Chapter 7

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_ CHAPTER VII

Christopher had gone down to the door with his brother and the girls, and had sent a glance up and down the quiet, handsome block, feeling in the moving air what Norma felt, what all the city felt--the bold, wild promise of spring. He turned back into the house with something like a sigh; Acton and Leslie in their young happiness were somehow a little haunting to-night.

The butler was starting upstairs with the papers; Christopher took them from him, and went back to Alice's room with his eyes idly following the headlines. The pretty apartment was somewhat disordered, and looked dull and dark in the half light. Christopher walked to a window, and pushed it open upon its railed balcony.

"Chris!" whispered his wife's voice, thick and dry in the gloom.

Aghast in the instant apprehension of something wrong, he sprang to her couch, dropped to his knees, and put an arm about her.

"Alice! What is it, my darling?"

She struggled for speech, and he could see that her face was ashen.

"Chris--no, don't ring. Chris, _who is that girl_?"

Christopher touched the chain that flooded the couch with rosy light. He bent in eager sympathy over his wife's relaxed form.

"Alice, what is it?" he asked, tenderly. "Don't worry, dear, don't try to talk too fast! Just tell Chris what frightened you----"

Alice laughed wretchedly as she detached the fingers he had pressed anxiously upon her forehead.

"No, I'm not feverish!" she assured him, holding tight to his hand. "But I want you to tell me, Chris, I must know--and no matter what promise you have given Mother--or given any one----"

"Now, now, now!" he soothed her. "I'll tell you anything, sweetheart, only don't let yourself get so excited. Just tell me what it is, Alice, and I'll do anything in the world for you, of course!"

"Chris," she said, swallowing with a dry throat, and sitting up with an air of regaining self-control, "you must tell me. You know you can trust me, you _know_----! That girl----"

"But _what_ girl--what are you talking about, dear? Do--do try to be just a little clearer, and calmer----"

"Who"--said Alice, with a ghastly look, sweeping the hair back from her damp forehead--"who is that Norma Sheridan?"

"Why, I told you, dear, that I don't know," her husband protested. "I told you weeks ago, after your mother made that scene, the night of Hendrick's speech, that I couldn't make head or tail of it!"

"Chris"--Alice was regarding him fixedly--"you _must_ know!"

"Dearest, couldn't your mother simply wish to befriend a girl whose parents----"

Alice flung her loosened hair back, and at her gesture and her glance at the little carafe on her table he poured her a glass of cold water. Drinking it off, and raising herself in her cushions, she stretched her hand to touch the chair beside her, and still without a word indicated that he was to take it. With a face of grave concern Christopher sat down beside her, holding her hands in both his own.

"Chris," she said, clearly and quickly, if with occasional catches of breath, "the minute that girl came into the room I knew that--I knew that _horror_ had come upon us all! I knew that she was one of us--one of us Melroses, somehow----"

"Alice!" he said, pleadingly.

"But Mama," she said, with a keen look, "didn't tell you that?"

"She told me only what I told you that night, on my honour as a gentleman! Alice, what makes you say what you do?"

"Ah, Chris," his wife cried, almost frantically, "look at her! _Look_ at her! Why, her voice is Annie's, the same identical voice--she looks like my father, like Theodore--she looks like us all! She and Leslie were so much alike, as they sat there, in spite of the colouring, that I almost screamed it at them! Surely--surely, you see it--everyone sees it!"

He stared at her, beginning to breathe a little quickly in his turn.

"By George!" she heard him whisper, as if to himself.

"Do you see it, Chris?" Alice whispered, almost fearfully.

"But--but----" He got up and walked restlessly to the window, and came back to sit down again. "But there's a cousinship somewhere," he said, sensibly. "There's no reason to suppose that the thing can't be explained. I do think you're taking this thing pretty hard, my dear. What can you possibly suppose? There might be a hundred girls----"

His voice fell. Alice was watching him expectantly.

"Mama felt it--saw it--as I do," she said. "You may be very sure that Mama wouldn't have almost lost her mind, as she did, unless something had given her cause!"

They looked at each other in silence, in the utter silence of the lovely, cool-toned room.

"Alice," Chris said in a puzzled voice after awhile, "you suspect me of keeping something from you. But on my honour you know all that your mother told me--all that I know!"

"Oh, Chris," she said, with a sort of wail. "If I don't know more!"

Her husband's slow colour rose.

