The Titan 32 страница

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Although Mrs. Hand had gone to Europe at the crisis of her affairs,

she had returned to seek him out. Cecily Haguenin found many

opportunities of writing him letters and assuring him of her undying

affection. Florence Cochrane persisted in seeing or attempting

to see him even after his interest in her began to wane. For

another thing Aileen, owing to the complication and general

degeneracy of her affairs, had recently begun to drink. Owing to

the failure of her affair with Lynde--for in spite of her yielding

she had never had any real heart interest in it--and to the cavalier

attitude with which Cowperwood took her disloyalty, she had reached

that state of speculative doldrums where the human animal turns

upon itself in bitter self-analysis; the end with the more sensitive

or the less durable is dissipation or even death. Woe to him who

places his faith in illusion--the only reality--and woe to him who

does not. In one way lies disillusion with its pain, in the other

way regret.

After Lynde's departure for Europe, whither she had refused to

follow him, Aileen took up with a secondary personage by the name

of Watson Skeet, a sculptor. Unlike most artists, he was the

solitary heir of the president of an immense furniture-manufacturing

company in which he refused to take any interest. He had studied

abroad, but had returned to Chicago with a view to propagating art

in the West. A large, blond, soft-fleshed man, he had a kind of

archaic naturalness and simplicity which appealed to Aileen. They

had met at the Rhees Griers'. Feeling herself neglected after

Lynde's departure, and dreading loneliness above all things, Aileen

became intimate with Skeet, but to no intense mental satisfaction.

That driving standard within--that obsessing ideal which requires

that all things be measured by it--was still dominant. Who has

not experienced the chilling memory of the better thing? How it

creeps over the spirit of one's current dreams! Like the specter

at the banquet it stands, its substanceless eyes viewing with a

sad philosophy the makeshift feast. The what-might-have-been of

her life with Cowperwood walked side by side with her wherever she

went. Once occasionally indulging in cigarettes, she now smoked

almost constantly. Once barely sipping at wines, cocktails,

brandy-and-soda, she now took to the latter, or, rather, to a

new whisky-and-soda combination known as " highball" with a kind

of vehemence which had little to do with a taste for the thing

itself. True, drinking is, after all, a state of mind, and not

an appetite. She had found on a number of occasions when she had

been quarreling with Lynde or was mentally depressed that in

partaking of these drinks a sort of warm, speculative indifference

seized upon her. She was no longer so sad. She might cry, but

it was in a soft, rainy, relieving way. Her sorrows were as

strange, enticing figures in dreams. They moved about and around

her, not as things actually identical with her, but as ills which

she could view at a distance. Sometimes both she and they (for

she saw herself also as in a kind of mirage or inverted vision)

seemed beings of another state, troubled, but not bitterly painful.

The old nepenthe of the bottle had seized upon her. After a few

accidental lapses, in which she found it acted as a solace or

sedative, the highball visioned itself to her as a resource. Why

should she not drink if it relieved her, as it actually did, of

physical and mental pain? There were apparently no bad after-effects.

The whisky involved was diluted to an almost watery state. It

was her custom now when at home alone to go to the butler's pantry

where the liquors were stored and prepare a drink for herself, or

to order a tray with a siphon and bottle placed in her room.

Cowperwood, noticing the persistence of its presence there and the

fact that she drank heavily at table, commented upon it.

" You're not taking too much of that, are you, Aileen? " he questioned

one evening, watching her drink down a tumbler of whisky and water

as she sat contemplating a pattern of needlework with which the

table was ornamented.

" Certainly I'm not, " she replied, irritably, a little flushed and

thick of tongue. " Why do you ask? " She herself had been wondering

whether in the course of time it might not have a depreciating

effect on her complexion. This was the only thing that still

concerned her--her beauty.

" Well, I see you have that bottle in your room all the time. I

was wondering if you might not be forgetting how much you are using

it. "

Because she was so sensitive he was trying to be tactful.

" Well, " she answered, crossly, " what if I am? It wouldn't make any

particular difference if I did. I might as well drink as do some

other things that are done. "

It was a kind of satisfaction to her to bait him in this way. His

inquiry, being a proof of continued interest on his part, was of

some value. At least he was not entirely indifferent to her.

