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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Financier, by Theodore Dreiser
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Financier
+
+Author: Theodore Dreiser
+
+Release Date: February 25, 2006 [EBook #1840]
+Last Updated: December 1, 2019
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FINANCIER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Kirk Pearson and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+The Financier
+
+by Theodore Dreiser
+
+
+Contents
+
+ Chapter I
+ Chapter II
+ Chapter III
+ Chapter IV
+ Chapter V
+ Chapter VI
+ Chapter VII
+ Chapter VIII
+ Chapter IX
+ Chapter X
+ Chapter XI
+ Chapter XII
+ Chapter XIII
+ Chapter XIV
+ Chapter XV
+ Chapter XVI
+ Chapter XVII
+ Chapter XVIII
+ Chapter XIX
+ Chapter XX
+ Chapter XXI
+ Chapter XXII
+ Chapter XXIII
+ Chapter XXIV
+ Chapter XXV
+ Chapter XXVI
+ Chapter XXVII
+ Chapter XXVIII
+ Chapter XXIX
+ Chapter XXX
+ Chapter XXXI
+ Chapter XXXII
+ Chapter XXXIII
+ Chapter XXXIV
+ Chapter XXXV
+ Chapter XXXVI
+ Chapter XXXVII
+ Chapter XXXVIII
+ Chapter XXXIX
+ Chapter XL
+ Chapter XLI
+ Chapter XLII
+ Chapter XLIII
+ Chapter XLIV
+ Chapter XLV
+ Chapter XLVI
+ Chapter XLVII
+ Chapter XLVIII
+ Chapter XLIX
+ Chapter L
+ Chapter LI
+ Chapter LII
+ Chapter LIII
+ Chapter LIV
+ Chapter LV
+ Chapter LVI
+ Chapter LVII
+ Chapter LVIII
+ Chapter LIX
+ Concerning Mycteroperca Bonaci
+ The Magic Crystal
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+
+The Philadelphia into which Frank Algernon Cowperwood was born was a
+city of two hundred and fifty thousand and more. It was set with
+handsome parks, notable buildings, and crowded with historic memories.
+Many of the things that we and he knew later were not then in
+existence—the telegraph, telephone, express company, ocean steamer,
+city delivery of mails. There were no postage-stamps or registered
+letters. The street car had not arrived. In its place were hosts of
+omnibuses, and for longer travel the slowly developing railroad system
+still largely connected by canals.
+
+Cowperwood’s father was a bank clerk at the time of Frank’s birth, but
+ten years later, when the boy was already beginning to turn a very
+sensible, vigorous eye on the world, Mr. Henry Worthington Cowperwood,
+because of the death of the bank’s president and the consequent moving
+ahead of the other officers, fell heir to the place vacated by the
+promoted teller, at the, to him, munificent salary of thirty-five
+hundred dollars a year. At once he decided, as he told his wife
+joyously, to remove his family from 21 Buttonwood Street to 124 New
+Market Street, a much better neighborhood, where there was a nice brick
+house of three stories in height as opposed to their present
+two-storied domicile. There was the probability that some day they
+would come into something even better, but for the present this was
+sufficient. He was exceedingly grateful.
+
+Henry Worthington Cowperwood was a man who believed only what he saw
+and was content to be what he was—a banker, or a prospective one. He
+was at this time a significant figure—tall, lean, inquisitorial,
+clerkly—with nice, smooth, closely-cropped side whiskers coming to
+almost the lower lobes of his ears. His upper lip was smooth and
+curiously long, and he had a long, straight nose and a chin that tended
+to be pointed. His eyebrows were bushy, emphasizing vague,
+grayish-green eyes, and his hair was short and smooth and nicely
+parted. He wore a frock-coat always—it was quite the thing in financial
+circles in those days—and a high hat. And he kept his hands and nails
+immaculately clean. His manner might have been called severe, though
+really it was more cultivated than austere.
+
+Being ambitious to get ahead socially and financially, he was very
+careful of whom or with whom he talked. He was as much afraid of
+expressing a rabid or unpopular political or social opinion as he was
+of being seen with an evil character, though he had really no opinion
+of great political significance to express. He was neither anti- nor
+pro-slavery, though the air was stormy with abolition sentiment and its
+opposition. He believed sincerely that vast fortunes were to be made
+out of railroads if one only had the capital and that curious thing, a
+magnetic personality—the ability to win the confidence of others. He
+was sure that Andrew Jackson was all wrong in his opposition to
+Nicholas Biddle and the United States Bank, one of the great issues of
+the day; and he was worried, as he might well be, by the perfect storm
+of wildcat money which was floating about and which was constantly
+coming to his bank—discounted, of course, and handed out again to
+anxious borrowers at a profit. His bank was the Third National of
+Philadelphia, located in that center of all Philadelphia and indeed, at
+that time, of practically all national finance—Third Street—and its
+owners conducted a brokerage business as a side line. There was a
+perfect plague of State banks, great and small, in those days, issuing
+notes practically without regulation upon insecure and unknown assets
+and failing and suspending with astonishing rapidity; and a knowledge
+of all these was an important requirement of Mr. Cowperwood’s position.
+As a result, he had become the soul of caution. Unfortunately, for him,
+he lacked in a great measure the two things that are necessary for
+distinction in any field—magnetism and vision. He was not destined to
+be a great financier, though he was marked out to be a moderately
+successful one.
+
+Mrs. Cowperwood was of a religious temperament—a small woman, with
+light-brown hair and clear, brown eyes, who had been very attractive in
+her day, but had become rather prim and matter-of-fact and inclined to
+take very seriously the maternal care of her three sons and one
+daughter. The former, captained by Frank, the eldest, were a source of
+considerable annoyance to her, for they were forever making expeditions
+to different parts of the city, getting in with bad boys, probably, and
+seeing and hearing things they should neither see nor hear.
+
+Frank Cowperwood, even at ten, was a natural-born leader. At the day
+school he attended, and later at the Central High School, he was looked
+upon as one whose common sense could unquestionably be trusted in all
+cases. He was a sturdy youth, courageous and defiant. From the very
+start of his life, he wanted to know about economics and politics. He
+cared nothing for books. He was a clean, stalky, shapely boy, with a
+bright, clean-cut, incisive face; large, clear, gray eyes; a wide
+forehead; short, bristly, dark-brown hair. He had an incisive,
+quick-motioned, self-sufficient manner, and was forever asking
+questions with a keen desire for an intelligent reply. He never had an
+ache or pain, ate his food with gusto, and ruled his brothers with a
+rod of iron. “Come on, Joe!” “Hurry, Ed!” These commands were issued in
+no rough but always a sure way, and Joe and Ed came. They looked up to
+Frank from the first as a master, and what he had to say was listened
+to eagerly.
+
+He was forever pondering, pondering—one fact astonishing him quite as
+much as another—for he could not figure out how this thing he had come
+into—this life—was organized. How did all these people get into the
+world? What were they doing here? Who started things, anyhow? His
+mother told him the story of Adam and Eve, but he didn’t believe it.
+There was a fish-market not so very far from his home, and there, on
+his way to see his father at the bank, or conducting his brothers on
+after-school expeditions, he liked to look at a certain tank in front
+of one store where were kept odd specimens of sea-life brought in by
+the Delaware Bay fishermen. He saw once there a sea-horse—just a queer
+little sea-animal that looked somewhat like a horse—and another time he
+saw an electric eel which Benjamin Franklin’s discovery had explained.
+One day he saw a squid and a lobster put in the tank, and in connection
+with them was witness to a tragedy which stayed with him all his life
+and cleared things up considerably intellectually. The lobster, it
+appeared from the talk of the idle bystanders, was offered no food, as
+the squid was considered his rightful prey. He lay at the bottom of the
+clear glass tank on the yellow sand, apparently seeing nothing—you
+could not tell in which way his beady, black buttons of eyes were
+looking—but apparently they were never off the body of the squid. The
+latter, pale and waxy in texture, looking very much like pork fat or
+jade, moved about in torpedo fashion; but his movements were apparently
+never out of the eyes of his enemy, for by degrees small portions of
+his body began to disappear, snapped off by the relentless claws of his
+pursuer. The lobster would leap like a catapult to where the squid was
+apparently idly dreaming, and the squid, very alert, would dart away,
+shooting out at the same time a cloud of ink, behind which it would
+disappear. It was not always completely successful, however. Small
+portions of its body or its tail were frequently left in the claws of
+the monster below. Fascinated by the drama, young Cowperwood came daily
+to watch.
+
+One morning he stood in front of the tank, his nose almost pressed to
+the glass. Only a portion of the squid remained, and his ink-bag was
+emptier than ever. In the corner of the tank sat the lobster, poised
+apparently for action.
+
+The boy stayed as long as he could, the bitter struggle fascinating
+him. Now, maybe, or in an hour or a day, the squid might die, slain by
+the lobster, and the lobster would eat him. He looked again at the
+greenish-copperish engine of destruction in the corner and wondered
+when this would be. To-night, maybe. He would come back to-night.
+
+He returned that night, and lo! the expected had happened. There was a
+little crowd around the tank. The lobster was in the corner. Before him
+was the squid cut in two and partially devoured.
+
+“He got him at last,” observed one bystander. “I was standing right
+here an hour ago, and up he leaped and grabbed him. The squid was too
+tired. He wasn’t quick enough. He did back up, but that lobster he
+calculated on his doing that. He’s been figuring on his movements for a
+long time now. He got him to-day.”
+
+Frank only stared. Too bad he had missed this. The least touch of
+sorrow for the squid came to him as he stared at it slain. Then he
+gazed at the victor.
+
+“That’s the way it has to be, I guess,” he commented to himself. “That
+squid wasn’t quick enough.” He figured it out.
+
+“The squid couldn’t kill the lobster—he had no weapon. The lobster
+could kill the squid—he was heavily armed. There was nothing for the
+squid to feed on; the lobster had the squid as prey. What was the
+result to be? What else could it be? He didn’t have a chance,” he
+concluded finally, as he trotted on homeward.
+
+The incident made a great impression on him. It answered in a rough way
+that riddle which had been annoying him so much in the past: “How is
+life organized?” Things lived on each other—that was it. Lobsters lived
+on squids and other things. What lived on lobsters? Men, of course!
+Sure, that was it! And what lived on men? he asked himself. Was it
+other men? Wild animals lived on men. And there were Indians and
+cannibals. And some men were killed by storms and accidents. He wasn’t
+so sure about men living on men; but men did kill each other. How about
+wars and street fights and mobs? He had seen a mob once. It attacked
+the Public Ledger building as he was coming home from school. His
+father had explained why. It was about the slaves. That was it! Sure,
+men lived on men. Look at the slaves. They were men. That’s what all
+this excitement was about these days. Men killing other men—negroes.
+
+He went on home quite pleased with himself at his solution.
+
+“Mother!” he exclaimed, as he entered the house, “he finally got him!”
+
+“Got who? What got what?” she inquired in amazement. “Go wash your
+hands.”
+
+“Why, that lobster got that squid I was telling you and pa about the
+other day.”
+
+“Well, that’s too bad. What makes you take any interest in such things?
+Run, wash your hands.”
+
+“Well, you don’t often see anything like that. I never did.” He went
+out in the back yard, where there was a hydrant and a post with a
+little table on it, and on that a shining tin-pan and a bucket of
+water. Here he washed his face and hands.
+
+“Say, papa,” he said to his father, later, “you know that squid?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, he’s dead. The lobster got him.”
+
+His father continued reading. “Well, that’s too bad,” he said,
+indifferently.
+
+But for days and weeks Frank thought of this and of the life he was
+tossed into, for he was already pondering on what he should be in this
+world, and how he should get along. From seeing his father count money,
+he was sure that he would like banking; and Third Street, where his
+father’s office was, seemed to him the cleanest, most fascinating
+street in the world.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+
+The growth of young Frank Algernon Cowperwood was through years of what
+might be called a comfortable and happy family existence. Buttonwood
+Street, where he spent the first ten years of his life, was a lovely
+place for a boy to live. It contained mostly small two and three-story
+red brick houses, with small white marble steps leading up to the front
+door, and thin, white marble trimmings outlining the front door and
+windows. There were trees in the street—plenty of them. The road
+pavement was of big, round cobblestones, made bright and clean by the
+rains; and the sidewalks were of red brick, and always damp and cool.
+In the rear was a yard, with trees and grass and sometimes flowers, for
+the lots were almost always one hundred feet deep, and the
+house-fronts, crowding close to the pavement in front, left a
+comfortable space in the rear.
+
+The Cowperwoods, father and mother, were not so lean and narrow that
+they could not enter into the natural tendency to be happy and joyous
+with their children; and so this family, which increased at the rate of
+a child every two or three years after Frank’s birth until there were
+four children, was quite an interesting affair when he was ten and they
+were ready to move into the New Market Street home. Henry Worthington
+Cowperwood’s connections were increased as his position grew more
+responsible, and gradually he was becoming quite a personage. He
+already knew a number of the more prosperous merchants who dealt with
+his bank, and because as a clerk his duties necessitated his calling at
+other banking-houses, he had come to be familiar with and favorably
+known in the Bank of the United States, the Drexels, the Edwards, and
+others. The brokers knew him as representing a very sound organization,
+and while he was not considered brilliant mentally, he was known as a
+most reliable and trustworthy individual.
+
+In this progress of his father young Cowperwood definitely shared. He
+was quite often allowed to come to the bank on Saturdays, when he would
+watch with great interest the deft exchange of bills at the brokerage
+end of the business. He wanted to know where all the types of money
+came from, why discounts were demanded and received, what the men did
+with all the money they received. His father, pleased at his interest,
+was glad to explain so that even at this early age—from ten to
+fifteen—the boy gained a wide knowledge of the condition of the country
+financially—what a State bank was and what a national one; what brokers
+did; what stocks were, and why they fluctuated in value. He began to
+see clearly what was meant by money as a medium of exchange, and how
+all values were calculated according to one primary value, that of
+gold. He was a financier by instinct, and all the knowledge that
+pertained to that great art was as natural to him as the emotions and
+subtleties of life are to a poet. This medium of exchange, gold,
+interested him intensely. When his father explained to him how it was
+mined, he dreamed that he owned a gold mine and waked to wish that he
+did. He was likewise curious about stocks and bonds and he learned that
+some stocks and bonds were not worth the paper they were written on,
+and that others were worth much more than their face value indicated.
+
+“There, my son,” said his father to him one day, “you won’t often see a
+bundle of those around this neighborhood.” He referred to a series of
+shares in the British East India Company, deposited as collateral at
+two-thirds of their face value for a loan of one hundred thousand
+dollars. A Philadelphia magnate had hypothecated them for the use of
+the ready cash. Young Cowperwood looked at them curiously. “They don’t
+look like much, do they?” he commented.
+
+“They are worth just four times their face value,” said his father,
+archly.
+
+Frank reexamined them. “The British East India Company,” he read. “Ten
+pounds—that’s pretty near fifty dollars.”
+
+“Forty-eight, thirty-five,” commented his father, dryly. “Well, if we
+had a bundle of those we wouldn’t need to work very hard. You’ll notice
+there are scarcely any pin-marks on them. They aren’t sent around very
+much. I don’t suppose these have ever been used as collateral before.”
+
+Young Cowperwood gave them back after a time, but not without a keen
+sense of the vast ramifications of finance. What was the East India
+Company? What did it do? His father told him.
+
+At home also he listened to considerable talk of financial investment
+and adventure. He heard, for one thing, of a curious character by the
+name of Steemberger, a great beef speculator from Virginia, who was
+attracted to Philadelphia in those days by the hope of large and easy
+credits. Steemberger, so his father said, was close to Nicholas Biddle,
+Lardner, and others of the United States Bank, or at least friendly
+with them, and seemed to be able to obtain from that organization
+nearly all that he asked for. His operations in the purchase of cattle
+in Virginia, Ohio, and other States were vast, amounting, in fact, to
+an entire monopoly of the business of supplying beef to Eastern cities.
+He was a big man, enormous, with a face, his father said, something
+like that of a pig; and he wore a high beaver hat and a long frock-coat
+which hung loosely about his big chest and stomach. He had managed to
+force the price of beef up to thirty cents a pound, causing all the
+retailers and consumers to rebel, and this was what made him so
+conspicuous. He used to come to the brokerage end of the elder
+Cowperwood’s bank, with as much as one hundred thousand or two hundred
+thousand dollars, in twelve months—post-notes of the United States Bank
+in denominations of one thousand, five thousand, and ten thousand
+dollars. These he would cash at from ten to twelve per cent. under
+their face value, having previously given the United States Bank his
+own note at four months for the entire amount. He would take his pay
+from the Third National brokerage counter in packages of Virginia,
+Ohio, and western Pennsylvania bank-notes at par, because he made his
+disbursements principally in those States. The Third National would in
+the first place realize a profit of from four to five per cent. on the
+original transaction; and as it took the Western bank-notes at a
+discount, it also made a profit on those.
+
+There was another man his father talked about—one Francis J. Grund, a
+famous newspaper correspondent and lobbyist at Washington, who
+possessed the faculty of unearthing secrets of every kind, especially
+those relating to financial legislation. The secrets of the President
+and the Cabinet, as well as of the Senate and the House of
+Representatives, seemed to be open to him. Grund had been about, years
+before, purchasing through one or two brokers large amounts of the
+various kinds of Texas debt certificates and bonds. The Republic of
+Texas, in its struggle for independence from Mexico, had issued bonds
+and certificates in great variety, amounting in value to ten or fifteen
+million dollars. Later, in connection with the scheme to make Texas a
+State of the Union, a bill was passed providing a contribution on the
+part of the United States of five million dollars, to be applied to the
+extinguishment of this old debt. Grund knew of this, and also of the
+fact that some of this debt, owing to the peculiar conditions of issue,
+was to be paid in full, while other portions were to be scaled down,
+and there was to be a false or pre-arranged failure to pass the bill at
+one session in order to frighten off the outsiders who might have heard
+and begun to buy the old certificates for profit. He acquainted the
+Third National Bank with this fact, and of course the information came
+to Cowperwood as teller. He told his wife about it, and so his son, in
+this roundabout way, heard it, and his clear, big eyes glistened. He
+wondered why his father did not take advantage of the situation and buy
+some Texas certificates for himself. Grund, so his father said, and
+possibly three or four others, had made over a hundred thousand dollars
+apiece. It wasn’t exactly legitimate, he seemed to think, and yet it
+was, too. Why shouldn’t such inside information be rewarded? Somehow,
+Frank realized that his father was too honest, too cautious, but when
+he grew up, he told himself, he was going to be a broker, or a
+financier, or a banker, and do some of these things.
+
+Just at this time there came to the Cowperwoods an uncle who had not
+previously appeared in the life of the family. He was a brother of Mrs.
+Cowperwood’s—Seneca Davis by name—solid, unctuous, five feet ten in
+height, with a big, round body, a round, smooth head rather bald, a
+clear, ruddy complexion, blue eyes, and what little hair he had of a
+sandy hue. He was exceedingly well dressed according to standards
+prevailing in those days, indulging in flowered waistcoats, long,
+light-colored frock-coats, and the invariable (for a fairly prosperous
+man) high hat. Frank was fascinated by him at once. He had been a
+planter in Cuba and still owned a big ranch there and could tell him
+tales of Cuban life—rebellions, ambuscades, hand-to-hand fighting with
+machetes on his own plantation, and things of that sort. He brought
+with him a collection of Indian curies, to say nothing of an
+independent fortune and several slaves—one, named Manuel, a tall,
+raw-boned black, was his constant attendant, a bodyservant, as it were.
+He shipped raw sugar from his plantation in boat-loads to the Southwark
+wharves in Philadelphia. Frank liked him because he took life in a
+hearty, jovial way, rather rough and offhand for this somewhat quiet
+and reserved household.
+
+“Why, Nancy Arabella,” he said to Mrs Cowperwood on arriving one Sunday
+afternoon, and throwing the household into joyous astonishment at his
+unexpected and unheralded appearance, “you haven’t grown an inch! I
+thought when you married old brother Hy here that you were going to
+fatten up like your brother. But look at you! I swear to Heaven you
+don’t weigh five pounds.” And he jounced her up and down by the waist,
+much to the perturbation of the children, who had never before seen
+their mother so familiarly handled.
+
+Henry Cowperwood was exceedingly interested in and pleased at the
+arrival of this rather prosperous relative; for twelve years before,
+when he was married, Seneca Davis had not taken much notice of him.
+
+“Look at these little putty-faced Philadelphians,” he continued, “They
+ought to come down to my ranch in Cuba and get tanned up. That would
+take away this waxy look.” And he pinched the cheek of Anna Adelaide,
+now five years old. “I tell you, Henry, you have a rather nice place
+here.” And he looked at the main room of the rather conventional
+three-story house with a critical eye.
+
+Measuring twenty by twenty-four and finished in imitation cherry, with
+a set of new Sheraton parlor furniture it presented a quaintly
+harmonious aspect. Since Henry had become teller the family had
+acquired a piano—a decided luxury in those days—brought from Europe;
+and it was intended that Anna Adelaide, when she was old enough, should
+learn to play. There were a few uncommon ornaments in the room—a gas
+chandelier for one thing, a glass bowl with goldfish in it, some rare
+and highly polished shells, and a marble Cupid bearing a basket of
+flowers. It was summer time, the windows were open, and the trees
+outside, with their widely extended green branches, were pleasantly
+visible shading the brick sidewalk. Uncle Seneca strolled out into the
+back yard.
+
+“Well, this is pleasant enough,” he observed, noting a large elm and
+seeing that the yard was partially paved with brick and enclosed within
+brick walls, up the sides of which vines were climbing. “Where’s your
+hammock? Don’t you string a hammock here in summer? Down on my veranda
+at San Pedro I have six or seven.”
+
+“We hadn’t thought of putting one up because of the neighbors, but it
+would be nice,” agreed Mrs. Cowperwood. “Henry will have to get one.”
+
+“I have two or three in my trunks over at the hotel. My niggers make
+’em down there. I’ll send Manuel over with them in the morning.”
+
+He plucked at the vines, tweaked Edward’s ear, told Joseph, the second
+boy, he would bring him an Indian tomahawk, and went back into the
+house.
+
+“This is the lad that interests me,” he said, after a time, laying a
+hand on the shoulder of Frank. “What did you name him in full, Henry?”
+
+“Frank Algernon.”
+
+“Well, you might have named him after me. There’s something to this
+boy. How would you like to come down to Cuba and be a planter, my boy?”
+
+“I’m not so sure that I’d like to,” replied the eldest.
+
+“Well, that’s straight-spoken. What have you against it?”
+
+“Nothing, except that I don’t know anything about it.”
+
+“What do you know?”
+
+The boy smiled wisely. “Not very much, I guess.”
+
+“Well, what are you interested in?”
+
+“Money!”
+
+“Aha! What’s bred in the bone, eh? Get something of that from your
+father, eh? Well, that’s a good trait. And spoken like a man, too!
+We’ll hear more about that later. Nancy, you’re breeding a financier
+here, I think. He talks like one.”
+
+He looked at Frank carefully now. There was real force in that sturdy
+young body—no doubt of it. Those large, clear gray eyes were full of
+intelligence. They indicated much and revealed nothing.
+
+“A smart boy!” he said to Henry, his brother-in-law. “I like his
+get-up. You have a bright family.”
+
+Henry Cowperwood smiled dryly. This man, if he liked Frank, might do
+much for the boy. He might eventually leave him some of his fortune. He
+was wealthy and single.
+
+Uncle Seneca became a frequent visitor to the house—he and his negro
+body-guard, Manuel, who spoke both English and Spanish, much to the
+astonishment of the children; and he took an increasing interest in
+Frank.
+
+“When that boy gets old enough to find out what he wants to do, I think
+I’ll help him to do it,” he observed to his sister one day; and she
+told him she was very grateful. He talked to Frank about his studies,
+and found that he cared little for books or most of the study he was
+compelled to pursue. Grammar was an abomination. Literature silly.
+Latin was of no use. History—well, it was fairly interesting.
+
+“I like bookkeeping and arithmetic,” he observed. “I want to get out
+and get to work, though. That’s what I want to do.”
+
+“You’re pretty young, my son,” observed his uncle. “You’re only how old
+now? Fourteen?”
+
+“Thirteen.”
+
+“Well, you can’t leave school much before sixteen. You’ll do better if
+you stay until seventeen or eighteen. It can’t do you any harm. You
+won’t be a boy again.”
+
+“I don’t want to be a boy. I want to get to work.”
+
+“Don’t go too fast, son. You’ll be a man soon enough. You want to be a
+banker, do you?”
+
+“Yes, sir!”
+
+“Well, when the time comes, if everything is all right and you’ve
+behaved yourself and you still want to, I’ll help you get a start in
+business. If I were you and were going to be a banker, I’d first spend
+a year or so in some good grain and commission house. There’s good
+training to be had there. You’ll learn a lot that you ought to know.
+And, meantime, keep your health and learn all you can. Wherever I am,
+you let me know, and I’ll write and find out how you’ve been conducting
+yourself.”
+
+He gave the boy a ten-dollar gold piece with which to start a
+bank-account. And, not strange to say, he liked the whole Cowperwood
+household much better for this dynamic, self-sufficient, sterling youth
+who was an integral part of it.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+
+It was in his thirteenth year that young Cowperwood entered into his
+first business venture. Walking along Front Street one day, a street of
+importing and wholesale establishments, he saw an auctioneer’s flag
+hanging out before a wholesale grocery and from the interior came the
+auctioneer’s voice: “What am I bid for this exceptional lot of Java
+coffee, twenty-two bags all told, which is now selling in the market
+for seven dollars and thirty-two cents a bag wholesale? What am I bid?
+What am I bid? The whole lot must go as one. What am I bid?”
+
+“Eighteen dollars,” suggested a trader standing near the door, more to
+start the bidding than anything else. Frank paused.
+
+“Twenty-two!” called another.
+
+“Thirty!” a third. “Thirty-five!” a fourth, and so up to seventy-five,
+less than half of what it was worth.
+
+“I’m bid seventy-five! I’m bid seventy-five!” called the auctioneer,
+loudly. “Any other offers? Going once at seventy-five; am I offered
+eighty? Going twice at seventy-five, and”—he paused, one hand raised
+dramatically. Then he brought it down with a slap in the palm of the
+other—“sold to Mr. Silas Gregory for seventy-five. Make a note of that,
+Jerry,” he called to his red-haired, freckle-faced clerk beside him.
+Then he turned to another lot of grocery staples—this time starch,
+eleven barrels of it.
+
+Young Cowperwood was making a rapid calculation. If, as the auctioneer
+said, coffee was worth seven dollars and thirty-two cents a bag in the
+open market, and this buyer was getting this coffee for seventy-five
+dollars, he was making then and there eighty-six dollars and four
+cents, to say nothing of what his profit would be if he sold it at
+retail. As he recalled, his mother was paying twenty-eight cents a
+pound. He drew nearer, his books tucked under his arm, and watched
+these operations closely. The starch, as he soon heard, was valued at
+ten dollars a barrel, and it only brought six. Some kegs of vinegar
+were knocked down at one-third their value, and so on. He began to wish
+he could bid; but he had no money, just a little pocket change. The
+auctioneer noticed him standing almost directly under his nose, and was
+impressed with the stolidity—solidity—of the boy’s expression.
+
+“I am going to offer you now a fine lot of Castile soap—seven cases, no
+less—which, as you know, if you know anything about soap, is now
+selling at fourteen cents a bar. This soap is worth anywhere at this
+moment eleven dollars and seventy-five cents a case. What am I bid?
+What am I bid? What am I bid?” He was talking fast in the usual style
+of auctioneers, with much unnecessary emphasis; but Cowperwood was not
+unduly impressed. He was already rapidly calculating for himself. Seven
+cases at eleven dollars and seventy-five cents would be worth just
+eighty-two dollars and twenty-five cents; and if it went at half—if it
+went at half—
+
+“Twelve dollars,” commented one bidder.
+
+“Fifteen,” bid another.
+
+“Twenty,” called a third.
+
+“Twenty-five,” a fourth.
+
+Then it came to dollar raises, for Castile soap was not such a vital
+commodity. “Twenty-six.” “Twenty-seven.” “Twenty-eight.” “Twenty-nine.”
+There was a pause. “Thirty,” observed young Cowperwood, decisively.
+
+The auctioneer, a short lean faced, spare man with bushy hair and an
+incisive eye, looked at him curiously and almost incredulously but
+without pausing. He had, somehow, in spite of himself, been impressed
+by the boy’s peculiar eye; and now he felt, without knowing why, that
+the offer was probably legitimate enough, and that the boy had the
+money. He might be the son of a grocer.
+
+“I’m bid thirty! I’m bid thirty! I’m bid thirty for this fine lot of
+Castile soap. It’s a fine lot. It’s worth fourteen cents a bar. Will
+any one bid thirty-one? Will any one bid thirty-one? Will any one bid
+thirty-one?”
+
+“Thirty-one,” said a voice.
+
+“Thirty-two,” replied Cowperwood. The same process was repeated.
+
+“I’m bid thirty-two! I’m bid thirty-two! I’m bid thirty-two! Will
+anybody bid thirty-three? It’s fine soap. Seven cases of fine Castile
+soap. Will anybody bid thirty-three?”
+
+Young Cowperwood’s mind was working. He had no money with him; but his
+father was teller of the Third National Bank, and he could quote him as
+reference. He could sell all of his soap to the family grocer, surely;
+or, if not, to other grocers. Other people were anxious to get this
+soap at this price. Why not he?
+
+The auctioneer paused.
+
+“Thirty-two once! Am I bid thirty-three? Thirty-two twice! Am I bid
+thirty-three? Thirty-two three times! Seven fine cases of soap. Am I
+bid anything more? Once, twice! Three times! Am I bid anything
+more?”—his hand was up again—“and sold to Mr.—?” He leaned over and
+looked curiously into the face of his young bidder.
+
+“Frank Cowperwood, son of the teller of the Third National Bank,”
+replied the boy, decisively.
+
+“Oh, yes,” said the man, fixed by his glance.
+
+“Will you wait while I run up to the bank and get the money?”
+
+“Yes. Don’t be gone long. If you’re not here in an hour I’ll sell it
+again.”
+
+Young Cowperwood made no reply. He hurried out and ran fast; first, to
+his mother’s grocer, whose store was within a block of his home.
+
+Thirty feet from the door he slowed up, put on a nonchalant air, and
+strolling in, looked about for Castile soap. There it was, the same
+kind, displayed in a box and looking just as his soap looked.
+
+“How much is this a bar, Mr. Dalrymple?” he inquired.
+
+“Sixteen cents,” replied that worthy.
+
+“If I could sell you seven boxes for sixty-two dollars just like this,
+would you take them?”
+
+“The same soap?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+Mr. Dalrymple calculated a moment.
+
+“Yes, I think I would,” he replied, cautiously.
+
+“Would you pay me to-day?”
+
+“I’d give you my note for it. Where is the soap?”
+
+He was perplexed and somewhat astonished by this unexpected proposition
+on the part of his neighbor’s son. He knew Mr. Cowperwood well—and
+Frank also.
+
+“Will you take it if I bring it to you to-day?”
+
+“Yes, I will,” he replied. “Are you going into the soap business?”
+
+“No. But I know where I can get some of that soap cheap.”
+
+He hurried out again and ran to his father’s bank. It was after banking
+hours; but he knew how to get in, and he knew that his father would be
+glad to see him make thirty dollars. He only wanted to borrow the money
+for a day.
+
+“What’s the trouble, Frank?” asked his father, looking up from his desk
+when he appeared, breathless and red faced.
+
+“I want you to loan me thirty-two dollars! Will you?”
+
+“Why, yes, I might. What do you want to do with it?”
+
+“I want to buy some soap—seven boxes of Castile soap. I know where I
+can get it and sell it. Mr. Dalrymple will take it. He’s already
+offered me sixty-two for it. I can get it for thirty-two. Will you let
+me have the money? I’ve got to run back and pay the auctioneer.”
+
+His father smiled. This was the most business-like attitude he had seen
+his son manifest. He was so keen, so alert for a boy of thirteen.
+
+“Why, Frank,” he said, going over to a drawer where some bills were,
+“are you going to become a financier already? You’re sure you’re not
+going to lose on this? You know what you’re doing, do you?”
+
+“You let me have the money, father, will you?” he pleaded. “I’ll show
+you in a little bit. Just let me have it. You can trust me.”
+
+He was like a young hound on the scent of game. His father could not
+resist his appeal.
+
+“Why, certainly, Frank,” he replied. “I’ll trust you.” And he counted
+out six five-dollar certificates of the Third National’s own issue and
+two ones. “There you are.”
+
+Frank ran out of the building with a briefly spoken thanks and returned
+to the auction room as fast as his legs would carry him. When he came
+in, sugar was being auctioned. He made his way to the auctioneer’s
+clerk.
+
+“I want to pay for that soap,” he suggested.
+
+“Now?”
+
+“Yes. Will you give me a receipt?”
+
+“Yep.”
+
+“Do you deliver this?”
+
+“No. No delivery. You have to take it away in twenty-four hours.”
+
+That difficulty did not trouble him.
+
+“All right,” he said, and pocketed his paper testimony of purchase.
+
+The auctioneer watched him as he went out. In half an hour he was back
+with a drayman—an idle levee-wharf hanger-on who was waiting for a job.
+
+Frank had bargained with him to deliver the soap for sixty cents. In
+still another half-hour he was before the door of the astonished Mr.
+Dalrymple whom he had come out and look at the boxes before attempting
+to remove them. His plan was to have them carried on to his own home if
+the operation for any reason failed to go through. Though it was his
+first great venture, he was cool as glass.
+
+“Yes,” said Mr. Dalrymple, scratching his gray head reflectively. “Yes,
+that’s the same soap. I’ll take it. I’ll be as good as my word. Where’d
+you get it, Frank?”
+
+“At Bixom’s auction up here,” he replied, frankly and blandly.
+
+Mr. Dalrymple had the drayman bring in the soap; and after some
+formality—because the agent in this case was a boy—made out his note at
+thirty days and gave it to him.
+
+Frank thanked him and pocketed the note. He decided to go back to his
+father’s bank and discount it, as he had seen others doing, thereby
+paying his father back and getting his own profit in ready money. It
+couldn’t be done ordinarily on any day after business hours; but his
+father would make an exception in his case.
+
+He hurried back, whistling; and his father glanced up smiling when he
+came in.
+
+“Well, Frank, how’d you make out?” he asked.
+
+“Here’s a note at thirty days,” he said, producing the paper Dalrymple
+had given him. “Do you want to discount that for me? You can take your
+thirty-two out of that.”
+
+His father examined it closely. “Sixty-two dollars!” he observed. “Mr.
+Dalrymple! That’s good paper! Yes, I can. It will cost you ten per
+cent.,” he added, jestingly. “Why don’t you just hold it, though? I’ll
+let you have the thirty-two dollars until the end of the month.”
+
+“Oh, no,” said his son, “you discount it and take your money. I may
+want mine.”
+
+His father smiled at his business-like air. “All right,” he said. “I’ll
+fix it to-morrow. Tell me just how you did this.” And his son told him.
+
+At seven o’clock that evening Frank’s mother heard about it, and in due
+time Uncle Seneca.
+
+“What’d I tell you, Cowperwood?” he asked. “He has stuff in him, that
+youngster. Look out for him.”
+
+Mrs. Cowperwood looked at her boy curiously at dinner. Was this the son
+she had nursed at her bosom not so very long before? Surely he was
+developing rapidly.
+
+“Well, Frank, I hope you can do that often,” she said.
+
+“I hope so, too, ma,” was his rather noncommittal reply.
+
+Auction sales were not to be discovered every day, however, and his
+home grocer was only open to one such transaction in a reasonable
+period of time, but from the very first young Cowperwood knew how to
+make money. He took subscriptions for a boys’ paper; handled the agency
+for the sale of a new kind of ice-skate, and once organized a band of
+neighborhood youths into a union for the purpose of purchasing their
+summer straw hats at wholesale. It was not his idea that he could get
+rich by saving. From the first he had the notion that liberal spending
+was better, and that somehow he would get along.
+
+It was in this year, or a little earlier, that he began to take an
+interest in girls. He had from the first a keen eye for the beautiful
+among them; and, being good-looking and magnetic himself, it was not
+difficult for him to attract the sympathetic interest of those in whom
+he was interested. A twelve-year old girl, Patience Barlow, who lived
+further up the street, was the first to attract his attention or be
+attracted by him. Black hair and snapping black eyes were her portion,
+with pretty pigtails down her back, and dainty feet and ankles to match
+a dainty figure. She was a Quakeress, the daughter of Quaker parents,
+wearing a demure little bonnet. Her disposition, however, was
+vivacious, and she liked this self-reliant, self-sufficient,
+straight-spoken boy. One day, after an exchange of glances from time to
+time, he said, with a smile and the courage that was innate in him:
+“You live up my way, don’t you?”
+
+“Yes,” she replied, a little flustered—this last manifested in a
+nervous swinging of her school-bag—“I live at number one-forty-one.”
