THE LAST INTERVIEW
The night was falling when Buford left. He and Dominick had sat on in
the den, talking together in low voices, going over past events in the
concatenation of circumstances that had led up to the extraordinary
situation in which they now found themselves. Both listened with
strained ears for the opening of Bernice’s door, but not a sound came
from her room. Each silently, without expressing his thoughts to the
other, wondered what she would do, what sensational move might now be
expected of her. While they talked, it was evident she intended to make
no sign of life.
After Buford had left, Dominick called up his friend on the telephone
telling him that he would be unable to meet him at dinner. He knew that
Berny could hear every word he uttered, and with indescribable dread
he expected that she would open her door and accost him. But again she
preserved an inviolate invisibility, though beneath her portal he could
see a crack of light and could hear her moving about in the room.
He went into his own room, lit the gas, and began packing his trunks.
He was dazed and stupefied by what had occurred, and almost the only
clearly-defined idea he had was to leave the house and get far from the
presence of the woman who had so ruthlessly poisoned his life. He was
in the midst of his packing when the Chinaman summoned him to dinner,
but he told the man he cared for nothing and would want no breakfast
on the following morning. The servant, who by this time was well aware
that the household was a strange one, shrugged his shoulders without
comment and passed on to the door of his mistress’ room, upon which he
knocked with the low, deferential rap of the Chinese domestic. Berny’s
voice sounded shrilly, through the silence of the flat:
“Go away! Let me alone! If that’s dinner I don’t want any.”
The sound of her voice pierced Dominick with a sense of loathing
and horror. He stopped in his packing, suddenly deciding to leave
everything and go, go from the house and from her as soon as he could
get away. He thrust into a valise such articles as he would want for
the night and set the bag by the stair-head while he went into the
parlor to find some bills and letters of his that he remembered to
have left in the desk. As he passed Berny’s door, it flew open and she
appeared in the aperture. The room behind her was a blaze of light,
every gas-jet lit and pouring a flood of radiance over the clothes
outspread on the bed, the chairs, and the floor. She, herself, in a
lace-trimmed petticoat and loose silk dressing-sack, stood in the
doorway staring at Dominick, her face pinched, white, and fierce.
“What are you doing?” she said abruptly. “Going away?”
“Yes,” he answered, stopping at the sight of the dreaded apparition.
“That’s my intention.”
“Where are you going?” she demanded.
He gave her a cold look and made no answer.
“Are you going to your mother’s?” she cried.
He moved forward toward the parlor door and she came out into the
passage, looking after him and repeating with a tremulous, hoarse
persistence, “Dominick, answer me. Are you going to your mother’s?”
“Yes, I am,” he said over his shoulder.
He had an unutterable dread that she would begin to speak of the
situation, of Buford, of her past life; that she would try to explain
and exonerate herself and they would be plunged into a long and
profitless discussion of all the sickening, irremediable wretchedness
of the past. He could not bear the thought of it; he would have
done anything to avoid it. He wanted to escape from her, from the
house where she had tortured him, where he seemed to have laid down
his manhood, his honor, his faith, and seen her trample on them.
The natural supposition that he would want to confront her with her
deception and hear her explanation was the last thing he desired doing.
“Don’t go to your mother’s,” she cried, following him up the hall, “for
to-night, Dominick, please. And don’t tell her. I beg, I pray of you,
don’t tell her till to-morrow.”
Her manner was so pleadingly, so imploringly insistent, that he turned
and looked somberly at her. She was evidently deeply in earnest, her
face lined with anxiety.
“This is the last thing I’ll ever ask of you. I know I’ve got no right
to ask anything, but you’re generous, you’ve been kind to me in the
past, and it’ll not cost you much to be kind just once again. Go to a
hotel, or the club, or anywhere you like, but not to your mother’s and
don’t tell her till to-morrow afternoon.”
He stared at her without speaking, wishing she would be silent and
leave him.
“I’ll not trouble you after to-morrow. I’ll go, I’ll get out. You’ll
never be bothered by me any more.”
“All right,” he said, “I’ll go to the club. Let me alone, that’s all,
and let me go.”
“And--and,” she persisted, “you won’t tell her till to-morrow,
to-morrow afternoon?”
He had entered the parlor in which the Chinaman had lit the lamps,
and opening the desk began hunting for his papers. To her last words
he returned no answer, and she crept in after him and stood in the
doorway, leaning against the woodwork of the door-frame.
“You won’t tell her till to-morrow--to-morrow, say, after three?”
He found the letters and drew them out of their pigeonhole.
