berny was extremely unsettled. she had never been in such a condition of worry and indecision. she was at once depressed and elated, triumphant and cast down, all in a bubble of excitement and uncertainty. a combination of violent feelings, hostile to one another, had possession of her and used her as a battle-ground for shattering encounters.
she loved money with the full power of her nature—it was her strongest, her predominating passion—and now for the first time in her life it was within her grasp. she could at any moment become possessed of a fortune, undisputedly her own, to do with as she liked. she lay awake at night thinking of it. she made calculations on bits of paper as she footed up the bills at her desk.
but then on the other hand, there was dominick, dominick suddenly become valuable. he was like a piece of jewelry held in slight esteem as a trifling imitation and suddenly discovered to be[301] real and of rich worth. insignificant and strange are the happenings which determine the course of events. the sage had told her that one more inch in the length of cleopatra’s nose would have altered the face of the world and changed the course of history. had berny not gone to the park on that sunday afternoon, and seen a woman’s face change color at the sight of her husband, she might have come to terms with mrs. ryan and now have been on her way to chicago in the first stage of the plan of desertion.
it was another woman’s wanting dominick that made berny more determined to cling to him than if he had been the prince charming of her dreams. she carried about with her a continual feeling of self-congratulation that she had discovered the full significance of the plot in time. her attitude was that of the quarreling husband and wife who fight furiously for the possession of a child for which neither cares. to herself she kept saying, “they want my husband, do they? well, i’ll take mighty good care, no matter how much they want him and he wants to go, they don’t get him.”
it made her boil with rage to think of them all, with dominick at their head, getting everything they wanted and sending her off to paris, even though paris might be delightful, and she have a great deal better time there than she ever had in san francisco.
[302]all these thoughts were in her mind as she walked down town one afternoon for her usual diversion of shopping and promenading. of late she had not been sleeping well and the fear that this would react upon her looks had spurred her to the unwonted exertion of walking. the route she had chosen was one of those thoroughfares which radiate from market street, and though not yet slums, are far removed from the calm, wide gentility of the city’s more dignified highways. with all her cleverness, she had never shaken off the tastes and instincts of the class she had come from. she felt more at home in this noisy byway, where children played on the pavements and there were the house-to-house intimacies, the lack of privacy, of the little town, than she did on the big, clean-swept streets where the houses presented a blank exterior to the gaze, and most of the people were transported in cars or carriages. even the fact that the tenderloin was in close proximity did not modify her interest with a counteracting disgust; though she was not one of the women who have a lively curiosity as to that dark side of life, it did not, on the other hand, particularly repel her. she viewed it with the same practical utilitarianism with which she regarded her own virtue. that possession had been precious to her for what she could gain with it. when she had sacrificed it to her ambition, she had not liked giving it up[303] at all, but had reconciled herself to doing so because of the importance of the stake involved.
walking loiteringly forward she crossed powell street, and approached the entrance of that home of vaudeville, the granada theater. this was a place of amusement that she much favored, and of which she was a frequent patron. dominick did not like it, so she generally went to the matinée with one of her sisters. there had been a recent change of bill, and as she drew near she looked over the posters standing by the entrance on which the program for the coming week was printed in large letters. midway down one of these, her eye was caught by a name and she paused and stood reading the words:
“james defay buford
the witty, brilliant and incomparable
monologist
in his unrivaled monologue
entitled
klondike memories”
she remembered at once that this was the actor dominick had spoken of as having been snowed in with them at antelope. dominick had evidently not expected he would come to san francisco. he had said the man had been going to act in sacramento. after standing for some moments looking at the words, she moved on again with the short, mincing step that was[304] habitual to her, and which always made walking a slow and undesirable mode of progression. she seemed more thoughtful than she had been before she saw the program, and for some blocks her face wore an absent and somewhat pensive air of musing.
her preoccupation lasted up grant avenue and down post street till it was finally dispelled by the sight of that attractive show-window in which a large dry-goods establishment exhibits the marvels of new millinery. it was april, and the spring fashions were just in from paris, filling the window with a brilliant display of the newest revolutionary modes of which san francisco had so far only heard. women stood staring, some dismayed at the introduction of styles which they felt would have a blighting, not to say obliterating effect on their own beauty. others, of practical inclinations, studied the new gowns with an eye to discoveries whereby their wardrobes might be induced to assume a deceptive air of second youth.