" I wish you wouldn't talk that way, Aileen, " he replied. " I have

no objection to your drinking some. I don't suppose it makes any

difference to you now whether I object or not. But you are too

good-looking, too well set up physically, to begin that. You don't

need it, and it's such a short road to hell. Your state isn't so

bad. Good heavens! many another woman has been in your position.

I'm not going to leave you unless you want to leave me. I've

told you that over and over. I'm just sorry people change--we all

do. I suppose I've changed some, but that's no reason for your

letting yourself go to pieces. I wish you wouldn't be desperate

about this business. It may come out better than you think in the

long run. "

He was merely talking to console her.

" Oh! oh! oh! " Aileen suddenly began to rock and cry in a foolish

drunken way, as though her heart would break, and Cowperwood got

up. He was horrified after a fashion.

" Oh, don't come near me! " Aileen suddenly exclaimed, sobering in

an equally strange way. " I know why you come. I know how much

you care about me or my looks. Don't you worry whether I drink

or not. I'll drink if I please, or do anything else if I choose.

If it helps me over my difficulties, that's my business, not yours, "

and in defiance she prepared another glass and drank it.

Cowperwood shook his head, looking at her steadily and sorrowfully.

" It's too bad, Aileen, " he said. " I don't know what to do about

you exactly. You oughtn't to go on this way. Whisky won't get

you anywhere. It will simply ruin your looks and make you miserable

in the bargain. "

" Oh, to hell with my looks! " she snapped. " A lot of good they've

done me. " And, feeling contentious and sad, she got up and left

the table. Cowperwood followed her after a time, only to see her

dabbing at her eyes and nose with powder. A half-filled glass of

whisky and water was on the dressing-table beside her. It gave

him a strange feeling of responsibility and helplessness.

Mingled with his anxiety as to Aileen were thoughts of the alternate

rise and fall of his hopes in connection with Berenice. She was

such a superior girl, developing so definitely as an individual.

To his satisfaction she had, on a few recent occasions when he had

seen her, unbent sufficiently to talk to him in a friendly and

even intimate way, for she was by no means hoity-toity, but a

thinking, reasoning being of the profoundest intellectual, or,

rather, the highest artistic tendencies. She was so care-free,

living in a high and solitary world, at times apparently enwrapt

in thoughts serene, at other times sharing vividly in the current

interests of the social world of which she was a part, and which

she dignified as much as it dignified her.

One Sunday morning at Pocono, in late June weather, when he had

come East to rest for a few days, and all was still and airy on

the high ground which the Carter cottage occupied, Berenice came

out on the veranda where Cowperwood was sitting, reading a fiscal

report of one of his companies and meditating on his affairs. By

now they had become somewhat more sympatica than formerly, and

Berenice had an easy, genial way in his presence. She liked him,

rather. With an indescribable smile which wrinkled her nose and

eyes, and played about the corners of her mouth, she said: " Now

I am going to catch a bird. "

" A what? " asked Cowperwood, looking up and pretending he had not

heard, though he had. He was all eyes for any movement of hers.

She was dressed in a flouncy morning gown eminently suitable for

the world in which she was moving.

" A bird, " she replied, with an airy toss of her head. " This is

June-time, and the sparrows are teaching their young to fly. "

Cowperwood, previously engrossed in financial speculations, was

translated, as by the wave of a fairy wand, into another realm

where birds and fledglings and grass and the light winds of heaven

were more important than brick and stone and stocks and bonds.

He got up and followed her flowing steps across the grass to where,

near a clump of alder bushes, she had seen a mother sparrow enticing

a fledgling to take wing. From her room upstairs, she had been

watching this bit of outdoor sociology. It suddenly came to

Cowperwood, with great force, how comparatively unimportant in the

great drift of life were his own affairs when about him was operative

all this splendid will to existence, as sensed by her. He saw her

stretch out her hands downward, and run in an airy, graceful way,

stooping here and there, while before her fluttered a baby sparrow,

until suddenly she dived quickly and then, turning, her face agleam,

cried: " See, I have him! He wants to fight, too! Oh, you little

dear! "

She was holding " him, " as she chose to characterize it, in the

hollow of her hand, the head between her thumb and forefinger,

with the forefinger of her free hand petting it the while she

laughed and kissed it. It was not so much bird-love as the artistry

of life and of herself that was moving her. Hearing the parent

bird chirping distractedly from a nearby limb, she turned and

called: " Don't make such a row! I sha'n't keep him long. "

Cowperwood laughed--trig in the morning sun. " You can scarcely

blame her, " he commented.