“All right,” he almost shouted. “I won’t tell her. But, for God’s sake,
leave me alone and let me go. If you keep on following me round this
way I won’t answer for what I’ll do.”
“You promise then,” she said, ignoring his heat. “You promise you’ll
not tell her till after three?”
He turned from the desk, gave her a look of restrained passion, and
said, “I promise,” then passed by her as she stood in the doorway and
walked to the stair-head. Here his valise stood, and snatching it up he
ran down the stairs and out of the house.
Bernice, hearing the door shut, returned to her room and went on with
the work of sorting her wardrobe and packing her trunks. She did it
deliberately and carefully, looking over each garment, and folding the
choicer articles between sheets of tissue paper. At midnight she had
not yet finished, and under the blaze of the gases, looking very tired,
she went on smoothing skirts and pinching up the lace on bodices as she
laid them tenderly on the trays that stood on the bed, the table, and
the sofa. The night was far spent before everything was arranged to her
satisfaction and she went to bed.
She was up betimes in the morning. Eight o’clock had not struck
when she was making a last tour of the parlor, picking up small
articles of silver and glass that she crowded down into cracks in the
tightly-packed trunks. At breakfast the Chinaman, an oblique, observant
eye on her, asked her what he should prepare for lunch. Conscious
that if she told him she would not be back he might become alarmed at
the general desertion and demand his wages, she ordered an even more
elaborate menu than usual, telling him she would bring home a friend.
She breakfasted in her wrapper and after the meal finished her toilet
with the extremest solicitude. Never had she taken more pains with
herself. Though anxiety and strain had thinned and sharpened her, the
fever of excitement which burnt in her temporarily repaired these
ravages. Her eyes were brilliant without artificial aid; her cheeks
a hot dry crimson that needed no rouge. The innate practicality of
her character asserted itself even in this harassed hour. Last night
she had put the purple orchid in a glass of water on the bureau.
Now, as she pinned it on her breast, she congratulated herself for
her foresight, the pale lavender petals of the rare blossom toning
altogether harmoniously with her dress of dark purple cloth.
Before she left the room she locked the trunks and left beside them a
dress suit-case packed for a journey. Standing in the doorway she took
a hurried look about the apartment--a last, farewell survey, not of
sentiment but of investigation, to see if she had forgotten anything. A
silver photograph frame set in rhinestones caught her eye and she went
back and took it up, weighing it uncertainly in her hand. Some of the
rhinestones had fallen out, and she finally decided it was not worth
while opening the trunks to put in such a damaged article.
It was only a quarter past nine when she emerged from the flat. She
took the down-town car and twenty minutes later was mounting the
steps to Bill Cannon’s office. She had been motionless and rigidly
preoccupied on the car, but, as she approached the office, a change was
visible in her gait and mien. She moved with a light, perky assurance,
a motion as of a delicate, triumphant buoyancy seeming to impart itself
to her whole body from her shoulders to her feet. A slight, mild smile
settled on her lips, suggesting gaiety tempered with good humor. Her
eye was charged with the same expression rendered more piquant by a
gleam--the merest suggestion--of coquettish challenge.
The Bonanza King was already in his office. The same obsequious clerk
who had shown her in on a former occasion took her card in to the inner
sanctum where the great man, even at this early hour, was shut away
with the business which occupied his crowded days. In a moment the
young man returned smiling and quite as murmurously polite as he had
been on her former visit, and Berny was once again ushered into the
presence of the enemy.
The old man had read the name on the card with a lowering glance. His
command to admit the visitor had been hardly more than an inarticulate
growl which the well-trained clerk understood, as those about deaf
mutes can read their half-made signs. Cannon was not entirely surprised
at her reappearance, and mingled feelings stirred in him as he turned
his swivel chair away from the table, and sat hunched in it, his elbows
on its arms, his hands clasped over his stomach.
She came in with an effect of dash, confidence, and brilliancy that
astonished him. He had expected her almost to sidle in in obvious,
guilty fear of him, her resistance broken, humbly coming to sue for
the money. Instead, a rustling, scented apparition appeared in the
doorway, more gracious, handsome, and smiling than he had ever thought
she could be. She stood for a moment, as if waiting for his invitation
to enter, the whole effect of her rich costume, her feverishly high
coloring, and her debonair and self-confident demeanor, surprising
him into silence. A long white feather on her hat made a background
for her darkly-flushed face and auburn hair. There were some amethysts
round her neck, their purple lights harmonizing richly with the superb
flower pinned on her breast. Her eyes looked very black, laughing, and
provocative through her spotted veil.
