on the second sunday after their return from antelope, bill cannon resolved to dedicate the afternoon to paying calls. this, at least, was what he told his daughter at luncheon as he, she, and gene sat over the end of the meal. to pay calls was not one of the bonanza king’s customs, and in answer to rose’s query as to whom he was going to honor thus, he responded that he thought he’d “start in with delia ryan.”
rose made no comment on this intelligence. the sharp glance he cast at her discovered no suggestion of consciousness in the peach-like placidity of her face. it gratified him to see her thus unsuspecting, and in the mellowing warmth of his satisfaction he turned and addressed a polite query to gene as to how he intended spending the afternoon. gene and rose, it appeared, were going to the park to hear the band. gene loved a good band, and the one that played in the park sunday afternoons was especially good. the sunday before, gene had heard it play poet and peasant and the overture of william tell, and it was great! that was one of the worst things about living on a ranch, gene complained, you didn’t have any music except at the men’s house at night when one of the mexicans played on an accordion.
the old man, with his elbow on the table, and a short, blunt-fingered hand stroking his beard, looked at his son with narrowed eyes full of veiled amusement. when he did not find gene disagreeably aggravating as his only failure, he could, as it were, stand away from him and realize how humorous he was if you took him in a certain way.
“what’s the mexican play?” he growled without removing his hand.
“la paloma,” answered gene, pleased to be questioned thus amicably by his autocratic sire, “generally la paloma, but he can play the heart bowed down and the toreador song from carmen. i want him to learn the miserere from trovatore. it’s nice to sit on the porch after dinner and listen while you smoke.”
“sort of court minstrel,” said his father, thumping down his napkin with his hand spread flat on it. “don eugenio cannon, with his minstrel playing to him in the gloaming! it’s very picturesque. did you ever think of having a court fool too, or perhaps you don’t feel as if you needed one?”
he arose from his chair before gene, who never quite understood the somewhat ferocious humor of his parent, had time to reply.
“well, so long,” said the old man; “be good children and don’t get into mischief, and rose, see that your brother doesn’t get lost or so carried away by the poet and the peasant that he forgets the dinner hour. adios, girlie.”
a half-hour later he walked down the flight of marble steps that led in dignified sweep from the front door to the street. it was a wonderful day and for a moment he paused, looking with observing eyes at the prospect of hill and bay which seemed to glitter in the extreme clearness of the atmosphere. like all californians he had a strong, natural appreciation of scenic and climatic beauty. preoccupied with thoughts and schemes which were anything but uplifting, he yet was sensitively responsive to the splendors of the view before him, to the unclouded, pure blue of the vault above, to the balmy softness of the air against his face. some one had once asked him why he did not live in paris as the ideal home of the man of great wealth and small scruples. his answer had been that he preferred san francisco because there were more fine days in the year there than anywhere else he knew of.
now he paused, sniffing the air with distended nostril and inhaling it in deep, grateful inspirations. his eye moved slowly over the noble prospect, noted the deep sapphire tint of the bay, the horizon, violet dark against a pale sky, and the gem-like blues and amethysts of the distant hills. he turned his glance in the other direction and looked down the gray expanse of the street, the wide, clear, stately street, with its air of clean spaciousness, sun-bathed, silent, almost empty, in the calm quietude of the sabbath afternoon. the bustling thoroughfares of greater cities, with their dark, sordid crowds, their unlovely, vulgar hurry, their distracting noise, were offensive to him. the wonder crossed his mind, as it had done before, how men who could escape from such surroundings chose to remain in them.
he walked forward slowly, a thick-set, powerful figure, his frock-coat buttoned tight about the barrel-like roundness of his torso, a soft, black felt hat pulled well down on his head. his feet were broad and blunt like his hands, and in their square-toed shoes he planted them firmly on the pavement with a tread of solid, deliberate authority. his forward progress had something in it of an invincible, resistless march. he was thinking deeply as he walked, arranging and planning, and there was nothing in his figure, or movements, or the expression of his face, which suggested the sauntering aimlessness of an afternoon stroll.
when he turned into van ness avenue the ryan house was one block beyond him, a conglomerate white mass, like a crumbling wedding cake slowly settling on a green lawn. he surveyed it as he approached, noting its ugliness with a musing satisfaction. its size and the bright summery perfection of surrounding grass and flower beds lent it impressiveness and redeemed it from the position of a colossal blight on the prospect to which architect and builder had done their best to relegate it. prosperity, a complacent, overwhelming prosperity, was suggested not only by its bulk but by the state of studied finish and neatness that marked mansion and grounds. there did not seem to be a wilting flower bed or withered leaf left on a single stalk in the garden borders. every window-pane gleamed like a mirror innocent of dust or blemishing spot. the marble steps up which cannon mounted were as snowily unsullied as though no foot had passed over them since their last ablution.
