FRIEND OR FOE
For some time after Rose had left her, Berny remained on the bench, not
moving, her glance resting on that part of the path whence the young
girl’s figure had faded from view.
The night slowly deepened, impregnating the gray atmosphere with
a velvety depth of shadow that oozed through it like an infusion
of a darker, denser element. Lights came out. First sporadically,
here and there blooming through the opaque dusk, not suddenly, but
with an effect of gradualness, as though the air was so thick it
took some time to break through it. Then came more. Rows of windows
appeared in long, magnified sputters. All round the plaza there was a
suggestion of effaced brightness, as of a painting which had once been
sharply outlined and brilliant but was now rubbed into a formless,
impressionist study of shadows and undefined, yellow blurs. The golden
halos of lamps blotted the dark at intervals, and now and then the
figures, which had occupied the benches, passed into the circles of
vaporous illumination, and passed out of them, as if they had been
crossing the stage of a theater.
Berny did not move and did not notice the increasing chill of the
hour or the moisture beading on her clothes like wintry rime. She was
sunk in an abyss of thought, a suspended trance of contemplation, of
receptivity to new ideas. In one hour her basic estimate of human
nature, her accepted measurement of motives and standards, had been
suddenly upset. Her point of view was like a kaleidoscope, which is
unexpectedly turned. Sitting motionless on the bench she saw the
familiar aspect of life fallen into new shapes, taking on alien forms.
She realized that Dominick had never been happy with her, and, for
the first time, she understood the gulf between them. She saw what
the life was that he had wanted to lead, and that he could have led
with the other woman. It would have been that very form of existence
which Berny had always derided, and thought an outward expression of
the inward dullness of people who had children, looked shabby, and did
not care for money. Now she felt unsure as to whether her scorn of it
was not foolish and unenlightened. As in a sudden forward shoot of a
search-light, she saw them--Dominick and Rose--happy in a way she had
never dreamed of being happy, in a world so far from hers that she had
never before had a clear look at it, a man and woman concentrated upon
the piece of life that belonged to them, living passionately for each
other, indifferent to all that seemed to her of value.
She brought her mental vision back from this upon herself and felt
shaken and slightly sick. Seeing beyond the circle of her own
experience and sensation for the first time, she would have said to
any companion who might have shared her thoughts, “No wonder Dominick
didn’t get on with me!” For a dispassionately-contemplative moment she
saw herself in Dominick’s eyes; she saw their married life as it had
been to him. She felt sorry for both of them--for him in his forced
acquiescence with the conditions around him, for herself because of her
ignorance of all he had wanted and expected.
“I couldn’t be any different,” she whispered to herself, “that’s the
way I am.”
She never could be any different. She was one kind of woman and Rose
Cannon was another, and Dominick belonged to Rose Cannon’s kind. She
did not know that it was so much better than her kind but it was
different. They made her feel like an outsider in a distant world, and
the feeling gave her a sensation of deadly depression. The burning heat
of resentment that had made her speak to Rose was gone. All the burning
heats and angers of the last two months seemed to belong to the past.
An icy, nostalgic ache of loneliness had hold of her. The accustomed
sense of intimacy and warm, enjoying interest in the world--what we
mean when we talk of “living”--had been completely drawn out of her.
The cold, biting in to her marrow, at last woke her to a realization of
her surroundings, and she sat upright, looking blinkingly to the right
and left. The half-lit plaza lay like a lake of shadow surrounded by a
circlet of light and girdled by noise. It was like the brightness and
animation of the world flowing round her but not touching her, as she
sat alone in the darkness.
She rose suddenly, determined to escape from her gloomy thoughts, and
walked toward the upper end of the square, directing her steps to the
Spanish and Italian section of the city which is called the Latin
Quarter. She walked slowly, not knowing where to go, only determined
that she would not go home. She thought for a moment of her sisters’,
where she could have dinner and find the cheer of congenial society.