+
+“I know the house,” he said. “I’ve seen you go in there. You go to the
+same school my sister does, don’t you? Aren’t you Patience Barlow?” He
+had heard some of the boys speak her name. “Yes. How do you know?”
+
+“Oh, I’ve heard,” he smiled. “I’ve seen you. Do you like licorice?”
+
+He fished in his coat and pulled out some fresh sticks that were sold
+at the time.
+
+“Thank you,” she said, sweetly, taking one.
+
+“It isn’t very good. I’ve been carrying it a long time. I had some
+taffy the other day.”
+
+“Oh, it’s all right,” she replied, chewing the end of hers.
+
+“Don’t you know my sister, Anna Cowperwood?” he recurred, by way of
+self-introduction. “She’s in a lower grade than you are, but I thought
+maybe you might have seen her.”
+
+“I think I know who she is. I’ve seen her coming home from school.”
+
+“I live right over there,” he confided, pointing to his own home as he
+drew near to it, as if she didn’t know. “I’ll see you around here now,
+I guess.”
+
+“Do you know Ruth Merriam?” she asked, when he was about ready to turn
+off into the cobblestone road to reach his own door.
+
+“No, why?”
+
+“She’s giving a party next Tuesday,” she volunteered, seemingly
+pointlessly, but only seemingly.
+
+“Where does she live?”
+
+“There in twenty-eight.”
+
+“I’d like to go,” he affirmed, warmly, as he swung away from her.
+
+“Maybe she’ll ask you,” she called back, growing more courageous as the
+distance between them widened. “I’ll ask her.”
+
+“Thanks,” he smiled.
+
+And she began to run gayly onward.
+
+He looked after her with a smiling face. She was very pretty. He felt a
+keen desire to kiss her, and what might transpire at Ruth Merriam’s
+party rose vividly before his eyes.
+
+This was just one of the early love affairs, or puppy loves, that held
+his mind from time to time in the mixture of after events. Patience
+Barlow was kissed by him in secret ways many times before he found
+another girl. She and others of the street ran out to play in the snow
+of a winter’s night, or lingered after dusk before her own door when
+the days grew dark early. It was so easy to catch and kiss her then,
+and to talk to her foolishly at parties. Then came Dora Fitler, when he
+was sixteen years old and she was fourteen; and Marjorie Stafford, when
+he was seventeen and she was fifteen. Dora Fitter was a brunette, and
+Marjorie Stafford was as fair as the morning, with bright-red cheeks,
+bluish-gray eyes, and flaxen hair, and as plump as a partridge.
+
+It was at seventeen that he decided to leave school. He had not
+graduated. He had only finished the third year in high school; but he
+had had enough. Ever since his thirteenth year his mind had been on
+finance; that is, in the form in which he saw it manifested in Third
+Street. There had been odd things which he had been able to do to earn
+a little money now and then. His Uncle Seneca had allowed him to act as
+assistant weigher at the sugar-docks in Southwark, where
+three-hundred-pound bags were weighed into the government bonded
+warehouses under the eyes of United States inspectors. In certain
+emergencies he was called to assist his father, and was paid for it. He
+even made an arrangement with Mr. Dalrymple to assist him on Saturdays;
+but when his father became cashier of his bank, receiving an income of
+four thousand dollars a year, shortly after Frank had reached his
+fifteenth year, it was self-evident that Frank could no longer continue
+in such lowly employment.
+
+Just at this time his Uncle Seneca, again back in Philadelphia and
+stouter and more domineering than ever, said to him one day:
+
+“Now, Frank, if you’re ready for it, I think I know where there’s a
+good opening for you. There won’t be any salary in it for the first
+year, but if you mind your p’s and q’s, they’ll probably give you
+something as a gift at the end of that time. Do you know of Henry
+Waterman & Company down in Second Street?”
+
+“I’ve seen their place.”
+
+“Well, they tell me they might make a place for you as a bookkeeper.
+They’re brokers in a way—grain and commission men. You say you want to
+get in that line. When school’s out, you go down and see Mr.
+Waterman—tell him I sent you, and he’ll make a place for you, I think.
+Let me know how you come out.”
+
+Uncle Seneca was married now, having, because of his wealth, attracted
+the attention of a poor but ambitious Philadelphia society matron; and
+because of this the general connections of the Cowperwoods were
+considered vastly improved. Henry Cowperwood was planning to move with
+his family rather far out on North Front Street, which commanded at
+that time a beautiful view of the river and was witnessing the
+construction of some charming dwellings. His four thousand dollars a
+year in these pre-Civil-War times was considerable. He was making what
+he considered judicious and conservative investments and because of his
+cautious, conservative, clock-like conduct it was thought he might
+reasonably expect some day to be vice-president and possibly president,
+of his bank.
+
+This offer of Uncle Seneca to get him in with Waterman & Company seemed
+to Frank just the thing to start him off right. So he reported to that
+organization at 74 South Second Street one day in June, and was
+cordially received by Mr. Henry Waterman, Sr. There was, he soon
+learned, a Henry Waterman, Jr., a young man of twenty-five, and a
+George Waterman, a brother, aged fifty, who was the confidential inside
+man. Henry Waterman, Sr., a man of fifty-five years of age, was the
+general head of the organization, inside and out—traveling about the
+nearby territory to see customers when that was necessary, coming into
+final counsel in cases where his brother could not adjust matters,
+suggesting and advising new ventures which his associates and hirelings
+carried out. He was, to look at, a phlegmatic type of man—short, stout,
+wrinkled about the eyes, rather protuberant as to stomach, red-necked,
+red-faced, the least bit popeyed, but shrewd, kindly, good-natured, and
+witty. He had, because of his naturally common-sense ideas and rather
+pleasing disposition built up a sound and successful business here. He
+was getting strong in years and would gladly have welcomed the hearty
+cooperation of his son, if the latter had been entirely suited to the
+business.
+
+He was not, however. Not as democratic, as quick-witted, or as pleased
+with the work in hand as was his father, the business actually offended
+him. And if the trade had been left to his care, it would have rapidly
+disappeared. His father foresaw this, was grieved, and was hoping some
+young man would eventually appear who would be interested in the
+business, handle it in the same spirit in which it had been handled,
+and who would not crowd his son out.
+
+Then came young Cowperwood, spoken of to him by Seneca Davis. He looked
+him over critically. Yes, this boy might do, he thought. There was
+something easy and sufficient about him. He did not appear to be in the
+least flustered or disturbed. He knew how to keep books, he said,
+though he knew nothing of the details of the grain and commission
+business. It was interesting to him. He would like to try it.
+
+“I like that fellow,” Henry Waterman confided to his brother the moment
+Frank had gone with instructions to report the following morning.
+“There’s something to him. He’s the cleanest, briskest, most alive
+thing that’s walked in here in many a day.”
+
+“Yes,” said George, a much leaner and slightly taller man, with dark,
+blurry, reflective eyes and a thin, largely vanished growth of
+brownish-black hair which contrasted strangely with the egg-shaped
+whiteness of his bald head. “Yes, he’s a nice young man. It’s a wonder
+his father don’t take him in his bank.”
+
+“Well, he may not be able to,” said his brother. “He’s only the cashier
+there.”
+
+“That’s right.”
+
+“Well, we’ll give him a trial. I bet anything he makes good. He’s a
+likely-looking youth.”
+
+Henry got up and walked out into the main entrance looking into Second
+Street. The cool cobble pavements, shaded from the eastern sun by the
+wall of buildings on the east—of which his was a part—the noisy trucks
+and drays, the busy crowds hurrying to and fro, pleased him. He looked
+at the buildings over the way—all three and four stories, and largely
+of gray stone and crowded with life—and thanked his stars that he had
+originally located in so prosperous a neighborhood. If he had only
+brought more property at the time he bought this!
+
+“I wish that Cowperwood boy would turn out to be the kind of man I
+want,” he observed to himself, meditatively. “He could save me a lot of
+running these days.”
+
+Curiously, after only three or four minutes of conversation with the
+boy, he sensed this marked quality of efficiency. Something told him he
+would do well.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+
+The appearance of Frank Cowperwood at this time was, to say the least,
+prepossessing and satisfactory. Nature had destined him to be about
+five feet ten inches tall. His head was large, shapely, notably
+commercial in aspect, thickly covered with crisp, dark-brown hair and
+fixed on a pair of square shoulders and a stocky body. Already his eyes
+had the look that subtle years of thought bring. They were inscrutable.
+You could tell nothing by his eyes. He walked with a light, confident,
+springy step. Life had given him no severe shocks nor rude awakenings.
+He had not been compelled to suffer illness or pain or deprivation of
+any kind. He saw people richer than himself, but he hoped to be rich.
+His family was respected, his father well placed. He owed no man
+anything. Once he had let a small note of his become overdue at the
+bank, but his father raised such a row that he never forgot it. “I
+would rather crawl on my hands and knees than let my paper go to
+protest,” the old gentleman observed; and this fixed in his mind what
+scarcely needed to be so sharply emphasized—the significance of credit.
+No paper of his ever went to protest or became overdue after that
+through any negligence of his.
+
+He turned out to be the most efficient clerk that the house of Waterman
+& Co. had ever known. They put him on the books at first as assistant
+bookkeeper, vice Mr. Thomas Trixler, dismissed, and in two weeks George
+said: “Why don’t we make Cowperwood head bookkeeper? He knows more in a
+minute than that fellow Sampson will ever know.”
+
+“All right, make the transfer, George, but don’t fuss so. He won’t be a
+bookkeeper long, though. I want to see if he can’t handle some of these
+transfers for me after a bit.”
+
+The books of Messrs. Waterman & Co., though fairly complicated, were
+child’s play to Frank. He went through them with an ease and rapidity
+which surprised his erstwhile superior, Mr. Sampson.
+
+“Why, that fellow,” Sampson told another clerk on the first day he had
+seen Cowperwood work, “he’s too brisk. He’s going to make a bad break.
+I know that kind. Wait a little bit until we get one of those rush
+credit and transfer days.” But the bad break Mr. Sampson anticipated
+did not materialize. In less than a week Cowperwood knew the financial
+condition of the Messrs. Waterman as well as they did—better—to a
+dollar. He knew how their accounts were distributed; from what section
+they drew the most business; who sent poor produce and good—the varying
+prices for a year told that. To satisfy himself he ran back over
+certain accounts in the ledger, verifying his suspicions. Bookkeeping
+did not interest him except as a record, a demonstration of a firm’s
+life. He knew he would not do this long. Something else would happen;
+but he saw instantly what the grain and commission business was—every
+detail of it. He saw where, for want of greater activity in offering
+the goods consigned—quicker communication with shippers and buyers, a
+better working agreement with surrounding commission men—this house,
+or, rather, its customers, for it had nothing, endured severe losses. A
+man would ship a tow-boat or a car-load of fruit or vegetables against
+a supposedly rising or stable market; but if ten other men did the same
+thing at the same time, or other commission men were flooded with fruit
+or vegetables, and there was no way of disposing of them within a
+reasonable time, the price had to fall. Every day was bringing its
+special consignments. It instantly occurred to him that he would be of
+much more use to the house as an outside man disposing of heavy
+shipments, but he hesitated to say anything so soon. More than likely,
+things would adjust themselves shortly.
+
+The Watermans, Henry and George, were greatly pleased with the way he
+handled their accounts. There was a sense of security in his very
+presence. He soon began to call Brother George’s attention to the
+condition of certain accounts, making suggestions as to their possible
+liquidation or discontinuance, which pleased that individual greatly.
+He saw a way of lightening his own labors through the intelligence of
+this youth; while at the same time developing a sense of pleasant
+companionship with him.
+
+Brother Henry was for trying him on the outside. It was not always
+possible to fill the orders with the stock on hand, and somebody had to
+go into the street or the Exchange to buy and usually he did this. One
+morning, when way-bills indicated a probable glut of flour and a
+shortage of grain—Frank saw it first—the elder Waterman called him into
+his office and said:
+
+“Frank, I wish you would see what you can do with this condition that
+confronts us on the street. By to-morrow we’re going to be overcrowded
+with flour. We can’t be paying storage charges, and our orders won’t
+eat it up. We’re short on grain. Maybe you could trade out the flour to
+some of those brokers and get me enough grain to fill these orders.”
+
+“I’d like to try,” said his employee.
+
+He knew from his books where the various commission-houses were. He
+knew what the local merchants’ exchange, and the various
+commission-merchants who dealt in these things, had to offer. This was
+the thing he liked to do—adjust a trade difficulty of this nature. It
+was pleasant to be out in the air again, to be going from door to door.
+He objected to desk work and pen work and poring over books. As he said
+in later years, his brain was his office. He hurried to the principal
+commission-merchants, learning what the state of the flour market was,
+and offering his surplus at the very rate he would have expected to get
+for it if there had been no prospective glut. Did they want to buy for
+immediate delivery (forty-eight hours being immediate) six hundred
+barrels of prime flour? He would offer it at nine dollars straight, in
+the barrel. They did not. He offered it in fractions, and some agreed
+to take one portion, and some another. In about an hour he was all
+secure on this save one lot of two hundred barrels, which he decided to
+offer in one lump to a famous operator named Genderman with whom his
+firm did no business. The latter, a big man with curly gray hair, a
+gnarled and yet pudgy face, and little eyes that peeked out shrewdly
+through fat eyelids, looked at Cowperwood curiously when he came in.
+
+“What’s your name, young man?” he asked, leaning back in his wooden
+chair.
+
+“Cowperwood.”
+
+“So you work for Waterman & Company? You want to make a record, no
+doubt. That’s why you came to me?”
+
+Cowperwood merely smiled.
+
+“Well, I’ll take your flour. I need it. Bill it to me.”
+
+Cowperwood hurried out. He went direct to a firm of brokers in Walnut
+Street, with whom his firm dealt, and had them bid in the grain he
+needed at prevailing rates. Then he returned to the office.
+
+“Well,” said Henry Waterman, when he reported, “you did that quick.
+Sold old Genderman two hundred barrels direct, did you? That’s doing
+pretty well. He isn’t on our books, is he?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“I thought not. Well, if you can do that sort of work on the street you
+won’t be on the books long.”
+
+Thereafter, in the course of time, Frank became a familiar figure in
+the commission district and on ’change (the Produce Exchange), striking
+balances for his employer, picking up odd lots of things they needed,
+soliciting new customers, breaking gluts by disposing of odd lots in
+unexpected quarters. Indeed the Watermans were astonished at his
+facility in this respect. He had an uncanny faculty for getting
+appreciative hearings, making friends, being introduced into new
+realms. New life began to flow through the old channels of the Waterman
+company. Their customers were better satisfied. George was for sending
+him out into the rural districts to drum up trade, and this was
+eventually done.
+
+Near Christmas-time Henry said to George: “We’ll have to make
+Cowperwood a liberal present. He hasn’t any salary. How would five
+hundred dollars do?”
+
+“That’s pretty much, seeing the way times are, but I guess he’s worth
+it. He’s certainly done everything we’ve expected, and more. He’s cut
+out for this business.”
+
+“What does he say about it? Do you ever hear him say whether he’s
+satisfied?”
+
+“Oh, he likes it pretty much, I guess. You see him as much as I do.”
+
+“Well, we’ll make it five hundred. That fellow wouldn’t make a bad
+partner in this business some day. He has the real knack for it. You
+see that he gets the five hundred dollars with a word from both of us.”
+
+So the night before Christmas, as Cowperwood was looking over some
+way-bills and certificates of consignment preparatory to leaving all in
+order for the intervening holiday, George Waterman came to his desk.
+
+“Hard at it,” he said, standing under the flaring gaslight and looking
+at his brisk employee with great satisfaction.
+
+It was early evening, and the snow was making a speckled pattern
+through the windows in front.
+
+“Just a few points before I wind up,” smiled Cowperwood.
+
+“My brother and I have been especially pleased with the way you have
+handled the work here during the past six months. We wanted to make
+some acknowledgment, and we thought about five hundred dollars would be
+right. Beginning January first we’ll give you a regular salary of
+thirty dollars a week.”
+
+“I’m certainly much obliged to you,” said Frank. “I didn’t expect that
+much. It’s a good deal. I’ve learned considerable here that I’m glad to
+know.”
+
+“Oh, don’t mention it. We know you’ve earned it. You can stay with us
+as long as you like. We’re glad to have you with us.”
+
+Cowperwood smiled his hearty, genial smile. He was feeling very
+comfortable under this evidence of approval. He looked bright and
+cheery in his well-made clothes of English tweed.
+
+On the way home that evening he speculated as to the nature of this
+business. He knew he wasn’t going to stay there long, even in spite of
+this gift and promise of salary. They were grateful, of course; but why
+shouldn’t they be? He was efficient, he knew that; under him things
+moved smoothly. It never occurred to him that he belonged in the realm
+of clerkdom. Those people were the kind of beings who ought to work for
+him, and who would. There was nothing savage in his attitude, no rage
+against fate, no dark fear of failure. These two men he worked for were
+already nothing more than characters in his eyes—their business
+significated itself. He could see their weaknesses and their
+shortcomings as a much older man might have viewed a boy’s.
+
+After dinner that evening, before leaving to call on his girl, Marjorie
+Stafford, he told his father of the gift of five hundred dollars and
+the promised salary.
+
+“That’s splendid,” said the older man. “You’re doing better than I
+thought. I suppose you’ll stay there.”
+
+“No, I won’t. I think I’ll quit sometime next year.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Well, it isn’t exactly what I want to do. It’s all right, but I’d
+rather try my hand at brokerage, I think. That appeals to me.”
+
+“Don’t you think you are doing them an injustice not to tell them?”
+
+“Not at all. They need me.” All the while surveying himself in a
+mirror, straightening his tie and adjusting his coat.
+
+“Have you told your mother?”
+
+“No. I’m going to do it now.”
+
+He went out into the dining-room, where his mother was, and slipping
+his arms around her little body, said: “What do you think, Mammy?”
+
+“Well, what?” she asked, looking affectionately into his eyes.
+
+“I got five hundred dollars to-night, and I get thirty a week next
+year. What do you want for Christmas?”
+
+“You don’t say! Isn’t that nice! Isn’t that fine! They must like you.
+You’re getting to be quite a man, aren’t you?”
+
+“What do you want for Christmas?”
+
+“Nothing. I don’t want anything. I have my children.”
+
+He smiled. “All right. Then nothing it is.”
+
+But she knew he would buy her something.
+
+He went out, pausing at the door to grab playfully at his sister’s
+waist, and saying that he’d be back about midnight, hurried to
+Marjorie’s house, because he had promised to take her to a show.
+
+“Anything you want for Christmas this year, Margy?” he asked, after
+kissing her in the dimly-lighted hall. “I got five hundred to-night.”
+
+She was an innocent little thing, only fifteen, no guile, no
+shrewdness.
+
+“Oh, you needn’t get me anything.”
+
+“Needn’t I?” he asked, squeezing her waist and kissing her mouth again.
+
+It was fine to be getting on this way in the world and having such a
+good time.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+
+The following October, having passed his eighteenth year by nearly six
+months, and feeling sure that he would never want anything to do with
+the grain and commission business as conducted by the Waterman Company,
+Cowperwood decided to sever his relations with them and enter the
+employ of Tighe & Company, bankers and brokers.
+
+Cowperwood’s meeting with Tighe & Company had come about in the
+ordinary pursuance of his duties as outside man for Waterman & Company.
+From the first Mr. Tighe took a keen interest in this subtle young
+emissary.
+
+“How’s business with you people?” he would ask, genially; or, “Find
+that you’re getting many I.O.U.’s these days?”
+
+Because of the unsettled condition of the country, the over-inflation
+of securities, the slavery agitation, and so forth, there were
+prospects of hard times. And Tighe—he could not have told you why—was
+convinced that this young man was worth talking to in regard to all
+this. He was not really old enough to know, and yet he did know.
+
+“Oh, things are going pretty well with us, thank you, Mr. Tighe,”
+Cowperwood would answer.
+
+“I tell you,” he said to Cowperwood one morning, “this slavery
+agitation, if it doesn’t stop, is going to cause trouble.”
+
+A negro slave belonging to a visitor from Cuba had just been abducted
+and set free, because the laws of Pennsylvania made freedom the right
+of any negro brought into the state, even though in transit only to
+another portion of the country, and there was great excitement because
+of it. Several persons had been arrested, and the newspapers were
+discussing it roundly.
+
+“I don’t think the South is going to stand for this thing. It’s making
+trouble in our business, and it must be doing the same thing for
+others. We’ll have secession here, sure as fate, one of these days.” He
+talked with the vaguest suggestion of a brogue.
+
+“It’s coming, I think,” said Cowperwood, quietly. “It can’t be healed,
+in my judgment. The negro isn’t worth all this excitement, but they’ll
+go on agitating for him—emotional people always do this. They haven’t
+anything else to do. It’s hurting our Southern trade.”
+
+“I thought so. That’s what people tell me.”
+
+He turned to a new customer as young Cowperwood went out, but again the
+boy struck him as being inexpressibly sound and deep-thinking on
+financial matters. “If that young fellow wanted a place, I’d give it to
+him,” he thought.
+
+Finally, one day he said to him: “How would you like to try your hand
+at being a floor man for me in ’change? I need a young man here. One of
+my clerks is leaving.”
+
+“I’d like it,” replied Cowperwood, smiling and looking intensely
+gratified. “I had thought of speaking to you myself some time.”
+
+“Well, if you’re ready and can make the change, the place is open. Come
+any time you like.”
+
+“I’ll have to give a reasonable notice at the other place,” Cowperwood
+said, quietly. “Would you mind waiting a week or two?”
+
+“Not at all. It isn’t as important as that. Come as soon as you can
+straighten things out. I don’t want to inconvenience your employers.”
+
+It was only two weeks later that Frank took his departure from Waterman
+& Company, interested and yet in no way flustered by his new prospects.
+And great was the grief of Mr. George Waterman. As for Mr. Henry
+Waterman, he was actually irritated by this defection.
+
+“Why, I thought,” he exclaimed, vigorously, when informed by Cowperwood
+of his decision, “that you liked the business. Is it a matter of
+salary?”
+
+“No, not at all, Mr. Waterman. It’s just that I want to get into the
+straight-out brokerage business.”
+
+“Well, that certainly is too bad. I’m sorry. I don’t want to urge you
+against your own best interests. You know what you are doing. But
+George and I had about agreed to offer you an interest in this thing
+after a bit. Now you’re picking up and leaving. Why, damn it, man,
+there’s good money in this business.”
+
+“I know it,” smiled Cowperwood, “but I don’t like it. I have other
+plans in view. I’ll never be a grain and commission man.” Mr. Henry
+Waterman could scarcely understand why obvious success in this field
+did not interest him. He feared the effect of his departure on the
+business.
+
+And once the change was made Cowperwood was convinced that this new
+work was more suited to him in every way—as easy and more profitable,
+of course. In the first place, the firm of Tighe & Co., unlike that of
+Waterman & Co., was located in a handsome green-gray stone building at
+66 South Third Street, in what was then, and for a number of years
+afterward, the heart of the financial district. Great institutions of
+national and international import and repute were near at hand—Drexel &
+Co., Edward Clark & Co., the Third National Bank, the First National
+Bank, the Stock Exchange, and similar institutions. Almost a score of
+smaller banks and brokerage firms were also in the vicinity. Edward
+Tighe, the head and brains of this concern, was a Boston Irishman, the
+son of an immigrant who had flourished and done well in that
+conservative city. He had come to Philadelphia to interest himself in
+the speculative life there. “Sure, it’s a right good place for those of
+us who are awake,” he told his friends, with a slight Irish accent, and
+he considered himself very much awake. He was a medium-tall man, not
+very stout, slightly and prematurely gray, and with a manner which was
+as lively and good-natured as it was combative and self-reliant. His
+upper lip was ornamented by a short, gray mustache.
+
+“May heaven preserve me,” he said, not long after he came there, “these
+Pennsylvanians never pay for anything they can issue bonds for.” It was
+the period when Pennsylvania’s credit, and for that matter
+Philadelphia’s, was very bad in spite of its great wealth. “If there’s
+ever a war there’ll be battalions of Pennsylvanians marching around
+offering notes for their meals. If I could just live long enough I
+could get rich buyin’ up Pennsylvania notes and bonds. I think they’ll
+pay some time; but, my God, they’re mortal slow! I’ll be dead before
+the State government will ever catch up on the interest they owe me
+now.”
+
+It was true. The condition of the finances of the state and city was
+most reprehensible. Both State and city were rich enough; but there
+were so many schemes for looting the treasury in both instances that
+when any new work had to be undertaken bonds were necessarily issued to
+raise the money. These bonds, or warrants, as they were called, pledged
+interest at six per cent.; but when the interest fell due, instead of
+paying it, the city or State treasurer, as the case might be, stamped
+the same with the date of presentation, and the warrant then bore
+interest for not only its original face value, but the amount then due
+in interest. In other words, it was being slowly compounded. But this
+did not help the man who wanted to raise money, for as security they
+could not be hypothecated for more than seventy per cent. of their
+market value, and they were not selling at par, but at ninety. A man
+might buy or accept them in foreclosure, but he had a long wait. Also,
+in the final payment of most of them favoritism ruled, for it was only
+when the treasurer knew that certain warrants were in the hands of “a
+friend” that he would advertise that such and such warrants—those
+particular ones that he knew about—would be paid.
+
+What was more, the money system of the United States was only then
+beginning slowly to emerge from something approximating chaos to
+something more nearly approaching order. The United States Bank, of
+which Nicholas Biddle was the progenitor, had gone completely in 1841,
+and the United States Treasury with its subtreasury system had come in
+1846; but still there were many, many wildcat banks, sufficient in
+number to make the average exchange-counter broker a walking
+encyclopedia of solvent and insolvent institutions. Still, things were
+slowly improving, for the telegraph had facilitated stock-market
+quotations, not only between New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, but
+between a local broker’s office in Philadelphia and his stock exchange.
+In other words, the short private wire had been introduced.
+Communication was quicker and freer, and daily grew better.
+
+Railroads had been built to the South, East, North, and West. There was
+as yet no stock-ticker and no telephone, and the clearing-house had
+only recently been thought of in New York, and had not yet been
+introduced in Philadelphia. Instead of a clearing-house service,
+messengers ran daily between banks and brokerage firms, balancing
+accounts on pass-books, exchanging bills, and, once a week,
+transferring the gold coin, which was the only thing that could be
+accepted for balances due, since there was no stable national currency.
+“On ’change,” when the gong struck announcing the close of the day’s
+business, a company of young men, known as “settlement clerks,” after a
+system borrowed from London, gathered in the center of the room and
+compared or gathered the various trades of the day in a ring, thus
+eliminating all those sales and resales between certain firms which
+naturally canceled each other. They carried long account books, and
+called out the transactions—“Delaware and Maryland sold to Beaumont and
+Company,” “Delware and Maryland sold to Tighe and Company,” and so on.
+This simplified the bookkeeping of the various firms, and made for
+quicker and more stirring commercial transactions.
+
+Seats “on ’change” sold for two thousand dollars each. The members of
+the exchange had just passed rules limiting the trading to the hours
+between ten and three (before this they had been any time between
+morning and midnight), and had fixed the rates at which brokers could
+do business, in the face of cut-throat schemes which had previously
+held. Severe penalties were fixed for those who failed to obey. In
+other words, things were shaping up for a great ’change business, and
+Edward Tighe felt, with other brokers, that there was a great future
+ahead.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+
+The Cowperwood family was by this time established in its new and
+larger and more tastefully furnished house on North Front Street,
+facing the river. The house was four stories tall and stood twenty-five
+feet on the street front, without a yard.
+
+Here the family began to entertain in a small way, and there came to
+see them, now and then, representatives of the various interests that
+Henry Cowperwood had encountered in his upward climb to the position of
+cashier. It was not a very distinguished company, but it included a
+number of people who were about as successful as himself—heads of small
+businesses who traded at his bank, dealers in dry-goods, leather,
+groceries (wholesale), and grain. The children had come to have
+intimacies of their own. Now and then, because of church connections,
+Mrs. Cowperwood ventured to have an afternoon tea or reception, at
+which even Cowperwood attempted the gallant in so far as to stand about
+in a genially foolish way and greet those whom his wife had invited.
+And so long as he could maintain his gravity very solemnly and greet
+people without being required to say much, it was not too painful for
+him. Singing was indulged in at times, a little dancing on occasion,
+and there was considerably more “company to dinner,” informally, than
+there had been previously.
+
+And here it was, during the first year of the new life in this house,
+that Frank met a certain Mrs. Semple, who interested him greatly. Her
+husband had a pretentious shoe store on Chestnut Street, near Third,
+and was planning to open a second one farther out on the same street.
+
+The occasion of the meeting was an evening call on the part of the
+Semples, Mr. Semple being desirous of talking with Henry Cowperwood
+concerning a new transportation feature which was then entering the
+world—namely, street-cars. A tentative line, incorporated by the North
+Pennsylvania Railway Company, had been put into operation on a mile and
+a half of tracks extending from Willow Street along Front to Germantown
+Road, and thence by various streets to what was then known as the
+Cohocksink Depot; and it was thought that in time this mode of
+locomotion might drive out the hundreds of omnibuses which now crowded
+and made impassable the downtown streets. Young Cowperwood had been
+greatly interested from the start. Railway transportation, as a whole,
+interested him, anyway, but this particular phase was most fascinating.
+It was already creating widespread discussion, and he, with others, had
+gone to see it. A strange but interesting new type of car, fourteen
+feet long, seven feet wide, and nearly the same height, running on
+small iron car-wheels, was giving great satisfaction as being quieter
+and easier-riding than omnibuses; and Alfred Semple was privately
+considering investing in another proposed line which, if it could
+secure a franchise from the legislature, was to run on Fifth and Sixth
+streets.
+
+Cowperwood, Senior, saw a great future for this thing; but he did not
+see as yet how the capital was to be raised for it. Frank believed that
+Tighe & Co. should attempt to become the selling agents of this new
+stock of the Fifth and Sixth Street Company in the event it succeeded
+in getting a franchise. He understood that a company was already
+formed, that a large amount of stock was to be issued against the
+prospective franchise, and that these shares were to be sold at five
+dollars, as against an ultimate par value of one hundred. He wished he
+had sufficient money to take a large block of them.
+
+Meanwhile, Lillian Semple caught and held his interest. Just what it
+was about her that attracted him at this age it would be hard to say,
+for she was really not suited to him emotionally, intellectually, or
+otherwise. He was not without experience with women or girls, and still
+held a tentative relationship with Marjorie Stafford; but Lillian
+Semple, in spite of the fact that she was married and that he could
+have legitimate interest in her, seemed not wiser and saner, but more
+worth while. She was twenty-four as opposed to Frank’s nineteen, but
+still young enough in her thoughts and looks to appear of his own age.
+She was slightly taller than he—though he was now his full height (five
+feet ten and one-half inches)—and, despite her height, shapely,
+artistic in form and feature, and with a certain unconscious placidity
+of soul, which came more from lack of understanding than from force of
+character. Her hair was the color of a dried English walnut, rich and
+plentiful, and her complexion waxen—cream wax—-with lips of faint pink,
+and eyes that varied from gray to blue and from gray to brown,
+according to the light in which you saw them. Her hands were thin and
+shapely, her nose straight, her face artistically narrow. She was not
+brilliant, not active, but rather peaceful and statuesque without
+knowing it. Cowperwood was carried away by her appearance. Her beauty
+measured up to his present sense of the artistic. She was lovely, he
+thought—gracious, dignified. If he could have his choice of a wife,
+this was the kind of a girl he would like to have.
+
+As yet, Cowperwood’s judgment of women was temperamental rather than
+intellectual. Engrossed as he was by his desire for wealth, prestige,
+dominance, he was confused, if not chastened by considerations relating
+to position, presentability and the like. None the less, the homely
+woman meant nothing to him. And the passionate woman meant much. He
+heard family discussions of this and that sacrificial soul among women,
+as well as among men—women who toiled and slaved for their husbands or
+children, or both, who gave way to relatives or friends in crises or
+crucial moments, because it was right and kind to do so—but somehow
+these stories did not appeal to him. He preferred to think of
+people—even women—as honestly, frankly self-interested. He could not
+have told you why. People seemed foolish, or at the best very
+unfortunate not to know what to do in all circumstances and how to
+protect themselves. There was great talk concerning morality, much
+praise of virtue and decency, and much lifting of hands in righteous
+horror at people who broke or were even rumored to have broken the
+Seventh Commandment. He did not take this talk seriously. Already he
+had broken it secretly many times. Other young men did. Yet again, he
+was a little sick of the women of the streets and the bagnio. There
+were too many coarse, evil features in connection with such contacts.
+For a little while, the false tinsel-glitter of the house of ill repute
+appealed to him, for there was a certain force to its luxury—rich, as a
+rule, with red-plush furniture, showy red hangings, some coarse but
+showily-framed pictures, and, above all, the strong-bodied or
+sensuously lymphatic women who dwelt there, to (as his mother phrased
+it) prey on men. The strength of their bodies, the lust of their souls,
+the fact that they could, with a show of affection or good-nature,
+receive man after man, astonished and later disgusted him. After all,
+they were not smart. There was no vivacity of thought there. All that
+they could do, in the main, he fancied, was this one thing. He pictured
+to himself the dreariness of the mornings after, the stale dregs of
+things when only sleep and thought of gain could aid in the least; and
+more than once, even at his age, he shook his head. He wanted contact
+which was more intimate, subtle, individual, personal.
+
+So came Lillian Semple, who was nothing more to him than the shadow of
+an ideal. Yet she cleared up certain of his ideas in regard to women.
+She was not physically as vigorous or brutal as those other women whom
+he had encountered in the lupanars, thus far—raw, unashamed
+contraveners of accepted theories and notions—and for that very reason
+he liked her. And his thoughts continued to dwell on her,
+notwithstanding the hectic days which now passed like flashes of light
+in his new business venture. For this stock exchange world in which he
+now found himself, primitive as it would seem to-day, was most
+fascinating to Cowperwood. The room that he went to in Third Street, at
+Dock, where the brokers or their agents and clerks gathered one hundred
+and fifty strong, was nothing to speak of artistically—a square chamber
+sixty by sixty, reaching from the second floor to the roof of a
+four-story building; but it was striking to him. The windows were high
+and narrow; a large-faced clock faced the west entrance of the room
+where you came in from the stairs; a collection of telegraph
+instruments, with their accompanying desks and chairs, occupied the
+northeast corner. On the floor, in the early days of the exchange, were
+rows of chairs where the brokers sat while various lots of stocks were
+offered to them. Later in the history of the exchange the chairs were
+removed and at different points posts or floor-signs indicating where
+certain stocks were traded in were introduced. Around these the men who
+were interested gathered to do their trading. From a hall on the third
+floor a door gave entrance to a visitor’s gallery, small and poorly
+furnished; and on the west wall a large blackboard carried current
+quotations in stocks as telegraphed from New York and Boston. A
+wicket-like fence in the center of the room surrounded the desk and
+chair of the official recorder; and a very small gallery opening from
+the third floor on the west gave place for the secretary of the board,
+when he had any special announcement to make. There was a room off the
+southwest corner, where reports and annual compendiums of chairs were
+removed and at different signs indicating where certain stocks of
+various kinds were kept and were available for the use of members.
+
+Young Cowperwood would not have been admitted at all, as either a
+broker or broker’s agent or assistant, except that Tighe, feeling that
+he needed him and believing that he would be very useful, bought him a
+seat on ’change—charging the two thousand dollars it cost as a debt and
+then ostensibly taking him into partnership. It was against the rules
+of the exchange to sham a partnership in this way in order to put a man
+on the floor, but brokers did it. These men who were known to be minor
+partners and floor assistants were derisively called “eighth chasers”
+and “two-dollar brokers,” because they were always seeking small orders
+and were willing to buy or sell for anybody on their commission,
+accounting, of course, to their firms for their work. Cowperwood,
+regardless of his intrinsic merits, was originally counted one of their
+number, and he was put under the direction of Mr. Arthur Rivers, the
+regular floor man of Tighe & Company.
+
+Rivers was an exceedingly forceful man of thirty-five, well-dressed,
+well-formed, with a hard, smooth, evenly chiseled face, which was
+ornamented by a short, black mustache and fine, black, clearly penciled
+eyebrows. His hair came to an odd point at the middle of his forehead,
+where he divided it, and his chin was faintly and attractively cleft.
+He had a soft voice, a quiet, conservative manner, and both in and out
+of this brokerage and trading world was controlled by good form.
+Cowperwood wondered at first why Rivers should work for Tighe—he
+appeared almost as able—but afterward learned that he was in the
+company. Tighe was the organizer and general hand-shaker, Rivers the
+floor and outside man.
+
+It was useless, as Frank soon found, to try to figure out exactly why
+stocks rose and fell. Some general reasons there were, of course, as he
+was told by Tighe, but they could not always be depended on.
+
+“Sure, anything can make or break a market”—Tighe explained in his
+delicate brogue—“from the failure of a bank to the rumor that your
+second cousin’s grandmother has a cold. It’s a most unusual world,
+Cowperwood. No man can explain it. I’ve seen breaks in stocks that you
+could never explain at all—no one could. It wouldn’t be possible to
+find out why they broke. I’ve seen rises the same way. My God, the
+rumors of the stock exchange! They beat the devil. If they’re going
+down in ordinary times some one is unloading, or they’re rigging the
+market. If they’re going up—God knows times must be good or somebody
+must be buying—that’s sure. Beyond that—well, ask Rivers to show you
+the ropes. Don’t you ever lose for me, though. That’s the cardinal sin
+in this office.” He grinned maliciously, even if kindly, at that.