the door was opened by a chinaman, who, taking the visitor’s card, left him standing in the hall, and, deaf to his queries as to where he should go, serenely mounted the stairs. cannon hesitated a moment, then hearing a sound of voices to his right, entered the anteroom that gave on that suite of apartments into which dominick had walked on the night of the ball. they were softly lit by the afternoon sun filtering through thin draperies, and extended in pale, gilt-touched[197] vista to the shining emptiness of the ball-room. the old man was advancing toward the voices when he suddenly saw whence they proceeded, and stopped. in the room just beyond him cornelia ryan and a young man were sitting on a small, empire sofa, their figures thrown out in high relief against the background of silk-covered wall. cornelia’s red head was in close proximity to that of her companion, which the intruder saw to be clothed with a thatch of sleek black hair, and which he recognized as appertaining to a young man whose father had once been shift boss on the rey del monte, and who bore the patronymic of duffy.
cornelia and jack duffy had the appearance of being completely engrossed in each other’s society. in his moment of unobserved survey, cannon had time to note the young woman’s air of bashful, pleased embarrassment and the gentleman’s expression of that tense, unsmiling earnestness which attends the delivery of sentimental passages. cornelia was looking down, and her flaming hair and the rosy tones of her face, shading from the faintest of pearly pinks to deepening degrees of coral, were luminously vivid against the flat surface of cream-colored wall behind her, and beside the black poll and thin, dark cheek of her companion. that something very tender was afoot was quickly seen by the visitor, who softly withdrew, stepping gingerly over the fur rugs, and gaining the entrance to the hall with a sensation of flurried alarm.
an open door just opposite offered a refuge, and, passing through it with a forward questing glance alert for other occupants who might resent intrusion, the old man entered a small reception-room lit by the glow of a hard coal fire. the room was different in furnishings and style from those he had left. it had the austere bleakness of aspect resultant from a combination of bare white walls and large pieces of furniture of a black wood upon which gold lines were traced in ornamental squares. an old-fashioned carpet was on the floor, and several tufted arm-chairs, begirt with dangling fringes, were drawn up sociably before the fire. this burned cheerily, a red focus of heat barred by the stripes of a grate, and surmounted by a chastely severe white marble mantelpiece. he had been in the room often before and knew it for mrs. ryan’s own particular sanctum. when a celebrated decorator had been sent out from new york to furnish the lower floor of the house, she had insisted on retaining in this apartment the pieces of furniture and the works of art which she approved, and which the decorator wished to banish to the garret. mrs. ryan had her way as she always did, and the first fine “soote” of furniture which she and con had bought in the days of their early affluence, and various oil paintings also collected in the same era of their evolution, went to the decking of the room she used for her own and oftenest sat in.
cannon approached the fire, and stood there looking up at the life-size portrait in oils of the late cornelius ryan, which hung over the chimneypiece. the artist had portrayed him as a thickly-whiskered man with the complexion of a healthy infant and eyes of baby blue. a watch chain, given him by his colleagues in the old days at shasta, and formed of squares of quartz set in native gold, was painted with a finished carefulness which had pleased mrs. ryan even more than the likeness had done. in showing the picture, she was wont to say proudly, “just look at the watch chain! seems as if you could almost hear the ticking of the watch.”
cannon was speculating as to the merits of the likeness when he heard the silken rustling of skirts, and turned to greet his old friend. she came in smiling, with extended hand, richly clad, the gleam of a fastening jewel at her neck. her hair was dressed with a shining, smooth elaboration, drawn up tightly at the sides and arranged over her forehead in careful curls. as she and her visitor exchanged the first sentences of greeting he noticed that she looked much older and more worn than she had done the last time he had seen her, but her face was as full of pugnacious force as ever. while delia ryan’s body lived her spirit would hold its dominion. she had ruled all her life and would do so to the end.
they sat down on either side of the fire and the old man said,
“i don’t know whether i ought to be in here. the chinaman left me to my fate, and i had to nose about myself and find out where i belonged.”
“oh, that’s lee,” she answered with a short laugh. “he waits on the door every other sunday. we’ve had him ten years and no one’s ever been able to make him show people into the parlor. he thinks it better to leave them standing in the hall till one of us sees the card. then he’ll go down and tell them as sociably as you please ‘to go right in and sit down.’ i asked him why he didn’t do it at first, and he said ‘they might steal something.’”
cannon looked into the fire with an amused eye.
