The Titan 29 страница

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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!

Chapter XLII

F. A. Cowperwood, Guardian

It was some time after this first encounter before Cowperwood saw

Berenice again, and then only for a few days in that region of the

Pocono Mountains where Mrs. Carter had her summer home. It was

an idyllic spot on a mountainside, some three miles from Stroudsburg,

among a peculiar juxtaposition of hills which, from the comfortable

recesses of a front veranda, had the appearance, as Mrs. Carter

was fond of explaining, of elephants and camels parading in the

distance. The humps of the hills--some of them as high as eighteen

hundred feet--rose stately and green. Below, quite visible for a

mile or more, moved the dusty, white road descending to Stroudsburg.

Out of her Louisville earnings Mrs. Carter had managed to employ,

for the several summer seasons she had been here, a gardener, who

kept the sloping front lawn in seasonable flowers. There was a

trig two-wheeled trap with a smart horse and harness, and both

Rolfe and Berenice were possessed of the latest novelty of the

day--low-wheeled bicycles, which had just then superseded the old,

high-wheel variety. For Berenice, also, was a music-rack full of

classic music and song collections, a piano, a shelf of favorite

books, painting-materials, various athletic implements, and several

types of Greek dancing-tunics which she had designed herself,

including sandals and fillet for her hair. She was an idle,

reflective, erotic person dreaming strange dreams of a near and

yet far-off social supremacy, at other times busying herself with

such social opportunities as came to her. A more safely calculating

and yet wilful girl than Berenice Fleming would have been hard to

find. By some trick of mental adjustment she had gained a clear

prevision of how necessary it was to select the right socially,

and to conceal her true motives and feelings; and yet she was by

no means a snob, mentally, nor utterly calculating. Certain things

in her own and in her mother's life troubled her--quarrels in her

early days, from her seventh to her eleventh year, between her

mother and her stepfather, Mr. Carter; the latter's drunkenness

verging upon delirium tremens at times; movings from one place to

another--all sorts of sordid and depressing happenings. Berenice

had been an impressionable child. Some things had gripped her

memory mightily--once, for instance, when she had seen her stepfather,

in the presence of her governess, kick a table over, and, seizing

the toppling lamp with demoniac skill, hurl it through a window.

She, herself, had been tossed by him in one of these tantrums,

when, in answer to the cries of terror of those about her, he had

shouted: " Let her fall! It won't hurt the little devil to break a

few bones. " This was her keenest memory of her stepfather, and it

rather softened her judgment of her mother, made her sympathetic

with her when she was inclined to be critical. Of her own father

she only knew that he had divorced her mother--why, she could not

say. She liked her mother on many counts, though she could not

feel that she actually loved her--Mrs. Carter was too fatuous at

times, and at other times too restrained. This house at Pocono,

or Forest Edge, as Mrs. Carter had named it, was conducted after

a peculiar fashion. From June to October only it was open, Mrs.

Carter, in the past, having returned to Louisville at that time,

while Berenice and Rolfe went back to their respective schools.

Rolfe was a cheerful, pleasant-mannered youth, well bred, genial,

and courteous, but not very brilliant intellectually. Cowperwood's

judgment of him the first time he saw him was that under ordinary

circumstances he would make a good confidential clerk, possibly

in a bank. Berenice, on the other hand, the child of the first

husband, was a creature of an exotic mind and an opalescent heart.

After his first contact with her in the reception-room of the

Brewster School Cowperwood was deeply conscious of the import of

this budding character. He was by now so familiar with types

and kinds of women that an exceptional type--quite like an exceptional

horse to a judge of horse-flesh--stood out in his mind with singular

vividness. Quite as in some great racing-stable an ambitious

horseman might imagine that he detected in some likely filly the

signs and lineaments of the future winner of a Derby, so in

Berenice Fleming, in the quiet precincts of the Brewster School,

Cowperwood previsioned the central figure of a Newport lawn fete

or a London drawing-room. Why? She had the air, the grace, the

lineage, the blood--that was why; and on that score she appealed

to him intensely, quite as no other woman before had ever done.

It was on the lawn of Forest Edge that Cowperwood now saw Berenice.

The latter had had the gardener set up a tall pole, to which was

attached a tennis-ball by a cord, and she and Rolfe were hard at

work on a game of tether-ball. Cowperwood, after a telegram to

Mrs. Carter, had been met at the station in Pocono by her and

rapidly driven out to the house. The green hills pleased him, the

up-winding, yellow road, the silver-gray cottage with the brown-shingle

roof in the distance. It was three in the afternoon, and bright

for a sinking sun.