berny elbowed her way in among them and pressed herself close to the glass, exploring, with a strained glance, the intricacies of back draperies turned from view. she wished hazel was there with her. hazel was wonderfully sharp at seeing how things were put together, and could carry complications of trimming and design in her head without forgetting them or getting them mixed.[305] the discovery that skirts were being cut in a new way gave berny a shock of painful surprise, especially when she thought of her raspberry crape, still sufficiently new to be kept in its own box between layers of tissue paper, and yet at the stage when the necessity of paying for it was at a comfortable, unvexing distance.
she was standing with her back to the street when a woman next her gave a low exclamation and uttered the name of mrs. con ryan. berny wheeled about just as the exceedingly smart victoria of mrs. cornelius ryan drew up at the curb and that august matron prepared to descend from it. in these afternoon shopping excursions she had often met her mother-in-law, often met her and invariably seen her turn her head and fix her eyes in the opposite direction. now, however, matters were on another footing. if mrs. ryan had not recognized berny, or spoken to her, or received her, she had at least opened negotiations with her, negotiations which presupposed a knowledge of her existence if not a desire for her acquaintance. berny did not go so far as to anticipate a verbal greeting, but she thought, in consideration of recent developments, she was warranted in expecting a bow.
she moved forward almost in mrs. ryan’s path, paused, and then looked at the large figure moving toward her with a certain massive stateliness. this time mrs. ryan did not turn her head away.[306] instead, she looked at the young woman directly and steadily, looked at her full in the eye with her own face void of all recognition, impassive and stonily unmoved as the marble mask of a statue. berny, her half-made bow checked as if by magic, her face deeply flushed, walked on. she moved down the street rapidly, her head held high, trembling with indignation.
such are the strange, unaccountable contradictions of the female character that she felt more incensed by this cut than by any previous affront or slight the elder woman had offered her. the anticipated bow, neither thought of nor hoped for till she had seen mrs. ryan alighting from the carriage, was suddenly a factor of paramount importance in the struggle between the two. so small a matter as a nod of the elder woman’s head would have made the younger woman more pliable, more tractable and easily managed, than almost any other action on her mother-in-law’s part. berny, bowed to, would have been a more docile, reasonable person than either mrs. ryan or bill cannon had had yet to deal with; while berny, cut, flamed up into a blaze of mutinous fury that, had they known it, would have planted dismay in the breasts of those bold conspirators.
as she walked down the street she was at first too angry to know where she was going, but after a few moments of rapid progress she saw that she was approaching the car line which passed[307] close to her old home. in the excitement of her wrath, the thought of her sisters—the only human beings who could be relied on unquestioningly and ungrudgingly to offer her sympathy—came to her with a sense of consolation and relief. a clock in a window showed her it was nearly five. hannah would have been home for some time, and hazel might be expected within an hour. without more thought she hailed an up-town car.
as the car whisked her up the long hill from kearney street she thought what she would say to her sisters. several times of late she had contemplated letting them into the secrets—or some of the secrets—of her married life and its present complications. she wanted their sympathy, for they were the only people she knew who were interested in her through affection, and did not blame her when she did things that were wrong. she also wanted to surprise them and to impress them. she wanted to see their eyes grow round, and their faces more and more startled, as she told of what mrs. ryan was trying to do, and how the sum of one hundred thousand dollars was hers—their sister’s—when she chose to take it. they were good people, the best people for her to tell it to. they did not know too much. they could be relied upon for a blind, uninquiring loyalty, and she could now (as she had before) tell them, not all—just enough—suppressing,[308] as women do, those facts in the story which it were best for her to keep to herself.
she found them both at home, hazel having been allowed to leave her work an hour earlier than usual. sitting in a small room in the back of the house, they were surrounded by the outward signs of dressmaking. yards of material lay over the chairs, and on a small wooden table, which fitted close to her body and upon which portions of the material lay neatly smoothed out, hannah was cutting with a large pair of shears.