"How could you know more?" he asked, bewilderedly.

Alice was unhappily silent.

"Chris, if I tell you what I'm afraid of--what I fear," she said, presently, after anxious thought, "will you promise me never, never to speak of it--never even to think of it!--if it--if it proves not to be true?"

"I don't have to tell you that, Alice," he said.

"No, of course you don't--of course you don't!" she echoed with a nervous laugh. "I'll tell you what I think, Chris--what has been almost driving me mad--and you can probably tell me a thousand reasons why it can't be so! You see, I've never understood Mama's feverish distress these last weeks. She's been to see me, she's done what had to be done about Leslie's engagement, but she's not herself--you can see that! Yesterday she began to cry, almost for nothing, and when I happened to mention--or rather when I mentioned very deliberately--that Miss Sheridan was coming here, she almost shrieked. Well, I didn't know what to make of it, and even then I rather wondered----

"Even then," Alice began again, after a painful pause, and with her own voice rising uncontrollably, "I suspected something. But not this! Oh, Chris, if I'm wrong about this, I shall be on my knees for gratitude for the rest of my life; I would die, I would die to have it just--just my wretched imagination!--A thing like this--to us--the Melroses--who have always been so straight--so respected!"

"Now, Alice--now, Alice!"

"Yes, I know!" she said, quickly. "I know!" And for a moment she lay back quietly, stroking his hand. "Chris," she resumed, composedly, after a moment, "you know the tragedy of Annie's life?"

Chris, taken by surprise, frowned.

"Why, yes, I suppose so," he admitted, unwillingly.

"Chris, did it ever occur to you that she might have had a child--by that fiend?"

Chris looked at his wife a moment, and his eyes widened, and his mouth twitched humorously.

"Oh, come now, Alice--come now!"

"You think it's folly!" she asked, eagerly.

"Worse!" he answered, briefly, his eyes smiling reproach.

Alice's whole tense body relaxed, and she stared at him with light dawning in her eyes.

"Well, probably it is," she said, very simply.

"Of course it is," Chris said. "Now, you are dead tired, dear, and you have let the thing mill about in your head until you can't see anything normally. I confess that I don't understand your mother's mysterious nervousness, but then I am free to say that I don't by any means always understand your mother! You remember the pearl episode, and the time that she had Annie and Hendrick cabling from Italy--because Hendrick Junior had a rash! And then there was Porter--a boy nineteen years old, and she actually had everyone guessing exactly what she felt toward him----"

"Oh, Chris, no, she didn't! She simply felt that he was a genius, and he hadn't a penny," Alice protested, reproachful and hurt.

"Well, she had him there at the house until his mother came after him, and then, when he finally was sent abroad, she asked me seriously if I thought two hundred dollars a month was enough for his musical education!"

"Yes, I know!" Alice said, ruefully, shaking her head.

"Now this comes along," said Christopher, encouraged by the effect of his words, "and you begin to fret your poor little soul with all sorts of wild speculations. I wish to the Lord that your mother was a little bit more trusting with her confidences, but when it all comes out it'll prove to be some sister of your grandfather who married a tailor or something, and left a line of pretty girls to work in Biretta's----"

"But, Chris, she reminded me so of Annie to-day I almost felt _sick_," Alice said, still frightened and dubious.

"Well, that merely shows that you're soft-hearted; it's no reflection on Annie!" Chris said, giving her her paper, and opening his own. But Alice did not open her paper.

A maid came in, and moved about noiselessly setting chairs and rugs in order. Another soft light was lighted and the little square table set before the fire. The cool fresh air drifted in at the half-open window, and sent a delicate breath, from Alice's great bowl of freesia lilies, through the peaceful room. The fire snapped smartly about a fresh log, and Alice's great tortoise-shell cat came to make a majestic spring into her lap.

"Chris--I'm so worried!" said his wife.

"As a matter of fact," said Christopher, quietly, after a while, "did----Annie was very ill, I know, but was there--was there any reason to suppose that there might have been--that such a situation as to-day's might have arisen?"

Alice looked at him with apprehension dawning afresh.

"Oh, yes--that is, I believe so. I didn't know it then, of course."

"I never knew that," Christopher said, thoughtfully.

"Well, I didn't at the time, you know. It was--of course it was sixteen--eighteen years ago," Alice said. And in a whisper she added, "Chris, that girl is eighteen!"

