It was on the lawn of Forest Edge that Cowperwood now saw Berenice. The latter had had the gardener set up a tall pole, to which was attached a tennis-ball by a cord, and she and Rolfe were hard at work on a game of tether-ball. Cowperwood, after a telegram to Mrs. Carter, had been met at the station in Pocono by her and rapidly driven out to the house. The green hills pleased him, the up-winding, yellow road, the silver-gray cottage with the brown-shingle roof in the distance. It was three in the afternoon, and bright for a sinking sun.
“There they are now,” observed Mrs. Carter, cheerful and smiling, as they came out from under a low ledge that skirted the road a little way from the cottage. Berenice, executing a tripping, running step to one side, was striking the tethered ball with her racquet. “They are hard at it, as usual. Two such romps!”
She surveyed them with pleased motherly interest, which Cowperwood considered did her much credit. He was thinking that it would be too bad if her hopes for her children should not be realized. Yet possibly they might not be. Life was very grim. How strange, he thought, was this type of woman—at once a sympathetic, affectionate mother and a panderer to the vices of men. How strange that she should have these children at all. Berenice had on a white skirt, white tennis-shoes, a pale-cream silk waist or blouse, which fitted her very loosely. Because of exercise her color was high—quite pink—and her dusty, reddish hair was blowy. Though they turned into the hedge gate and drove to the west entrance, which was at one side of the house, there was no cessation of the game, not even a glance from Berenice, so busy was she.
He was merely her mother’s friend to her. Cowperwood noted, with singular vividness of feeling, that the lines of her movements—the fleeting, momentary positions she assumed—were full of a wondrous natural charm. He wanted to say so to Mrs. Carter, but restrained himself.
“It’s a brisk game,” he commented, with a pleased glance. “You play, do you?”
“Oh, I did. I don’t much any more. Sometimes I try a set with Rolfe or Bevy; but they both beat me so badly.”
“Bevy? Who is Bevy?”
“Oh, that’s short of Berenice. It’s what Rolfe called her when he was a baby.”
“Bevy! I think that rather nice.”
“I always like it, too. Somehow it seems to suit her, and yet I don’t know why.”
Before dinner Berenice made her appearance, freshened by a bath and clad in a light summer dress that appeared to Cowperwood to be all flounces, and the more graceful in its lines for the problematic absence of a corset. Her face and hands, however—a face thin, long, and sweetly hollow, and hands that were slim and sinewy—gripped and held his fancy. He was reminded in the least degree of Stephanie; but this girl’s chin was firmer and more delicately, though more aggressively, rounded. Her eyes, too, were shrewder and less evasive, though subtle enough.
“So I meet you again,” he observed, with a somewhat aloof air, as she came out on the porch and sank listlessly into a wicker chair. “The last time I met you you were hard at work in New York.”
“Breaking the rules. No, I forget; that was my easiest work. Oh, Rolfe,” she called over her shoulder, indifferently, “I see your pocket-knife out on the grass.”
Cowperwood, properly suppressed, waited a brief space. “Who won that exciting game?”
“I did, of course. I always win at tether-ball.”
“Oh, do you?” commented Cowperwood.
“I mean with brother, of course. He plays so poorly.” She turned to the west—the house faced south—and studied the road which came up from Stroudsburg. “I do believe that’s Harry Kemp,” she added, quite to herself. “If so, he’ll have my mail, if there is any.”
She got up again and disappeared into the house, coming out a few moments later to saunter down to the gate, which was over a hundred feet away. To Cowperwood she seemed to float, so hale and graceful was she. A smart youth in blue serge coat, white trousers, and white shoes drove by in a high-seated trap.
“Two letters for you,” he called, in a high, almost falsetto voice. “I thought you would have eight or nine. Blessed hot, isn’t it?” He had a smart though somewhat effeminate manner, and Cowperwood at once wrote him down as an ass. Berenice took the mail with an engaging smile. She sauntered past him reading, without so much as a glance. Presently he heard her voice within.