_ Engrossed in the pleasures and entertainments which Cowperwood's
money was providing, Berenice had until recently given very little
thought to her future. Cowperwood had been most liberal. "She
is young," he once said to Mrs. Carter, with an air of disinterested
liberality, when they were talking about Berenice and her future.
"She is an exquisite. Let her have her day. If she marries well
she can pay you back, or me. But give her all she needs now." And
he signed checks with the air of a gardener who is growing a
wondrous orchid.
The truth was that Mrs. Carter had become so fond of Berenice as
an object of beauty, a prospective grande dame, that she would
have sold her soul to see her well placed; and as the money to
provide the dresses, setting, equipage had to come from somewhere,
she had placed her spirit in subjection to Cowperwood and pretended
not to see the compromising position in which she was placing all
that was near and dear to her.
"Oh, you're so good," she more than once said to him a mist of
gratitude commingled with joy in her eyes. "I would never have
believed it of any one. But Bevy--"
"An esthete is an esthete," Cowperwood replied. "They are rare
enough. I like to see a spirit as fine as hers move untroubled.
She will make her way."
Seeing Lieutenant Braxmar in the foreground of Berenice's affairs,
Mrs. Carter was foolish enough to harp on the matter in a friendly,
ingratiating way. Braxmar was really interesting after his fashion.
He was young, tall, muscular, and handsome, a graceful dancer;
but, better yet, he represented in his moods lineage, social
position, a number of the things which engaged Berenice most. He
was intelligent, serious, with a kind of social grace which was
gay, courteous, wistful. Berenice met him first at a local dance,
where a new step was being practised--"dancing in the barn," as
it was called--and so airily did he tread it with her in his
handsome uniform that she was half smitten for the moment.
"You dance delightfully," she said. "Is this a part of your life
on the ocean wave?"
"Deep-sea-going dancing," he replied, with a heavenly smile. "All
battles are accompanied by balls, don't you know?"
"Oh, what a wretched jest!" she replied. "It's unbelievably bad."
"Not for me. I can make much worse ones."
"Not for me," she replied, "I can't stand them." And they went
prancing on. Afterward he came and sat by her; they walked in the
moonlight, he told her of naval life, his Southern home and
connections.
Mrs. Carter, seeing him with Berenice, and having been introduced,
observed the next morning, "I like your Lieutenant, Bevy. I know
some of his relatives well. They come from the Carolinas. He's
sure to come into money. The whole family is wealthy. Do you
think he might be interested in you?"
"Oh, possibly--yes, I presume so," replied Berenice, airily, for
she did not take too kindly to this evidence of parental interest.
She preferred to see life drift on in some nebulous way at present,
and this was bringing matters too close to home. "Still, he has
so much machinery on his mind I doubt whether he could take any
serious interest in a woman. He is almost more of a battle-ship
than he is a man."
She made a mouth, and Mrs. Carter commented gaily: "You rogue! All
the men take an interest in you. You don't think you could care
for him, then, at all?"
"Why, mother, what a question! Why do you ask? Is it so essential
that I should?"
"Oh, not that exactly," replied Mrs. Carter, sweetly, bracing
herself for a word which she felt incumbent upon her; "but think
of his position. He comes of such a good family, and he must be
heir to a considerable fortune in his own right. Oh, Bevy, I
don't want to hurry or spoil your life in any way, but do keep in
mind the future. With your tastes and instincts money is so
essential, and unless you marry it I don't know where you are to
get it. Your father was so thoughtless, and Rolfe's was even worse.
She sighed.
Berenice, for almost the first time in her life, took solemn heed
of this thought. She pondered whether she could endure Braxmar
as a life partner, follow him around the world, perhaps retransferring
her abode to the South; but she could not make up her mind. This
suggestion on the part of her mother rather poisoned the cup for
her. To tell the truth, in this hour of doubt her thoughts turned
vaguely to Cowperwood as one who represented in his avid way more
of the things she truly desired. She remembered his wealth, his
plaint that his new house could be only a museum, the manner in
which he approached her with looks and voiceless suggestions. But
he was old and married--out of the question, therefore--and Braxmar
was young and charming. To think her mother should have been so
tactless as to suggest the necessity for consideration in his case!
It almost spoiled him for her. And was their financial state,
then, as uncertain as her mother indicated?
