“Oh, that’s all right, Cornie,” he said, turning to summon the waiter. “I can’t let my sister get married without me. Tell mother I’ll come. You haven’t yet told me when it’s to be.”
“June,” said the prospective bride, once more beginning to blush and beam, “early in June. The roses are so fine then, and we can have the house so beautifully decorated. We’ve already begun to plan the trousseau. It’s going to be just stunning, I tell you; the dresses from New York and all the lingerie and things like that from Paris. Mommer says she’ll give me fifteen thousand dollars for it. And she’s going to give me, besides, a string of pearls that hangs down to here”—Cornelia indicated a point on her person with a proud finger—“or else a house and lot anywhere in town that I like. Which would you take?”
Dominick was saved from the responsibility of stating a preference on this important point by Etienne, the waiter, presenting his hat to him with the low bow of the well-tipped garçon. With a scraping of chair legs, they rose and, threading their way among the now crowded tables, passed out into the wind-swept streets. Here they separated, Cornelia, with her armful of wilting flowers, going home, and Dominick back to the bank.
He was entering the building when he met Bill Cannon, also returning to his office from a restaurant lunch at a small Montgomery Street chop-house, where, every day at one, he drank a glass of milk and ate a sandwich. The Bonanza King stopped and spoke to the young man, his greeting marked by a simple friendliness. Their conversation lasted a few minutes, and then Dominick entered the bank.
Two hours later, while he was still bending over his books, in the hushed seclusion of the closed building, Bill Cannon was talking to Berny in the parlor of the Sacramento Street flat. This interview was neither so long, and (on Berny’s part) did not show the self-restraint which had marked the first one. The offer of one hundred thousand dollars which the old man made her was refused with more scorn and less courtesy than had been displayed in her manner on the former occasion.
CHAPTER XVII
A CUT AND A CONFESSION
Berny was extremely unsettled. She had never been in such a condition of worry and indecision. She was at once depressed and elated, triumphant and cast down, all in a bubble of excitement and uncertainty. 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 possessed 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 jewelry held in slight esteem as a trifling imitation and suddenly discovered to be real and of rich worth. Insignificant and strange are the happenings which determine the course of events. The sage 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 determined 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 mighty good care, no matter how much they want him and he wants to go, they don’t get him.”