" Oh, she knows well enough I wouldn't hurt him, " Berenice replied,

spiritedly, as though it were literally true.

" Does she, indeed? " inquired Cowperwood. " Why do you say that? "

" Because it's true. Don't you think they know when their children

are really in danger? "

" But why should they? " persisted Cowperwood, charmed and interested

by the involute character of her logic. She was quite deceptive

to him. He could not be sure what she thought.

She merely fixed him a moment with her cool, slate-blue eyes. " Do

you think the senses of the world are only five? " she asked, in

the most charming and non-reproachful way. " Indeed, they know

well enough. She knows. " She turned and waved a graceful hand in

the direction of the tree, where peace now reigned. The chirping

had ceased. " She knows I am not a cat. "

Again that enticing, mocking smile that wrinkled her nose, her

eye-corners, her mouth. The word " cat" had a sharp, sweet sound

in her mouth. It seemed to be bitten off closely with force and

airy spirit. Cowperwood surveyed her as he would have surveyed

the ablest person he knew. Here was a woman, he saw, who could

and would command the utmost reaches of his soul in every direction.

If he interested her at all, he would need them all. The eyes

of her were at once so elusive, so direct, so friendly, so cool

and keen. " You will have to be interesting, indeed, to interest

me, " they seemed to say; and yet they were by no means averse,

apparently, to a hearty camaraderie. That nose-wrinkling smile

said as much. Here was by no means a Stephanie Platow, nor yet a

Rita Sohlberg. He could not assume her as he had Ella Hubby, or

Florence Cochrane, or Cecily Haguenin. Here was an iron individuality

with a soul for romance and art and philosophy and life. He could

not take her as he had those others. And yet Berenice was really

beginning to think more than a little about Cowperwood. He must

be an extraordinary man; her mother said so, and the newspapers

were always mentioning his name and noting his movements.

A little later, at Southampton, whither she and her mother had

gone, they met again. Together with a young man by the name of

Greanelle, Cowperwood and Berenice had gone into the sea to bathe.

It was a wonderful afternoon.

To the east and south and west spread the sea, a crinkling floor

of blue, and to their left, as they faced it, was a lovely

outward-curving shore of tawny sand. Studying Berenice in blue-silk

bathing costume and shoes, Cowperwood had been stung by the wonder

of passing life--how youth comes in, ever fresh and fresh, and

age goes out. Here he was, long crowded years of conflict and

experience behind him, and yet this twenty-year-old girl, with her

incisive mind and keen tastes, was apparently as wise in matters

of general import as himself. He could find no flaw in her armor

in those matters which they could discuss. Her knowledge and

comments were so ripe and sane, despite a tendency to pose a little,

which was quite within her rights. Because Greanelle had bored

her a little she had shunted him off and was amusing herself talking

to Cowperwood, who fascinated her by his compact individuality.

" Do you know, " she confided to him, on this occasion, " I get so

very tired of young men sometimes. They can be so inane. I do

declare, they are nothing more than shoes and ties and socks and

canes strung together in some unimaginable way. Vaughn Greanelle

is for all the world like a perambulating manikin to-day. He is

just an English suit with a cane attached walking about. "

" Well, bless my soul, " commented Cowperwood, " what an indictment! "

" It's true, " she replied. " He knows nothing at all except polo,

and the latest swimming-stroke, and where everybody is, and who

is going to marry who. Isn't it dull? "

She tossed her head back and breathed as though to exhale the fumes

of the dull and the inane from her inmost being.

" Did you tell him that? " inquired Cowperwood, curiously.

" Certainly I did. "

" I don't wonder he looks so solemn, " he said, turning and looking

back at Greanelle and Mrs. Carter; they were sitting side by side

in sand-chairs, the former beating the sand with his toes. " You're

a curious girl, Berenice, " he went on, familiarly. " You are so

direct and vital at times.

" Not any more than you are, from all I can hear, " she replied,

fixing him with those steady eyes. " Anyhow, why should I be

bored? He is so dull. He follows me around out here all the

time, and I don't want him. "

She tossed her head and began to run up the beach to where bathers

were fewer and fewer, looking back at Cowperwood as if to say,

" Why don't you follow? " He developed a burst of enthusiasm and ran

quite briskly, overtaking her near some shallows where, because

of a sandbar offshore, the waters were thin and bright.

