The Titan 37 страница

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guests who recognized Braxmar and herself, hut 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.

Chapter LII

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.

Chapter LIII

A Declaration of Love

For the first time in her life Berenice now pondered seriously

what she could do. She thought of marriage, but decided that

instead of sending for Braxmar or taking up some sickening chase

of an individual even less satisfactory it might be advisable to

announce in a simple social way to her friends that her mother had

lost her money, and that she herself was now compelled to take up

some form of employment--the teaching of dancing, perhaps, or the

practice of it professionally. She suggested this calmly to her

mother one day. Mrs. Carter, who had been long a parasite really,

without any constructive monetary notions of real import, was

terrified. To think that she and " Bevy, " her wonderful daughter,

and by reaction her son, should come to anything so humdrum and

prosaic as ordinary struggling life, and after all her dreams.

She sighed and cried in secret, writing Cowperwood a cautious

explanation and asking him to see her privately in New York when

he returned.

" Don't you think we had best go on a little while longer? " she

suggested to Berenice. " It just wrings my heart to think that

you, with your qualifications, should have to stoop to giving

dancing-lessons. We had better do almost anything for a while

yet. You can make a suitable marriage, and then everything will

be all right for you. It doesn't matter about me. I can live.

But you--" Mrs. Carter's strained eyes indicated the misery she

felt. Berenice was moved by this affection for her, which she

knew to be genuine; but what a fool her mother had been, what a

weak reed, indeed, she was to lean upon! Cowperwood, when he

conferred with Mrs. Carter, insisted that Berenice was quixotic,

nervously awry, to wish to modify her state, to eschew society and

invalidate her wondrous charm by any sort of professional life.

By prearrangement with Mrs. Carter he hurried to Pocono at a time

when he knew that Berenice was there alone. Ever since the Beales

Chadsey incident she had been evading him.

When he arrived, as he did about one in the afternoon of a crisp

January day, there was snow on the ground, and the surrounding

landscape was bathed in a crystalline light that gave back to the

eye endless facets of luster--jewel beams that cut space with a

flash. The automobile had been introduced by now, and he rode in

a touring-car of eighty horse-power that gave back from its

dark-brown, varnished surface a lacquered light. In a great fur

coat and cap of round, black lamb's-wool he arrived at the door.

" Well, Bevy, " he exclaimed, pretending not to know of Mrs. Carter's

absence, " how are you? How's your mother? Is she in? "

Berenice fixed him with her cool, steady-gazing eyes, as frank and

incisive as they were daring, and smiled him an equivocal welcome.

She wore a blue denim painter's apron, and a palette of many

colors glistened under her thumb. She was painting and thinking

--thinking being her special occupation these days, and her thoughts

had been of Braxmar, Cowperwood, Kilmer Duelma, a half-dozen others,

as well as of the stage, dancing, painting. Her life was in a

melting-pot, as it were, before her; again it was like a disarranged

puzzle, the pieces of which might be fitted together into some

interesting picture if she could but endure.

" Do come in, " she said. " It's cold, isn't it? Well, there's a

nice fire here for you. No, mother isn't here. She went down to

New York. I should think you might have found her at the apartment.

Are you in New York for long? "

She was gay, cheerful, genial, but remote. Cowperwood felt the

protective gap that lay between him and her. It had always been

there. He felt that, even though she might understand and like

him, yet there was something--convention, ambition, or some

deficiency on his part--that was keeping her from him, keeping her

eternally distant.

He looked about the room, at the picture she was attempting (a

snow-scape, of a view down a slope), at the view itself which he

contemplated from the window, at some dancing sketches she had

recently executed and hung on the wall for the time being--lovely,

short tunic motives. He looked at her in her interesting and

becoming painter's apron. " Well, Berenice, " he said, " always the

artist first. It is your world. You will never escape it. These

things are beautiful. " He waved an ungloved hand in the direction

of a choric line. " It wasn't your mother I came to see, anyhow.

It is you. I had such a curious letter from her. She tells me

you want to give up society and take to teaching or something of

that sort. I came because I wanted to talk to you about that.

Don't you think you are acting rather hastily? "

He spoke now as though there were some reason entirely disassociated

from himself that was impelling him to this interest in her.

Berenice, brush in hand, standing by her picture, gave him a look

that was cool, curious, defiant, equivocal.

" No, I don't think so, " she replied, quietly. " You know how things

have been, so I may speak quite frankly. I know that mother's

intentions were always of the best. "

Her mouth moved with the faintest touch of sadness. " Her heart,

I am afraid, is better than her head. As for your motives, I am

satisfied to believe that they have been of the best also. I know

that they have been, in fact--it would be ungenerous of me to

suggest anything else. " (Cowperwood's fixed eyes, it seemed to

her, had moved somewhere in their deepest depths. ) " Yet I don't

feel we can go on as we have been doing. We have no money of our

own. Why shouldn't I do something? What else can I really do? "

She paused, and Cowperwood gazed at her, quite still. In her

informal, bunchy painter's apron, and with her blue eyes looking

out at him from beneath her loose red hair, it seemed to him she

was the most perfect thing he had ever known. Such a keen, fixed,

enthroned mind. She was so capable, so splendid, and, like his

own, her eyes were unafraid. Her spiritual equipoise was undisturbed.

" Berenice, " he said, quietly, " let me tell you something. You did

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