It was not so high, the wall, as massive, not so old as moss-covered. After Rudolph Côt, the painter, had achieved celebrity with his historical canvas, The Death of the Antique World, now in the Louvre, he bought the estate of Chalfontaine, which lies at the junction of two highroads: one leading to Ecouen, the other to Villiers-le-Bel. Almost touching the end of the park on the Ecouen side there is a little lake, hardly larger than a pool, and because of its melancholy aspect—sorrowful willows hem it about, drooping into stagnant waters—Monsieur Côt had christened the spot: The Dark Tarn of Auber. He was a fanatical lover of Poe, reading him in the Baudelaire translation, and openly avowing his preference for the French version of the great American's tales. That he could speak only five words of English did not deter his associates from considering him a profound critic of literature.
After his death his property and invested wealth passed into the hands of his youthful widow, a charming lady, a native of Burgundy, and—if gossip did not lie—a former model of the artist; indeed, some went so far as to assert that her face could be seen in her late husband's masterpiece—the figure of a young Greek slave attired as a joyous bacchante. But her friends always denied this. Her dignified bearing, sincere sorrow for her dead husband, and her motherly solicitude for her daughter left no doubt as to the value of all petty talk. It was her custom of summer evenings to walk to the pool, and with her daughter Berenice she would sit on the broad wall and watch the moon rise, or acknowledge the respectful salutations of the country folk with their bran-speckled faces. In those days Villiers-le-Bel was a dull town a half-hour from Paris on the Northern Railway, and about two miles from the station.
The widow was not long without offers. Her usual answer was to point out the tiny Berenice, playing in the garden with her nurse. Then a landscape painter, one of the Barbizon group, appeared, and, as a former associate of Rudolph Côt, and a man of means and position, his suit was successful. To the astonishment of Villiers-le-Bel, Madame Valerie Côt became Madame Théophile Mineur; on the day of the wedding little Berenice—named after a particularly uncanny heroine of Poe's by his relentless French admirer—scratched the long features of her stepfather. The entire town accepted this as a distressing omen and it was not deceived; Berenice Côt grew up in the likeness of a determined young lady whose mother weakly endured her tyranny, whose new father secretly feared her.
At the age of eighteen she had refused nearly all the young painters between Ecouen and Domaine de Vallières; and had spent several summers in England, and four years at a Lausanne school. She feared neither man nor mouse, and once, when she saw a famous Polish pianist walking on his terrace at Morges, she took him by the hand, asked for a lock of his hair, and was not refused by the amiable virtuoso. After that Berenice was the acknowledged leader of her class. The teachers trembled before her sparkling, wrathful black eyes. At home she ruled the household, and as she was an heiress no one dared to contradict her. Her contempt for her stepfather was only matched by her impatience in the company of young men. She pretended—so her intimates said—to loathe them. "Frivolous idiots" was her mildest form of reproof when an ambitious boy would trench upon her pet art theories or attempt to flirt. She called her mother "the lamb" and her stepfather "the parrot"—he had a long curved nose; all together she was very unlike the pattern French girl. Her favourite lounging place was the wall, and after she had draped it with a scarlet shawl and perched herself upon it, she was only too happy to worry any unfortunate man who presented himself.
The night Hubert Falcroft called at Chalfontaine Mademoiselle Élise Evergonde told him that her cousin, Madame Mineur, and Berenice had gone in the direction of the pool. He had walked over from the station, preferring the open air to the stuffy train. So a few vigorous steps brought to his view mother and daughter as they slowly moved, encircling each other's waist. The painter paused and noted the general loveliness of the picture; the setting sun had splashed the blue basin overhead with delicate pinks, and in the fretted edges of some high floating cloud-fleece there was a glint of fire. The smooth grass parquet swept gracefully to the semicircle of dark green trees, against the foliage of which the virginal white of the gowns was transposed to an ivory tone by the blue and green keys in sky and forest.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "paint in the foreground a few peacocks languidly dragging their gorgeous tails, and you have a Watteau or a Fragonard—no, a Monticelli! Only, Monticelli would have made the peacocks the central motive with the women and trees as an arabesque."
He was a portraitist who solemnly believed in the principle of decoration—character must take its chances when he painted. Falcroft was successful with women's heads, which he was fond of depicting in misty shadows framed by luxurious accessories. They called him the Master of Chiffon, at Julien's; when he threw overboard his old friends and joined the new crowd, their indignation was great. His title now was the Ribbon Impressionist, and at the last salon of the Independents, Falcroft had the mortification of seeing a battalion of his former companions at anchor in front of his picture, The Lady with the Cat, which they reviled for at least an hour. He was an American who had lived his life long in France, and only showed race in his nervous, brilliant technic and his fondness for bizarre subjects....
He had not stood many minutes when a young voice saluted him:—
"Ah, Monsieur Falcroft. Come, come quickly. Mamma is delighted to see you!" His mental picture was decomposed by the repeated waving of the famous shawl, which only came into view as Berenice turned. Hubert regretted that she had not worn it—the peacocks could have been exchanged for its vivid note of scarlet. Pretending not to have heard her speech, he gravely saluted the mother and daughter. But Berenice was unabashed.
"Mamma was wondering if you would visit us to-night, Monsieur Falcroft, when I saw you staring at us as if we were ghosts." A burst of malicious laughter followed.