hazel sat near by trimming a hat, a wide, flat leghorn, round which she twined a wreath of brier roses. black velvet bows held the wreath in place, and hazel skewered these down with long black pins, several of which she held in her mouth. berny knew of old this outburst of millinery activity which always marked the month of april. it was the semi-annual rehabilitation of pearl’s wardrobe, and was a ceremonial to which all the females of the family were supposed to contribute. in her own day she herself had given time and thought to it. she had even been in sympathy with the idea of the family’s rise and increase of distinction through pearl, who was going to be many steps farther up the social ladder than her mother and her aunt, if those devoted women could possibly accomplish it.
now, watching her sisters bent over their tasks after the heat and burden of their own day’s[309] work, she felt a deep, heartfelt sense of gratitude that she had escaped from this humble, domestic sphere in which they seemed so content. whether pearl’s summer hat should be trimmed with pink or blue had once been a question which she had thought worthy of serious consideration. how far she had traveled from the world of her childhood could not have been more plainly shown her than by the complete indifference she now felt to pearl, her hat, and its trimmings.
she had come prepared to surprise her sisters, and to shake out of them, by her revelations, the amazed and shocked sympathy she felt would ease her of her present wrath and pain. she was too overwrought to be diplomatic or to approach the point by preparatory gradations. thrown back in the one arm-chair in the room, her head so pressed against its back that her hat was thrust forward over her forehead, she told them of her meeting with mrs. ryan, and the cut which she had received.
neither hannah nor hazel expressed the outraged astonishment at this insult that berny had anticipated. in fact, they took it with a tranquillity which savored of indifference. for the moment, she forgot that they knew nothing of her reason for expecting mrs. ryan to recognize her, and to her quivering indignation was added a last wounding sense of disappointment. the sight of hazel, holding the leghorn hat off at arm’s[310] length and studying it with a preoccupied, narrowed eye, was even more irritating than her remark, made mumblingly because of the pins in her mouth:
“i don’t see why you should feel so bad about that. i should think you’d have got sort of used to it by this time. she’s been cutting you for over two years now.”
“do you think that makes it any better?” said berny in a belligerent tone, not moving her head, but shifting her eyes to stare angrily at hazel from under her projecting hat-brim. “do you think you’d get used to it if josh’s mother cut you on the street?”
it was hard to compass the idea of josh’s deceased parent, who had left behind her a memory of almost unique meekness, cutting anybody. it made hazel laugh and she had to bend her head down and take the pins out of her mouth before she could answer.
“well, if she’d been doing it for over two years, i think i’d have got sort of broken to it by now,” she said. “what makes you so mad about it all of a sudden?”
“maybe things aren’t just the same as they’ve been for the last two years,” said berny darkly. “maybe there’s a reason for mrs. ryan’s bowing to me.”
these words had the effect that the victim of the cut desired. her sisters paused in their work[311] and looked at her. there had been times lately when hannah had felt uneasy about berny’s fine marriage, and she now eyed the younger woman with sober intentness over the glasses pushed down toward the tip of her nose.
“reason?” said hazel. “what reason? have you and she been trying to make up?”
“i don’t know whether you’d call it that or not,” said berny.
“have things really changed between you and her, berny?” she asked gravely.
hannah put down the shears and laid her hands on the table. she felt the coming revelations.
“well, yes, i guess you’d say they have,” said berny slowly, letting every word make its impression. “she’s trying to buy me off to leave dominick. i suppose you’d call that a change.”
if berny wanted to surprise her sisters, she certainly now had the satisfaction of realizing her hopes. for a moment they stared at her, too amazed to speak, even hannah, who had scented difficulties, being completely unprepared—after the way of human nature—for the particular difficulty that had cropped up. it was hazel who first spoke.
“buy you off to leave dominick? give you money to go away from him, do you mean?”
“that’s what i said,” returned her sister with dry grimness. “she’s made me two offers to leave my husband, wants me to get out and, after[312] i’ve gone for a year, ask him to bring suit for desertion.”
