The Titan 26 страница

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women--play the sweet and loving wife? Well, I won't. I know why

you say this about Lynde. It's to keep me from being interested

in him, possibly. Well, I will be if I want to. I told you I

would be, and I will. You can do what you please about that. You

don't want me, so why should you be disturbed as to whether other

men are interested in me or not? "

The truth was that Cowperwood was not clearly thinking of any

probable relation between Lynde and Aileen any more than he was

in connection with her and any other man, and yet in a remote way

he was sensing some one. It was this that Aileen felt in him, and

that brought forth her seemingly uncalled-for comment. Cowperwood,

under the circumstances, attempted to be as suave as possible,

having caught the implication clearly.

" Aileen, " he cooed, " how you talk! Why do you say that? You know

I care for you. I can't prevent anything you want to do, and I'm

sure you know I don't want to. It's you that I want to see satisfied.

You know that I care. "

" Yes, I know how you care, " replied Aileen, her mood changing for

the moment. " Don't start that old stuff, please. I'm sick of it.

I know how you're running around. I know about Mrs. Hand. Even

the newspapers make that plain. You've been home just one evening

in the last eight days, long enough for me to get more than a

glimpse of you. Don't talk to me. Don't try to bill and coo.

I've always known. Don't think I don't know who your latest flame

is. But don't begin to whine, and don't quarrel with me if I go

about and get interested in other men, as I certainly will. It

will be all your fault if I do, and you know it. Don't begin and

complain. It won't do you any good. I'm not going to sit here

and be made a fool of. I've told you that over and over. You

don't believe it, but I'm not. I told you that I'd find some one

one of these days, and I will. As a matter of fact, I have already. "

At this remark Cowperwood surveyed her coolly, critically, and yet

not unsympathetically; but she swung out of the room with a defiant

air before anything could be said, and went down to the music-room,

from whence a few moments later there rolled up to him from the

hall below the strains of the second Hungarian Rhapsodie, feelingly

and for once movingly played. Into it Aileen put some of her own

wild woe and misery. Cowperwood hated the thought for the moment

that some one as smug as Lynde--so good-looking, so suave a society

rake--should interest Aileen; but if it must be, it must be. He

could have no honest reason for complaint. At the same time a

breath of real sorrow for the days that had gone swept over him.

He remembered her in Philadelphia in her red cape as a school-girl

--in his father's house--out horseback-riding, driving. What a

splendid, loving girl she had been--such a sweet fool of love.

Could she really have decided not to worry about him any more?

Could it be possible that she might find some one else who would

be interested in her, and in whom she would take a keen interest?

It was an odd thought for him.

He watched her as she came into the dining-room later, arrayed in

green silk of the shade of copper patina, her hair done in a high

coil--and in spite of himself he could not help admiring her. She

looked very young in her soul, and yet moody--loving (for some

one), eager, and defiant. He reflected for a moment what terrible

things passion and love are--how they make fools of us all. " All

of us are in the grip of a great creative impulse, " he said to

himself. He talked of other things for a while--the approaching

election, a poster-wagon he had seen bearing the question, " Shall

Cowperwood own the city? " " Pretty cheap politics, I call that, "

he commented. And then he told of stopping in a so-called Republican

wigwam at State and Sixteenth streets--a great, cheaply erected,

unpainted wooden shack with seats, and of hearing himself bitterly

denounced by the reigning orator. " I was tempted once to ask that

donkey a few questions, " he added, " but I decided I wouldn't. "

Aileen had to smile. In spite of all his faults he was such a

wonderful man--to set a city thus by the ears. " Yet, what care I

how fair he be, if he be not fair to me. "

" Did you meet any one else besides Lynde you liked? " he finally

asked, archly, seeking to gather further data without stirring up

too much feeling.

Aileen, who had been studying him, feeling sure the subject would

come up again, replied: " No, I haven't; but I don't need to. One

is enough. "

" What do you mean by that? " he asked, gently.

" Oh, just what I say. One will do. "

" You mean you are in love with Lynde? "

" I mean--oh! " She stopped and surveyed him defiantly. " What

difference does it make to you what I mean? Yes, I am. But what

do you care? Why do you sit there and question me? It doesn't make

any difference to you what I do. You don't want me. Why should

you sit there and try to find out, or watch? It hasn't been any

consideration for you that has restrained me so far. Suppose I

am in love? What difference would it make to you? "

" Oh, I care. You know I care. Why do you say that? "

" Yes, you care, " she flared. " I know how you care. Well, I'll

just tell you one thing" --rage at his indifference was driving her

on--" I am in love with Lynde, and what's more, I'm his mistress.

