The Titan 18 страница

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pity! It was Gardner Knowles who had done this, she admitted. But

he was not very much to blame, either. It just happened. She had

tried to protest, but-- Wasn't she angry? Yes, but then she was

sorry to do anything to hurt Gardner Knowles. He was such a charming

boy, and he had such a lovely mother and sister, and the like.

Cowperwood was astonished. He had reached that point in life where

the absence of primal innocence in a woman was not very significant;

but in Stephanie, seeing that she was so utterly charming, it was

almost too bad. He thought what fools the Platows must be to

tolerate this art atmosphere for Stephanie without keeping a sharp

watch over it. Nevertheless, he was inclined to believe from

observation thus far that Stephanie might be hard to watch. She

was ingrainedly irresponsible, apparently--so artistically nebulous,

so non-self-protective. To go on and be friends with this scamp!

And yet she protested that never after that had there been the

least thing between them. Cowperwood could scarcely believe it.

She must be lying, and yet he liked her so. The very romantic,

inconsequential way in which she narrated all this staggered,

amused, and even fascinated him.

" But, Stephanie, " he argued, curiously, " there must been some

aftermath to all this. What happened? What did you do? "

" Nothing. " She shook her head.

He had to smile.

" But oh, don't let's talk about it! " she pleaded. " I don't want

to. It hurts me. There was nothing more. "

She sighed, and Cowperwood meditated. The evil was now done, and

the best that he could do, if he cared for her at all--and he

did--was to overlook it. He surveyed her oddly, wonderingly.

What a charming soul she was, anyhow! How naive--how brooding! She

had art--lots of it. Did he want to give her up?

As he might have known, it was dangerous to trifle with a type of

this kind, particularly once awakened to the significance of

promiscuity, and unless mastered by some absorbing passion.

Stephanie had had too much flattery and affection heaped upon her

in the past two years to be easily absorbed. Nevertheless, for

the time being, anyhow, she was fascinated by the significance of

Cowperwood. It was wonderful to have so fine, so powerful a man

care for her. She conceived of him as a very great artist in his

realm rather than as a business man, and he grasped this fact

after a very little while and appreciated it. To his delight, she

was even more beautiful physically than he had anticipated--a

smoldering, passionate girl who met him with a fire which, though

somber, quite rivaled his own. She was different, too, in her

languorous acceptance of all that he bestowed from any one he had

ever known. She was as tactful as Rita Sohlberg--more so--but so

preternaturally silent at times.

" Stephanie, " he would exclaim, " do talk. What are you thinking

of? You dream like an African native. "

She merely sat and smiled in a dark way or sketched or modeled

him. She was constantly penciling something, until moved by the

fever of her blood, when she would sit and look at him or brood

silently, eyes down. Then, when he would reach for her with seeking

hands, she would sigh, " Oh yes, oh yes! "

Those were delightful days with Stephanie.

In the matter of young MacDonald's request for fifty thousand

dollars in securities, as well as the attitude of the other

editors--Hyssop, Braxton, Ricketts, and so on--who had proved

subtly critical, Cowperwood conferred with Addison and McKenty.

" A likely lad, that, " commented McKenty, succintly, when he heard

it. " He'll do better than his father in one way, anyhow. He'll

probably make more money. "

McKenty had seen old General MacDonald just once in his life, and

liked him.

" I should like to know what the General would think of that if he

knew, " commented Addison, who admired the old editor greatly.

" I'm afraid he wouldn't sleep very well. "

" There is just one thing, " observed Cowperwood, thoughtfully.

" This young man will certainly come into control of the Inquirer

sometime. He looks to me like some one who would not readily

forget an injury. " He smiled sardonically. So did McKenty and

Addison.

" Be that as it may, " suggested the latter, " he isn't editor yet. "

McKenty, who never revealed his true views to any one but Cowperwood,

waited until he had the latter alone to observe:

What can they do? Your request is a reasonable one. Why shouldn't

the city give you the tunnel? It's no good to anyone as it is.

And the loop is no more than the other roads have now. I'm thinking

it's the Chicago City Railway and that silk-stocking crowd on State

Street or that gas crowd that's talking against you. I've heard

them before. Give them what they want, and it's a fine moral

cause. Give it to anyone else, and there's something wrong with

it. It's little attention I pay to them. We have the council,

let it pass the ordinances. It can't be proved that they don't

do it willingly. The mayor is a sensible man. He'll sign them.

