Chapter 31

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_ CHAPTER XXXI

Mrs. Melrose never spoke again, or showed another flicker of the clear and normal intelligence that she had shown in the night. But she still breathed, and the long, wet day dragged slowly, in the big, mournful old house, until late in the unnatural afternoon. People--all sorts of people--were coming and going now, and being answered, or being turned away; a few privileged old friends came softly up the carpeted stairs, and cried quietly with Annie, who looked unbelievably old and ashen under the double shock. Norma began to hear, on all sides, respectful and sympathetic references to "the family." The family felt this, and would like that, the family was not seeing any one, the family must be protected and considered in every way. The privileged old friends talked with strange men in the lower hall, and were heard saying "I suppose so" dubiously, to questions of hats and veils and carriages and the church.

Chris was gone all day, but at four o'clock an urgent message was sent him, and he and Acton came into Mrs. Melrose's room about half an hour later, for the end. His face was ghastly, and he seemed almost unable to understand what was said to him, but he was very quiet.

Norma never forgot the scene. She knelt on one side of the bed, praying with all the concentration and fervour that she could rally under the circumstances. But her frightened, tired eyes were impressed with every detail of the dark old stately bedroom none the less. This was the end of the road, for youth and beauty and power and wealth, this sunken, unrecognizable face, this gathering of shadows among the dull, wintry shadows of the afternoon.

Annie was kneeling, too, her fine, unringed hands clasping one of her mother's hands. Chris sat against the back of the bed, half-supporting the piled pillows, in a futile attempt to make more easy the fighting breath, and Acton and Hendrick von Behrens, grave and awed, stood beside him, their faces full of sympathy and distress. There was an outer fringe of nurses, doctors, maids; there was even an audible whisper from one of them that caused Annie to frown, annoyed and rebuking, over her shoulder.

Minutes passed. Norma, pressing her cheek against the hand she held, began a Litany, very low. Suddenly the dying woman opened her eyes.

"Yes--yes--yes!" she whispered, eagerly, and with a break in her frightened voice Norma began more clearly, "Our Father, Who art in Heaven----" and they all joined in, somewhat awkwardly and uncertainly.

Mrs. Melrose sank back; she had raised herself just a fraction of an inch to speak. Now her head fell, and Norma saw the florid colour drain from her face as wine drains from an overturned glass. A leaden pallor settled suddenly upon her. When the prayer was finished they waited--eyed each other--waited again. There was no other breath.

"Doctor----" Annie cried, choking. The doctor gently laid down the limp hand he had raised; it was already cool. And behind him the maids began to sob and wail unrebuked.

Norma went out into the hall dazed and shaken. This was her first sight of death. It made her feel a little faint and sick. Chris came and talked to her for a few minutes; Annie had collapsed utterly, and was under the doctor's care; Acton broke down, too, and Norma heard Chris attempting to quiet him. There was audible sobbing all over the house when, an hour or two later, Alice's beautiful body in a magnificent casket was brought to lie in the old home beside the mother she had adored.

The fragrance of masses and masses of damp flowers began to penetrate everywhere, and Norma made occasional pilgrimages in to Annie's bedside, and told her what beautiful offerings were coming and coming and coming. Joseph had reinforcements of sympathetic, black-clad young men, who kept opening the front door, and murmuring at the muffled telephone. Annie's secretary, a young woman about Norma's age, was detailed by Hendrick to keep cards and messages straight--for every little courtesy must be acknowledged on Annie's black-bordered card within a few weeks' time--and Norma heard Joseph telephoning several of the prominent florists that Mr. Liggett had directed that all flowers were to come to the Melrose house. Nothing was overlooked.

When Norma went to her room, big boxes were on the bed, boxes that held everything that was simple and beautiful in mourning: plain, charming frocks, a smart long seal-bordered coat, veils and gloves, small and elegant hats, even black-bordered handkerchiefs. She dressed herself soberly, yet not without that mournful thrill that fitness and becomingness lends to bereavement. When she went back to Annie's side Annie was in beautiful lengths of lustreless crape, too; they settled down to low, sad conversation, with a few of the privileged old friends. Chris was nowhere to be seen, but at about six o'clock Acton came in to show them a telegram from Leslie, flying homeward. Judge Lee was hurrying to them from Washington, and for a few minutes Annie's handsome, bewildered little boys came in with a governess, and she cried over them, and clung to them forlornly.