+
+Cowperwood understood—none better. This subtle world appealed to him.
+It answered to his temperament.
+
+There were rumors, rumors, rumors—of great railway and street-car
+undertakings, land developments, government revision of the tariff, war
+between France and Turkey, famine in Russia or Ireland, and so on. The
+first Atlantic cable had not been laid as yet, and news of any kind
+from abroad was slow and meager. Still there were great financial
+figures in the held, men who, like Cyrus Field, or William H.
+Vanderbilt, or F. X. Drexel, were doing marvelous things, and their
+activities and the rumors concerning them counted for much.
+
+Frank soon picked up all of the technicalities of the situation. A
+“bull,” he learned, was one who bought in anticipation of a higher
+price to come; and if he was “loaded up” with a “line” of stocks he was
+said to be “long.” He sold to “realize” his profit, or if his margins
+were exhausted he was “wiped out.” A “bear” was one who sold stocks
+which most frequently he did not have, in anticipation of a lower
+price, at which he could buy and satisfy his previous sales. He was
+“short” when he had sold what he did not own, and he “covered” when he
+bought to satisfy his sales and to realize his profits or to protect
+himself against further loss in case prices advanced instead of
+declining. He was in a “corner” when he found that he could not buy in
+order to make good the stock he had borrowed for delivery and the
+return of which had been demanded. He was then obliged to settle
+practically at a price fixed by those to whom he and other “shorts” had
+sold.
+
+He smiled at first at the air of great secrecy and wisdom on the part
+of the younger men. They were so heartily and foolishly suspicious. The
+older men, as a rule, were inscrutable. They pretended indifference,
+uncertainty. They were like certain fish after a certain kind of bait,
+however. Snap! and the opportunity was gone. Somebody else had picked
+up what you wanted. All had their little note-books. All had their
+peculiar squint of eye or position or motion which meant “Done! I take
+you!” Sometimes they seemed scarcely to confirm their sales or
+purchases—they knew each other so well—but they did. If the market was
+for any reason active, the brokers and their agents were apt to be more
+numerous than if it were dull and the trading indifferent. A gong
+sounded the call to trading at ten o’clock, and if there was a
+noticeable rise or decline in a stock or a group of stocks, you were
+apt to witness quite a spirited scene. Fifty to a hundred men would
+shout, gesticulate, shove here and there in an apparently aimless
+manner; endeavoring to take advantage of the stock offered or called
+for.
+
+“Five-eighths for five hundred P. and W.,” some one would call—Rivers
+or Cowperwood, or any other broker.
+
+“Five hundred at three-fourths,” would come the reply from some one
+else, who either had an order to sell the stock at that price or who
+was willing to sell it short, hoping to pick up enough of the stock at
+a lower figure later to fill his order and make a little something
+besides. If the supply of stock at that figure was large Rivers would
+probably continue to bid five-eighths. If, on the other hand, he
+noticed an increasing demand, he would probably pay three-fourths for
+it. If the professional traders believed Rivers had a large buying
+order, they would probably try to buy the stock before he could at
+three-fourths, believing they could sell it out to him at a slightly
+higher price. The professional traders were, of course, keen students
+of psychology; and their success depended on their ability to guess
+whether or not a broker representing a big manipulator, like Tighe, had
+an order large enough to affect the market sufficiently to give them an
+opportunity to “get in and out,” as they termed it, at a profit before
+he had completed the execution of his order. They were like hawks
+watching for an opportunity to snatch their prey from under the very
+claws of their opponents.
+
+Four, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, and sometimes
+the whole company would attempt to take advantage of the given rise of
+a given stock by either selling or offering to buy, in which case the
+activity and the noise would become deafening. Given groups might be
+trading in different things; but the large majority of them would
+abandon what they were doing in order to take advantage of a
+speciality. The eagerness of certain young brokers or clerks to
+discover all that was going on, and to take advantage of any given rise
+or fall, made for quick physical action, darting to and fro, the
+excited elevation of explanatory fingers. Distorted faces were shoved
+over shoulders or under arms. The most ridiculous grimaces were
+purposely or unconsciously indulged in. At times there were situations
+in which some individual was fairly smothered with arms, faces,
+shoulders, crowded toward him when he manifested any intention of
+either buying or selling at a profitable rate. At first it seemed quite
+a wonderful thing to young Cowperwood—the very physical face of it—for
+he liked human presence and activity; but a little later the sense of
+the thing as a picture or a dramatic situation, of which he was a part
+faded, and he came down to a clearer sense of the intricacies of the
+problem before him. Buying and selling stocks, as he soon learned, was
+an art, a subtlety, almost a psychic emotion. Suspicion, intuition,
+feeling—these were the things to be “long” on.
+
+Yet in time he also asked himself, who was it who made the real
+money—the stock-brokers? Not at all. Some of them were making money,
+but they were, as he quickly saw, like a lot of gulls or stormy
+petrels, hanging on the lee of the wind, hungry and anxious to snap up
+any unwary fish. Back of them were other men, men with shrewd ideas,
+subtle resources. Men of immense means whose enterprise and holdings
+these stocks represented, the men who schemed out and built the
+railroads, opened the mines, organized trading enterprises, and built
+up immense manufactories. They might use brokers or other agents to buy
+and sell on ’change; but this buying and selling must be, and always
+was, incidental to the actual fact—the mine, the railroad, the wheat
+crop, the flour mill, and so on. Anything less than straight-out sales
+to realize quickly on assets, or buying to hold as an investment, was
+gambling pure and simple, and these men were gamblers. He was nothing
+more than a gambler’s agent. It was not troubling him any just at this
+moment, but it was not at all a mystery now, what he was. As in the
+case of Waterman & Company, he sized up these men shrewdly, judging
+some to be weak, some foolish, some clever, some slow, but in the main
+all small-minded or deficient because they were agents, tools, or
+gamblers. A man, a real man, must never be an agent, a tool, or a
+gambler—acting for himself or for others—he must employ such. A real
+man—a financier—was never a tool. He used tools. He created. He led.
+
+Clearly, very clearly, at nineteen, twenty, and twenty-one years of
+age, he saw all this, but he was not quite ready yet to do anything
+about it. He was certain, however, that his day would come.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+
+In the meantime, his interest in Mrs. Semple had been secretly and
+strangely growing. When he received an invitation to call at the Semple
+home, he accepted with a great deal of pleasure. Their house was
+located not so very far from his own, on North Front Street, in the
+neighborhood of what is now known as No. 956. It had, in summer, quite
+a wealth of green leaves and vines. The little side porch which
+ornamented its south wall commanded a charming view of the river, and
+all the windows and doors were topped with lunettes of small-paned
+glass. The interior of the house was not as pleasing as he would have
+had it. Artistic impressiveness, as to the furniture at least, was
+wanting, although it was new and good. The pictures were—well, simply
+pictures. There were no books to speak of—the Bible, a few current
+novels, some of the more significant histories, and a collection of
+antiquated odds and ends in the shape of books inherited from
+relatives. The china was good—of a delicate pattern. The carpets and
+wall-paper were too high in key. So it went. Still, the personality of
+Lillian Semple was worth something, for she was really pleasing to look
+upon, making a picture wherever she stood or sat.
+
+There were no children—a dispensation of sex conditions which had
+nothing to do with her, for she longed to have them. She was without
+any notable experience in social life, except such as had come to the
+Wiggin family, of which she was a member—relatives and a few
+neighborhood friends visiting. Lillian Wiggin, that was her maiden
+name—had two brothers and one sister, all living in Philadelphia and
+all married at this time. They thought she had done very well in her
+marriage.
+
+It could not be said that she had wildly loved Mr. Semple at any time.
+Although she had cheerfully married him, he was not the kind of man who
+could arouse a notable passion in any woman. He was practical,
+methodic, orderly. His shoe store was a good one—well-stocked with
+styles reflecting the current tastes and a model of cleanliness and
+what one might term pleasing brightness. He loved to talk, when he
+talked at all, of shoe manufacturing, the development of lasts and
+styles. The ready-made shoe—machine-made to a certain extent—was just
+coming into its own slowly, and outside of these, supplies of which he
+kept, he employed bench-making shoemakers, satisfying his customers
+with personal measurements and making the shoes to order.
+
+Mrs. Semple read a little—not much. She had a habit of sitting and
+apparently brooding reflectively at times, but it was not based on any
+deep thought. She had that curious beauty of body, though, that made
+her somewhat like a figure on an antique vase, or out of a Greek
+chorus. It was in this light, unquestionably, that Cowperwood saw her,
+for from the beginning he could not keep his eyes off her. In a way,
+she was aware of this but she did not attach any significance to it.
+Thoroughly conventional, satisfied now that her life was bound
+permanently with that of her husband, she had settled down to a staid
+and quiet existence.
+
+At first, when Frank called, she did not have much to say. She was
+gracious, but the burden of conversation fell on her husband.
+Cowperwood watched the varying expression of her face from time to
+time, and if she had been at all psychic she must have felt something.
+Fortunately she was not. Semple talked to him pleasantly, because in
+the first place Frank was becoming financially significant, was suave
+and ingratiating, and in the next place he was anxious to get richer
+and somehow Frank represented progress to him in that line. One spring
+evening they sat on the porch and talked—nothing very
+important—slavery, street-cars, the panic—it was on then, that of
+1857—the development of the West. Mr. Semple wanted to know all about
+the stock exchange. In return Frank asked about the shoe business,
+though he really did not care. All the while, inoffensively, he watched
+Mrs. Semple. Her manner, he thought, was soothing, attractive,
+delightful. She served tea and cake for them. They went inside after a
+time to avoid the mosquitoes. She played the piano. At ten o’clock he
+left.
+
+Thereafter, for a year or so, Cowperwood bought his shoes of Mr.
+Semple. Occasionally also he stopped in the Chestnut Street store to
+exchange the time of the day. Semple asked his opinion as to the
+advisability of buying some shares in the Fifth and Sixth Street line,
+which, having secured a franchise, was creating great excitement.
+Cowperwood gave him his best judgment. It was sure to be profitable. He
+himself had purchased one hundred shares at five dollars a share, and
+urged Semple to do so. But he was not interested in him personally. He
+liked Mrs. Semple, though he did not see her very often.
+
+About a year later, Mr. Semple died. It was an untimely death, one of
+those fortuitous and in a way insignificant episodes which are,
+nevertheless, dramatic in a dull way to those most concerned. He was
+seized with a cold in the chest late in the fall—one of those seizures
+ordinarily attributed to wet feet or to going out on a damp day without
+an overcoat—and had insisted on going to business when Mrs. Semple
+urged him to stay at home and recuperate. He was in his way a very
+determined person, not obstreperously so, but quietly and under the
+surface. Business was a great urge. He saw himself soon to be worth
+about fifty thousand dollars. Then this cold—nine more days of
+pneumonia—and he was dead. The shoe store was closed for a few days;
+the house was full of sympathetic friends and church people. There was
+a funeral, with burial service in the Callowhill Presbyterian Church,
+to which they belonged, and then he was buried. Mrs. Semple cried
+bitterly. The shock of death affected her greatly and left her for a
+time in a depressed state. A brother of hers, David Wiggin, undertook
+for the time being to run the shoe business for her. There was no will,
+but in the final adjustment, which included the sale of the shoe
+business, there being no desire on anybody’s part to contest her right
+to all the property, she received over eighteen thousand dollars. She
+continued to reside in the Front Street house, and was considered a
+charming and interesting widow.
+
+Throughout this procedure young Cowperwood, only twenty years of age,
+was quietly manifest. He called during the illness. He attended the
+funeral. He helped her brother, David Wiggin, dispose of the shoe
+business. He called once or twice after the funeral, then stayed away
+for a considerable time. In five months he reappeared, and thereafter
+he was a caller at stated intervals—periods of a week or ten days.
+
+Again, it would be hard to say what he saw in Semple. Her prettiness,
+wax-like in its quality, fascinated him; her indifference aroused
+perhaps his combative soul. He could not have explained why, but he
+wanted her in an urgent, passionate way. He could not think of her
+reasonably, and he did not talk of her much to any one. His family knew
+that he went to see her, but there had grown up in the Cowperwood
+family a deep respect for the mental force of Frank. He was genial,
+cheerful, gay at most times, without being talkative, and he was
+decidedly successful. Everybody knew he was making money now. His
+salary was fifty dollars a week, and he was certain soon to get more.
+Some lots of his in West Philadelphia, bought three years before, had
+increased notably in value. His street-car holdings, augmented by still
+additional lots of fifty and one hundred and one hundred and fifty
+shares in new lines incorporated, were slowly rising, in spite of hard
+times, from the initiative five dollars in each case to ten, fifteen,
+and twenty-five dollars a share—all destined to go to par. He was liked
+in the financial district and he was sure that he had a successful
+future. Because of his analysis of the brokerage situation he had come
+to the conclusion that he did not want to be a stock gambler. Instead,
+he was considering the matter of engaging in bill-brokering, a business
+which he had observed to be very profitable and which involved no risk
+as long as one had capital. Through his work and his father’s
+connections he had met many people—merchants, bankers, traders. He
+could get their business, or a part of it, he knew. People in Drexel &
+Co. and Clark & Co. were friendly to him. Jay Cooke, a rising banking
+personality, was a personal friend of his.
+
+Meanwhile he called on Mrs. Semple, and the more he called the better
+he liked her. There was no exchange of brilliant ideas between them;
+but he had a way of being comforting and social when he wished. He
+advised her about her business affairs in so intelligent a way that
+even her relatives approved of it. She came to like him, because he was
+so considerate, quiet, reassuring, and so ready to explain over and
+over until everything was quite plain to her. She could see that he was
+looking on her affairs quite as if they were his own, trying to make
+them safe and secure.
+
+“You’re so very kind, Frank,” she said to him, one night. “I’m awfully
+grateful. I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t been for
+you.”
+
+She looked at his handsome face, which was turned to hers, with
+child-like simplicity.
+
+“Not at all. Not at all. I want to do it. I wouldn’t have been happy if
+I couldn’t.”
+
+His eyes had a peculiar, subtle ray in them—not a gleam. She felt warm
+toward him, sympathetic, quite satisfied that she could lean on him.
+
+“Well, I am very grateful just the same. You’ve been so good. Come out
+Sunday again, if you want to, or any evening. I’ll be home.”
+
+It was while he was calling on her in this way that his Uncle Seneca
+died in Cuba and left him fifteen thousand dollars. This money made him
+worth nearly twenty-five thousand dollars in his own right, and he knew
+exactly what to do with it. A panic had come since Mr. Semple had died,
+which had illustrated to him very clearly what an uncertain thing the
+brokerage business was. There was really a severe business depression.
+Money was so scarce that it could fairly be said not to exist at all.
+Capital, frightened by uncertain trade and money conditions,
+everywhere, retired to its hiding-places in banks, vaults, tea-kettles,
+and stockings. The country seemed to be going to the dogs. War with the
+South or secession was vaguely looming up in the distance. The temper
+of the whole nation was nervous. People dumped their holdings on the
+market in order to get money. Tighe discharged three of his clerks. He
+cut down his expenses in every possible way, and used up all his
+private savings to protect his private holdings. He mortgaged his
+house, his land holdings—everything; and in many instances young
+Cowperwood was his intermediary, carrying blocks of shares to different
+banks to get what he could on them.
+
+“See if your father’s bank won’t loan me fifteen thousand on these,” he
+said to Frank, one day, producing a bundle of Philadelphia & Wilmington
+shares. Frank had heard his father speak of them in times past as
+excellent.
+
+“They ought to be good,” the elder Cowperwood said, dubiously, when
+shown the package of securities. “At any other time they would be. But
+money is so tight. We find it awfully hard these days to meet our own
+obligations. I’ll talk to Mr. Kugel.” Mr. Kugel was the president.
+
+There was a long conversation—a long wait. His father came back to say
+it was doubtful whether they could make the loan. Eight per cent., then
+being secured for money, was a small rate of interest, considering its
+need. For ten per cent. Mr. Kugel might make a call-loan. Frank went
+back to his employer, whose commercial choler rose at the report.
+
+“For Heaven’s sake, is there no money at all in the town?” he demanded,
+contentiously. “Why, the interest they want is ruinous! I can’t stand
+that. Well, take ’em back and bring me the money. Good God, this’ll
+never do at all, at all!”
+
+Frank went back. “He’ll pay ten per cent.,” he said, quietly.
+
+Tighe was credited with a deposit of fifteen thousand dollars, with
+privilege to draw against it at once. He made out a check for the total
+fifteen thousand at once to the Girard National Bank to cover a
+shrinkage there. So it went.
+
+During all these days young Cowperwood was following these financial
+complications with interest. He was not disturbed by the cause of
+slavery, or the talk of secession, or the general progress or decline
+of the country, except in so far as it affected his immediate
+interests. He longed to become a stable financier; but, now that he saw
+the inside of the brokerage business, he was not so sure that he wanted
+to stay in it. Gambling in stocks, according to conditions produced by
+this panic, seemed very hazardous. A number of brokers failed. He saw
+them rush in to Tighe with anguished faces and ask that certain trades
+be canceled. Their very homes were in danger, they said. They would be
+wiped out, their wives and children put out on the street.
+
+This panic, incidentally, only made Frank more certain as to what he
+really wanted to do—now that he had this free money, he would go into
+business for himself. Even Tighe’s offer of a minor partnership failed
+to tempt him.
+
+“I think you have a nice business,” he explained, in refusing, “but I
+want to get in the note-brokerage business for myself. I don’t trust
+this stock game. I’d rather have a little business of my own than all
+the floor work in this world.”
+
+“But you’re pretty young, Frank,” argued his employer. “You have lots
+of time to work for yourself.” In the end he parted friends with both
+Tighe and Rivers. “That’s a smart young fellow,” observed Tighe,
+ruefully.
+
+“He’ll make his mark,” rejoined Rivers. “He’s the shrewdest boy of his
+age I ever saw.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+
+Cowperwood’s world at this time was of roseate hue. He was in love and
+had money of his own to start his new business venture. He could take
+his street-car stocks, which were steadily increasing in value, and
+raise seventy per cent. of their market value. He could put a mortgage
+on his lots and get money there, if necessary. He had established
+financial relations with the Girard National Bank—President Davison
+there having taken a fancy to him—and he proposed to borrow from that
+institution some day. All he wanted was suitable investments—things in
+which he could realize surely, quickly. He saw fine prospective profits
+in the street-car lines, which were rapidly developing into local
+ramifications.
+
+He purchased a horse and buggy about this time—the most
+attractive-looking animal and vehicle he could find—the combination
+cost him five hundred dollars—and invited Mrs. Semple to drive with
+him. She refused at first, but later consented. He had told her of his
+success, his prospects, his windfall of fifteen thousand dollars, his
+intention of going into the note-brokerage business. She knew his
+father was likely to succeed to the position of vice-president in the
+Third National Bank, and she liked the Cowperwoods. Now she began to
+realize that there was something more than mere friendship here. This
+erstwhile boy was a man, and he was calling on her. It was almost
+ridiculous in the face of things—her seniority, her widowhood, her
+placid, retiring disposition—but the sheer, quiet, determined force of
+this young man made it plain that he was not to be balked by her sense
+of convention.
+
+Cowperwood did not delude himself with any noble theories of conduct in
+regard to her. She was beautiful, with a mental and physical lure for
+him that was irresistible, and that was all he desired to know. No
+other woman was holding him like that. It never occurred to him that he
+could not or should not like other women at the same time. There was a
+great deal of palaver about the sanctity of the home. It rolled off his
+mental sphere like water off the feathers of a duck. He was not eager
+for her money, though he was well aware of it. He felt that he could
+use it to her advantage. He wanted her physically. He felt a keen,
+primitive interest in the children they would have. He wanted to find
+out if he could make her love him vigorously and could rout out the
+memory of her former life. Strange ambition. Strange perversion, one
+might almost say.
+
+In spite of her fears and her uncertainty, Lillian Semple accepted his
+attentions and interest because, equally in spite of herself, she was
+drawn to him. One night, when she was going to bed, she stopped in
+front of her dressing table and looked at her face and her bare neck
+and arms. They were very pretty. A subtle something came over her as
+she surveyed her long, peculiarly shaded hair. She thought of young
+Cowperwood, and then was chilled and shamed by the vision of the late
+Mr. Semple and the force and quality of public opinion.
+
+“Why do you come to see me so often?” she asked him when he called the
+following evening.
+
+“Oh, don’t you know?” he replied, looking at her in an interpretive
+way.
+
+“No.”
+
+“Sure you don’t?”
+
+“Well, I know you liked Mr. Semple, and I always thought you liked me
+as his wife. He’s gone, though, now.”
+
+“And you’re here,” he replied.
+
+“And I’m here?”
+
+“Yes. I like you. I like to be with you. Don’t you like me that way?”
+
+“Why, I’ve never thought of it. You’re so much younger. I’m five years
+older than you are.”
+
+“In years,” he said, “certainly. That’s nothing. I’m fifteen years
+older than you are in other ways. I know more about life in some ways
+than you can ever hope to learn—don’t you think so?” he added, softly,
+persuasively.
+
+“Well, that’s true. But I know a lot of things you don’t know.” She
+laughed softly, showing her pretty teeth.
+
+It was evening. They were on the side porch. The river was before them.
+
+“Yes, but that’s only because you’re a woman. A man can’t hope to get a
+woman’s point of view exactly. But I’m talking about practical affairs
+of this world. You’re not as old that way as I am.”
+
+“Well, what of it?”
+
+“Nothing. You asked why I came to see you. That’s why. Partly.”
+
+He relapsed into silence and stared at the water.
+
+She looked at him. His handsome body, slowly broadening, was nearly
+full grown. His face, because of its full, clear, big, inscrutable
+eyes, had an expression which was almost babyish. She could not have
+guessed the depths it veiled. His cheeks were pink, his hands not
+large, but sinewy and strong. Her pale, uncertain, lymphatic body
+extracted a form of dynamic energy from him even at this range.
+
+“I don’t think you ought to come to see me so often. People won’t think
+well of it.” She ventured to take a distant, matronly air—the air she
+had originally held toward him.
+
+“People,” he said, “don’t worry about people. People think what you
+want them to think. I wish you wouldn’t take that distant air toward
+me.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because I like you.”
+
+“But you mustn’t like me. It’s wrong. I can’t ever marry you. You’re
+too young. I’m too old.”
+
+“Don’t say that!” he said, imperiously. “There’s nothing to it. I want
+you to marry me. You know I do. Now, when will it be?”
+
+“Why, how silly! I never heard of such a thing!” she exclaimed. “It
+will never be, Frank. It can’t be!”
+
+“Why can’t it?” he asked.
+
+“Because—well, because I’m older. People would think it strange. I’m
+not long enough free.”
+
+“Oh, long enough nothing!” he exclaimed, irritably. “That’s the one
+thing I have against you—you are so worried about what people think.
+They don’t make your life. They certainly don’t make mine. Think of
+yourself first. You have your own life to make. Are you going to let
+what other people think stand in the way of what you want to do?”
+
+“But I don’t want to,” she smiled.
+
+He arose and came over to her, looking into her eyes.
+
+“Well?” she asked, nervously, quizzically.
+
+He merely looked at her.
+
+“Well?” she queried, more flustered.
+
+He stooped down to take her arms, but she got up.
+
+“Now you must not come near me,” she pleaded, determinedly. “I’ll go in
+the house, and I’ll not let you come any more. It’s terrible! You’re
+silly! You mustn’t interest yourself in me.”
+
+She did show a good deal of determination, and he desisted. But for the
+time being only. He called again and again. Then one night, when they
+had gone inside because of the mosquitoes, and when she had insisted
+that he must stop coming to see her, that his attentions were
+noticeable to others, and that she would be disgraced, he caught her,
+under desperate protest, in his arms.
+
+“Now, see here!” she exclaimed. “I told you! It’s silly! You mustn’t
+kiss me! How dare you! Oh! oh! oh!—”
+
+She broke away and ran up the near-by stairway to her room. Cowperwood
+followed her swiftly. As she pushed the door to he forced it open and
+recaptured her. He lifted her bodily from her feet and held her
+crosswise, lying in his arms.
+
+“Oh, how could you!” she exclaimed. “I will never speak to you any
+more. I will never let you come here any more if you don’t put me down
+this minute. Put me down!”
+
+“I’ll put you down, sweet,” he said. “I’ll take you down,” at the same
+time pulling her face to him and kissing her. He was very much aroused,
+excited.
+
+While she was twisting and protesting, he carried her down the stairs
+again into the living-room, and seated himself in the great armchair,
+still holding her tight in his arms.
+
+“Oh!” she sighed, falling limp on his shoulder when he refused to let
+her go. Then, because of the set determination of his face, some
+intense pull in him, she smiled. “How would I ever explain if I did
+marry you?” she asked, weakly. “Your father! Your mother!”
+
+“You don’t need to explain. I’ll do that. And you needn’t worry about
+my family. They won’t care.”
+
+“But mine,” she recoiled.
+
+“Don’t worry about yours. I’m not marrying your family. I’m marrying
+you. We have independent means.”
+
+She relapsed into additional protests; but he kissed her the more.
+There was a deadly persuasion to his caresses. Mr. Semple had never
+displayed any such fire. He aroused a force of feeling in her which had
+not previously been there. She was afraid of it and ashamed.
+
+“Will you marry me in a month?” he asked, cheerfully, when she paused.
+
+“You know I won’t!” she exclaimed, nervously. “The idea! Why do you
+ask?”
+
+“What difference does it make? We’re going to get married eventually.”
+He was thinking how attractive he could make her look in other
+surroundings. Neither she nor his family knew how to live.
+
+“Well, not in a month. Wait a little while. I will marry you after a
+while—after you see whether you want me.”
+
+He caught her tight. “I’ll show you,” he said.
+
+“Please stop. You hurt me.”
+
+“How about it? Two months?”
+
+“Certainly not.”
+
+“Three?”
+
+“Well, maybe.”
+
+“No maybe in that case. We marry.”
+
+“But you’re only a boy.”
+
+“Don’t worry about me. You’ll find out how much of a boy I am.”
+
+He seemed of a sudden to open up a new world to her, and she realized
+that she had never really lived before. This man represented something
+bigger and stronger than ever her husband had dreamed of. In his young
+way he was terrible, irresistible.
+
+“Well, in three months then,” she whispered, while he rocked her cozily
+in his arms.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+
+Cowperwood started in the note brokerage business with a small office
+at No. 64 South Third Street, where he very soon had the pleasure of
+discovering that his former excellent business connections remembered
+him. He would go to one house, where he suspected ready money might be
+desirable, and offer to negotiate their notes or any paper they might
+issue bearing six per cent. interest for a commission and then he would
+sell the paper for a small commission to some one who would welcome a
+secure investment. Sometimes his father, sometimes other people, helped
+him with suggestions as to when and how. Between the two ends he might
+make four and five per cent. on the total transaction. In the first
+year he cleared six thousand dollars over and above all expenses. That
+wasn’t much, but he was augmenting it in another way which he believed
+would bring great profit in the future.
+
+Before the first street-car line, which was a shambling affair, had
+been laid on Front Street, the streets of Philadelphia had been crowded
+with hundreds of springless omnibuses rattling over rough, hard,
+cobblestones. Now, thanks to the idea of John Stephenson, in New York,
+the double rail track idea had come, and besides the line on Fifth and
+Sixth Streets (the cars running out one street and back on another)
+which had paid splendidly from the start, there were many other lines
+proposed or under way. The city was as eager to see street-cars replace
+omnibuses as it was to see railroads replace canals. There was
+opposition, of course. There always is in such cases. The cry of
+probable monopoly was raised. Disgruntled and defeated omnibus owners
+and drivers groaned aloud.
+
+Cowperwood had implicit faith in the future of the street railway. In
+support of this belief he risked all he could spare on new issues of
+stock shares in new companies. He wanted to be on the inside wherever
+possible, always, though this was a little difficult in the matter of
+the street-railways, he having been so young when they started and not
+having yet arranged his financial connections to make them count for
+much. The Fifth and Sixth Street line, which had been but recently
+started, was paying six hundred dollars a day. A project for a West
+Philadelphia line (Walnut and Chestnut) was on foot, as were lines to
+occupy Second and Third Streets, Race and Vine, Spruce and Pine, Green
+and Coates, Tenth and Eleventh, and so forth. They were engineered and
+backed by some powerful capitalists who had influence with the State
+legislature and could, in spite of great public protest, obtain
+franchises. Charges of corruption were in the air. It was argued that
+the streets were valuable, and that the companies should pay a road tax
+of a thousand dollars a mile. Somehow, however, these splendid grants
+were gotten through, and the public, hearing of the Fifth and Sixth
+Street line profits, was eager to invest. Cowperwood was one of these,
+and when the Second and Third Street line was engineered, he invested
+in that and in the Walnut and Chestnut Street line also. He began to
+have vague dreams of controlling a line himself some day, but as yet he
+did not see exactly how it was to be done, since his business was far
+from being a bonanza.
+
+In the midst of this early work he married Mrs. Semple. There was no
+vast to-do about it, as he did not want any and his bride-to-be was
+nervous, fearsome of public opinion. His family did not entirely
+approve. She was too old, his mother and father thought, and then
+Frank, with his prospects, could have done much better. His sister Anna
+fancied that Mrs. Semple was designing, which was, of course, not true.
+His brothers, Joseph and Edward, were interested, but not certain as to
+what they actually thought, since Mrs. Semple was good-looking and had
+some money.
+
+It was a warm October day when he and Lillian went to the altar, in the
+First Presbyterian Church of Callowhill Street. His bride, Frank was
+satisfied, looked exquisite in a trailing gown of cream lace—a creation
+that had cost months of labor. His parents, Mrs. Seneca Davis, the
+Wiggin family, brothers and sisters, and some friends were present. He
+was a little opposed to this idea, but Lillian wanted it. He stood up
+straight and correct in black broadcloth for the wedding
+ceremony—because she wished it, but later changed to a smart business
+suit for traveling. He had arranged his affairs for a two weeks’ trip
+to New York and Boston. They took an afternoon train for New York,
+which required five hours to reach. When they were finally alone in the
+Astor House, New York, after hours of make-believe and public pretense
+of indifference, he gathered her in his arms.
+
+“Oh, it’s delicious,” he exclaimed, “to have you all to myself.”
+
+She met his eagerness with that smiling, tantalizing passivity which he
+had so much admired but which this time was tinged strongly with a
+communicated desire. He thought he should never have enough of her, her
+beautiful face, her lovely arms, her smooth, lymphatic body. They were
+like two children, billing and cooing, driving, dining, seeing the
+sights. He was curious to visit the financial sections of both cities.
+New York and Boston appealed to him as commercially solid. He wondered,
+as he observed the former, whether he should ever leave Philadelphia.
+He was going to be very happy there now, he thought, with Lillian and
+possibly a brood of young Cowperwoods. He was going to work hard and
+make money. With his means and hers now at his command, he might
+become, very readily, notably wealthy.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+
+The home atmosphere which they established when they returned from
+their honeymoon was a great improvement in taste over that which had
+characterized the earlier life of Mrs. Cowperwood as Mrs. Semple. They
+had decided to occupy her house, on North Front Street, for a while at
+least. Cowperwood, aggressive in his current artistic mood, had
+objected at once after they were engaged to the spirit of the furniture
+and decorations, or lack of them, and had suggested that he be allowed
+to have it brought more in keeping with his idea of what was
+appropriate. During the years in which he had been growing into manhood
+he had come instinctively into sound notions of what was artistic and
+refined. He had seen so many homes that were more distinguished and
+harmonious than his own. One could not walk or drive about Philadelphia
+without seeing and being impressed with the general tendency toward a
+more cultivated and selective social life. Many excellent and expensive
+houses were being erected. The front lawn, with some attempt at floral
+gardening, was achieving local popularity. In the homes of the Tighes,
+the Leighs, Arthur Rivers, and others, he had noticed art objects of
+some distinction—bronzes, marbles, hangings, pictures, clocks, rugs.
+
+It seemed to him now that his comparatively commonplace house could be
+made into something charming and for comparatively little money. The
+dining-room for instance which, through two plain windows set in a hat
+side wall back of the veranda, looked south over a stretch of grass and
+several trees and bushes to a dividing fence where the Semple property
+ended and a neighbor’s began, could be made so much more attractive.
+That fence—sharp-pointed, gray palings—could be torn away and a hedge
+put in its place. The wall which divided the dining-room from the
+parlor could be knocked through and a hanging of some pleasing
+character put in its place. A bay-window could be built to replace the
+two present oblong windows—a bay which would come down to the floor and
+open out on the lawn via swiveled, diamond-shaped, lead-paned frames.
+All this shabby, nondescript furniture, collected from heaven knows
+where—partly inherited from the Semples and the Wiggins and partly
+bought—could be thrown out or sold and something better and more
+harmonious introduced. He knew a young man by the name of Ellsworth, an
+architect newly graduated from a local school, with whom he had struck
+up an interesting friendship—one of those inexplicable inclinations of
+temperament. Wilton Ellsworth was an artist in spirit, quiet,
+meditative, refined. From discussing the quality of a certain building
+on Chestnut Street which was then being erected, and which Ellsworth
+pronounced atrocious, they had fallen to discussing art in general, or
+the lack of it, in America. And it occurred to him that Ellsworth was
+the man to carry out his decorative views to a nicety. When he
+suggested the young man to Lillian, she placidly agreed with him and
+also with his own ideas of how the house could be revised.
+
+So while they were gone on their honeymoon Ellsworth began the revision
+on an estimated cost of three thousand dollars, including the
+furniture. It was not completed for nearly three weeks after their
+return; but when finished made a comparatively new house. The
+dining-room bay hung low over the grass, as Frank wished, and the
+windows were diamond-paned and leaded, swiveled on brass rods. The
+parlor and dining-room were separated by sliding doors; but the
+intention was to hang in this opening a silk hanging depicting a
+wedding scene in Normandy. Old English oak was used in the dining-room,
+an American imitation of Chippendale and Sheraton for the sitting-room
+and the bedrooms. There were a few simple water-colors hung here and
+there, some bronzes of Hosmer and Powers, a marble venus by Potter, a
+now forgotten sculptor, and other objects of art—nothing of any
+distinction. Pleasing, appropriately colored rugs covered the floor.
+Mrs. Cowperwood was shocked by the nudity of the Venus which conveyed
+an atmosphere of European freedom not common to America; but she said
+nothing. It was all harmonious and soothing, and she did not feel
+herself capable to judge. Frank knew about these things so much better
+than she did. Then with a maid and a man of all work installed, a
+program of entertaining was begun on a small scale.
+
+Those who recall the early years of their married life can best realize
+the subtle changes which this new condition brought to Frank, for, like
+all who accept the hymeneal yoke, he was influenced to a certain extent
+by the things with which he surrounded himself. Primarily, from certain
+traits of his character, one would have imagined him called to be a
+citizen of eminent respectability and worth. He appeared to be an ideal
+home man. He delighted to return to his wife in the evenings, leaving
+the crowded downtown section where traffic clamored and men hurried.
+Here he could feel that he was well-stationed and physically happy in
+life. The thought of the dinner-table with candles upon it (his idea);
+the thought of Lillian in a trailing gown of pale-blue or green silk—he
+liked her in those colors; the thought of a large fireplace flaming
+with solid lengths of cord-wood, and Lillian snuggling in his arms,
+gripped his immature imagination. As has been said before, he cared
+nothing for books, but life, pictures, trees, physical contact—these,
+in spite of his shrewd and already gripping financial calculations,
+held him. To live richly, joyously, fully—his whole nature craved that.
+
+And Mrs. Cowperwood, in spite of the difference in their years,
+appeared to be a fit mate for him at this time. She was once awakened,
+and for the time being, clinging, responsive, dreamy. His mood and hers
+was for a baby, and in a little while that happy expectation was
+whispered to him by her. She had half fancied that her previous
+barrenness was due to herself, and was rather surprised and delighted
+at the proof that it was not so. It opened new possibilities—a
+seemingly glorious future of which she was not afraid. He liked it, the
+idea of self-duplication. It was almost acquisitive, this thought. For
+days and weeks and months and years, at least the first four or five,
+he took a keen satisfaction in coming home evenings, strolling about
+the yard, driving with his wife, having friends in to dinner, talking
+over with her in an explanatory way the things he intended to do. She
+did not understand his financial abstrusities, and he did not trouble
+to make them clear.