In this crisis some of her previous social experiences became
significant. For instance, only a few weeks previous to her meeting
with Braxmar she had been visiting at the country estate of the
Corscaden Batjers, at Redding Hills, Long Island, and had been
sitting with her hostess in the morning room of Hillcrest, which
commanded a lovely though distant view of Long Island Sound.
Mrs. Fredericka Batjer was a chestnut blonde, fair, cool, quiescent
--a type out of Dutch art. Clad in a morning gown of gray and
silver, her hair piled in a Psyche knot, she had in her lap on
this occasion a Java basket filled with some attempt at Norwegian
needlework.
"Bevy," she said, "you remember Kilmer Duelma, don't you? Wasn't
he at the Haggertys' last summer when you were there?"
Berenice, who was seated at a small Chippendale writing-desk
penning letters, glanced up, her mind visioning for the moment
the youth in question. Kilmer Duelma--tall, stocky, swaggering,
his clothes the loose, nonchalant perfection of the season, his
walk ambling, studied, lackadaisical, aimless, his color high, his
cheeks full, his eyes a little vacuous, his mind acquiescing in a
sort of genial, inconsequential way to every query and thought
that was put to him. The younger of the two sons of Auguste Duelma,
banker, promoter, multimillionaire, he would come into a fortune
estimated roughly at between six and eight millions. At the
Haggertys' the year before he had hung about her in an aimless
fashion.
Mrs. Batjer studied Berenice curiously for a moment, then returned
to her needlework. "I've asked him down over this week-end," she
suggested.
"Yes?" queried Berenice, sweetly. "Are there others?"
"Of course," assented Mrs. Batjer, remotely. "Kilmer doesn't
interest you, I presume."
Berenice smiled enigmatically.
"You remember Clarissa Faulkner, don't you, Bevy?" pursued Mrs.
Batjer. "She married Romulus Garrison."
"Perfectly. Where is she now?"
"They have leased the Chateau Brieul at Ars for the winter. Romulus
is a fool, but Clarissa is so clever. You know she writes that
she is holding a veritable court there this season. Half the smart
set of Paris and London are dropping in. It is so charming for
her to be able to do those things now. Poor dear! At one time I
was quite troubled over her."
Without giving any outward sign Berenice did not fail to gather
the full import of the analogy. It was all true. One must begin
early to take thought of one's life. She suffered a disturbing
sense of duty. Kilmer Duelma arrived at noon Friday with six types
of bags, a special valet, and a preposterous enthusiasm for polo
and hunting (diseases lately acquired from a hunting set in the
Berkshires). A cleverly contrived compliment supposed to have
emanated from Miss Fleming and conveyed to him with tact by Mrs.
Batjer brought him ambling into Berenice's presence suggesting a
Sunday drive to Saddle Rock.
"Haw! haw! You know, I'm deiighted to see you again. Haw! haw!
It's been an age since I've seen the Haggertys. We missed you
after you left. Haw! haw! I did, you know. Since I saw you I
have taken up polo--three ponies with me all the time now--haw!
haw!--a regular stable nearly."
Berenice strove valiantly to retain a serene interest. Duty was
in her mind, the Chateau Brieul, the winter court of Clarissa
Garrison, some first premonitions of the flight of time. Yet the
drive was a bore, conversation a burden, the struggle to respond
titanic, impossible. When Monday came she fled, leaving three
days between that and a week-end at Morristown. Mrs. Batjer--who
read straws most capably--sighed. Her own Corscaden was not much
beyond his money, but life must be lived and the ambitious must
inherit wealth or gather it wisely. Some impossible scheming
silly would soon collect Duelma, and then-- She considered Berenice
a little difficult.
Berenice could not help piecing together the memory of this incident
with her mother's recent appeal in behalf of Lieutenant Braxmar.
A great, cloying, disturbing, disintegrating factor in her life
was revealed by the dawning discovery that she and her mother were
without much money, that aside from her lineage she was in a certain
sense an interloper in society. There were never rumors of great
wealth in connection with her--no flattering whispers or public
notices regarding her station as an heiress. All the smug minor
manikins of the social world were on the qui vive for some
cotton-headed doll of a girl with an endless bank-account. By
nature sybaritic, an intense lover of art fabrics, of stately
functions, of power and success in every form, she had been dreaming
all this while of a great soul-freedom and art-freedom under some
such circumstances as the greatest individual wealth of the day,
and only that, could provide. Simultaneously she had vaguely
cherished the idea that if she ever found some one who was truly
fond of her, and whom she could love or even admire intensely--some
one who needed her in a deep, sincere way--she would give herself
freely and gladly. Yet who could it be? She had been charmed by
Braxmar, but her keen, analytic intelligence required some one
harder, more vivid, more ruthless, some one who would appeal to
her as an immense force. Yet she must be conservative, she must
play what cards she had to win.
