two days after this momentous combination of her enemies, berny was sitting in the parlor of her flat, writing a letter. it was three o’clock in the afternoon and she had just dressed herself for her daily jaunt down town, where she spent an hour or two looking into the shop windows, pricing articles of apparel, taking a glass of soda water, and stopping for chats with acquaintances under awnings and in open doorways. her life was exceedingly barren of occupation and companionship. when she had married, she had dropped all work save such as seemed to her fitting for the wife of a rich man. outside her sisters she had no friends. she knew the wives of several of the bank officials and to them, as representing a rise in the social scale, she clung hopefully. the letter she was now writing was to one of them who had taken a sick child to the country.
she had finished it, and was inscribing her signature, when a ring at the bell caught her[249] ear. she raised her head listening, and then bent it again over the letter. visitors were too rare at the sacramento street flat for her to cherish any delusive hopes. writing the address in her best hand, she did not hear a foot ascending the stairs, nor know that it actually was a visitor, till a tap on the door-post of the room made her turn and ejaculate a startled “come in!” the door that led from the parlor to the hall had been removed, and a bamboo portière hung in the opening. a large masculine hand thrust apart the hanging strands, and bill cannon, hat in hand, confident and yet apologetic, entered the room.
he had been surprised when he had seen how small and unpretentious was the home of con ryan’s only son. he was more than ever surprised when the chinaman, with the unveiled impudence of those domestics when the employes of masters they do not like, had waved his proffered card aside, and with a jerk of his head motioned him forward to a doorway at the end of the passage. now, on entering, he took in, in an impressionistic sweep, the overcrowded, vulgar garishness of the little room, saturated with the perfume of scents and sachets, and seeming to be the fitting frame for the woman who rose from a seat by the desk.
she looked at him inquiringly with something of wariness and distrust in her face. she was the[250] last of the ascending scale of surprises he had encountered, for she was altogether better-looking, more a person to be reckoned with, than he had expected. his quick eye, trained to read human nature, recognized the steely determination of this woman before she spoke, saw it in the level scrutiny of her eyes, in the decision of her close mouth. he felt a sensation, oft experienced and keenly pleasurable, of gathering himself together for effort. it was the instinct of an old warrior who loves the fray.
berny, on her side, knew him at the first glance, and her sensations were those of disturbance and uneasiness. she remembered him to be a friend of the ryans’, and she had arrived at the stage when any friend of the ryans’ was an enemy of hers. she was instantly in arms and on the defensive. rose had not yet taken shape in her mind as a new, menacing force conniving against her. besides, she had no idea that rose reciprocated the sentiment that dominick cherished for her. her discovery had only made her certain that dominick loved another woman. but this had shaken her confidence in everything, and she looked at the old man guardedly, ready for an attack and bracing herself to meet it.
“you’ll pardon this intrusion, won’t you?” he said in a deep, friendly voice, and with a manner of cordial urbanity. “i tried to do it correctly, but the chinaman had other designs.[251] it was he who frustrated me. here’s the card i wanted him to take to you.”
he approached her, holding out a card which she took, still unsmiling, and glanced at. her instinct of dissimulation was strong, and, uneasy as she was, she pretended to read the name, not wanting him to see that she already knew him.
“mr. william g. cannon,” she read, and then looked up at him and made a slight inclination of her head as she had seen actresses do on the stage. “won’t you sit down, mr. cannon?” she added, and completed the impressiveness of her greeting by a gesture, which also suggested a histrionic origin, toward an adjacent chair.
he backed toward the chair, pulling it out into the unencumbered space in the middle of the floor, his movements deliberate and full of design, as if he felt comfortably at home. subsiding into the seat, which had arms and was rather cramped for his large bulk, he laid his hat among the knick-knacks of a near-by table and said smilingly,
“now, let me make my apologies for coming. in the first place, i’m an old man. we’ve got a few privileges to compensate us for the loss of so much that’s good. don’t you think that’s fair, mrs. ryan?”
berny liked him. there was something so easy and affable in his manner, something that made her feel he would never censure her for her past, or, in fact, think about it at all. but she was[252] still on her guard, though the embarrassment she had felt on his entrance disappeared.