+
+But love, her pretty body, her lips, her quiet manner—the lure of all
+these combined, and his two children, when they came—two in four
+years—held him. He would dandle Frank, Jr., who was the first to
+arrive, on his knee, looking at his chubby feet, his kindling eyes, his
+almost formless yet bud-like mouth, and wonder at the process by which
+children came into the world. There was so much to think of in this
+connection—the spermatozoic beginning, the strange period of gestation
+in women, the danger of disease and delivery. He had gone through a
+real period of strain when Frank, Jr., was born, for Mrs. Cowperwood
+was frightened. He feared for the beauty of her body—troubled over the
+danger of losing her; and he actually endured his first worry when he
+stood outside the door the day the child came. Not much—he was too
+self-sufficient, too resourceful; and yet he worried, conjuring up
+thoughts of death and the end of their present state. Then word came,
+after certain piercing, harrowing cries, that all was well, and he was
+permitted to look at the new arrival. The experience broadened his
+conception of things, made him more solid in his judgment of life. That
+old conviction of tragedy underlying the surface of things, like wood
+under its veneer, was emphasized. Little Frank, and later Lillian,
+blue-eyed and golden-haired, touched his imagination for a while. There
+was a good deal to this home idea, after all. That was the way life was
+organized, and properly so—its cornerstone was the home.
+
+It would be impossible to indicate fully how subtle were the material
+changes which these years involved—changes so gradual that they were,
+like the lap of soft waters, unnoticeable. Considerable—a great deal,
+considering how little he had to begin with—wealth was added in the
+next five years. He came, in his financial world, to know fairly
+intimately, as commercial relationships go, some of the subtlest
+characters of the steadily enlarging financial world. In his days at
+Tighe’s and on the exchange, many curious figures had been pointed out
+to him—State and city officials of one grade and another who were
+“making something out of politics,” and some national figures who came
+from Washington to Philadelphia at times to see Drexel & Co., Clark &
+Co., and even Tighe & Co. These men, as he learned, had tips or advance
+news of legislative or economic changes which were sure to affect
+certain stocks or trade opportunities. A young clerk had once pulled
+his sleeve at Tighe’s.
+
+“See that man going in to see Tighe?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“That’s Murtagh, the city treasurer. Say, he don’t do anything but play
+a fine game. All that money to invest, and he don’t have to account for
+anything except the principal. The interest goes to him.”
+
+Cowperwood understood. All these city and State officials speculated.
+They had a habit of depositing city and State funds with certain
+bankers and brokers as authorized agents or designated State
+depositories. The banks paid no interest—save to the officials
+personally. They loaned it to certain brokers on the officials’ secret
+order, and the latter invested it in “sure winners.” The bankers got
+the free use of the money a part of the time, the brokers another part:
+the officials made money, and the brokers received a fat commission.
+There was a political ring in Philadelphia in which the mayor, certain
+members of the council, the treasurer, the chief of police, the
+commissioner of public works, and others shared. It was a case
+generally of “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” Cowperwood
+thought it rather shabby work at first, but many men were rapidly
+getting rich and no one seemed to care. The newspapers were always
+talking about civic patriotism and pride but never a word about these
+things. And the men who did them were powerful and respected.
+
+There were many houses, a constantly widening circle, that found him a
+very trustworthy agent in disposing of note issues or note payment. He
+seemed to know so quickly where to go to get the money. From the first
+he made it a principle to keep twenty thousand dollars in cash on hand
+in order to be able to take up a proposition instantly and without
+discussion. So, often he was able to say, “Why, certainly, I can do
+that,” when otherwise, on the face of things, he would not have been
+able to do so. He was asked if he would not handle certain stock
+transactions on ’change. He had no seat, and he intended not to take
+any at first; but now he changed his mind, and bought one, not only in
+Philadelphia, but in New York also. A certain Joseph Zimmerman, a
+dry-goods man for whom he had handled various note issues, suggested
+that he undertake operating in street-railway shares for him, and this
+was the beginning of his return to the floor.
+
+In the meanwhile his family life was changing—growing, one might have
+said, finer and more secure. Mrs. Cowperwood had, for instance, been
+compelled from time to time to make a subtle readjustment of her
+personal relationship with people, as he had with his. When Mr. Semple
+was alive she had been socially connected with tradesmen
+principally—retailers and small wholesalers—a very few. Some of the
+women of her own church, the First Presbyterian, were friendly with
+her. There had been church teas and sociables which she and Mr. Semple
+attended, and dull visits to his relatives and hers. The Cowperwoods,
+the Watermans, and a few families of that caliber, had been the notable
+exceptions. Now all this was changed. Young Cowperwood did not care
+very much for her relatives, and the Semples had been alienated by her
+second, and to them outrageous, marriage. His own family was closely
+interested by ties of affection and mutual prosperity, but, better than
+this, he was drawing to himself some really significant personalities.
+He brought home with him, socially—not to talk business, for he
+disliked that idea—bankers, investors, customers and prospective
+customers. Out on the Schuylkill, the Wissahickon, and elsewhere, were
+popular dining places where one could drive on Sunday. He and Mrs.
+Cowperwood frequently drove out to Mrs. Seneca Davis’s, to Judge
+Kitchen’s, to the home of Andrew Sharpless, a lawyer whom he knew, to
+the home of Harper Steger, his own lawyer, and others. Cowperwood had
+the gift of geniality. None of these men or women suspected the depth
+of his nature—he was thinking, thinking, thinking, but enjoyed life as
+he went.
+
+One of his earliest and most genuine leanings was toward paintings. He
+admired nature, but somehow, without knowing why, he fancied one could
+best grasp it through the personality of some interpreter, just as we
+gain our ideas of law and politics through individuals. Mrs. Cowperwood
+cared not a whit one way or another, but she accompanied him to
+exhibitions, thinking all the while that Frank was a little peculiar.
+He tried, because he loved her, to interest her in these things
+intelligently, but while she pretended slightly, she could not really
+see or care, and it was very plain that she could not.
+
+The children took up a great deal of her time. However, Cowperwood was
+not troubled about this. It struck him as delightful and exceedingly
+worth while that she should be so devoted. At the same time, her
+lethargic manner, vague smile and her sometimes seeming indifference,
+which sprang largely from a sense of absolute security, attracted him
+also. She was so different from him! She took her second marriage quite
+as she had taken her first—a solemn fact which contained no possibility
+of mental alteration. As for himself, however, he was bustling about in
+a world which, financially at least, seemed all alteration—there were
+so many sudden and almost unheard-of changes. He began to look at her
+at times, with a speculative eye—not very critically, for he liked
+her—but with an attempt to weigh her personality. He had known her five
+years and more now. What did he know about her? The vigor of
+youth—those first years—had made up for so many things, but now that he
+had her safely...
+
+There came in this period the slow approach, and finally the
+declaration, of war between the North and the South, attended with so
+much excitement that almost all current minds were notably colored by
+it. It was terrific. Then came meetings, public and stirring, and
+riots; the incident of John Brown’s body; the arrival of Lincoln, the
+great commoner, on his way from Springfield, Illinois, to Washington
+via Philadelphia, to take the oath of office; the battle of Bull Run;
+the battle of Vicksburg; the battle of Gettysburg, and so on.
+Cowperwood was only twenty-five at the time, a cool, determined youth,
+who thought the slave agitation might be well founded in human
+rights—no doubt was—but exceedingly dangerous to trade. He hoped the
+North would win; but it might go hard with him personally and other
+financiers. He did not care to fight. That seemed silly for the
+individual man to do. Others might—there were many poor, thin-minded,
+half-baked creatures who would put themselves up to be shot; but they
+were only fit to be commanded or shot down. As for him, his life was
+sacred to himself and his family and his personal interests. He
+recalled seeing, one day, in one of the quiet side streets, as the
+working-men were coming home from their work, a small enlisting squad
+of soldiers in blue marching enthusiastically along, the Union flag
+flying, the drummers drumming, the fifes blowing, the idea being, of
+course, to so impress the hitherto indifferent or wavering citizen, to
+exalt him to such a pitch, that he would lose his sense of proportion,
+of self-interest, and, forgetting all—wife, parents, home, and
+children—and seeing only the great need of the country, fall in behind
+and enlist. He saw one workingman swinging his pail, and evidently not
+contemplating any such denouement to his day’s work, pause, listen as
+the squad approached, hesitate as it drew close, and as it passed, with
+a peculiar look of uncertainty or wonder in his eyes, fall in behind
+and march solemnly away to the enlisting quarters. What was it that had
+caught this man, Frank asked himself. How was he overcome so easily? He
+had not intended to go. His face was streaked with the grease and dirt
+of his work—he looked like a foundry man or machinist, say twenty-five
+years of age. Frank watched the little squad disappear at the end of
+the street round the corner under the trees.
+
+This current war-spirit was strange. The people seemed to him to want
+to hear nothing but the sound of the drum and fife, to see nothing but
+troops, of which there were thousands now passing through on their way
+to the front, carrying cold steel in the shape of guns at their
+shoulders, to hear of war and the rumors of war. It was a thrilling
+sentiment, no doubt, great but unprofitable. It meant self-sacrifice,
+and he could not see that. If he went he might be shot, and what would
+his noble emotion amount to then? He would rather make money, regulate
+current political, social and financial affairs. The poor fool who fell
+in behind the enlisting squad—no, not fool, he would not call him
+that—the poor overwrought working-man—well, Heaven pity him! Heaven
+pity all of them! They really did not know what they were doing.
+
+One day he saw Lincoln—a tall, shambling man, long, bony, gawky, but
+tremendously impressive. It was a raw, slushy morning of a late
+February day, and the great war President was just through with his
+solemn pronunciamento in regard to the bonds that might have been
+strained but must not be broken. As he issued from the doorway of
+Independence Hall, that famous birthplace of liberty, his face was set
+in a sad, meditative calm. Cowperwood looked at him fixedly as he
+issued from the doorway surrounded by chiefs of staff, local
+dignitaries, detectives, and the curious, sympathetic faces of the
+public. As he studied the strangely rough-hewn countenance a sense of
+the great worth and dignity of the man came over him.
+
+“A real man, that,” he thought; “a wonderful temperament.” His every
+gesture came upon him with great force. He watched him enter his
+carriage, thinking “So that is the railsplitter, the country lawyer.
+Well, fate has picked a great man for this crisis.”
+
+For days the face of Lincoln haunted him, and very often during the war
+his mind reverted to that singular figure. It seemed to him
+unquestionable that fortuitously he had been permitted to look upon one
+of the world’s really great men. War and statesmanship were not for
+him; but he knew how important those things were—at times.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+
+It was while the war was on, and after it was perfectly plain that it
+was not to be of a few days’ duration, that Cowperwood’s first great
+financial opportunity came to him. There was a strong demand for money
+at the time on the part of the nation, the State, and the city. In
+July, 1861, Congress had authorized a loan of fifty million dollars, to
+be secured by twenty-year bonds with interest not to exceed seven per
+cent., and the State authorized a loan of three millions on much the
+same security, the first being handled by financiers of Boston, New
+York, and Philadelphia, the second by Philadelphia financiers alone.
+Cowperwood had no hand in this. He was not big enough. He read in the
+papers of gatherings of men whom he knew personally or by reputation,
+“to consider the best way to aid the nation or the State”; but he was
+not included. And yet his soul yearned to be of them. He noticed how
+often a rich man’s word sufficed—no money, no certificates, no
+collateral, no anything—just his word. If Drexel & Co., or Jay Cooke &
+Co., or Gould & Fiske were rumored to be behind anything, how secure it
+was! Jay Cooke, a young man in Philadelphia, had made a great strike
+taking this State loan in company with Drexel & Co., and selling it at
+par. The general opinion was that it ought to be and could only be sold
+at ninety. Cooke did not believe this. He believed that State pride and
+State patriotism would warrant offering the loan to small banks and
+private citizens, and that they would subscribe it fully and more.
+Events justified Cooke magnificently, and his public reputation was
+assured. Cowperwood wished he could make some such strike; but he was
+too practical to worry over anything save the facts and conditions that
+were before him.
+
+His chance came about six months later, when it was found that the
+State would have to have much more money. Its quota of troops would
+have to be equipped and paid. There were measures of defense to be
+taken, the treasury to be replenished. A call for a loan of
+twenty-three million dollars was finally authorized by the legislature
+and issued. There was great talk in the street as to who was to handle
+it—Drexel & Co. and Jay Cooke & Co., of course.
+
+Cowperwood pondered over this. If he could handle a fraction of this
+great loan now—he could not possibly handle the whole of it, for he had
+not the necessary connections—he could add considerably to his
+reputation as a broker while making a tidy sum. How much could he
+handle? That was the question. Who would take portions of it? His
+father’s bank? Probably. Waterman & Co.? A little. Judge Kitchen? A
+small fraction. The Mills-David Company? Yes. He thought of different
+individuals and concerns who, for one reason and another—personal
+friendship, good-nature, gratitude for past favors, and so on—would
+take a percentage of the seven-percent. bonds through him. He totaled
+up his possibilities, and discovered that in all likelihood, with a
+little preliminary missionary work, he could dispose of one million
+dollars if personal influence, through local political figures, could
+bring this much of the loan his way.
+
+One man in particular had grown strong in his estimation as having some
+subtle political connection not visible on the surface, and this was
+Edward Malia Butler. Butler was a contractor, undertaking the
+construction of sewers, water-mains, foundations for buildings,
+street-paving, and the like. In the early days, long before Cowperwood
+had known him, he had been a garbage-contractor on his own account. The
+city at that time had no extended street-cleaning service, particularly
+in its outlying sections and some of the older, poorer regions. Edward
+Butler, then a poor young Irishman, had begun by collecting and hauling
+away the garbage free of charge, and feeding it to his pigs and cattle.
+Later he discovered that some people were willing to pay a small charge
+for this service. Then a local political character, a councilman friend
+of his—they were both Catholics—saw a new point in the whole thing.
+Butler could be made official garbage-collector. The council could vote
+an annual appropriation for this service. Butler could employ more
+wagons than he did now—dozens of them, scores. Not only that, but no
+other garbage-collector would be allowed. There were others, but the
+official contract awarded him would also, officially, be the end of the
+life of any and every disturbing rival. A certain amount of the
+profitable proceeds would have to be set aside to assuage the feelings
+of those who were not contractors. Funds would have to be loaned at
+election time to certain individuals and organizations—but no matter.
+The amount would be small. So Butler and Patrick Gavin Comiskey, the
+councilman (the latter silently) entered into business relations.
+Butler gave up driving a wagon himself. He hired a young man, a smart
+Irish boy of his neighborhood, Jimmy Sheehan, to be his assistant,
+superintendent, stableman, bookkeeper, and what not. Since he soon
+began to make between four and five thousand a year, where before he
+made two thousand, he moved into a brick house in an outlying section
+of the south side, and sent his children to school. Mrs. Butler gave up
+making soap and feeding pigs. And since then times had been exceedingly
+good with Edward Butler.
+
+He could neither read nor write at first; but now he knew how, of
+course. He had learned from association with Mr. Comiskey that there
+were other forms of contracting—sewers, water-mains, gas-mains,
+street-paving, and the like. Who better than Edward Butler to do it? He
+knew the councilmen, many of them. Het met them in the back rooms of
+saloons, on Sundays and Saturdays at political picnics, at election
+councils and conferences, for as a beneficiary of the city’s largess he
+was expected to contribute not only money, but advice. Curiously he had
+developed a strange political wisdom. He knew a successful man or a
+coming man when he saw one. So many of his bookkeepers,
+superintendents, time-keepers had graduated into councilmen and state
+legislators. His nominees—suggested to political conferences—were so
+often known to make good. First he came to have influence in his
+councilman’s ward, then in his legislative district, then in the city
+councils of his party—Whig, of course—and then he was supposed to have
+an organization.
+
+Mysterious forces worked for him in council. He was awarded significant
+contracts, and he always bid. The garbage business was now a thing of
+the past. His eldest boy, Owen, was a member of the State legislature
+and a partner in his business affairs. His second son, Callum, was a
+clerk in the city water department and an assistant to his father also.
+Aileen, his eldest daughter, fifteen years of age, was still in St.
+Agatha’s, a convent school in Germantown. Norah, his second daughter
+and youngest child, thirteen years old, was in attendance at a local
+private school conducted by a Catholic sisterhood. The Butler family
+had moved away from South Philadelphia into Girard Avenue, near the
+twelve hundreds, where a new and rather interesting social life was
+beginning. They were not of it, but Edward Butler, contractor, now
+fifty-five years of age, worth, say, five hundred thousand dollars, had
+many political and financial friends. No longer a “rough neck,” but a
+solid, reddish-faced man, slightly tanned, with broad shoulders and a
+solid chest, gray eyes, gray hair, a typically Irish face made wise and
+calm and undecipherable by much experience. His big hands and feet
+indicated a day when he had not worn the best English cloth suits and
+tanned leather, but his presence was not in any way offensive—rather
+the other way about. Though still possessed of a brogue, he was
+soft-spoken, winning, and persuasive.
+
+He had been one of the first to become interested in the development of
+the street-car system and had come to the conclusion, as had Cowperwood
+and many others, that it was going to be a great thing. The money
+returns on the stocks or shares he had been induced to buy had been
+ample evidence of that, He had dealt through one broker and another,
+having failed to get in on the original corporate organizations. He
+wanted to pick up such stock as he could in one organization and
+another, for he believed they all had a future, and most of all he
+wanted to get control of a line or two. In connection with this idea he
+was looking for some reliable young man, honest and capable, who would
+work under his direction and do what he said. Then he learned of
+Cowperwood, and one day sent for him and asked him to call at his
+house.
+
+Cowperwood responded quickly, for he knew of Butler, his rise, his
+connections, his force. He called at the house as directed, one cold,
+crisp February morning. He remembered the appearance of the street
+afterward—broad, brick-paved sidewalks, macadamized roadway, powdered
+over with a light snow and set with young, leafless, scrubby trees and
+lamp-posts. Butler’s house was not new—he had bought and repaired
+it—but it was not an unsatisfactory specimen of the architecture of the
+time. It was fifty feet wide, four stories tall, of graystone and with
+four wide, white stone steps leading up to the door. The window arches,
+framed in white, had U-shaped keystones. There were curtains of lace
+and a glimpse of red plush through the windows, which gleamed warm
+against the cold and snow outside. A trim Irish maid came to the door
+and he gave her his card and was invited into the house.
+
+“Is Mr. Butler home?”
+
+“I’m not sure, sir. I’ll find out. He may have gone out.”
+
+In a little while he was asked to come upstairs, where he found Butler
+in a somewhat commercial-looking room. It had a desk, an office chair,
+some leather furnishings, and a bookcase, but no completeness or
+symmetry as either an office or a living room. There were several
+pictures on the wall—an impossible oil painting, for one thing, dark
+and gloomy; a canal and barge scene in pink and nile green for another;
+some daguerreotypes of relatives and friends which were not half bad.
+Cowperwood noticed one of two girls, one with reddish-gold hair,
+another with what appeared to be silky brown. The beautiful silver
+effect of the daguerreotype had been tinted. They were pretty girls,
+healthy, smiling, Celtic, their heads close together, their eyes
+looking straight out at you. He admired them casually, and fancied they
+must be Butler’s daughters.
+
+“Mr. Cowperwood?” inquired Butler, uttering the name fully with a
+peculiar accent on the vowels. (He was a slow-moving man, solemn and
+deliberate.) Cowperwood noticed that his body was hale and strong like
+seasoned hickory, tanned by wind and rain. The flesh of his cheeks was
+pulled taut and there was nothing soft or flabby about him.
+
+“I’m that man.”
+
+“I have a little matter of stocks to talk over with you” (“matter”
+almost sounded like “mather”), “and I thought you’d better come here
+rather than that I should come down to your office. We can be more
+private-like, and, besides, I’m not as young as I used to be.”
+
+He allowed a semi-twinkle to rest in his eye as he looked his visitor
+over.
+
+Cowperwood smiled.
+
+“Well, I hope I can be of service to you,” he said, genially.
+
+“I happen to be interested just at present in pickin’ up certain
+street-railway stocks on ’change. I’ll tell you about them later. Won’t
+you have somethin’ to drink? It’s a cold morning.”
+
+“No, thanks; I never drink.”
+
+“Never? That’s a hard word when it comes to whisky. Well, no matter.
+It’s a good rule. My boys don’t touch anything, and I’m glad of it. As
+I say, I’m interested in pickin’ up a few stocks on ’change; but, to
+tell you the truth, I’m more interested in findin’ some clever young
+felly like yourself through whom I can work. One thing leads to
+another, you know, in this world.” And he looked at his visitor
+non-committally, and yet with a genial show of interest.
+
+“Quite so,” replied Cowperwood, with a friendly gleam in return.
+
+“Well,” Butler meditated, half to himself, half to Cowperwood, “there
+are a number of things that a bright young man could do for me in the
+street if he were so minded. I have two bright boys of my own, but I
+don’t want them to become stock-gamblers, and I don’t know that they
+would or could if I wanted them to. But this isn’t a matter of
+stock-gambling. I’m pretty busy as it is, and, as I said awhile ago,
+I’m getting along. I’m not as light on my toes as I once was. But if I
+had the right sort of a young man—I’ve been looking into your record,
+by the way, never fear—he might handle a number of little
+things—investments and loans—which might bring us each a little
+somethin’. Sometimes the young men around town ask advice of me in one
+way and another—they have a little somethin’ to invest, and so—”
+
+He paused and looked tantalizingly out of the window, knowing full well
+Cowperwood was greatly interested, and that this talk of political
+influence and connections could only whet his appetite. Butler wanted
+him to see clearly that fidelity was the point in this case—fidelity,
+tact, subtlety, and concealment.
+
+“Well, if you have been looking into my record,” observed Cowperwood,
+with his own elusive smile, leaving the thought suspended.
+
+Butler felt the force of the temperament and the argument. He liked the
+young man’s poise and balance. A number of people had spoken of
+Cowperwood to him. (It was now Cowperwood & Co. The company was fiction
+purely.) He asked him something about the street; how the market was
+running; what he knew about street-railways. Finally he outlined his
+plan of buying all he could of the stock of two given lines—the Ninth
+and Tenth and the Fifteenth and Sixteenth—without attracting any
+attention, if possible. It was to be done slowly, part on ’change, part
+from individual holders. He did not tell him that there was a certain
+amount of legislative pressure he hoped to bring to bear to get him
+franchises for extensions in the regions beyond where the lines now
+ended, in order that when the time came for them to extend their
+facilities they would have to see him or his sons, who might be large
+minority stockholders in these very concerns. It was a far-sighted
+plan, and meant that the lines would eventually drop into his or his
+sons’ basket.
+
+“I’ll be delighted to work with you, Mr. Butler, in any way that you
+may suggest,” observed Cowperwood. “I can’t say that I have so much of
+a business as yet—merely prospects. But my connections are good. I am
+now a member of the New York and Philadelphia exchanges. Those who have
+dealt with me seem to like the results I get.”
+
+“I know a little something about your work already,” reiterated Butler,
+wisely.
+
+“Very well, then; whenever you have a commission you can call at my
+office, or write, or I will call here. I will give you my secret
+operating code, so that anything you say will be strictly
+confidential.”
+
+“Well, we’ll not say anything more now. In a few days I’ll have
+somethin’ for you. When I do, you can draw on my bank for what you
+need, up to a certain amount.” He got up and looked out into the
+street, and Cowperwood also arose.
+
+“It’s a fine day now, isn’t it?”
+
+“It surely is.”
+
+“Well, we’ll get to know each other better, I’m sure.”
+
+He held out his hand.
+
+“I hope so.”
+
+Cowperwood went out, Butler accompanying him to the door. As he did so
+a young girl bounded in from the street, red-cheeked, blue-eyed,
+wearing a scarlet cape with the peaked hood thrown over her red-gold
+hair.
+
+“Oh, daddy, I almost knocked you down.”
+
+She gave her father, and incidentally Cowperwood, a gleaming, radiant,
+inclusive smile. Her teeth were bright and small, and her lips bud-red.
+
+“You’re home early. I thought you were going to stay all day?”
+
+“I was, but I changed my mind.”
+
+She passed on in, swinging her arms.
+
+“Yes, well—” Butler continued, when she had gone. “Then well leave it
+for a day or two. Good day.”
+
+“Good day.”
+
+Cowperwood, warm with this enhancing of his financial prospects, went
+down the steps; but incidentally he spared a passing thought for the
+gay spirit of youth that had manifested itself in this red-cheeked
+maiden. What a bright, healthy, bounding girl! Her voice had the
+subtle, vigorous ring of fifteen or sixteen. She was all vitality. What
+a fine catch for some young fellow some day, and her father would make
+him rich, no doubt, or help to.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+
+It was to Edward Malia Butler that Cowperwood turned now, some nineteen
+months later when he was thinking of the influence that might bring him
+an award of a portion of the State issue of bonds. Butler could
+probably be interested to take some of them himself, or could help him
+place some. He had come to like Cowperwood very much and was now being
+carried on the latter’s books as a prospective purchaser of large
+blocks of stocks. And Cowperwood liked this great solid Irishman. He
+liked his history. He had met Mrs. Butler, a rather fat and phlegmatic
+Irish woman with a world of hard sense who cared nothing at all for
+show and who still liked to go into the kitchen and superintend the
+cooking. He had met Owen and Callum Butler, the boys, and Aileen and
+Norah, the girls. Aileen was the one who had bounded up the steps the
+first day he had called at the Butler house several seasons before.
+
+There was a cozy grate-fire burning in Butler’s improvised private
+office when Cowperwood called. Spring was coming on, but the evenings
+were cool. The older man invited Cowperwood to make himself comfortable
+in one of the large leather chairs before the fire and then proceeded
+to listen to his recital of what he hoped to accomplish.
+
+“Well, now, that isn’t so easy,” he commented at the end. “You ought to
+know more about that than I do. I’m not a financier, as you well know.”
+And he grinned apologetically.
+
+“It’s a matter of influence,” went on Cowperwood. “And favoritism. That
+I know. Drexel & Company and Cooke & Company have connections at
+Harrisburg. They have men of their own looking after their interests.
+The attorney-general and the State treasurer are hand in glove with
+them. Even if I put in a bid, and can demonstrate that I can handle the
+loan, it won’t help me to get it. Other people have done that. I have
+to have friends—influence. You know how it is.”
+
+“Them things,” Butler said, “is easy enough if you know the right
+parties to approach. Now there’s Jimmy Oliver—he ought to know
+something about that.” Jimmy Oliver was the whilom district attorney
+serving at this time, and incidentally free adviser to Mr. Butler in
+many ways. He was also, accidentally, a warm personal friend of the
+State treasurer.
+
+“How much of the loan do you want?”
+
+“Five million.”
+
+“Five million!” Butler sat up. “Man, what are you talking about? That’s
+a good deal of money. Where are you going to sell all that?”
+
+“I want to bid for five million,” assuaged Cowperwood, softly. “I only
+want one million but I want the prestige of putting in a bona fide bid
+for five million. It will do me good on the street.”
+
+Butler sank back somewhat relieved.
+
+“Five million! Prestige! You want one million. Well, now, that’s
+different. That’s not such a bad idea. We ought to be able to get
+that.”
+
+He rubbed his chin some more and stared into the fire.
+
+And Cowperwood felt confident when he left the house that evening that
+Butler would not fail him but would set the wheels working. Therefore,
+he was not surprised, and knew exactly what it meant, when a few days
+later he was introduced to City Treasurer Julian Bode, who promised to
+introduce him to State Treasurer Van Nostrand and to see that his
+claims to consideration were put before the people. “Of course, you
+know,” he said to Cowperwood, in the presence of Butler, for it was at
+the latter’s home that the conference took place, “this banking crowd
+is very powerful. You know who they are. They don’t want any
+interference in this bond issue business. I was talking to Terrence
+Relihan, who represents them up there”—meaning Harrisburg, the State
+capital—“and he says they won’t stand for it at all. You may have
+trouble right here in Philadelphia after you get it—they’re pretty
+powerful, you know. Are you sure just where you can place it?”
+
+“Yes, I’m sure,” replied Cowperwood.
+
+“Well, the best thing in my judgment is not to say anything at all.
+Just put in your bid. Van Nostrand, with the governor’s approval, will
+make the award. We can fix the governor, I think. After you get it they
+may talk to you personally, but that’s your business.”
+
+Cowperwood smiled his inscrutable smile. There were so many ins and
+outs to this financial life. It was an endless network of underground
+holes, along which all sorts of influences were moving. A little wit, a
+little nimbleness, a little luck-time and opportunity—these sometimes
+availed. Here he was, through his ambition to get on, and nothing else,
+coming into contact with the State treasurer and the governor. They
+were going to consider his case personally, because he demanded that it
+be considered—nothing more. Others more influential than himself had
+quite as much right to a share, but they didn’t take it. Nerve, ideas,
+aggressiveness, how these counted when one had luck!
+
+He went away thinking how surprised Drexel & Co. and Cooke & Co. would
+be to see him appearing in the field as a competitor. In his home, in a
+little room on the second floor next his bedroom, which he had fixed up
+as an office with a desk, a safe, and a leather chair, he consulted his
+resources. There were so many things to think of. He went over again
+the list of people whom he had seen and whom he could count on to
+subscribe, and in so far as that was concerned—the award of one million
+dollars—he was safe. He figured to make two per cent. on the total
+transaction, or twenty thousand dollars. If he did he was going to buy
+a house out on Girard Avenue beyond the Butlers’, or, better yet, buy a
+piece of ground and erect one; mortgaging house and property so to do.
+His father was prospering nicely. He might want to build a house next
+to him, and they could live side by side. His own business, aside from
+this deal, would yield him ten thousand dollars this year. His
+street-car investments, aggregating fifty thousand, were paying six per
+cent. His wife’s property, represented by this house, some government
+bonds, and some real estate in West Philadelphia amounted to forty
+thousand more. Between them they were rich; but he expected to be much
+richer. All he needed now was to keep cool. If he succeeded in this
+bond-issue matter, he could do it again and on a larger scale. There
+would be more issues. He turned out the light after a while and went
+into his wife’s boudoir, where she was sleeping. The nurse and the
+children were in a room beyond.
+
+“Well, Lillian,” he observed, when she awoke and turned over toward
+him, “I think I have that bond matter that I was telling you about
+arranged at last. I think I’ll get a million of it, anyhow. That’ll
+mean twenty thousand. If I do we’ll build out on Girard Avenue. That’s
+going to be the street. The college is making that neighborhood.”
+
+“That’ll be fine, won’t it, Frank!” she observed, and rubbed his arm as
+he sat on the side of the bed.
+
+Her remark was vaguely speculative.
+
+“We’ll have to show the Butlers some attention from now on. He’s been
+very nice to me and he’s going to be useful—I can see that. He asked me
+to bring you over some time. We must go. Be nice to his wife. He can do
+a lot for me if he wants to. He has two daughters, too. We’ll have to
+have them over here.”
+
+“I’ll have them to dinner sometime,” she agreed cheerfully and
+helpfully, “and I’ll stop and take Mrs. Butler driving if she’ll go, or
+she can take me.”
+
+She had already learned that the Butlers were rather showy—the younger
+generation—that they were sensitive as to their lineage, and that money
+in their estimation was supposed to make up for any deficiency in any
+other respect. “Butler himself is a very presentable man,” Cowperwood
+had once remarked to her, “but Mrs. Butler—well, she’s all right, but
+she’s a little commonplace. She’s a fine woman, though, I think,
+good-natured and good-hearted.” He cautioned her not to overlook Aileen
+and Norah, because the Butlers, mother and father, were very proud of
+them.
+
+Mrs. Cowperwood at this time was thirty-two years old; Cowperwood
+twenty-seven. The birth and care of two children had made some
+difference in her looks. She was no longer as softly pleasing, more
+angular. Her face was hollow-cheeked, like so many of Rossetti’s and
+Burne-Jones’s women. Her health was really not as good as it had
+been—the care of two children and a late undiagnosed tendency toward
+gastritis having reduced her. In short she was a little run down
+nervously and suffered from fits of depression. Cowperwood had noticed
+this. He tried to be gentle and considerate, but he was too much of a
+utilitarian and practical-minded observer not to realize that he was
+likely to have a sickly wife on his hands later. Sympathy and affection
+were great things, but desire and charm must endure or one was
+compelled to be sadly conscious of their loss. So often now he saw
+young girls who were quite in his mood, and who were exceedingly robust
+and joyous. It was fine, advisable, practical, to adhere to the virtues
+as laid down in the current social lexicon, but if you had a sickly
+wife—And anyhow, was a man entitled to only one wife? Must he never
+look at another woman? Supposing he found some one? He pondered those
+things between hours of labor, and concluded that it did not make so
+much difference. If a man could, and not be exposed, it was all right.
+He had to be careful, though. Tonight, as he sat on the side of his
+wife’s bed, he was thinking somewhat of this, for he had seen Aileen
+Butler again, playing and singing at her piano as he passed the parlor
+door. She was like a bright bird radiating health and enthusiasm—a
+reminder of youth in general.
+
+“It’s a strange world,” he thought; but his thoughts were his own, and
+he didn’t propose to tell any one about them.
+
+The bond issue, when it came, was a curious compromise; for, although
+it netted him his twenty thousand dollars and more and served to
+introduce him to the financial notice of Philadelphia and the State of
+Pennsylvania, it did not permit him to manipulate the subscriptions as
+he had planned. The State treasurer was seen by him at the office of a
+local lawyer of great repute, where he worked when in the city. He was
+gracious to Cowperwood, because he had to be. He explained to him just
+how things were regulated at Harrisburg. The big financiers were looked
+to for campaign funds. They were represented by henchmen in the State
+assembly and senate. The governor and the treasurer were foot-free; but
+there were other influences—prestige, friendship, social power,
+political ambitions, etc. The big men might constitute a close
+corporation, which in itself was unfair; but, after all, they were the
+legitimate sponsors for big money loans of this kind. The State had to
+keep on good terms with them, especially in times like these. Seeing
+that Mr. Cowperwood was so well able to dispose of the million he
+expected to get, it would be perfectly all right to award it to him;
+but Van Nostrand had a counter-proposition to make. Would Cowperwood,
+if the financial crowd now handling the matter so desired, turn over
+his award to them for a consideration—a sum equal to what he expected
+to make—in the event the award was made to him? Certain financiers
+desired this. It was dangerous to oppose them. They were perfectly
+willing he should put in a bid for five million and get the prestige of
+that; to have him awarded one million and get the prestige of that was
+well enough also, but they desired to handle the twenty-three million
+dollars in an unbroken lot. It looked better. He need not be advertised
+as having withdrawn. They would be content to have him achieve the
+glory of having done what he started out to do. Just the same the
+example was bad. Others might wish to imitate him. If it were known in
+the street privately that he had been coerced, for a consideration,
+into giving up, others would be deterred from imitating him in the
+future. Besides, if he refused, they could cause him trouble. His loans
+might be called. Various banks might not be so friendly in the future.
+His constituents might be warned against him in one way or another.
+
+Cowperwood saw the point. He acquiesced. It was something to have
+brought so many high and mighties to their knees. So they knew of him!
+They were quite well aware of him! Well and good. He would take the
+award and twenty thousand or thereabouts and withdraw. The State
+treasurer was delighted. It solved a ticklish proposition for him.
+
+“I’m glad to have seen you,” he said. “I’m glad we’ve met. I’ll drop in
+and talk with you some time when I’m down this way. We’ll have lunch
+together.”
+
+The State treasurer, for some odd reason, felt that Mr. Cowperwood was
+a man who could make him some money. His eye was so keen; his
+expression was so alert, and yet so subtle. He told the governor and
+some other of his associates about him.
+
+So the award was finally made; Cowperwood, after some private
+negotiations in which he met the officers of Drexel & Co., was paid his
+twenty thousand dollars and turned his share of the award over to them.
+New faces showed up in his office now from time to time—among them that
+of Van Nostrand and one Terrence Relihan, a representative of some
+other political forces at Harrisburg. He was introduced to the governor
+one day at lunch. His name was mentioned in the papers, and his
+prestige grew rapidly.
+
+Immediately he began working on plans with young Ellsworth for his new
+house. He was going to build something exceptional this time, he told
+Lillian. They were going to have to do some entertaining—entertaining
+on a larger scale than ever. North Front Street was becoming too tame.
+He put the house up for sale, consulted with his father and found that
+he also was willing to move. The son’s prosperity had redounded to the
+credit of the father. The directors of the bank were becoming much more
+friendly to the old man. Next year President Kugel was going to retire.
+Because of his son’s noted coup, as well as his long service, he was
+going to be made president. Frank was a large borrower from his
+father’s bank. By the same token he was a large depositor. His
+connection with Edward Butler was significant. He sent his father’s
+bank certain accounts which it otherwise could not have secured. The
+city treasurer became interested in it, and the State treasurer.
+Cowperwood, Sr., stood to earn twenty thousand a year as president, and
+he owed much of it to his son. The two families were now on the best of
+terms. Anna, now twenty-one, and Edward and Joseph frequently spent the
+night at Frank’s house. Lillian called almost daily at his mother’s.
+There was much interchange of family gossip, and it was thought well to
+build side by side. So Cowperwood, Sr., bought fifty feet of ground
+next to his son’s thirty-five, and together they commenced the erection
+of two charming, commodious homes, which were to be connected by a
+covered passageway, or pergola, which could be inclosed with glass in
+winter.
+
+The most popular local stone, a green granite was chosen; but Mr.
