Cowperwood was now actually transferring his possessions to New York, and had persuaded Aileen to accompany him. Fine compound of tact and chicane that he was, he had the effrontery to assure her that they could here create a happier social life. His present plan was to pretend a marital contentment which had no basis solely in order to make this transition period as undisturbed as possible. Subsequently he might get a divorce, or he might make an arrangement whereby his life would be rendered happy outside the social pale.
Of all this Berenice Fleming knew nothing at all. At the same time the building of this splendid mansion eventually awakened her to an understanding of the spirit of art that occupied the center of Cowperwood’s iron personality and caused her to take a real interest in him. Before this she had looked on him as a kind of Western interloper coming East and taking advantage of her mother’s good nature to scrape a little social courtesy. Now, however, all that Mrs. Carter had been telling her of his personality and achievements was becoming crystallized into a glittering chain of facts. This house, the papers were fond of repeating, would be a jewel of rare workmanship. Obviously the Cowperwoods were going to try to enter society. “What a pity it is,” Mrs. Carter once said to Berenice, “that he couldn’t have gotten a divorce from his wife before he began all this. I am so afraid they will never be received. He would be if he only had the right woman; but she—” Mrs. Carter, who had once seen Aileen in Chicago, shook her head doubtfully. “She is not the type,” was her comment. “She has neither the air nor the understanding.”
“If he is so unhappy with her,” observed Berenice, thoughtfully, “why doesn’t he leave her? She can be happy without him. It is so silly—this cat-and-dog existence. Still I suppose she values the position he gives her,” she added, “since she isn’t so interesting herself.”
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Carter, “that he married her twenty years ago, when he was a very different man from what he is to-day. She is not exactly coarse, but not clever enough. She cannot do what he would like to see done. I hate to see mismatings of this kind, and yet they are so common. I do hope, Bevy, that when you marry it will be some one with whom you can get along, though I do believe I would rather see you unhappy than poor.”
This was delivered as an early breakfast peroration in Central Park South, with the morning sun glittering on one of the nearest park lakes. Bevy, in spring-green and old-gold, was studying the social notes in one of the morning papers.
“I think I should prefer to be unhappy with wealth than to be without it,” she said, idly, without looking up.
Her mother surveyed her admiringly, conscious of her imperious mood. What was to become of her? Would she marry well? Would she marry in time? Thus far no breath of the wretched days in Louisville had affected Berenice. Most of those with whom Mrs. Carter had found herself compelled to deal would be kind enough to keep her secret. But there were others. How near she had been to drifting on the rocks when Cowperwood had appeared!
“After all,” observed Berenice, thoughtfully, “Mr. Cowperwood isn’t a mere money-grabber, is he? So many of these Western moneyed men are so dull.”
“My dear,” exclaimed Mrs. Carter, who by now had become a confirmed satellite of her secret protector, “you don’t understand him at all. He is a very astonishing man, I tell you. The world is certain to hear a lot more of Frank Cowperwood before he dies. You can say what you please, but some one has to make the money in the first place. It’s little enough that good breeding does for you in poverty. I know, because I’ve seen plenty of our friends come down.”
In the new house, on a scaffold one day, a famous sculptor and his assistants were at work on a Greek frieze which represented dancing nymphs linked together by looped wreaths. Berenice and her mother happened to be passing. They stopped to look, and Cowperwood joined them. He waved his hand at the figures of the frieze, and said to Berenice, with his old, gay air, “If they had copied you they would have done better.”
“How charming of you!” she replied, with her cool, strange, blue eyes fixed on him. “They are beautiful.” In spite of her earlier prejudices she knew now that he and she had one god in common—Art; and that his mind was fixed on things beautiful as on a shrine.
He merely looked at her.
“This house can be little more than a museum to me,” he remarked, simply, when her mother was out of hearing; “but I shall build it as perfectly as I can. Perhaps others may enjoy it if I do not.”
She looked at him musingly, understandingly, and he smiled. She realized, of course, that he was trying to convey to her that he was lonely.
Chapter LI.
The Revival of Hattie Starr
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.