But on consideration she felt that this, too, was more than she could
just now bear. They would torment her with questions and she felt in no
mood to put them off or to be confidential. Finally she remembered a
Mexican restaurant, to visit which had at one time been a fashion. She
had been there with Hazel and Josh, and once in a party with some of
the bank people. She knew where the place was and felt that she could
dine there with no fear of encountering any one she knew.
With an objective point in view, her step gained decision, and she
moved forward briskly, leaving the plaza and plunging into the
congeries of picturesque streets which harbor a swarming foreign
population. The lights of shops and open stalls fell out into the
fog, transforming it into thick, churning currents of smoky pallor.
Wet walls and sidewalks showed a gold veneer, and lingering drops,
trembling on cornices, hung like tiny globes of thin yellow glass.
People and things looked magnified and sometimes horrible seen through
this mysterious, obscuring medium. Once behind a pane of glass she
saw lines of detached, staring eyes, fastened glaringly on her as she
advanced. It was the display in an optician’s show-window, where glass
eyes were disposed in fanciful lines, like a decoration. She looked at
them askance, feeling that there was something sinister in their wide,
unwinking scrutiny. She hurried by the market stalls, where the shawled
figures of women stood huddled round the butcher’s block. They looked
as if they might be grouped round a point of interest, bending to stare
at something lying there, something dreadful, like a corpse, Berny
thought.
When she saw the Mexican restaurant she felt relieved. The strange
atmospheric conditions seemed to have played upon her nerves and she
was glad to get somewhere where she could find warmth and light and
people. The place, a little shabby house dating from the era of the
projecting shingle roof and encircling balcony, stood on a corner with
windows on two streets. It was built upon a slope so sharp that the
balcony, which in front skirted the second story, in the back was on
a level with the sidewalk. The bright light of gas-jets, under shades
of fluted white china, fell over the contents of the show-window. They
were not attractive. A dish of old and shriveled oranges stood between
a plate of tamales and another of red and green peppers. There were
many flies in the window, and, chilled by the cold, they stood along
the inside of the glass in a state of torpor.
Berny pushed open the door and entered. The front part of the place was
used as a grocery store and had a short counter at one side, behind
which stood shelves piled high with the wares demanded by the Mexican
and Spanish population. Back of this were the tables of the restaurant.
The powerful, aromatic odors of the groceries blended with the even
more powerful ones of the Mexican menu. The room was close and hot. In
a corner, his back braced against the wall, a Spaniard, with inky hair
and a large expanse of white shirt bosom, was languidly picking at a
guitar.
Berny knew that there was an inner sanctum for the guests that
preferred more secluded quarters, and walked past the counter and
between the tables. An arched opening connected with this room.
Coarse, dirty, lace curtains hung in the archway and, looped back
against gilt hooks, left a space through which a glimpse of the
interior was vouchsafed to the diners without. It was smaller than the
restaurant proper, and was fitted up with an attempt at elegance. Lace
curtains--also coarse and dirty--veiled the windows, and two large
mirrors, with tarnished and fly-spotted gilt frames, hung on the wall
opposite the entrance.
Just now it was sparsely patronized. In one corner two women in
mourning and a child were sitting. They glanced at Berny with languid
curiosity and then resumed a loud and voluble conversation in
Spanish. A party of three Jews, an over-dressed woman and two young
men--evidently visitors from another part of town--sat near them. On
the opposite side there was no one. Berny slipped noiselessly into a
chair at the corner table, her back against the partition that shut
off the rest of the dining-room. She felt sheltered in this unoccupied
angle, despite the fact that the mirror hanging opposite gave a
reflection of her to any one standing in the archway.