+Ellsworth promised to present it in such a way that it would be
+especially pleasing. Cowperwood, Sr., decided that he could afford to
+spent seventy-five thousand dollars—he was now worth two hundred and
+fifty thousand; and Frank decided that he could risk fifty, seeing that
+he could raise money on a mortgage. He planned at the same time to
+remove his office farther south on Third Street and occupy a building
+of his own. He knew where an option was to be had on a twenty-five-foot
+building, which, though old, could be given a new brownstone front and
+made very significant. He saw in his mind’s eye a handsome building,
+fitted with an immense plate-glass window; inside his hardwood fixtures
+visible; and over the door, or to one side of it, set in bronze
+letters, Cowperwood & Co. Vaguely but surely he began to see looming
+before him, like a fleecy tinted cloud on the horizon, his future
+fortune. He was to be rich, very, very rich.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+
+During all the time that Cowperwood had been building himself up thus
+steadily the great war of the rebellion had been fought almost to its
+close. It was now October, 1864. The capture of Mobile and the Battle
+of the Wilderness were fresh memories. Grant was now before Petersburg,
+and the great general of the South, Lee, was making that last brilliant
+and hopeless display of his ability as a strategist and a soldier.
+There had been times—as, for instance, during the long, dreary period
+in which the country was waiting for Vicksburg to fall, for the Army of
+the Potomac to prove victorious, when Pennsylvania was invaded by
+Lee—when stocks fell and commercial conditions were very bad generally.
+In times like these Cowperwood’s own manipulative ability was taxed to
+the utmost, and he had to watch every hour to see that his fortune was
+not destroyed by some unexpected and destructive piece of news.
+
+His personal attitude toward the war, however, and aside from his
+patriotic feeling that the Union ought to be maintained, was that it
+was destructive and wasteful. He was by no means so wanting in
+patriotic emotion and sentiment but that he could feel that the Union,
+as it had now come to be, spreading its great length from the Atlantic
+to the Pacific and from the snows of Canada to the Gulf, was worth
+while. Since his birth in 1837 he had seen the nation reach that
+physical growth—barring Alaska—which it now possesses. Not so much
+earlier than his youth Florida had been added to the Union by purchase
+from Spain; Mexico, after the unjust war of 1848, had ceded Texas and
+the territory to the West. The boundary disputes between England and
+the United States in the far Northwest had been finally adjusted. To a
+man with great social and financial imagination, these facts could not
+help but be significant; and if they did nothing more, they gave him a
+sense of the boundless commercial possibilities which existed
+potentially in so vast a realm. His was not the order of speculative
+financial enthusiasm which, in the type known as the “promoter,” sees
+endless possibilities for gain in every unexplored rivulet and prairie
+reach; but the very vastness of the country suggested possibilities
+which he hoped might remain undisturbed. A territory covering the
+length of a whole zone and between two seas, seemed to him to possess
+potentialities which it could not retain if the States of the South
+were lost.
+
+At the same time, the freedom of the negro was not a significant point
+with him. He had observed that race from his boyhood with considerable
+interest, and had been struck with virtues and defects which seemed
+inherent and which plainly, to him, conditioned their experiences.
+
+He was not at all sure, for instance, that the negroes could be made
+into anything much more significant than they were. At any rate, it was
+a long uphill struggle for them, of which many future generations would
+not witness the conclusion. He had no particular quarrel with the
+theory that they should be free; he saw no particular reason why the
+South should not protest vigorously against the destruction of their
+property and their system. It was too bad that the negroes as slaves
+should be abused in some instances. He felt sure that that ought to be
+adjusted in some way; but beyond that he could not see that there was
+any great ethical basis for the contentions of their sponsors. The vast
+majority of men and women, as he could see, were not essentially above
+slavery, even when they had all the guarantees of a constitution
+formulated to prevent it. There was mental slavery, the slavery of the
+weak mind and the weak body. He followed the contentions of such men as
+Sumner, Garrison, Phillips, and Beecher, with considerable interest;
+but at no time could he see that the problem was a vital one for him.
+He did not care to be a soldier or an officer of soldiers; he had no
+gift for polemics; his mind was not of the disputatious order—not even
+in the realm of finance. He was concerned only to see what was of vast
+advantage to him, and to devote all his attention to that. This
+fratricidal war in the nation could not help him. It really delayed, he
+thought, the true commercial and financial adjustment of the country,
+and he hoped that it would soon end. He was not of those who complained
+bitterly of the excessive war taxes, though he knew them to be trying
+to many. Some of the stories of death and disaster moved him greatly;
+but, alas, they were among the unaccountable fortunes of life, and
+could not be remedied by him. So he had gone his way day by day,
+watching the coming in and the departing of troops, seeing the bands of
+dirty, disheveled, gaunt, sickly men returning from the fields and
+hospitals; and all he could do was to feel sorry. This war was not for
+him. He had taken no part in it, and he felt sure that he could only
+rejoice in its conclusion—not as a patriot, but as a financier. It was
+wasteful, pathetic, unfortunate.
+
+The months proceeded apace. A local election intervened and there was a
+new city treasurer, a new assessor of taxes, and a new mayor; but
+Edward Malia Butler continued to have apparently the same influence as
+before. The Butlers and the Cowperwoods had become quite friendly. Mrs.
+Butler rather liked Lillian, though they were of different religious
+beliefs; and they went driving or shopping together, the younger woman
+a little critical and ashamed of the elder because of her poor grammar,
+her Irish accent, her plebeian tastes—as though the Wiggins had not
+been as plebeian as any. On the other hand the old lady, as she was
+compelled to admit, was good-natured and good-hearted. She loved to
+give, since she had plenty, and sent presents here and there to
+Lillian, the children, and others. “Now youse must come over and take
+dinner with us”—the Butlers had arrived at the evening-dinner period—or
+“Youse must come drive with me to-morrow.”
+
+“Aileen, God bless her, is such a foine girl,” or “Norah, the darlin’,
+is sick the day.”
+
+But Aileen, her airs, her aggressive disposition, her love of
+attention, her vanity, irritated and at times disgusted Mrs.
+Cowperwood. She was eighteen now, with a figure which was subtly
+provocative. Her manner was boyish, hoydenish at times, and although
+convent-trained, she was inclined to balk at restraint in any form. But
+there was a softness lurking in her blue eyes that was most sympathetic
+and human.
+
+St. Timothy’s and the convent school in Germantown had been the choice
+of her parents for her education—what they called a good Catholic
+education. She had learned a great deal about the theory and forms of
+the Catholic ritual, but she could not understand them. The church,
+with its tall, dimly radiant windows, its high, white altar, its figure
+of St. Joseph on one side and the Virgin Mary on the other, clothed in
+golden-starred robes of blue, wearing haloes and carrying scepters, had
+impressed her greatly. The church as a whole—any Catholic church—was
+beautiful to look at—soothing. The altar, during high mass, lit with a
+half-hundred or more candles, and dignified and made impressive by the
+rich, lacy vestments of the priests and the acolytes, the impressive
+needlework and gorgeous colorings of the amice, chasuble, cope, stole,
+and maniple, took her fancy and held her eye. Let us say there was
+always lurking in her a sense of grandeur coupled with a love of color
+and a love of love. From the first she was somewhat sex-conscious. She
+had no desire for accuracy, no desire for precise information. Innate
+sensuousness rarely has. It basks in sunshine, bathes in color, dwells
+in a sense of the impressive and the gorgeous, and rests there.
+Accuracy is not necessary except in the case of aggressive, acquisitive
+natures, when it manifests itself in a desire to seize. True
+controlling sensuousness cannot be manifested in the most active
+dispositions, nor again in the most accurate.
+
+There is need of defining these statements in so far as they apply to
+Aileen. It would scarcely be fair to describe her nature as being
+definitely sensual at this time. It was too rudimentary. Any harvest is
+of long growth. The confessional, dim on Friday and Saturday evenings,
+when the church was lighted by but a few lamps, and the priest’s
+warnings, penances, and ecclesiastical forgiveness whispered through
+the narrow lattice, moved her as something subtly pleasing. She was not
+afraid of her sins. Hell, so definitely set forth, did not frighten
+her. Really, it had not laid hold on her conscience. The old women and
+old men hobbling into church, bowed in prayer, murmuring over their
+beads, were objects of curious interest like the wood-carvings in the
+peculiar array of wood-reliefs emphasizing the Stations of the Cross.
+She herself had liked to confess, particularly when she was fourteen
+and fifteen, and to listen to the priest’s voice as he admonished her
+with, “Now, my dear child.” A particularly old priest, a French father,
+who came to hear their confessions at school, interested her as being
+kind and sweet. His forgiveness and blessing seemed sincere—better than
+her prayers, which she went through perfunctorily. And then there was a
+young priest at St. Timothy’s, Father David, hale and rosy, with a curl
+of black hair over his forehead, and an almost jaunty way of wearing
+his priestly hat, who came down the aisle Sundays sprinkling holy water
+with a definite, distinguished sweep of the hand, who took her fancy.
+He heard confessions and now and then she liked to whisper her strange
+thoughts to him while she actually speculated on what he might
+privately be thinking. She could not, if she tried, associate him with
+any divine authority. He was too young, too human. There was something
+a little malicious, teasing, in the way she delighted to tell him about
+herself, and then walk demurely, repentantly out. At St. Agatha’s she
+had been rather a difficult person to deal with. She was, as the good
+sisters of the school had readily perceived, too full of life, too
+active, to be easily controlled. “That Miss Butler,” once observed
+Sister Constantia, the Mother Superior, to Sister Sempronia, Aileen’s
+immediate mentor, “is a very spirited girl, you may have a great deal
+of trouble with her unless you use a good deal of tact. You may have to
+coax her with little gifts. You will get on better.” So Sister
+Sempronia had sought to find what Aileen was most interested in, and
+bribe her therewith. Being intensely conscious of her father’s
+competence, and vain of her personal superiority, it was not so easy to
+do. She had wanted to go home occasionally, though; she had wanted to
+be allowed to wear the sister’s rosary of large beads with its pendent
+cross of ebony and its silver Christ, and this was held up as a great
+privilege. For keeping quiet in class, walking softly, and speaking
+softly—as much as it was in her to do—for not stealing into other
+girl’s rooms after lights were out, and for abandoning crushes on this
+and that sympathetic sister, these awards and others, such as walking
+out in the grounds on Saturday afternoons, being allowed to have all
+the flowers she wanted, some extra dresses, jewels, etc., were offered.
+She liked music and the idea of painting, though she had no talent in
+that direction; and books, novels, interested her, but she could not
+get them. The rest—grammar, spelling, sewing, church and general
+history—she loathed. Deportment—well, there was something in that. She
+had liked the rather exaggerated curtsies they taught her, and she had
+often reflected on how she would use them when she reached home.
+
+When she came out into life the little social distinctions which have
+been indicated began to impress themselves on her, and she wished
+sincerely that her father would build a better home—a mansion—such as
+those she saw elsewhere, and launch her properly in society. Failing in
+that, she could think of nothing save clothes, jewels, riding-horses,
+carriages, and the appropriate changes of costume which were allowed
+her for these. Her family could not entertain in any distinguished way
+where they were, and so already, at eighteen, she was beginning to feel
+the sting of a blighted ambition. She was eager for life. How was she
+to get it?
+
+Her room was a study in the foibles of an eager and ambitious mind. It
+was full of clothes, beautiful things for all occasions—jewelry—which
+she had small opportunity to wear—shoes, stockings, lingerie, laces. In
+a crude way she had made a study of perfumes and cosmetics, though she
+needed the latter not at all, and these were present in abundance. She
+was not very orderly, and she loved lavishness of display; and her
+curtains, hangings, table ornaments, and pictures inclined to
+gorgeousness, which did not go well with the rest of the house.
+
+Aileen always reminded Cowperwood of a high-stepping horse without a
+check-rein. He met her at various times, shopping with her mother, out
+driving with her father, and he was always interested and amused at the
+affected, bored tone she assumed before him—the “Oh, dear! Oh, dear!
+Life is so tiresome, don’t you know,” when, as a matter of fact, every
+moment of it was of thrilling interest to her. Cowperwood took her
+mental measurement exactly. A girl with a high sense of life in her,
+romantic, full of the thought of love and its possibilities. As he
+looked at her he had the sense of seeing the best that nature can do
+when she attempts to produce physical perfection. The thought came to
+him that some lucky young dog would marry her pretty soon and carry her
+away; but whoever secured her would have to hold her by affection and
+subtle flattery and attention if he held her at all.
+
+“The little snip”—she was not at all—“she thinks the sun rises and sets
+in her father’s pocket,” Lillian observed one day to her husband. “To
+hear her talk, you’d think they were descended from Irish kings. Her
+pretended interest in art and music amuses me.”
+
+“Oh, don’t be too hard on her,” coaxed Cowperwood diplomatically. He
+already liked Aileen very much. “She plays very well, and she has a
+good voice.”
+
+“Yes, I know; but she has no real refinement. How could she have? Look
+at her father and mother.”
+
+“I don’t see anything so very much the matter with her,” insisted
+Cowperwood. “She’s bright and good-looking. Of course, she’s only a
+girl, and a little vain, but she’ll come out of that. She isn’t without
+sense and force, at that.”
+
+Aileen, as he knew, was most friendly to him. She liked him. She made a
+point of playing the piano and singing for him in his home, and she
+sang only when he was there. There was something about his steady, even
+gait, his stocky body and handsome head, which attracted her. In spite
+of her vanity and egotism, she felt a little overawed before him at
+times—keyed up. She seemed to grow gayer and more brilliant in his
+presence.
+
+The most futile thing in this world is any attempt, perhaps, at exact
+definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of
+contradictions—none more so than the most capable.
+
+In the case of Aileen Butler it would be quite impossible to give an
+exact definition. Intelligence, of a raw, crude order she had
+certainly—also a native force, tamed somewhat by the doctrines and
+conventions of current society, still showed clear at times in an
+elemental and not entirely unattractive way. At this time she was only
+eighteen years of age—decidedly attractive from the point of view of a
+man of Frank Cowperwood’s temperament. She supplied something he had
+not previously known or consciously craved. Vitality and vivacity. No
+other woman or girl whom he had ever known had possessed so much innate
+force as she. Her red-gold hair—not so red as decidedly golden with a
+suggestion of red in it—looped itself in heavy folds about her forehead
+and sagged at the base of her neck. She had a beautiful nose, not
+sensitive, but straight-cut with small nostril openings, and eyes that
+were big and yet noticeably sensuous. They were, to him, a pleasing
+shade of blue-gray-blue, and her toilet, due to her temperament, of
+course, suggested almost undue luxury, the bangles, anklets, ear-rings,
+and breast-plates of the odalisque, and yet, of course, they were not
+there. She confessed to him years afterward that she would have loved
+to have stained her nails and painted the palms of her hands with
+madder-red. Healthy and vigorous, she was chronically interested in
+men—what they would think of her—and how she compared with other women.
+
+The fact that she could ride in a carriage, live in a fine home on
+Girard Avenue, visit such homes as those of the Cowperwoods and others,
+was of great weight; and yet, even at this age, she realized that life
+was more than these things. Many did not have them and lived.
+
+But these facts of wealth and advantage gripped her; and when she sat
+at the piano and played or rode in her carriage or walked or stood
+before her mirror, she was conscious of her figure, her charms, what
+they meant to men, how women envied her. Sometimes she looked at poor,
+hollow-chested or homely-faced girls and felt sorry for them; at other
+times she flared into inexplicable opposition to some handsome girl or
+woman who dared to brazen her socially or physically. There were such
+girls of the better families who, in Chestnut Street, in the expensive
+shops, or on the drive, on horseback or in carriages, tossed their
+heads and indicated as well as human motions can that they were
+better-bred and knew it. When this happened each stared defiantly at
+the other. She wanted ever so much to get up in the world, and yet
+namby-pamby men of better social station than herself did not attract
+her at all. She wanted a man. Now and then there was one “something
+like,” but not entirely, who appealed to her, but most of them were
+politicians or legislators, acquaintances of her father, and socially
+nothing at all—and so they wearied and disappointed her. Her father did
+not know the truly elite. But Mr. Cowperwood—he seemed so refined, so
+forceful, and so reserved. She often looked at Mrs. Cowperwood and
+thought how fortunate she was.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+
+
+The development of Cowperwood as Cowperwood & Co. following his
+arresting bond venture, finally brought him into relationship with one
+man who was to play an important part in his life, morally,
+financially, and in other ways. This was George W. Stener, the new city
+treasurer-elect, who, to begin with, was a puppet in the hands of other
+men, but who, also in spite of this fact, became a personage of
+considerable importance, for the simple reason that he was weak. Stener
+had been engaged in the real estate and insurance business in a small
+way before he was made city treasurer. He was one of those men, of whom
+there are so many thousands in every large community, with no breadth
+of vision, no real subtlety, no craft, no great skill in anything. You
+would never hear a new idea emanating from Stener. He never had one in
+his life. On the other hand, he was not a bad fellow. He had a stodgy,
+dusty, commonplace look to him which was more a matter of mind than of
+body. His eye was of vague gray-blue; his hair a dusty light-brown and
+thin. His mouth—there was nothing impressive there. He was quite tall,
+nearly six feet, with moderately broad shoulders, but his figure was
+anything but shapely. He seemed to stoop a little, his stomach was the
+least bit protuberant, and he talked commonplaces—the small change of
+newspaper and street and business gossip. People liked him in his own
+neighborhood. He was thought to be honest and kindly; and he was, as
+far as he knew. His wife and four children were as average and
+insignificant as the wives and children of such men usually are.
+
+Just the same, and in spite of, or perhaps, politically speaking,
+because of all this, George W. Stener was brought into temporary public
+notice by certain political methods which had existed in Philadelphia
+practically unmodified for the previous half hundred years. First,
+because he was of the same political faith as the dominant local
+political party, he had become known to the local councilman and
+ward-leader of his ward as a faithful soul—one useful in the matter of
+drumming up votes. And next—although absolutely without value as a
+speaker, for he had no ideas—you could send him from door to door,
+asking the grocer and the blacksmith and the butcher how he felt about
+things and he would make friends, and in the long run predict fairly
+accurately the probable vote. Furthermore, you could dole him out a few
+platitudes and he would repeat them. The Republican party, which was
+the new-born party then, but dominant in Philadelphia, needed your
+vote; it was necessary to keep the rascally Democrats out—he could
+scarcely have said why. They had been for slavery. They were for free
+trade. It never once occurred to him that these things had nothing to
+do with the local executive and financial administration of
+Philadelphia. Supposing they didn’t? What of it?
+
+In Philadelphia at this time a certain United States Senator, one Mark
+Simpson, together with Edward Malia Butler and Henry A. Mollenhauer, a
+rich coal dealer and investor, were supposed to, and did, control
+jointly the political destiny of the city. They had representatives,
+benchmen, spies, tools—a great company. Among them was this same
+Stener—a minute cog in the silent machinery of their affairs.
+
+In scarcely any other city save this, where the inhabitants were of a
+deadly average in so far as being commonplace was concerned, could such
+a man as Stener have been elected city treasurer. The rank and file did
+not, except in rare instances, make up their political program. An
+inside ring had this matter in charge. Certain positions were allotted
+to such and such men or to such and such factions of the party for such
+and such services rendered—but who does not know politics?
+
+In due course of time, therefore, George W. Stener had become persona
+grata to Edward Strobik, a quondam councilman who afterward became ward
+leader and still later president of council, and who, in private life
+was a stone-dealer and owner of a brickyard. Strobik was a benchman of
+Henry A. Mollenhauer, the hardest and coldest of all three of the
+political leaders. The latter had things to get from council, and
+Strobik was his tool. He had Stener elected; and because he was
+faithful in voting as he was told the latter was later made an
+assistant superintendent of the highways department.
+
+Here he came under the eyes of Edward Malia Butler, and was slightly
+useful to him. Then the central political committee, with Butler in
+charge, decided that some nice, docile man who would at the same time
+be absolutely faithful was needed for city treasurer, and Stener was
+put on the ticket. He knew little of finance, but was an excellent
+bookkeeper; and, anyhow, was not corporation counsel Regan, another
+political tool of this great triumvirate, there to advise him at all
+times? He was. It was a very simple matter. Being put on the ticket was
+equivalent to being elected, and so, after a few weeks of exceedingly
+trying platform experiences, in which he had stammered through
+platitudinous declarations that the city needed to be honestly
+administered, he was inducted into office; and there you were.
+
+Now it wouldn’t have made so much difference what George W. Stener’s
+executive and financial qualifications for the position were, but at
+this time the city of Philadelphia was still hobbling along under
+perhaps as evil a financial system, or lack of it, as any city ever
+endured—the assessor and the treasurer being allowed to collect and
+hold moneys belonging to the city, outside of the city’s private
+vaults, and that without any demand on the part of anybody that the
+same be invested by them at interest for the city’s benefit. Rather,
+all they were expected to do, apparently, was to restore the principal
+and that which was with them when they entered or left office. It was
+not understood or publicly demanded that the moneys so collected, or
+drawn from any source, be maintained intact in the vaults of the city
+treasury. They could be loaned out, deposited in banks or used to
+further private interests of any one, so long as the principal was
+returned, and no one was the wiser. Of course, this theory of finance
+was not publicly sanctioned, but it was known politically and
+journalistically, and in high finance. How were you to stop it?
+
+Cowperwood, in approaching Edward Malia Butler, had been unconsciously
+let in on this atmosphere of erratic and unsatisfactory speculation
+without really knowing it. When he had left the office of Tighe & Co.,
+seven years before, it was with the idea that henceforth and forever he
+would have nothing to do with the stock-brokerage proposition; but now
+behold him back in it again, with more vim than he had ever displayed,
+for now he was working for himself, the firm of Cowperwood & Co., and
+he was eager to satisfy the world of new and powerful individuals who
+by degrees were drifting to him. All had a little money. All had tips,
+and they wanted him to carry certain lines of stock on margin for them,
+because he was known to other political men, and because he was safe.
+And this was true. He was not, or at least up to this time had not
+been, a speculator or a gambler on his own account. In fact he often
+soothed himself with the thought that in all these years he had never
+gambled for himself, but had always acted strictly for others instead.
+But now here was George W. Stener with a proposition which was not
+quite the same thing as stock-gambling, and yet it was.
+
+During a long period of years preceding the Civil War, and through it,
+let it here be explained and remembered, the city of Philadelphia had
+been in the habit, as a corporation, when there were no available funds
+in the treasury, of issuing what were known as city warrants, which
+were nothing more than notes or I.O.U.’s bearing six per cent.
+interest, and payable sometimes in thirty days, sometimes in three,
+sometimes in six months—all depending on the amount and how soon the
+city treasurer thought there would be sufficient money in the treasury
+to take them up and cancel them. Small tradesmen and large contractors
+were frequently paid in this way; the small tradesman who sold supplies
+to the city institutions, for instance, being compelled to discount his
+notes at the bank, if he needed ready money, usually for ninety cents
+on the dollar, while the large contractor could afford to hold his and
+wait. It can readily be seen that this might well work to the
+disadvantage of the small dealer and merchant, and yet prove quite a
+fine thing for a large contractor or note-broker, for the city was sure
+to pay the warrants at some time, and six per cent. interest was a fat
+rate, considering the absolute security. A banker or broker who
+gathered up these things from small tradesmen at ninety cents on the
+dollar made a fine thing of it all around if he could wait.
+
+Originally, in all probability, there was no intention on the part of
+the city treasurer to do any one an injustice, and it is likely that
+there really were no funds to pay with at the time. However that may
+have been, there was later no excuse for issuing the warrants, seeing
+that the city might easily have been managed much more economically.
+But these warrants, as can readily be imagined, had come to be a fine
+source of profit for note-brokers, bankers, political financiers, and
+inside political manipulators generally and so they remained a part of
+the city’s fiscal policy.
+
+There was just one drawback to all this. In order to get the full
+advantage of this condition the large banker holding them must be an
+“inside banker,” one close to the political forces of the city, for if
+he was not and needed money and he carried his warrants to the city
+treasurer, he would find that he could not get cash for them. But if he
+transferred them to some banker or note-broker who was close to the
+political force of the city, it was quite another matter. The treasury
+would find means to pay. Or, if so desired by the note-broker or
+banker—the right one—notes which were intended to be met in three
+months, and should have been settled at that time, were extended to run
+on years and years, drawing interest at six per cent. even when the
+city had ample funds to meet them. Yet this meant, of course, an
+illegal interest drain on the city, but that was all right also. “No
+funds” could cover that. The general public did not know. It could not
+find out. The newspapers were not at all vigilant, being pro-political.
+There were no persistent, enthusiastic reformers who obtained any
+political credence. During the war, warrants outstanding in this manner
+arose in amount to much over two million dollars, all drawing six per
+cent. interest, but then, of course, it began to get a little
+scandalous. Besides, at least some of the investors began to want their
+money back.
+
+In order, therefore, to clear up this outstanding indebtedness and make
+everything shipshape again, it was decided that the city must issue a
+loan, say for two million dollars—no need to be exact about the amount.
+And this loan must take the shape of interest-bearing certificates of a
+par value of one hundred dollars, redeemable in six, twelve, or
+eighteen months, as the case may be. These certificates of loan were
+then ostensibly to be sold in the open market, a sinking-fund set aside
+for their redemption, and the money so obtained used to take up the
+long-outstanding warrants which were now such a subject of public
+comment.
+
+It is obvious that this was merely a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
+There was no real clearing up of the outstanding debt. It was the
+intention of the schemers to make it possible for the financial
+politicians on the inside to reap the same old harvest by allowing the
+certificates to be sold to the right parties for ninety or less,
+setting up the claim that there was no market for them, the credit of
+the city being bad. To a certain extent this was true. The war was just
+over. Money was high. Investors could get more than six per cent.
+elsewhere unless the loan was sold at ninety. But there were a few
+watchful politicians not in the administration, and some newspapers and
+non-political financiers who, because of the high strain of patriotism
+existing at the time, insisted that the loan should be sold at par.
+Therefore a clause to that effect had to be inserted in the enabling
+ordinance.
+
+This, as one might readily see, destroyed the politicians’ little
+scheme to get this loan at ninety. Nevertheless since they desired that
+the money tied up in the old warrants and now not redeemable because of
+lack of funds should be paid them, the only way this could be done
+would be to have some broker who knew the subtleties of the stock
+market handle this new city loan on ’change in such a way that it would
+be made to seem worth one hundred and to be sold to outsiders at that
+figure. Afterward, if, as it was certain to do, it fell below that, the
+politicians could buy as much of it as they pleased, and eventually
+have the city redeem it at par.
+
+George W. Stener, entering as city treasurer at this time, and bringing
+no special financial intelligence to the proposition, was really
+troubled. Henry A. Mollenhauer, one of the men who had gathered up a
+large amount of the old city warrants, and who now wanted his money, in
+order to invest it in bonanza offers in the West, called on Stener, and
+also on the mayor. He with Simpson and Butler made up the Big Three.
+
+“I think something ought to be done about these warrants that are
+outstanding,” he explained. “I am carrying a large amount of them, and
+there are others. We have helped the city a long time by saying
+nothing; but now I think that something ought to be done. Mr. Butler
+and Mr. Simpson feel the same way. Couldn’t these new loan certificates
+be listed on the stock exchange and the money raised that way? Some
+clever broker could bring them to par.”
+
+Stener was greatly flattered by the visit from Mollenhauer. Rarely did
+he trouble to put in a personal appearance, and then only for the
+weight and effect his presence would have. He called on the mayor and
+the president of council, much as he called on Stener, with a lofty,
+distant, inscrutable air. They were as office-boys to him.
+
+In order to understand exactly the motive for Mollenhauer’s interest in
+Stener, and the significance of this visit and Stener’s subsequent
+action in regard to it, it will be necessary to scan the political
+horizon for some little distance back. Although George W. Stener was in
+a way a political henchman and appointee of Mollenhauer’s, the latter
+was only vaguely acquainted with him. He had seen him before; knew of
+him; had agreed that his name should be put on the local slate largely
+because he had been assured by those who were closest to him and who
+did his bidding that Stener was “all right,” that he would do as he was
+told, that he would cause no one any trouble, etc. In fact, during
+several previous administrations, Mollenhauer had maintained a
+subsurface connection with the treasury, but never so close a one as
+could easily be traced. He was too conspicuous a man politically and
+financially for that. But he was not above a plan, in which Simpson if
+not Butler shared, of using political and commercial stool-pigeons to
+bleed the city treasury as much as possible without creating a scandal.
+In fact, for some years previous to this, various agents had already
+been employed—Edward Strobik, president of council, Asa Conklin, the
+then incumbent of the mayor’s chair, Thomas Wycroft, alderman, Jacob
+Harmon, alderman, and others—to organize dummy companies under various
+names, whose business it was to deal in those things which the city
+needed—lumber, stone, steel, iron, cement—a long list—and of course,
+always at a fat profit to those ultimately behind the dummy companies,
+so organized. It saved the city the trouble of looking far and wide for
+honest and reasonable dealers.
+
+Since the action of at least three of these dummies will have something
+to do with the development of Cowperwood’s story, they may be briefly
+described. Edward Strobik, the chief of them, and the one most useful
+to Mollenhauer, in a minor way, was a very spry person of about
+thirty-five at this time—lean and somewhat forceful, with black hair,
+black eyes, and an inordinately large black mustache. He was dapper,
+inclined to noticeable clothing—a pair of striped trousers, a white
+vest, a black cutaway coat and a high silk hat. His markedly ornamental
+shoes were always polished to perfection, and his immaculate appearance
+gave him the nickname of “The Dude” among some. Nevertheless he was
+quite able on a small scale, and was well liked by many.
+
+His two closest associates, Messrs. Thomas Wycroft and Jacob Harmon,
+were rather less attractive and less brilliant. Jacob Harmon was a
+thick wit socially, but no fool financially. He was big and rather
+doleful to look upon, with sandy brown hair and brown eyes, but fairly
+intelligent, and absolutely willing to approve anything which was not
+too broad in its crookedness and which would afford him sufficient
+protection to keep him out of the clutches of the law. He was really
+not so cunning as dull and anxious to get along.
+
+Thomas Wycroft, the last of this useful but minor triumvirate, was a
+tall, lean man, candle-waxy, hollow-eyed, gaunt of face, pathetic to
+look at physically, but shrewd. He was an iron-molder by trade and had
+gotten into politics much as Stener had—because he was useful; and he
+had managed to make some money—via this triumvirate of which Strobik
+was the ringleader, and which was engaged in various peculiar
+businesses which will now be indicated.
+
+The companies which these several henchmen had organized under previous
+administrations, and for Mollenhauer, dealt in meat, building material,
+lamp-posts, highway supplies, anything you will, which the city
+departments or its institutions needed. A city contract once awarded
+was irrevocable, but certain councilmen had to be fixed in advance and
+it took money to do that. The company so organized need not actually
+slaughter any cattle or mold lamp-posts. All it had to do was to
+organize to do that, obtain a charter, secure a contract for supplying
+such material to the city from the city council (which Strobik, Harmon,
+and Wycroft would attend to), and then sublet this to some actual
+beef-slaughterer or iron-founder, who would supply the material and
+allow them to pocket their profit which in turn was divided or paid for
+to Mollenhauer and Simpson in the form of political donations to clubs
+or organizations. It was so easy and in a way so legitimate. The
+particular beef-slaughterer or iron-founder thus favored could not hope
+of his own ability thus to obtain a contract. Stener, or whoever was in
+charge of the city treasury at the time, for his services in loaning
+money at a low rate of interest to be used as surety for the proper
+performance of contract, and to aid in some instances the beef-killer
+or iron-founder to carry out his end, was to be allowed not only the
+one or two per cent. which he might pocket (other treasurers had), but
+a fair proportion of the profits. A complacent, confidential chief
+clerk who was all right would be recommended to him. It did not concern
+Stener that Strobik, Harmon, and Wycroft, acting for Mollenhauer, were
+incidentally planning to use a little of the money loaned for purposes
+quite outside those indicated. It was his business to loan it.
+
+However, to be going on. Some time before he was even nominated, Stener
+had learned from Strobik, who, by the way, was one of his sureties as
+treasurer (which suretyship was against the law, as were those of
+Councilmen Wycroft and Harmon, the law of Pennsylvania stipulating that
+one political servant might not become surety for another), that those
+who had brought about this nomination and election would by no means
+ask him to do anything which was not perfectly legal, but that he must
+be complacent and not stand in the way of big municipal perquisites nor
+bite the hands that fed him. It was also made perfectly plain to him,
+that once he was well in office a little money for himself was to be
+made. As has been indicated, he had always been a poor man. He had seen
+all those who had dabbled in politics to any extent about him
+heretofore do very well financially indeed, while he pegged along as an
+insurance and real-estate agent. He had worked hard as a small
+political henchman. Other politicians were building themselves nice
+homes in newer portions of the city. They were going off to New York or
+Harrisburg or Washington on jaunting parties. They were seen in happy
+converse at road-houses or country hotels in season with their wives or
+their women favorites, and he was not, as yet, of this happy throng.
+Naturally now that he was promised something, he was interested and
+compliant. What might he not get?
+
+When it came to this visit from Mollenhauer, with its suggestion in
+regard to bringing city loan to par, although it bore no obvious
+relation to Mollenhauer’s subsurface connection with Stener, through
+Strobik and the others, Stener did definitely recognize his own
+political subservience—his master’s stentorian voice—and immediately
+thereafter hurried to Strobik for information.
+
+“Just what would you do about this?” he asked of Strobik, who knew of
+Mollenhauer’s visit before Stener told him, and was waiting for Stener
+to speak to him. “Mr. Mollenhauer talks about having this new loan
+listed on ’change and brought to par so that it will sell for one
+hundred.”
+
+Neither Strobik, Harmon, nor Wycroft knew how the certificates of city
+loan, which were worth only ninety on the open market, were to be made
+to sell for one hundred on ’change, but Mollenhauer’s secretary, one
+Abner Sengstack, had suggested to Strobik that, since Butler was
+dealing with young Cowperwood and Mollenhauer did not care particularly
+for his private broker in this instance, it might be as well to try
+Cowperwood.
+
+So it was that Cowperwood was called to Stener’s office. And once
+there, and not as yet recognizing either the hand of Mollenhauer or
+Simpson in this, merely looked at the peculiarly shambling,
+heavy-cheeked, middle-class man before him without either interest or
+sympathy, realizing at once that he had a financial baby to deal with.
+If he could act as adviser to this man—be his sole counsel for four
+years!
+
+“How do you do, Mr. Stener?” he said in his soft, ingratiating voice,
+as the latter held out his hand. “I am glad to meet you. I have heard
+of you before, of course.”
+
+Stener was long in explaining to Cowperwood just what his difficulty
+was. He went at it in a clumsy fashion, stumbling through the
+difficulties of the situation he was suffered to meet.
+
+“The main thing, as I see it, is to make these certificates sell at
+par. I can issue them in any sized lots you like, and as often as you
+like. I want to get enough now to clear away two hundred thousand
+dollars’ worth of the outstanding warrants, and as much more as I can
+get later.”
+
+Cowperwood felt like a physician feeling a patient’s pulse—a patient
+who is really not sick at all but the reassurance of whom means a fat
+fee. The abstrusities of the stock exchange were as his A B C’s to him.
+He knew if he could have this loan put in his hands—all of it, if he
+could have the fact kept dark that he was acting for the city, and that
+if Stener would allow him to buy as a “bull” for the sinking-fund while
+selling judiciously for a rise, he could do wonders even with a big
+issue. He had to have all of it, though, in order that he might have
+agents under him. Looming up in his mind was a scheme whereby he could
+make a lot of the unwary speculators about ’change go short of this
+stock or loan under the impression, of course, that it was scattered
+freely in various persons’ hands, and that they could buy as much of it
+as they wanted. Then they would wake to find that they could not get
+it; that he had it all. Only he would not risk his secret that far. Not
+he, oh, no. But he would drive the city loan to par and then sell. And
+what a fat thing for himself among others in so doing. Wisely enough he
+sensed that there was politics in all this—shrewder and bigger men
+above and behind Stener. But what of that? And how slyly and shrewdly
+they were sending Stener to him. It might be that his name was becoming
+very potent in their political world here. And what might that not
+mean!
+
+“I tell you what I’d like to do, Mr. Stener,” he said, after he had
+listened to his explanation and asked how much of the city loan he
+would like to sell during the coming year. “I’ll be glad to undertake
+it. But I’d like to have a day or two in which to think it over.”
+
+“Why, certainly, certainly, Mr. Cowperwood,” replied Stener, genially.
+“That’s all right. Take your time. If you know how it can be done, just
+show me when you’re ready. By the way, what do you charge?”
+
+“Well, the stock exchange has a regular scale of charges which we
+brokers are compelled to observe. It’s one-fourth of one per cent. on
+the par value of bonds and loans. Of course, I may hav to add a lot of
+fictitious selling—I’ll explain that to you later—but I won’t charge
+you anything for that so long as it is a secret between us. I’ll give
+you the best service I can, Mr. Stener. You can depend on that. Let me
+have a day or two to think it over, though.”
