“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!
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