And I'll continue to be. But what do you care? Pshaw! "

Her eyes blazed hotly, her color rose high and strong. She breathed

heavily.

At this announcement, made in the heat of spite and rage generated

by long indifference, Cowperwood sat up for a moment, and his eyes

hardened with quite that implacable glare with which he sometimes

confronted an enemy. He felt at once there were many things he

could do to make her life miserable, and to take revenge on Lynde,

but he decided after a moment he would not. It was not weakness,

but a sense of superior power that was moving him. Why should he

be jealous? Had he not been unkind enough? In a moment his mood

changed to one of sorrow for Aileen, for himself, for life, indeed

--its tangles of desire and necessity. He could not blame Aileen.

Lynde was surely attractive. He had no desire to part with her or

to quarrel with him--merely to temporarily cease all intimate

relations with her and allow her mood to clear itself up. Perhaps

she would want to leave him of her own accord. Perhaps, if he

ever found the right woman, this might prove good grounds for his

leaving her. The right woman--where was she? He had never found

her yet.

" Aileen, " he said, quite softly, " I wish you wouldn't feel so

bitterly about this. Why should you? When did you do this? Will

you tell me that? "

" No, I'll not tell you that, " she replied, bitterly. " It's none

of your affair, and I'll not tell you. Why should you ask? You

don't care. "

" But I do care, I tell you, " he returned, irritably, almost roughly.

" When did you? You can tell me that, at least. " His eyes had a

hard, cold look for the moment, dying away, though, into kindly

inquiry.

" Oh, not long ago. About a week, " Aileen answered, as though she

were compelled.

" How long have you known him? " he asked, curiously.

" Oh, four or five months, now. I met him last winter. "

" And did you do this deliberately--because you were in love with

him, or because you wanted to hurt me? "

He could not believe from past scenes between them that she had

ceased to love him.

Aileen stirred irritably. " I like that, " she flared. " I did it

because I wanted to, and not because of any love for you--I can

tell you that. I like your nerve sitting here presuming to question

me after the way you have neglected me. " She pushed back her plate,

and made as if to get up.

" Wait a minute, Aileen, " he said, simply, putting down his knife

and fork and looking across the handsome table where Sevres, silver,

fruit, and dainty dishes were spread, and where under silk-shaded

lights they sat opposite each other. " I wish you wouldn't talk

that way to me. You know that I am not a petty, fourth-rate fool.

You know that, whatever you do, I am not going to quarrel with

you. I know what the trouble is with you. I know why you are

acting this way, and how you will feel afterward if you go on.

It isn't anything I will do--" He paused, caught by a wave of

feeling.

" Oh, isn't it? " she blazed, trying to overcome the emotion that

was rising in herself. The calmness of him stirred up memories

of the past. " Well, you keep your sympathy for yourself. I don't

need it. I will get along. I wish you wouldn't talk to me. "

She shoved her plate away with such force that she upset a glass

in which was champagne, the wine making a frayed, yellowish splotch

on the white linen, and, rising, hurried toward the door. She was

choking with anger, pain, shame, regret.

" Aileen! Aileen! " he called, hurrying after her, regardless of the

butler, who, hearing the sound of stirring chairs, had entered.

These family woes were an old story to him. " It's love you want

--not revenge. I know--I can tell. You want to be loved by some

one completely. I'm sorry. You mustn't be too hard on me. I

sha'n't be on you. " He seized her by the arm and detained her as

they entered the next room. By this time Aileen was too ablaze

with emotion to talk sensibly or understand what he was doing.

" Let me go! " she exclaimed, angrily, hot tears in her eyes. " Let

me go! I tell you I don't love you any more. I tell you I hate

you! " She flung herself loose and stood erect before him. " I

don't want you to talk to me! I don't want you to speak to me!

You're the cause of all my troubles. You're the cause of whatever

I do, when I do it, and don't you dare to deny it! You'll see!

