THE MOONLIGHT NIGHT
A few nights after this, there was a full moon. Dominick, walking
home from the bank, saw it at the end of the street’s vista, a large,
yellowish-pink disk floating up into the twilight. The air about it was
suffused with a misty radiance, and its wide glowing face, having a
thin look like a transparency of paper with a light behind it, seemed,
though not yet clear of the housetops, already to dominate the sky.
The evening was warm, like the early summer in other climates; and
Dominick, walking slowly and watching the great yellow sphere deepening
in color as it swam majestically upward, thought of evenings like this
in the past when he had been full of the joy of life and had gone forth
in the spirit of love and adventure.
The sight of his home dispelled these memories and brought upon him
the sense of his daily environment and its distastefulness. The
determination to accept his fate which had been with him on his return
from Antelope had of late been shaken by stirrings of rebellion.
Uplifted by the thought of his love for a woman hopelessly removed from
him, but who would always be a lodestar to worship reverently and to
guide him up difficult paths, he had been able to face his domestic
tragedy with the high resolution of the martyr. But this exalted
condition was hard to maintain in the friction of daily life with
Berny. Before, she had merely been a disagreeable companion of whom he
had to make the best. Now, she was that, intensified by a comparison
which threw out her every fault and petty vulgarity into glaring
prominence. And more than that--she was the angel with the flaming
sword, the self-incurred, invited, domesticated angel--the angel come
to stay--who barred the way to Paradise.
She seemed to him to have changed within the last week. When he had
first come home from Antelope she had been Berny in one of her less
familiar but recognizable moods--Berny trying to be agreeable, wearing
her best clothes every day, ordering the things for dinner he liked,
talking loudly and incessantly. Then, quite suddenly, he became aware
of a change in her. She grew silent, absent-minded, morose. He had
tried to make their lives easier by always being polite and carefully
considerate of her and she had responded to it. For the last few days
she had made no effort to assist him in this laudable design. Instead,
she had been unresponsive, preoccupied, uninvitingly snappish in her
replies. Several times he had been forced into the novel position of
“making conversation” throughout dinner, exerting his wits for subjects
to talk about that he might lift the gloom and elicit some response
from the mute, scowling woman opposite.
To-night, the period of ill-humor seemed over. Berny was not only once
again her animated self, she was almost feverishly garrulous. Dinner
had not progressed past the fish when she began to question him on his
recent experiences at Antelope. The subject had come up several times
since his return, but for the last few days he had had a respite from
it, and hoped its interest had worn away. She had many queries to make
about Bill Cannon, and from the father it was but a natural transition
to the daughter, so much the more attractive of the pair. Dominick was
soon inwardly writhing under an exceedingly ingenious and searching
catechism.
Had he been less preoccupied by his own acute discomfort, he might have
noticed that Berny herself gave evidence of disturbance. As she prodded
him with her questions, her face was suffused with unusual color, and
the eagerness of her curiosity shone through the carelessness with
which she sought to veil it. Certain queries she accompanied with a
piercing glance of investigation, watching with hungry sharpness the
countenance of the persecuted man. Fearful of angering her, or, still
worse, of arousing her suspicions, Dominick bore the examination with
all the fortitude he had, but he rose from the table with every nerve
tingling, rasped and galled to the limit of endurance.
He did not come into the den immediately but roamed about, into the
parlor, down the passage, and into his own room. He spread the scent of
his cigar and its accompanying films of smoke all through the flat, a
thing that Berny would never have ordinarily allowed. To-night she was
too occupied in listening to his prowling steps to bother about minor
rules and regulations. She saw in his restlessness a disturbance evoked
by her questionings.
“Aren’t you coming into the den?” she called, as she heard him pacing
steadily along the passageway.
“No,” he called back. “The moonlight’s shining in at every window. It
makes me restless. I don’t feel like sitting still.”
She sat on the divan, a paper spread before her face, but her eyes
were slanted sidewise, unblinking in the absorption of her attention.
Suddenly she heard a rattling sound which she knew to be from the canes
and umbrellas in the hat-rack. She cast away the paper, and, drawing
herself to the edge of the divan, peered down the passage. Dominick was
standing by the hat-rack, his hat on the back of his head, his hand
feeling among the canes.
“You’ve got your hat on,” she called in a high key of surprise. “You’re
not going out?”
“Yes, I am,” he answered, drawing out the cane he wanted. “It’s a fine
night, and I’m going for a walk.”
“For a walk?”--there was hesitancy in her tone, and for a horrible
moment, he thought she was going to suggest coming with him. “Where are
you going to?”
“Oh, I don’t know, just prowl about. I want some exercise.”
“Are you going to your mother’s?” she ventured, not without some
timidity.
“No,” he said, “I’m not going anywhere in particular. Good night.”
