Toward the end of the meal she inquired of the servant at what time her husband had gone out, and received the reply that Mr. Ryan had had his breakfast and left the flat two hours earlier. There was nothing disconcerting or unusual about this, as Dominick always went for a walk on fine Sunday mornings, but her mind was far from easy and she immediately fell to wondering why he had departed so early, and the slight ferment10 of disquietude that was always with her stirred again and made her forget the society column and let her Spanish omelet grow cold.
There was something strange about Dominick since he had come back, something that intrigued11 her, that she could not satisfactorily explain. She assured herself that he was still angry, but in the deeper places of her understanding the voice that whispers the truth and will not be gainsaid13 told her it was not that. Neither was it exactly antagonism14. In a way he had been studiously kind and polite to her, a sort of consciously-guarded politeness, such as one might practise to a guest with whom one was intimate without being friendly. She tried to explain to herself just what this change was, and when it came to putting the matter in words she could not find the right ones. It was a coldness, a coldness that was not harsh and did not express itself in actions or phrases. It went deeper; it was exhaled15 from the inner places of his being.
Sometimes as she talked to him she would meet his eyes fixed16 on her with a deep, vacant glance, which she suddenly realized was unseeing and unheeding. In the evening as he sat reading in the cramped18 confines of the den17 she surreptitiously watched him and saw that a moment often came when he dropped his book, and with his long body limp in the arm-chair, his chin sunk on his breast, would sit with a brooding gaze fixed on nothing. Once, as he was dreaming this way, she said suddenly,
“What are you thinking of, Dominick? Antelope19?”
He started and turned upon her a face that had reddened consciously.
“Why should I think of Antelope?” he said, and she was aware that her remark had startled him and made him uncomfortable.
“For no particular reason,” she answered lightly; “you just looked as if you were thinking of something a long way off.”
She tried to reassure20 herself that it all rose from the quarrel. To believe that comforted her and gave her confidence, but it was hard to think it, for not only did her own instinct proclaim against it, but Dominick’s manner and attitude were in distinct refutation of any such theory. He was not sullen21, he was absent; he was not resentful, he was indifferent. And in small outward ways he tried to please her, which was not after the manner of a sore and angry man. On this very Sunday he had agreed to meet her and her family in the park at the band stand at four. She always dined with her sisters on Sunday and if the weather was fine they went to the park and listened to the music. It was nearly a year now since Dominick had joined these family parties, preferring to walk on the Presidio hills and the Cliff House beach with a friend from the bank. But on the evening before he had promised to meet them; been quite agreeable about it, Berny had thought, when her pleadings and importunities had finally extorted22 from him a promise to join them there.
She left the dining-room and walked up the hallway to the parlor23, her head drooped24, anxieties gnawing25 at her. The little room was flooded with sunshine, and she parted the lace curtains and, throwing up the window, leaned out. The rich, enveloping26 warmth surrounded her, clasped her, seemed to sink deep into her and thaw27 the apprehensions28 that were so cold at her heart. She drew in the sweet, still air, that did not stimulate29 but that had in it something of a crystalline youth and freshness, like the air of an untainted world, concerned with nothing but the joy of living. The scents31 of flowers were in it; the mellowness32 of the earth and its fruits. Peace was the message of this tranquil33 Sunday morning, peace was in the sunshine, in the sound of bells with which the air was full, in the fall of feet—light, joyous34 feet—on the pavement, in the voices of passers-by and the laughter, sweet and broken, of children. It was not right for any one to harbor cankering cares on such a day. The earth was happy, abandoned to the sunshine, irresponsible, care free, rejoicing in the perfect moment. The woman felt the restoring processes that Nature, in its tireless generosity35, offers to all who will take them. She felt eased of her troubles, soothed36 and cheered, as though the enwrapping radiance that bathed her held an opiate for jangled nerves. Blinking in the brightness she leaned on the window-sill, immovable, quieted, feeling the warmth suffuse37 her and dissipate those alarms that half an hour earlier had been so chill and heavy.
As she dressed, the sense of well-being38 and confidence increased. She looked very well this morning. Since Dominick’s return she had looked haggard and thin. Sometimes she had seemed to see, showing shadowy through her reflected face in the mirror, the lines and hollows of that face when time should have put a stamp on it that neither massage40 nor pigments41 would efface42. A sudden moment of revelation showed her herself as an old woman, her nose pointed43, her mouth a thin, tight line. This morning the glass gave her back none of these disconcerting hints. She was at her best, and as she dressed carefully and slowly, she had the satisfaction of seeing that each added article of apparel increased her good looks. When she finally put on her new hat—the one she had bought in celebration of Dominick’s return—and over it tied a white and black dotted veil, she was so gratified with the picture she presented that she was reluctant to leave it and pirouetted slowly before the glass, surveying her back and side views, and finally lifting her skirt that she might see the full effect of her lilac petticoat as it burst into sight in an ebullition of pleats and frills.
Walking up the avenue she was bridlingly conscious that her brilliant appearance drew its tribute of glances. Many people looked at her, and their sidelong admiration45 was an even more exhilarating tonic46 than the sunshine. She walked with a light, elastic47 step, spreading perfume on the air, her progress accompanied by a rich, seductive rustle48. Once or twice she passed members of that exclusive world from which she had stolen Dominick. She swept by them, languidly indifferent, her eyes looking with glacial hauteur49 over their heads. The sound made by her brushing silk petticoats was gratifyingly aggressive. She imparted to them a slight disdainful swing, and lifted her dress skirt daintily higher, conscious of the impeccable amplitude51 of her emerging lilac frills.
