After the excursion she remained at home until her marriage. Her liaison with Dominick was conducted with the utmost secrecy. Her sisters had not a suspicion of it, knew nothing but that the young man was attentive to her, till she told them of her approaching marriage. This took place in the parlor of Hannah’s house, and the amazed sisters, bewildered by Berny’s glories, had waited to see her burst into the inner circles of fashion and wealth with a tiara of diamonds on her head and ropes of pearls about her throat. That no tiara was forthcoming, no pearls graced her bridal parure, and no Ryan ever crossed the threshold of her door, seemed to the loyal Hannah and Hazel the most unmerited and inexplicable injustice that had ever come within their experience.
It took Bernice some time to dress, for she attached the greatest importance to all matters of personal adornment, and the lunch hour was at hand when she alighted from the Hyde Street car and walked toward the house. It was on one of those streets which cross Hyde near the slope of Russian Hill, and are devoted to the habitats of small, thrifty householders. A staring, bright cleanliness is the prevailing characteristic of the neighborhood, the cement sidewalks always swept, the houses standing back in tiny squares of garden, clipped and trimmed to a precise shortness of grass and straightness of border. The sun was now broadly out and the house-fronts engarlanded with vines, their cream-colored faces spotless in fresh coats of paint, presented a line of uniform bay-windows to its ingratiating warmth. Hannah’s was the third, and its gleaming clearness of window-pane and the stainless purity of its front steps were points of domestic decency that its proprietor insisted on as she did on the servant girl’s apron being clean and the parlor free from dust.
Berny had retained her latch-key, and letting herself in passed into the dustless parlor which connected by folding doors with the dining-room beyond. Nothing had been changed in it since the days of her tenancy. The upright piano, draped with a China silk scarf, stood in the old corner. The solar print of her father hung over the mantelpiece on which a gilt clock and a pair of China dogs stood at accurately-measured distances. The tufted arm-chairs were placed far from each other, severely isolated in the corners, as though the room were too remote and sacred even to suggest the cheerful amenities of social intercourse. A curious, musty smell hung in the air. It recalled the past in which Dominick had figured as her admirer. The few times that he had been to her home she had received him in this solemn, unaired apartment in which the chandelier was lit for the occasion, and Hannah and Hazel had sat in the kitchen, breathless with curiosity as to what such a call might portend. She had been married here, in the bay-window, under a wedding bell of white roses. The musty smell brought it all back, even her sense of almost breathless elation, when the seal was set on her daring schemes.
From beyond the folding doors a sound of conversation and smitten crockery arose, also a strong odor of cooking. The family were already at lunch, and opening the door Berny entered in upon the midday meal which was being partaken of by her two sisters, Josh, and Hazel’s daughter Pearl, a pretty child of eight.
Neither of her sisters resembled her in the least. Hannah was a woman who looked more than her age, with a large, calm face, and gentle, near-sighted eyes which blinked at the world behind a pair of steel-rimmed glasses. Her quarter-century of school teaching had not dried or stiffened her. She was fuller of the milk of human kindness, of the ideals and enthusiasms of youth, than either of her sisters. All the love of her kindly, maternal nature was given to Pearl, whom she was bringing up carefully to be what seemed to Hannah best in woman.
Hazel was very pretty and still young. She had the fresh, even bloom of a Californian woman, a round, graceful figure, and glossy brown hair, rippled and arranged in an elaborate coiffure as though done by a hair-dresser. She could do this herself as she could make her own clothes, earn a fair salary at the milliner’s, and sing to the guitar in a small piping voice. Her husband was ravished by her good looks and accomplishments, and thought her the most wonderful woman in the world. He was a thin, tall, young man with stooping shoulders, a long, lean neck, and an amiable, insignificant face. But he seemed to please Hazel, who had married him when she was nineteen, being haunted by the nightmare thought that if she did not take what chances offered, she might become an old maid like Hannah.
Berny sat down next to the child, conscious that under the pleasant friendliness of their greetings a violent curiosity as to whether she had been to the ball burned in each breast. She had talked over her chances of going with them, and Hazel, whose taste in all such matters was excellent, had helped her order the dress. Now, drawing her plate toward her and shaking out her napkin, she began to eat her lunch, at once too sore and too perverse to begin the subject. The others endured their condition of ignorance for some minutes, and then Hazel, finding that to wait was useless, approached the vital topic.
“Well, Berny, we’ve been looking over the list of guests at the ball in the morning papers and your name don’t seem to be down.”
“I don’t see why it should,” said Berny without looking up, “considering I wasn’t there.”
“You weren’t there!” ejaculated Hannah. “They didn’t ask you?”