" Oh, look! " exclaimed Berenice, when he came up. " See, the fish!

O-oh! "

She dashed in to where a few feet offshore a small school of minnows

as large as sardines were playing, silvery in the sun. She ran

as she had for the bird, doing her best to frighten them into a

neighboring pocket or pool farther up on the shore. Cowperwood,

as gay as a boy of ten, joined in the chase. He raced after them

briskly, losing one school, but pocketing another a little farther

on and calling to her to come.

" Oh! " exclaimed Berenice at one point. " Here they are now. Come

quick! Drive them in here! "

Her hair was blowy, her face a keen pink, her eyes an electric

blue by contrast. She was bending low over the water--Cowperwood

also--their hands outstretched, the fish, some five in all, nervously

dancing before them in their efforts to escape. All at once,

having forced them into a corner, they dived; Berenice actually

caught one. Cowperwood missed by a fraction, but drove the fish

she did catch into her hands.

" Oh, " she exclaimed, jumping up, " how wonderful! It's alive. I

caught it. "

She danced up and down, and Cowperwood, standing before her, was

sobered by her charm. He felt an impulse to speak to her of his

affection, to tell her how delicious she was to him.

" You, " he said, pausing over the word and giving it special

emphasis--" you are the only thing here that is wonderful to me. "

She looked at him a moment, the live fish in her extended hands,

her eyes keying to the situation. For the least fraction of a

moment she was uncertain, as he could see, how to take this. Many

men had been approximative before. It was common to have compliments

paid to her. But this was different. She said nothing, but fixed

him with a look which said quite plainly, " You had better not say

anything more just now, I think. " Then, seeing that he understood,

that his manner softened, and that he was troubled, she crinkled

her nose gaily and added: " It's like fairyland. I feel as though

I had caught it out of another world. " Cowperwood understood. The

direct approach was not for use in her case; and yet there was

something, a camaraderie, a sympathy which he felt and which she

felt. A girls' school, conventions, the need of socially placing

herself, her conservative friends, and their viewpoint--all were

working here. If he were only single now, she told herself, she

would be willing to listen to him in a very different spirit, for

he was charming. But this way-- And he, for his part, concluded

that here was one woman whom he would gladly marry if she would

have him.

Chapter XLVII

American Match

Following Cowperwood's coup in securing cash by means of his seeming

gift of three hundred thousand dollars for a telescope his enemies

rested for a time, but only because of a lack of ideas wherewith

to destroy him. Public sentiment--created by the newspapers--was

still against him. Yet his franchises had still from eight to ten

years to run, and meanwhile he might make himself unassailably

powerful. For the present he was busy, surrounded by his engineers

and managers and legal advisers, constructing his several elevated

lines at a whirlwind rate. At the same time, through Videra,

Kaffrath, and Addison, he was effecting a scheme of loaning money

on call to the local Chicago banks--the very banks which were most

opposed to him--so that in a crisis be could retaliate. By

manipulating the vast quantity of stocks and bonds of which he was

now the master he was making money hand over fist, his one rule

being that six per cent. was enough to pay any holder who had

merely purchased his stock as an outsider. It was most profitable

to himself. When his stocks earned more than that he issued new

ones, selling them on 'change and pocketing the difference. Out

of the cash-drawers of his various companies he took immense sums,

temporary loans, as it were, which later he had charged by his

humble servitors to " construction, " " equipment, " or " operation. "

He was like a canny wolf prowling in a forest of trees of his own

creation.

The weak note in this whole project of elevated lines was that for

some time it was destined to be unprofitable. Its very competition

tended to weaken the value of his surface-line companies. His

holdings in these as well as in elevated-road shares were immense.

If anything happened to cause them to fall in price immense numbers

of these same stocks held by others would be thrown on the market,

thus still further depreciating their value and compelling him to

come into the market and buy. With the most painstaking care he

began at once to pile up a reserve in government bonds for emergency

purposes, which he decided should be not less than eight or nine

million dollars, for he feared financial storms as well as financial

reprisal, and where so much was at stake he did not propose to be

caught napping.