“i don’t know,” she said vaguely. “i don’t know why an old man should have more privileges than a young one.”
“but you do know,” he said quickly, and giving a short, jolly laugh, “that an old man who’s known your husband all his life can have the privilege of calling on you without an introduction. you’ll admit that, won’t you?”
he leaned out of the narrow chair, his broad face creased with a good-humored smile, and his eyes, keen and light-colored, sharp on hers. berny felt doubtful as to whether she liked him so much. she, too, had a large experience of men, and the hard intelligence of the eyes in the laughing face made her more than ever on the defensive.
“i’m sure i’m very glad you came,” she said politely; “any friend of dominick’s is welcome here.”
“i’ve been that for a good many years. my friendship with the ryans goes back to the days before dominick was born. i knew con and delia well in the old times in virginia when we were all young there together, all young, and strong, and poor. i’ve known dominick since he was a baby, though i haven’t seen much of him of late years.”
“nor of his wife either,” berny was going to[253] say, but she checked herself and substituted, “is that so?” a comment which seemed to her to have the advantages of being at once dignified and elegantly non-committal.
“yes, i knew con when he was working on a prospect of his own called the mamie r at gold hill. i was a miner on the royal charles close by on steady wages. con was in for himself. he was playing it in pretty hard luck. if it hadn’t been for his wife he couldn’t have hung on as long as he did. she was a fine, husky, irish girl, strong as a man; and the washing she used to do on the back porch of the shanty kept them.”
“yes, i’ve heard that,” said berny, much interested, and hoping that her visitor would continue to indulge in further reminiscences of mrs. ryan’s lowly beginnings.
“that was forty-five years ago,” he went on, “and the fellows that were on top then are underneath now, and vice versa. but delia ryan’s just about the same. there’s no shifting, or changing, or not knowing her own mind about her. she’s one of the strongest women in california; one of the biggest women anywhere.”
this was not what berny had expected, and was more than she could subscribe to. the distinguished position of her guest made her want to be polite, but there was a limit to her powers of diplomatic agreement. a silver blotter[254] stood on the desk, and she took it up and began absently rolling it back and forth over her letter.
“she seems to be a great friend of yours?” she said, watching the blotter with lowered eyes.
“she’s all that,” he answered heartily. “one of the greatest. she is to any one who knows her well. she’s a big nature; nothing picayune or small about her. a true friend and a fair enemy. she’s the most generous woman i ever knew.”
“we haven’t seen much of her generosity,” said berny. her words did not come with suddenness, but slowly, with a measured and biting deliberation.
“you’ve got your chance to see it now,” answered the old man.
berny looked at him, a side glance from the corner of one long, dark eye. her face was perfectly grave and the eyes fixed on him were imbued with a considering, apprehensive expectancy. he looked very large, squeezed into the small chair, but he seemed oblivious to the fact that there was anything ridiculous in his appearance, as well as to his own discomfort. the easy good-humor had gone from his face. it was alert, shrewd, and eagerly interested. berny knew now that he had not come to pay his respects to dominick’s wife. a sensation of internal trembling began to possess her and the color deepened in her face.
“how have i got my chance?” she said. “i[255] guess if you know the ryans so well you must know that they won’t have anything to do with me.”
“they’ll have a good deal to do with you if you’ll let them,” he answered.
there was a momentary pause, during which—now conscious of battle and menace—berny strove to control her rising excitement and keep her head cool. he watched her with a glance which had the boring penetration of a gimlet.
“that’s funny,” she said, “not wanting to speak to me for two years and then all of a sudden wanting to have a good deal to do with me. it’s a sort of lightning-change act, like you see at the orpheum. i guess i’d understand it better if i knew more about it.”