Christopher pursed his lips to whistle, but made no sound, and looked into the fire.

"You see I was only about thirteen or fourteen," Alice said. "I was going to Miss Bennet's school, and we were all living in the Madison Avenue house. Papa had been dead only a year, or less, for I remember that Annie was eighteen, and wasn't going out much, because of mourning. Theodore had been worrying Mama to death, and had left the house then, and Mama was sending him and his wife money, I believe, but of course lots of that was kept from me. Annie was terribly wild and excitable then, always doing reckless things; I can remember when she and Belle Duer dressed up as boys and had their pictures taken, and once they put a matrimonial advertisement in the papers--of course they were just silly--at least that was. But then she began to rave about this man Mueller----"

"The acrobat!" Christopher, who was listening intently, supplied.

"No, dearest! He was their riding master--I suppose that isn't much better, really. But he was an extremely handsome man--really stunning. Carry Winchester's mother forbade her taking any more lessons because _she_ was so wild about him, and Annie told me once that that was why Ida Burnett was popped into a boarding school. He was big, and dark, and he had a slight foreign accent, and he was ever so much older than Annie--forty, at least. She began to spend all her time at the riding club; it used to make Mama wild--especially as Annie was so headstrong and saucy about it! Poor Mama, I remember her crying and complaining!"

"And how long did this go on?" Christopher asked.

"Oh, weeks! Well, and then one hot day, just before Easter vacation it was, I remember, I came home early from school with a headache, and when I reached the upper hall I could hear Mama crying, and Annie shouting out loud, and this Kate--this very same Kate Sheridan!--trying to quiet Mama, and everything in an uproar! Finally I heard Annie sobbing--I was frightened to death of course, and I sat down on the stairs that go up to the nursery--and I heard Annie say something about being eighteen--and she was eighteen the very day before; and she ran by me, in her riding clothes, with the derby hat that girls used to wear then, and her hair clubbed on her neck, and she ran downstairs, and I could hear her crying, and saying to herself: 'I'll show them; I'll show them!' And that was the last I saw of her," Alice finished sadly, "for almost two years."

"She went out?" Christopher asked.

"Yes; she slammed the door. Mama fainted."

"Of course!"

"Oh, Chris," said his wife, half crying, "wasn't that enough to make any one faint?--let alone Mama. Anyway, she was dreadfully ill, and they rather shut me up about it, and told everyone that Annie had gone abroad. We had been living very quietly, you know, and nobody cared much what Annie did, then. And she really had gone abroad, she wrote Mama from Montreal, and she had been married to Emil Mueller in Albany. They had taken a train there, and were married that same afternoon. They went to London, and they were in Germany, and then--then it all broke up, you know about that!"

"How much later was that?"

Alice considered.

"It was about Christmas time. Don't you remember that I went to your mother, and Acton and I got measles? Mama was abroad then."

"And this Kate went with her?"

"Yes. That was--that was one of the things I was--just thinking about! Annie wrote Mama that she was very ill, in Munich, and poor Mama just flew. Mueller had left her; indeed there was a woman and two quite big girls that had a claim on him, and if Mama hadn't been so anxious to shut it all up, she might have proved that he was a bigamist--but I don't know that she was ever sure. Judge Lee put the divorce through for Annie, and Mama took her to the Riviera and petted her, and pulled her through. But all her hair came out, and for weeks they didn't think she would live. She had brain fever. You see, Annie had had some money waiting for her on her eighteenth birthday, and your own father, who was her guardian, Chris, had given her the check--interest, it was, about seven or eight thousand dollars. And he told her to open her own account, and manage her own income, from then on. And we thought--Mama and I--that in some way Mueller must have heard of it. Anyway, she never deposited the check, and when her money gave out he just left her."

"But what makes you think that her illness didn't commence--or wasn't entirely--brain fever?"

"That she might have had a baby?" Alice asked, outright.

Christopher nodded, the point almost insufferably distasteful to him.

"Oh, I know it!" Alice said.

"You _know_ it?" the man echoed, almost in displeasure.

