berny had been turning over in her mind the advantages of accepting the money—had been letting herself dwell upon the delights of possible possession—when at the sunday dinner that afternoon josh mccrae threw her back into the state of incensed rejection with which she had met the first offer. with his face wreathed in joyous grins, he had apprised her of the fact that only an hour earlier, while walking on telegraph hill, he had seen dominick there talking with miss cannon.
a good deal of query followed josh’s statement. there was quite an outburst of animated interrogations rising from the curiosity the iversons felt concerning bill cannon’s daughter, and under cover of it berny controlled her face and managed to throw in a question or two on her own account. there had been a minute—that one when josh’s statement had struck with a shocking unexpectedness on her consciousness—when she had felt and looked her wrath and amaze. then she had[355] gripped her glass and drunk some water and, swallowing gulpingly, had heard her sister’s rapid fire of questions, and josh, proud to have imparted such interesting information, answering importantly. putting down her glass, she said quite naturally,
“where did you say you saw them—near the quarry?”
“just by the edge, talking together. i was going to walk along and join them, and then i thought they looked so sort of sociable, i’d better not butt in. dominick got to know her real well up in the sierra, didn’t he?”
“yes, of course,” she said hurriedly. “they grew to be quite friends. they must have met by accident on the hill. dominick’s always walking in those queer, deserted places.”
“you haven’t got acquainted with her yet, have you?” said the simple josh, whose touch was not of the lightest. “it would be a sort of grind on the ryans if you get really solid with her.”
“oh, i can know her whenever i want,” berny answered airily, above a discomfort of growing revelation that was almost as sharp as a pain. “dominick’s several times asked me if i wanted to meet her, but it always was at times when i’d other things to do. we’re going to ask her to the flat to tea some time.”
on ordinary occasions, berny would never have[356] gone to this length of romantic invention, for she was a judicious liar and believed, with the sage, that a lie was too valuable a thing to waste. but just now she was too upset, too preyed upon by shock and suspicion, to exercise an artistic restraint, and she lied recklessly, unmindful of a future when her listeners would expect to see her drafts on the bank of truth cashed.
she was quiet for the rest of the afternoon, but it was not till she had reached her own home, silent in its untenanted desertion, that she had an opportunity to turn the full vigor of her mind on what she had heard.
she had been jealous of rose since that fatal sunday when she had discovered why dominick was changed. it was not the jealousy of disprized love, it was not the jealousy of thwarted passion. it was a subtle compound of many ingredients, the main one a sense of bursting indignation that two people—one of them a possession of her own—should dare to seek for happiness where she had found only dullness and disappointment. she had an enraging premonition that rose would probably succeed where she had failed. it made her not only jealous of rose, it made her hate her.
josh’s words increased this, and caused her suspicions, which, if not sleeping, had of late been dormant, to wake into excited activity. dominick’s lonely sunday walks she now saw shared[357] by the girl who was trying to buy his freedom. incidents that before she had taken at their face value now were suddenly fraught with disturbing significance. why did dominick go out so often in the evening? since the moonlight night, he had been out twice, once not coming back till eleven. the confirmation of sight could hardly have made her more confident that he must spend these stolen hours with rose cannon in the palatial residence on nob hill. and it was not the most soothing feature in the case that berny should picture them in one of the artistically-furnished parlors of which she had heard so much and seen nothing but the linings of the window curtains. here, amid glories of upholstery, from the sight of which she was for ever debarred, rose and dominick talked of the time when he should be free. berny, like the tiger lashing itself to fury with its own tail, thought of what they said, till she became sure her imaginings were facts; and the more she imagined, the more enraged and convinced she became.
she put from her mind all intention of ever taking the money. she wanted it desperately, terribly; she wanted it so much that when she thought of it it made her feel sick, but the joys of its possession were at the unrealizable distance of dreams, while the fact of her husband’s being enticed away by another woman was a thing[358] of close, immediate concern, a matter of the moment, as if some one were trying to pick her pocket. as an appurtenance of hers, dominick might not have been a source of happiness, but that was no reason why he should be a source of happiness to some one else.
berny did not argue with any such compact clearness. she was less lucid, less defined and formulated in her ideas and desires than she had been when bill cannon made the first offer. anger had thickened and obscured her clarity of vision. suspicions, harbored and stimulated by a mind which wished for confirmation of the most extravagant, had destroyed the firm and well-outlined conception of what she wanted and was willing to fight for. in fact, she had passed the stage in the controversy when she was formidable because she stood with the strength of sincerity in her position, her demands, and refusals. now the integrity of her defiance was gone. she wanted the money. she wanted to take it, and her refusal to do so was false to herself and to her standards.