You'll see! I'll show you what I'll do! "

She twisted and turned, but he held her firmly until, in his strong

grasp, as usual, she collapsed and began to cry. " Oh, I cry, " she

declared, even in her tears, " but it will be just the same. It's

too late! too late! "

Chapter XXXVIII

An Hour of Defeat

The stoic Cowperwood, listening to the blare and excitement that

went with the fall campaign, was much more pained to learn of

Aileen's desertion than to know that he had arrayed a whole social

element against himself in Chicago. He could not forget the wonder

of those first days when Aileen was young, and love and hope had

been the substance of her being. The thought ran through all his

efforts and cogitations like a distantly orchestrated undertone.

In the main, in spite of his activity, he was an introspective

man, and art, drama, and the pathos of broken ideals were not

beyond him. He harbored in no way any grudge against Aileen--only

a kind of sorrow over the inevitable consequences of his own

ungovernable disposition, the will to freedom within himself.

Change! Change! the inevitable passing of things! Who parts with

a perfect thing, even if no more than an unreasoning love, without

a touch of self-pity?

But there followed swiftly the sixth of November, with its election,

noisy and irrational, and the latter resulted in a resounding

defeat. Out of the thirty-two Democratic aldermen nominated only

ten were elected, giving the opposition a full two-thirds majority

in council, Messrs. Tiernan and Kerrigan, of course, being safely

in their places. With them came a Republican mayor and all his

Republican associates on the ticket, who were now supposed to carry

out the theories of the respectable and the virtuous. Cowperwood

knew what it meant and prepared at once to make overtures to the

enemy. From McKenty and others he learned by degrees the full

story of Tiernan's and Kerrigan's treachery, but he did not store

it up bitterly against them. Such was life. They must be looked

after more carefully in future, or caught in some trap and utterly

undone. According to their own accounts, they had barely managed

to scrape through.

" Look at meself! I only won by three hundred votes, " archly declared

Mr. Kerrigan, on divers and sundry occasions. " By God, I almost

lost me own ward! "

Mr. Tiernan was equally emphatic. " The police was no good to me, "

he declared, firmly. " They let the other fellows beat up me men.

I only polled six thousand when I should have had nine. "

But no one believed them.

While McKenty meditated as to how in two years he should be able

to undo this temporary victory, and Cowperwood was deciding that

conciliation was the best policy for him, Schryhart, Hand, and

Arneel, joining hands with young MacDonald, were wondering how

they could make sure that this party victory would cripple Cowperwood

and permanently prevent him from returning to power. It was a

long, intricate fight that followed, but it involved (before

Cowperwood could possibly reach the new aldermen) a proposed

reintroduction and passage of the much-opposed General Electric

franchise, the granting of rights and privileges in outlying

districts to various minor companies, and last and worst--a thing

which had not previously dawned on Cowperwood as in any way

probable--the projection of an ordinance granting to a certain

South Side corporation the privilege of erecting and operating an

elevated road. This was as severe a blow as any that had yet been

dealt Cowperwood, for it introduced a new factor and complication

into the Chicago street-railway situation which had hitherto, for

all its troubles, been comparatively simple.

In order to make this plain it should be said that some eighteen

or twenty years before in New York there had been devised and

erected a series of elevated roads calculated to relieve the

congestion of traffic on the lower portion of that long and narrow

island, and they had proved an immense success. Cowperwood had

been interested in them, along with everything else which pertained

to public street traffic, from the very beginning. In his various

trips to New York he had made a careful physical inspection of

them. He knew all about their incorporation, backers, the expense

connected with them, their returns, and so forth. Personally, in

so far as New York was concerned, he considered them an ideal

solution of traffic on that crowded island. Here in Chicago,

where the population was as yet comparatively small--verging now

toward a million, and widely scattered over a great area--he did

not feel that they would be profitable--certainly not for some

years to come. What traffic they gained would be taken from the

surface lines, and if he built them he would be merely doubling

his expenses to halve his profits. From time to time he had

contemplated the possibility of their being built by other men

--providing they could secure a franchise, which previous to the

late election had not seemed probable--and in this connection he

had once said to Addison: " Let them sink their money, and about

the time the population is sufficient to support the lines they

will have been driven into the hands of receivers. That will

simply chase the game into my bag, and I can buy them for a mere

song. " With this conclusion Addison had agreed. But since this

conversation circumstances made the construction of these elevated

roads far less problematic.

