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When he inquired as to how soon a vote on the General Electric

franchise--which had been introduced by Mr. Klemm--could reasonably

be expected, Gilgan declared himself much grieved to admit that

in one direction or other considerable opposition seemed to have

developed to the measure.

" What's that? " said Hand, a little savagely. " Didn't we make a

plain bargain in regard to this? You had all the money you asked

for, didn't you? You said you could give me twenty-six aldermen

who would vote as we agreed. You're not going to go back on your

bargain, are you? "

" Bargain! bargain! " retorted Gilgan, irritated because of the

spirit of the assault. " I agreed to elect twenty-six Republican

aldermen, and that I did. I don't own 'em body and soul. I didn't

name 'em in every case. I made deals with the men in the different

wards that had the best chance, and that the people wanted. I'm

not responsible for any crooked work that's going on behind my

back, am I? I'm not responsible for men's not being straight if

they're not? "

Mr. Gilgan's face was an aggrieved question-mark.

" But you had the picking of these men, " insisted Mr. Hand,

aggressively. " Every one of them had your personal indorsement.

You made the deals with them. You don't mean to say they're going

back on their sacred agreement to fight Cowperwood tooth and nail?

There can't be any misunderstanding on their part as to what they

were elected to do. The newspapers have been full of the fact

that nothing favorable to Cowperwood was to be put through. "

" That's all true enough, " replied Mr. Gilgan; " but I can't be held

responsible for the private honesty of everybody. Sure I selected

these men. Sure I did! But I selected them with the help of the

rest of the Republicans and some of the Democrats. I had to make

the best terms I could--to pick the men that could win. As far

as I can find out most of 'em are satisfied not to do anything for

Cowperwood. It's passing these ordinances in favor of other people

that's stirring up the trouble. "

Mr. Hand's broad forehead wrinkled, and his blue eyes surveyed Mr.

Gilgan with suspicion. " Who are these men, anyhow? " he inquired.

" I'd like to get a list of them. "

Mr. Gilgan, safe in his own subtlety, was ready with a toll of the

supposed recalcitrants. They must fight their own battles. Mr.

Hand wrote down the names, determining meanwhile to bring pressure

to bear. He decided also to watch Mr. Gilgan. If there should

prove to be a hitch in the programme the newspapers should be

informed and commanded to thunder appropriately. Such aldermen

as proved unfaithful to the great trust imposed on them should be

smoked out, followed back to the wards which had elected them, and

exposed to the people who were behind them. Their names should

be pilloried in the public press. The customary hints as to

Cowperwood's deviltry and trickery should be redoubled.

But in the mean time Messrs. Stimson, Avery, McKibben, Van Sickle,

and others were on Cowperwood's behalf acting separately upon

various unattached aldermen--those not temperamentally and chronically

allied with the reform idea--and making them understand that if

they could find it possible to refrain from supporting anti-Cowperwood

measures for the next two years, a bonus in the shape of an annual

salary of two thousand dollars or a gift in some other form--perhaps

a troublesome note indorsed or a mortgage taken care of--would be

forthcoming, together with a guarantee that the general public

should never know. In no case was such an offer made direct.

Friends or neighbors, or suave unidentified strangers, brought

mysterious messages. By this method some eleven aldermen--quite

apart from the ten regular Democrats who, because of McKenty and

his influence, could be counted upon--had been already suborned.

Although Schryhart, Hand, and Arneel did not know it, their plans

--even as they planned--were being thus undermined, and, try as

they would, the coveted ordinance for a blanket franchise

persistently eluded them. They had to content themselves for the

time being with a franchise for a single 'L' road line on the South

Side in Schryhart's own territory, and with a franchise to the

General Electric covering only one unimportant line, which it

would be easy for Cowperwood, if he continued in power, to take

over at some later time.

Chapter XL

A Trip to Louisville

The most serious difficulty confronting Cowperwood from now on was

really not so much political as financial. In building up and

financing his Chicago street-railway enterprises he had, in those

days when Addison was president of the Lake City National, used

that bank as his chief source of supply. Afterward, when Addison

had been forced to retire from the Lake City to assume charge of

the Chicago Trust Company, Cowperwood had succeeded in having the

latter designated as a central reserve and in inducing a number

of rural banks to keep their special deposits in its vaults.