“my lord!” murmured hannah in a hushed voice of horror.
“well, that beats anything i’ve ever heard!” exclaimed hazel. “that beats the ball, and not speaking to you, and all the rest. it’s the worst yet! what’s made her do it? what’s the matter with her?”
“the same thing that’s always been the matter with her—she doesn’t like me, she wants to get rid of me. she tried to freeze me out first by not speaking to me, and leaving us to scramble along the best way we could on dominick’s salary. now, she’s seen that that won’t work, and she’s gone off on a new tack. she’s a woman of resources. if she finds the way blocked in one direction, she tries another.”
“she’s actually offered you money to leave dominick?” asked hannah. “said she’d give it to you if you’d desert him and let him get a divorce?”
“that’s it,” returned her sister, in the same hard tone, tapping with her finger-tips on the arms of the chair. “that’s the flattering offer she’s made me twice now.”
“how much did she offer you?” said hazel.
this was a crucial question. berny knew its importance and sat up, pushing back her disarranged hat.
[313]“one hundred thousand dollars,” she said calmly.
there was a second pause which seemed charged with astonishment, as with electrical forces. the sisters, their hands fallen in their laps, fastened their eyes on the speaker in a stare of glassy amaze.
“a hundred thousand dollars!” gasped hazel. “why—why—berny!”
she stopped, almost trembling in the excitement of her stunned incredulity.
“a hundred thousand dollars!” hannah echoed, each word pronounced with slow, aghast unbelief. “oh, it can’t be that much!”
“it’s that much now,” said berny, her calmness accentuated to the point of nonchalance, “and if i want i can make them double it, raise it to a quarter of a million. two hundred and fifty thousand dollars isn’t so much when you’ve got millions in trunks. what’s that to the ryans?”
she looked at her sisters with a cool, dispassionate glance, feeling that it had been worth while to tell them. hannah’s face was a pale, uninteresting mask of shocked surprise—the kind of face with which one would imagine hannah’s greeting such intelligence. but through the astonishment of hazel’s a close and intimate understanding of the possibilities of the situation, an eagerness of rising respect for it and for the recipient of such honors, was discernible and[314] appealed to berny’s vanity and assuaged her more uncomfortable sensations.
“you could get a quarter of a million?” hazel persisted. “how do you know that?”
berny looked at her with disdain which was softened by a slight, indulgent smile.
“my dear, if they want it bad enough to offer one hundred thousand, they want it bad enough to offer two. the money is nothing to them, and i’m a good deal. i shouldn’t be surprised if i could get more.” she thought of bill cannon’s participation in the matter, and let an expression of sly, knowing mysteriousness cross her face. but bill cannon’s participation was a fact she did not intend to mention. he was a part of the story that she had decided to suppress.
“but two hundred and fifty thousand dollars!” said hazel. “why, it’s a fortune! the interest on it alone would make you rich. you could go to europe. you could have a house on pacific avenue. just fancy! and three years ago you were working for twenty a week in the merchants and mechanics trust company. do you remember when they agreed to give you that you thought you were on velvet? twenty dollars a week! that looks pretty small now, doesn’t it?”
“but she doesn’t intend to take it, hazel mccrae!” said hannah in a deep voice of shocked disapproval. “you talk as if she was going to accept their outrageous offer.”
[315]hazel’s face, which, as her fancy ranged over these attractive possibilities, had shown varying stages of flushed and exhilarated excitement, now suddenly fell. conscious that she had exhibited a condition of mind that was low and sordid, she hastily sought to obliterate the effect of her words by saying sharply,
“of course, i knew she wasn’t going to accept. i never had such an idea. i’d be the first one to turn it down. i was just thinking what she could do if she did.”
“oh, there’s any amount of things i could do,” said berny. “they want me to go abroad and live there. that was”—she was going to say “one of the conditions,” but this, too, she decided to suppress, and said instead—“one of the things they suggested. they told me the income of the money would go twice as far there. then the year while i was deserting dominick—i was to go to chicago, or new york, and desert him that way—i’d have seven thousand dollars for my expenses. they weren’t mean about it, i’ll say that much for them.”