“i guess he thought i was after the spoons. it’s a dangerous habit, for i took the first turning to the right and butted into cornelia and a young man who gave me to understand i’d come the wrong way around.”
“what did they say?” said the mother, her face stiffening with sudden disapproving surprise.
“they didn’t say anything. that was just it. they didn’t even see me. but they certainly led me to believe that i’d got somewhere where i wasn’t wanted. i may not be smart, but a hint doesn’t have to be much harder than the kick of a mule for me to see it.”
mrs. ryan looked at him consideringly.
“yes,” she said, nodding, “it’s a case, i guess.”
“it ought to be satisfactory,” he answered. “pat duffy, the father of those boys, was one of the finest fellers i ever knew. he was shift boss on the rey del monte in seventy-one when i was the superintendent. he got out of virginia with his pile, didn’t lose it like the others. he had an easy three million when he came down here and bought the bristed house on pine street. and jack’s the best of his children. maggie, who married the english baronet, was a nice sort of girl, but she’s never come back, and terry’s smart enough, but not the kind you can bank on. jack’s a good, straight boy. cornelia couldn’t do better.”
“that’s what i think,” said the mother, who, however, looked grave and worried. “cornelia’s thirty. it’s time for her to settle, and she’ll make a good wife. they’ll live here, too. there’ll be no kicking up of their heels and going off to europe or new york and thinking themselves too good to come back to california, like maggie duffy and her baronet. i want them here. i want to see some grandchildren round this house before i die. i want to know where con’s money is going to.”
she sighed, and it was obvious that her heart was heavy.
“yes,” she said, “it’s a good marriage and i’m pleased at it. jack’s a roman catholic but you can’t have everything down here in this world.”
the ryans were protestants, almost the only prominent irish-american family in san francisco which belonged to that church. cornelius ryan had been a north-country man, and went out with the orange men when they paraded. he had been firm in his faith and so had his wife, and with the hibernian’s violent devotion to creed they had made public their antipathy to the church of rome and their hopes that their children would not make alliances with its members.
“oh well,” said cannon with a shrug of vague tolerance, “a man’s beliefs don’t matter. with a woman it’s a different thing. she brings up the children and takes her religion hard. jack won’t interfere with cornelia that way.”
“perhaps not,” said the mother. there was a slight pause and then she said with a sigh,
“well, thank god, one of my children’s going to marry as i want.”
she was gazing into the fire and did not notice the quick look, sly and piercing, that her companion shot at her. the conversation had suddenly, without any effort of his, fallen upon the subject to which he had intended directing it.
“yes,” he said, looking away from her, “you’ve had one disappointment. that’s enough.”
“disappointment!” she echoed in a loud voice. “disappointment? i’ve lost my son; lost him as if he was dead—worse than if he was dead, for then i’d know he was happy and safe somewhere.”
it was a cry of pain, rachel mourning for her child. the note of feeling in it checked the remark on cannon’s lips. he understood what her suffering was and respected it.
“why, bill cannon,” she went on, turning the perturbed fierceness of her face on him, “how often do you think i see my boy? what ties do you think he has with his home? he came up here after he’d got back from antelope, but before that i’d only seen him once in six weeks.”
“that’s pretty hard,” he commented, his elbow on the arm of the chair, his chin sunk in the cup of his up-curled hand. “that’s pretty tough. i didn’t know it was as bad as that.”
“nobody knows anything about him. he won’t let them. he won’t let me. he’s proud, and trying to hide it all. that’s the reason he comes up here so seldom. he knows i can see into him, see through him, clear through him, and he don’t want me to see how miserable he is.”
“oh!” said the old man, moving slightly and raising his eyes to look at her. the interjection was full of significance, pregnant with understanding, appreciation and enlightenment. he was surprised himself. he had thought, and had understood from dominick, that no one, especially no one of his own people, knew of the young man’s domestic infelicities. neither of them was shrewd enough to realize that the mother would guess, would know by instinct.
“and what do you suppose he came up for that once?” pursued mrs. ryan. “you could guess a lot of times but you’d never strike it. he came up here the night of my ball to ask me to give him an invitation for his wife!”
she stared at her visitor with her face set in a stony hardness, a hardness reminiscent of that which had marked it when dominick had asked for the invitation. cannon saw it and checked the remark that rose to his lips. he was going to say “why didn’t you give it to him?” and he saw that it was too light a comment for what had been a tragic occasion. all he did was to utter a grunt that might have meant anything and was consequently safe.