However, since the war on him and his interests had begun to

strengthen through the efforts of Hand and Arneel--men most

influential in the control of the other central-reserve banks of

Chicago, and in close touch with the money barons of New York

--there were signs not wanting that some of the country banks

depositing with the Chicago Trust Company had been induced to

withdraw because of pressure from outside inimical forces, and

that more were to follow. It was some time before Cowperwood fully

realized to what an extent this financial opposition might be

directed against himself. In its very beginning it necessitated

speedy hurryings to New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Baltimore,

Boston--even London at times--on the chance that there would be

loose and ready cash in someone's possession. It was on one of

these peregrinations that he encountered a curious personality

which led to various complications in his life, sentimental and

otherwise, which he had not hitherto contemplated.

In various sections of the country Cowperwood had met many men of

wealth, some grave, some gay, with whom he did business, and among

these in Louisville, Kentucky, he encountered a certain Col.

Nathaniel Gillis, very wealthy, a horseman, inventor, roue, from

whom he occasionally extracted loans. The Colonel was an interesting

figure in Kentucky society; and, taking a great liking to Cowperwood,

he found pleasure, during the brief periods in which they were

together, in piloting him about. On one occasion in Louisville

he observed: " To-night, Frank, with your permission, I am going

to introduce you to one of the most interesting women I know. She

isn't good, but she's entertaining. She has had a troubled history.

She is the ex-wife of two of my best friends, both dead, and the

ex-mistress of another. I like her because I knew her father and

mother, and because she was a clever little girl and still is a

nice woman, even if she is getting along. She keeps a sort of

house of convenience here in Louisville for a few of her old friends.

You haven't anything particular to do to-night, have you? Suppose

we go around there? "

Cowperwood, who was always genially sportive when among strong

men--a sort of bounding collie--and who liked to humor those who

could be of use to him, agreed.

" It sounds interesting to me. Certainly I'll go. Tell me more

about her. Is she good-looking? "

" Rather. But better yet, she is connected with a number of women

who are. " The Colonel, who had a small, gray goatee and sportive

dark eyes, winked the latter solemnly.

Cowperwood arose.

" Take me there, " he said.

It was a rainy night. The business on which he was seeing the

Colonel required another day to complete. There was little or

nothing to do. On the way the Colonel retailed more of the life

history of Nannie Hedden, as he familiarly called her, and explained

that, although this was her maiden name, she had subsequently

become first Mrs. John Alexander Fleming, then, after a divorce,

Mrs. Ira George Carter, and now, alas! was known among the exclusive

set of fast livers, to which he belonged, as plain Hattie Starr,

the keeper of a more or less secret house of ill repute. Cowperwood

did not take so much interest in all this until he saw her, and

then only because of two children the Colonel told him about, one

a girl by her first marriage, Berenice Fleming, who was away in a

New York boarding-school, the other a boy, Rolfe Carter, who was

in a military school for boys somewhere in the West.

" That daughter of hers, " observed the Colonel, " is a chip of the

old block, unless I miss my guess. I only saw her two or three

times a few years ago when I was down East at her mother's summer

home; but she struck me as having great charm even for a girl of

ten. She's a lady born, if ever there was one. How her mother

is to keep her straight, living as she does, is more than I know.

How she keeps her in that school is a mystery. There's apt to

be a scandal here at any time. I'm very sure the girl doesn't

know anything about her mother's business. She never lets her

come out here. "

" Berenice Fleming, " Cowperwood thought to himself. " What a pleasing

name, and what a peculiar handicap in life. "

" How old is the daughter now? " he inquired.

" Oh, she must be about fifteen--not more than that. "

When they reached the house, which was located in a rather somber,

treeless street, Cowperwood was surprised to find the interior

spacious and tastefully furnished. Presently Mrs. Carter, as she

was generally known in society, or Hattie Starr, as she was known

to a less satisfying world, appeared. Cowperwood realized at once

that he was in the presence of a woman who, whatever her present

occupation, was not without marked evidences of refinement. She

was exceedingly intelligent, if not highly intellectual, trig,

vivacious, anything but commonplace. A certain spirited undulation

in her walk, a seeming gay, frank indifference to her position in

life, an obvious accustomedness to polite surroundings took his

fancy. Her hair was built up in a loose Frenchy way, after the

fashion of the empire, and her cheeks were slightly mottled with

red veins. Her color was too high, and yet it was not utterly

unbecoming. She had friendly gray-blue eyes, which went well with

her light-brown hair; along with a pink flowered house-gown, which

became her fulling figure, she wore pearls.