“Well,” she said in a gay voice, “here I am again! Is it a surprise?”
She advanced into the room, and the old man, almost unconsciously, rose
from his chair.
“Yes, sort of,” he said dryly.
She stopped by the desk, looked at him sidewise, and said,
“Do we shake hands?”
His glance on her was hard and cold. Berny met it and could not
restrain a sinking of the courage that was her most admirable
characteristic and that she had screwed far past its ordinary
sticking-point that morning. She sank down into the same arm-chair that
she had occupied on her former visit and said, with a little languid
effect of indifference,
“Oh, well, never mind. We don’t have to waste time being polite. That’s
one of the most convenient things about our interviews. We just say
what we really think and there’s no need bothering about humbug.”
“So glad to hear it,” said the old man with his most ironical air.
“Suppose then you let me know what you’ve come down to say.”
“Can’t you guess?” she answered, with an expression that was almost one
of flirtatious interrogation.
“Nup,” he answered, looking steadily at her. “I have to have it said in
that plain style with no politeness that you say is the way we always
talk.”
“All right,” she answered briskly. “Here it is as plain as A B C. I’ve
decided to accept your offer and take the money.”
She looked up at him, smiling gallantly. But as her eye caught his her
smile, try as she would to keep it, died. He suddenly realized that she
was extremely nervous, that her lips were dry, and the hand she put up
to adjust her veil, and thus hide her intractable mouth, was shaking.
The admiration he had of late felt for her insolent fearlessness
increased, also he began to feel that now, at last, he was rising to
the position of master of the situation. He leaned back in the swivel
chair and glowered at her.
“You know,” he said slowly, “you’ve a gall that beats anything I’ve
ever seen. Two days ago you busted this business higher than a kite by
stopping my daughter on the public street and telling her the whole
story. You did the one thing you knew I’d never forgive; and you ended
the affair, hammered the nails in its coffin and buried it. Now you
come flourishing into my office as if nothing had happened and say
you’ll take the money. It beats me how you’ve got the nerve to dare to
show your face in here.”
Berny listened with the hand holding the veil pressed against her mouth
and her eyes staring over it.
“It’s all straight enough,” she burst out, “what you say about telling
your daughter. I did it and I was crazy. I’ll admit that. But you’ll
have to admit on your side that it was pretty rough the way I was
treated here, ordered out like a peddler. I was sore, and it was you
that made me so. And I’ll not deny that I wanted to hit you back. But
you brought it on yourself. And, anyway, what does it matter if I go?
Maybe your daughter’s mad and disgusted now, but women don’t stay that
way for ever. If I get out, drop out of sight, the way I intend to do,
give Dominick his freedom, isn’t she going to forget all about what I
said? Wouldn’t any woman?”
The Bonanza King made no answer. He had no intention of talking with
this objectionable woman about his daughter. But in his heart hope
sprang at the words. They were an echo of his own desires and opinions.
If this woman took the money and went, would not Rose, in the course of
time, relent in her attitude of iron disapproval, and smile on the man
she loved? Could any woman hold out for ever in such a position?
“See here,” Berny went on, “I’ll leave a statement. I’ll put it in your
hands that I changed my mind and voluntarily left. I’ll draw it up
before a notary if you want. And it’s true. She needn’t think that I’m
being forced out to make a place for her. I’m glad to go.”
She had leaned nearer to him from the chair, one finger tapping the
corner of the desk to emphasize her words. Scrutinizing her as she
spoke, he became more than ever impressed with the conviction that she
was held in a tremor of febrile excitement. Her voice had an under note
of vibration in it, like the voice of one who breathes quickly. The
orchid on her breast trembled with the trembling of her frame.
“Look here,” he said quietly, “I want to understand this thing. What’s
made you change your mind so suddenly? A few days ago you were all up
on fiddle-strings at the suggestion of taking that money. Here, this
morning, in you pop, and you’re all of a tremble to get it. What’s the
meaning of it?”
“I can’t stand it any more,” she said. “When you said I couldn’t the
other day, that I’d break down, you were right. I can’t stand it.
Nobody could. It’s broken me to pieces. I want to get away from it all.
I want to go somewhere where I’m at peace, where the people don’t hate
me and hound me----”
Her voice suddenly grew hoarse and she stopped. He looked at her in
surprise. She bent her face down, biting her under lip, and picked
tremulously at the leaves of the purple orchid as if arranging them.
“You’ve beaten me,” she said in a suddenly strangled voice, “you’ve
beaten me. I can’t fight any longer. Give me some money and let me go.