Let young MacDonald talk if he wants to. If he says too much you

can talk to his father. As for Hyssop, he's an old grandmother

anyhow. I've never known him to be for a public improvement yet

that was really good for Chicago unless Schryhart or Merrill or

Arneel or someone else of that crowd wanted it. I know them of

old. My advice is to go ahead and never mind them. To hell with

them! Things will be sweet enough, once you are as powerful as

they are. They'll get nothing in the future without paying for

it. It's little enough they've ever done to further anything that

I wanted.

Cowperwood, however, remained cool and thoughtful. Should he pay

young MacDonald? he asked himself. Addison knew of no influence

that he could bring to bear. Finally, after much thought, he

decided to proceed as he had planned. Consequently, the reporters

around the City Hall and the council-chamber, who were in touch

with Alderman Thomas Dowling, McKenty's leader on the floor of

council, and those who called occasionally--quite regularly, in

fact--at the offices of the North Chicago Street Railway Company,

Cowperwood's comfortable new offices in the North Side, were now

given to understand that two ordinances--one granting the free use

of the La Salle Street tunnel for an unlimited period (practically

a gift of it), and another granting a right of way in La Salle,

Munroe, Dearborn, and Randolph streets for the proposed loop--would

be introduced in council very shortly. Cowperwood granted a very

flowery interview, in which he explained quite enthusiastically

all that the North Chicago company was doing and proposed to do,

and made clear what a splendid development it would assure to the

North Side and to the business center.

At once Schryhart, Merrill, and some individuals connected with

the Chicago West Division Company, began to complain in the newspaper

offices and at the clubs to Ricketts, Braxton, young MacDonald,

and the other editors. Envy of the pyrotechnic progress of the

man was as much a factor in this as anything else. It did not

make the slightest difference, as Cowperwood had sarcastically

pointed out, that every other corporation of any significance in

Chicago had asked and received without money and without price.

Somehow his career in connection with Chicago gas, his venturesome,

if unsuccessful effort to enter Chicago society, his self-acknowledged

Philadelphia record, rendered the sensitive cohorts of the

ultra-conservative exceedingly fearful. In Schryhart's Chronicle

appeared a news column which was headed, " Plain Grab of City Tunnel

Proposed. " It was a very truculent statement, and irritated

Cowperwood greatly. The Press (Mr. Haguenin's paper), on the other

hand, was most cordial to the idea of the loop, while appearing

to be a little uncertain as to whether the tunnel should be granted

without compensation or not. Editor Hyssop felt called upon to

insist that something more than merely nominal compensation should

be made for the tunnel, and that " riders" should be inserted in

the loop ordinance making it incumbent upon the North Chicago

company to keep those thoroughfares in full repair and well lighted.

The Inquirer, under Mr. MacDonald, junior, and Mr. Du Bois, was

in rumbling opposition. No free tunnels, it cried; no free

ordinances for privileges in the down-town heart. It had nothing

to say about Cowperwood personally. The Globe, Mr. Braxton's

paper, was certain that no free rights to the tunnel should be

given, and that a much better route for the loop could be found--one

larger and more serviceable to the public, one that might be made

to include State Street or Wabash Avenue, or both, where Mr.

Merrill's store was located. So it went, and one could see quite

clearly to what extent the interests of the public figured in the

majority of these particular viewpoints.

Cowperwood, individual, reliant, utterly indifferent to opposition

of any kind, was somewhat angered by the manner in which his

overtures had been received, but still felt that the best way out

of his troubles was to follow McKenty's advice and get power first.

Once he had his cable-conduit down, his new cars running, the

tunnel rebuilt, brilliantly lighted, and the bridge crush disposed

of, the public would see what a vast change for the better had

been made and would support him. Finally all things were in readiness

and the ordinance jammed through. McKenty, being a little dubious

of the outcome, had a rocking-chair brought into the council-chamber

itself during the hours when the ordinances were up for consideration.

In this he sat, presumably as a curious spectator, actually as a

master dictating the course of liquidation in hand. Neither

Cowperwood nor any one else knew of McKenty's action until too

late to interfere with it. Addison and Videra, when they read

about it as sneeringly set forth in the news columns of the papers,

lifted and then wrinkled their eyebrows.

" That looks like pretty rough work to me, " commented Addison. " I

thought McKenty had more tact. That's his early Irish training. "

Alexander Rambaud, who was an admirer and follower of Cowperwood's,

wondered whether the papers were lying, whether it really could

be true that Cowperwood had a serious political compact with McKenty

which would allow him to walk rough-shod over public opinion.