During his summer visit at Narragansett Cowperwood had not been
long disturbed by the presence of Braxmar, for, having received
special orders, the latter was compelled to hurry away to Hampton
Roads. But the following November, forsaking temporarily his
difficult affairs in Chicago for New York and the Carter apartment
in Central Park South, Cowperwood again encountered the Lieutenant,
who arrived one evening brilliantly arrayed in full official regalia
in order to escort Berenice to a ball. A high military cap
surmounting his handsome face, his epaulets gleaming in gold, the
lapels of his cape thrown back to reveal a handsome red silken
lining, his sword clanking by his side, he seemed a veritable
singing flame of youth. Cowperwood, caught in the drift of
circumstance--age, unsuitableness, the flaring counter-attractions
of romance and vigor--fairly writhed in pain.
Berenice was so beautiful in a storm of diaphanous clinging garments.
He stared at them from an adjacent room, where he pretended to
be reading, and sighed. Alas, how was his cunning and foresight
--even his--to overcome the drift of life itself? How was he to
make himself appealing to youth? Braxmar had the years, the color,
the bearing. Berenice seemed to-night, as she prepared to leave,
to be fairly seething with youth, hope, gaiety. He arose after a
few moments and, giving business as an excuse, hurried away. But
it was only to sit in his own rooms in a neighboring hotel and
meditate. The logic of the ordinary man under such circumstances,
compounded of the age-old notions of chivalry, self-sacrifice,
duty to higher impulses, and the like, would have been to step
aside in favor of youth, to give convention its day, and retire
in favor of morality and virtue. Cowperwood saw things in no such
moralistic or altruistic light. "I satisfy myself," had ever been
his motto, and under that, however much he might sympathize with
Berenice in love or with love itself, he was not content to withdraw
until he was sure that the end of hope for him had really come.
There had been moments between him and Berenice--little approximations
toward intimacy--which had led him to believe that by no means was
she seriously opposed to him. At the same time this business of
the Lieutenant, so Mrs. Carter confided to him a little later,
was not to be regarded lightly. While Berenice might not care so
much, obviously Braxmar did.
"Ever since he has been away he has been storming her with letters,"
she remarked to Cowperwood, one afternoon. "I don't think he is
the kind that can be made to take no for an answer.
"A very successful kind," commented Cowperwood, dryly. Mrs. Carter
was eager for advice in the matter. Braxmar was a man of parts.
She knew his connections. He would inherit at least six hundred
thousand dollars at his father's death, if not more. What about
her Louisville record? Supposing that should come out later? Would
it not be wise for Berenice to marry, and have the danger over
with?
"It is a problem, isn't it?" observed Cowperwood, calmly. "Are
you sure she's in love?"
"Oh, I wouldn't say that, but such things so easily turn into love.
I have never believed that Berenice could be swept off her feet
by any one--she is so thoughtful--but she knows she has her own
way to make in the world, and Mr. Braxmar is certainly eligible.
I know his cousins, the Clifford Porters, very well."
Cowperwood knitted his brows. He was sick to his soul with this
worry over Berenice. He felt that he must have her, even at the
cost of inflicting upon her a serious social injury. Better that
she should surmount it with him than escape it with another. It
so happened, however, that the final grim necessity of acting on
any such idea was spared him.
Imagine a dining-room in one of the principal hotels of New York,
the hour midnight, after an evening at the opera, to which Cowperwood,
as host, had invited Berenice, Lieutenant Braxmar, and Mrs. Carter.
He was now playing the role of disinterested host and avuncular
mentor.
His attitude toward Berenice, meditating, as he was, a course which
should be destructive to Braxmar, was gentle, courteous, serenely
thoughtful. Like a true Mephistopheles he was waiting, surveying
Mrs. Carter and Berenice, who were seated in front chairs clad in
such exotic draperies as opera-goers affect--Mrs. Carter in
pale-lemon silk and diamonds; Berenice in purple and old-rose,
with a jeweled comb in her hair. The Lieutenant in his dazzling
uniform smiled and talked blandly, complimented the singers,
whispered pleasant nothings to Berenice, descanted at odd moments
to Cowperwood on naval personages who happened to be present.
