Rich men's children

by Geraldine Bonner

More alarmed than she had been in the course of her married life she left the room and passed up the hall to the parlor. The brilliant, over-furnished apartment in which she had crowded every fashion in interior decoration that had pleased her fancy and been within the compass of her purse, looked slovenly and unattractive in the gray light of the morning. The smell of smoke was strong in it and the butts and ashes of cigars Dominick had been smoking the evening before lay in a tray on the center-table. She noticed none of these things, which under ordinary circumstances would have been ground for scolding, for she was a woman of fastidious personal daintiness. A cushioned seat was built round the curve of the bay-window, and on this she sat down, drawing back the fall of thick écru lace that veiled the pane. Her eyes were fastened with an unwinking fixity on the fog-drenched street without; her figure was motionless.

Her outward rigidity of body concealed an intense inward energy of thought. It suddenly appeared to her as if her hold on Dominick, which till yesterday had seemed so strong that nothing but death could break it, was weak, was nothing. It had been rooted in his sense of honor, the sense that she fostered in him and by means of which she had been able to make him marry her. Was this sense not so powerful as she believed, or—dreadful thought!—was it weakening under the friction of their life together? Had she played on it too much and worn it out? She had been so sure of Dominick, so secure in his blind, plodding devotion to his duty! She had secretly wondered at it, as a queer characteristic that it was fortunate he possessed. Deep in her heart she had a slight, amused contempt for it, a contempt that had extended to other things. She had felt it for him in those early days of their marriage when he had looked forward to children and wanted to live quietly, without society, in his own home. It grew stronger later when she realized he had accepted his exclusion from his world and was too proud to ask his mother for money.

And now! Suppose he had gone back to his people? A low ejaculation escaped her, and she dropped the curtain and pressed her hand, clenched to the hardness of a stone, against her breast.

The mere thought of such a thing was intolerable. She did not see how she could support the idea of his mother and sister winning him from her. She hated them. They were the ones who had wronged her, who had excluded her from the home and the riches and the position that her marriage should have given her. Her retaliation had been her unwavering grip on Dominick and the careful discretion with which she had comported herself as his wife. There was no ground of complaint against her. She had been as quiet, home-keeping and dutiful a woman as any in California. She had been a good housekeeper, a skilful manager of her husband’s small means. It was only within the last year that she had, in angry spite, run into the debts with which she had taunted him. No wife could have lived more rigorously up to the letter of her marriage contract. It was easy for her to do it. She was not a woman whom light living and license attracted. She had sacrificed her honor to win Dominick, grudgingly, unwillingly, as close-fisted men part with money in the hope of rich returns. She did not want to be his mistress, but she knew of no other means by which she could reach the position of his wife.

Now suppose he had gone back to his people! It was an insupportable, a maddening thought. It plunged her into agitation that made her rise and move about the room with an aimless restlessness, like some soft-footed feline animal. Suppose he had gone home and told them about last night, and they had prevailed upon him not to come back!

Well, even if they had, hers was still the strong position. The sympathy of the disinterested outsider would always be with her. If she had been quarrelsome and ugly, those were small matters. In the great essentials she had not failed. Suppose she and the Ryans ever did come to an open crossing of swords, would not her story be the story of the two? The world’s sympathy would certainly not go to the rich women, trampling on the poor little typewriter, the honest working-girl, who for one slip, righted by subsequent marriage, had been the object of their implacable antagonism and persecution.

She said this opposite the mirror, extending her hands as she had seen an actress do in a recent play. As she saw her pointed, pale face, her expression of worry gave way to one of pleased complacence. She looked pathetic, and her position was pathetic. Who would have the heart to condemn her when they saw her and heard her side of the story? Her spirits began to rise. With the first gleam of returning confidence she shook off her apprehensions. A struggle of sunshine pierced the fog, and going to the window she drew the curtains and looked out on the veil of mist every moment growing brighter and thinner. The sun finally pierced it, a patch of blue shone above, and dropping the curtains she turned and looked at the clock. It was after eleven. She decided she would go out and take lunch with her sisters, who were always ready to listen and to sympathize with her.

These sisters were the only intimate friends and companions Bernice had, their home the one house to which she was a constant visitor. With all her peculiarities and faults she possessed a strong sense of kin. In her rise to fairer fortune, if not greater happiness, her old home had never lost its hold upon her, nor had she weakened in a sort of cross-grained, patronizing loyalty to her two sisters. This may have been accounted for by the fact that they were exceedingly amiable and affectionate, proud to regard Bernice as the flower of the family, whose dizzy translation to unexpected heights they had watched with unenvious admiration.

Hannah, the oldest of the family, was the daughter of a first marriage. She was now a spinster of forty-five, and had taught school for twenty years. Hazel was the youngest of the three, she and Bernice having been the offspring of Danny Iverson’s second alliance with a woman of romantic tendencies, which had no way of expressing themselves except in the naming of her children. Hazel, while yet in her teens, had married a clerk in a jewelry store, called Josh McCrae. It had been a happy marriage. After the birth of a daughter, Hazel had returned to her work as saleslady in a fashionable millinery. Both sisters, Josh, and the child, had continued to live together in domestic harmony, in the house which Hannah, with the savings of a quarter of a century, had finally cleared of all mortgages and now owned. No household could have been more simply decent and honest; no family more unaspiringly content. In such an environment Bernice, with her daring ambitions and bold unscrupulousness, was like that unaccounted-for blossom which in the floral world is known as a “sport.”

But it did not appear that she regarded herself as such. With the exception of a year spent in Los Angeles and Chicago she had been a member of the household from her childhood till the day of her marriage. The year of absence had been the result of a sudden revolt against the monotony of her life and surroundings, an upwelling of the restless ambitions that preyed upon her. A good position had been offered her in Los Angeles and she had accepted it with eagerness, thankful for the opportunity to see the world, and break away, so she said, from the tameness of her situation, the narrowness of her circle. The spirit of adventure carried her farther afield, and she penetrated as far across the continent as Chicago, where she was employed in one of the most prosperous business houses, earning a large salary. But, like many Californians, homesickness seized her, and before the year was out she was back, inveighing against the eastern manners, character, and climate, and glad to shake down again into the family nest. Her sisters were satisfied with her account of her wanderings, not knowing that Bernice was as much of an adept at telling half a story as she was at taking down a dictation in typewriting. She was too clever to be found out in a lie; they were altogether too simple to suspect her apparent frankness.