After a distracted half-hour in the dining-room, when she and Acton and Annie's secretary had soup and salad from a sort of buffet meal that was going on there indefinitely, Norma went upstairs to find that the door to the front upper sitting-room, closed for hours, was set ajar, and to see a vague mass of beautiful flowers within--white and purple flowers, and wreaths of shining dark round leaves. With a quick-beating heart she stepped softly inside, and went to kneel at the nearer coffin, and cover her face with her shaking hands. The thick sweetness of the wet leaves and blossoms enveloped her. Candles were burning; there was no other light.

Two or three other women were in the room, catching their breath up through their nostrils with little gasps, pressing folded handkerchiefs against their trembling mouths, letting fresh tears well from their tear-reddened eyes. Chris was standing a few feet away from the white-clad, flower-circled, radiant sleeper who had been Alice; his arms were folded, his splendid dark gaze fell upon her with a sort of sombre calm; he seemed entirely unconscious of the pitying and sorrowful friends who were moving noiselessly to and fro.

In the candlelight there was a wavering smile on Alice's quiet face, her broad forehead was unruffled, and her mouth mysteriously sweet. Norma's eyes fell upon a familiar black coat, on the kneeling woman nearest her, and with a start she recognized Aunt Kate.

They left the room together a few minutes later, and Norma led her aunt to her own room, where they talked tenderly of the dead. The older woman was touched by the slender little black figure, and badly shaken by the double tragedy, and she cried quite openly. Norma had Regina send her up some tea, and petted and fussed about her in her little daughterly way.

"I saw about Miss Alice this morning, but I had no idea the poor old lady----!" Mrs. Sheridan commented sadly. "Well, well, it seems only yesterday that here, in this very house--and they were all young then----" Aunt Kate fell silent, and mused for a moment, before adding briskly: "But now, will they want you, Norma, after the funeral, I mean? Wolf wrote me----"

"I don't think Aunt Annie wants me now," Norma said, and with a heightened colour she added, suddenly, "But I belong here, now, Aunt Kate--I know who I am at last!"

Mrs. Sheridan's face did not move; but an indefinable tightness came about her mouth, and an indefinable sharpness to her eyes. She looked at Norma without speaking.

"Aunt Marianna told me," the girl said, simply. "You're sorry," she added, quickly, "I can see you are!"

"No--I wouldn't say that, Baby!" But Mrs. Sheridan spoke heavily, and ended on a sigh. There was a short silence.

Then Regina came in with a note for Norma, who read it, and turned to her aunt.

"It's Chris--he wants very much to see you before you go away," she said. "I wonder if you would ask Mr. Liggett to come in here, Regina?" But five minutes later, when Chris came in, he looked so ill that she was quick to spare him. "Chris, wouldn't to-morrow do--you look so tired!"

"I _am_ tired," Chris said, after quietly accepting Mrs. Sheridan's murmured condolence, with his hand holding hers, as if he liked the big, sympathetic woman. "But I want this off my mind before I see Judge Lee! You are right, Mrs. Sheridan," he said, with a sort of boyish gruffness, not yet releasing her hands, "my wife was an angel. I always knew it--but I wish I could tell her so just once more!"

"Ah, that's the very hardest thing about death," Mrs. Sheridan said, sitting down, and quite frankly wiping from her eyes the tears that sympathy for his sorrow had made spring again. "We'd always want one more hour!"

"But Norma perhaps has told you----?" Chris said, in a different tone. "Told you of the--the remarkable talk we had yesterday--with my poor mother-in-law----"

Kate Sheridan nodded gravely.

"Yes," she answered, almost reluctantly, "Norma is Theodore Melrose's child. I have letters--all their letters. I knew her mother, that was Louison Courtot, well. It was a mixed-up business--but you've got the whole truth at last. I've lost more than one night's sleep over my share of it, Mr. Liggett, thinking who this child was, and whether I had the right to hold my tongue.

"I was a widow when I went to Germany with Mrs. Melrose. She begged and begged me to, for she was sick with worry about Miss Annie. Miss Annie had been over there about eight months, and something she'd written had made her mother feel that she was ill, or in trouble. Well, I didn't want to leave my own children, but she coaxed me so hard that I went. We sailed without cabling, and went straight to Leipsic, and to the dreadful, dreary pension that Miss Annie was in--a dismal, lonely place. She came downstairs to see her mother, and I'll never forget the scream she gave, for she'd had no warning, poor child, and Mueller had taken all her money, and she was--well, we could see how she was. She began laughing and crying, and her mother did, too, but Mrs. Melrose stopped after a few minutes, and we couldn't stop Miss Annie at all. She shrieked and sobbed and strangled until we saw she was ill, and her mother gave me one look, and bundled her right out to the carriage, and off to a better place, and we got a doctor and a nurse. But all that night she was in danger of her life. I went in to her room that evening, to put things in order, and she was lying on the bed like a dead thing--white, sick, and with her eyes never moving off her mother's face. I could hear her murmuring the whole story, the shame and the bitter cruelty of it, crying sometimes--and her mother crying, too.

