Chapter 33

Throughout this turmoil of business affairs—which had been punctuated by the departure of Aileen for Paris and Berenice’s activities in connection with Pryor’s Cove—Cowperwood had had to content himself with mere glimpses of his loved one. She was so busy, apparently, shopping and arranging things. The graceful trivialities with which she amused herself, however, only served to make her more of an intriguing personality in his eyes. She is so alive, he often said to himself. She desires things and enjoys them intensely, and makes me do so. She appears to be interested in everything, and therefore people are naturally interested in her.

And now, on his first visit to Pryor’s Cove, he found the place completely equipped: cook, maids, housekeeper, butler, to say nothing of the outdoor staff maintained by Stane. And Berenice herself affecting an interest—or pose, he could not say which—in regard to the charms of this rustic life. So often her love of nature appeared to be genuine, and even affecting: a bird, a tree, a flower, a butterfly—she was ecstatic. Marie Antoinette could have played the part no better. When he arrived, she was out with the shepherd, who had assembled the sheep and lambs for her inspection. As his carriage rolled into the drive, she gathered into her arms one of the smallest and wooliest of the new lambs. She made a picture which delighted but in no way deceived him. Acting, and for my benefit, was his thought.

“The shepherdess and her sheep! ” he exclaimed, stepping forward and touching the head of the lamb in her arms. “These charming creatures! They come and go like the spring flowers.”

His glance acknowledged the artistry of her dress, although he said nothing. He understood clearly that for her to effect an unusual costume was natural. She would pretend to be unconscious of the significance of her poses, considering them natural to herself, a privilege as well as an obligation that was a part of her physical gifts.

“You should have come a little earlier, ” she said. “You might have met our neighbor, Arthur Tavistock. He’s been helping me arrange things. He had to go to London, but he’s coming tomorrow to do some more work.”

“Really! What a practical chatelaine! Employing her guests! Is this a place where work is to be the chief form of entertainment? What am I to do? ”

“Run errands. And lots of them, too.”

“But I began life that way.”

“Be careful that you don’t end it that way.” She took his arm. “Come along with me, dear. Here, Dobson! ” she called to the shepherd, who came forward and took the lamb from her arms.

They walked across the smooth green lawn to the houseboat. There, on the awninged veranda, a table was spread. Inside, at one of the boat’s open windows, Mrs. Carter was reading. After Cowperwood had greeted her cordially, Berenice led him over to the table.

“Now, you’re to sit here and contemplate nature, ” she ordered. “Just relax and forget all about London.” Then she put before him his favorite drink, a mint julep. “There! Now let me tell you some of the things I have in mind that we could do, if you’re going to have any time. Are you? ”

“All the time in the world, sweet, ” he said. “I’ve arranged things. We are free. Aileen has gone to Paris, ” he added confidentially, “and from what she said, I don’t expect her back under ten days. Now, what’s on your mind? ”

“A tour of some of the English cathedrals for mother, daughter, and guardian! ” she replied, promptly. “I have always wanted to see Canterbury and York and Wells. Don’t you think we might take the time to do that, since we can’t very well go to the Continent? ”

“I think it would be ideal. I have never seen much of England, and it will be a treat for me. We can be alone.” He took her hand in his, while she touched his hair with her lips.

“I don’t think I’m not keeping up with all this noise about you in the papers, ” she said. “Already, the fact that the great Cowperwood is my guardian has gotten around. My furniture mover wanted to know if my guardian and the American millionaire talked of in the Chronicle were the same person. I had to admit it. But Arthur Tavistock seems to think it natural enough for me to have so distinguished a mentor.”

Cowperwood smiled.

“I suppose you’ve considered the servants and what they are likely to think.”

“I certainly have, dearest! Troublesome, but necessary. That is the reason I want us to take the trip. Now, if you’re rested I want to show you something interesting.” And she smiled as she signaled Cowperwood to follow her.

She led the way to a bedroom which was beyond the central hall, opened a bureau drawer and extracted from it a pair of hairbrushes, with the coat of arms of the Earl of Stane engraved on the silver backs; also a stray collar button, and several hairpins.

“If hairpins could be identified as easily as hairbrushes, these things might prove a romance, ” she said, mischievously. “But the noble lord’s secret is going to be kept by me.”

At that moment, from under the trees surrounding the cottage, came the sound of a sheep bell.

“There! ” she exclaimed, as it ceased. “When you hear that, wherever you are, you’re to come to dinner. It’s going to take the place of a bowing butler.”

The trip, as Berenice planned it, was to start south from London, with perhaps a stop at Rochester, and then on to Canterbury. After paying homage to that exquisite poem in stone, they were to motor to some modest streamside inn on the river Stour—no great hotel or resort to break the aesthetic simplicity of this tour—where they would enjoy a room with a fire and the simplest of English fare. For Berenice had been reading Chaucer and books on these English cathedrals, and she hoped to recapture the spirit in which they were conceived. From Canterbury they would go to Winchester, and from there to Salisbury, and from Salisbury to Stonehenge; from thence to Wells, Glastonbury, Bath, Oxford, Peterborough, York, Cambridge, and then home again. But always, as she insisted, the purely conventional was to be avoided. They were to seek the smallest of inns and the simplest of villages.

“It will be good for us, ” she insisted. “We pamper ourselves too much. If you study all these lovely things, you may build better subways.”

“And you ought to be content with simple cotton dresses! ” said Cowperwood.

For Cowperwood, the real charm of their vacation trip was not the cathedrals or the village cottages and inns. It was the changeful vividness of Berenice’s temperament and tastes that held him. There was not a single woman of his acquaintance who, given a choice of Paris and the Continent in early May, would have selected the cathedral towns of England. But Berenice was apart from others in that she seemed to find within herself the pleasures and fulfilments which she most craved.