“then i’ll tell you. will you let me speak frankly, mrs. ryan? have i got your permission to go right ahead and talk the plain talk that’s the only way a plain man knows?”
“yes,” said berny. “go right ahead.”
he looked at the carpet for a considering moment, then raised his eyes and, gazing into hers with steady directness, said,
“it wouldn’t be fair if i pretended not to know that you and your husband’s family are unfriendly. i know it, and that they have, as you say, refused to know you. they’ve not liked the marriage; that’s the long and the short of it.”
“and what right have they got—” began berny,[256] raising her head with a movement of war, and staring belligerently at him. he silenced her with a lifted hand:
“don’t let’s go into that. don’t let’s bother ourselves with the rights and wrongs of the matter. we could talk all afternoon and be just where we were at the beginning. let’s have it understood that our attitude in this is businesslike and impersonal. they don’t like the marriage—that’s admitted. they’ve refused to know you—that’s admitted. and let us admit, for the sake of the argument, that they’ve put you in a damned disagreeable position.”
berny, sitting stiffly erect, all in a quiver of nerves, anger, and uncertainty, had her eyes fixed on him in a glare of questioning.
“that’s all true,” she said grimly. “that’s a statement i’ll not challenge.”
“then we’ll agree that your position is disagreeable, and that it’s been made so by the antagonism of your husband’s family. now, mrs. ryan, let me tell you something that maybe you don’t understand. you’re never going to conquer or soften your mother-in-law. i don’t know anything about it, but perhaps i can make a guess. you’ve thought you’d win her over, that you’d married her son and made him a good wife and that some day she’d acknowledge that and open her doors and invite you in. my dear young lady, just give up building those castles in the air.[257] there’s nothing in them. you don’t know delia ryan. she’ll never bend and the one thing that’ll break her is death. she’s got no hard feelings against you except as her son’s wife. that’s the thing she’ll never forgive you for. i’m not saying it’s not pretty tough on you. i’m just stating a fact. what i do say is that she’s never going to be any different about it. she’s started on her course, and she’s going to go straight along on the same route till she comes to the place where we’ve all got to jump off.”
at the commencement of this speech, a surge of words had boiled up within berny. now as he stopped she leaned toward him and the words burst out of her lips.
“and what right has she got to act that way, i’d like to know? what’s she got against me? what’s wrong with me? dominick ryan married me of his own free will. he chose me and he was of age. i’d been a typewriter in the merchants and mechanics trust company, honestly earning my living. is that what she don’t like about me? i might have got my living another way, a good sight easier and pleasanter, but i wasn’t that kind. maybe she didn’t like a decent working-girl for her son’s wife? and what was she to kick? didn’t you just say now she washed for the miners in virginia? didn’t she used to keep a two-room grocery at shasta? i don’t see that there’s anything so darned aristocratic about that. there were no[258] more diamond tiaras and crests on the harness in her early days than there are in mine. she’s forgetting old times. you can just tell her i’m not.”
she came to a breathless close, her body bent forward, her dark eyes burning with rage and excitement. this suddenly sank down, chilled, and, as it were, abashed by the aspect of her listener, who was sitting motionless in his chair, his hands clasped over the curving front of his torso, his chin sunk on his collar, and his eyes fixed upon her with a look of calm, ruminating attention. her words had not only failed to heat him to controversy, but he had the air of patiently waiting for them to cease, when he could resume the matter under discussion.
“it’s natural enough that you should feel that way about it,” he said, “but let’s put out of the argument these purely personal questions. you think one way and mrs. ryan thinks another. we recognize that and assume that it is so. we’re not passing judgment. i’d be the last one to do that between two ladies. what i came to talk of to-day was not the past but the present; not the wrongs you’ve suffered from the ryans, but the way they can be righted.”
“there’s only one way they can be righted,” she said.
