The Daughter of Mrs. Fleming
Berenice Fleming, at the time Cowperwood first encountered her mother,
was an inmate of the Misses Brewster's School for Girls, then on
Riverside Drive, New York, and one of the most exclusive establishments
of its kind in America. The social prestige and connections of the
Heddens, Flemings, and Carters were sufficient to gain her this
introduction, though the social fortunes of her mother were already at
this time on the down grade. A tall girl, delicately haggard, as he
had imagined her, with reddish-bronze hair of a tinge but distantly
allied to that of Aileen's, she was unlike any woman Cowperwood had
ever known. Even at seventeen she stood up and out with an
inexplicable superiority which brought her the feverish and exotic
attention of lesser personalities whose emotional animality found an
outlet in swinging a censer at her shrine.
A strange maiden, decidedly! Even at this age, when she was, as one
might suppose, a mere slip of a girl, she was deeply conscious of
herself, her sex, her significance, her possible social import. Armed
with a fair skin, a few freckles, an almost too high color at times,
strange, deep, night-blue, cat-like eyes, a long nose, a rather
pleasant mouth, perfect teeth, and a really good chin, she moved always
with a feline grace that was careless, superior, sinuous, and yet the
acme of harmony and a rhythmic flow of lines. One of her mess-hall
tricks, when unobserved by her instructors, was to walk with six plates
and a water-pitcher all gracefully poised on the top of her head after
the fashion of the Asiatic and the African, her hips moving, her
shoulders, neck, and head still. Girls begged weeks on end to have her
repeat this "stunt," as they called it. Another was to put her arms
behind her and with a rush imitate the Winged Victory, a copy of which
graced the library hall.
"You know," one little rosy-cheeked satellite used to urge on her,
adoringly, "she must have been like you. Her head must have been like
yours. You are lovely when you do it."
For answer Berenice's deep, almost black-blue eyes turned on her
admirer with solemn unflattered consideration. She awed always by the
something that she did not say.
The school, for all the noble dames who presided over it--solemn,
inexperienced owl-like conventionalists who insisted on the last tittle
and jot of order and procedure--was a joke to Berenice. She recognized
the value of its social import, but even at fifteen and sixteen she was
superior to it. She was superior to her superiors and to the specimens
of maidenhood--supposed to be perfect socially--who gathered about to
hear her talk, to hear her sing, declaim, or imitate. She was deeply,
dramatically, urgently conscious of the value of her personality in
itself, not as connected with any inherited social standing, but of its
innate worth, and of the artistry and wonder of her body. One of her
chief delights was to walk alone in her room--sometimes at night, the
lamp out, the moon perhaps faintly illuminating her chamber--and to
pose and survey her body, and dance in some naive, graceful, airy Greek
way a dance that was singularly free from sex consciousness--and yet
was it? She was conscious of her body--of every inch of it--under the
ivory-white clothes which she frequently wore. Once she wrote in a
secret diary which she maintained--another art impulse or an
affectation, as you will: "My skin is so wonderful. It tingles so with
rich life. I love it and my strong muscles underneath. I love my hands
and my hair and my eyes. My hands are long and thin and delicate; my
eyes are a dark, deep blue; my hair is a brown, rusty red, thick and
sleepy. My long, firm, untired limbs can dance all night. Oh, I love
life! I love life!"
You would not have called Berenice Fleming sensuous--though she
was--because she was self-controlled. Her eyes lied to you. They lied
to all the world. They looked you through and through with a calm
savoir faire, a mocking defiance, which said with a faint curl of the
lips, barely suggested to help them out, "You cannot read me, you
cannot read me." She put her head to one side, smiled, lied (by
implication), assumed that there was nothing. And there was nothing,
as yet. Yet there was something, too--her inmost convictions, and
these she took good care to conceal. The world--how little it should
ever, ever know! How little it ever could know truly!
The first time Cowperwood encountered this Circe daughter of so
unfortunate a mother was on the occasion of a trip to New York, the
second spring following his introduction to Mrs. Carter in Louisville.
Berenice was taking some part in the closing exercises of the Brewster
School, and Mrs. Carter, with Cowperwood for an escort, decided to go
East. Cowperwood having located himself at the Netherlands, and Mrs.