Coming out of the opera and driving through blowy, windy streets
to the Waldorf, they took the table reserved for them, and Cowperwood,
after consulting with regard to the dishes and ordering the wine,
went back reminiscently to the music, which had been "La Boheme."
The death of Mimi and the grief of Rodolph, as voiced by the
splendid melodies of Puccini, interested him.
"That makeshift studio world may have no connection with the genuine
professional artist, but it's very representative of life," he
remarked.
"I don't know, I'm sure," said Braxmar, seriously.
"All I know of Bohemia is what I have read in books--Trilby, for
instance, and--" He could think of no other, and stopped. "I
suppose it is that way in Paris."
He looked at Berenice for confirmation and to win a smile. Owing
to her mobile and sympathetic disposition, she had during the opera
been swept from period to period by surges of beauty too gay or
pathetic for words, but clearly comprehended of the spirit. Once
when she had been lost in dreamy contemplation, her hands folded
on her knees, her eyes fixed on the stage, both Braxmar and
Cowperwood had studied her parted lips and fine profile with common
impulses of emotion and enthusiasm. Realizing after the mood was
gone that they had been watching her, Berenice had continued the
pose for a moment, then had waked as from a dream with a sigh.
This incident now came back to her as well as her feeling in regard
to the opera generally.
"It is very beautiful," she said; "I do not know what to say.
People are like that, of course. It is so much better than just
dull comfort. Life is really finest when it's tragic, anyhow."
She looked at Cowperwood, who was studying her; then at Braxmar,
who saw himself for the moment on the captain's bridge of a
battle-ship commanding in time of action. To Cowperwood came back
many of his principal moments of difficulty. Surely his life had
been sufficiently dramatic to satisfy her.
"I don't think I care so much for it," interposed Mrs. Carter.
"One gets tired of sad happenings. We have enough drama in real
life."
Cowperwood and Braxmar smiled faintly. Berenice looked contemplatively
away. The crush of diners, the clink of china and glass, the
bustling to and fro of waiters, and the strumming of the orchestra
diverted her somewhat, as did the nods and smiles of some entering
guests who recognized Braxmar and herself, hut not Cowperwood.
Suddenly from a neighboring door, opening from the men's cafe and
grill, there appeared the semi-intoxicated figure of an ostensibly
swagger society man, his clothing somewhat awry, an opera-coat
hanging loosely from one shoulder, a crush-opera-hat dangling in
one hand, his eyes a little bloodshot, his under lip protruding
slightly and defiantly, and his whole visage proclaiming that
devil-may-care, superior, and malicious aspect which the drunken
rake does not so much assume as achieve. He looked sullenly,
uncertainly about; then, perceiving Cowperwood and his party, made
his way thither in the half-determined, half-inconsequential
fashion of one not quite sound after his cups. When he was directly
opposite Cowperwood's table--the cynosure of a number of eyes--he
suddenly paused as if in recognition, and, coming over, laid a
genial and yet condescending hand on Mrs. Carter's bare shoulder.
"Why, hello, Hattie!" he called, leeringly and jeeringly. "What
are you doing down here in New York? You haven't given up your
business in Louisville, have you, eh, old sport? Say, lemme tell
you something. I haven't had a single decent girl since you
left--not one. If you open a house down here, let me know, will
you?"
He bent over her smirkingly and patronizingly the while he made
as if to rummage in his white waistcoat pocket for a card. At the
same moment Cowperwood and Braxmar, realizing quite clearly the
import of his words, were on their feet. While Mrs. Carter was
pulling and struggling back from the stranger, Braxmar's hand (he
being the nearest) was on him, and the head waiter and two assistants
had appeared.
"What is the trouble here? What has he done?" they demanded.
Meanwhile the intruder, leering contentiously at them all, was
exclaiming in very audible tones: "Take your hands off. Who are
you? What the devil have you got to do with this? Don't you think
I know what I'm about? She knows me--don't you, Hattie? That's
Hattie Starr, of Louisville--ask her! She kept one of the swellest
ever run in Louisville. What do you people want to be so upset
about? I know what I'm doing. She knows me."
He not only protested, but contested, and with some vehemence.
Cowperwood, Braxmar, and the waiters forming a cordon, he was
shoved and hustled out into the lobby and the outer entranceway,
and an officer was called.
