Behind the Arras
Berenice, perusing the apology from Beales Chadsey, which her
mother--very much fagged and weary--handed her the next morning,
thought that it read like the overnight gallantry of some one who was
seeking to make amends without changing his point of view. Mrs. Carter
was too obviously self-conscious. She protested too much. Berenice
knew that she could find out for herself if she chose, but would she
choose? The thought sickened her, and yet who was she to judge too
severely?
Cowperwood came in bright and early to put as good a face on the matter
as he could. He explained how he and Braxmar had gone to the police
station to make a charge; how Chadsey, sobered by arrest, had abandoned
his bravado and humbly apologized. When viewing the letter handed him
by Mrs. Carter he exclaimed:
"Oh yes. He was very glad to promise to write that if we would let him
off. Braxmar seemed to think it was necessary that he should. I
wanted the judge to impose a fine and let it go at that. He was drunk,
and that's all there was to it."
He assumed a very unknowing air when in the presence of Berenice and
her mother, but when alone with the latter his manner changed
completely.
"Brazen it out," he commanded. "It doesn't amount to anything. Braxmar
doesn't believe that this man really knows anything. This letter is
enough to convince Berenice. Put a good face on it; more depends on
your manner than on anything else. You're much too upset. That won't
do at all; you'll tell the whole story that way."
At the same time he privately regarded this incident as a fine windfall
of chance--in all likelihood the one thing which would serve to scare
the Lieutenant away. Outwardly, however, he demanded effrontery,
assumption; and Mrs. Carter was somewhat cheered, but when she was
alone she cried. Berenice, coming upon her accidentally and finding
her eyes wet, exclaimed:
"Oh, mother, please don't be foolish. How can you act this way? We had
better go up in the country and rest a little while if you are so
unstrung."
Mrs. Carter protested that it was merely nervous reaction, but to
Berenice it seemed that where there was so much smoke there must be
some fire.
Her manner in the aftermath toward Braxmar was gracious, but remote. He
called the next day to say how sorry he was, and to ask her to a new
diversion. She was sweet, but distant. In so far as she was concerned
it was plain that the Beales Chadsey incident was closed, but she did
not accept his invitation.
"Mother and I are planning to go to the country for a few days," she
observed, genially. "I can't say just when we shall return, but if you
are still here we shall meet, no doubt. You must be sure and come to
see us." She turned to an east court-window, where the morning sun was
gleaming on some flowers in a window-box, and began to pinch off a dead
leaf here and there.
Braxmar, full of the tradition of American romance, captivated by her
vibrant charm, her poise and superiority under the circumstances, her
obvious readiness to dismiss him, was overcome, as the human mind
frequently is, by a riddle of the spirit, a chemical reaction as
mysterious to its victim as to one who is its witness. Stepping
forward with a motion that was at once gallant, reverent, eager,
unconscious, he exclaimed:
"Berenice! Miss Fleming! Please don't send me away like this. Don't
leave me. It isn't anything I have done, is it? I am mad about you. I
can't bear to think that anything that has happened could make any
difference between you and me. I haven't had the courage to tell you
before, but I want to tell you now. I have been in love with you from
the very first night I saw you. You are such a wonderful girl! I don't
feel that I deserve you, but I love you. I love you with all the honor
and force in me. I admire and respect you. Whatever may or may not be
true, it is all one and the same to me. Be my wife, will you? Marry
me, please! Oh, I'm not fit to be the lacer of your shoes, but I have
position and I'll make a name for myself, I hope. Oh, Berenice!" He
extended his arms in a dramatic fashion, not outward, but downward,
stiff and straight, and declared: "I don't know what I shall do without
you. Is there no hope for me at all?"
An artist in all the graces of sex--histrionic, plastic,
many-faceted--Berenice debated for the fraction of a minute what she
should do and say. She did not love the Lieutenant as he loved her by
any means, and somehow this discovery concerning her mother shamed her
pride, suggesting an obligation to save herself in one form or another,
which she resented bitterly. She was sorry for his tactless proposal
at this time, although she knew well enough the innocence and virtue of
the emotion from which it sprung.
"Really, Mr. Braxmar," she replied, turning on him with solemn eyes,
"you mustn't ask me to decide that now. I know how you feel. I'm
afraid, though, that I may have been a little misleading in my manner.
I didn't mean to be. I'm quite sure you'd better forget your interest
in me for the present anyhow. I could only make up my mind in one way
if you should insist. I should have to ask you to forget me entirely.
I wonder if you can see how I feel--how it hurts me to say this?"
She paused, perfectly poised, yet quite moved really, as charming a
figure as one would have wished to see--part Greek, part
Oriental--contemplative, calculating.
In that moment, for the first time, Braxmar realized that he was
talking to some one whom he could not comprehend really. She was
strangely self-contained, enigmatic, more beautiful perhaps because
more remote than he had ever seen her before. In a strange flash this
young American saw the isles of Greece, Cytherea, the lost Atlantis,
Cyprus, and its Paphian shrine. His eyes burned with a strange,
comprehending luster; his color, at first high, went pale.