"'And, Mama,' she said--the innocence of her! 'Mama, did the doctor tell you that there might have been a baby?--I didn't know it myself until a few weeks ago! And that's why they're so frightened about me now. But,' she said, beginning to cry again, 'I should have hated it--I've always hated it, and I'd rather have it all over--I don't want to have to face anything more!'

"Well, it looked then as if she couldn't possibly live through the night, and all her mother could think of was to comfort her. She told her that they would go away and forget it all, and Miss Annie clung to her through the whole terrible thing. We none of us got any sleep that night, and I think it was at about three o'clock the next morning that I crept to the door, and the doctor--Doctor Leslie--an old English doctor who was very kind, came to the door and gave me the poor little pitiful baby in a blanket. I almost screamed when I took it, for the poor little soul was alive, working her little mouth! I took her to my room, and indeed I baptized her myself--I named her Mary for my mother, and Leslie for the doctor, but I never thought she'd need a name--then. She was under four pounds, and with a little claw like a monkey's paw, and so thin we didn't dare dress her--we thought she was three months too soon, then, and I just sat watching her, waiting for her to die, and thinking of my own----!

"Miss Annie was given up the next day, she'd gone into a brain fever, but my poor little soul was wailing a good healthy wail--I remember I cried bitterly when the doctor told me not to hope for her! But she lived--and on the fourth day Mrs. Melrose sent us away, and we went and stayed in the country for two months after that.

"Then I had a letter from the Riviera, the first that'd come. Miss Annie was getting well, her hair was coming out curly, and she hardly remembered anything about what had happened at all. She wasn't nineteen then, poor child! She had cried once, her mother wrote, and had said she thanked God the baby had died and that was all she ever said of it.

"I brought the baby home, and for nearly three years she lived with my own, and of course Mrs. Melrose paid me for it. And then one day Louison Courtot came to see me--I'd known her, of course--Mr. Theodore's wife, that had been Miss Annie's maid. She had a letter from Mrs. Melrose, and she took Leslie away, and gave her to her grandmother--just according to plan. Well, I didn't like it--though it gave the child her rights, but it didn't seem honest. I had no call to interfere, and a few months later Mrs. Melrose gave me the double house in Brooklyn, that you'll well remember, Norma--and your own father made out the deed of gift, Mr. Chris----!

"And then, perhaps a year later, Louison came to call on me again, and with her was a little girl--four years old, and I looked at her, and looked at Louison, and I said, 'My God--that's a Melrose!' She said, yes, it was Theodore's child."

"Norma!" Chris said.

"Norma--and I remember her as if it was yesterday! With a blue velvet coat on her, and a white collar, and the way she dragged off her little mittens to go over and play with Rose and Wolf--and the little coaxing air she had! So then Louison told me the story, how she had never told Mrs. Melrose that Theodore really had a daughter, because she hated her so! But she was going to be married again, and go to Canada, and she wanted me to keep the baby until she could send for her. I said I would see how it went, but I could see then that there never was in the world----" Mrs. Sheridan interrupted herself, coughed, and glanced at the girl. "Well, we liked Norma right then and there!" she finished, a little tamely.

"Oh, Aunt Kate!" Norma said, smiling through tears, her hand tight upon the older woman's, "you never will praise me!"

"So Norma," the story went on, "had her supper that night between my two children, and for fourteen years she never knew that she wasn't our own. And perhaps she never would have known if Louison hadn't written me that she was in a hospital--she was to have an operation, and she was willing at last to make peace with her husband's family. In the same letter was her husband's note that she was gone, so I had to use my own judgment then. And when I heard Norma talk of the rich girls she saw in the bookstore, Mr. Chris, and knew how she loved what money could do for her, it seemed to me that at least I must tell her grandmother the truth. So we came here, three years ago, and if it wasn't for Miss Alice's mistake about her, perhaps the story would have come out then! But that's all the truth."

Chris nodded, his arms folded on his chest, his tired face very thoughtful.

"It makes her a rich woman, Mrs. Sheridan," he said.