The habit of dining with her own people on Sunday had been one she had never abandoned, even in the first aspiring52 days of her marriage. It was a sort of family reunion and at first Dominick had been a not unwilling53 participant in its domestic festivities. The solid bourgeois54 respectability of his wife’s relations appealed to him. For all his advantages in money and education he was of the same class himself, and while Berny was, if not a beloved spouse55, a yet endurable one, he had found the Sunday gatherings56 and subsequent hejira to the park not entirely58 objectionable. For over a year now he had escaped from it, pleading the need of open air and exercise, and his sisters-in-law, who had at first protested, had grown used to his absence and accepted it as something to bear uncomplainingly.
The day was so fine that they hurried through their dinner, a hearty59 and lavish60 meal, the chef-d’œuvre of Hannah’s housekeeping, and, loath61 to lose a moment of the sunshine, determined62 to walk down to Van Ness Avenue and there catch an outgoing car to the park. It was the middle of the afternoon and the great thoroughfare lay still and idle in the slanting63 light. There was something foreign, almost tropical in its vista64, in the scene that hung like a drop curtain at the limit of sight—pale blue hills dotted with ochre-colored houses—in the background of sky deep in tint65, the foliage66 dark against it as if printed upon its intense glaring blue, in the sharp lines of palms and spiky67 leaves crossing stuccoed walls. The people that moved slowly along the sidewalks fitted into this high-colored exotic setting. There was no hurry or crowding among them. They progressed with an un-American deliberation, tasting the delicate sweetness of the air, rejoicing in the sky and the sun, pausing to look at the dark bushiness of a dracæna against a wash of blue, the skeleton blossom of a Century plant, the pool of thick scarlet68 made by a parterre of geranium.
The three sisters—Hannah and Pearl leading, Berny and Hazel walking behind with Josh—fared buoyantly down the street. As they passed, they commented on the houses and their inmates69. They had plenty of stories of the dwellers70 in those solemn palaces, many of whom were people whose humble71 beginnings they knew by heart, and whose rapid rise had been watched almost awe-stricken by an admiring and envious72 community.
As the Ryan house loomed73 into view their chatter74 ceased and their eyes, serious with staring attention, were fixed on the mansion75 which had so stubbornly closed its doors on one of them. Sensations of varying degrees of animosity stirred in each of them, except the child, still too young to be tainted30 by the corroding76 sense of worldly injustice77. She skipped along sidewise, her warm, soft hand clasped in her Aunt Hannah’s decently-gloved palm. Some wave or vibration78 of the intense feelings of her elders passed to her, and as they drew nearer the house she, too, began to grow grave, and her skipping quieted down into a sober walk.
“That’s Uncle Dominick’s house, isn’t it?” she said to Hannah.
Hannah nodded. By far the most amiable79 and wide-minded of the sisters, she could not rise above the sense of rankling80 indignation that she felt against the Ryans for their treatment of Berny.
“That’s the biggest house in San Francisco,” said Pearl over her shoulder to her parents. “Ain’t it, Popper?”
“I guess it is,” answered Josh, giving his head a confirmatory wag, “and even if it ain’t, it’s big enough, the Lord knows!”
“I can’t see what a private family wants with all that room,” said Hannah with a condemnatory81 air. “There must be whole sootes of rooms on that upper floor that nobody lives in.”
“Don’t you fret82. They’re all occupied,” said Berny. “Each one of them has their own particular soote. Cornie has three rooms all of her own, and even the housekeeper83 has a private bath!”
“And there’s twelve indoor servants,” said Hazel. “They want a lot of space for them. Twelve servants, just think of it!”
“Twelve servants!” ejaculated Hannah almost with a groan84. “Well, that don’t seem to me right.”
They were close to the house now and silence fell on them, as though the antagonism of its owners was exhaled upon them from the mansion’s aggressive bulk, like an unspoken curse. They felt overawed, and at the same time proud that one of their number should have even the most distant affiliations85 with a family too exclusive to know her. The women with their more responsive and sensitive natures felt it more delicately than Josh, who blunderingly expressed one of the thoughts of the moment by remarking,
“Some day you’ll live in there, Berny, and boss the twelve servants.”
“Rats!” said Berny, giving her head an angry toss. “I’d rather live in my flat and boss Sing.”
Josh’s whistle of facetious86 incredulity died away incomplete, for at that moment the hall door opened and a portly masculine shape emerged upon the porch. Berny, at the first glance, was not sure of its identity, but her doubts were dispelled87 by her brother-in-law’s quick sentence, delivered on the rise of a surprised breath.
“Bill Cannon88, by gum! What’s he doing there?”
This name, as powerful to conjure89 with in the city as in the mining-camps, cast its instantaneous spell upon the sisters, who stared avid-eyed upon the great man. He for his part seemed oblivious90 to their glances and to their presence. He stood on the top step for a musing91 moment, looking down with that sort of filmy fixity of gaze which is noticeable in the glance of the resting eagle. His appearance was a last crowning touch to the proud, unapproachable distinction of the Ryans.
“Don’t he look as if he was thinking?” said Hazel in a whisper. “I wonder what’s on his mind.”
“Probably that Monday’s pay-day and he don’t know whether he can scratch through,” said the jocose
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