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 calledand 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, possiblyyes,
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 marriedout of the
question, thereforeand 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, quiescenta 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 Duelmatall, 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
delighted 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 polothree ponies with me all the time
nowhaw! 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. Batjerwho
read straws most capablysighed.
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 herno
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 intenselysome
one who needed her in a deep, sincere wayshe
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 circumstanceage,
unsuitableness, the flaring counter-attractions of
romance and vigorfairly 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 foresighteven histo 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 Berenicelittle
approximations toward intimacywhich 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 oneshe is so thoughtfulbut
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 rôle 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
affectMrs. 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 Bohême.”
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 booksTrilby, 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, but 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 tablethe cynosure of
a number of eyeshe 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
leftnot 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
medon’t you, Hattie? That’s
Hattie Starr, of Louisvilleask 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 wantHotel 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 hernot 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 abackby
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 motherthe
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 Carter36 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 Louisvillewhy,
I have not the slightest idea. For this wholly
shameful and outrageous conduct I sincerely ask your
pardonbeg 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.