CHAPTER XXVII
THE STORM CENTER MOVES
As soon as Berny had left his office Bill Cannon wrote a note to Mrs. Ryan, telling her of the interview he had just had with her daughter-in-law. He did not mention the check, simply stating Berny’s decision to accept their proposal and leave her husband. The matter was of too intimate a nature to trust to the telephone and he sent the note by one of his own clerks, who had instructions to wait for an answer, as the old man did not know what Mrs. Ryan might already have heard from Dominick.
It threw its recipient into a state of agitated, quivering exultation. Mrs. Ryan had heard nothing from her son, and her hopes of the separation had sunk to the lowest ebb. Not so prudent as Cannon, she called up Dominick at the bank, asking him if it were true that his wife had left him, and beseeching him simply to tell her “yes” or “no.” The young man, hampered by the publicity of his surroundings and his promise to Berny, answered her with the utmost brevity, telling her that there had been a change in his domestic life but that he could not enter into details now. He begged her to ask him no further questions as he would be at home at three o’clock that afternoon, when he would explain the whole matter to her.
She wrote this to the Bonanza King and sent it by his waiting messenger. The old man felt relieved when he read the letter. He was confident now that Berny had not deceived him. She had told the truth, and was leaving the town and her husband, for what reason he could not yet be sure, but there seemed no doubt that she was going. They would ignore the subject before Rose, and, in the course of time, Dominick would break down the unflinching resistance she had threatened to make to his suit. The old man felt buoyant and exhilarated. It looked as if things were at last going their way.
He sent a message to Mrs. Ryan, asking her to let him know as soon as possible what Dominick said, and waited in his office in a state of tension very foreign to his usual iron stolidity. It was four o’clock before word came from her in the form of a telephone message, demanding his presence at her house at the earliest possible moment. He responded to it at once, and in the sitting-room of the Ryan mansion heard from Dominick’s own lips the story of his false and tragic marriage.
The old man listened, unwinking, speechless, immovable. It was the one thing he had never thought of, a solution of the situation that was as completely unexpected to him as death would have been. He said nothing to Dominick about the money he had given Berny, did not mention having seen her. A sharp observer might have noticed that he looked a little blank, that, the first shock of surprise over, there was a slight expression of wandering attention in his eye, a suggestion of mental faculties inwardly focusing on an unseen point, about his manner.
He walked home, deeply thinking, abashed a little by the ease with which Fate unties the knots that man’s clumsy fingers work over in vain. And it was untied. They were free—the boy and girl he loved—to realize his and their own dreams. It would need no years of wooing to melt Rose from stony resistance. Nobody had been sacrificed.
He felt a sense of gratitude toward Berny. Down in his heart he was conscious of a stirring of something that was kindly, almost affectionate, toward her. It did not require a great stretch of imagination to see himself and her as two knowing, world-battered rogues who had combined to let youth and innocence have their happiness. He could almost feel the partnership with her she had spoken of, a sort of bond of Masonic understanding, a kindred attitude in matters of ethics. They had a mutually low estimate of human nature, a bold, cool unscrupulousness, a daring courage that never faltered. In fact, he was sorry he had not given Berny the whole fifty thousand dollars.
“She could have got it out of me,” he said to himself, pondering pensively. “If she’d stuck out for it I’d have given it to her. And she might just as well have had it.”
That evening for the first time in nearly three years Dominick Ryan dined with his mother in the great dining-room of the Ryan mansion. Cornelia was out with Jack Duffy, so Mrs. Ryan had her boy all to herself and she beamed and glowed and gloated on him as he sat opposite her, the reddened light of the candles falling on his beloved, familiar face.