At Rochester, they listened to a guide who talked of King John, William Rufus, Simon de Montfort, and Watt Tyler, all of whom Cowperwood dismissed as mere shadows, men or creatures who had once had their day and selfish notions of one kind or another and had moved on to pass into nothing, as would all who were here. He liked better the sunlight on the river and the sense of spring in the air. Even Berenice seemed a little disappointed at the somewhat commonplace view.

But at Canterbury the mood of all changed greatly, even that of Mrs. Carter, who was by no means interested in religious architecture. “Well, now, I like this place, ” she commented, as they entered one of its winding streets.

“I want to find out by which road the pilgrims came, ” said Berenice. “I wonder if it was this one. Oh, look, there’s the cathedral! ” and she pointed to a tower and spandril visible above the low roof of a stone cottage.

“Lovely! ” commented Cowperwood. “And a delightful afternoon for it, too. Do we have lunch first, or feast on the cathedral instead? ”

“The cathedral first! ” replied Berenice.

“And eat a cold lunch afterwards, I suppose, ” put in her mother, sarcastically.

“Mother! ” chided Berenice. “And at Canterbury, of all places! ”

“Well, I happen to know something of these English inns, and I know how important it is not to be last if we can’t be the first, ” said Mrs. Carter.

“And there you have the power of religion in 1900! ” remarked Cowperwood. “It must wait on a country inn.”

“I haven’t a word to say against religion, ” persisted Mrs. Carter, “but churches are different. They haven’t a thing to do with it.”

Canterbury. The tenth-century close, with its rabble of winding streets, and within its walls, silence and the stately, time-blackened spires, pinnacles, and buttresses of the cathedral itself. Jackdaws fluttering and quarreling over the vantage points. Within, a welter of tombs, altars, tablets, shrines: Henry IV, Thomas à Becket, Archbishop Laud, the Huguenots, and Edward, the Black Prince. Berenice could scarcely be drawn away. Guides and flocks of sightseers were slowly parading from memory to memory. In the crypt where the Huguenots lived and found shelter, worshipped and wove their clothes, she stayed to meditate, guide-book in hand. And so, too, at the spot where Thomas à Becket was killed.

Cowperwood, who saw things in the large, could scarcely endure this minutae. He was but little interested in the affairs of bygone men and women, being so intensely engaged with the living present. And after a time he slipped outside, preferring the wide sweep of gardens, with their flower-lined walks and views of the cathedral. Its arches and towers and stained-glass windows, this whole carefully executed shrine, still held glamor, but all because of the hands and brains, aspirations and dreams of selfish and self-preserving creatures like himself. And so many of these, as he now mused, walking about, had warred over possession of this church. And now they were within its walls, graced and made respectable, the noble dead! Was any man noble? Had there ever been such a thing as an indubitably noble soul? He was scarcely prepared to believe it. Men killed to live—all of them—and wallowed in lust in order to reproduce themselves. In fact, wars, vanities, pretenses, cruelties, greeds, lusts, murder, spelled their true history, with only the weak running to a mythical saviour or god for aid. And the strong using this belief in a god to further the conquest of the weak. And by such temples or shrines as this. He looked, meditated, and was somehow touched with the futility of so much that was still so beautiful.

But occasional glimpses of Berenice, poised attentively over a cross or religious inscription, were sufficient to restore him. There was about her at such moments a seemingly non-material as well as mentally contemplative grace which brushed aside the tang of that pagan modernity which at other times gave her the force and glare of a red flower in a gray rock. Perhaps, as he now reasoned with himself, her reaction to these faded memories and forms, joined, as it was, with her delight in luxury, was not unakin to his own personal delight in paintings and his pleasure in power. Because of this he was moved to respect, and all the more so when, the pilgrimage over, they were finally preparing to leave for dinner, she exclaimed: “We’re coming back here this evening after dinner! There will be a new moon.”

“Indeed! ” said Cowperwood, amusedly.

Mrs. Carter yawned and announced that she would not return. She was going to her room after dinner.

“Very well, Mother, ” said Berenice, “but Frank must come back for the good of his soul! ”

“There you are! I have a soul! ” said Cowperwood, indulgently. So later, after a simple meal at the inn, Berenice led him down the darkening street. As they entered the carved black gate that led into the close, the moon, a new white feather in a roof of blue-black steel, seemed but an ornament of the topmost pinnacle of the long silhouette of the cathedral. At first, engaged by the temperamental whim of Berenice, Cowperwood stared dutifully. But presently, it was the blend of her own response that swayed him. Oh, to be young, to be so thrilled, to be so deeply moved by color, form, the mystery and meaninglessness of human activity!

But Berenice was not thinking only of the faded memories and jumble of hopes and fears that had produced all this, but also of the mystery and immensity of voiceless time and space. Ah, to have understanding, knowledge! To think earnestly and seekingly for some reason or excuse for life! Was her own life merely to be one of clever, calculating, and ruthless determination to fulfil herself socially, or as an individual? What benefit could that be, to her or to anyone? What beauty would that create or inspire? Now... here... in this place... perfumed with memories and moonlight... something was at her elbow and in her heart... something that whispered of quiet and peace... solitude... fulfilment... a desire to create something utterly beautiful, so that her life would be complete and significant.

But... this was wild dreaming... the moon had bewitched her. Why should she want anything? She had all that women desired.

“Let’s go back, Frank, ” she said, at last, something within herself failing her, some sense of beauty gone forever. “Let’s go back to the inn.”