Rambaud considered Cowperwood's proposition so sane and reasonable

that he could not understand why there should be serious opposition,

or why Cowperwood and McKenty should have to resort to such methods.

However, the streets requisite for the loop were granted. The

tunnel was leased for nine hundred and ninety-nine years at the

nominal sum of five thousand dollars per year. It was understood

that the old bridges over State, Dearborn, and Clark streets should

be put in repair or removed; but there was " a joker" inserted

elsewhere which nullified this. Instantly there were stormy

outbursts in the Chronicle, Inquirer, and Globe; but Cowperwood,

when he read them, merely smiled. " Let them grumble, " he said to

himself. " I put a very reasonable proposition before them. Why

should they complain? I'm doing more now than the Chicago City

Railway. It's jealousy, that's all. If Schryhart or Merrill had

asked for it, there would have been no complaint.

McKenty called at the offices of the Chicago Trust Company to

congratulate Cowperwood. " The boys did as I thought they would, "

he said. " I had to be there, though, for I heard some one say

that about ten of them intended to ditch us at the last moment. "

" Good work, good work! " replied Cowperwood, cheerfully. " This row

will all blow over. It would be the same whenever we asked. The

air will clear up. We'll give them such a fine service that they'll

forget all about this, and be glad they gave us the tunnel. "

Just the same, the morning after the enabling ordinances had passed,

there was much derogatory comment in influential quarters. Mr.

Norman Schryhart, who, through his publisher, had been fulminating

defensively against Cowperwood, stared solemnly at Mr. Ricketts

when they met.

" Well, " said the magnate, who imagined he foresaw a threatened

attack on his Chicago City Street Railway preserves, " I see our

friend Mr. Cowperwood has managed to get his own way with the

council. I am morally certain he uses money to get what he is

after as freely as a fireman uses water. He's as slippery as an

eel. I should be glad if we could establish that there is a

community of interest between him and these politicians around

City Hall, or between him and Mr. McKenty. I believe he has set

out to dominate this city politically as well as financially, and

he'll need constant watching. If public opinion can be aroused

against him he may be dislodged in the course of time. Chicago

may get too uncomfortable for him. I know Mr. McKenty personally,

but he is not the kind of man I care to do business with. "

Mr. Schryhart's method of negotiating at City Hall was through

certain reputable but somewhat slow-going lawyers who were in the

employ of the South Side company. They had never been able to

reach Mr. McKenty at all. Ricketts echoed a hearty approval.

" You're very right, " he said, with owlish smugness, adjusting a

waistcoat button that had come loose, and smoothing his cuffs.

" He's a prince of politicians. We'll have to look sharp if we

ever trap him" Mr. Ricketts would have been glad to sell out to Mr.

Cowperwood, if he had not been so heavily obligated to Mr. Schryhart.

He had no especial affection for Cowperwood, but he recognized

in him a coming man.

Young MacDonald, talking to Clifford Du Bois in the office of the

Inquirer, and reflecting how little his private telephone message

had availed him, was in a waspish, ironic frame of mind.

" Well, " he said, " it seems our friend Cowperwood hasn't taken our

advice. He may make his mark, but the Inquirer isn't through with

him by a long shot. He'll be wanting other things from the city

in the future. "

Clifford Du Bois regarded his acid young superior with a curious

eye. He knew nothing of MacDonald's private telephone message to

Cowperwood; but he knew how he himself would have dealt with the

crafty financier had he been in MacDonald's position.

" Yes, Cowperwood is shrewd, " was his comment. " Pritchard, our

political man, says the ways of the City Hall are greased straight

up to the mayor and McKenty, and that Cowperwood can have anything

he wants at any time. Tom Dowling eats out of his hand, and you

know what that means. Old General Van Sickle is working for him

in some way. Did you ever see that old buzzard flying around if

there wasn't something dead in the woods? "

" He's a slick one, " remarked MacDonald. " But as for Cowperwood,

he can't get away with this sort of thing very long. He's going

too fast. He wants too much. "

Mr. Du Bois smiled quite secretly. It amused him to see how

Cowperwood had brushed MacDonald and his objections aside--dispensed

for the time being with the services of the Inquirer. Du Bois

confidently believed that if the old General had been at home he

would have supported the financier.