In the first place, public interest in the idea of elevated roads

was increasing. They were a novelty, a factor in the life of New

York; and at this time rivalry with the great cosmopolitan heart

was very keen in the mind of the average Chicago citizen. Public

sentiment in this direction, however naive or unworthy, was

nevertheless sufficient to make any elevated road in Chicago popular

for the time being. In the second place, it so happened that

because of this swelling tide of municipal enthusiasm, this

renaissance of the West, Chicago had finally been chosen, at a

date shortly preceding the present campaign, as the favored city

for an enormous international fair--quite the largest ever given

in America. Men such as Hand, Schryhart, Merrill, and Arneel, to

say nothing of the various newspaper publishers and editors, had

been enthusiastic supporters of the project, and in this Cowperwood

had been one with them. No sooner, however, had the award actually

been granted than Cowperwood's enemies made it their first concern

to utilize the situation against him.

To begin with, the site of the fair, by aid of the new anti-Cowperwood

council, was located on the South Side, at the terminus of the

Schryhart line, thus making the whole city pay tribute to that

corporation. Simultaneously the thought suddenly dawned upon the

Schryhart faction that it would be an excellent stroke of business

if the New York elevated-road idea were now introduced into the

city--not so much with the purpose of making money immediately,

but in order to bring the hated magnate to an understanding that

he had a formidable rival which might invade the territory that

he now monopolized, curtailing his and thus making it advisable

for him to close out his holdings and depart. Bland and interesting

were the conferences held by Mr. Schryhart with Mr. Hand, and by

Mr. Hand with Mr. Arneel on this subject. Their plan as first

outlined was to build an elevated road on the South Side--south of

the proposed fair-grounds--and once that was popular--having

previously secured franchises which would cover the entire field,

West, South, and North--to construct the others at their leisure,

and so to bid Mr. Cowperwood a sweet and smiling adieu.

Cowperwood, awaiting the assembling of the new city council one

month after election, did not propose to wait in peace and quiet

until the enemy should strike at him unprepared. Calling those

familiar agents, his corporation attorneys, around him, he was

shortly informed of the new elevated-road idea, and it gave him a

real shock. Obviously Hand and Schryhart were now in deadly

earnest. At once he dictated a letter to Mr. Gilgan asking him

to call at his office. At the same time he hurriedly adjured his

advisers to use due diligence in discovering what influences could

be brought to bear on the new mayor, the honorable Chaffee Thayer

Sluss, to cause him to veto the ordinances in case they came before

him--to effect in him, indeed, a total change of heart.

The Hon. Chaffee Thayer Sluss, whose attitude in this instance

was to prove crucial, was a tall, shapely, somewhat grandiloquent

person who took himself and his social and commercial opportunities

and doings in the most serious and, as it were, elevated light.

You know, perhaps, the type of man or woman who, raised in an

atmosphere of comparative comfort and some small social pretension,

and being short of those gray convolutions in the human brain-pan

which permit an individual to see life in all its fortuitousness

and uncertainty, proceed because of an absence of necessity and

the consequent lack of human experience to take themselves and all

that they do in the most reverential and Providence-protected spirit.

The Hon. Chaffee Thayer Sluss reasoned that, because of the splendid

ancestry on which he prided himself, he was an essentially honest

man. His father had amassed a small fortune in the wholesale

harness business. The wife whom at the age of twenty-eight he had

married--a pretty but inconsequential type of woman--was the daughter

of a pickle manufacturer, whose wares were in some demand and

whose children had been considered good " catches" in the neighborhood

from which the Hon. Chaffee Sluss emanated. There had been a

highly conservative wedding feast, and a honeymoon trip to the

Garden of the Gods and the Grand Canon. Then the sleek Chaffee,

much in the grace of both families because of his smug determination

to rise in the world, had returned to his business, which was

that of a paper-broker, and had begun with the greatest care to

amass a competence on his own account.

The Honorable Chaffee, be it admitted, had no particular faults,

unless those of smugness and a certain over-carefulness as to his

own prospects and opportunities can be counted as such. But he

had one weakness, which, in view of his young wife's stern and

somewhat Puritanic ideas and the religious propensities of his

father and father-in-law, was exceedingly disturbing to him. He

had an eye for the beauty of women in general, and particularly

for plump, blonde women with corn-colored hair. Now and then, in

spite of the fact that he had an ideal wife and two lovely children,

he would cast a meditative and speculative eye after those alluring

forms that cross the path of all men and that seem to beckon slyly

by implication if not by actual, open suggestion.