+
+He shook hands with Stener, and they parted. Cowperwood was satisfied
+that he was on the verge of a significant combination, and Stener that
+he had found someone on whom he could lean.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+
+
+The plan Cowperwood developed after a few days’ meditation will be
+plain enough to any one who knows anything of commercial and financial
+manipulation, but a dark secret to those who do not. In the first
+place, the city treasurer was to use his (Cowperwood’s) office as a
+bank of deposit. He was to turn over to him, actually, or set over to
+his credit on the city’s books, subject to his order, certain amounts
+of city loans—two hundred thousand dollars at first, since that was the
+amount it was desired to raise quickly—and he would then go into the
+market and see what could be done to have it brought to par. The city
+treasurer was to ask leave of the stock exchange at once to have it
+listed as a security. Cowperwood would then use his influence to have
+this application acted upon quickly. Stener was then to dispose of all
+city loan certificates through him, and him only. He was to allow him
+to buy for the sinking-fund, supposedly, such amounts as he might have
+to buy in order to keep the price up to par. To do this, once a
+considerable number of the loan certificates had been unloaded on the
+public, it might be necessary to buy back a great deal. However, these
+would be sold again. The law concerning selling only at par would have
+to be abrogated to this extent—i.e., that the wash sales and
+preliminary sales would have to be considered no sales until par was
+reached.
+
+There was a subtle advantage here, as Cowperwood pointed out to Stener.
+In the first place, since the certificates were going ultimately to
+reach par anyway, there was no objection to Stener or any one else
+buying low at the opening price and holding for a rise. Cowperwood
+would be glad to carry him on his books for any amount, and he would
+settle at the end of each month. He would not be asked to buy the
+certificates outright. He could be carried on the books for a certain
+reasonable margin, say ten points. The money was as good as made for
+Stener now. In the next place, in buying for the sinking-fund it would
+be possible to buy these certificates very cheap, for, having the new
+and reserve issue entirely in his hands, Cowperwood could throw such
+amounts as he wished into the market at such times as he wished to buy,
+and consequently depress the market. Then he could buy, and, later, up
+would go the price. Having the issues totally in his hands to boost or
+depress the market as he wished, there was no reason why the city
+should not ultimately get par for all its issues, and at the same time
+considerable money be made out of the manufactured fluctuations. He,
+Cowperwood, would be glad to make most of his profit that way. The city
+should allow him his normal percentage on all his actual sales of
+certificates for the city at par (he would have to have that in order
+to keep straight with the stock exchange); but beyond that, and for all
+the other necessary manipulative sales, of which there would be many,
+he would depend on his knowledge of the stock market to reimburse him.
+And if Stener wanted to speculate with him—well.
+
+Dark as this transaction may seem to the uninitiated, it will appear
+quite clear to those who know. Manipulative tricks have always been
+worked in connection with stocks of which one man or one set of men has
+had complete control. It was no different from what subsequently was
+done with Erie, Standard Oil, Copper, Sugar, Wheat, and what not.
+Cowperwood was one of the first and one of the youngest to see how it
+could be done. When he first talked to Stener he was twenty-eight years
+of age. When he last did business with him he was thirty-four.
+
+The houses and the bank-front of Cowperwood & Co. had been proceeding
+apace. The latter was early Florentine in its decorations with windows
+which grew narrower as they approached the roof, and a door of wrought
+iron set between delicately carved posts, and a straight lintel of
+brownstone. It was low in height and distinguished in appearance. In
+the center panel had been hammered a hand, delicately wrought, thin and
+artistic, holding aloft a flaming brand. Ellsworth informed him that
+this had formerly been a money-changer’s sign used in old Venice, the
+significance of which had long been forgotten.
+
+The interior was finished in highly-polished hardwood, stained in
+imitation of the gray lichens which infest trees. Large sheets of
+clear, beveled glass were used, some oval, some oblong, some square,
+and some circular, following a given theory of eye movement. The
+fixtures for the gas-jets were modeled after the early Roman
+flame-brackets, and the office safe was made an ornament, raised on a
+marble platform at the back of the office and lacquered a silver-gray,
+with Cowperwood & Co. lettered on it in gold. One had a sense of
+reserve and taste pervading the place, and yet it was also inestimably
+prosperous, solid and assuring. Cowperwood, when he viewed it at its
+completion, complimented Ellsworth cheerily. “I like this. It is really
+beautiful. It will be a pleasure to work here. If those houses are
+going to be anything like this, they will be perfect.”
+
+“Wait till you see them. I think you will be pleased, Mr. Cowperwood. I
+am taking especial pains with yours because it is smaller. It is really
+easier to treat your father’s. But yours—” He went off into a
+description of the entrance-hall, reception-room and parlor, which he
+was arranging and decorating in such a way as to give an effect of size
+and dignity not really conformable to the actual space.
+
+And when the houses were finished, they were effective and
+arresting—quite different from the conventional residences of the
+street. They were separated by a space of twenty feet, laid out as
+greensward. The architect had borrowed somewhat from the Tudor school,
+yet not so elaborated as later became the style in many of the
+residences in Philadelphia and elsewhere. The most striking features
+were rather deep-recessed doorways under wide, low, slightly floriated
+arches, and three projecting windows of rich form, one on the second
+floor of Frank’s house, two on the facade of his father’s. There were
+six gables showing on the front of the two houses, two on Frank’s and
+four on his father’s. In the front of each house on the ground floor
+was a recessed window unconnected with the recessed doorways, formed by
+setting the inner external wall back from the outer face of the
+building. This window looked out through an arched opening to the
+street, and was protected by a dwarf parapet or balustrade. It was
+possible to set potted vines and flowers there, which was later done,
+giving a pleasant sense of greenery from the street, and to place a few
+chairs there, which were reached via heavily barred French casements.
+
+On the ground floor of each house was placed a conservatory of flowers,
+facing each other, and in the yard, which was jointly used, a pool of
+white marble eight feet in diameter, with a marble Cupid upon which
+jets of water played. The yard which was enclosed by a high but pierced
+wall of green-gray brick, especially burnt for the purpose the same
+color as the granite of the house, and surmounted by a white marble
+coping which was sown to grass and had a lovely, smooth, velvety
+appearance. The two houses, as originally planned, were connected by a
+low, green-columned pergola which could be enclosed in glass in winter.
+
+The rooms, which were now slowly being decorated and furnished in
+period styles were very significant in that they enlarged and
+strengthened Frank Cowperwood’s idea of the world of art in general. It
+was an enlightening and agreeable experience—one which made for
+artistic and intellectual growth—to hear Ellsworth explain at length
+the styles and types of architecture and furniture, the nature of woods
+and ornaments employed, the qualities and peculiarities of hangings,
+draperies, furniture panels, and door coverings. Ellsworth was a
+student of decoration as well as of architecture, and interested in the
+artistic taste of the American people, which he fancied would some day
+have a splendid outcome. He was wearied to death of the prevalent
+Romanesque composite combinations of country and suburban villa. The
+time was ripe for something new. He scarcely knew what it would be; but
+this that he had designed for Cowperwood and his father was at least
+different, as he said, while at the same time being reserved, simple,
+and pleasing. It was in marked contrast to the rest of the architecture
+of the street. Cowperwood’s dining-room, reception-room, conservatory,
+and butler’s pantry he had put on the first floor, together with the
+general entry-hall, staircase, and coat-room under the stairs. For the
+second floor he had reserved the library, general living-room, parlor,
+and a small office for Cowperwood, together with a boudoir for Lillian,
+connected with a dressing-room and bath.
+
+On the third floor, neatly divided and accommodated with baths and
+dressing-rooms, were the nursery, the servants’ quarters, and several
+guest-chambers.
+
+Ellsworth showed Cowperwood books of designs containing furniture,
+hangings, etageres, cabinets, pedestals, and some exquisite piano
+forms. He discussed woods with him—rosewood, mahogany, walnut, English
+oak, bird’s-eye maple, and the manufactured effects such as ormolu,
+marquetry, and Boule, or buhl. He explained the latter—how difficult it
+was to produce, how unsuitable it was in some respects for this
+climate, the brass and tortoise-shell inlay coming to swell with the
+heat or damp, and so bulging or breaking. He told of the difficulties
+and disadvantages of certain finishes, but finally recommended ormolu
+furniture for the reception room, medallion tapestry for the parlor,
+French renaissance for the dining-room and library, and bird’s-eye
+maple (dyed blue in one instance, and left its natural color in
+another) and a rather lightly constructed and daintily carved walnut
+for the other rooms. The hangings, wall-paper, and floor coverings were
+to harmonize—not match—and the piano and music-cabinet for the parlor,
+as well as the etagere, cabinets, and pedestals for the
+reception-rooms, were to be of buhl or marquetry, if Frank cared to
+stand the expense.
+
+Ellsworth advised a triangular piano—the square shapes were so
+inexpressibly wearisome to the initiated. Cowperwood listened
+fascinated. He foresaw a home which would be chaste, soothing, and
+delightful to look upon. If he hung pictures, gilt frames were to be
+the setting, large and deep; and if he wished a picture-gallery, the
+library could be converted into that, and the general living-room,
+which lay between the library and the parlor on the second-floor, could
+be turned into a combination library and living-room. This was
+eventually done; but not until his taste for pictures had considerably
+advanced.
+
+It was now that he began to take a keen interest in objects of art,
+pictures, bronzes, little carvings and figurines, for his cabinets,
+pedestals, tables, and etageres. Philadelphia did not offer much that
+was distinguished in this realm—certainly not in the open market. There
+were many private houses which were enriched by travel; but his
+connection with the best families was as yet small. There were then two
+famous American sculptors, Powers and Hosmer, of whose work he had
+examples; but Ellsworth told him that they were not the last word in
+sculpture and that he should look into the merits of the ancients. He
+finally secured a head of David, by Thorwaldsen, which delighted him,
+and some landscapes by Hunt, Sully, and Hart, which seemed somewhat in
+the spirit of his new world.
+
+The effect of a house of this character on its owner is unmistakable.
+We think we are individual, separate, above houses and material objects
+generally; but there is a subtle connection which makes them reflect us
+quite as much as we reflect them. They lend dignity, subtlety, force,
+each to the other, and what beauty, or lack of it, there is, is shot
+back and forth from one to the other as a shuttle in a loom, weaving,
+weaving. Cut the thread, separate a man from that which is rightfully
+his own, characteristic of him, and you have a peculiar figure, half
+success, half failure, much as a spider without its web, which will
+never be its whole self again until all its dignities and emoluments
+are restored.
+
+The sight of his new house going up made Cowperwood feel of more weight
+in the world, and the possession of his suddenly achieved connection
+with the city treasurer was as though a wide door had been thrown open
+to the Elysian fields of opportunity. He rode about the city those days
+behind a team of spirited bays, whose glossy hides and metaled harness
+bespoke the watchful care of hostler and coachman. Ellsworth was
+building an attractive stable in the little side street back of the
+houses, for the joint use of both families. He told Mrs. Cowperwood
+that he intended to buy her a victoria—as the low, open, four-wheeled
+coach was then known—as soon as they were well settled in their new
+home, and that they were to go out more. There was some talk about the
+value of entertaining—that he would have to reach out socially for
+certain individuals who were not now known to him. Together with Anna,
+his sister, and his two brothers, Joseph and Edward, they could use the
+two houses jointly. There was no reason why Anna should not make a
+splendid match. Joe and Ed might marry well, since they were not
+destined to set the world on fire in commerce. At least it would not
+hurt them to try.
+
+“Don’t you think you will like that?” he asked his wife, referring to
+his plans for entertaining.
+
+She smiled wanly. “I suppose so,” she said.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+
+
+It was not long after the arrangement between Treasurer Stener and
+Cowperwood had been made that the machinery for the carrying out of
+that political-financial relationship was put in motion. The sum of two
+hundred and ten thousand dollars in six per cent. interest-bearing
+certificates, payable in ten years, was set over to the credit of
+Cowperwood & Co. on the books of the city, subject to his order. Then,
+with proper listing, he began to offer it in small amounts at more than
+ninety, at the same time creating the impression that it was going to
+be a prosperous investment. The certificates gradually rose and were
+unloaded in rising amounts until one hundred was reached, when all the
+two hundred thousand dollars’ worth—two thousand certificates in
+all—was fed out in small lots. Stener was satisfied. Two hundred shares
+had been carried for him and sold at one hundred, which netted him two
+thousand dollars. It was illegitimate gain, unethical; but his
+conscience was not very much troubled by that. He had none, truly. He
+saw visions of a halcyon future.
+
+It is difficult to make perfectly clear what a subtle and significant
+power this suddenly placed in the hands of Cowperwood. Consider that he
+was only twenty-eight—nearing twenty-nine. Imagine yourself by nature
+versed in the arts of finance, capable of playing with sums of money in
+the forms of stocks, certificates, bonds, and cash, as the ordinary man
+plays with checkers or chess. Or, better yet, imagine yourself one of
+those subtle masters of the mysteries of the higher forms of chess—the
+type of mind so well illustrated by the famous and historic
+chess-players, who could sit with their backs to a group of rivals
+playing fourteen men at once, calling out all the moves in turn,
+remembering all the positions of all the men on all the boards, and
+winning. This, of course, would be an overstatement of the subtlety of
+Cowperwood at this time, and yet it would not be wholly out of bounds.
+He knew instinctively what could be done with a given sum of money—how
+as cash it could be deposited in one place, and yet as credit and the
+basis of moving checks, used in not one but many other places at the
+same time. When properly watched and followed this manipulation gave
+him the constructive and purchasing power of ten and a dozen times as
+much as his original sum might have represented. He knew instinctively
+the principles of “pyramiding” and “kiting.” He could see exactly not
+only how he could raise and lower the value of these certificates of
+loan, day after day and year after year—if he were so fortunate as to
+retain his hold on the city treasurer—but also how this would give him
+a credit with the banks hitherto beyond his wildest dreams. His
+father’s bank was one of the first to profit by this and to extend him
+loans. The various local politicians and bosses—Mollenhauer, Butler,
+Simpson, and others—seeing the success of his efforts in this
+direction, speculated in city loan. He became known to Mollenhauer and
+Simpson, by reputation, if not personally, as the man who was carrying
+this city loan proposition to a successful issue. Stener was supposed
+to have done a clever thing in finding him. The stock exchange
+stipulated that all trades were to be compared the same day and settled
+before the close of the next; but this working arrangement with the new
+city treasurer gave Cowperwood much more latitude, and now he had
+always until the first of the month, or practically thirty days at
+times, in which to render an accounting for all deals connected with
+the loan issue.
+
+And, moreover, this was really not an accounting in the sense of
+removing anything from his hands. Since the issue was to be so large,
+the sum at his disposal would always be large, and so-called transfers
+and balancing at the end of the month would be a mere matter of
+bookkeeping. He could use these city loan certificates deposited with
+him for manipulative purposes, deposit them at any bank as collateral
+for a loan, quite as if they were his own, thus raising seventy per
+cent. of their actual value in cash, and he did not hesitate to do so.
+He could take this cash, which need not be accounted for until the end
+of the month, and cover other stock transactions, on which he could
+borrow again. There was no limit to the resources of which he now found
+himself possessed, except the resources of his own energy, ingenuity,
+and the limits of time in which he had to work. The politicians did not
+realize what a bonanza he was making of it all for himself, because
+they were as yet unaware of the subtlety of his mind. When Stener told
+him, after talking the matter over with the mayor, Strobik, and others
+that he would formally, during the course of the year, set over on the
+city’s books all of the two millions in city loan, Cowperwood was
+silent—but with delight. Two millions! His to play with! He had been
+called in as a financial adviser, and he had given his advice and it
+had been taken! Well. He was not a man who inherently was troubled with
+conscientious scruples. At the same time he still believed himself
+financially honest. He was no sharper or shrewder than any other
+financier—certainly no sharper than any other would be if he could.
+
+It should be noted here that this proposition of Stener’s in regard to
+city money had no connection with the attitude of the principal leaders
+in local politics in regard to street-railway control, which was a new
+and intriguing phase of the city’s financial life. Many of the leading
+financiers and financier-politicians were interested in that. For
+instance, Messrs. Mollenhauer, Butler, and Simpson were interested in
+street-railways separately on their own account. There was no
+understanding between them on this score. If they had thought at all on
+the matter they would have decided that they did not want any outsider
+to interfere. As a matter of fact the street-railway business in
+Philadelphia was not sufficiently developed at this time to suggest to
+any one the grand scheme of union which came later. Yet in connection
+with this new arrangement between Stener and Cowperwood, it was Strobik
+who now came forward to Stener with an idea of his own. All were
+certain to make money through Cowperwood—he and Stener, especially.
+What was amiss, therefore, with himself and Stener and with Cowperwood
+as their—or rather Stener’s secret representative, since Strobik did
+not dare to appear in the matter—buying now sufficient street-railway
+shares in some one line to control it, and then, if he, Strobik, could,
+by efforts of his own, get the city council to set aside certain
+streets for its extension, why, there you were—they would own it. Only,
+later, he proposed to shake Stener out if he could. But this
+preliminary work had to be done by some one, and it might as well be
+Stener. At the same time, as he saw, this work had to be done very
+carefully, because naturally his superiors were watchful, and if they
+found him dabbling in affairs of this kind to his own advantage, they
+might make it impossible for him to continue politically in a position
+where he could help himself just the same. Any outside organization
+such as a street-railway company already in existence had a right to
+appeal to the city council for privileges which would naturally further
+its and the city’s growth, and, other things being equal, these could
+not be refused. It would not do for him to appear, however, both as a
+shareholder and president of the council. But with Cowperwood acting
+privately for Stener it would be another thing.
+
+The interesting thing about this proposition as finally presented by
+Stener for Strobik to Cowperwood, was that it raised, without appearing
+to do so, the whole question of Cowperwood’s attitude toward the city
+administration. Although he was dealing privately for Edward Butler as
+an agent, and with this same plan in mind, and although he had never
+met either Mollenhauer or Simpson, he nevertheless felt that in so far
+as the manipulation of the city loan was concerned he was acting for
+them. On the other hand, in this matter of the private street-railway
+purchase which Stener now brought to him, he realized from the very
+beginning, by Stener’s attitude, that there was something untoward in
+it, that Stener felt he was doing something which he ought not to do.
+
+“Cowperwood,” he said to him the first morning he ever broached this
+matter—it was in Stener’s office, at the old city hall at Sixth and
+Chestnut, and Stener, in view of his oncoming prosperity, was feeling
+very good indeed—“isn’t there some street-railway property around town
+here that a man could buy in on and get control of if he had sufficient
+money?”
+
+Cowperwood knew that there were such properties. His very alert mind
+had long since sensed the general opportunities here. The omnibuses
+were slowly disappearing. The best routes were already preempted.
+Still, there were other streets, and the city was growing. The incoming
+population would make great business in the future. One could afford to
+pay almost any price for the short lines already built if one could
+wait and extend the lines into larger and better areas later. And
+already he had conceived in his own mind the theory of the “endless
+chain,” or “argeeable formula,” as it was later termed, of buying a
+certain property on a long-time payment and issuing stocks or bonds
+sufficient not only to pay your seller, but to reimburse you for your
+trouble, to say nothing of giving you a margin wherewith to invest in
+other things—allied properties, for instance, against which more bonds
+could be issued, and so on, ad infinitum. It became an old story later,
+but it was new at that time, and he kept the thought closely to
+himself. None the less he was glad to have Stener speak of this, since
+street-railways were his hobby, and he was convinced that he would be a
+great master of them if he ever had an opportunity to control them.
+
+“Why, yes, George,” he said, noncommittally, “there are two or three
+that offer a good chance if a man had money enough. I notice blocks of
+stock being offered on ’change now and then by one person and another.
+It would be good policy to pick these things up as they’re offered, and
+then to see later if some of the other stockholders won’t want to sell
+out. Green and Coates, now, looks like a good proposition to me. If I
+had three or four hundred thousand dollars that I thought I could put
+into that by degrees I would follow it up. It only takes about thirty
+per cent. of the stock of any railroad to control it. Most of the
+shares are scattered around so far and wide that they never vote, and I
+think two or three hundred thousand dollars would control that road.”
+He mentioned one other line that might be secured in the same way in
+the course of time.
+
+Stener meditated. “That’s a good deal of money,” he said, thoughtfully.
+“I’ll talk to you about that some more later.” And he was off to see
+Strobik none the less.
+
+Cowperwood knew that Stener did not have any two or three hundred
+thousand dollars to invest in anything. There was only one way that he
+could get it—and that was to borrow it out of the city treasury and
+forego the interest. But he would not do that on his own initiative.
+Some one else must be behind him and who else other than Mollenhauer,
+or Simpson, or possibly even Butler, though he doubted that, unless the
+triumvirate were secretly working together. But what of it? The larger
+politicians were always using the treasury, and he was thinking now,
+only, of his own attitude in regard to the use of this money. No harm
+could come to him, if Stener’s ventures were successful; and there was
+no reason why they should not be. Even if they were not he would be
+merely acting as an agent. In addition, he saw how in the manipulation
+of this money for Stener he could probably eventually control certain
+lines for himself.
+
+There was one line being laid out to within a few blocks of his new
+home—the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Street line it was called—which
+interested him greatly. He rode on it occasionally when he was delayed
+or did not wish to trouble about a vehicle. It ran through two thriving
+streets of red-brick houses, and was destined to have a great future
+once the city grew large enough. As yet it was really not long enough.
+If he could get that, for instance, and combine it with Butler’s lines,
+once they were secured—or Mollenhauer’s, or Simpson’s, the legislature
+could be induced to give them additional franchises. He even dreamed of
+a combination between Butler, Mollenhauer, Simpson, and himself.
+Between them, politically, they could get anything. But Butler was not
+a philanthropist. He would have to be approached with a very sizable
+bird in hand. The combination must be obviously advisable. Besides, he
+was dealing for Butler in street-railway stocks, and if this particular
+line were such a good thing Butler might wonder why it had not been
+brought to him in the first place. It would be better, Frank thought,
+to wait until he actually had it as his own, in which case it would be
+a different matter. Then he could talk as a capitalist. He began to
+dream of a city-wide street-railway system controlled by a few men, or
+preferably himself alone.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+
+
+The days that had been passing brought Frank Cowperwood and Aileen
+Butler somewhat closer together in spirit. Because of the pressure of
+his growing affairs he had not paid so much attention to her as he
+might have, but he had seen her often this past year. She was now
+nineteen and had grown into some subtle thoughts of her own. For one
+thing, she was beginning to see the difference between good taste and
+bad taste in houses and furnishings.
+
+“Papa, why do we stay in this old barn?” she asked her father one
+evening at dinner, when the usual family group was seated at the table.
+
+“What’s the matter with this house, I’d like to know?” demanded Butler,
+who was drawn up close to the table, his napkin tucked comfortably
+under his chin, for he insisted on this when company was not present.
+“I don’t see anything the matter with this house. Your mother and I
+manage to live in it well enough.”
+
+“Oh, it’s terrible, papa. You know it,” supplemented Norah, who was
+seventeen and quite as bright as her sister, though a little less
+experienced. “Everybody says so. Look at all the nice houses that are
+being built everywhere about here.”
+
+“Everybody! Everybody! Who is ‘everybody,’ I’d like to know?” demanded
+Butler, with the faintest touch of choler and much humor. “I’m
+somebody, and I like it. Those that don’t like it don’t have to live in
+it. Who are they? What’s the matter with it, I’d like to know?”
+
+The question in just this form had been up a number of times before,
+and had been handled in just this manner, or passed over entirely with
+a healthy Irish grin. To-night, however, it was destined for a little
+more extended thought.
+
+“You know it’s bad, papa,” corrected Aileen, firmly. “Now what’s the
+use getting mad about it? It’s old and cheap and dingy. The furniture
+is all worn out. That old piano in there ought to be given away. I
+won’t play on it any more. The Cowperwoods—”
+
+“Old is it!” exclaimed Butler, his accent sharpening somewhat with his
+self-induced rage. He almost pronounced it “owled.” “Dingy, hi! Where
+do you get that? At your convent, I suppose. And where is it worn? Show
+me where it’s worn.”
+
+He was coming to her reference to Cowperwood, but he hadn’t reached
+that when Mrs. Butler interfered. She was a stout, broad-faced woman,
+smiling-mouthed most of the time, with blurry, gray Irish eyes, and a
+touch of red in her hair, now modified by grayness. Her cheek, below
+the mouth, on the left side, was sharply accented by a large wen.
+
+“Children! children!” (Mr. Butler, for all his commercial and political
+responsibility, was as much a child to her as any.) “Youse mustn’t
+quarrel now. Come now. Give your father the tomatoes.”
+
+There was an Irish maid serving at table; but plates were passed from
+one to the other just the same. A heavily ornamented chandelier,
+holding sixteen imitation candles in white porcelain, hung low over the
+table and was brightly lighted, another offense to Aileen.
+
+“Mama, how often have I told you not to say ‘youse’?” pleaded Norah,
+very much disheartened by her mother’s grammatical errors. “You know
+you said you wouldn’t.”
+
+“And who’s to tell your mother what she should say?” called Butler,
+more incensed than ever at this sudden and unwarranted rebellion and
+assault. “Your mother talked before ever you was born, I’d have you
+know. If it weren’t for her workin’ and slavin’ you wouldn’t have any
+fine manners to be paradin’ before her. I’d have you know that. She’s a
+better woman nor any you’ll be runnin’ with this day, you little
+baggage, you!”
+
+“Mama, do you hear what he’s calling me?” complained Norah, hugging
+close to her mother’s arm and pretending fear and dissatisfaction.
+
+“Eddie! Eddie!” cautioned Mrs. Butler, pleading with her husband. “You
+know he don’t mean that, Norah, dear. Don’t you know he don’t?”
+
+She was stroking her baby’s head. The reference to her grammar had not
+touched her at all.
+
+Butler was sorry that he had called his youngest a baggage; but these
+children—God bless his soul—were a great annoyance. Why, in the name of
+all the saints, wasn’t this house good enough for them?
+
+“Why don’t you people quit fussing at the table?” observed Callum, a
+likely youth, with black hair laid smoothly over his forehead in a
+long, distinguished layer reaching from his left to close to his right
+ear, and his upper lip carrying a short, crisp mustache. His nose was
+short and retrousse, and his ears were rather prominent; but he was
+bright and attractive. He and Owen both realized that the house was old
+and poorly arranged; but their father and mother liked it, and business
+sense and family peace dictated silence on this score.
+
+“Well, I think it’s mean to have to live in this old place when people
+not one-fourth as good as we are are living in better ones. The
+Cowperwoods—why, even the Cowperwoods—”
+
+“Yes, the Cowperwoods! What about the Cowperwoods?” demanded Butler,
+turning squarely to Aileen—she was sitting beside him—-his big, red
+face glowing.
+
+“Why, even they have a better house than we have, and he’s merely an
+agent of yours.”
+
+“The Cowperwoods! The Cowperwoods! I’ll not have any talk about the
+Cowperwoods. I’m not takin’ my rules from the Cowperwoods. Suppose they
+have a fine house, what of it? My house is my house. I want to live
+here. I’ve lived here too long to be pickin’ up and movin’ away. If you
+don’t like it you know what else you can do. Move if you want to. I’ll
+not move.”
+
+It was Butler’s habit when he became involved in these family quarrels,
+which were as shallow as puddles, to wave his hands rather
+antagonistically under his wife’s or his children’s noses.
+
+“Oh, well, I will get out one of these days,” Aileen replied. “Thank
+heaven I won’t have to live here forever.”
+
+There flashed across her mind the beautiful reception-room, library,
+parlor, and boudoirs of the Cowperwoods, which were now being arranged
+and about which Anna Cowperwood talked to her so much—their dainty,
+lovely triangular grand piano in gold and painted pink and blue. Why
+couldn’t they have things like that? Her father was unquestionably a
+dozen times as wealthy. But no, her father, whom she loved dearly, was
+of the old school. He was just what people charged him with being, a
+rough Irish contractor. He might be rich. She flared up at the
+injustice of things—why couldn’t he have been rich and refined, too?
+Then they could have—but, oh, what was the use of complaining? They
+would never get anywhere with her father and mother in charge. She
+would just have to wait. Marriage was the answer—the right marriage.
+But whom was she to marry?
+
+“You surely are not going to go on fighting about that now,” pleaded
+Mrs. Butler, as strong and patient as fate itself. She knew where
+Aileen’s trouble lay.
+
+“But we might have a decent house,” insisted Aileen. “Or this one done
+over,” whispered Norah to her mother.
+
+“Hush now! In good time,” replied Mrs. Butler to Norah. “Wait. We’ll
+fix it all up some day, sure. You run to your lessons now. You’ve had
+enough.”
+
+Norah arose and left. Aileen subsided. Her father was simply stubborn
+and impossible. And yet he was sweet, too. She pouted in order to
+compel him to apologize.
+
+“Come now,” he said, after they had left the table, and conscious of
+the fact that his daughter was dissatisfied with him. He must do
+something to placate her. “Play me somethin’ on the piano, somethin’
+nice.” He preferred showy, clattery things which exhibited her skill
+and muscular ability and left him wondering how she did it. That was
+what education was for—to enable her to play these very difficult
+things quickly and forcefully. “And you can have a new piano any time
+you like. Go and see about it. This looks pretty good to me, but if you
+don’t want it, all right.” Aileen squeezed his arm. What was the use of
+arguing with her father? What good would a lone piano do, when the
+whole house and the whole family atmosphere were at fault? But she
+played Schumann, Schubert, Offenbach, Chopin, and the old gentleman
+strolled to and fro and mused, smiling. There was real feeling and a
+thoughtful interpretation given to some of these things, for Aileen was
+not without sentiment, though she was so strong, vigorous, and withal
+so defiant; but it was all lost on him. He looked on her, his bright,
+healthy, enticingly beautiful daughter, and wondered what was going to
+become of her. Some rich man was going to many her—some fine, rich
+young man with good business instincts—and he, her father, would leave
+her a lot of money.
+
+There was a reception and a dance to be given to celebrate the opening
+of the two Cowperwood homes—the reception to be held in Frank
+Cowperwood’s residence, and the dance later at his father’s. The Henry
+Cowperwood domicile was much more pretentious, the reception-room,
+parlor, music-room, and conservatory being in this case all on the
+ground floor and much larger. Ellsworth had arranged it so that those
+rooms, on occasion, could be thrown into one, leaving excellent space
+for promenade, auditorium, dancing—anything, in fact, that a large
+company might require. It had been the intention all along of the two
+men to use these houses jointly. There was, to begin with, a
+combination use of the various servants, the butler, gardener,
+laundress, and maids. Frank Cowperwood employed a governess for his
+children. The butler was really not a butler in the best sense. He was
+Henry Cowperwood’s private servitor. But he could carve and preside,
+and he could be used in either house as occasion warranted. There was
+also a hostler and a coachman for the joint stable. When two carriages
+were required at once, both drove. It made a very agreeable and
+satisfactory working arrangement.
+
+The preparation of this reception had been quite a matter of
+importance, for it was necessary for financial reasons to make it as
+extensive as possible, and for social reasons as exclusive. It was
+therefore decided that the afternoon reception at Frank’s house, with
+its natural overflow into Henry W.’s, was to be for all—the Tighes,
+Steners, Butlers, Mollenhauers, as well as the more select groups to
+which, for instance, belonged Arthur Rivers, Mrs. Seneca Davis, Mr. and
+Mrs. Trenor Drake, and some of the younger Drexels and Clarks, whom
+Frank had met. It was not likely that the latter would condescend, but
+cards had to be sent. Later in the evening a less democratic group if
+possible was to be entertained, albeit it would have to be extended to
+include the friends of Anna, Mrs. Cowperwood, Edward, and Joseph, and
+any list which Frank might personally have in mind. This was to be the
+list. The best that could be persuaded, commanded, or influenced of the
+young and socially elect were to be invited here.
+
+It was not possible, however, not to invite the Butlers, parents and
+children, particularly the children, for both afternoon and evening,
+since Cowperwood was personally attracted to Aileen and despite the
+fact that the presence of the parents would be most unsatisfactory.
+Even Aileen as he knew was a little unsatisfactory to Anna and Mrs.
+Frank Cowperwood; and these two, when they were together supervising
+the list of invitations, often talked about it.
+
+“She’s so hoidenish,” observed Anna, to her sister-in-law, when they
+came to the name of Aileen. “She thinks she knows so much, and she
+isn’t a bit refined. Her father! Well, if I had her father I wouldn’t
+talk so smart.”
+
+Mrs. Cowperwood, who was before her secretaire in her new boudoir,
+lifted her eyebrows.
+
+“You know, Anna, I sometimes wish that Frank’s business did not compel
+me to have anything to do with them. Mrs. Butler is such a bore. She
+means well enough, but she doesn’t know anything. And Aileen is too
+rough. She’s too forward, I think. She comes over here and plays upon
+the piano, particularly when Frank’s here. I wouldn’t mind so much for
+myself, but I know it must annoy him. All her pieces are so noisy. She
+never plays anything really delicate and refined.”
+
+“I don’t like the way she dresses,” observed Anna, sympathetically.
+“She gets herself up too conspicuously. Now, the other day I saw her
+out driving, and oh, dear! you should have seen her! She had on a
+crimson Zouave jacket heavily braided with black about the edges, and a
+turban with a huge crimson feather, and crimson ribbons reaching nearly
+to her waist. Imagine that kind of a hat to drive in. And her hands!
+You should have seen the way she held her hands—oh—just
+so—self-consciously. They were curved just so”—and she showed how. “She
+had on yellow gauntlets, and she held the reins in one hand and the
+whip in the other. She drives just like mad when she drives, anyhow,
+and William, the footman, was up behind her. You should just have seen
+her. Oh, dear! oh, dear! she does think she is so much!” And Anna
+giggled, half in reproach, half in amusement.
+
+“I suppose we’ll have to invite her; I don’t see how we can get out of
+it. I know just how she’ll do, though. She’ll walk about and pose and
+hold her nose up.”
+
+“Really, I don’t see how she can,” commented Anna. “Now, I like Norah.
+She’s much nicer. She doesn’t think she’s so much.”
+
+“I like Norah, too,” added Mrs. Cowperwood. “She’s really very sweet,
+and to me she’s prettier.”
+
+“Oh, indeed, I think so, too.”
+
+It was curious, though, that it was Aileen who commanded nearly all
+their attention and fixed their minds on her so-called idiosyncrasies.
+All they said was in its peculiar way true; but in addition the girl
+was really beautiful and much above the average intelligence and force.
+She was running deep with ambition, and she was all the more
+conspicuous, and in a way irritating to some, because she reflected in
+her own consciousness her social defects, against which she was
+inwardly fighting. She resented the fact that people could justly
+consider her parents ineligible, and for that reason her also. She was
+intrinsically as worth while as any one. Cowperwood, so able, and
+rapidly becoming so distinguished, seemed to realize it. The days that
+had been passing had brought them somewhat closer together in spirit.
+He was nice to her and liked to talk to her. Whenever he was at her
+home now, or she was at his and he was present, he managed somehow to
+say a word. He would come over quite near and look at her in a warm
+friendly fashion.
+
+“Well, Aileen”—she could see his genial eyes—“how is it with you? How
+are your father and mother? Been out driving? That’s fine. I saw you
+to-day. You looked beautiful.”
+
+“Oh, Mr. Cowperwood!”
+
+“You did. You looked stunning. A black riding-habit becomes you. I can
+tell your gold hair a long way off.”
+
+“Oh, now, you mustn’t say that to me. You’ll make me vain. My mother
+and father tell me I’m too vain as it is.”
+
+“Never mind your mother and father. I say you looked stunning, and you
+did. You always do.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+She gave a little gasp of delight. The color mounted to her cheeks and
+temples. Mr. Cowperwood knew of course. He was so informed and
+intensely forceful. And already he was so much admired by so many, her
+own father and mother included, and by Mr. Mollenhauer and Mr. Simpson,
+so she heard. And his own home and office were so beautiful. Besides,
+his quiet intensity matched her restless force.
+
+Aileen and her sister were accordingly invited to the reception but the
+Butlers mere and pere were given to understand, in as tactful a manner
+as possible, that the dance afterward was principally for young people.
+
+The reception brought a throng of people. There were many, very many,
+introductions. There were tactful descriptions of little effects Mr.
+Ellsworth had achieved under rather trying circumstances; walks under
+the pergola; viewings of both homes in detail. Many of the guests were
+old friends. They gathered in the libraries and dining-rooms and
+talked. There was much jesting, some slappings of shoulders, some good
+story-telling, and so the afternoon waned into evening, and they went
+away.
+
+Aileen had created an impression in a street costume of dark blue silk
+with velvet pelisse to match, and trimmed with elaborate pleatings and
+shirrings of the same materials. A toque of blue velvet, with high
+crown and one large dark-red imitation orchid, had given her a jaunty,
+dashing air. Beneath the toque her red-gold hair was arranged in an
+enormous chignon, with one long curl escaping over her collar. She was
+not exactly as daring as she seemed, but she loved to give that
+impression.
+
+“You look wonderful,” Cowperwood said as she passed him.
+
+“I’ll look different to-night,” was her answer.
+
+She had swung herself with a slight, swaggering stride into the
+dining-room and disappeared. Norah and her mother stayed to chat with
+Mrs. Cowperwood.