The cloth was dirty and here and there showed a hole. Her ineradicable
fastidiousness was strong in her even at this hour, when everything
that was a manifestation of her own personality seemed weak and
devitalized. She was disgustedly clearing away the crumbs of the last
occupant with daintily-brushing movements of her finger-tips, when the
waiter drew up beside her and demanded her order. It was part of this
weird evening, when natural surroundings seemed to combine with her own
overwrought condition to create an effect of strangeness and terror,
that the waiter should have been an old, shriveled man of shabby and
dejected mien, with a defect in one eye, which rendered it abnormally
large and prominent under a drooping, reddened lid. In order to see
well it was necessary for him to hold his head at a certain angle and
bring the eye, staring with alarming wildness, upon the object of his
attention. His aspect added still further to Berny’s dissatisfaction.
She resolved to eat little and leave the place as soon as possible.
When her soup came, a thin yellow liquid in which dark bits of leaves
and herbs floated, she tasted it hesitatingly, and, after a mouthful or
two, put down her spoon and leaned back against the wall. She felt very
tired and incapable of any more concentration of mind. Her thoughts
seemed to float, disconnectedly and indifferently, this way and that,
like a cobweb stirred by air currents and half held by a restraining
thread. To her dulled sense of observation the laughter of the Jewish
party came mingled with the tinkling of the guitar outside, and the
loud, continuous talk from the Spanish women in the corner.
The waiter brought fish--a fried smelt--and she roused herself and
picked up her fork. She did not notice that a man was standing near her
in the archway, the edge of the lace curtain in his hand, looking about
the room. He threw a side glance at her which swept her shoulders, her
hat, and her down-bent profile, and looked away. Then, as if something
in this glimpse had suddenly touched a spring of curiosity, he looked
back again. His second survey was longer. The glance he bent upon her
was sharp and grew in intensity. He made no attempt to enter or to move
nearer her, but any one watching him would have seen that his interest
increased with the prolongation of his scrutiny.
As if afraid of being observed he cast a quick surreptitious look over
the room, which in its circuit crossed the mirror. Here, reflected
from a different point of view, Berny was shown in full face, her
eyes lowered, her hands moving over her plate. The man scanned the
reflection with immovable intentness. Berny laid down her fork and
pushed the fish away with a petulant movement, and the watcher drew
back behind the lace curtain. Through its meshes he continued to stare
at the mirror, his lips tightly shut, his face becoming rigid in the
fixity of his observation.
The waiter entered, his arms piled with dishes, and she made a
beckoning gesture to him. He answered with a jerk of his head, and,
going to the table where the Spanish women sat, unloaded his cargo
there, as he set it out exchanging remarks with the women in their own
language and showing no haste to answer Berny’s summons. She moved
in her chair and muttered angrily. The man behind the lace curtain
advanced his head and through the interstices of the drapery tried to
look directly at her. In this position he could only catch a glimpse of
her, but he saw her hand stretched forward to take one of the red beans
from the glass saucer in the middle of the table. It was an elegant
hand, the skin smooth and white, the fingers covered with rings. She
again beckoned, this time peremptorily, and the waiter came. The
listener could hear her voice distinctly as he watched her reflection
in the glass.
“Why didn’t you come when I beckoned?” she said sharply.
“Because I had other people to wait on,” said the waiter with equal
asperity. “They was here before you.”
“What’s the matter with the dinner to-night? It’s all bad.”
“I ain’t cooked it,” retorted the man, growing red with indignation,
his swollen eye glaring fiercely at her. “And no one else’s complained.
I guess it’s what’s the matter with you?”
Berny made an angry movement--sometimes alluded to as “flouncing”--and
turned her head away from him.
“Get me an enchilada,” she said peremptorily, “and after that some
frijoles. I don’t want anything else.”
The waiter moved away and the man behind the curtain, as if satisfied
by his long survey, also turned back into the general room. Close to
the opening there was an unoccupied table, and at this he sat down,
laid his hat on the chair beside him, and unfastened his coat. To the
servant who came for his order, he asked for a cup of black coffee and
a liqueur glass of brandy. He also requested an evening paper. With the
sheet open before him he sat sipping the coffee, the slightest noise
from the inner room causing him to start and lift the paper before his
face.