However, it was not until several years after Mr. Sluss had married,

and when he might have been considered settled in the ways of

righteousness, that he actually essayed to any extent the role of

a gay Lothario. An experience or two with the less vigorous and

vicious girls of the streets, a tentative love affair with a girl

in his office who was not new to the practices she encouraged, and

he was fairly launched. He lent himself at first to the great

folly of pretending to love truly; but this was taken by one and

another intelligent young woman with a grain of salt. The

entertainment and preferment he could provide were accepted as

sufficient reward. One girl, however, actually seduced, had to

be compensated by five thousand dollars--and that after such

terrors and heartaches (his wife, her family, and his own looming

up horribly in the background) as should have cured him forever

of a penchant for stenographers and employees generally. Thereafter

for a long time he confined himself strictly to such acquaintances

as he could make through agents, brokers, and manufacturers who

did business with him, and who occasionally invited him to one

form of bacchanalian feast or another.

As time went on he became wiser, if, alas, a little more eager.

By association with merchants and some superior politicians whom

he chanced to encounter, and because the ward in which he lived

happened to be a pivotal one, he began to speak publicly on occasion

and to gather dimly the import of that logic which sees life as a

pagan wild, and religion and convention as the forms man puts on

or off to suit his fancy, mood, and whims during the onward drift

of the ages. Not for Chaffee Thayer Sluss to grasp the true meaning

of it all. His brain was not big enough. Men led dual lives, it

was true; but say what you would, and in the face of his own erring

conduct, this was very bad. On Sunday, when he went to church

with his wife, he felt that religion was essential and purifying.

In his own business he found himself frequently confronted by

various little flaws of logic relating to undue profits,

misrepresentations, and the like; but say what you would, nevertheless

and notwithstanding, God was God, morality was superior, the church

was important. It was wrong to yield to one's impulses, as he

found it so fascinating to do. One should be better than his

neighbor, or pretend to be.

What is to be done with such a rag-bag, moralistic ass as this?

In spite of all his philanderings, and the resultant qualms due

to his fear of being found out, he prospered in business and rose

to some eminence in his own community. As he had grown more lax

he had become somewhat more genial and tolerant, more generally

acceptable. He was a good Republican, a follower in the wake of

Norrie Simms and young Truman Leslie MacDonald. His father-in-law

was both rich and moderately influential. Having lent himself to

some campaign speaking, and to party work in general, he proved

quite an adept. Because of all these things--his ability, such

as it was, his pliability, and his thoroughly respectable savor

--he had been slated as candidate for mayor on the Republican

ticket, which had subsequently been elected.

Cowperwood was well aware, from remarks made in the previous

campaign, of the derogatory attitude of Mayor Sluss. Already he

had discussed it in a conversation with the Hon. Joel Avery

(ex-state senator), who was in his employ at the time. Avery had

recently been in all sorts of corporation work, and knew the ins

and outs of the courts--lawyers, judges, politicians--as he knew

his revised statutes. He was a very little man--not more than

five feet one inch tall--with a wide forehead, saffron hair and

brows, brown, cat-like eyes and a mushy underlip that occasionally

covered the upper one as he thought. After years and years Mr.

Avery had leamed to smile, but it was in a strange, exotic way.

Mostly he gazed steadily, folded his lower lip over his upper one,

and expressed his almost unchangeable conclusions in slow Addisonian

phrases. In the present crisis it was Mr. Avery who had a suggestion

to make.

" One thing that I think could be done, " he said to Cowperwood one

day in a very confidential conference, " would be to have a look

into the--the--shall I say the heart affairs--of the Hon. Chaffee

Thayer Sluss. " Mr. Avery's cat-like eyes gleamed sardonically.

" Unless I am greatly mistaken, judging the man by his personal

presence merely, he is the sort of person who probably has had,

or if not might readily be induced to have, some compromising

affair with a woman which would require considerable sacrifice

on his part to smooth over. We are all human and vulnerable" --up

went Mr. Avery's lower lip covering the upper one, and then down

again--" and it does not behoove any of us to be too severely

ethical and self-righteous. Mr. Sluss is a well-meaning man, but

a trifle sentimental, as I take it. "

As Mr. Avery paused Cowperwood merely contemplated him, amused no

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