“that’s what his marriage has done for him, and that’s the state that woman has ground him down to. she’d worked on him till she’d got him to come up here and ask for it a few minutes before the people began to arrive! that’s what she made him do.”
“and you wouldn’t give it?” he inquired mildly, inwardly surprised, as he had been often before, at the rancor displayed by women in their quarrels.
“give it?” she exclaimed, “well, i guess not. it would have been my surrender. i’d have thrown up the fight for ever when i did that.” and then as if she had read his thoughts: “it’s not natural meanness either. there’s only one hope for me—for me and for dominick, too. divorce.”
he did not move his chin from its resting-place in his up-curled hand, but made a slight assenting motion with his head, and said,
“i suppose that’s the only thing.”
“that’s been my hope since the day when i first saw her. i didn’t know then she’d been anything to dominick before the marriage, but i knew the first look i had at her what she was. that long, mean nose and those sly eyes, and seven years older than the boy if she was a day. you didn’t have to tell me any more. i saw then just like a flash in the dark what my son had let himself in for. and then, not a month after, i heard the rest about her, and i knew that dominick had started in to ruin his life about the best way he knew how.”
cannon gave another grunt, and this time it contained a recognizable note of sympathy. she went on, absorbed in her recital, anxious to pour out her griefs, now that she had begun.
“right there from the start i thought of divorce. i knew it was the only way out and was bound to come in time. the woman had[206] married dominick for money and position. i knew that, saw it in her face along with other things. there was no love in that face, just calculation, hard and sharp as a meat ax. i shut down on the money right there and then. dominick had three thousand a year, so i knew he couldn’t starve, but three thousand a year wasn’t what she’d married him for.”
“she’s got along on it for over two years.”
“that’s it. she’s beaten me so far. i’m the keeper of con ryan’s fortune and i just closed my hand on it and said to her in so many words, ‘not a cent of this for you.’ i thought she’d tire of struggling along in a flat with one chinaman and not a soul to come near her. but she’s stood it and she’s going to go on standing it. where she’s concerned, i did something the smartest men and women sometimes do—underrated the brains of my enemy.”
“she’s pretty smart, i guess,” said cannon, raising a gravely-commenting eye to his companion’s face.
“that’s what she is,—smart and long-headed. she’s more far-sighted than women of her kind usually are and she’s got her eye on the future. she’s not going to give us a chance for divorce. she’s not going to make any breaks or mistakes. there’s not a more respectable woman in san francisco. she doesn’t go with any one but her husband and her own sisters, two decent women that you can’t believe have the same blood in them. she’s the quietest, most domestic kind of a wife. it don’t matter, and nobody knows, that she’s making her husband the most miserable man in the country. that doesn’t cut any ice. what does is that there’s no ground for divorce against her. if she had the kind of husband that wouldn’t put up with anything from a woman, all he could do would be to leave her and she’d go round then getting everybody’s sympathies as a virtuous, deserted wife.”
the old man gave his head an appreciative jerk, and murmured,
“a pretty smart woman, all right.”
“she’s all that—that and more. it’s the future that she’s banking on. i’m nearly seventy years of age, bill cannon, and this has broken me up more than anything that’s gone before. i’m not the woman i was before my boy married. and what’s going to happen when i die? i’ve only got two living children. outside them there’s nobody but some distant relations that con made settlements on before he died. if i left all i’ve got to cornelia, or divided it up between cornelia and charity, cutting off my son because he’d made a marriage i didn’t like, would such a will as that stand? why had i left nothing to my only son? because he’d married a woman i didn’t think good enough? and what was there against her? she’d been a typewriter and her husband’s mistress for six months before he married her. the mistress part of it had been condoned by marriage and good conduct—and after all, how many families in san francisco and other places were founded on just those beginnings? as for her being a typewriter, delia ryan herself had been a washerwoman, washed for the miners with these hands;”—she held out her blunt, beringed hands with one of those dramatic gestures natural to the irish—“when con was working underground with his pick i was at the wash-tub, and i made money that way for him to run the mine. where’s the california jury that would hesitate to award dominick, and through him, his wife her part of the fortune that con and i made?”
“well, that’s all possible,” cannon said slowly, “but it’s so far off. it’s all surmise. you may live twenty years yet. i fancy she’d find a twenty-years’ wait under the present conditions rather wearying.”
the old woman shook her head, looking very sad.
“i’m not the woman i was,” she repeated, “this last thing’s broken me more than anything that went before. i lost three children by death, and it wasn’t as hard as losing my youngest boy the way i have.”
“have you any idea whether dominick has ever thought of divorce?” he asked.