She sat forward, listening to his descending feet and the bang of the
hall door. A glance at the window showed her it was, as he said, a fine
night, deluged with the radiance of the moon. Probably he _was_ just
going out for a walk and not to see anybody. He was always doing queer
things like that. But,--Berny sat staring in front of her, biting her
nails and thinking. Uneasiness had been planted in her by Dominick’s
flight to Antelope. More poignant uneasiness had followed that first
attack. Now the bitter corrosive of jealousy began to grow and expand
in her. Sitting huddled on the divan, she thought of Dominick, walking
through the moonlight to Rose Cannon, and another new and griping pang
laid hold upon her.
Outside, Dominick walked slowly, keeping to the smaller and less
frequented streets. It was a wonderful night, as still as though the
moon had exerted some mesmeric influence upon the earth. Everything was
held motionless and without sound in a trance-like quietude. In the
gardens not a blossom stirred. Where leaves extended from undefined
darknesses of foliage, they stood out, stem and fiber, with a carven
distinctness, their shadows painted on the asphalt walks in inky
silhouette. There was no lamplight to warm the clear, still pallor of
the street’s vista. It stretched between the fronts of houses, a river
of light, white and mysterious, like a path in a dream.
It was a night for lovers, for trysts, and for whispered vows.
Dominick walked slowly, feeling himself an outsider in its passionate
enchantment. The scents that the gardens gave out, and through which
he passed as through zones of sweetness, were part of it. So were the
sounds that rose from the blotted vagueness of white figures on a
porch, from impenetrable depths of shadow--laughter, low voices, little
cries. In the distance people were singing snatches of a song that rose
and fell, breaking out suddenly and as suddenly dropping into silence.
His course was not aimless, and took him by a slow upward ascent to
that high point of the city, whence the watcher can look down on the
bay, the rugged, engirdling hills, and the hollow of North Beach. Here
he stood, resting on his cane, and gazing on the far-flung panorama,
with the white moon sailing high and its reflection glittering across
the water. Along the bases of the hills the clotted lights of little
towns shone in faintly-glimmering agglomerations. At his feet the
hollow lay like a black hole specked with hundreds of sparks. Each
spark was the light of a home, symbol of the fire of a hearth. He stood
looking down on them, thinking of what they represented, that cherished
center round which a man’s life revolves, and which he, by his own sin
and folly, had lost for ever.
He walked on, skirting the hollow, and moving forward through streets
where old houses brooded in overgrown gardens. The thin music of
strings rose on the night, and two men passed him playing on the
mandolin and guitar. They walked with quick, elastic steps, their
playing accurately in accord, their bodies swaying slightly to its
rhythm. They swung by him, and the vibrating harmonies, that sounded so
frail and attenuated in the suave largeness of the night, grew faint
and fainter, as if weighed upon and gradually extinguished by the dense
saturation of the moonlight.
Music was evidently a mode of expression that found favor on this
evening of still brilliance. A few moments later a sound of singing
rose on the air and a youthful couple came into view, walking close
together, their arms twined about each other, caroling in serene
indifference to such wayfarers as they might meet. They passed him,
their faces uplifted to the light, their mouths open in the abandon
of their song. Unconscious of his presence, with upraised eyes and
clasping arms, they paced on, filling the night with their voices--a
boy and girl in love, singing in the moonlight. Dominick quickened his
steps, hastening from the sound.
The moon was now high in the sky and the town lay dreaming under its
spell. Below him he could see the expanse of flat roofs, shining
surfaces between inlayings of shadow, with the clefts of the streets
cut through at regular intervals like slices made by a giant knife. Now
and then he looked up at the dome above, clear and solemn, the great
disk floating in solitary majesty across the vast and thoughtful heaven.
That part of California Street which crested the hill was but a few
blocks beyond him, and before his mind would acknowledge it, his feet
had borne him that way. He thought only to pass the Cannon house, to
look at its windows, and see their lights. As it rose before him, a
huge, pale mass checkered with shadows, the longing to see it--the
outer shell that hid his heart’s desire--passed into a keener,
concentrated agitation that seemed to press out from his soul like a
cry to her.
The porch yawned black behind pillars that in the daytime were painted
wood and now looked like temple columns wrought in marble. Dominick’s
glance, sweeping the lines of yellowed windows, finally rested on this
cavern of shadow, and he approached stealthily, as a robber might, his
body close to the iron fence. Almost before his eyes had told him, he
knew that a woman was standing there, leaning against the balustrade
that stretched between the columns. A climbing rose spread, in a
mottling of darkness, over the wall beside her. Here and there it was
starred with the small white faces of blossoms. As the young man drew
near she leaned over the balustrade, plucked one of the blossoms, and,
slowly shredding the leaves from the stem, stretched out her hand and
let them fall, like a languid shower of silver drops, to the grass.
Dominick halted below her, leaning against the fence and looking up.