"Yes, she told me herself! But of course that was years later. At the time, all I knew was that Kate Sheridan came home, and came to see me at school, and told me that Mama and Annie were very well, but that Annie had been frightfully sick, and that Mama wouldn't come back until Annie was much stronger. As a matter of fact, it was nearly two years--Theodore took me over to them a year from that following summer, and then Annie stayed with some friends in England; she was having a wonderful time! But years afterward, when little Hendrick was coming, in fact, she was here one day, and she seemed to feel blue, and finally I happened to say that if motherhood seemed so hard to a person like herself, whose husband and whose whole family were so mad with joy over the prospect of a baby, what on earth must it be to the poor girls who have every reason to hate it. And she looked at me rather oddly, and said: 'Ah, I know what _that_ is!' Of course I guessed right away what she meant, and I said: 'Annie--not really!' And she said: 'Oh, yes, that was what started my illness. I had been so almost crazy--so blue and lonesome, and so sick with horror at the whole thing, that it all happened too soon, the day after Mama and Kate got there, in fact!' And then she burst out crying and said: 'Thank God it was that way! I couldn't have faced _that_.' And she said that she had been too desperately ill to realize anything, but that afterward, at Como, when she was much better, she asked Mama about it, and Mama said she must only be glad that it was all over, and try to think of it as a terrible dream!"

"Well, there you are," said Chris, "she herself says that no child was born!"

"Yes, but, Chris, mightn't it be that she didn't know?" Alice submitted, timidly.

Her husband eyed her with a faint and thoughtful frown.

"It seems to me that that is rather a fantastic theory, dear! Where would this child be all this time?"

"Kate" Alice said, simply.

"Kate!" he echoed, struck. And Alice saw, with a sinking heart, that he was impressed. After a full moment of silence he said, simply: "You think this is the child?"

"Chris," his wife cried, appealingly, "I don't say I think so! But it occurred to me that it might be. I hope, with all my soul, that you don't think so!"

"I'm afraid," he answered, thoughtfully, "that I do!"

Alice's eyes filled with tears, and she tightened her fingers in his without speaking.

"The idea being," Christopher mused, "that Mrs. Sheridan brought the baby home, and has raised her. That makes Miss Sheridan--Norma--the child of Annie and that German blackguard!"

"I suppose so!" Alice admitted, despairingly.

"But why has it been kept quiet all this time!"

"Well, that," Alice said, "I don't understand. But this I _am_ sure of: Annie hasn't the faintest suspicion of it! She supposes that the whole thing ended with her terrible illness. She was only eighteen, and younger and more childish even than Leslie is! Oh, Chris," said Alice, her eyes watering, "isn't it horrible! To come to us, of all people! Will everybody know?"

"Well, it all depends. It's a nasty sort of business, but I suppose there's no help for it. How much does Hendrick know?"

"About Annie? Oh, everything that she does; I know that. Annie told him, and Judge Lee told him about Mueller and the divorce, or nullification, or whatever it was! There was nothing left unexplained there. But if the child lived, she didn't know that--only Mama did, and Kate. Oh, poor Annie, it would kill her to have all that raked up now! Why Kate kept it secret all these years----"

"I must say," Christopher exclaimed, "that----By George, I hate this sort of thing! No help for it, I suppose. But if it gets out we shall all be in for a sweet lot of notoriety. We shall just have to make terms with these Sheridans, and keep our mouths shut. I didn't get the idea that they were holding your mother up. I believe it's more that she wants justice done; she would, you know, for the sake of the family. The girl herself, this Norma, evidently hasn't been raised on any expectations--probably knows nothing about it!"

"Oh, I'm sure of that!" Alice agreed, eagerly. "And if she has Melrose blood in her, you may be sure she'll play the game. But, Chris, I can't stand the uncertainty. Mama's coming to have luncheon with me to-morrow, and I'm going to ask her outright. And if this Norma is really--what we fear, what do you think we ought to do?"

"Well, it's hard to say. It's all utterly damnable," Christopher said, distressed. "And Annie, who let us all in for it, gets off scot free! I wish, since she let it go so long, that your mother had forgotten it entirely. But, as it is, this child isn't, strictly speaking, illegitimate. There was a marriage, and some sort of divorce, whether Mueller deceived Annie as to his being a bachelor or not!"

A maid stood in the doorway.

"Mrs. Melrose, Mrs. Liggett."

"Oh," Alice said, in an animated tone of pleasure, "ask her to come upstairs!" But the eyes she turned to her husband were full of apprehension. "Chris, here's Mama now! Shall we----? Would you dare?"

"Use your own judgment!" he had time to say hastily, before his wife's mother came in. _

Read next: Chapter 8

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