" There they are now, " observed Mrs. Carter, cheerful and smiling,

as they came out from under a low ledge that skirted the road a

little way from the cottage. Berenice, executing a tripping,

running step to one side, was striking the tethered ball with her

racquet. " They are hard at it, as usual. Two such romps! "

She surveyed them with pleased motherly interest, which Cowperwood

considered did her much credit. He was thinking that it would be

too bad if her hopes for her children should not be realized. Yet

possibly they might not be. Life was very grim. How strange, he

thought, was this type of woman--at once a sympathetic, affectionate

mother and a panderer to the vices of men. How strange that she

should have these children at all. Berenice had on a white skirt,

white tennis-shoes, a pale-cream silk waist or blouse, which fitted

her very loosely. Because of exercise her color was high--quite

pink--and her dusty, reddish hair was blowy. Though they turned

into the hedge gate and drove to the west entrance, which was at

one side of the house, there was no cessation of the game, not

even a glance from Berenice, so busy was she.

He was merely her mother's friend to her. Cowperwood noted, with

singular vividness of feeling, that the lines of her movements--the

fleeting, momentary positions she assumed--were full of a wondrous

natural charm. He wanted to say so to Mrs. Carter, but restrained

himself.

" It's a brisk game, " he commented, with a pleased glance. " You

play, do you? "

" Oh, I did. I don't much any more. Sometimes I try a set with

Rolfe or Bevy; but they both beat me so badly. "

" Bevy? Who is Bevy? "

" Oh, that's short of Berenice. It's what Rolfe called her when

he was a baby. "

" Bevy! I think that rather nice. "

" I always like it, too. Somehow it seems to suit her, and yet I

don't know why. "

Before dinner Berenice made her appearance, freshened by a bath

and clad in a light summer dress that appeared to Cowperwood to

be all flounces, and the more graceful in its lines for the

problematic absence of a corset. Her face and hands, however--a

face thin, long, and sweetly hollow, and hands that were slim and

sinewy--gripped and held his fancy. He was reminded in the least

degree of Stephanie; but this girl's chin was firmer and more

delicately, though more aggressively, rounded. Her eyes, too,

were shrewder and less evasive, though subtle enough.

" So I meet you again, " he observed, with a somewhat aloof air, as

she came out on the porch and sank listlessly into a wicker chair.

" The last time I met you you were hard at work in New York. "

" Breaking the rules. No, I forget; that was my easiest work. Oh,

Rolfe, " she called over her shoulder, indifferently, " I see your

pocket-knife out on the grass. "

Cowperwood, properly suppressed, waited a brief space. " Who won

that exciting game? "

" I did, of course. I always win at tether-ball. "

" Oh, do you? " commented Cowperwood.

" I mean with brother, of course. He plays so poorly. " She turned

to the west--the house faced south--and studied the road which

came up from Stroudsburg. " I do believe that's Harry Kemp, " she

added, quite to herself. " If so, he'll have my mail, if there is

any. "

She got up again and disappeared into the house, coming out a few

moments later to saunter down to the gate, which was over a hundred

feet away. To Cowperwood she seemed to float, so hale and graceful

was she. A smart youth in blue serge coat, white trousers, and

white shoes drove by in a high-seated trap.

" Two letters for you, " he called, in a high, almost falsetto voice.

" I thought you would have eight or nine. Blessed hot, isn't it? "

He had a smart though somewhat effeminate manner, and Cowperwood

at once wrote him down as an ass. Berenice took the mail with an

engaging smile. She sauntered past him reading, without so much

as a glance. Presently he heard her voice within.

" Mother, the Haggertys have invited me for the last week in August.

I have half a mind to cut Tuxedo and go. I like Bess Haggerty. "

" Well, you'll have to decide that, dearest. Are they going to be

at Tarrytown or Loon Lake? "

" Loon Lake, of course, " came Berenice's voice.

What a world of social doings she was involved in, thought Cowperwood.

She had begun well. The Haggertys were rich coal-mine operators

in Pennsylvania. Harris Haggerty, to whose family she was probably

referring, was worth at least six or eight million. The social

world they moved in was high.

They drove after dinner to The Saddler, at Saddler's Run, where a

dance and " moonlight promenade" was to be given. On the way over,

owing to the remoteness of Berenice, Cowperwood for the first time

in his life felt himself to be getting old. In spite of the vigor

of his mind and body, he realized constantly that he was over

fifty-two, while she was only seventeen. Why should this lure of

youth continue to possess him? She wore a white concoction of lace

and silk which showed a pair of smooth young shoulders and a slender,

queenly, inimitably modeled neck. He could tell by the sleek lines

of her arms how strong she was.

" It is perhaps too late, " he said to himself, in comment. " I am

getting old. "

The freshness of the hills in the pale night was sad.

Saddler's, when they reached there after ten, was crowded with the

youth and beauty of the vicinity. Mrs. Carter, who was prepossessing

in a ball costume of silver and old rose, expected that Cowperwood

would dance with her. And he did, but all the time his eyes were

on Berenice, who was caught up by one youth and another of dapper

mien during the progress of the evening and carried rhythmically

by in the mazes of the waltz or schottische. There was a new dance

in vogue that involved a gay, running step--kicking first one foot

and then the other forward, turning and running backward and kicking

again, and then swinging with a smart air, back to back, with one's

partner. Berenice, in her lithe, rhythmic way, seemed to him the

soul of spirited and gracious ease--unconscious of everybody and

everything save the spirit of the dance itself as a medium of sweet

emotion, of some far-off, dreamlike spirit of gaiety. He wondered.