Carter at the much humbler Grenoble, they journeyed together to visit
this paragon whose picture he had had hanging in his rooms in Chicago
for months past. When they were introduced into the somewhat somber
reception parlor of the Brewster School, Berenice came slipping in
after a few moments, a noiseless figure of a girl, tall and slim, and
deliciously sinuous. Cowperwood saw at first glance that she fulfilled
all the promise of her picture, and was delighted. She had, he
thought, a strange, shrewd, intelligent smile, which, however, was
girlish and friendly. Without so much as a glance in his direction she
came forward, extending her arms and hands in an inimitable histrionic
manner, and exclaimed, with a practised and yet natural inflection:
"Mother, dear! So here you are really! You know, I've been thinking of
you all morning. I wasn't sure whether you would come to-day, you
change about so. I think I even dreamed of you last night."
Her skirts, still worn just below the shoe-tops, had the richness of
scraping silk then fashionable. She was also guilty of using a faint
perfume of some kind.
Cowperwood could see that Mrs. Carter, despite a certain nervousness
due to the girl's superior individuality and his presence, was very
proud of her. Berenice, he also saw quickly, was measuring him out of
the tail of her eye--a single sweeping glance which she vouchsafed from
beneath her long lashes sufficing; but she gathered quite accurately
the totality of Cowperwood's age, force, grace, wealth, and worldly
ability. Without hesitation she classed him as a man of power in some
field, possibly finance, one of the numerous able men whom her mother
seemed to know. She always wondered about her mother. His large gray
eyes, that searched her with lightning accuracy, appealed to her as
pleasant, able eyes. She knew on the instant, young as she was, that
he liked women, and that probably he would think her charming; but as
for giving him additional attention it was outside her code. She
preferred to be interested in her dear mother exclusively.
"Berenice," observed Mrs. Carter, airily, "let me introduce Mr.
Cowperwood."
Berenice turned, and for the fraction of a second leveled a frank and
yet condescending glance from wells of what Cowperwood considered to be
indigo blue.
"Your mother has spoken of you from time to time," he said, pleasantly.
She withdrew a cool, thin hand as limp and soft as wax, and turned to
her mother again without comment, and yet without the least
embarrassment. Cowperwood seemed in no way important to her.
"What would you say, dear," pursued Mrs. Carter, after a brief exchange
of commonplaces, "if I were to spend next winter in New York?"
"It would be charming if I could live at home. I'm sick of this silly
boarding-school."
"Why, Berenice! I thought you liked it."
"I hate it, but only because it's so dull. The girls here are so
silly."
Mrs. Carter lifted her eyebrows as much as to say to her escort, "Now
what do you think?" Cowperwood stood solemnly by. It was not for him
to make a suggestion at present. He could see that for some
reason--probably because of her disordered life--Mrs. Carter was
playing a game of manners with her daughter; she maintained always a
lofty, romantic air. With Berenice it was natural--the expression of a
vain, self-conscious, superior disposition.
"A rather charming garden here," he observed, lifting a curtain and
looking out into a blooming plot.
"Yes, the flowers are nice," commented Berenice.
"Wait; I'll get some for you. It's against the rules, but they can't
do more than send me away, and that's what I want."
"Berenice! Come back here!"
It was Mrs. Carter calling.
The daughter was gone in a fling of graceful lines and flounces. "Now
what do you make of her?" asked Mrs. Carter, turning to her friend.
"Youth, individuality, energy--a hundred things. I see nothing wrong
with her."
"If I could only see to it that she had her opportunities unspoiled."
Already Berenice was returning, a subject for an artist in almost
studied lines. Her arms were full of sweet-peas and roses which she
had ruthlessly gathered.
"You wilful girl!" scolded her mother, indulgently. "I shall have to
go and explain to your superiors. Whatever shall I do with her, Mr.
Cowperwood?"
"Load her with daisy chains and transport her to Cytherea," commented
Cowperwood, who had once visited this romantic isle, and therefore knew
its significance.
Berenice paused. "What a pretty speech that is!" she exclaimed. "I
have a notion to give you a special flower for that. I will, too." She
presented him with a rose.
For a girl who had slipped in shy and still, Cowperwood commented, her
mood had certainly changed. Still, this was the privilege of the born
actress, to change. And as he viewed Berenice Fleming now he felt her
to be such--a born actress, lissome, subtle, wise, indifferent,
superior, taking the world as she found it and expecting it to obey--to
sit up like a pet dog and be told to beg. What a charming character!
What a pity it should not be allowed to bloom undisturbed in its
make-believe garden! What a pity, indeed!