“well now, let’s see,” persuasively. “we’re both agreed that your position in san francisco is hard. here you are in the town where you were[259] born and raised, leading a lonely life in what, considering your marriage, we might call reduced circumstances. you have—you’ll excuse my plain talking—little or no social position. your life is monotonous and dull, when, at your age, it should be all brightness and pleasure. in the height of your youth and beauty you’re cramped in a small flat, deprived of the amusements of your age, ostracized from society, and pinched by lack of money. that seems to me a pretty mean position for a woman of your years and appearance.”
berny made no answer. she was confused by his thus espousing her cause, using almost the words she herself would have used in describing her unmerited trials. she was one of those women who, with an almost unbreakable nerve, when attacked or enraged, tremble. she was seized now with this trembling and to control it clasped her hands tight in her lap and tried to hold her body stiff by will power.
“it is from this situation,” he went on, his voice slightly lowered, “that mrs. ryan offers to release you.”
a gleam of light zigzagged through the woman’s uncomprehension, and the trembling seemed to concentrate in her knees and stomach.
“to release me?” she repeated with a rising inflection.
“yes. she’ll make it possible for you to escape[260] from all this, to live in the way you ought to live, and to have the position and amusements you are entitled to. as i said to you before, she’s got no ill feeling toward you except as her son’s wife. she wishes you well, and to prove it she is ready to make you the most generous offer.”
berny’s rigidity relaxed and she leaned against the chair-back. she said nothing, but her eyes remained fixed on his face.
“i told you she was generous and see if i am not right,” he continued. “she will make you a rich woman, independent of any one, the money yours to do with as you like, if you’ll consent to the few conditions she exacts.”
“what are they?”
“that you will leave your husband for a year and at the end of that time ask him to give you your liberty, he suing you for divorce on the ground of desertion.”
there was a pause. berny had moved her eyes from the old man’s face, and was looking at the blotter upon which her hand had again closed. the cheek turned to him was a deep rose pink. he looked at her unembarrassed and inquiring, as though he had made an ordinary business proposition.
“it’s a bribe,” she said slowly, “a bribe to leave my husband.”
“oh, i wouldn’t say that,” he answered with a[261] deprecating shrug. “call it a deal, a settlement. the terms are easy and favorable. you’ll not find one of them unjust or unfair. you’re to leave the city, going preferably to chicago or new york and staying there for the period of desertion. seven thousand dollars will be set aside for your expenses. at the end of the year you are to write to dominick telling him you no longer want to live with him and asking him to give you your freedom. after the divorce is granted the sum of fifty thousand dollars will be handed over to you, the one condition being that you will leave the country and go to europe. it is also understood, of course, that the matter’s to be kept a secret from dominick. he must think that you are acting entirely from your own free will. he mustn’t guess his mother’s had any part in it.”
“she’s not ashamed to try to buy me off, but she’s ashamed to have her precious boy know it!”
the old man looked at her with a slight, indulgent smile, inwardly wondering how dominick ryan had endured life with this woman.
“oh, it’s best not to have dominick know,” he said easily; “not because there’s anything to be ashamed of, but on general principles it’s best to have as few complications as possible in the way of other people’s butting in. what good would there be in dominick’s knowing?”
[262]she rolled the blotter back and forth for a moment without answering, then said,
“so mrs. ryan offers me fifty thousand dollars to desert my husband?”
“with one condition—that you leave the country. just look what that’s going to mean!” he rose from the narrow, upholstered seat, took a light chair that stood near by and, setting it close to her, sat sidewise on it, one hand extended toward her. “fifty thousand dollars is a good bit of money over here, but over there it’s a fortune. you’d be a rich woman with that amount in your own right. you could take an apartment in paris, or a slice of some prince-feller’s palace down in rome. on the income of that capital, safely invested, you could live in a style that only a millionaire can manage over here—have your own carriage, dress like a queen, go to the opera. they like americans, especially when they’ve got money. first thing you know you’d be right in it, knowing everybody, and going everywhere. you’re nobody here, worse than nobody. over there you’d be one of the people everybody was talking about and wanted to know. you’re not only a pretty woman, you’re a smart woman; you could get on top in no time, marry into the nobility if you wanted.”
berny, her eyes on the blotter, said nothing.