“and then laying it all out like that!” said hannah. “it’s just the most scandalous thing i’ve ever heard of. i’ve never had much opinion of mrs. ryan, but i really didn’t believe she’d go that far.”
“but dominick?” said hazel suddenly; “what about dominick? what did he say?”
[316]the matter of dominick was the difficult part of the revelation. berny felt the necessity of a certain amount of dissembling, and it helped to chill the excitement and heat that had carried her up to her sisters and on to this point. dominick’s part of the story was one of the subjects upon which she had decided to let her remarks be as notes about the text, and expurgated notes at that. now, she realized it was a complicated matter of which to tell only half, and looking on the floor pricked the carpet with the tip of her parasol, and tried to maintain her tone of airy indifference.
“dominick doesn’t know anything about it,” she said. “he’s never to know. they were pretty decided on that point. he’s to be deserted without his own knowledge or consent.”
“but to take his wife away from him!” hannah cried. “to rob him of her! they must be crazy.”
“dominick can get along all right without me,” said dominick’s wife, looking at the tip of her parasol as she prodded the carpet.
hazel, the married sister, heard something in these words that the spinster did not recognize. a newly-wakened intelligence, startled and suspicious, dawned on her face.
“dominick’s not so dead in love with me,” continued berny, with her eyes following the parasol tip. “he could manage to bear his life without me. he—” she paused, and then[317] said, enraged to hear that her voice was husky—“doesn’t care a button whether i live or die.”
the pause that greeted this statement was entirely different from its predecessors. there was amazement in it, and there was pain. neither listener could for a moment speak; then hannah said with a solemnity full of dignity,
“i can’t believe that, berny.”
“you needn’t if you don’t want to,” returned berny, still not looking up. “if you like to keep on believing lies, it’s all the same to me. but i guess i know more about dominick ryan, and what he feels, than you do, and i tell you he doesn’t care a hang for me. he gave up caring”—she paused, a memory of the ball, the quarrel, and the fatal visit to antelope flashing through her mind—“over a year ago. i guess,” she raised her head and looked coolly at her sisters, “he won’t lay awake nights at the thought of losing me.”
they looked at her without speaking, their faces curiously different in expression from what they had been after her first confessions. all excitement had gone from them. they looked more wounded and hurt than she did. they were women, dashed and mortified, by a piece of news that had abashed them in its admitted failure and humiliation of another woman.
“i—i—can’t believe it,” faltered hannah. “dominick’s always so kind, so attentive, so——”
[318]she came to a stop, checked by an illuminating memory of the sundays on which dominick now never came to dinner, of his absence from their excursions to the park, of his mysterious mid-winter holiday to the sierra.
“have you had a row?” said hazel. “everybody has them some time and then you make up again, and it’s just the same as it was before. fighting with your husband’s different from other fighting. it doesn’t matter much, or last.”
berny looked down at the parasol tip. her lips suddenly began to quiver, and tears, the rare burning tears of her kind, pricked into her eyes.
“we haven’t lived together for over eight months,” she said.
the silence that greeted this remark was the heaviest of all the silences.
“why didn’t you tell us before?” said hazel, in a low, awed voice.
for a moment, berny could not answer. she was ashamed and angry at the unexpected emotion which made it impossible for her to command her voice, and made things shine before her eyes, brokenly, as through crystal. she was afraid her sisters would think she was fond of dominick, or would guess the real source of the trouble.
“i was afraid something was wrong,” said hannah, mechanically picking up the shears, her face pale and furrowed with new anxieties.
the concern in her tone soothed berny. it was[319] something not only to have astonished her family, but to have disturbed their peace by a forced participation in her woes. it had been enraging to think of them light-heartedly going their way while she struggled under such a load of care.
“it was all right till last autumn,” she said in a stifled voice, “and then it all got wrong—and—and—now it’s all gone to pieces.”