+
+“Well, it’s lovely now, isn’t it?” breathed Mrs. Butler. “Sure you’ll
+be happy here. Sure you will. When Eddie fixed the house we’re in now,
+says I: ‘Eddie, it’s almost too fine for us altogether—surely it is,’
+and he says, says ’e, ‘Norah, nothin’ this side o’ heavin or beyond is
+too good for ye’—and he kissed me. Now what d’ye think of that fer a
+big, hulkin’ gossoon?”
+
+“It’s perfectly lovely, I think, Mrs. Butler,” commented Mrs.
+Cowperwood, a little bit nervous because of others.
+
+“Mama does love to talk so. Come on, mama. Let’s look at the
+dining-room.” It was Norah talking.
+
+“Well, may ye always be happy in it. I wish ye that. I’ve always been
+happy in mine. May ye always be happy.” And she waddled good-naturedly
+along.
+
+The Cowperwood family dined hastily alone between seven and eight. At
+nine the evening guests began to arrive, and now the throng was of a
+different complexion—girls in mauve and cream-white and salmon-pink and
+silver-gray, laying aside lace shawls and loose dolmans, and the men in
+smooth black helping them. Outside in the cold, the carriage doors were
+slamming, and new guests were arriving constantly. Mrs. Cowperwood
+stood with her husband and Anna in the main entrance to the reception
+room, while Joseph and Edward Cowperwood and Mr. and Mrs. Henry W.
+Cowperwood lingered in the background. Lillian looked charming in a
+train gown of old rose, with a low, square neck showing a delicate
+chemisette of fine lace. Her face and figure were still notable, though
+her face was not as smoothly sweet as it had been years before when
+Cowperwood had first met her. Anna Cowperwood was not pretty, though
+she could not be said to be homely. She was small and dark, with a
+turned-up nose, snapping black eyes, a pert, inquisitive, intelligent,
+and alas, somewhat critical, air. She had considerable tact in the
+matter of dressing. Black, in spite of her darkness, with shining beads
+of sequins on it, helped her complexion greatly, as did a red rose in
+her hair. She had smooth, white well-rounded arms and shoulders. Bright
+eyes, a pert manner, clever remarks—these assisted to create an
+illusion of charm, though, as she often said, it was of little use.
+“Men want the dolly things.”
+
+In the evening inpour of young men and women came Aileen and Norah, the
+former throwing off a thin net veil of black lace and a dolman of black
+silk, which her brother Owen took from her. Norah was with Callum, a
+straight, erect, smiling young Irishman, who looked as though he might
+carve a notable career for himself. She wore a short, girlish dress
+that came to a little below her shoe-tops, a pale-figured lavender and
+white silk, with a fluffy hoop-skirt of dainty laced-edged ruffles,
+against which tiny bows of lavender stood out in odd places. There was
+a great sash of lavender about her waist, and in her hair a rosette of
+the same color. She looked exceedingly winsome—eager and bright-eyed.
+
+But behind her was her sister in ravishing black satin, scaled as a
+fish with glistening crimsoned-silver sequins, her round, smooth arms
+bare to the shoulders, her corsage cut as low in the front and back as
+her daring, in relation to her sense of the proprieties, permitted. She
+was naturally of exquisite figure, erect, full-breasted, with somewhat
+more than gently swelling hips, which, nevertheless, melted into
+lovely, harmonious lines; and this low-cut corsage, receding back and
+front into a deep V, above a short, gracefully draped overskirt of
+black tulle and silver tissue, set her off to perfection. Her full,
+smooth, roundly modeled neck was enhanced in its cream-pink whiteness
+by an inch-wide necklet of black jet cut in many faceted black squares.
+Her complexion, naturally high in tone because of the pink of health,
+was enhanced by the tiniest speck of black court-plaster laid upon her
+cheekbone; and her hair, heightened in its reddish-gold by her dress,
+was fluffed loosely and adroitly about her eyes. The main mass of this
+treasure was done in two loose braids caught up in a black spangled net
+at the back of her neck; and her eyebrows had been emphasized by a
+pencil into something almost as significant as her hair. She was, for
+the occasion, a little too emphatic, perhaps, and yet more because of
+her burning vitality than of her costume. Art for her should have meant
+subduing her physical and spiritual significance. Life for her meant
+emphasizing them.
+
+“Lillian!” Anna nudged her sister-in-law. She was grieved to think that
+Aileen was wearing black and looked so much better than either of them.
+
+“I see,” Lillian replied, in a subdued tone.
+
+“So you’re back again.” She was addressing Aileen. “It’s chilly out,
+isn’t it?”
+
+“I don’t mind. Don’t the rooms look lovely?”
+
+She was gazing at the softly lighted chambers and the throng before
+her.
+
+Norah began to babble to Anna. “You know, I just thought I never would
+get this old thing on.” She was speaking of her dress. “Aileen wouldn’t
+help me—the mean thing!”
+
+Aileen had swept on to Cowperwood and his mother, who was near him. She
+had removed from her arm the black satin ribbon which held her train
+and kicked the skirts loose and free. Her eyes gleamed almost
+pleadingly for all her hauteur, like a spirited collie’s, and her even
+teeth showed beautifully.
+
+Cowperwood understood her precisely, as he did any fine, spirited
+animal.
+
+“I can’t tell you how nice you look,” he whispered to her, familiarly,
+as though there was an old understanding between them. “You’re like
+fire and song.”
+
+He did not know why he said this. He was not especially poetic. He had
+not formulated the phrase beforehand. Since his first glimpse of her in
+the hall, his feelings and ideas had been leaping and plunging like
+spirited horses. This girl made him set his teeth and narrow his eyes.
+Involuntarily he squared his jaw, looking more defiant, forceful,
+efficient, as she drew near.
+
+But Aileen and her sister were almost instantly surrounded by young men
+seeking to be introduced and to write their names on dance-cards, and
+for the time being she was lost to view.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII
+
+
+The seeds of change—subtle, metaphysical—are rooted deeply. From the
+first mention of the dance by Mrs. Cowperwood and Anna, Aileen had been
+conscious of a desire toward a more effective presentation of herself
+than as yet, for all her father’s money, she had been able to achieve.
+The company which she was to encounter, as she well knew, was to be so
+much more impressive, distinguished than anything she had heretofore
+known socially. Then, too, Cowperwood appeared as something more
+definite in her mind than he had been before, and to save herself she
+could not get him out of her consciousness.
+
+A vision of him had come to her but an hour before as she was dressing.
+In a way she had dressed for him. She was never forgetful of the times
+he had looked at her in an interested way. He had commented on her
+hands once. To-day he had said that she looked “stunning,” and she had
+thought how easy it would be to impress him to-night—to show him how
+truly beautiful she was.
+
+She had stood before her mirror between eight and nine—it was
+nine-fifteen before she was really ready—and pondered over what she
+should wear. There were two tall pier-glasses in her wardrobe—an unduly
+large piece of furniture—and one in her closet door. She stood before
+the latter, looking at her bare arms and shoulders, her shapely figure,
+thinking of the fact that her left shoulder had a dimple, and that she
+had selected garnet garters decorated with heart-shaped silver buckles.
+The corset could not be made quite tight enough at first, and she
+chided her maid, Kathleen Kelly. She studied how to arrange her hair,
+and there was much ado about that before it was finally adjusted. She
+penciled her eyebrows and plucked at the hair about her forehead to
+make it loose and shadowy. She cut black court-plaster with her
+nail-shears and tried different-sized pieces in different places.
+Finally, she found one size and one place that suited her. She turned
+her head from side to side, looking at the combined effect of her hair,
+her penciled brows, her dimpled shoulder, and the black beauty-spot. If
+some one man could see her as she was now, some time! Which man? That
+thought scurried back like a frightened rat into its hole. She was, for
+all her strength, afraid of the thought of the one—the very deadly—the
+man.
+
+And then she came to the matter of a train-gown. Kathleen laid out
+five, for Aileen had come into the joy and honor of these things
+recently, and she had, with the permission of her mother and father,
+indulged herself to the full. She studied a golden-yellow silk, with
+cream-lace shoulder-straps, and some gussets of garnet beads in the
+train that shimmered delightfully, but set it aside. She considered
+favorably a black-and-white striped silk of odd gray effect, and,
+though she was sorely tempted to wear it, finally let it go. There was
+a maroon dress, with basque and overskirt over white silk; a rich
+cream-colored satin; and then this black sequined gown, which she
+finally chose. She tried on the cream-colored satin first, however,
+being in much doubt about it; but her penciled eyes and beauty-spot did
+not seem to harmonize with it. Then she put on the black silk with its
+glistening crimsoned-silver sequins, and, lo, it touched her. She liked
+its coquettish drapery of tulle and silver about the hips. The
+“overskirt,” which was at that time just coming into fashion, though
+avoided by the more conservative, had been adopted by Aileen with
+enthusiasm. She thrilled a little at the rustle of this black dress,
+and thrust her chin and nose forward to make it set right. Then after
+having Kathleen tighten her corsets a little more, she gathered the
+train over her arm by its train-band and looked again. Something was
+wanting. Oh, yes, her neck! What to wear—red coral? It did not look
+right. A string of pearls? That would not do either. There was a
+necklace made of small cameos set in silver which her mother had
+purchased, and another of diamonds which belonged to her mother, but
+they were not right. Finally, her jet necklet, which she did not value
+very highly, came into her mind, and, oh, how lovely it looked! How
+soft and smooth and glistening her chin looked above it. She caressed
+her neck affectionately, called for her black lace mantilla, her long,
+black silk dolman lined with red, and she was ready.
+
+The ball-room, as she entered, was lovely enough. The young men and
+young women she saw there were interesting, and she was not wanting for
+admirers. The most aggressive of these youths—the most
+forceful—recognized in this maiden a fillip to life, a sting to
+existence. She was as a honey-jar surrounded by too hungry flies.
+
+But it occurred to her, as her dance-list was filling up, that there
+was not much left for Mr. Cowperwood, if he should care to dance with
+her.
+
+Cowperwood was meditating, as he received the last of the guests, on
+the subtlety of this matter of the sex arrangement of life. Two sexes.
+He was not at all sure that there was any law governing them. By
+comparison now with Aileen Butler, his wife looked rather dull, quite
+too old, and when he was ten years older she would look very much
+older.
+
+“Oh, yes, Ellsworth had made quite an attractive arrangement out of
+these two houses—better than we ever thought he could do.” He was
+talking to Henry Hale Sanderson, a young banker. “He had the advantage
+of combining two into one, and I think he’s done more with my little
+one, considering the limitations of space, than he has with this big
+one. Father’s has the advantage of size. I tell the old gentleman he’s
+simply built a lean-to for me.”
+
+His father and a number of his cronies were over in the dining-room of
+his grand home, glad to get away from the crowd. He would have to stay,
+and, besides, he wanted to. Had he better dance with Aileen? His wife
+cared little for dancing, but he would have to dance with her at least
+once. There was Mrs. Seneca Davis smiling at him, and Aileen. By
+George, how wonderful! What a girl!
+
+“I suppose your dance-list is full to overflowing. Let me see.” He was
+standing before her and she was holding out the little blue-bordered,
+gold-monogrammed booklet. An orchestra was playing in the music room.
+The dance would begin shortly. There were delicately constructed,
+gold-tinted chairs about the walls and behind palms.
+
+He looked down into her eyes—those excited, life-loving, eager eyes.
+
+“You’re quite full up. Let me see. Nine, ten, eleven. Well, that will
+be enough. I don’t suppose I shall want to dance very much. It’s nice
+to be popular.”
+
+“I’m not sure about number three. I think that’s a mistake. You might
+have that if you wish.”
+
+She was falsifying.
+
+“It doesn’t matter so much about him, does it?”
+
+His cheeks flushed a little as he said this.
+
+“No.”
+
+Her own flamed.
+
+“Well, I’ll see where you are when it’s called. You’re darling. I’m
+afraid of you.” He shot a level, interpretive glance into her eyes,
+then left. Aileen’s bosom heaved. It was hard to breathe sometimes in
+this warm air.
+
+While he was dancing first with Mrs. Cowperwood and later with Mrs.
+Seneca Davis, and still later with Mrs. Martyn Walker, Cowperwood had
+occasion to look at Aileen often, and each time that he did so there
+swept over him a sense of great vigor there, of beautiful if raw,
+dynamic energy that to him was irresistible and especially so to-night.
+She was so young. She was beautiful, this girl, and in spite of his
+wife’s repeated derogatory comments he felt that she was nearer to his
+clear, aggressive, unblinking attitude than any one whom he had yet
+seen in the form of woman. She was unsophisticated, in a way, that was
+plain, and yet in another way it would take so little to make her
+understand so much. Largeness was the sense he had of her—not
+physically, though she was nearly as tall as himself—but emotionally.
+She seemed so intensely alive. She passed close to him a number of
+times, her eyes wide and smiling, her lips parted, her teeth agleam,
+and he felt a stirring of sympathy and companionship for her which he
+had not previously experienced. She was lovely, all of her—delightful.
+
+“I’m wondering if that dance is open now,” he said to her as he drew
+near toward the beginning of the third set. She was seated with her
+latest admirer in a far corner of the general living-room, a clear
+floor now waxed to perfection. A few palms here and there made
+embrasured parapets of green. “I hope you’ll excuse me,” he added,
+deferentially, to her companion.
+
+“Surely,” the latter replied, rising.
+
+“Yes, indeed,” she replied. “And you’d better stay here with me. It’s
+going to begin soon. You won’t mind?” she added, giving her companion a
+radiant smile.
+
+“Not at all. I’ve had a lovely waltz.” He strolled off.
+
+Cowperwood sat down. “That’s young Ledoux, isn’t it? I thought so. I
+saw you dancing. You like it, don’t you?”
+
+“I’m crazy about it.”
+
+“Well, I can’t say that myself. It’s fascinating, though. Your partner
+makes such a difference. Mrs. Cowperwood doesn’t like it as much as I
+do.”
+
+His mention of Lillian made Aileen think of her in a faintly derogative
+way for a moment.
+
+“I think you dance very well. I watched you, too.” She questioned
+afterwards whether she should have said this. It sounded most forward
+now—almost brazen.
+
+“Oh, did you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+He was a little keyed up because of her—slightly cloudy in his
+thoughts—because she was generating a problem in his life, or would if
+he let her, and so his talk was a little tame. He was thinking of
+something to say—some words which would bring them a little nearer
+together. But for the moment he could not. Truth to tell, he wanted to
+say a great deal.
+
+“Well, that was nice of you,” he added, after a moment. “What made you
+do it?”
+
+He turned with a mock air of inquiry. The music was beginning again.
+The dancers were rising. He arose.
+
+He had not intended to give this particular remark a serious turn; but,
+now that she was so near him, he looked into her eyes steadily but with
+a soft appeal and said, “Yes, why?”
+
+They had come out from behind the palms. He had put his hand to her
+waist. His right arm held her left extended arm to arm, palm to palm.
+Her right hand was on his shoulder, and she was close to him, looking
+into his eyes. As they began the gay undulations of the waltz she
+looked away and then down without answering. Her movements were as
+light and airy as those of a butterfly. He felt a sudden lightness
+himself, communicated as by an invisible current. He wanted to match
+the suppleness of her body with his own, and did. Her arms, the flash
+and glint of the crimson sequins against the smooth, black silk of her
+closely fitting dress, her neck, her glowing, radiant hair, all
+combined to provoke a slight intellectual intoxication. She was so
+vigorously young, so, to him, truly beautiful.
+
+“But you didn’t answer,” he continued.
+
+“Isn’t this lovely music?”
+
+He pressed her fingers.
+
+She lifted shy eyes to him now, for, in spite of her gay, aggressive
+force, she was afraid of him. His personality was obviously so
+dominating. Now that he was so close to her, dancing, she conceived of
+him as something quite wonderful, and yet she experienced a nervous
+reaction—a momentary desire to run away.
+
+“Very well, if you won’t tell me,” he smiled, mockingly.
+
+He thought she wanted him to talk to her so, to tease her with
+suggestions of this concealed feeling of his—this strong liking. He
+wondered what could come of any such understanding as this, anyhow?
+
+“Oh, I just wanted to see how you danced,” she said, tamely, the force
+of her original feeling having been weakened by a thought of what she
+was doing. He noted the change and smiled. It was lovely to be dancing
+with her. He had not thought mere dancing could hold such charm.
+
+“You like me?” he said, suddenly, as the music drew to its close.
+
+She thrilled from head to toe at the question. A piece of ice dropped
+down her back could not have startled her more. It was apparently
+tactless, and yet it was anything but tactless. She looked up quickly,
+directly, but his strong eyes were too much for her.
+
+“Why, yes,” she answered, as the music stopped, trying to keep an even
+tone to her voice. She was glad they were walking toward a chair.
+
+“I like you so much,” he said, “that I have been wondering if you
+really like me.” There was an appeal in his voice, soft and gentle. His
+manner was almost sad.
+
+“Why, yes,” she replied, instantly, returning to her earlier mood
+toward him. “You know I do.”
+
+“I need some one like you to like me,” he continued, in the same vein.
+“I need some one like you to talk to. I didn’t think so before—but now
+I do. You are beautiful—wonderful.”
+
+“We mustn’t,” she said. “I mustn’t. I don’t know what I’m doing.” She
+looked at a young man strolling toward her, and asked: “I have to
+explain to him. He’s the one I had this dance with.”
+
+Cowperwood understood. He walked away. He was quite warm and tense
+now—almost nervous. It was quite clear to him that he had done or was
+contemplating perhaps a very treacherous thing. Under the current code
+of society he had no right to do it. It was against the rules, as they
+were understood by everybody. Her father, for instance—his father—every
+one in this particular walk of life. However, much breaking of the
+rules under the surface of things there might be, the rules were still
+there. As he had heard one young man remark once at school, when some
+story had been told of a boy leading a girl astray and to a disastrous
+end, “That isn’t the way at all.”
+
+Still, now that he had said this, strong thoughts of her were in his
+mind. And despite his involved social and financial position, which he
+now recalled, it was interesting to him to see how deliberately and
+even calculatingly—and worse, enthusiastically—he was pumping the
+bellows that tended only to heighten the flames of his desire for this
+girl; to feed a fire that might ultimately consume him—and how
+deliberately and resourcefully!
+
+Aileen toyed aimlessly with her fan as a black-haired, thin-faced young
+law student talked to her, and seeing Norah in the distance she asked
+to be allowed to run over to her.
+
+“Oh, Aileen,” called Norah, “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.
+Where have you been?”
+
+“Dancing, of course. Where do you suppose I’ve been? Didn’t you see me
+on the floor?”
+
+“No, I didn’t,” complained Norah, as though it were most essential that
+she should. “How late are you going to stay?”
+
+“Until it’s over, I suppose. I don’t know.”
+
+“Owen says he’s going at twelve.”
+
+“Well, that doesn’t matter. Some one will take me home. Are you having
+a good time?”
+
+“Fine. Oh, let me tell you. I stepped on a lady’s dress over there,
+last dance. She was terribly angry. She gave me such a look.”
+
+“Well, never mind, honey. She won’t hurt you. Where are you going now?”
+
+Aileen always maintained a most guardian-like attitude toward her
+sister.
+
+“I want to find Callum. He has to dance with me next time. I know what
+he’s trying to do. He’s trying to get away from me. But he won’t.”
+
+Aileen smiled. Norah looked very sweet. And she was so bright. What
+would she think of her if she knew? She turned back, and her fourth
+partner sought her. She began talking gayly, for she felt that she had
+to make a show of composure; but all the while there was ringing in her
+ears that definite question of his, “You like me, don’t you?” and her
+later uncertain but not less truthful answer, “Yes, of course I do.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX
+
+
+The growth of a passion is a very peculiar thing. In highly organized
+intellectual and artistic types it is so often apt to begin with keen
+appreciation of certain qualities, modified by many, many mental
+reservations. The egoist, the intellectual, gives but little of himself
+and asks much. Nevertheless, the lover of life, male or female, finding
+himself or herself in sympathetic accord with such a nature, is apt to
+gain much.
+
+Cowperwood was innately and primarily an egoist and intellectual,
+though blended strongly therewith, was a humane and democratic spirit.
+We think of egoism and intellectualism as closely confined to the arts.
+Finance is an art. And it presents the operations of the subtlest of
+the intellectuals and of the egoists. Cowperwood was a financier.
+Instead of dwelling on the works of nature, its beauty and subtlety, to
+his material disadvantage, he found a happy mean, owing to the
+swiftness of his intellectual operations, whereby he could,
+intellectually and emotionally, rejoice in the beauty of life without
+interfering with his perpetual material and financial calculations. And
+when it came to women and morals, which involved so much relating to
+beauty, happiness, a sense of distinction and variety in living, he was
+but now beginning to suspect for himself at least that apart from
+maintaining organized society in its present form there was no basis
+for this one-life, one-love idea. How had it come about that so many
+people agreed on this single point, that it was good and necessary to
+marry one woman and cleave to her until death? He did not know. It was
+not for him to bother about the subtleties of evolution, which even
+then was being noised abroad, or to ferret out the curiosities of
+history in connection with this matter. He had no time. Suffice it that
+the vagaries of temperament and conditions with which he came into
+immediate contact proved to him that there was great dissatisfaction
+with that idea. People did not cleave to each other until death; and in
+thousands of cases where they did, they did not want to. Quickness of
+mind, subtlety of idea, fortuitousness of opportunity, made it possible
+for some people to right their matrimonial and social infelicities;
+whereas for others, because of dullness of wit, thickness of
+comprehension, poverty, and lack of charm, there was no escape from the
+slough of their despond. They were compelled by some devilish accident
+of birth or lack of force or resourcefulness to stew in their own juice
+of wretchedness, or to shuffle off this mortal coil—which under other
+circumstances had such glittering possibilities—via the rope, the
+knife, the bullet, or the cup of poison.
+
+“I would die, too,” he thought to himself, one day, reading of a man
+who, confined by disease and poverty, had lived for twelve years alone
+in a back bedroom attended by an old and probably decrepit housekeeper.
+A darning-needle forced into his heart had ended his earthly woes. “To
+the devil with such a life! Why twelve years? Why not at the end of the
+second or third?”
+
+Again, it was so very evident, in so many ways, that force was the
+answer—great mental and physical force. Why, these giants of commerce
+and money could do as they pleased in this life, and did. He had
+already had ample local evidence of it in more than one direction.
+Worse—the little guardians of so-called law and morality, the
+newspapers, the preachers, the police, and the public moralists
+generally, so loud in their denunciation of evil in humble places, were
+cowards all when it came to corruption in high ones. They did not dare
+to utter a feeble squeak until some giant had accidentally fallen and
+they could do so without danger to themselves. Then, O Heavens, the
+palaver! What beatings of tom-toms! What mouthings of pharisaical
+moralities—platitudes! Run now, good people, for you may see clearly
+how evil is dealt with in high places! It made him smile. Such
+hypocrisy! Such cant! Still, so the world was organized, and it was not
+for him to set it right. Let it wag as it would. The thing for him to
+do was to get rich and hold his own—to build up a seeming of virtue and
+dignity which would pass muster for the genuine thing. Force would do
+that. Quickness of wit. And he had these. “I satisfy myself,” was his
+motto; and it might well have been emblazoned upon any coat of arms
+which he could have contrived to set forth his claim to intellectual
+and social nobility.
+
+But this matter of Aileen was up for consideration and solution at this
+present moment, and because of his forceful, determined character he
+was presently not at all disturbed by the problem it presented. It was
+a problem, like some of those knotty financial complications which
+presented themselves daily; but it was not insoluble. What did he want
+to do? He couldn’t leave his wife and fly with Aileen, that was
+certain. He had too many connections. He had too many social, and
+thinking of his children and parents, emotional as well as financial
+ties to bind him. Besides, he was not at all sure that he wanted to. He
+did not intend to leave his growing interests, and at the same time he
+did not intend to give up Aileen immediately. The unheralded
+manifestation of interest on her part was too attractive. Mrs.
+Cowperwood was no longer what she should be physically and mentally,
+and that in itself to him was sufficient to justify his present
+interest in this girl. Why fear anything, if only he could figure out a
+way to achieve it without harm to himself? At the same time he thought
+it might never be possible for him to figure out any practical or
+protective program for either himself or Aileen, and that made him
+silent and reflective. For by now he was intensely drawn to her, as he
+could feel—something chemic and hence dynamic was uppermost in him now
+and clamoring for expression.
+
+At the same time, in contemplating his wife in connection with all
+this, he had many qualms, some emotional, some financial. While she had
+yielded to his youthful enthusiasm for her after her husband’s death,
+he had only since learned that she was a natural conservator of public
+morals—the cold purity of the snowdrift in so far as the world might
+see, combined at times with the murky mood of the wanton. And yet, as
+he had also learned, she was ashamed of the passion that at times swept
+and dominated her. This irritated Cowperwood, as it would always
+irritate any strong, acquisitive, direct-seeing temperament. While he
+had no desire to acquaint the whole world with his feelings, why should
+there be concealment between them, or at least mental evasion of a fact
+which physically she subscribed to? Why do one thing and think another?
+To be sure, she was devoted to him in her quiet way, not passionately
+(as he looked back he could not say that she had ever been that), but
+intellectually. Duty, as she understood it, played a great part in
+this. She was dutiful. And then what people thought, what the
+time-spirit demanded—these were the great things. Aileen, on the
+contrary, was probably not dutiful, and it was obvious that she had no
+temperamental connection with current convention. No doubt she had been
+as well instructed as many another girl, but look at her. She was not
+obeying her instructions.
+
+In the next three months this relationship took on a more flagrant
+form. Aileen, knowing full well what her parents would think, how
+unspeakable in the mind of the current world were the thoughts she was
+thinking, persisted, nevertheless, in so thinking and longing.
+Cowperwood, now that she had gone thus far and compromised herself in
+intention, if not in deed, took on a peculiar charm for her. It was not
+his body—great passion is never that, exactly. The flavor of his spirit
+was what attracted and compelled, like the glow of a flame to a moth.
+There was a light of romance in his eyes, which, however governed and
+controlled—was directive and almost all-powerful to her.
+
+When he touched her hand at parting, it was as though she had received
+an electric shock, and she recalled that it was very difficult for her
+to look directly into his eyes. Something akin to a destructive force
+seemed to issue from them at times. Other people, men particularly,
+found it difficult to face Cowperwood’s glazed stare. It was as though
+there were another pair of eyes behind those they saw, watching through
+thin, obscuring curtains. You could not tell what he was thinking.
+
+And during the next few months she found herself coming closer and
+closer to Cowperwood. At his home one evening, seated at the piano, no
+one else being present at the moment, he leaned over and kissed her.
+There was a cold, snowy street visible through the interstices of the
+hangings of the windows, and gas-lamps flickering outside. He had come
+in early, and hearing Aileen, he came to where she was seated at the
+piano. She was wearing a rough, gray wool cloth dress, ornately banded
+with fringed Oriental embroidery in blue and burnt-orange, and her
+beauty was further enhanced by a gray hat planned to match her dress,
+with a plume of shaded orange and blue. On her fingers were four or
+five rings, far too many—an opal, an emerald, a ruby, and a
+diamond—flashing visibly as she played.
+
+She knew it was he, without turning. He came beside her, and she looked
+up smiling, the reverie evoked by Schubert partly vanishing—or melting
+into another mood. Suddenly he bent over and pressed his lips firmly to
+hers. His mustache thrilled her with its silky touch. She stopped
+playing and tried to catch her breath, for, strong as she was, it
+affected her breathing. Her heart was beating like a triphammer. She
+did not say, “Oh,” or, “You mustn’t,” but rose and walked over to a
+window, where she lifted a curtain, pretending to look out. She felt as
+though she might faint, so intensely happy was she.
+
+Cowperwood followed her quickly. Slipping his arms about her waist, he
+looked at her flushed cheeks, her clear, moist eyes and red mouth.
+
+“You love me?” he whispered, stern and compelling because of his
+desire.
+
+“Yes! Yes! You know I do.”
+
+He crushed her face to his, and she put up her hands and stroked his
+hair.
+
+A thrilling sense of possession, mastery, happiness and understanding,
+love of her and of her body, suddenly overwhelmed him.
+
+“I love you,” he said, as though he were surprised to hear himself say
+it. “I didn’t think I did, but I do. You’re beautiful. I’m wild about
+you.”
+
+“And I love you” she answered. “I can’t help it. I know I shouldn’t,
+but—oh—” Her hands closed tight over his ears and temples. She put her
+lips to his and dreamed into his eyes. Then she stepped away quickly,
+looking out into the street, and he walked back into the living-room.
+They were quite alone. He was debating whether he should risk anything
+further when Norah, having been in to see Anna next door, appeared and
+not long afterward Mrs. Cowperwood. Then Aileen and Norah left.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX
+
+
+This definite and final understanding having been reached, it was but
+natural that this liaison should proceed to a closer and closer
+relationship. Despite her religious upbringing, Aileen was decidedly a
+victim of her temperament. Current religious feeling and belief could
+not control her. For the past nine or ten years there had been slowly
+forming in her mind a notion of what her lover should be like. He
+should be strong, handsome, direct, successful, with clear eyes, a
+ruddy glow of health, and a certain native understanding and sympathy—a
+love of life which matched her own. Many young men had approached her.
+Perhaps the nearest realization of her ideal was Father David, of St.
+Timothy’s, and he was, of course, a priest and sworn to celibacy. No
+word had ever passed between them but he had been as conscious of her
+as she of him. Then came Frank Cowperwood, and by degrees, because of
+his presence and contact, he had been slowly built up in her mind as
+the ideal person. She was drawn as planets are drawn to their sun.
+
+It is a question as to what would have happened if antagonistic forces
+could have been introduced just at this time. Emotions and liaisons of
+this character can, of course, occasionally be broken up and destroyed.
+The characters of the individuals can be modified or changed to a
+certain extent, but the force must be quite sufficient. Fear is a great
+deterrent—fear of material loss where there is no spiritual dread—but
+wealth and position so often tend to destroy this dread. It is so easy
+to scheme with means. Aileen had no spiritual dread whatever.
+Cowperwood was without spiritual or religious feeling. He looked at
+this girl, and his one thought was how could he so deceive the world
+that he could enjoy her love and leave his present state undisturbed.
+Love her he did surely.
+
+Business necessitated his calling at the Butlers’ quite frequently, and
+on each occasion he saw Aileen. She managed to slip forward and squeeze
+his hand the first time he came—to steal a quick, vivid kiss; and
+another time, as he was going out, she suddenly appeared from behind
+the curtains hanging at the parlor door.
+
+“Honey!”
+
+The voice was soft and coaxing. He turned, giving her a warning nod in
+the direction of her father’s room upstairs.
+
+She stood there, holding out one hand, and he stepped forward for a
+second. Instantly her arms were about his neck, as he slipped his about
+her waist.
+
+“I long to see you so.”
+
+“I, too. I’ll fix some way. I’m thinking.”
+
+He released her arms, and went out, and she ran to the window and
+looked out after him. He was walking west on the street, for his house
+was only a few blocks away, and she looked at the breadth of his
+shoulders, the balance of his form. He stepped so briskly, so
+incisively. Ah, this was a man! He was her Frank. She thought of him in
+that light already. Then she sat down at the piano and played pensively
+until dinner.
+
+And it was so easy for the resourceful mind of Frank Cowperwood,
+wealthy as he was, to suggest ways and means. In his younger
+gallivantings about places of ill repute, and his subsequent occasional
+variations from the straight and narrow path, he had learned much of
+the curious resources of immorality. Being a city of five hundred
+thousand and more at this time, Philadelphia had its nondescript
+hotels, where one might go, cautiously and fairly protected from
+observation; and there were houses of a conservative, residential
+character, where appointments might be made, for a consideration. And
+as for safeguards against the production of new life—they were not
+mysteries to him any longer. He knew all about them. Care was the point
+of caution. He had to be cautious, for he was so rapidly coming to be
+an influential and a distinguished man. Aileen, of course, was not
+conscious, except in a vague way, of the drift of her passion; the
+ultimate destiny to which this affection might lead was not clear to
+her. Her craving was for love—to be fondled and caressed—and she really
+did not think so much further. Further thoughts along this line were
+like rats that showed their heads out of dark holes in shadowy corners
+and scuttled back at the least sound. And, anyhow, all that was to be
+connected with Cowperwood would be beautiful. She really did not think
+that he loved her yet as he should; but he would. She did not know that
+she wanted to interfere with the claims of his wife. She did not think
+she did. But it would not hurt Mrs. Cowperwood if Frank loved
+her—Aileen—also.
+
+How shall we explain these subtleties of temperament and desire? Life
+has to deal with them at every turn. They will not down, and the large,
+placid movements of nature outside of man’s little organisms would
+indicate that she is not greatly concerned. We see much punishment in
+the form of jails, diseases, failures, and wrecks; but we also see that
+the old tendency is not visibly lessened. Is there no law outside of
+the subtle will and power of the individual to achieve? If not, it is
+surely high time that we knew it—one and all. We might then agree to do
+as we do; but there would be no silly illusion as to divine regulation.
+Vox populi, vox Dei.
+
+So there were other meetings, lovely hours which they soon began to
+spend the moment her passion waxed warm enough to assure compliance,
+without great fear and without thought of the deadly risk involved.
+From odd moments in his own home, stolen when there was no one about to
+see, they advanced to clandestine meetings beyond the confines of the
+city. Cowperwood was not one who was temperamentally inclined to lose
+his head and neglect his business. As a matter of fact, the more he
+thought of this rather unexpected affectional development, the more
+certain he was that he must not let it interfere with his business time
+and judgment. His office required his full attention from nine until
+three, anyhow. He could give it until five-thirty with profit; but he
+could take several afternoons off, from three-thirty until five-thirty
+or six, and no one would be the wiser. It was customary for Aileen to
+drive alone almost every afternoon a spirited pair of bays, or to ride
+a mount, bought by her father for her from a noted horse-dealer in
+Baltimore. Since Cowperwood also drove and rode, it was not difficult
+to arrange meeting-places far out on the Wissahickon or the Schuylkill
+road. There were many spots in the newly laid-out park, which were as
+free from interruption as the depths of a forest. It was always
+possible that they might encounter some one; but it was also always
+possible to make a rather plausible explanation, or none at all, since
+even in case of such an encounter nothing, ordinarily, would be
+suspected.
+
+So, for the time being there was love-making, the usual billing and
+cooing of lovers in a simple and much less than final fashion; and the
+lovely horseback rides together under the green trees of the
+approaching spring were idyllic. Cowperwood awakened to a sense of joy
+in life such as he fancied, in the blush of this new desire, he had
+never experienced before. Lillian had been lovely in those early days
+in which he had first called on her in North Front Street, and he had
+fancied himself unspeakably happy at that time; but that was nearly ten
+years since, and he had forgotten. Since then he had had no great
+passion, no notable liaison; and then, all at once, in the midst of his
+new, great business prosperity, Aileen. Her young body and soul, her
+passionate illusions. He could see always, for all her daring, that she
+knew so little of the calculating, brutal world with which he was
+connected. Her father had given her all the toys she wanted without
+stint; her mother and brothers had coddled her, particularly her
+mother. Her young sister thought she was adorable. No one imagined for
+one moment that Aileen would ever do anything wrong. She was too
+sensible, after all, too eager to get up in the world. Why should she,
+when her life lay open and happy before her—a delightful love-match,
+some day soon, with some very eligible and satisfactory lover?
+
+“When you marry, Aileen,” her mother used to say to her, “we’ll have a
+grand time here. Sure we’ll do the house over then, if we don’t do it
+before. Eddie will have to fix it up, or I’ll do it meself. Never
+fear.”
+
+“Yes—well, I’d rather you’d fix it now,” was her reply.
+
+Butler himself used to strike her jovially on the shoulder in a rough,
+loving way, and ask, “Well, have you found him yet?” or “Is he hanging
+around the outside watchin’ for ye?”
+
+If she said, “No,” he would reply: “Well, he will be, never fear—worse
+luck. I’ll hate to see ye go, girlie! You can stay here as long as ye
+want to, and ye want to remember that you can always come back.”
+
+Aileen paid very little attention to this bantering. She loved her
+father, but it was all such a matter of course. It was the commonplace
+of her existence, and not so very significant, though delightful
+enough.
+
+But how eagerly she yielded herself to Cowperwood under the spring
+trees these days! She had no sense of that ultimate yielding that was
+coming, for now he merely caressed and talked to her. He was a little
+doubtful about himself. His growing liberties for himself seemed
+natural enough, but in a sense of fairness to her he began to talk to
+her about what their love might involve. Would she? Did she understand?
+This phase of it puzzled and frightened Aileen a little at first. She
+stood before him one afternoon in her black riding-habit and high silk
+riding-hat perched jauntily on her red-gold hair; and striking her
+riding-skirt with her short whip, pondering doubtfully as she listened.