“and what’s the alternative over here?” the tempter continued. “staying on as an outsider,[263] being in a position where, though you’re lawfully married and are living decently with your husband, you’re ostracized as completely as if you weren’t married at all; where you’ve hardly got enough to pay your way, cramped up in a corner like this, never going anywhere or seeing anybody. does that kind of life appeal to you? not if i know anything.”
berny lifted her head and looked at him. the color was now burning in her cheeks and her eyes seemed to hold all the vitality of her rigid face.
“you tell mrs. ryan,” she said slowly, “that i’ll lie dead in my coffin before i’ll take her money and leave my husband.”
they looked at each other for a silent moment, two strong and determined antagonists. then the old man said mildly and pleasantly,
“now don’t be too hasty; don’t jump at a decision in the heat of the moment. just at the first glimpse this way, you may feel surprised—may take it as sort of out of the way and interfering. but when you’ve thought it over, it will look different. take time. you don’t have to make your mind up now, or to-morrow, or the day after. turn it over, look at the other side, sleep on it for a few nights. think a bit of the things i’ve said. you don’t want to be hasty about it. it’s not the kind of offer you get every day.”
[264]“no, it’s not!” said berny fiercely. “it’s too dirty for most people. it’s too dirty for any one but mrs. ryan, and you can tell her i said so.”
she rose to her feet, still clenching the blotter in her hand. he rose too, interested, annoyed and disappointed, for he knew with a cynical certainty just about what she was going to say.
“yes,” she cried, stiff and quivering like a leaf, “go and tell her! tell her just what i said. i’ll see her in hell before i’ll take a cent of her money, or budge an inch out of this house. she’s a fine one to give herself such airs, and think herself too good to know me and then offer to buy me off like a kept woman. tell her i’m her son’s wife, and i’ll stay so till she’s good and dead, and dominick’s got his share of his father’s estate. tell her i’m here to stay, right here, here in this flat, just round the corner from where she lives, and that i’m mrs. ryan as well as she is, and that i’m going to stay so. this is my home, here in san francisco, where she’s tried to ruin me and freeze me out, and here i stick.”
she glared at him as he stood, one hand on the back of his chair, his eyes thoughtfully fixed on her.
“i wouldn’t be too hasty if i were you,” he said pacifically. “things done in a hurry are rarely satisfactory. it’s a bad way to do business. you’re apt to let good chances slip by.”“don’t be afraid,” she said with grim significance.[265] “i’m not going to let mine slip by. i’ve married dominick ryan and i’m going to stay by him.”
he turned to the table and picked up his hat, which was a soft, black felt wide-awake. as he dented it into shape, he said,
“you’re sort of heated up and excited now, and a person’s brain don’t work well in that state. you don’t want to come to any important conclusions when you’re not cool and able to think. sleep on this thing for one night, anyway. you can call me up on the telephone to-morrow, or probably it would be better to send a line by a messenger.”
“you’re very much interested in this affair, aren’t you?” she said with sudden malicious meaning.
for the first time in the interview he was slightly taken aback. her face held a reserve of knowledge with which she seemed to be silently taunting him.
“naturally,” he said with an air of simple frankness, “as an old family friend would be.”
“and that’s the only reason?”
“what other could there be?”
“oh, i don’t know”—she turned and dropped the blotter on the desk with a nonchalant movement—“i was just wondering.”
he eyed her for a second without speaking, and in this one moment of scrutiny allowed a look[266] of dislike and menace to creep into his face. then he said genially,
“well, i guess this brings our interview to an end. it’s not been just what you’d call a pleasant one, but i for one can say it’s left no hard feelings. i hope you’ll admit as much.”
she shrugged her shoulders and turned to the desk.