she knew that the interview for which bill cannon had asked was for a last, deciding conversation. he was to make his final offer. it was a moment of torture to her when she wondered what it would be, and her mind hovered in distracted temptation over the certain two hundred thousand dollars and the possible quarter[359] of a million. it was then that she whipped up her wrath, obscured for the moment by the mounting dizziness of cupidity, and thought of rose and dominick in the japanese room, or the turkish room, or the persian room, into which she had never been admitted. the thought that they were making love received a last, corrosive bitterness from the fact that berny could not see the beautiful and expensive surroundings of these sentimental passages.
she was in this state of feverish distractedness when she went to bill cannon’s office. she had chosen the last of the three days he had specified in his note, and had left the flat at the time he had mentioned as the latest hour at which he would be there. she had chosen the last day as a manner of indicating her languid interest in the matter to be discussed, and had also decided to be about fifteen minutes late, as it looked more indifferent, less eager. bill cannon would never know that she was dressed and ready half an hour before she started, and had lounged about the flat, watching the clocks, and starting at every unrecognized sound.
she was received with a flattering deference. as her footstep sounded on the sill of the outer office, a face was advanced toward one of the circular openings in the long partition, immediately disappeared, and then a door was thrown back to admit to her presence a good-looking, well-dressed[360] young man. his manner was all deferential politeness. a murmur of her name, just touched with the delicately-questioning quality imparted by the faintest of rising inflections, accompanied his welcoming bow. mr. cannon was expecting her in the private office. special instructions had been left that she should be at once admitted. would she be kind enough to step this way?
berny followed him down the long strip of outer office where it flanked the partition in which the regularly-recurring holes afforded glimpses of smooth bent heads. she walked lightly, and had an alert, wary air as though it might be a good thing to be prepared for an ambush. she had been rehearsing her part of the interview for days; and like other artists, now that the moment of her appearance was at hand, felt extremely nervous, and had a sense of girding herself up against unforeseen movements on the part of the foe.
nothing, however, could have been more disarmingly friendly than the old man’s greeting. as the door opened and the clerk pronounced her name, he rose from his seat and welcomed her in a manner which was a subtle compound of simple cordiality and a sort of masonic, unexpressed understanding, as between two comrades bound together by a common interest. sitting opposite him in one of the big leather chairs, she could not but feel some of her resentment melting away,[361] and her stiffly-antagonistic pose losing something of its rigidity as he smiled indulgently on her, asking about herself, about dominick, finally about her sisters, with whose names and positions he appeared flatteringly familiar.
berny answered him cautiously. she made a grip at her receding anger, conscious that she needed all her sense of wrong to hold her own against this crafty enemy. even when he told her he had heard with admiration and wonder of hannah’s fine record in the primary school department, her smile was guarded, her answer one of brief and watchful reserve. she wished he would get to the point of the interview. her mind could not comfortably contain two subjects at once, and it was crammed and running over with the all-important one of the money. her eyes, fixed on him, did not stray to the furnishings of the room or the long windows that reached to the ceiling and through the dimmed panes of which men on the other side of the alley stood looking curiously down on her.
“well,” he said, when he had disposed of hannah’s worthiness and even celebrated the merits of josh in a sentence of appreciation, “it’s something to have such a good sterling set of relations. they’re what make the ‘good families’ in our new west out here. and they’re beginning to understand that in europe. when they see your people in paris, they’ll recognize[362] them as the right kind of americans. the french ain’t as effete as you’d think from what you hear. they know the real from the imitation every time. they’ve had their fill of coal oil johnnys and spectacular spenders. what they’re looking for is the strong man and woman who have carved out their own path.”
berny’s eyes snapped into an even closer concentration of attention.
“maybe that’s so,” she said, “but i don’t see when my sisters are ever going to get to paris.”
“they’ll go over to see you,” he answered. “i guess i could manage now and then to get ’em passes across the continent.”
he rested one elbow on the desk against which he was sitting, and with his hand caressing his short, stubby beard, he looked at berny with eyes of twinkling good nature.
“come to think of it,” he added, “i guess i could manage the transportation across the ocean, too. it oughtn’t to cost ’em, all told, more’n fifty dollars. it seems hard luck that miss hannah, after a lifetime of work, shouldn’t see paris, and——”
“what makes you think i’m going to be there?” said berny sharply. she found any deviation from the subject in hand extremely irritating, and her manner and voice showed it.