He was deeply impressed.

" Berenice, " observed Mrs. Carter, when in an intermission she came

forward to where Cowperwood and she were sitting in the moonlight

discussing New York and Kentucky social life, " haven't you saved

one dance for Mr. Cowperwood? "

Cowperwood, with a momentary feeling of resentment, protested that

he did not care to dance any more. Mrs. Carter, he observed to

himself, was a fool.

" I believe, " said her daughter, with a languid air, " that I am

full up. I could break one engagement, though, somewhere. "

" Not for me, though, please, " pleaded Cowperwood. " I don't care

to dance any more, thank you. "

He almost hated her at the moment for a chilly cat. And yet he

did not.

" Why, Bevy, how you talk! I think you are acting very badly this

evening. "

" Please, please, " pleaded Cowperwood, quite sharply. " Not any

more. I don't care to dance any more. "

Bevy looked at him oddly for a moment--a single thoughtful glance.

" But I have a dance, though, " she pleaded, softly. " I was just

teasing. Won't you dance it with me?

" I can't refuse, of course, " replied Cowperwood, coldly.

" It's the next one, " she replied.

They danced, but he scarcely softened to her at first, so angry

was he. Somehow, because of all that had gone before, he felt

stiff and ungainly. She had managed to break in upon his natural

savoir faire--this chit of a girl. But as they went on through a

second half the spirit of her dancing soul caught him, and he felt

more at ease, quite rhythmic. She drew close and swept him into

a strange unison with herself.

" You dance beautifully, " he said.

" I love it, " she replied. She was already of an agreeable height

for him.

It was soon over. " I wish you would take me where the ices are, "

she said to Cowperwood.

He led her, half amused, half disturbed at her attitude toward him.

" You are having a pleasant time teasing me, aren't you? " he asked.

" I am only tired, " she replied. " The evening bores me. Really

it does. I wish we were all home. "

" We can go when you say, no doubt. "

As they reached the ices, and she took one from his hand, she

surveyed him with those cool, dull blue eyes of hers--eyes that

had the flat quality of unglazed Dutch tiles.

" I wish you would forgive me, " she said. " I was rude. I couldn't

help it. I am all out of sorts with myself. "

" I hadn't felt you were rude, " he observed, lying grandly, his

mood toward her changing entirely.

" Oh yes I was, and I hope you will forgive me. I sincerely wish

you would. "

" I do with all my heart--the little that there is to forgive. "

He waited to take her back, and yielded her to a youth who was

waiting. He watched her trip away in a dance, and eventually led

her mother to the trap. Berenice was not with them on the home

drive; some one else was bringing her. Cowperwood wondered when

she would come, and where was her room, and whether she was really

sorry, and-- As he fell asleep Berenice Fleming and her slate-blue

eyes were filling his mind completely.

Chapter XLIII

The Planet Mars

The banking hostility to Cowperwood, which in its beginning had

made necessary his trip to Kentucky and elsewhere, finally reached

a climax. It followed an attempt on his part to furnish funds for

the building of elevated roads. The hour for this new form of

transit convenience had struck. The public demanded it. Cowperwood

saw one elevated road, the South Side Alley Line, being built, and

another, the West Side Metropolitan Line, being proposed, largely,

as he knew, in order to create sentiment for the idea, and so to

make his opposition to a general franchise difficult. He was well

aware that if he did not choose to build them others would. It

mattered little that electricity had arrived finally as a perfected

traction factor, and that all his lines would soon have to be done

over to meet that condition, or that it was costing him thousands

and thousands to stay the threatening aspect of things politically.

In addition he must now plunge into this new realm, gaining

franchises by the roughest and subtlest forms of political bribery.

The most serious aspect of this was not political, but rather

financial. Elevated roads in Chicago, owing to the sparseness of

the population over large areas, were a serious thing to contemplate.

The mere cost of iron, right of way, rolling-stock, and power-plants

was immense. Being chronically opposed to investing his private

funds where stocks could just as well be unloaded on the public,

and the management and control retained by him, Cowperwood, for

the time being, was puzzled as to where he should get credit for

the millions to be laid down in structural steel, engineering fees,

labor, and equipment before ever a dollar could be taken out in

passenger fares. Owing to the advent of the World's Fair, the

South Side 'L'--to which, in order to have peace and quiet, he had

finally conceded a franchise--was doing reasonably well. Yet it

was not making any such return on the investment as the New York

roads. The new lines which he was preparing would traverse even

less populous sections of the city, and would in all likelihood

yield even a smaller return. Money had to be forthcoming--something

between twelve and fifteen million dollars--and this on the stocks

and bonds of a purely paper corporation which might not yield

paying dividends for years to come. Addison, finding that the

Chicago Trust Company was already heavily loaded, called upon

various minor but prosperous local banks to take over the new

securities (each in part, of course). He was astonished and

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