Chapter V: As Usual

WHEN Norman’s mother had been there less than a week, he had settled down to a somewhat fretful but unprotesting acceptance of her presence. She had got him an efficient cleaning woman; she had sewed buttons on his shirts, and bought him a needed supply of socks and handkerchiefs. She waked him in the morning to the kind of breakfast he had always had at home. It was no use trying to regard her as a guest. She slipped easily into the familiar, authoritative, useful and neglected rôle of mother.... When Charlie Beckett, at the office, suggested to Norman one day, as one bachelor to another, that they have dinner and go to a musical comedy together that evening, he called up his mother and said he wouldn’t be home till late--leaving her alone with no more thought than if he had been at home in Vickley.

(One incident may be lightly touched upon. Norman was not much of a drinking man, but in Charlie Beckett’s genial company, at the place where Charlie took him to get some real old-fashioned beer after the show, he drank enough to become rather tearily and beerily confidential; though even then he presented his troubles in a somewhat fictional disguise. “M’ wife ran away. Lef’ me with a baby. Nice little kid, too!”--something like that, and so unlike Norman in his sober senses that he preferred to forget it....)

His mother had written to Lucinda telling her she could come Saturday. “Just for a few days,” she explained to Norman.... She herself had not said how long she was going to stay; but on Monday she had brought home from the station a second suitcase which she had checked there on her arrival, and he guessed that she intended to remain at least a fortnight. Well, there was nothing to complain of, surely, in this; he had invited her to come--and he couldn’t say that she was in his way. She did make him comfortable. Nevertheless her motherly presence secretly and unreasonably irritated him. But that was no new thing, either. He had been secretly irritated at her for the last several years.... So that everything was much as it had always been.

Once, only, there flashed into his mind the curious tale that Gilbert Rand had told him about his father. He hadn’t exactly doubted the story--he had taken its truth for granted; but in a certain sense he had not really believed it. How can one believe such things about one’s parents? He wondered, now, if his mother had guessed what was going on? And if she had guessed, had she sat there calmly, sewing buttons on her husband’s shirts, knowing that he would get over what ailed him sooner or later? Or had she never dreamed of such a thing? It was hard to make his mother out--impossible, now, to tell what she knew or thought....

She saw the baby every day, and one evening they went together. If her alien presence exercised a constraint on Mrs. Czermak and her family, she appeared placidly unaware of it. She was friendly enough with them; they were formal with her--still suspicious, it seemed, of her intentions regarding the baby. Norman was ill at ease too, during this visit.... And thereby occurred a second and still more disturbing incident in Norman’s relations with Monica.

It was a rainy evening, late in the week, and he had’phoned for a taxi to take them back home. As they were getting into the taxi, his mother remembered that she had left her bag in the nursery; and he went back to get it. Monica found it for him, and came down to the door with him. It was the first time they had been alone together since that night of the kiss, and they were both embarrassed. Doubtless it was this embarrassment which provoked him to a silly speech. As they passed the door of his old room, he remarked: “I suppose you’re bringing morning coffee to somebody else now?”

She looked at him reproachfully, and they halted outside the room. “Do you think so?” she said. She turned the knob. “See--it’s still empty--waiting for you to come back.” And somehow or other they were there together in that empty room, with the door slowly swinging shut behind them. As it swung shut, the shadows closed in and obliterated the light from the flickering gas-jet in the hall. In the darkness Norman’s hand touched Monica’s hungrily. And this time he was not surprised that next moment they were in one another’s arms.

No, he was not surprised. Monica no longer seemed to him a child. And he knew that he wanted this--her arms about him, her kisses on his mouth. He wanted it all so much that he couldn’t think of anything else at the moment.

“Darling!” he whispered.

Then, in the darkness, she whispered to him: “I can’t stand it, Norman! I want you too much! I don’t care if you _are_ married!...

“Now you know!” And her mouth passionately met his again.

“Do you want me?” she whispered.

And what could a young man answer but--

“Yes, of course I do!”

“Then come back and live with us again--and don’t let her take the baby away!” she whispered pleadingly.

“We’ll talk about it later,” he said, half brought back to sanity by this alien note ... half aware that this was all mad folly, until her kiss dizzied his senses again....

“You must go, now, dear,” she said presently, pushing him gently out.

“Good Lord!” thought Norman, as he ran down to the waiting taxi.