I’m beaten.”
She lowered her head still farther and burst into tears. So unexpected
were they that she had no preparations for them. Her handkerchief
was in the bead purse that hung on her wrist, and, blinded by tears,
she could not find the clasp. Her fumbling hand tried for a possible
reserve supply in her belt, and then in despair went up to her face and
lifted her veil trying to brush away the falling drops. The Bonanza
King stared at her amazed, as much surprised as if he had seen a man
weep. Finally he felt in his own pocket, produced a crisply-laundered
square of white linen and handed it to her, observing soothingly,
“Here, take mine. You’re all broke up, aren’t you?”
She seized his offering and mopped her cheeks with it, sniffing and
gasping, while he watched her in genuine solicitude.
“What’s wore you down to this state?” he said. “You’re the nerviest
woman I ever saw.”
“It’s--it’s--all this thing,” she answered in a stifled voice. “I’m
just worn out. I haven’t slept for nights,”--a memory of those
miserable nights of perturbation and uncertainty swept over her and
submerged her in a wave of self-pity. The tears gushed out again, and
she held the old man’s large handkerchief against her eyes, uttering
small, sobbing noises, sunk in abandoned despondence in the hollow of
the chair.
The Bonanza King was moved. The facile tears of women did not affect
him, but the tears of this bold, hard, unbreakable creature, whom
he had regarded only as an antagonist to be vanquished, stirred
him to a sort of abashed sympathy. There was something singularly
pathetic about the completeness of her breakdown. She, who had been so
audacious an adversary, now in all her crumpled finery weeping into his
handkerchief, was so entirely and utterly a feeble, crushable thing.
“Come, brace up,” he said cheeringly. “We can’t do any talking while
you’re acting this way. What’s the proposition again?”
“I want some money and I want to go.” She raised her head and lowered
the handkerchief, speaking with a strained, throaty insistence like a
child. “I can’t live here any more. I can’t bear it. It would give a
prize fighter nervous prostration. I can’t bear it.” Her voice grew
small and high. “Really I can’t,” she managed to articulate, and then
dissolved into another flood.
The old man, high in his swivel chair, sat with his hands in his
pockets, his lips pursed and his eyes on the floor. Once or twice he
whirled the chair slightly from one side to the other. After a pause of
some minutes he said,
“Are you prepared to agree to everything Mrs. Ryan and I demanded?”
After the last outbreak she had completely abandoned herself to the
hysterical condition that was beyond her control. Now she made an
effort to recover herself, sat up, swallowing and gasping, while she
wiped her eyes.
“I’m ready to do it all,” she sniffed, “only--only--” she paused on the
verge of another collapse, suppressed it, and said with some show of
returning animation, “only I must have some money now--a guarantee.”
“Oh,” he said with the descending note of comprehension. “As I
remember, we agreed to pay you seven thousand dollars for the first
year, the year of desertion.”
She lowered the handkerchief entirely, presenting to him a disfigured
face, all its good looks gone, but showing distinct signs of attention.
“I don’t want the seven thousand. I’ll waive it. I want a sum down, a
guarantee, an advance. You offered me at first fifty thousand dollars.
Give me that down and I’ll go this afternoon.”
“That wasn’t our original arrangement,” he said to gain time.
“Deduct it from the rest. I must have it. I can’t go without it. If you
give me the check now I’ll leave for New York to-night.”
Her reviving interest and force seemed to have quenched the sources of
her tears as suddenly as her exhausted nerves had made them flow. But
her disfigured face, her figure which seemed to have shrunken in its
fine clothes, were extremely pathetic.
“If you don’t trust me send one of your clerks with me to buy my
ticket, send one to see me off. I’ve left my husband for good, for
ever. I can’t live here any longer. Give me the money and let me go.”
“I don’t see that I’m going to have any security that you’re going to
carry out the whole plan. How do I know that you’re not going to New
York to have a good time and then, when you’ve spent the money, come
back here?”
She sat up and sent a despairing look about the room as if in a wild
search for something that would convince him of her sincerity.
“I _swear_, I _promise_,” she cried with almost frantic emphasis, “that
I’ll never come back. I’m going for good and I’m going to set Dominick
free. Oh, _do_ believe me. _Please._ I’m telling the truth.”
He was impressed by her manner, as he had been by her tears. Something
undoubtedly had happened which had suddenly caused her to change her
mind and decide to leave her husband. He did not think that it was what
she had told him. Her excitement, her overwrought condition suggested
a cause less gradual, more like a shock. He ran over in his mind the
advantages of giving her the money. Nothing would be jeopardized by it.
