He stared at them from an adjacent room, where he pretended to be reading, and sighed. Alas, how was his cunning and foresight --even his--to overcome the drift of life itself? How was he to make himself appealing to youth? Braxmar had the years, the color, the bearing. Berenice seemed to-night, as she prepared to leave, to be fairly seething with youth, hope, gaiety. He arose after a few moments and, giving business as an excuse, hurried away. But it was only to sit in his own rooms in a neighboring hotel and meditate. The logic of the ordinary man under such circumstances, compounded of the age-old notions of chivalry, self-sacrifice, duty to higher impulses, and the like, would have been to step aside in favor of youth, to give convention its day, and retire in favor of morality and virtue. Cowperwood saw things in no such moralistic or altruistic light. "I satisfy myself," had ever been his motto, and under that, however much he might sympathize with Berenice in love or with love itself, he was not content to withdraw until he was sure that the end of hope for him had really come.
There had been moments between him and Berenice--little approximations toward intimacy--which had led him to believe that by no means was she seriously opposed to him. At the same time this business of the Lieutenant, so Mrs. Carter confided to him a little later, was not to be regarded lightly. While Berenice might not care so much, obviously Braxmar did.
"Ever since he has been away he has been storming her with letters," she remarked to Cowperwood, one afternoon. "I don't think he is the kind that can be made to take no for an answer.
"A very successful kind," commented Cowperwood, dryly. Mrs. Carter was eager for advice in the matter. Braxmar was a man of parts.
She knew his connections. He would inherit at least six hundred thousand dollars at his father's death, if not more. What about her Louisville record? Supposing that should come out later? Would it not be wise for Berenice to marry, and have the danger over with?
"It is a problem, isn't it?" observed Cowperwood, calmly. "Are you sure she's in love?"
"Oh, I wouldn't say that, but such things so easily turn into love.
I have never believed that Berenice could be swept off her feet by any one--she is so thoughtful--but she knows she has her own way to make in the world, and Mr. Braxmar is certainly eligible.
I know his cousins, the Clifford Porters, very well."
Cowperwood knitted his brows. He was sick to his soul with this worry over Berenice. He felt that he must have her, even at the cost of inflicting upon her a serious social injury. Better that she should surmount it with him than escape it with another. It so happened, however, that the final grim necessity of acting on any such idea was spared him.
Imagine a dining-room in one of the principal hotels of New York, the hour midnight, after an evening at the opera, to which Cowperwood, as host, had invited Berenice, Lieutenant Braxmar, and Mrs. Carter.
He was now playing the role of disinterested host and avuncular mentor.
His attitude toward Berenice, meditating, as he was, a course which should be destructive to Braxmar, was gentle, courteous, serenely thoughtful. Like a true Mephistopheles he was waiting, surveying Mrs. Carter and Berenice, who were seated in front chairs clad in such exotic draperies as opera-goers affect--Mrs. Carter in pale-lemon silk and diamonds; Berenice in purple and old-rose, with a jeweled comb in her hair. The Lieutenant in his dazzling uniform smiled and talked blandly, complimented the singers, whispered pleasant nothings to Berenice, descanted at odd moments to Cowperwood on naval personages who happened to be present.
Coming out of the opera and driving through blowy, windy streets to the Waldorf, they took the table reserved for them, and Cowperwood, after consulting with regard to the dishes and ordering the wine, went back reminiscently to the music, which had been "La Boheme."
The death of Mimi and the grief of Rodolph, as voiced by the splendid melodies of Puccini, interested him.
"That makeshift studio world may have no connection with the genuine professional artist, but it's very representative of life," he remarked.
"I don't know, I'm sure," said Braxmar, seriously.
"All I know of Bohemia is what I have read in books--Trilby, for instance, and--" He could think of no other, and stopped. "I suppose it is that way in Paris."
He looked at Berenice for confirmation and to win a smile. Owing to her mobile and sympathetic disposition, she had during the opera been swept from period to period by surges of beauty too gay or pathetic for words, but clearly comprehended of the spirit. Once when she had been lost in dreamy contemplation, her hands folded on her knees, her eyes fixed on the stage, both Braxmar and Cowperwood had studied her parted lips and fine profile with common impulses of emotion and enthusiasm. Realizing after the mood was gone that they had been watching her, Berenice had continued the pose for a moment, then had waked as from a dream with a sigh.
This incident now came back to her as well as her feeling in regard to the opera generally.
"It is very beautiful," she said; "I do not know what to say.
People are like that, of course. It is so much better than just dull comfort. Life is really finest when it's tragic, anyhow."
She looked at Cowperwood, who was studying her; then at Braxmar, who saw himself for the moment on the captain's bridge of a battle-ship commanding in time of action. To Cowperwood came back many of his principal moments of difficulty. Surely his life had been sufficiently dramatic to satisfy her.
"I don't think I care so much for it," interposed Mrs. Carter.
"One gets tired of sad happenings. We have enough drama in real life."