He sat thus for some fifteen minutes. The Spanish women and the child
emerged from the archway and left the restaurant, and a few moments
later he heard the scraping of chair legs and Berny’s voice as she
asked for her bill. He lifted the paper and appeared buried in its
contents, not moving as Berny brushed back the lace curtain and passed
him. Her eyes absently fell on him and she had a vague impression of
the dark dome of a head emerging from above the opened sheets of the
journal. As she rustled by he lowered the paper and followed her with
a keen watchful glance. He did not move till the street door closed
behind her, when he threw the paper aside, snatched up his hat and
flicked a silver dollar on to the cloth.
“No change,” he said to the waiter, who came forward.
The surprised servant, unaccustomed to such tips, stared astonished
after him as he hurried down the passage between the tables, quickly
opened the door and disappeared into the darkness of the street.
Berny was only a few rods away, moving forward with a slow, loitering
step. It was an easy night to follow without being observed. Walking at
a prudent distance behind her, he kept her in sight as she passed from
the smaller streets of the Latin Quarter into the glare and discord
of the more populous highways, along Kearney Street, past the lower
boundary of Portsmouth Square. He noticed that she walked without
haste, now and then glancing at a window or a passer-by. She was like a
person who has no objective point in view, or at least is in no hurry
to reach it.
But this did not seem to be the case, for when she reached the square
she took her stand on the corner where the Sacramento Street cars
stop. The man drew back into a doorway opposite. They were the only
passengers who boarded the car at that corner, Berny entering the
closed interior, the man taking a seat on the outside. He had it
to himself here, and chose the end seat by the window. Muttering
imprecations at the cold, he turned up his overcoat collar and drew
his soft felt hat down over his ears. By turning his head he could
see between the bars that cross the end windows, the interior of the
car shining with light, its polished yellow woodwork throwing back
the white glare of the electricity. There were only three passengers,
two depressed-looking women in dingy black, and Berny on a line with
himself in the corner by the door. He could see her even better here
than in the restaurant. She sat, a small dark figure, pressed into
the angle of the seat, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes down.
Her hat cast a shadow over the upper part of her face, and below this
the end of her nose, her mouth and chin were revealed as pale and
sharply-cut as an ivory carving. She seemed to be sunk in thought and
sat motionless; the half of her face he could see, looking very white
against her black fur collar.
He was furtively surveying her, when she started, glanced out of the
window and signed to the conductor to stop. The man on the front
dropped to the ground and stole lightly round the car, so that its
moving body hid him from her. Emptiness and silence held the street,
and he could easily follow her as she walked upward along the damp and
deserted sidewalk. Halfway up the block a building larger than those
surrounding it rose into the night. A mounting file of bay-windows
broke its façade, and, a few steps above the level of the pavement,
a line of doors with numbers showing black on illuminated transoms
revealed it to the man opposite as a flat building. Here Berny stopped
and without hesitation, evidently as one who was familiar with the
place, mounted the steps and walked to the last of the doors.
The man, with soft and careful footsteps, crossed the street. As he
drew nearer he saw that she was not using a latch-key, but was waiting
to be admitted, leaning as if tired against the wall. He had reached
the sidewalk when the door opened, vouchsafing him a bright, unimpeded
view of a long flight of stairs carpeted in green. Berny entered and
for a moment, before the door closed, he saw her mounting the stairs.
She had not asked for any one, or indeed made a sound of greeting or
inquiry. She was therefore either expected or an habitué of the place.
When the door was shut he, too, mounted the porch steps and read the
number on the transom. He whispered it over several times, the light
falling out on his thin, aquiline face with a sweep of dark hair
drooping downward toward his collar.
Satisfied with his investigation, he left the porch and walked rapidly
down the street to the corner. Here there was a lamp, and halting
under its light he drew from his pocket a leather wallet and took
therefrom Dominick Ryan’s card with an address written on it. The
penciled numbers were the same as those on the door he had just left,
and he stood looking fixedly at the card, an expression of excitement
and exultation growing on his face.