It would simply be an advance made on the sum they had agreed upon.
“Fifty thousand’s too much,” he said slowly. “But I’ll be square to you
and I’ll split the difference and give you twenty-five. I’ll give you
the check now and you can take it and go to-night.”
She shook her head obstinately.
“It won’t do,” she said. “What difference does it make to you whether
you give it to me now or next year? I’ll give you a receipt for it.
There won’t be any trouble about it. It’s as broad as it’s long. It’s
simply an advance on the main sum.”
He looked moodily at her and then down. Her demand seemed reasonable
enough, but he distrusted her.
“If you don’t believe me,” she insisted, “send out that clerk of yours
to buy my ticket to New York. Tell him to go up to the flat and he’ll
see my trunks all packed and ready. I tell you you’ve beaten me. You
and Mrs. Ryan are one too many for me.”
He again looked at her, his lips pressed together, his eye coldly
considering.
“I’ll give you thirty thousand dollars and it’s understood that you’re
to leave the city to-night.”
She demurred, but with less show of vigor, and, for a space, they
haggled over the sum till they finally agreed upon thirty-five thousand
dollars.
As the old man drew the check she watched him with avid eagerness,
restraining by force the hand that trembled in its anxiety to become
possessed of the slip of paper. He noticed, as she bent over the desk
to sign the receipt, that her fingers shook so they could hardly direct
the pen. She remarked it herself, setting it down to her upset nerves,
and laughing at the sprawling signature.
With the check in her hand she rose, something of the airy buoyancy of
demeanor that had marked her on her entrance returning to her.
“Well,” she said, opening her purse, “this is the real beginning of our
business relations. I feel as if we were partners.”
The old man gave a short, dry laugh. He could not rid his mind of
suspicions of her and the whole proceeding, though he did not see just
how she could be deceiving him.
“Wait till next year,” he said. “When I see the divorce papers I’ll
feel a lot surer of the partnership.”
She snapped the clasp of her purse, laughing and moving to the door.
She was wild to get away, to escape from the dark room that held such
unpleasant memories, and the old man, whose steely penetrating eye,
fastened on her, was full of unsatisfied query.
“Well, so long!” she cried, opening the door. “Next time we meet it
will be more sociable, I hope. We really ought to be old friends by
this time.”
She hardly knew what she was saying, but she laughed with a natural
gaiety, and in the doorway turned and bowed her jaunty good-bys to
him. He stood back and nodded good-humoredly at her, his face showing
puzzlement under its slight, ironic smile.
Once in the street her demeanor again changed. Her step became sharp
and quick, her expression keenly absorbed and concentrated. A clock
showed her that it was nearly half-past ten, and she walked, with a
speed that was as rapid a mode of progression as it could be without
attracting attention, to the great bank on which the check was drawn.
On the way down on the car she had thought out all her movements, just
what she would do, and where she would go. Her mind was as clear, her
movements as systematic as though she were moved by mechanism.
She ran up the steps to the bank and presented the check at the paying
teller’s window.
“In one-thousand dollar bills, if you please,” she said, trying not to
speak breathlessly, “all but five hundred, and you can give me that in
one-hundreds.”
The man knew her, made some vaguely-polite remark, and took the slip
of paper back into unseen regions. Berny stood waiting, throbbing from
head to foot with excitement. She was not afraid they would refuse to
cash the check. Her sole fear was that Cannon, as soon as she was gone,
might have regretted his action and telephoned from his office to stop
the payment on it. She knew that once the money was hers he would not
make any attempt to get it back. His own reputation and that of his
daughter were too inextricably bound up with the transaction for him to
dare to apprehend or punish Berny for her deception.
Her heart gave a wild leap as she saw the teller returning, and then
pause behind the netting of his golden cage while he counted out the
bills. She tried to speak lightly to him as he laid them one by one
on the glass slab. She was hardly conscious of what she said; all
she realized was that the crisp roll of paper in her fingers was her
possession, if not of great fortune, at least of something to stand
between her and the world.
When she left the bank she walked forward slowly, the excitement which
had carried her on to this point having suddenly left her feeling weak
and tired. She entered the railway office and bought her ticket for
New York for that evening’s train. Then once more emerging into the
sunshine she directed her steps to the car which would take her to her
sisters. She had decided to spend her last day in San Francisco with
them. As the car whisked her up the hills she carefully pondered on how
much she would tell them, where truth was advisable and where fiction
would serve a better purpose.