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?"
