“It’s very good of you,” she said, “to come and listen to an old woman’s complaints. But as we get on, we seem to take them harder. And you know what my boy was to me?”
“About the same thing that my girl is to me,” Cannon answered as he turned away to look on the table for his hat.
There was a little more talk, and then the set phrases of farewell brought the interview to a close. Though momentous, it had not lasted long. As he left the room, Cannon heard the single note of half-past three chime from the clock on the mantelpiece.
Outside he stood for a moment on the top of the marble steps, looking downward with absent eyes. He was completely engrossed with the just-ended conversation, parts of which repeated themselves in his mind as he stared unseeingly down the wide, unencumbered vista of the street.
Carriages flashed past through strips of sunshine; automobiles whirred by, leaving dust and gasoline in their wake. On the sidewalks there were many foot passengers: lazily sauntering couples, lovers, family parties, and little groups bound for the cars which would whisk them over the dunes to the park. As he slowly began to descend, one of these groups, formed of three women, a man, and a child, approached the bottom of the steps. They were walking down the avenue in a close, talkative bunch. The descending magnate was apprised of their proximity by the high, cackling sound of the women’s voices and an aura of perfume which extended from them into the surrounding ether. He paid no attention to them, his eye, with its look of inward brooding, passing indifferently over the faces turned eagerly toward him.
They were not so unmoved. Their glances were trained full on him, their eyes wide in the unblinking intensity of their scrutiny. Even the child, who was skipping along beside the eldest of the women, inspected him with solemn care. Brushing by in their gay Sunday raiment they drew together to discuss him, their heads in a cluster, their voices lowered. He was so used to being the object of such interest that he did not bother to look at them, and was therefore unaware that one of the women, quite pretty, with reddish hair and dark eyes, had turned as she moved away and surveyed him over her shoulder.
CHAPTER XII
BERNY MAKES A DISCOVERY
It was near eleven o’clock on that same Sunday morning, when Berny, wrappered and heavy-eyed, emerged from her room. She shuffled down the passage to the dining-room, sending her voice before her in a shrill summons to the Chinaman. The morning papers were scattered over the table as Dominick had left them and she gathered them up, sitting sidewise in her chair and running her eye down their columns, while the servant set out her breakfast. She was still sleepy, and frequent yawns interrupted her perusal of the lines of print which interested her above all written matter. A kimono clothed her slim form and from beneath its hem her foot protruded, thrust bare into a furred slipper. She folded the paper over to bring the society column into a prominence easy of access, and, propping it up against a bowl of fruit, read as she ate her breakfast.
Toward the end of the meal she inquired of the servant at what time her husband had gone out, and received the reply that Mr. Ryan had had his breakfast and left the flat two hours earlier. There was nothing disconcerting or unusual about this, as Dominick always went for a walk on fine Sunday mornings, but her mind was far from easy and she immediately fell to wondering why he had departed so early, and the slight ferment of disquietude that was always with her stirred again and made her forget the society column and let her Spanish omelet grow cold.
There was something strange about Dominick since he had come back, something that intrigued her, that she could not satisfactorily explain. She assured herself that he was still angry, but in the deeper places of her understanding the voice that whispers the truth and will not be gainsaid told her it was not that. Neither was it exactly antagonism. In a way he had been studiously kind and polite to her, a sort of consciously-guarded politeness, such as one might practise to a guest with whom one was intimate without being friendly. She tried to explain to herself just what this change was, and when it came to putting the matter in words she could not find the right ones. It was a coldness, a coldness that was not harsh and did not express itself in actions or phrases. It went deeper; it was exhaled from the inner places of his being.