“i’m not a good one at lies,” she said. “i leave that to the ryans and their old family friends.”
he laughed good-humoredly and answered,
“that’s all right. you never can hurt me by plain speaking. that’s the only kind i know. i guess we’re neither of us great at guff. remember that i’ll expect a visit or a letter from you.”
“you’ll have to wait a long time for either,” she said without moving.
“well, i’m a patient man, and everything comes to him who waits.”
she looked over her shoulder with a slight acid smile.
“not everything,” she said.
“so long,” he answered, giving his hat a farewell wave at her. “i’ve enjoyed meeting you and hope we’ll soon meet again in a more friendly way. hasta manana, señora!”
she wheeled so that she faced him and gave a short nod, then watched him as he walked to the door. here he turned, bowed deeply and[267] respectfully, and passed out into the hall, the bamboo strands of the portière clashing together behind him. a moment later she heard the bang of the street door.
she stood motionless in the middle of the room, her face deeply flushed, her eyes fixed on the swaying curtain. for the first few moments a blind excitement held her, and then from the welter of this, her thoughts separated themselves and took definite directions. rage, triumph, bewilderment, alarm, surged to the surface of her mind. shaken by one after another she stood rigid in the intensity of her preoccupation, not noticing the shaking of her knees or the thumping of her heart.
her two predominant sensations were rage and triumph. the insult of the bribe burned in her—this flinging money at her as it might be flung at a cast-off mistress. it deepened her detestation of the ryans, and at the same time gave her a sense of intimacy with them. it made them more on a par with her, drew them down from the lofty heights whence they had scornfully ignored her, to a place beside her, a place where they, as well as she, did underhand, disreputable things they did not want known.
and it showed her her power. standing in the middle of the room with her eyes still staring at the now motionless portière strands, she saw, stretching away into a limitless gilded distance,[268] her negotiations with her husband’s family. if their desire to rupture the marriage took them thus far, where might it not take them? she stared into a future where she saw herself extracting money in vast amounts from them. it was fortune—twice, three times this first paltry sum—waiting for her when she chose to stretch her hand and take it. she could be rich, as the old man said; she could go abroad, see the world, have all the joys that riches give, when she chose to let mrs. ryan humbly pay her such a sum as she would accept.
with a quick catch of her breath, she turned and moved to the window, stirred to her depth with the exultation of unexpected power. and standing there, the thought of the old man suddenly swept across her, and with it, transfixing her in an attitude of frozen, inward contemplation, the memory of his daughter. new vistas, extending away through the abruptly-illuminated dimness of her previous ignorance, suddenly opened before her, and she sent her startled vision exploring down them. at the end of them, waiting for dominick in an attitude of welcome, was the pink and white girl she had seen in the park.
the discovery was made so quickly, came upon her flushed complacency with such a shock of unexpectedness, that even her sharp, suspicious mind could not for the moment take it in. then miss cannon’s face, as she had seen it in that[269] moment of recognition in the park, rose with confirming clearness on her memory, and she saw straight to the heart of the plot. it was not the ryans alone who wanted to buy her off. it was the cannons as well. they not only wanted dominick to get rid of her; they wanted him to get rid of her so that he could marry rose cannon. the other girl was behind it all, accounted for the participation of the bonanza king, accounted probably for the whole move—the pink and white girl in the french clothes who had all her life had everything and now wanted berny iverson’s husband.
poor dominick, whom berny had held contemptuously as a disappointing and aggravating appurtenance of hers, suddenly rose in her estimation into a valuable possession whose worth she had not before realized. it was enough that another woman wanted him, was, through underhand channels, trying to get him. all in a minute, berny had changed from the negligent proprietor of a valueless and lightly-held object, to the possessor of an article of rare worth, which she was prepared jealously to guard. with a sort of proud challenge she felt that she stood valiantly facing the marauders, protecting her treasure against their predatory advances. and her hatred against mrs. ryan began to extend toward bill cannon, and beyond him toward the fair-faced girl, who grew red to her forehead when she accidentally encountered dominick ryan.