Within eight months after seizing the La Salle Street tunnel and

gobbling four of the principal down-town streets for his loop,

Cowperwood turned his eyes toward the completion of the second

part of the programme--that of taking over the Washington Street

tunnel and the Chicago West Division Company, which was still

drifting along under its old horse-car regime. It was the story

of the North Side company all over again. Stockholders of a certain

type--the average--are extremely nervous, sensitive, fearsome.

They are like that peculiar bivalve, the clam, which at the slightest

sense of untoward pressure withdraws into its shell and ceases all

activity. The city tax department began by instituting proceedings

against the West Division company, compelling them to disgorge

various unpaid street-car taxes which had hitherto been conveniently

neglected. The city highway department was constantly jumping on

them for neglect of street repairs. The city water department,

by some hocus-pocus, made it its business to discover that they

had been stealing water. On the other hand were the smiling

representatives of Cowperwood, Kaifrath, Addison, Videra, and

others, approaching one director or stockholder after another with

glistening accounts of what a splendid day would set in for the

Chicago West Division Company if only it would lease fifty-one per

cent. of its holdings--fifty-one per cent. of twelve hundred and

fifty shares, par value two hundred dollars--for the fascinating

sum of six hundred dollars per share, and thirty per cent. interest

on all stock not assumed.

Who could resist? Starve and beat a dog on the one hand; wheedle,

pet, and hold meat in front of it on the other, and it can soon

be brought to perform. Cowperwood knew this. His emissaries for

good and evil were tireless. In the end--and it was not long in

coming--the directors and chief stockholders of the Chicago West

Division Company succumbed; and then, ho! the sudden leasing by

the Chicago West Division Company of all its property--to the North

Chicago Street Railway Company, lessee in turn of the Chicago City

Passenger Railway, a line which Cowperwood had organized to take

over the Washington Street tunnel. How had he accomplished it?

The question was on the tip of every financial tongue. Who were

the men or the organization providing the enormous sums necessary

to pay six hundred dollars per share for six hundred and fifty

shares of the twelve hundred and fifty belonging to the old West

Division company, and thirty per cent. per year on all the remainder?

Where was the money coming from to cable all these lines? It was

simple enough if they had only thought. Cowperwood was merely

capitalizing the future.

Before the newspapers or the public could suitably protest, crowds

of men were at work day and night in the business heart of the

city, their flaring torches and resounding hammers making a fitful

bedlamic world of that region; they were laying the first great

cable loop and repairing the La Salle Street tunnel. It was the

same on the North and West Sides, where concrete conduits were

being laid, new grip and trailer cars built, new car-barns erected,

and large, shining power-houses put up. The city, so long used

to the old bridge delays, the straw-strewn, stoveless horse-cars

on their jumping rails, was agog to see how fine this new service

would be. The La Salle Street tunnel was soon aglow with white

plaster and electric lights. The long streets and avenues of the

North Side were threaded with concrete-lined conduits and heavy

street-rails. The powerhouses were completed and the system was

started, even while the contracts for the changes on the West Side

were being let.

Schryhart and his associates were amazed at this swiftness of

action, this dizzy phantasmagoria of financial operations. It

looked very much to the conservative traction interests of Chicago

as if this young giant out of the East had it in mind to eat up

the whole city. The Chicago Trust Company, which he, Addison,

McKenty, and others had organized to manipulate the principal

phases of the local bond issues, and of which he was rumored to

be in control, was in a flourishing condition. Apparently he could

now write his check for millions, and yet he was not beholden, so

far as the older and more conservative multimillionaires of Chicago

were concerned, to any one of them. The worst of it was that this

Cowperwood--an upstart, a jail-bird, a stranger whom they had done

their best to suppress financially and ostracize socially, had now

become an attractive, even a sparkling figure in the eyes of the

Chicago public. His views and opinions on almost any topic were

freely quoted; the newspapers, even the most antagonistic, did not

dare to neglect him. Their owners were now fully alive to the

fact that a new financial rival had appeared who was worthy of

their steel.

Chapter XXVII

A Financier Bewitched

It was interesting to note how, able though he was, and bound up

with this vast street-railway enterprise which was beginning to

affect several thousand men, his mind could find intense relief

and satisfaction in the presence and actions of Stephanie Platow.