“oh, of course you are,” he said, with a little impatient, deprecating jerk of his head. “you[363] can’t be going to persist in a policy that’s simply cutting your own throat.”
“i rather fancy i am,” she answered in a cool, hard tone. to lend emphasis to her words, she unbent from her upright attitude and leaned against the chair-back in a sudden assumption of indifference. her eyes, meeting his, were full of languid insolence.
“i don’t feel that i’ll go to paris at all,” she said. “i think little old san francisco’s good enough for me.”
he looked away from her at the papers on the desk, eyed them for a thoughtful moment, and then said,
“i didn’t think you were as short-sighted as that. i’ll tell you fair and square that up to this i’ve thought you were a pretty smart woman.”
“well, i guess from this on, you’ll have to put me down a fool.”
she laughed, a short, sardonic laugh, and her adversary smiled politely in somewhat absent response. with his eyes still on the papers, he said,
“no, no—i can’t agree to that. short-sighted is the word. you’re not looking into the future, you’re not calculating on your own powers of endurance. how much longer do you think you can stand this battle with your husband and the ryans?”
[364]in the dead watches of the night, berny had asked herself this question, and found no answer to it. she tried to laugh again, but it was harder and less mirthful than before.
the old man leaned forward, shaking an admonitory forefinger at her.
“don’t you know, young woman, that’s a pretty wearing situation? don’t you know to live in a state of perpetual strife will break down the strongest spirit? the dropping of water will wear away a stone. you can’t stand the state of siege and warfare you’ve got yourself into much longer. your rage is carrying you along now. you’re mad as a whole hive full of hornets and the heat of it’s keeping you going, furnishing fuel to the engines, so to speak. but you can’t keep up such a clip. you’ll break to pieces and you’ll break suddenly. then what’ll happen? why, the ryans’ll come with a big broom and sweep the pieces out. they won’t leave one little scrap behind. that flat on sacramento street will be swept as clean of you as if you’d never had your dresses hanging in the cupboard or your toothbrush on the wash-stand. old delia’s a great housekeeper. when she gets going with a broom there’s not a speck escapes her.”
his narrowed eyes looked into hers with that boring steadiness that she was beginning to know. he was not smiling now, rather he looked a man who knew he was talking of very[365] momentous things and wanted his companion to know it too.
“that’s all talk,” berny snapped. “if that’s all you’ve got to say to me, i’d better be going.”
“no, no,” he stretched out an opened hand and with it made a down-pressing gesture that was full of command. “don’t move yet. these are just suggestions of mine, suggestions i was making for your good. of course, if you don’t care to follow them, it’s your affair, not mine. i’ve done my duty, and, after all, that’s what concerns me most. what i asked you to come here for to-day was to talk about this matter, to talk further, to thresh it out some more. i’ve seen mrs. ryan since our last meeting.”
he paused, and berny sat upright, her eyes on him in a fixity of listening that was almost a glare. she was tremulously anxious and yet afraid to hear the coming words.
“what did she say?” she asked with the same irritation she had shown before.
“she doubles her offer to you. she’ll give you two hundred thousand dollars to leave her son.”
“well, i won’t,” said berny, drawing herself to the edge of the chair. “she can keep her two hundred thousand dollars.”
“that two hundred thousand dollars, well invested, would give an income of from twelve to fifteen thousand a year. on that, in paris, you’d be a rich woman.”
[366]“i guess i’ll stay a poor one in san francisco.”
he eyed her ponderingly over the hand that stroked his beard.
“i wonder,” he said slowly, “what’s making you act like this? you stump me. here you are, poor, treated like dirt, ostracized as if you were a leper, with the most powerful family in california your open enemy, and you won’t take a fortune that’s offered you without a condition, and go to a place where you’d be honored and courted and could make yourself anything you’d like. i can’t make it out. you beat me.”
berny was flattered. even through the almost sickening sense of longing that the thought of the lost two hundred thousand dollars created in her, she was conscious of the gratified conceit of the woman who is successfully mysterious.
“don’t bother your head about it,” she said as lightly as she could. “think i’m crazy, if that makes it any easier for you.”
“i can’t think that,” he answered, conveying in the accented monosyllable his inability to think lightly of her mental equipment. “there’s something underneath it all i don’t know. you’ve not been quite open, quite as open as i think my frankness deserves. but, of course, a man can’t force a lady’s confidence. if you don’t want to give me yours, i’ve got to be content without it.”
berny emitted a vague sound of agreement. she once more drew herself to the edge of the[367] chair, taking the renewed, arranging grip of departure on her purse. she wanted to go.