" The widow of two husbands, " thought Cowperwood; " the mother of two

children! " With the Colonel's easy introduction began a light

conversation. Mrs. Carter gracefully persisted that she had known

of Cowperwood for some time. His strenuous street-railway operations

were more or less familiar to her.

" It would be nice, " she suggested, " since Mr. Cowperwood is here,

if we invited Grace Deming to call. "

The latter was a favorite of the Colonel's.

" I would be very glad if I could talk to Mrs. Carter, " gallantly

volunteered Cowperwood--he scarcely knew why. He was curious to

learn more of her history. On subsequent occasions, and in more

extended conversation with the Colonel, it was retailed to him in

full.

Nannie Hedden, or Mrs. John Alexander Fleming, or Mrs. Ira George

Carter, or Hattie Starr, was by birth a descendant of a long line

of Virginia and Kentucky Heddens and Colters, related in a definite

or vague way to half the aristocracy of four or five of the

surrounding states. Now, although still a woman of brilliant

parts, she was the keeper of a select house of assignation in this

meager city of perhaps two hundred thousand population. How had

it happened? How could it possibly have come about? She had been

in her day a reigning beauty. She had been born to money and had

married money. Her first husband, John Alexander Fleming, who had

inherited wealth, tastes, privileges, and vices from a long line

of slave-holding, tobacco-growing Flemings, was a charming man

of the Kentucky-Virginia society type. He had been trained in the

law with a view to entering the diplomatic service, but, being an

idler by nature, had never done so. Instead, horse-raising,

horse-racing, philandering, dancing, hunting, and the like, had

taken up his time. When their wedding took place the Kentucky-Virginia

society world considered it a great match. There was wealth on

both sides. Then came much more of that idle social whirl which

had produced the marriage. Even philanderings of a very vital

character were not barred, though deception, in some degree at

least, would be necessary. As a natural result there followed the

appearance in the mountains of North Carolina during a charming

autumn outing of a gay young spark by the name of Tucker Tanner,

and the bestowal on him by the beautiful Nannie Fleming--as she

was then called--of her temporary affections. Kind friends were

quick to report what Fleming himself did not see, and Fleming,

roue that he was, encountering young Mr. Tanner on a high mountain

road one evening, said to him, " You get out of this party by night,

or I will let daylight through you in the morning. " Tucker Tanner,

realizing that however senseless and unfair the exaggerated chivalry

of the South might be, the end would be bullets just the same,

departed. Mrs. Fleming, disturbed but unrepentant, considered

herself greatly abused. There was much scandal. Then came quarrels,

drinking on both sides, finally a divorce. Mr. Tucker Tanner did

not appear to claim his damaged love, but the aforementioned Ira

George Carter, a penniless never-do-well of the same generation

and social standing, offered himself and was accepted. By the

first marriage there had been one child, a girl. By the second

there was another child, a boy. Ira George Carter, before the

children were old enough to impress Mrs. Carter with the importance

of their needs or her own affection for them, had squandered, in

one ridiculous venture after another, the bulk of the property

willed to her by her father, Major Wickham Hedden. Ultimately,

after drunkenness and dissipation on the husband's side, and finally

his death, came the approach of poverty. Mrs. Carter was not

practical, and still passionate and inclined to dissipation.

However, the aimless, fatuous going to pieces of Ira George Carter,

the looming pathos of the future of the children, and a growing

sense of affection and responsibility had finally sobered her.

The lure of love and life had not entirely disappeared, but her

chance of sipping at those crystal founts had grown sadly slender.

A woman of thirty-eight and still possessing some beauty, she

was not content to eat the husks provided for the unworthy. Her

gorge rose at the thought of that neglected state into which the

pariahs of society fall and on which the inexperienced so cheerfully

comment. Neglected by her own set, shunned by the respectable,

her fortune quite gone, she was nevertheless determined that she

would not be a back-street seamstress or a pensioner upon the

bounty of quondam friends. By insensible degrees came first

unhallowed relationships through friendship and passing passion,

then a curious intermediate state between the high world of fashion

and the half world of harlotry, until, finally, in Louisville, she

had become, not openly, but actually, the mistress of a house of

ill repute. Men who knew how these things were done, and who were

consulting their own convenience far more than her welfare, suggested

the advisability of it. Three or four friends like Colonel Gillis

wished rooms--convenient place in which to loaf, gamble, and bring

their women. Hattie Starr was her name now, and as such she had

even become known in a vague way to the police--but only vaguely

--as a woman whose home was suspiciously gay on occasions.