It is not too much to say that in her, perhaps, he found revivified

the spirit and personality of Rita Sohlberg. Rita, however, had

not contemplated disloyalty--it had never occurred to her to be

faithless to Cowperwood so long as he was fond of her any more

than for a long time it had been possible for her, even after all

his philanderings, to be faithless to Sohlberg. Stephanie, on the

other hand, had the strange feeling that affection was not necessarily

identified with physical loyalty, and that she could be fond of

Cowperwood and still deceive him--a fact which was based on her

lack as yet of a true enthusiasm for him. She loved him and she

didn't. Her attitude was not necessarily identified with her

heavy, lizardish animality, though that had something to do with

it; but rather with a vague, kindly generosity which permitted her

to feel that it was hard to break with Gardner Knowles and Lane

Cross after they had been so nice to her. Gardner Knowles had

sung her praises here, there, and everywhere, and was attempting

to spread her fame among the legitimate theatrical enterprises

which came to the city in order that she might be taken up and

made into a significant figure. Lane Cross was wildly fond of her

in an inadequate way which made it hard to break with him, and yet

certain that she would eventually. There was still another man--a

young playwright and poet by the name of Forbes Gurney--tall, fair,

passionate--who had newly arrived on the scene and was courting

her, or, rather, being courted by her at odd moments, for her time

was her own. In her artistically errant way she had refused to

go to school like her sister, and was idling about, developing, as

she phrased it, her artistic possibilities.

Cowperwood, as was natural, heard much of her stage life. At first

he took all this palaver with a grain of salt, the babbling of an

ardent nature interested in the flighty romance of the studio

world. By degrees, however, he became curious as to the freedom

of her actions, the ease with which she drifted from place to

place--Lane Cross's studio; Bliss Bridge's bachelor rooms, where

he appeared always to be receiving his theatrical friends of the

Garrick Players; Mr. Gardner Knowles's home on the near North Side,

where he was frequently entertaining a party after the theater.

It seemed to Cowperwood, to say the least, that Stephanie was

leading a rather free and inconsequential existence, and yet it

reflected her exactly--the color of her soul. But he began to

doubt and wonder.

" Where were you, Stephanie, yesterday? " he would ask, when they

met for lunch, or in the evenings early, or when she called at his

new offices on the North Side, as she sometimes did to walk or

drive with him.

" Oh, yesterday morning I was at Lane Cross's studio trying on some

of his Indian shawls and veils. He has such a lot of those

things--some of the loveliest oranges and blues. You just ought

to see me in them. I wish you might. "

" Alone? "

" For a while. I thought Ethel Tuckerman and Bliss Bridge would

be there, but they didn't come until later. Lane Cross is such a

dear. He's sort of silly at times, but I like him. His portraits

are so bizarre. "

She went off into a description of his pretentious but insignificant

art.

Cowperwood marveled, not at Lane Cross's art nor his shawls, but

at this world in which Stephanie moved. He could not quite make

her out. He had never been able to make her explain satisfactorily

that first single relationship with Gardner Knowles, which she

declared had ended so abruptly. Since then he had doubted, as was

his nature; but this girl was so sweet, childish, irreconcilable

with herself, like a wandering breath of air, or a pale-colored

flower, that he scarcely knew what to think. The artistically

inclined are not prone to quarrel with an enticing sheaf of flowers.

She was heavenly to him, coming in, as she did at times when he

was alone, with bland eyes and yielding herself in a kind of summery

ecstasy. She had always something artistic to tell of storms, winds,

dust, clouds, smoke forms, the outline of buildings, the lake, the

stage. She would cuddle in his arms and quote long sections from

" Romeo and Juliet, " " Paolo and Francesca, " " The Ring and the Book, "

Keats's " Eve of St. Agnes. " He hated to quarrel with her, because

she was like a wild rose or some art form in nature. Her sketch-book

was always full of new things. Her muff, or the light silk shawl

she wore in summer, sometimes concealed a modeled figure of some

kind which she would produce with a look like that of a doubting

child, and if he wanted it, if he liked it, he could have it.

Cowperwood meditated deeply. He scarcely knew what to think.

The constant atmosphere of suspicion and doubt in which he was

compelled to remain, came by degrees to distress and anger him.

While she was with him she was clinging enough, but when she was

away she was ardently cheerful and happy. Unlike the station he

had occupied in so many previous affairs, he found himself, after

the first little while, asking her whether she loved him instead

of submitting to the same question from her.

He thought that with his means, his position, his future possibilities

he had the power to bind almost any woman once drawn to his

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