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.
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 someone 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
