Madame de Berny

“ On his return to France from a journey to Italy with Madame Marbouty, he was overcome with grief at the news of the death of Madame de Berny. He found on his table a letter from her son Alexandre briefly announcing his mother's death.
But the novelist did not cease to respect her criticism:
"I resumed my work this morning; I am obeying the last words that Madame de Berny wrote me; 'I can die; I am sure that you have upon your brow the crown I wished there. The /Lys/ is a sublime work, without spot or flaw. Only, the death of Madame de Mortsauf does not need those horrible regrets ”

“ Her form detached itself gradually from the fog, the effect of deliberation being due to the fact that she was dressed in gray, a long, loose coat and a round hat with a film of veil about it. She would have been a study in monochrome but for the color in the cheek turned to Berny, a glowing, rose-tinted cheek into which the damp had called a pink brighter than any rouge. Berny looked at it with reluctant admiration, and the woman turned and presented her full face, blooming as a flower, to the watcher’s eye. ”

“ Berny heard him laugh and knew by the tone of his voice that he was pretending and was not really amused. She had nothing particular to say to him, feeling that she had accomplished enough in inducing him to join them, and, sitting forward on the edge of her chair, continued to watch the people. A blonde coiffure some rows in front caught her eye and she was studying its intricacies through the interstices that came and went between the moving heads, when the sudden emergence into view of an unusually striking female figure diverted her attention. ”

“ If in these wan and dripping surroundings the young girl had not looked so freshly fair and comely, Berny might have let her pass unchecked. But upon the elder woman’s sore and bitter mood the vision of this rosy youthfulness, triumphant where all the rest of the world sank unprotesting under the weight of a common ugliness, came with a sense of unbearable wrong and grievance. As Rose passed, Berny, with a sudden blinding up-rush of excitement, leaned forward and rose. ”

“ Berny felt dizzy. As her rancor had seemed slipping from her in the earlier part of the interview, now she felt as if her resolution was suddenly melting. She was confused between the strangling up-rush of greed and the passion that once again rose in her against the old man, who showed such a bold determination to sweep her from his daughter’s path. She was no longer mistress of herself. Inward excitement, the unfamiliar struggle with temptation, had upset and unnerved her. ”

“ Only a person watching closely would have noticed it, but Berny was watching with the most vigilant closeness. She saw the infusion of a new and keener interest transform the glance, concentrate its lazy, diffused attention into something that had the sharpness and suddenness of a leaping flame. The next moment a flood of color rose clearly pink over the face, and then, most surprising of all, the lady bent her head in a grave, deliberate bow. ”

“ Two days after this momentous combination of her enemies, Berny was sitting in the parlor of her flat, writing a letter. It was three o’clock in the afternoon and she had just dressed herself for her daily jaunt down town, where she spent an hour or two looking into the shop windows, pricing articles of apparel, taking a glass of soda water, and stopping for chats with acquaintances under awnings and in open doorways. Her life was exceedingly barren of occupation and companionship. When she had married, she had dropped all work save such as seemed to her fitting for the wife of a rich man. ”

“ She relaxed from her alert sprightliness of pose, and sank against the back of the seat in the limpness of unobserved indifference. Sitting thus, her eyes on the ground, she heard, at first unheeding, [400] then with a growing sense of attention, footsteps approaching on the gravel walk. They were the short, quick footsteps of a woman. Berny looked up and saw the woman, a little darker than the atmosphere, emerging from the surrounding grayness, as if she were slowly rising to the surface through water. ”

“ A sound escaped her, a sound of pain, as if forced from her by the grinding of jealous passions within. She dropped the curtain and rose to her feet. If they married it would be always that way with them. They would have everything in the world, everything that to Berny made life worth while. Even Paris, with [396] her three hundred thousand dollars to open all its doors, would be a savorless place to her if Rose and Dominick were to be left to the enjoyment of all the pleasures and luxuries of life back in California. ”

“ If this woman took the money and went, would not Rose, in the course of time, relent in her attitude of iron disapproval, and smile on the man she loved? Could any woman hold out for ever in such a position?
[476] “See here,” Berny went on, “I’ll leave a statement. I’ll put it in your hands that I changed my mind and voluntarily left. I’ll draw it up before a notary if you want. And it’s true. She needn’t think that I’m being forced out to make a place for her. I’m glad to go.”
She had leaned nearer to him from the chair, one finger tapping the corner of the desk to emphasize her words. ”

“ For a moment they both sat silent, listening, the actor with his face looking sharp and pale in the suspense of the moment, the muscles of his lean cheeks working. The rustle of Berny’s dress sounded from the stairway and grew in volume as she slowly ascended. The two men rose to their feet.
“Come in the den for a moment, Berny,” [463] Dominick called. “There’s a gentleman here who wants to see you.”
The rustle advanced up the hall, and the portière was drawn back. Bernice, brilliantly dressed, a mauve orchid pinned on her bosom, stood in the aperture, smiling. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You’re not only a pretty woman, you’re a smart woman; you could get on top in no time, marry into the nobility if you wanted.”
Berny, her eyes on the blotter, said nothing.
“And what’s the alternative over here?” the tempter continued. “Staying on as an outsider, [263] being in a position where, though you’re lawfully married and are living decently with your husband, you’re ostracized as completely as if you weren’t married at all; where you’ve hardly got enough to pay your way, cramped up in a corner like this, never going anywhere or seeing anybody. Does that kind of life appeal to you? ”