She did not see him and stretched out her hand again for another
blossom. The petals of this one fell through her fingers, one by one,
and lay, a scattering of white dots, on the darkness of the grass. She
bent over the balustrade to look at them, and in doing so, her eyes
encountered the man below.
For a moment they looked at each other without speaking, then she
said, her voice at the lowest note that would reach him,
“What are you doing there?”
“Watching you.”
“Have you been standing there long?”
“No, only a few minutes. Why are you pulling the roses to pieces?”
She gave a little laugh and said something that sounded like “I don’t
know,” and moved back from the balustrade.
He thought she was going, and clutched the iron spikes of the fence,
calling up to her in a voice of urgent feeling, curiously out of
keeping with the words, the first remark that came into his head:
“This is very different from Antelope, isn’t it?”
She came forward again and looked out and up at the sky.
“Yes,” she said gravely, “we had no moonlight there, nothing but storms
and gray clouds.”
“But it was lovely,” he answered in the same key. “The clouds and the
storms didn’t matter. Those were three--three great weeks.”
He ended lamely but they were the best words he could get, trying to
say something that would keep her there, trying to see her through the
vaporous light. She bent over the railing looking for another rose, but
there were no more within her reach and she gave the short, nervous
laugh she had given before and turned her eyes on him again. Then
he realized that she was agitated. The knowledge augmented his own
perturbation and for a moment he did not trust himself to speak. He
gazed at her fixedly, the look of a lover, and was not conscious that
she wavered under it, till she suddenly drew a quick breath, turned her
head sidewise, and said, with an effort at naturalness,
“Well, I must go in. The roses are all picked and papa’ll be wondering
where I am.”
It seemed to Dominick just then that he could not lose her. She must
stay a moment longer. Urgency that was imploring was in his voice as he
said,
“Don’t go! don’t go! Stay just one moment longer! Can’t you come down
and talk for a minute? Come part of the way down. I want to speak to
you for a little bit longer. It may be months before I see you again.”
She listened, wavered, and was won over. Without answer she turned from
the shadow of the porch into the light on the top of the steps, and
from there slowly descended, her skirt gathered in one hand, and the
other touching the baluster. She was in black and from its dead density
her arms, bare to the elbow, shone as white as the arms of a marble
woman. The baluster ended in a lion crouching in sleep on a slab of
stone, and she paused here and Dominick went up the few steps from the
street to meet her. With the sleeping lion between them they looked at
each other with troubled eyes.
The moonlight seemed to have drawn from the meeting the artificialities
of worldly expression, which in the sensible, familiar daylight would
have placed it on the footing of a casual, to-be-expected encounter.
The sun beating down on lovers beats some of their sentimental
transports out of them. Now in this mystic, beautifying luminosity,
the acquired point of view, the regard for the accepted conventions
of every-day seemed to have receded to a great distance, to be thin,
forgotten things that had nothing to do with real life. For a moment
Berny ceased to be a living presence, standing with a flaming sword
between them. They almost forgot her. The memory that pressed upon them
was that of their last meeting. It shone in their eyes and trembled
on their lips. The sleeping lion that separated them was a singularly
appropriate symbol.
Low-voiced and half-spoken sentences belonged to this romantic moment.
The moonlit night around them was still and empty, but Dominick spoke
as though other ears than hers were listening:
“I’ve wanted so to see you. I came by to-night hoping that perhaps I
could catch a glimpse of your shadow on the curtain. I didn’t expect
anything like this.”
He stopped, looking at her, and not listening to the few words of her
answer.
“I think I wanted you so that my will called you out,” he said in an
impassioned whisper.
She said nothing and suddenly his hand sought hers, clasped it tight on
the head of the lion, and he whispered again,
“Oh, Rose, if I could see you now and then--only for a moment like
this.”
He felt her hand, small and cold, crush softly inside his, and almost
immediately was conscious of her effort to withdraw it. He instantly
loosened his fingers, let hers slide from his grasp, and drew back.
“Good night,” she said hurriedly, and without looking at him turned and
went up the steps.
“Good night,” he called after her, following her ascending figure with
his eyes.
When she reached the shadow at the top of the steps, she called
“Good-by,” passed into the engulfing blackness, and was gone. He waited
till he heard the door bang behind her, then descended the steps and
walked slowly home, his eyes on the pavement.
Berny was in her own room ready for bed when she heard his ascending
footsteps. She was occupied in rubbing a skin-food into her face, with
careful circular motions and pinchings of her finger-tips. It was a
task that required deep attention and which she performed three nights
in the week with conscientious regularity. With her face gleaming with
grease she crept to her door and listened, heard his cane slide into
the umbrella holder, and the door of his room shut with a softness
which told her that he thought her asleep. She walked back to the glass
and resumed her manipulations, but with diminished zeal. The clock
on the bureau marked the hour at half-past ten. Dominick had been
out two hours. Would a man walk round a city--even a crank like her
husband--all by himself for two hours?