"This man should be arrested," Cowperwood protested, vigorously,
when the latter appeared. "He has grossly insulted lady guests
of mine. He is drunk and disorderly, and I wish to make that
charge. Here is my card. Will you let me know where to come?"
He handed it over, while Braxmar, scrutinizing the stranger with
military care, added: "I should like to thrash you within an inch
of your life. If you weren't drunk I would. If you are a gentleman
and have a card I want you to give it to me. I want to talk to
you later." He leaned over and presented a cold, hard face to that
of Mr. Beales Chadsey, of Louisville, Kentucky.
"Tha's all right, Captain," leered Chadsey, mockingly. "I got a
card. No harm done. Here you are. You c'n see me any time you
want--Hotel Buckingham, Fifth Avenue and Fiftieth Street. I got
a right to speak to anybody I please, where I please, when I please.
See?"
He fumbled and protested while the officer stood by read to take
him in charge. Not finding a card, he added: "Tha's all right.
Write it down. Beales Chadsey, Hotel Buckingham, or Louisville,
Kentucky. See me any time you want to. Tha's Hattie Starr. She
knows me. I couldn't make a mistake about her--not once in a
million. Many's the night I spent in her house."
Braxmar was quite ready to lunge at him had not the officer
intervened.
Back in the dining-room Berenice and her mother were sitting, the
latter quite flustered, pale, distrait, horribly taken aback--by
far too much distressed for any convincing measure of deception.
"Why, the very idea!" she was saying. "That dreadful man! How
terrible! I never saw him before in my life."
Berenice, disturbed and nonplussed, was thinking of the familiar
and lecherous leer with which the stranger had addressed her
mother--the horror, the shame of it. Could even a drunken man,
if utterly mistaken, be so defiant, so persistent, so willing to
explain? What shameful things had she been hearing?
"Come, mother," she said, gently, and with dignity; "never mind,
it is all right. We can go home at once. You will feel better
when you are out of here."
She called a waiter and asked him to say to the gentlemen that
they had gone to the women's dressing-room. She pushed an intervening
chair out of the way and gave her mother her arm.
"To think I should be so insulted," Mrs. Carter mumbled on, "here
in a great hotel, in the presence of Lieutenant Braxmar and Mr.
Cowperwood! This is too dreadful. Well, I never."
She half whimpered as she walked; and Berenice, surveying the room
with dignity, a lofty superiority in her face, led solemnly forth,
a strange, lacerating pain about her heart. What was at the bottom
of these shameful statements? Why should this drunken roisterer
have selected her mother, of all other women in the dining-room,
for the object of these outrageous remarks? Why should her mother
be stricken, so utterly collapsed, if there were not some truth
in what he had said? It was very strange, very sad, very grim,
very horrible. What would that gossiping, scandal-loving world
of which she knew so much say to a scene like this? For the first
time in her life the import and horror of social ostracism flashed
upon her.
The following morning, owing to a visit paid to the Jefferson
Market Police Court by Lieutenant Braxmar, where he proposed, if
satisfaction were not immediately guaranteed, to empty cold lead
into Mr. Beales Chadsey's stomach, the following letter on Buckingham
stationery was written and sent to Mrs. Ira George Carter--36
Central Park South:
DEAR MADAM:
Last evening, owing to a drunken debauch, for which I have no
satisfactory or suitable explanation to make, I was the unfortunate
occasion of an outrage upon your feelings and those of your daughter
and friends, for which I wish most humbly to apologize. I cannot
tell you how sincerely I regret whatever I said or did, which I
cannot now clearly recall. My mental attitude when drinking is
both contentious and malicious, and while in this mood and state
I was the author of statements which I know to be wholly unfounded.
In my drunken stupor I mistook you for a certain notorious woman
of Louisville--why, I have not the slightest idea. For this wholly
shameful and outrageous conduct I sincerely ask your pardon--beg
your forgiveness. I do not know what amends I can make, but
anything you may wish to suggest I shall gladly do. In the mean
while I hope you will accept this letter in the spirit in which
it is written and as a slight attempt at recompense which I know
can never fully be made.
Very sincerely,
BEALES CHADSEY.
At the same time Lieutenant Braxmar was fully aware before this
letter was written or sent that the charges implied against Mrs.
Carter were only too well founded. Beales Chadsey had said drunk
what twenty men in all sobriety and even the police at Louisville
would corroborate. Chadsey had insisted on making this clear to
Braxmar before writing the letter. _