“well,” she said with the cheerful lengthening of the word, which is the precursor of the preliminary sentence of farewell, “i guess——” but he stopped her again with the outspread, authoritative hand.
“don’t be in such a hurry; i’ve not finished yet. there’s more to be said, and it’s worth losing a few moments over.” his face was so much more commanding than his words that she made no attempt to move, though each minute deepened her desire to leave.
“this is just between you and me,” he went on slowly, his voice lowered, dropped to the key of confidences. “it’s a little matter between us that no one else needs to know anything about. my part of it just comes from the fact that i want to do a good turn not only to delia ryan, but to you. i’m sorry for you, young woman, and i think you’re up against it. now, here’s my proposition; i’ll add something to that money myself. i’ll give you another hundred thousand. i’ll put it with mrs. ryan’s pile, and it’ll run your fortune up well past a quarter of a million.”
his eyes fixed upon her were hard in his benevolently-smiling face.
“what do you think about it?” he asked, as she was speechless. “three hundred thousand dollars in a lump’s a goodish bit of money.”
[368]berny felt dizzy. as her rancor had seemed slipping from her in the earlier part of the interview, now she felt as if her resolution was suddenly melting. she was confused between the strangling up-rush of greed and the passion that once again rose in her against the old man, who showed such a bold determination to sweep her from his daughter’s path. she was no longer mistress of herself. inward excitement, the unfamiliar struggle with temptation, had upset and unnerved her. but she did not yet know it, and she answered slowly, with a sort of sullenness, that might have passed as the heaviness of indifference.
“what do you want to give it to me for?”
“because i’m sorry for you. because i want you to get out of this hole you’re in, and go and make something of your life.”
before she knew it, berny said low, but with a biting incisiveness,
“oh, you liar!”
cannon was surprised. he looked for a staring moment at her pale face, stiff over its strained muscles, and said in a tone of cheerful amaze,
“now, what do you mean by that?”
“just what i say,” she said. “you’re a liar and you know it. every word you’ve said to me’s been a lie. why, mrs. ryan’s better than you. she don’t come covering me with oily stories about wanting me to be happy. you[369] think that i don’t know why you’re offering me this money. well, old man, i do. you want to get my husband for your own daughter, rose cannon.”
it was cannon’s turn to be speechless. he had not for years received so unexpected and violent a blow. he sat in the same attitude, not moving or uttering a sound, and looking at berny with a pair of eyes that each second grew colder and more steely. berny, drawn to the edge of her chair, leaned toward him, speaking with the stinging quickness of an angry wasp.
“you thought i didn’t know it. well, i do. i know the whole thing. i’ve just sat back and watched you two old thieves thinking everything was hidden, like a pair of ostriches. and you being so free with your glad hand and being sorry for me and wanting me to make the most of my life! you said i was a smart woman. well, i’m evidently a lot smarter than you thought i was.”
“so it seems,” he said. “smart enough to do some very neat inventing.”
“inventing!” she cried, “i wish there was some inventing about it. i don’t take any pleasure in thinking that another woman’s trying to buy my husband.”
he dropped his hand from his chin, and moved a little impatiently in his chair.
“come,” he said with sudden authority, “i[370] can’t waste my time this way. are you going to take the money or not?”
his manner, as if by magic, had changed. every suggestion of deference, or consideration had gone from it. the respect, with which he had been careful to treat her, had suddenly vanished; there was something subtly brutal in his tone, in the very movement of impatience he made. it was as if the real man were at last showing himself.
she uttered a furious phrase of denial and sprang to her feet. his manner was the last unbearable touch on the sore helplessness of her futile rage. his chair had been standing sidewise toward the desk, and now, with a jerk of his body, he swept it back into position.
“all right, then go!” he said, without looking at her.
berny had intended going, rushing out of the place. now at these words of dismissal, flung at her as a bone to a dog, she suddenly was rooted to the spot. all her reason, balance, and common sense were swept away in the flood of her quivering, blind anger.
“i will not go,” she cried, at the pitch of folly, “i will not till i’m good and ready. who are you to order me out? who are you to tell me what i’m to do? a man who tries to buy another woman’s husband for his daughter, and then pretends he and she are such a sweet, innocent[371] pair! wouldn’t people be surprised if they knew that miss rose cannon wanted my husband, was getting her father to make bids for him, and was meeting him every sunday!”
