The Revival of Hattie Starr
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 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
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, 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 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.