“ She is to any one who knows her well. She’s a big nature; nothing picayune or small about her. A true friend and a fair enemy. She’s the most generous woman I ever knew.”
“We haven’t seen much of her generosity,” said Berny. Her words did not come with suddenness, but slowly, with a measured and biting deliberation.
“You’ve got your chance to see it now,” answered the old man.
Berny looked at him, a side glance from the corner of one long, dark eye. ”

“ I have my own opinion about Madame Bernstein's. A hundred years ago people of the great world were not so straitlaced as they are now, when everybody is good, pure, moral, modest; when there is no skeleton in anybody's closet; when there is no scheming; no slurring over old stories; when no girl tries to sell herself for wealth, and no mother abets her. Suppose my Lady Maria tries to make her little game, wherein is her ladyship's great eccentricity?
On these points no doubt the Baroness de Bernstein thought, as she communed with herself in her private apartment. ”

“ It’s not the kind of offer you get every day.”
[264] “No, it’s not!” said Berny fiercely. “It’s too dirty for most people. It’s too dirty for any one but Mrs. Ryan, and you can tell her I said so.”
She rose to her feet, still clenching the blotter in her hand. He rose too, interested, annoyed and disappointed, for he knew with a cynical certainty just about what she was going to say. ”

“ There’s nothing much to bother about. Good night, Berny,” and he stepped back into the room and shut the door.
Berny sat as he had left her for a space, and then drew back upon the divan and leaned against the mound of pillows. She made the movement charily and slowly, her face set in a rigidity of [190] thought to which her body seemed fixed and obedient. She sat thus for an hour without moving, her eyes staring before her, two straight lines folded in the skin between her brows. ”

“ Ryan alighting from the carriage, was suddenly a factor of paramount importance in the struggle between the two. So small a matter as a nod of the elder woman’s head would have made the younger woman more pliable, more tractable and easily managed, than almost any other action on her mother-in-law’s part. Berny, bowed to, would have been a more docile, reasonable person than either Mrs. Ryan or Bill Cannon had had yet to deal with; while Berny, cut, flamed up into a blaze of mutinous fury that, had they known it, would have planted dismay in the breasts of those bold conspirators. ”

“ There was no question of intimacy or friendship about it, any more than there was between Judge Washburne and me, or even the actor.”
Berny was exceedingly disappointed. Had the occasion been a less momentous one she would [184] have expressed herself freely. In her mind she thought it was “just like Dominick” to have such an opportunity and let it go. A slight color deepened the artificial rose of her cheeks and for a moment she had to exert some control to maintain the silence that was wisdom. She picked daintily at her food while she wrestled with her irritation. ”

“ Now he had been defied in his stronghold and by the sort of person that he looked upon as a worm in the path—the kind of worm a man did not even tread on but simply brushed aside. It was incredible in its audacity, its bold insolence. As he walked down Montgomery Street to the car, he pondered on Berny, wonderingly and with a sort of begrudging, astonished admission of a [377] courage that he could not but admire. What a nerve the woman had to dare to threaten him! To threaten Bill Cannon! ”

“ Berny regarded women who had children as fools, and the children grouped about these mothers of her own age—three and four sometimes, with the husband carrying a baby—were to her only annoying, burdensome creatures that made the party seem a little ridiculous, and had not half the impressiveness or style of her elegant costume and lilac frills. ”

“ Pure ugliness might be actuating her present line of conduct, and that state of mind was rarely of long duration. The jealous passions of women soon burn themselves out. Those shallow vessels could not long contain feelings of such a fiery potency, especially when harboring the feeling was so inconvenient and expensive. No one knew better than Berny how well worth her while it would be to cultivate a sweet reasonableness. This was the only gleam of hope left. Her power to endure the present conditions of her life might give out. ”

“ I went often to see old Bernis, [44] a veteran in the school of political intrigue and love. He is a phenomenon, for age has not impaired his faculties or misfortune subdued his liveliness. He lodges the Mesdames, aunts of the unfortunate Louis XVI. Madame Victoire [45] is so strikingly like him that it makes one start, and a paralytic affection, keeping her head perpetually moving, fills me with painful sensations. ”

“ She did not turn, and he continued:
“You’re asking people to this ball that you hardly know. Everybody in San Francisco’s going. What harm has Berny done that you should leave her out this way?”
“I don’t want women with that kind of record in my house. I don’t ask decent people here to meet that sort,” said his mother over her shoulder. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Come back to me. Please come back. Don’t be angry with me. I am your wife. You chose me of your own free will. That I loved you so that I forgot honor and public opinion and had no will but yours, you know better than any one else in the world. It isn’t every man, Dominick, that gets that kind of love. I gave it then and I’ve never stopped giving it, though I’ve often been so put upon and enraged that I’ve said things I didn’t mean and done things I’ve been ready to kill myself for. Here I am now, waiting for you, longing for you. Come back to me.
Your loving wife,
Berny. ”

“ Berny’s cheeks, under the faint bloom of rouge that covered them, flamed a sudden, dusky red. She had never been open with these simple relations of hers and she was not going to begin now. But she felt shame as she thought of Dominick’s humiliating quest for the invitation that was refused.
“Oh, no,” she said hurriedly. “It wasn’t sent, that’s all. Mrs. Ryan won’t have me in the house. That’s the fact and there’s no use trying to get round it. Well, she can do without me. I seem able to support my existence without her.” ”