“but what made dominick change?” said hazel, with avid, anxious eagerness. “everything was happy and peaceful a year ago. what got hold of him to change him?”
berny felt that she had told enough. it had been harder telling, too, than she had imagined. the last and greatest secret that she had determined to keep from her sisters was that of dominick’s love for another woman—what she regarded as his transfer of affection, not yet having guessed that his heart had never been hers. now she raised her head and looked at the two solemn-faced women, angrily and bitterly, through the tears that her eyes still held.
“i don’t know, and i don’t care what’s changed him,” she said defiantly. “i stood by my side of the bargain, and that’s all i know. i’ve made him a good wife, as good a one as i knew how. i’ve been bright and pleasant when his family treated me like dirt. i’ve not complained and i’ve made the best of it, staying indoors and going nowhere, when any other woman would have[320] been getting some sort of fun out of her life. i’ve managed that miserable little flat on not half enough money, and tried to keep out of debt, when any one else in the world would have run up bills all over for mrs. ryan to pay. nobody can say i haven’t done my part all right. maybe i’ve got my faults—most of us have—but i haven’t neglected my duty this time.”
she rose abruptly from her seat, pushing it back and feeling that she had better go before she said too much. she realized that in her hysterical and overwrought state she might become too loquacious and afterward regret it. for the moment she believed all she said. her sisters, full of sincere sympathy for her, believed it too, though in periods of cooler reflection they would probably question some of her grievances; notably that one as to the small income, three thousand a year, representing to them complete comfort, not to say affluence.
as she rose, hazel rose too, her face full of suspicious concern.
“it’s not another woman, is it, berny?” she almost whispered.
berny had told so many lies that she did not bother about a few more. moreover, she was determined not to let her sisters know about rose cannon—not yet, anyway.
“no,” she said with short scorn, turning to pick up her feather boa. “of course it’s not.[321] he’s not that kind of a man. he’s too much of a sissy. another woman! i’d like to tell him that.”
she gave a sardonic laugh and turned to the glass, disposing her boa becomingly and adjusting her hat. hannah, shaking herself loose from the encircling embrace of the cutting table, rose too, exclaiming,
“don’t go yet. you must tell us more of this. i’ve not heard anything for years that’s upset me so. if dominick’s not in love with somebody else, what’s got into him? why doesn’t he care for you any more? a man doesn’t stop loving his wife for no cause whatever. it isn’t in human nature.”
“well, it’s in dominick’s nature,” said dominick’s wife, pulling on her gloves. “maybe that isn’t human nature, but it’s the nature of the man i’m married to and that’s all that concerns me. remember, you’re not to say a word about this. it’s all a secret.”
“why should we talk about it?” said the practical hazel. “it’s bad enough to have had it happen. you don’t want to go round gossiping about a member of your family getting thrown down.”
to their pressing invitations to remain longer, berny was deaf. she had said her say and wanted to go. the interview had undoubtedly eased her of some of the choking exasperation[322] that had followed mrs. ryan’s cut; and it was a source of comfort to think that she had now broken the ice and could continue to come and pour out her wrongs and sorrows into the ever-attentive ears of her sisters. but now she wanted to get away from them, from their penetrative questions, and their frank curiosity, the curiosity of normal, healthy-minded women, whose lives had lacked the change and color of which hers had been full. she cut her good-bys short and left them to their own distracted speculations, staring blankly at each other, amid the scattered millinery of the disordered room.
when she reached home, she found on the hall table a note which the chinaman told her had been left by a messenger. it was from bill cannon and contained but a few lines. these, of a businesslike brevity, expressed the writer’s desire to see her again, and politely suggested that, if she could come to his office on any one of the three specified afternoons, between the hours of two and four, he would be deeply honored and obliged.
berny, frowning and abstracted, was standing with the note in her hand when dominick opened the hall door and came up the stairs. his eye casually fell on the square of paper, but he asked no question about it, hardly seemed to see it. yet her state of suspicion was so sensitively active that his lack of interest seemed fraught with[323] meaning, and pushing the letter back into its envelope she remarked that it was a note from her dressmaker. even the fact that his answer was an indifferent, barely-articulated sound seemed significant to her, and she took the letter into her bedroom and hid it in her handkerchief box, as though her husband, instead of being the least, was the most curious and jealous of men.