Cowperwood, with his appetite for the wonders of life, his

appreciation of the dramas which produce either failure or success,

could not help being interested in this spoiled woman who was

sailing so vaguely the seas of chance. Colonel Gillis once said

that with some strong man to back her, Nannie Fleming could be put

back into society. She had a pleasant appeal--she and her two

children, of whom she never spoke. After a few visits to her home

Cowperwood spent hours talking with Mrs. Carter whenever he was

in Louisville. On one occasion, as they were entering her boudoir,

she picked up a photograph of her daughter from the dresser and

dropped it into a drawer. Cowperwood had never seen this picture

before. It was that of a girl of fifteen or sixteen, of whom he

obtained but the most fleeting glance. Yet, with that instinct

for the essential and vital which invariably possessed him, he

gained a keen impression of it. It was of a delicately haggard

child with a marvelously agreeable smile, a fine, high-poised head

upon a thin neck, and an air of bored superiority. Combined with

this was a touch of weariness about the eyelids which drooped in

a lofty way. Cowperwood was fascinated. Because of the daughter

he professed an interest in the mother, which he really did not

feel.

A little later Cowperwood was moved to definite action by the

discovery in a photographer's window in Louisville of a second

picture of Berenice--a rather large affair which Mrs. Carter had

had enlarged from a print sent her by her daughter some time before.

Berenice was standing rather indifferently posed at the corner of

a colonial mantel, a soft straw outing-hat held negligently in one

hand, one hip sunk lower than the other, a faint, elusive smile

playing dimly around her mouth. The smile was really not a smile,

but only the wraith of one, and the eyes were wide, disingenuous,

mock-simple. The picture because of its simplicity, appealed to

him. He did not know that Mrs. Carter had never sanctioned its

display. " A personage, " was Cowperwood's comment to himself, and

he walked into the photographer's office to see what could be done

about its removal and the destruction of the plates. A half-hundred

dollars, he found, would arrange it all--plates, prints, everything.

Since by this ruse he secured a picture for himself, he promptly

had it framed and hung in his Chicago rooms, where sometimes of

an afternoon when he was hurrying to change his clothes he stopped

to look at it. With each succeeding examination his admiration

and curiosity grew. Here was perhaps, he thought, the true society

woman, the high-born lady, the realization of that ideal which Mrs.

Merrill and many another grande dame had suggested.

It was not so long after this again that, chancing to be in

Louisville, he discovered Mrs. Carter in a very troubled social

condition. Her affairs had received a severe setback. A certain

Major Hagenback, a citizen of considerable prominence, had died

in her home under peculiar circumstances. He was a man of wealth,

married, and nominally living with his wife in Lexington. As a

matter of fact, he spent very little time there, and at the time

of his death of heart failure was leading a pleasurable existence

with a Miss Trent, an actress, whom he had introduced to Mrs.

Carter as his friend. The police, through a talkative deputy

coroner, were made aware of all the facts. Pictures of Miss Trent,

Mrs. Carter, Major Hagenback, his wife, and many curious details

concerning Mrs. Carter's home were about to appear in the papers

when Colonel Gillis and others who were powerful socially and

politically interfered; the affair was hushed up, but Mrs. Carter

was in distress. This was more than she had bargained for.

Her quondam friends were frightened away for the nonce. She herself

had lost courage. When Cowperwood saw her she had been in the

very human act of crying, and her eyes were red.

" Well, well, " he commented, on seeing her--she was in moody gray

in the bargain--" you don't mean to tell me you're worrying about

anything, are you? "

" Oh, Mr. Cowperwood, " she explained, pathetically, " I have had so

much trouble since I saw you. You heard of Major Hagenback's

death, didn't you? " Cowperwood, who had heard something of the

story from Colonel Gillis, nodded. " Well, I have just been notified

by the police that I will have to move, and the landlord has given

me notice, too. If it just weren't for my two children--"

She dabbed at her eyes pathetically.

Cowperwood meditated interestedly.

" Haven't you any place you can go? " he asked.

" I have a summer place in Pennsylvania, " she confessed; " but I

can't go there very well in February. Besides, it's my living I'm

worrying about. I have only this to depend on. "

She waved her hand inclusively toward the various rooms. " Don't

you own that place in Pennsylvania? " he inquired.