“i’ve the clearest kind of an idea that he hasn’t. you don’t know dominick. he’s the best boy in the world. he’ll blame himself for everything that’s gone wrong, not that woman. she’s smart enough to let him, too. and suppose he was a different kind and did think of it? that’s all the good it would do him. men don’t sue women for divorce except under the greatest provocation, and dominick’s got no provocation at all. my hopes were that the woman herself would sue—that we’d freeze her out with small means and cold shoulders—and you see that’s just what she’s determined not to do!”
cannon dropped his supporting hand on the chair-arm and began to caress gently a large tassel that hung there.
“she could be approached in another way,” he said with a suggestion of pondering deliberation.
“what way?”
“you say she married dominick for money. have you never thought of buying her off?”
he looked at mrs. ryan and met her eyes staring anxiously and, in a sort of way, shyly into his.
“yes,” she said in a low voice, “i have.”
“have you tried it?”
“no,—i—i—i don’t think i dared,” she said almost desperately. “it was my last trump.”
he realized, and, though he was unmoved by it, felt the pathos of this admission from the proud and combative woman who had so long and so successfully domineered over her world.
“i suppose it is a sort of death-bed remedy,” he said, “but it seems to me it’s about time to try it. your idea that she’s going to wait till you die and then claim part of the estate as dominick’s wife is all very well, but she’s not the kind of woman to be willing to wait patiently through the rolling years on three thousand dollars per annum. she’s a good bit older than he is and it isn’t making her any happier to see her best days passing with nothing doing. i should think you stood a pretty good chance of getting her to listen to reason.”
“offering her a sum down to leave him?” she said, looking at the fire, her brows knit.
“exactly. offer her a good sum on the stipulation that she leaves him and goes away to new york or europe. then in the course of time she can write him asking him to grant her a divorce on some such technical grounds as desertion, or incompatibility, or anything else that’s respectable. he’ll have to give it to her. he can’t do anything else. and there you are!”
“what if she refuses?” she said in a low voice, and he saw she was afraid of this refusal which would shatter her last hope.
“raise your offer,” he answered briskly. “she probably will refuse the first time.”
she pondered, eying the fire with heavy immobility.
“yes,” she said, nodding. “it sounds reasonable. it’s about the only thing left.”
“if i can be of any assistance to you,” he said, “you just call on me. i’m willing to help in this thing all i can. it goes against me to see dominick caught in a trap this way just at the beginning of his life.”
“a boy,” said his mother, “that would have made some good girl so happy.”
cannon rose from his chair.
“that’s just it!” he said, “and there are not so many of ’em round that we can afford to lose one of the best. i’ve always liked dominick and getting to know him so well up at antelope i grew downright fond of him. he’s a fine boy.”
he smiled at her with his most genial air, beaming with disinterested affection for dominick and the desire to be helpful in a grievous strait. mrs. ryan looked brighter and more hopeful than she had done at the beginning of the interview.
“it’s very good of you,” she said, “to come and listen to an old woman’s complaints. but as we get on, we seem to take them harder. and you know what my boy was to me?”
“about the same thing that my girl is to me,” cannon answered as he turned away to look on the table for his hat.
there was a little more talk, and then the set phrases of farewell brought the interview to a close. though momentous, it had not lasted long. as he left the room, cannon heard the single note of half-past three chime from the clock on the mantelpiece.
outside he stood for a moment on the top of the marble steps, looking downward with absent eyes. he was completely engrossed with the just-ended conversation, parts of which repeated themselves in his mind as he stared unseeingly down the wide, unencumbered vista of the street.
carriages flashed past through strips of sunshine; automobiles whirred by, leaving dust and gasoline in their wake. on the sidewalks there were many foot passengers: lazily sauntering couples, lovers, family parties, and little groups bound for the cars which would whisk them over the dunes to the park. as he slowly began to descend, one of these groups, formed of three women, a man, and a child, approached the bottom of the steps. they were walking down the avenue in a close, talkative bunch. the descending magnate was apprised of their proximity by the high, cackling sound of the women’s voices and an aura of perfume which extended from them into the surrounding ether. he paid no attention to them, his eye, with its look of inward brooding, passing indifferently over the faces turned eagerly toward him.
they were not so unmoved. their glances were trained full on him, their eyes wide in the unblinking intensity of their scrutiny. even the child, who was skipping along beside the eldest of the women, inspected him with solemn care. brushing by in their gay sunday raiment they drew together to discuss him, their heads in a cluster, their voices lowered. he was so used to being the object of such interest that he did not bother to look at them, and was therefore unaware that one of the women, quite pretty, with reddish hair and dark eyes, had turned as she moved away and surveyed him over her shoulder.