“stop!” thundered the old man, bringing his open hand down on the table with a bang.
the tone of his voice was bull-like, and the blow of his hand so violent that the fittings of the heavy desk rattled. berny, though not frightened, was startled and drew back. for a moment she thought he was going to rise and forcibly put her out. then she looked sidewise and saw two men at a window on the other side of the alley gazing interestedly down at them. cannon was conscious of the observers at the same time. he restrained the impulse to spring to his feet which had made her shrink, and rose slowly.
“look here,” he said quietly, “you don’t seem to understand that this interview’s at an end.”
“no,” she said with a stubborn shake of her head, “i’m not through yet.”
“there’s nothing more for you to say unless you want to accept mrs. ryan’s offer.”
“yes, there is, there’s lots more for me to say, but since you seem in such a hurry to get rid of me, i’ll have to wait and say it to your daughter next time i see her.”
she paused, daring and impudently bold. she[372] was a woman of remarkable physical courage, and the old man’s aspect, which might have affrighted a less audacious spirit, had no terrors for her. he stood by the desk, his hands on his hips, the fingers turned toward his back, and his face, the chin drawn in, fronting her with a glowering fixity of menace.
“when do you ever see my daughter?” he asked, the accented pronoun pregnant with scorn.
“oh, on the streets, in the stores, walking round town. i often meet her. i’ve wanted several times lately to stop and tell her what i think of the way she’s acting. she doesn’t think that i know all about what she’s doing. she’ll be surprised when she hears that i do and what i think about it.”
she faced the old man’s motionless visage with an almost debonair audacity.
“you can offer me money,” she said, “but you can’t muzzle me.”
cannon, without changing his attitude, replied,
“i can do a good many things you don’t think of. take my advice, young woman, and muzzle yourself. don’t leave it for me to do. i’ve had nothing but friendly feelings for you up to this, and i’d hate to have you see what a damned ugly enemy i can be.”
he gave his head a nod, dropped his hands and turned from her. as he moved, a small spider that had been hidden among the papers on the[373] desk started to scuttle over the yellow blotting pad. it caught his eye.
“look there,” he said, indicating it, “that little spider thinks it can have things all its own way on my desk. but—” and he laid his great thumb on it, crushing it to a black smudge—“that’s what happens to it. now, mrs. dominick ryan, that’s not the first little spider that’s come to grief trying to run amuck through my affairs. and it don’t seem, as things look now, as if it was going to be the last. it’s not a healthy thing for little spiders to think they can run bill cannon.”
he rubbed his soiled thumb on the edge of the blotter, and berny looked at the stain that had been the spider.
“best not butt into places where little spiders are not wanted,” he said, and then looking at her sidewise, “well, is it good-by?”
something in the complete obliteration of the adventurous insect—or the words that had accompanied its execution—chilled berny. she was not frightened, nor less determined, but the first ardor of her defiance was as though a cold breath had blown on it. still she did not intend to leave, ignominiously withdrawing before defeat. she wanted to say more, rub it in that she knew the reason for his action, and let him see still plainer in how slight esteem she held his daughter. but the interlude of the spider had been such a check that she did not know exactly how to begin[374] again. she stood for a moment uncertain, and he said,
“will you take the money?”
“no!” she said loudly. “don’t ask me that again!”
“all right,” he answered quietly, “that ends our business. do you know your way out, or shall i ring for granger to see you to the door?”
there was a bell on the desk and he extended his hand toward it. she guessed that granger was the polished and deferential young man who had greeted her on her entrance, and the ignominy of being escorted out under a cloud—literally shown the door by the same youth, probably no longer polished or deferential, was more than she could bear.
“i’m going,” she said fiercely. “don’t dare to touch that bell! but just be sure of one thing, bill cannon, this is not the last you or your daughter will hear of me.”
he bowed with an air of irony that was so slight it might not have been noticed.
“any messages from you will be received by me with pleasure. but when it comes to other things”—her hand was on the door-knob but she had to listen—“remember the little spider.”
“rats!” she said furiously, and tore open the door.
“good afternoon, mrs. ryan,” he cried. “good afternoon!”
she did not answer, but even in her excitement[375] was conscious that the clerks behind the partition might be listening, and so shut the door, not with the bang her state of mind made natural, but with a soft, ladylike gentleness. then she walked, with a tapping of little heels and a rustle of silken linings, down the long, narrow office and out into the street.