"I can't believe you don't care for me at all, Miss Berenice," he went
on, quite strainedly. "I felt you did care about me. But here," he
added, all at once, with a real, if summoned, military force, "I won't
bother you. You do understand me. You know how I feel. I won't
change. Can't we be friends, anyhow?"
He held out his hand, and she took it, feeling now that she was putting
an end to what might have been an idyllic romance.
"Of course we can," she said. "I hope I shall see you again soon."
After he was gone she walked into the adjoining room and sat down in a
wicker chair, putting her elbows on her knees and resting her chin in
her hands. What a denouement to a thing so innocent, so charming! And
now he was gone. She would not see him any more, would not want to see
him--not much, anyhow. Life had sad, even ugly facts. Oh yes, yes,
and she was beginning to perceive them clearly.
Some two days later, when Berenice had brooded and brooded until she
could endure it no longer, she finally went to Mrs. Carter and said:
"Mother, why don't you tell me all about this Louisville matter so that
I may really know? I can see something is worrying you. Can't you
trust me? I am no longer a child by any means, and I am your daughter.
It may help me to straighten things out, to know what to do."
Mrs. Carter, who had always played a game of lofty though loving
motherhood, was greatly taken aback by this courageous attitude. She
flushed and chilled a little; then decided to lie.
"I tell you there was nothing at all," she declared, nervously and
pettishly. "It is all an awful mistake. I wish that dreadful man
could be punished severely for what he said to me. To be outraged and
insulted this way before my own child!"
"Mother," questioned Berenice, fixing her with those cool, blue eyes,
"why don't you tell me all about Louisville? You and I shouldn't have
things between us. Maybe I can help you."
All at once Mrs. Carter, realizing that her daughter was no longer a
child nor a mere social butterfly, but a woman superior, cool,
sympathetic, with intuitions much deeper than her own, sank into a
heavily flowered wing-chair behind her, and, seeking a small
pocket-handkerchief with one hand, placed the other over her eyes and
began to cry.
"I was so driven, Bevy, I didn't know which way to turn. Colonel
Gillis suggested it. I wanted to keep you and Rolfe in school and give
you a chance. It isn't true--anything that horrible man said. It
wasn't anything like what he suggested. Colonel Gillis and several
others wanted me to rent them bachelor quarters, and that's the way it
all came about. It wasn't my fault; I couldn't help myself, Bevy."
"And what about Mr. Cowperwood?" inquired Berenice curiously. She had
begun of late to think a great deal about Cowperwood. He was so cool,
deep, dynamic, in a way resourceful, like herself.
"There's nothing about him," replied Mrs. Carter, looking up
defensively. Of all her men friends she best liked Cowperwood. He had
never advised her to evil ways or used her house as a convenience to
himself alone. "He never did anything but help me out. He advised me
to give up my house in Louisville and come East and devote myself to
looking after you and Rolfe. He offered to help me until you two
should be able to help yourselves, and so I came. Oh, if I had only
not been so foolish--so afraid of life! But your father and Mr. Carter
just ran through everything."
She heaved a deep, heartfelt sigh.
"Then we really haven't anything at all, have we, mother--property or
anything else?"
Mrs. Carter shook her head, meaning no.
"And the money we have been spending is Mr. Cowperwood's?"
"Yes."
Berenice paused and looked out the window over the wide stretch of park
which it commanded. Framed in it like a picture were a small lake, a
hill of trees, with a Japanese pagoda effect in the foreground. Over
the hill were the yellow towering walls of a great hotel in Central
Park West. In the street below could be heard the jingle of
street-cars. On a road in the park could be seen a moving line of
pleasure vehicles--society taking an airing in the chill November
afternoon.
"Poverty, ostracism," she thought. And should she marry rich? Of
course, if she could. And whom should she marry? The Lieutenant?
Never. He was really not masterful enough mentally, and he had
witnessed her discomfiture. And who, then? Oh, the long line of
sillies, light-weights, rakes, ne'er-do-wells, who, combined with
sober, prosperous, conventional, muddle-headed oofs, constituted
society. Here and there, at far jumps, was a real man, but would he be
interested in her if he knew the whole truth about her?
"Have you broken with Mr. Braxmar?" asked her mother, curiously,
nervously, hopefully, hopelessly.
"I haven't seen him since," replied Berenice, lying conservatively. "I
don't know whether I shall or not. I want to think." She arose. "But
don't you mind, mother. Only I wish we had some other way of living
besides being dependent on Mr. Cowperwood."
She walked into her boudoir, and before her mirror began to dress for a
dinner to which she had been invited. So it was Cowperwood's money
that had been sustaining them all during the last few years; and she
had been so liberal with his means--so proud, vain, boastful, superior.
And he had only fixed her with those inquiring, examining eyes. Why?
But she did not need to ask herself why. She knew now. What a game he
had been playing, and what a silly she had been not to see it. Did her
mother in any way suspect? She doubted it. This queer, paradoxical,
impossible world! The eyes of Cowperwood burned at her as she thought.