Chapter XXI—THE MOTH MEETS THE STAR
THUS had Aline, her heart hot for battle in Jimmie's cause, contrived with Connie Deering as subsidiary conspirator. She had lain awake most of the night, thinking of the approaching interview, composing speeches, elaborating arguments, defining her attitude. Her plan of campaign was based on the assumption of immediate hostilities. She had pictured a scornful lady moved to sudden anger at seeing herself trapped, and haughtily refusing to discuss overtures of peace. It was to be war from the first, until she had brought her adversary low; and when the door-handle rattled and the door opened to admit Norma, every nerve in her young body grew tense, and her heart beat like the clapper of a bell.
Norma entered, looked for a moment in smiling surprise at Aline, came quickly forward, and moved by a sudden impulse, a yearning for love, sweetness, freshness, peace—she knew not what—she put her arms round the girl and kissed her.
“My dear Aline, how sweet it is to see you again!”
The poor little girl stood helpless. The bottom was knocked out of her half-childish plan of campaign. There was no scornful lady, no haughty words, no hostilities. She fell to crying. What else could she do?
“There, there! Don't cry, dear,” said Norma soothingly, almost as helpless. Seating herself on a low chair and drawing Aline to her side, she looked up at the piteous face.
“Why should you cry, dear?”
“I did n't know you would be so good to me,” answered Aline, wiping her eyes.
“Why should n't I be good to you? What reason could I have for not being glad to see you?”
“I don't know,” said the girl, with a touch of bitterness. “Things are so different now.”
Norma sighed for answer and thought of her premonition. She was aware that Connie had deliberately planned this interview, but could find no resentment in her heart. The reproach implied in Aline's words she accepted humbly. She was at once too spiritless for anger, and too much excited by the girl's presence for regret at having come. Her eye fell upon the picture leaning against the chair-back, and a conjecture swiftly passed through her mind.
“Mrs. Deering asked me to come and look at a wedding-present,” she said with a smile.
“Did she tell you from whom?” asked Aline, thrusting her handkerchief into her pocket. She had found her nerve again.
“No.”
“It's from Jimmie.”
“Is it that over there?”
Aline caught and misinterpreted an unsteadiness of voice. She threw herself on her knees by Norma's side.
“You won't refuse it, Miss Hardacre. Oh, say you won't refuse it. Jimmie began it ever so long ago. He put everything into it. It would break his heart if you refused it—the heart of the best and beautifullest and tenderest and most wonderful man God ever made.”
Norma touched with her gloved fingers a wisp of hair straying over the girl's forehead.
“How do you know he is all that?”
“How do I know? How do I know the sun shines and the rain falls? It's just so.”
“You have faith, my child,” said Norma, oddly.
“It isn't faith. It's knowledge. You all believe Jimmie has done something horrible. He has n't. I know he hasn't. He couldn't. He couldn't harm a living creature by word or deed. I know he never did it. If I had thought so for one moment, I should have loathed myself so that I would have gone out and killed myself. I know very little about it. I did n't read the newspapers—it's hideous—it's horrible—Jimmie would as soon think of torturing a child. It's not in his nature. He is all love and sweetness and chivalry. If you say he has taken the blame on himself for some great generous purpose—yes. That's Jimmie. That's Jimmie all over. It's cruel—it's monstrous for any one who knows him to think otherwise.”
She had risen from her knees half-way through her passionate speech, and moved about in front of Norma, wringing her hands. She ended in a sob and turned away. Norma lay back in her chair, pale and agitated. The cynical worldling with his piercing vision into men and the pure, ignorant child had arrived at the same conclusion, not after months of thought, but instantly, intuitively. She could make the girl no answer. Aline began again.
“He could n't. You know he could n't. It's something glorious and beautiful he has done and not anything shameful.”
She went on, with little pauses, hurling her short, breathless sentences across the space that separated her from Norma, forgetful of everything save the wrong done to Jimmie. At last Norma rose and went to her.
“Hush, dear!” she said. “There are some things I mustn't talk about. I daren't. You are too young to understand. Mr. Padgate has sent me a wedding-present. Tell him how gladly I accept it and how I shall value it. Let me see the picture.”
Aline, her slight bosom still heaving with the after-storm of emotion, said nothing, but drew the cloth from the canvas. Norma started back in-surprise. She had not anticipated seeing her own portrait.
“Oh, but it is beautiful!” she cried involuntarily.
“Yes—more than beautiful,” said Aline, and mechanically she moved the chair into the full light of the window.
Norma looked at the picture for a long time, stepped back and looked at herself in the mirror of the overmantel, and returned to the picture. And as she looked the soul behind the picture spoke to her. The message delivered, she glanced at Aline.
“It is not I, that woman. I wish to God it were.” She put her hands up to her face, and took a step or two across the room, and repeated a little wildly, “I wish to God it were!”
“It is very, very like you,” said Aline softly, recovering her girl's worship of the other's stately beauty.
Norma caught her by the arm and pointed at the portrait.
“Can't you see the difference?”
But the soul behind the picture had not spoken to Aline. There was love hovering around the pictured woman's lips; happy tenderness and trust and promise mingled in her eyes; in so far as the shadow of a flower-like woman's passion could strain her features, so were her features strained. Yet she looked out of the canvas a proud, queenly woman, capable of heroisms and lofty sacrifice. She was one who loved deeply and demanded love in return. She was warm of the flesh, infinitely pure of the spirit. The face was the face of Norma, but the soul was that of the dream-woman who had come and sat in the sitter's chair and communed with Jimmie as he painted her. And Norma heard her voice. It was an indictment of her life, a judgment and a sentence.
“I am glad you can't, dear,” she said to Aline, regaining her balance. “Tell him I shall prize it above all my wedding-gifts.”
They talked quietly, for a while about Jimmie's affairs, the pilgrimage through southern France and northern Italy, his illness, his work. His poverty Aline was too proud to mention.
“And you, my dear?” asked Norma, kindly.