"I suppose so, sir. I understand Mr. Melrose--the old gentleman--left everything to his son, Theodore."

"But not only that," Chris said. "She can claim every penny that has ever been paid over to Leslie, all through her minority, and since she came of age, and she also inherits the larger part of her grandmother's estate, under the will. Probably Mrs. Melrose would have changed that, if she had lived when all this came to light, and given that same legacy to Leslie, but we can't act on that supposition. The court will probably feel that a very grave injustice has been done Norma, and exact the full arrears."

"But, Chris," Norma said, quickly, "surely some way can be found to _give_ Leslie all that would have come to me----"

"Well, that, of course, would be pure generosity on your part!" he said, quietly. "However, it would seem to me desirable all round," he added, "to keep this in the family."

"Oh, I think so!" Norma agreed, eagerly.

"Annie and Hendrick must be informed, and, as Leslie's mother, Annie will provide for her some day, of course. We'll discuss all that later. But to-day I only wanted to clear up a few points before I see Judge Lee. He has the will, I believe. He will be here to-morrow morning. In the meanwhile, I think I would say nothing, Norma, just because Annie is so upset, and if Leslie heard any garbled story, before she got here----"

"Oh, I agree with you entirely, Chris! Anything that makes it easier all round!" Norma could afford to be magnanimous and agreeable. She would not have been human not to feel herself the most interesting figure in all this dramatic situation, not to know that thoughtfulness and generosity were the most charming parts of her new role. Quietly, affectionately, she went to the door with Aunt Kate.

"I wish I could go home with you!" she said. "But I think they need me here! And if Wolf should come up Saturday, Aunt Kate, you'll tell him about the funeral----"

"Rose said he wasn't coming up on Saturday," his mother said. "But if he does, of course he'll understand! Remember, Norma," she added, drawing the girl aside a moment, in the lower hall, "remember that they've all been very kind to you, dear! It's going to be hard for them all!"

"Yes, I know!" Norma said, hastily, the admonition not to her taste.

"And what you and Wolf will do with all that money----!" her aunt mused, shaking her head. "Well, one thing at a time! But I know," she finished, fondly, "my girl will show them all what a generous and a lovely nature she has, in all the changes and shifts!"

Clever Aunt Kate! Norma smiled to herself as she went upstairs. She had hundreds of times before this guided the girl by premature confidence and praise; she knew how Norma loved the approbation of those about her.

Not but what Norma meant to be everything that was broad and considerate now; she had assumed that position from the beginning. Leslie's chagrin, Aunt Annie's consternation, should be respected and humoured. They had sometimes shown her the arrogant, the supercilious side of the Melrose nature, in the years gone by. Now she, the truest Melrose of them all, would show them real greatness of soul. She would talk it all over with Wolf, of course----

She missed Wolf. It was, as always, a curiously unsatisfying atmosphere, this of the old Melrose house. The whispers, the hushed footsteps, the lowered voices, Aunt Annie's plaintive heroism in her superb crapes, the almost belligerent loyalty of the intimate friends who praised and marvelled at her, the costly flowers--thousands of dollars' worth of them--the extra men helping Joseph to keep everything decorous and beautiful--somehow it all sickened Norma, and she wished that Wolf could come and take her for a walk, and talk to her about it. He would be interested in it all, and he would laugh at her account of the undertakers, and he would break into elementary socialism when the cost of the whole pompous pageant was estimated.

And what would he think of her new-found wealth? Norma tried to imagine it, but somehow she could not think of Wolf as very much affected. He hated society, primarily, and he would never be idle, not for the treasures of India. He would let her spend it as she pleased, and go on working rapturously at his valves and meters and gauges, perhaps delighted if she bought him the costliest motor-car made, or the finest of mechanical piano-players, but quite as willing that the pearls about his wife's throat should cost fifty dollars as fifty thousand, and quite as anxious that the heiress of the Melroses should "make good" with his associate workers as if she had been still a little clerk from Biretta's Bookshop!

But cheerfully indifferent as he was to everything that made life worth living to such a man as Christopher Liggett, she knew that he would not go to California without her unless there was a definite break between them. She knew she could not persuade him to leave her here, as a normal and pleasant solution, just until everything was settled, and until they could see a little further ahead. No, Wolf was annoyingly conventional where his wife was concerned: her place was with him, unless for some secondary reason they had decided to part. And she knew that if he let her go it would be because he felt that he never should have claimed her--that, in the highest sense, he never had had her at all. _

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