Berny was extremely unsettled. She had never been in such a condition of worry and indecision. She was at once depressed2 and elated, triumphant3 and cast down, all in a bubble of excitement and uncertainty4. 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 possessed5 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 jewelry6 held in slight esteem7 as a trifling8 imitation and suddenly discovered to be[301] real and of rich worth. Insignificant9 and strange are the happenings which determine the course of events. The sage10 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 determined11 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 mighty12 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 delightful13, 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 promenading14. Of late she had not been sleeping well and the fear that this would react upon her looks had spurred her to the unwonted exertion15 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 dignified16 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 intimacies17, the lack of privacy, of the little town, than she did on the big, clean-swept streets where the houses presented a blank exterior18 to the gaze, and most of the people were transported in cars or carriages. Even the fact that the Tenderloin was in close proximity19 did not modify her interest with a counteracting20 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 repel21 her. She viewed it with the same practical utilitarianism with which she regarded her own virtue22. 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 vaudeville23, 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 standing24 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 Witty25, Brilliant and Incomparable
Monologist26
In His Unrivaled Monologue27
Entitled
KLONDIKE MEMORIES”
She remembered at once that this was the actor Dominick had spoken of as having been snowed in with them at Antelope29. 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, mincing30 step that was[304] habitual31 to her, and which always made walking a slow and undesirable32 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 pensive33 air of musing34.
Her preoccupation lasted up Grant Avenue and down Post Street till it was finally dispelled35 by the sight of that attractive show-window in which a large dry-goods establishment exhibits the marvels36 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 blighting37, not to say obliterating38 effect on their own beauty. Others, of practical inclinations39, studied the new gowns with an eye to discoveries whereby their wardrobes might be induced to assume a deceptive40 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 sufficiently41 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 exclamation42 and uttered the name of Mrs. Con1 Ryan. Berny wheeled about just as the exceedingly smart victoria of Mrs. Cornelius Ryan drew up at the curb43 and that august matron prepared to descend44 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 negotiations45 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 steadily46, looked at her full in the eye with her own face void of all recognition, impassive and stonily47 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 incensed48 by this cut than by any previous affront49 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 paramount50 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 pliable51, more tractable52 and easily managed, than almost any other action on her mother-in-law’s part. Berny, bowed to, would have been a more docile53, reasonable person than either Mrs. Ryan or Bill Cannon54 had had yet to deal with; while Berny, cut, flamed up into a blaze of mutinous55 fury that, had they known it, would have planted dismay in the breasts of those bold conspirators56.
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 wrath57, 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 consolation58 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 contemplated59 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 loyalty60, 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 neatly61 smoothed out, Hannah was cutting with a large pair of shears62.
Hazel sat near by trimming a hat, a wide, flat leghorn, round which she twined a wreath of brier roses. Black velvet63 bows held the wreath in place, and Hazel skewered64 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 rehabilitation65 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 devoted66 women could possibly accomplish it.
Now, watching her sisters bent67 over their tasks after the heat and burden of their own day’s[309] work, she felt a deep, heartfelt sense of gratitude68 that she had escaped from this humble69, 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 worthy70 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 indifference71 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 outraged72 astonishment73 at this insult that Berny had anticipated. In fact, they took it with a tranquillity74 which savored75 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 preoccupied76, narrowed eye, was even more irritating than her remark, made mumblingly77 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 belligerent78 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 meekness79, 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 a............