At the time that Cowperwood first entered on elevated-road

construction there was no evidence that any severe depression in

the American money-market was imminent. But it was not long before

a new difficulty began to appear. It was now the day of the trust

in all its watery magnificence. Coal, iron, steel, oil, machinery,

and a score of other commercial necessities had already been

" trustified, " and others, such as leather, shoes, cordage, and the

like, were, almost hourly, being brought under the control of

shrewd and ruthless men. Already in Chicago Schryhart, Hand,

Arneel, Merrill, and a score of others were seeing their way to

amazing profits by underwriting these ventures which required ready

cash, and to which lesser magnates, content with a portion of the

leavings of Dives's table, were glad to bring to their attention.

On the other hand, in the nation at large there was growing up a

feeling that at the top there were a set of giants--Titans--who,

without heart or soul, and without any understanding of or sympathy

with the condition of the rank and file, were setting forth to

enchain and enslave them. The vast mass, writhing in ignorance

and poverty, finally turned with pathetic fury to the cure-all of

a political leader in the West. This latter prophet, seeing gold

becoming scarcer and scarcer and the cash and credits of the land

falling into the hands of a few who were manipulating them for

their own benefit, had decided that what was needed was a greater

volume of currency, so that credits would be easier and money

cheaper to come by in the matter of interest. Silver, of which

there was a superabundance in the mines, was to be coined at the

ratio of sixteen dollars of silver for every one of gold in

circulation, and the parity of the two metals maintained by fiat

of government. Never again should the few be able to make a

weapon of the people's medium of exchange in order to bring about

their undoing. There was to be ample money, far beyond the control

of central banks and the men in power over them. It was a splendid

dream worthy of a charitable heart, but because of it a disturbing

war for political control of the government was shortly threatened

and soon began. The money element, sensing the danger of change

involved in the theories of the new political leader, began to

fight him and the element in the Democratic party which he

represented. The rank and file of both parties--the more or less

hungry and thirsty who lie ever at the bottom on both sides--hailed

him as a heaven-sent deliverer, a new Moses come to lead them out

of the wilderness of poverty and distress. Woe to the political

leader who preaches a new doctrine of deliverance, and who, out

of tenderness of heart, offers a panacea for human ills. His truly

shall be a crown of thorns.

Cowperwood, no less than other men of wealth, was opposed to what

he deemed a crack-brained idea--that of maintaining a parity between

gold and silver by law. Confiscation was his word for it--the

confiscation of the wealth of the few for the benefit of the many.

Most of all was he opposed to it because he feared that this

unrest, which was obviously growing, foreshadowed a class war in

which investors would run to cover and money be locked in strong-boxes.

At once he began to shorten sail, to invest only in the soundest

securities, and to convert all his weaker ones into cash.

To meet current emergencies, however, he was compelled to borrow

heavily here and there, and in doing so he was quick to note that

those banks representing his enemies in Chicago and elsewhere were

willing to accept his various stocks as collateral, providing he

would accept loans subject to call. He did so gladly, at the same

time suspecting Hand, Schryhart, Arneel, and Merrill of some scheme

to wreck him, providing they could get him where the calling of

his loans suddenly and in concert would financially embarrass him.

" I think I know what that crew are up to, he once observed to

Addison, at this period. " Well, they will have to rise very early

in the morning if they catch me napping. "

The thing that he suspected was really true. Schryhart, Hand, and

Arneel, watching him through their agents and brokers, had soon

discovered--in the very earliest phases of the silver agitation and

before the real storm broke--that he was borrowing in New York,

in London, in certain quarters of Chicago, and elsewhere. " It

looks to me, said Schryhart, one day, to his friend Arneel, " as

if our friend has gotten in a little too deep. He has overreached

himself. These elevated-road schemes of his have eaten up too

much capital. There is another election coming on next fall, and

he knows we are going to fight tooth and nail. He needs money to

electrify his surface lines. If we could trace out exactly where

he stands, and where he has borrowed, we might know what to do. "

" Unless I am greatly mistaken, " replied Arneel, " he is in a tight

place or is rapidly getting there. This silver agitation is

beginning to weaken stocks and tighten money. I suggest that our

banks here loan him all the money he wants on call. When the time

comes, if he isn't ready, we can shut him up tighter than a drum.

If we can pick up any other loans he's made anywhere else, well

and good. "

Mr. Arneel said this without a shadow of bitterness or humor. In

some tight hour, perhaps, now fast approaching, Mr. Cowperwood

would be promised salvation--" saved" on condition that he should

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