" Yes, but it isn't worth much, and I couldn't sell it. I've been

trying to do that anyhow for some time, because Berenice is getting

tired of it. "

" And haven't you any money laid away? "

" It's taken all I have to run this place and keep the children in

school. I've been trying to give Berenice and Rolfe a chance to

do something for themselves. "

At the repetition of Berenice's name Cowperwood consulted his own

interest or mood in the matter. A little assistance for her would

not bother him much. Besides, it would probably eventually bring

about a meeting with the daughter.

" Why don't you clear out of this? " he observed, finally. " It's

no business to be in, anyhow, if you have any regard for your

children. They can't survive anything like this. You want to put

your daughter back in society, don't you? "

" Oh yes, " almost pleaded Mrs. Carter.

" Precisely, " commented Cowperwood, who, when he was thinking,

almost invariably dropped into a short, cold, curt, business manner.

Yet he was humanely inclined in this instance.

" Well, then, why not live in your Pennsylvania place for the

present, or, if not that, go to New York? You can't stay here.

Ship or sell these things. " He waved a hand toward the rooms.

" I would only too gladly, " replied Mrs. Carter, " if I knew what

to do. "

" Take my advice and go to New York for the present. You will get

rid of your expenses here, and I will help you with the rest--for

the present, anyhow. You can get a start again. It is too bad

about these children of yours. I will take care of the boy as

soon as he is old enough. As for Berenice" --he used her name

softly--" if she can stay in her school until she is nineteen or

twenty the chances are that she will make social connections which

will save her nicely. The thing for you to do is to avoid meeting

any of this old crowd out here in the future if you can. It might

be advisable to take her abroad for a time after she leaves school. "

" Yes, if I just could, " sighed Mrs. Carter, rather lamely.

" Well, do what I suggest now, and we will see, " observed Cowperwood.

" It would be a pity if your two children were to have their lives

ruined by such an accident as this. "

Mrs. Carter, realizing that here, in the shape of Cowperwood, if

he chose to be generous, was the open way out of a lowering dungeon

of misery, was inclined to give vent to a bit of grateful emotion,

but, finding him subtly remote, restrained herself. His manner,

while warmly generous at times, was also easily distant, except

when he wished it to be otherwise. Just now he was thinking of

the high soul of Berenice Fleming and of its possible value to him.

Chapter XLI

The Daughter of Mrs. Fleming

Berenice Fleming, at the time Cowperwood first encountered her

mother, was an inmate of the Misses Brewster's School for Girls,

then on Riverside Drive, New York, and one of the most exclusive

establishments of its kind in America. The social prestige and

connections of the Heddens, Flemings, and Carters were sufficient

to gain her this introduction, though the social fortunes of her

mother were already at this time on the down grade. A tall girl,

delicately haggard, as he had imagined her, with reddish-bronze

hair of a tinge but distantly allied to that of Aileen's, she was

unlike any woman Cowperwood had ever known. Even at seventeen she

stood up and out with an inexplicable superiority which brought

her the feverish and exotic attention of lesser personalities whose

emotional animality found an outlet in swinging a censer at her

shrine.

A strange maiden, decidedly! Even at this age, when she was, as

one might suppose, a mere slip of a girl, she was deeply conscious

of herself, her sex, her significance, her possible social import.

Armed with a fair skin, a few freckles, an almost too high color

at times, strange, deep, night-blue, cat-like eyes, a long nose,

a rather pleasant mouth, perfect teeth, and a really good chin,

she moved always with a feline grace that was careless, superior,

sinuous, and yet the acme of harmony and a rhythmic flow of lines.

One of her mess-hall tricks, when unobserved by her instructors,

was to walk with six plates and a water-pitcher all gracefully

poised on the top of her head after the fashion of the Asiatic and

the African, her hips moving, her shoulders, neck, and head still.

Girls begged weeks on end to have her repeat this " stunt, " as

they called it. Another was to put her arms behind her and with

a rush imitate the Winged Victory, a copy of which graced the

library hall.

" You know, " one little rosy-cheeked satellite used to urge on her,

adoringly, " she must have been like you. Her head must have been

like yours. You are lovely when you do it. "

For answer Berenice's deep, almost black-blue eyes turned on her

admirer with solemn unflattered consideration. She awed always

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