+He had asked her whether she knew what she was doing? Whither they were
+drifting? If she loved him truly enough? The two horses were tethered
+in a thicket a score of yards away from the main road and from the bank
+of a tumbling stream, which they had approached. She was trying to
+discover if she could see them. It was pretense. There was no interest
+in her glance. She was thinking of him and the smartness of his habit,
+and the exquisiteness of this moment. He had such a charming calico
+pony. The leaves were just enough developed to make a diaphanous
+lacework of green. It was like looking through a green-spangled arras
+to peer into the woods beyond or behind. The gray stones were already
+faintly messy where the water rippled and sparkled, and early birds
+were calling—robins and blackbirds and wrens.
+
+“Baby mine,” he said, “do you understand all about this? Do you know
+exactly what you’re doing when you come with me this way?”
+
+“I think I do.”
+
+She struck her boot and looked at the ground, and then up through the
+trees at the blue sky.
+
+“Look at me, honey.”
+
+“I don’t want to.”
+
+“But look at me, sweet. I want to ask you something.”
+
+“Don’t make me, Frank, please. I can’t.”
+
+“Oh yes, you can look at me.”
+
+“No.”
+
+She backed away as he took her hands, but came forward again, easily
+enough.
+
+“Now look in my eyes.”
+
+“I can’t.”
+
+“See here.”
+
+“I can’t. Don’t ask me. I’ll answer you, but don’t make me look at
+you.”
+
+His hand stole to her cheek and fondled it. He petted her shoulder, and
+she leaned her head against him.
+
+“Sweet, you’re so beautiful,” he said finally, “I can’t give you up. I
+know what I ought to do. You know, too, I suppose; but I can’t. I must
+have you. If this should end in exposure, it would be quite bad for you
+and me. Do you understand?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I don’t know your brothers very well; but from looking at them I judge
+they’re pretty determined people. They think a great deal of you.”
+
+“Indeed, they do.” Her vanity prinked slightly at this.
+
+“They would probably want to kill me, and very promptly, for just this
+much. What do you think they would want to do if—well, if anything
+should happen, some time?”
+
+He waited, watching her pretty face.
+
+“But nothing need happen. We needn’t go any further.”
+
+“Aileen!”
+
+“I won’t look at you. You needn’t ask. I can’t.”
+
+“Aileen! Do you mean that?”
+
+“I don’t know. Don’t ask me, Frank.”
+
+“You know it can’t stop this way, don’t you? You know it. This isn’t
+the end. Now, if—” He explained the whole theory of illicit meetings,
+calmly, dispassionately. “You are perfectly safe, except for one thing,
+chance exposure. It might just so happen; and then, of course, there
+would be a great deal to settle for. Mrs. Cowperwood would never give
+me a divorce; she has no reason to. If I should clean up in the way I
+hope to—if I should make a million—I wouldn’t mind knocking off now. I
+don’t expect to work all my days. I have always planned to knock off at
+thirty-five. I’ll have enough by that time. Then I want to travel. It
+will only be a few more years now. If you were free—if your father and
+mother were dead”—curiously she did not wince at this practical
+reference—“it would be a different matter.”
+
+He paused. She still gazed thoughtfully at the water below, her mind
+running out to a yacht on the sea with him, a palace somewhere—just
+they two. Her eyes, half closed, saw this happy world; and, listening
+to him, she was fascinated.
+
+“Hanged if I see the way out of this, exactly. But I love you!” He
+caught her to him. “I love you—love you!”
+
+“Oh, yes,” she replied intensely, “I want you to. I’m not afraid.”
+
+“I’ve taken a house in North Tenth Street,” he said finally, as they
+walked over to the horses and mounted them. “It isn’t furnished yet;
+but it will be soon. I know a woman who will take charge.”
+
+“Who is she?”
+
+“An interesting widow of nearly fifty. Very intelligent—she is
+attractive, and knows a good deal of life. I found her through an
+advertisement. You might call on her some afternoon when things are
+arranged, and look the place over. You needn’t meet her except in a
+casual way. Will you?”
+
+She rode on, thinking, making no reply. He was so direct and practical
+in his calculations.
+
+“Will you? It will be all right. You might know her. She isn’t
+objectionable in any way. Will you?”
+
+“Let me know when it is ready,” was all she said finally.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI
+
+
+The vagaries of passion! Subtleties! Risks! What sacrifices are not
+laid willfully upon its altar! In a little while this more than average
+residence to which Cowperwood had referred was prepared solely to
+effect a satisfactory method of concealment. The house was governed by
+a seemingly recently-bereaved widow, and it was possible for Aileen to
+call without seeming strangely out of place. In such surroundings, and
+under such circumstances, it was not difficult to persuade her to give
+herself wholly to her lover, governed as she was by her wild and
+unreasoning affection and passion. In a way, there was a saving element
+of love, for truly, above all others, she wanted this man. She had no
+thought or feeling toward any other. All her mind ran toward visions of
+the future, when, somehow, she and he might be together for all time.
+Mrs. Cowperwood might die, or he might run away with her at thirty-five
+when he had a million. Some adjustment would be made, somehow. Nature
+had given her this man. She relied on him implicitly. When he told her
+that he would take care of her so that nothing evil should befall, she
+believed him fully. Such sins are the commonplaces of the confessional.
+
+It is a curious fact that by some subtlety of logic in the Christian
+world, it has come to be believed that there can be no love outside the
+conventional process of courtship and marriage. One life, one love, is
+the Christian idea, and into this sluice or mold it has been
+endeavoring to compress the whole world. Pagan thought held no such
+belief. A writing of divorce for trivial causes was the theory of the
+elders; and in the primeval world nature apparently holds no scheme for
+the unity of two beyond the temporary care of the young. That the
+modern home is the most beautiful of schemes, when based upon mutual
+sympathy and understanding between two, need not be questioned. And yet
+this fact should not necessarily carry with it a condemnation of all
+love not so fortunate as to find so happy a denouement. Life cannot be
+put into any mold, and the attempt might as well be abandoned at once.
+Those so fortunate as to find harmonious companionship for life should
+congratulate themselves and strive to be worthy of it. Those not so
+blessed, though they be written down as pariahs, have yet some
+justification. And, besides, whether we will or not, theory or no
+theory, the basic facts of chemistry and physics remain. Like is drawn
+to like. Changes in temperament bring changes in relationship. Dogma
+may bind some minds; fear, others. But there are always those in whom
+the chemistry and physics of life are large, and in whom neither dogma
+nor fear is operative. Society lifts its hands in horror; but from age
+to age the Helens, the Messalinas, the Du Barrys, the Pompadours, the
+Maintenons, and the Nell Gwyns flourish and point a freer basis of
+relationship than we have yet been able to square with our lives.
+
+These two felt unutterably bound to each other. Cowperwood, once he
+came to understand her, fancied that he had found the one person with
+whom he could live happily the rest of his life. She was so young, so
+confident, so hopeful, so undismayed. All these months since they had
+first begun to reach out to each other he had been hourly contrasting
+her with his wife. As a matter of fact, his dissatisfaction, though it
+may be said to have been faint up to this time, was now surely tending
+to become real enough. Still, his children were pleasing to him; his
+home beautiful. Lillian, phlegmatic and now thin, was still not homely.
+All these years he had found her satisfactory enough; but now his
+dissatisfaction with her began to increase. She was not like Aileen—not
+young, not vivid, not as unschooled in the commonplaces of life. And
+while ordinarily, he was not one who was inclined to be querulous,
+still now on occasion, he could be. He began by asking questions
+concerning his wife’s appearance—irritating little whys which are so
+trivial and yet so exasperating and discouraging to a woman. Why didn’t
+she get a mauve hat nearer the shade of her dress? Why didn’t she go
+out more? Exercise would do her good. Why didn’t she do this, and why
+didn’t she do that? He scarcely noticed that he was doing this; but she
+did, and she felt the undertone—the real significance—and took umbrage.
+
+“Oh, why—why?” she retorted, one day, curtly. “Why do you ask so many
+questions? You don’t care so much for me any more; that’s why. I can
+tell.”
+
+He leaned back startled by the thrust. It had not been based on any
+evidence of anything save his recent remarks; but he was not absolutely
+sure. He was just the least bit sorry that he had irritated her, and he
+said so.
+
+“Oh, it’s all right,” she replied. “I don’t care. But I notice that you
+don’t pay as much attention to me as you used to. It’s your business
+now, first, last, and all the time. You can’t get your mind off of
+that.”
+
+He breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t suspect, then.
+
+But after a little time, as he grew more and more in sympathy with
+Aileen, he was not so disturbed as to whether his wife might suspect or
+not. He began to think on occasion, as his mind followed the various
+ramifications of the situation, that it would be better if she did. She
+was really not of the contentious fighting sort. He now decided because
+of various calculations in regard to her character that she might not
+offer as much resistance to some ultimate rearrangement, as he had
+originally imagined. She might even divorce him. Desire, dreams, even
+in him were evoking calculations not as sound as those which ordinarily
+generated in his brain.
+
+No, as he now said to himself, the rub was not nearly so much in his
+own home, as it was in the Butler family. His relations with Edward
+Malia Butler had become very intimate. He was now advising with him
+constantly in regard to the handling of his securities, which were
+numerous. Butler held stocks in such things as the Pennsylvania Coal
+Company, the Delaware and Hudson Canal, the Morris and Essex Canal, the
+Reading Railroad. As the old gentleman’s mind had broadened to the
+significance of the local street-railway problem in Philadelphia, he
+had decided to close out his other securities at such advantageous
+terms as he could, and reinvest the money in local lines. He knew that
+Mollenhauer and Simpson were doing this, and they were excellent judges
+of the significance of local affairs. Like Cowperwood, he had the idea
+that if he controlled sufficient of the local situation in this field,
+he could at last effect a joint relationship with Mollenhauer and
+Simpson. Political legislation, advantageous to the combined lines,
+could then be so easily secured. Franchises and necessary extensions to
+existing franchises could be added. This conversion of his outstanding
+stock in other fields, and the picking up of odd lots in the local
+street-railway, was the business of Cowperwood. Butler, through his
+sons, Owen and Callum, was also busy planning a new line and obtaining
+a franchise, sacrificing, of course, great blocks of stock and actual
+cash to others, in order to obtain sufficient influence to have the
+necessary legislation passed. Yet it was no easy matter, seeing that
+others knew what the general advantages of the situation were, and
+because of this Cowperwood, who saw the great source of profit here,
+was able, betimes, to serve himself—buying blocks, a part of which only
+went to Butler, Mollenhauer or others. In short he was not as eager to
+serve Butler, or any one else, as he was to serve himself if he could.
+
+In this connection, the scheme which George W. Stener had brought
+forward, representing actually in the background Strobik, Wycroft, and
+Harmon, was an opening wedge for himself. Stener’s plan was to loan him
+money out of the city treasury at two per cent., or, if he would waive
+all commissions, for nothing (an agent for self-protective purposes was
+absolutely necessary), and with it take over the North Pennsylvania
+Company’s line on Front Street, which, because of the shortness of its
+length, one mile and a half, and the brevity of the duration of its
+franchise, was neither doing very well nor being rated very high.
+Cowperwood in return for his manipulative skill was to have a fair
+proportion of the stock—twenty per cent. Strobik and Wycroft knew the
+parties from whom the bulk of the stock could be secured if engineered
+properly. Their plan was then, with this borrowed treasury money, to
+extend its franchise and then the line itself, and then later again, by
+issuing a great block of stock and hypothecating it with a favored
+bank, be able to return the principal to the city treasury and pocket
+their profits from the line as earned. There was no trouble in this, in
+so far as Cowperwood was concerned, except that it divided the stock
+very badly among these various individuals, and left him but a
+comparatively small share—for his thought and pains.
+
+But Cowperwood was an opportunist. And by this time his financial
+morality had become special and local in its character. He did not
+think it was wise for any one to steal anything from anybody where the
+act of taking or profiting was directly and plainly considered
+stealing. That was unwise—dangerous—hence wrong. There were so many
+situations wherein what one might do in the way of taking or profiting
+was open to discussion and doubt. Morality varied, in his mind at
+least, with conditions, if not climates. Here, in Philadelphia, the
+tradition (politically, mind you—not generally) was that the city
+treasurer might use the money of the city without interest so long as
+he returned the principal intact. The city treasury and the city
+treasurer were like a honey-laden hive and a queen bee around which the
+drones—the politicians—swarmed in the hope of profit. The one
+disagreeable thing in connection with this transaction with Stener was
+that neither Butler, Mollenhauer nor Simpson, who were the actual
+superiors of Stener and Strobik, knew anything about it. Stener and
+those behind him were, through him, acting for themselves. If the
+larger powers heard of this, it might alienate them. He had to think of
+this. Still, if he refused to make advantageous deals with Stener or
+any other man influential in local affairs, he was cutting off his nose
+to spite his face, for other bankers and brokers would, and gladly. And
+besides it was not at all certain that Butler, Mollenhauer, and Simpson
+would ever hear.
+
+In this connection, there was another line, which he rode on
+occasionally, the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Street line, which he felt
+was a much more interesting thing for him to think about, if he could
+raise the money. It had been originally capitalized for five hundred
+thousand dollars; but there had been a series of bonds to the value of
+two hundred and fifty thousand dollars added for improvements, and the
+company was finding great difficulty in meeting the interest. The bulk
+of the stock was scattered about among small investors, and it would
+require all of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to collect it and
+have himself elected president or chairman of the board of directors.
+Once in, however, he could vote this stock as he pleased, hypothecating
+it meanwhile at his father’s bank for as much as he could get, and
+issuing more stocks with which to bribe legislators in the matter of
+extending the line, and in taking up other opportunities to either add
+to it by purchase or supplement it by working agreements. The word
+“bribe” is used here in this matter-of-fact American way, because
+bribery was what was in every one’s mind in connection with the State
+legislature. Terrence Relihan—the small, dark-faced Irishman, a dandy
+in dress and manners—who represented the financial interests at
+Harrisburg, and who had come to Cowperwood after the five million bond
+deal had been printed, had told him that nothing could be done at the
+capital without money, or its equivalent, negotiable securities. Each
+significant legislator, if he yielded his vote or his influence, must
+be looked after. If he, Cowperwood, had any scheme which he wanted
+handled at any time, Relihan had intimated to him that he would be glad
+to talk with him. Cowperwood had figured on this Seventeenth and
+Nineteenth Street line scheme more than once, but he had never felt
+quite sure that he was willing to undertake it. His obligations in
+other directions were so large. But the lure was there, and he pondered
+and pondered.
+
+Stener’s scheme of loaning him money wherewith to manipulate the North
+Pennsylvania line deal put this Seventeenth and Nineteenth Street dream
+in a more favorable light. As it was he was constantly watching the
+certificates of loan issue, for the city treasury,—buying large
+quantities when the market was falling to protect it and selling
+heavily, though cautiously, when he saw it rising and to do this he had
+to have a great deal of free money to permit him to do it. He was
+constantly fearful of some break in the market which would affect the
+value of all his securities and result in the calling of his loans.
+There was no storm in sight. He did not see that anything could happen
+in reason; but he did not want to spread himself out too thin. As he
+saw it now, therefore if he took one hundred and fifty thousand dollars
+of this city money and went after this Seventeenth and Nineteenth
+Street matter it would not mean that he was spreading himself out too
+thin, for because of this new proposition could he not call on Stener
+for more as a loan in connection with these other ventures? But if
+anything should happen—well—
+
+“Frank,” said Stener, strolling into his office one afternoon after
+four o’clock when the main rush of the day’s work was over—the
+relationship between Cowperwood and Stener had long since reached the
+“Frank” and “George” period—“Strobik thinks he has that North
+Pennsylvania deal arranged so that we can take it up if we want to. The
+principal stockholder, we find, is a man by the name of Coltan—not Ike
+Colton, but Ferdinand. How’s that for a name?” Stener beamed fatly and
+genially.
+
+Things had changed considerably for him since the days when he had been
+fortuitously and almost indifferently made city treasurer. His method
+of dressing had so much improved since he had been inducted into
+office, and his manner expressed so much more good feeling, confidence,
+aplomb, that he would not have recognized himself if he had been
+permitted to see himself as had those who had known him before. An old,
+nervous shifting of the eyes had almost ceased, and a feeling of
+restfulness, which had previously been restlessness, and had sprung
+from a sense of necessity, had taken its place. His large feet were
+incased in good, square-toed, soft-leather shoes; his stocky chest and
+fat legs were made somewhat agreeable to the eye by a well-cut suit of
+brownish-gray cloth; and his neck was now surrounded by a low,
+wing-point white collar and brown-silk tie. His ample chest, which
+spread out a little lower in around and constantly enlarging stomach,
+was ornamented by a heavy-link gold chain, and his white cuffs had
+large gold cuff-buttons set with rubies of a very notable size. He was
+rosy and decidedly well fed. In fact, he was doing very well indeed.
+
+He had moved his family from a shabby two-story frame house in South
+Ninth Street to a very comfortable brick one three stories in height,
+and three times as large, on Spring Garden Street. His wife had a few
+acquaintances—the wives of other politicians. His children were
+attending the high school, a thing he had hardly hoped for in earlier
+days. He was now the owner of fourteen or fifteen pieces of cheap real
+estate in different portions of the city, which might eventually become
+very valuable, and he was a silent partner in the South Philadelphia
+Foundry Company and the American Beef and Pork Company, two
+corporations on paper whose principal business was subletting contracts
+secured from the city to the humble butchers and foundrymen who would
+carry out orders as given and not talk too much or ask questions.
+
+“Well, that is an odd name,” said Cowperwood, blandly. “So he has it? I
+never thought that road would pay, as it was laid out. It’s too short.
+It ought to run about three miles farther out into the Kensington
+section.”
+
+“You’re right,” said Stener, dully.
+
+“Did Strobik say what Colton wants for his shares?”
+
+“Sixty-eight, I think.”
+
+“The current market rate. He doesn’t want much, does he? Well, George,
+at that rate it will take about”—he calculated quickly on the basis of
+the number of shares Cotton was holding—“one hundred and twenty
+thousand to get him out alone. That isn’t all. There’s Judge Kitchen
+and Joseph Zimmerman and Senator Donovan”—he was referring to the State
+senator of that name. “You’ll be paying a pretty fair price for that
+stud when you get it. It will cost considerable more to extend the
+line. It’s too much, I think.”
+
+Cowperwood was thinking how easy it would be to combine this line with
+his dreamed-of Seventeenth and Nineteenth Street line, and after a time
+and with this in view he added:
+
+“Say, George, why do you work all your schemes through Strobik and
+Harmon and Wycroft? Couldn’t you and I manage some of these things for
+ourselves alone instead of for three or four? It seems to me that plan
+would be much more profitable to you.”
+
+“It would, it would!” exclaimed Stener, his round eyes fixed on
+Cowperwood in a rather helpless, appealing way. He liked Cowperwood and
+had always been hoping that mentally as well as financially he could
+get close to him. “I’ve thought of that. But these fellows have had
+more experience in these matters than I have had, Frank. They’ve been
+longer at the game. I don’t know as much about these things as they
+do.”
+
+Cowperwood smiled in his soul, though his face remained passive.
+
+“Don’t worry about them, George,” he continued genially and
+confidentially. “You and I together can know and do as much as they
+ever could and more. I’m telling you. Take this railroad deal you’re in
+on now, George; you and I could manipulate that just as well and better
+than it can be done with Wycroft, Strobik, and Harmon in on it. They’re
+not adding anything to the wisdom of the situation. They’re not putting
+up any money. You’re doing that. All they’re doing is agreeing to see
+it through the legislature and the council, and as far as the
+legislature is concerned, they can’t do any more with that than any one
+else could—than I could, for instance. It’s all a question of arranging
+things with Relihan, anyhow, putting up a certain amount of money for
+him to work with. Here in town there are other people who can reach the
+council just as well as Strobik.” He was thinking (once he controlled a
+road of his own) of conferring with Butler and getting him to use his
+influence. It would serve to quiet Strobik and his friends. “I’m not
+asking you to change your plans on this North Pennsylvania deal. You
+couldn’t do that very well. But there are other things. In the future
+why not let’s see if you and I can’t work some one thing together?
+You’ll be much better off, and so will I. We’ve done pretty well on the
+city-loan proposition so far, haven’t we?”
+
+The truth was, they had done exceedingly well. Aside from what the
+higher powers had made, Stener’s new house, his lots, his bank-account,
+his good clothes, and his changed and comfortable sense of life were
+largely due to Cowperwood’s successful manipulation of these city-loan
+certificates. Already there had been four issues of two hundred
+thousand dollars each. Cowperwood had bought and sold nearly three
+million dollars’ worth of these certificates, acting one time as a
+“bull” and another as a “bear.” Stener was now worth all of one hundred
+and fifty thousand dollars.
+
+“There’s a line that I know of here in the city which could be made
+into a splendidly paying property,” continued Cowperwood, meditatively,
+“if the right things could be done with it. Just like this North
+Pennsylvania line, it isn’t long enough. The territory it serves isn’t
+big enough. It ought to be extended; but if you and I could get it, it
+might eventually be worked with this North Pennsylvania Company or some
+other as one company. That would save officers and offices and a lot of
+things. There is always money to be made out of a larger purchasing
+power.”
+
+He paused and looked out the window of his handsome little hardwood
+office, speculating upon the future. The window gave nowhere save into
+a back yard behind another office building which had formerly been a
+residence. Some grass grew feebly there. The red wall and old-fashioned
+brick fence which divided it from the next lot reminded him somehow of
+his old home in New Market Street, to which his Uncle Seneca used to
+come as a Cuban trader followed by his black Portuguese servitor. He
+could see him now as he sat here looking at the yard.
+
+“Well,” asked Stener, ambitiously, taking the bait, “why don’t we get
+hold of that—you and me? I suppose I could fix it so far as the money
+is concerned. How much would it take?”
+
+Cowperwood smiled inwardly again.
+
+“I don’t know exactly,” he said, after a time. “I want to look into it
+more carefully. The one trouble is that I’m carrying a good deal of the
+city’s money as it is. You see, I have that two hundred thousand
+dollars against your city-loan deals. And this new scheme will take two
+or three hundred thousand more. If that were out of the way—”
+
+He was thinking of one of the inexplicable stock panics—those strange
+American depressions which had so much to do with the temperament of
+the people, and so little to do with the basic conditions of the
+country. “If this North Pennsylvania deal were through and done with—”
+
+He rubbed his chin and pulled at his handsome silky mustache.
+
+“Don’t ask me any more about it, George,” he said, finally, as he saw
+that the latter was beginning to think as to which line it might be.
+“Don’t say anything at all about it. I want to get my facts exactly
+right, and then I’ll talk to you. I think you and I can do this thing a
+little later, when we get the North Pennsylvania scheme under way. I’m
+so rushed just now I’m not sure that I want to undertake it at once;
+but you keep quiet and we’ll see.” He turned toward his desk, and
+Stener got up.
+
+“I’ll make any sized deposit with you that you wish, the moment you
+think you’re ready to act, Frank,” exclaimed Stener, and with the
+thought that Cowperwood was not nearly as anxious to do this as he
+should be, since he could always rely on him (Stener) when there was
+anything really profitable in the offing. Why should not the able and
+wonderful Cowperwood be allowed to make the two of them rich? “Just
+notify Stires, and he’ll send you a check. Strobik thought we ought to
+act pretty soon.”
+
+“I’ll tend to it, George,” replied Cowperwood, confidently. “It will
+come out all right. Leave it to me.”
+
+Stener kicked his stout legs to straighten his trousers, and extended
+his hand. He strolled out in the street thinking of this new scheme.
+Certainly, if he could get in with Cowperwood right he would be a rich
+man, for Cowperwood was so successful and so cautious. His new house,
+this beautiful banking office, his growing fame, and his subtle
+connections with Butler and others put Stener in considerable awe of
+him. Another line! They would control it and the North Pennsylvania!
+Why, if this went on, he might become a magnate—he really might—he,
+George W. Stener, once a cheap real-estate and insurance agent. He
+strolled up the street thinking, but with no more idea of the
+importance of his civic duties and the nature of the social ethics
+against which he was offending than if they had never existed.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII
+
+
+The services which Cowperwood performed during the ensuing year and a
+half for Stener, Strobik, Butler, State Treasurer Van Nostrand, State
+Senator Relihan, representative of “the interests,” so-called, at
+Harrisburg, and various banks which were friendly to these gentlemen,
+were numerous and confidential. For Stener, Strobik, Wycroft, Harmon
+and himself he executed the North Pennsylvania deal, by which he became
+a holder of a fifth of the controlling stock. Together he and Stener
+joined to purchase the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Street line and in
+the concurrent gambling in stocks.
+
+By the summer of 1871, when Cowperwood was nearly thirty-four years of
+age, he had a banking business estimated at nearly two million dollars,
+personal holdings aggregating nearly half a million, and prospects
+which other things being equal looked to wealth which might rival that
+of any American. The city, through its treasurer—still Mr. Stener—was a
+depositor with him to the extent of nearly five hundred thousand
+dollars. The State, through its State treasurer, Van Nostrand, carried
+two hundred thousand dollars on his books. Bode was speculating in
+street-railway stocks to the extent of fifty thousand dollars. Relihan
+to the same amount. A small army of politicians and political
+hangers-on were on his books for various sums. And for Edward Malia
+Butler he occasionally carried as high as one hundred thousand dollars
+in margins. His own loans at the banks, varying from day to day on
+variously hypothecated securities, were as high as seven and eight
+hundred thousand dollars. Like a spider in a spangled net, every thread
+of which he knew, had laid, had tested, he had surrounded and entangled
+himself in a splendid, glittering network of connections, and he was
+watching all the details.
+
+His one pet idea, the thing he put more faith in than anything else,
+was his street-railway manipulations, and particularly his actual
+control of the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Street line. Through an
+advance to him, on deposit, made in his bank by Stener at a time when
+the stock of the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Street line was at a low
+ebb, he had managed to pick up fifty-one per cent. of the stock for
+himself and Stener, by virtue of which he was able to do as he pleased
+with the road. To accomplish this, however, he had resorted to some
+very “peculiar” methods, as they afterward came to be termed in
+financial circles, to get this stock at his own valuation. Through
+agents he caused suits for damages to be brought against the company
+for non-payment of interest due. A little stock in the hands of a
+hireling, a request made to a court of record to examine the books of
+the company in order to determine whether a receivership were not
+advisable, a simultaneous attack in the stock market, selling at three,
+five, seven, and ten points off, brought the frightened stockholders
+into the market with their holdings. The banks considered the line a
+poor risk, and called their loans in connection with it. His father’s
+bank had made one loan to one of the principal stockholders, and that
+was promptly called, of course. Then, through an agent, the several
+heaviest shareholders were approached and an offer was made to help
+them out. The stocks would be taken off their hands at forty. They had
+not really been able to discover the source of all their woes; and they
+imagined that the road was in bad condition, which it was not. Better
+let it go. The money was immediately forthcoming, and Cowperwood and
+Stener jointly controlled fifty-one per cent. But, as in the case of
+the North Pennsylvania line, Cowperwood had been quietly buying all of
+the small minority holdings, so that he had in reality fifty-one per
+cent. of the stock, and Stener twenty-five per cent. more.
+
+This intoxicated him, for immediately he saw the opportunity of
+fulfilling his long-contemplated dream—that of reorganizing the company
+in conjunction with the North Pennsylvania line, issuing three shares
+where one had been before and after unloading all but a control on the
+general public, using the money secured to buy into other lines which
+were to be boomed and sold in the same way. In short, he was one of
+those early, daring manipulators who later were to seize upon other and
+ever larger phases of American natural development for their own
+aggrandizement.
+
+In connection with this first consolidation, his plan was to spread
+rumors of the coming consolidation of the two lines, to appeal to the
+legislature for privileges of extension, to get up an arresting
+prospectus and later annual reports, and to boom the stock on the stock
+exchange as much as his swelling resources would permit. The trouble is
+that when you are trying to make a market for a stock—to unload a large
+issue such as his was (over five hundred thousand dollars’ worth)—while
+retaining five hundred thousand for yourself, it requires large capital
+to handle it. The owner in these cases is compelled not only to go on
+the market and do much fictitious buying, thus creating a fictitious
+demand, but once this fictitious demand has deceived the public and he
+has been able to unload a considerable quantity of his wares, he is,
+unless he rids himself of all his stock, compelled to stand behind it.
+If, for instance, he sold five thousand shares, as was done in this
+instance, and retained five thousand, he must see that the public price
+of the outstanding five thousand shares did not fall below a certain
+point, because the value of his private shares would fall with it. And
+if, as is almost always the case, the private shares had been
+hypothecated with banks and trust companies for money wherewith to
+conduct other enterprises, the falling of their value in the open
+market merely meant that the banks would call for large margins to
+protect their loans or call their loans entirely. This meant that his
+work was a failure, and he might readily fail. He was already
+conducting one such difficult campaign in connection with this
+city-loan deal, the price of which varied from day to day, and which he
+was only too anxious to have vary, for in the main he profited by these
+changes.
+
+But this second burden, interesting enough as it was, meant that he had
+to be doubly watchful. Once the stock was sold at a high price, the
+money borrowed from the city treasurer could be returned; his own
+holdings created out of foresight, by capitalizing the future, by
+writing the shrewd prospectuses and reports, would be worth their face
+value, or little less. He would have money to invest in other lines. He
+might obtain the financial direction of the whole, in which case he
+would be worth millions. One shrewd thing he did, which indicated the
+foresight and subtlety of the man, was to make a separate organization
+or company of any extension or addition which he made to his line.
+Thus, if he had two or three miles of track on a street, and he wanted
+to extend it two or three miles farther on the same street, instead of
+including this extension in the existing corporation, he would make a
+second corporation to control the additional two or three miles of
+right of way. This corporation he would capitalize at so much, and
+issue stocks and bonds for its construction, equipment, and
+manipulation. Having done this he would then take the sub-corporation
+over into the parent concern, issuing more stocks and bonds of the
+parent company wherewith to do it, and, of course, selling these bonds
+to the public. Even his brothers who worked for him did not know the
+various ramifications of his numerous deals, and executed his orders
+blindly. Sometimes Joseph said to Edward, in a puzzled way, “Well,
+Frank knows what he is about, I guess.”
+
+On the other hand, he was most careful to see that every current
+obligation was instantly met, and even anticipated, for he wanted to
+make a great show of regularity. Nothing was so precious as reputation
+and standing. His forethought, caution, and promptness pleased the
+bankers. They thought he was one of the sanest, shrewdest men they had
+ever met.
+
+However, by the spring and summer of 1871, Cowperwood had actually,
+without being in any conceivable danger from any source, spread himself
+out very thin. Because of his great success he had grown more
+liberal—easier—in his financial ventures. By degrees, and largely
+because of his own confidence in himself, he had induced his father to
+enter upon his street-car speculations, to use the resources of the
+Third National to carry a part of his loans and to furnish capital at
+such times as quick resources were necessary. In the beginning the old
+gentleman had been a little nervous and skeptical, but as time had worn
+on and nothing but profit eventuated, he grew bolder and more
+confident.
+
+“Frank,” he would say, looking up over his spectacles, “aren’t you
+afraid you’re going a little too fast in these matters? You’re carrying
+a lot of loans these days.”
+
+“No more than I ever did, father, considering my resources. You can’t
+turn large deals without large loans. You know that as well as I do.”
+
+“Yes, I know, but—now that Green and Coates—aren’t you going pretty
+strong there?”
+
+“Not at all. I know the inside conditions there. The stock is bound to
+go up eventually. I’ll bull it up. I’ll combine it with my other lines,
+if necessary.”
+
+Cowperwood stared at his boy. Never was there such a defiant, daring
+manipulator.
+
+“You needn’t worry about me, father. If you are going to do that, call
+my loans. Other banks will loan on my stocks. I’d like to see your bank
+have the interest.”
+
+So Cowperwood, Sr., was convinced. There was no gainsaying this
+argument. His bank was loaning Frank heavily, but not more so than any
+other. And as for the great blocks of stocks he was carrying in his
+son’s companies, he was to be told when to get out should that prove
+necessary. Frank’s brothers were being aided in the same way to make
+money on the side, and their interests were also now bound up
+indissolubly with his own.
+
+With his growing financial opportunities, however, Cowperwood had also
+grown very liberal in what might be termed his standard of living.
+Certain young art dealers in Philadelphia, learning of his artistic
+inclinations and his growing wealth, had followed him up with
+suggestions as to furniture, tapestries, rugs, objects of art, and
+paintings—at first the American and later the foreign masters
+exclusively. His own and his father’s house had not been furnished
+fully in these matters, and there was that other house in North Tenth
+Street, which he desired to make beautiful. Aileen had always objected
+to the condition of her own home. Love of distinguished surroundings
+was a basic longing with her, though she had not the gift of
+interpreting her longings. But this place where they were secretly
+meeting must be beautiful. She was as keen for that as he was. So it
+became a veritable treasure-trove, more distinguished in furnishings
+than some of the rooms of his own home. He began to gather here some
+rare examples of altar cloths, rugs, and tapestries of the Middle Ages.
+He bought furniture after the Georgian theory—a combination of
+Chippendale, Sheraton, and Heppelwhite modified by the Italian
+Renaissance and the French Louis. He learned of handsome examples of
+porcelain, statuary, Greek vase forms, lovely collections of Japanese
+ivories and netsukes. Fletcher Gray, a partner in Cable & Gray, a local
+firm of importers of art objects, called on him in connection with a
+tapestry of the fourteenth century weaving. Gray was an enthusiast and
+almost instantly he conveyed some of his suppressed and yet fiery love
+of the beautiful to Cowperwood.
+
+“There are fifty periods of one shade of blue porcelain alone, Mr.
+Cowperwood,” Gray informed him. “There are at least seven distinct
+schools or periods of rugs—Persian, Armenian, Arabian, Flemish, Modern
+Polish, Hungarian, and so on. If you ever went into that, it would be a
+distinguished thing to get a complete—I mean a
+representative—collection of some one period, or of all these periods.
+They are beautiful. I have seen some of them, others I’ve read about.”
+
+“You’ll make a convert of me yet, Fletcher,” replied Cowperwood. “You
+or art will be the ruin of me. I’m inclined that way temperamentally as
+it is, I think, and between you and Ellsworth and Gordon
+Strake”—another young man intensely interested in painting—“you’ll
+complete my downfall. Strake has a splendid idea. He wants me to begin
+right now—I’m using that word ‘right’ in the sense of ‘properly,’” he
+commented—“and get what examples I can of just the few rare things in
+each school or period of art which would properly illustrate each. He
+tells me the great pictures are going to increase in value, and what I
+could get for a few hundred thousand now will be worth millions later.
+He doesn’t want me to bother with American art.”
+
+“He’s right,” exclaimed Gray, “although it isn’t good business for me
+to praise another art man. It would take a great deal of money,
+though.”
+
+“Not so very much. At least, not all at once. It would be a matter of
+years, of course. Strake thinks that some excellent examples of
+different periods could be picked up now and later replaced if anything
+better in the same held showed up.”
+
+His mind, in spite of his outward placidity, was tinged with a great
+seeking. Wealth, in the beginning, had seemed the only goal, to which
+had been added the beauty of women. And now art, for art’s sake—the
+first faint radiance of a rosy dawn—had begun to shine in upon him, and
+to the beauty of womanhood he was beginning to see how necessary it was
+to add the beauty of life—the beauty of material background—how, in
+fact, the only background for great beauty was great art. This girl,
+this Aileen Butler, her raw youth and radiance, was nevertheless
+creating in him a sense of the distinguished and a need for it which
+had never existed in him before to the same degree. It is impossible to
+define these subtleties of reaction, temperament on temperament, for no
+one knows to what degree we are marked by the things which attract us.
+A love affair such as this had proved to be was little less or more
+than a drop of coloring added to a glass of clear water, or a foreign
+chemical agent introduced into a delicate chemical formula.
+
+In short, for all her crudeness, Aileen Butler was a definite force
+personally. Her nature, in a way, a protest against the clumsy
+conditions by which she found herself surrounded, was almost
+irrationally ambitious. To think that for so long, having been born
+into the Butler family, she had been the subject, as well as the victim
+of such commonplace and inartistic illusions and conditions, whereas
+now, owing to her contact with, and mental subordination to Cowperwood,
+she was learning so many wonderful phases of social, as well as
+financial, refinement of which previously she had guessed nothing. The
+wonder, for instance, of a future social career as the wife of such a
+man as Frank Cowperwood. The beauty and resourcefulness of his mind,
+which, after hours of intimate contact with her, he was pleased to
+reveal, and which, so definite were his comments and instructions, she
+could not fail to sense. The wonder of his financial and artistic and
+future social dreams. And, oh, oh, she was his, and he was hers. She
+was actually beside herself at times with the glory, as well as the
+delight of all this.
+
+At the same time, her father’s local reputation as a quondam garbage
+contractor (“slop-collector” was the unfeeling comment of the vulgarian
+cognoscenti); her own unavailing efforts to right a condition of
+material vulgarity or artistic anarchy in her own home; the
+hopelessness of ever being admitted to those distinguished portals
+which she recognized afar off as the last sanctum sanctorum of
+established respectability and social distinction, had bred in her,
+even at this early age, a feeling of deadly opposition to her home
+conditions as they stood. Such a house compared to Cowperwood’s! Her
+dear, but ignorant, father! And this great man, her lover, had now
+condescended to love her—see in her his future wife. Oh, God, that it
+might not fail! Through the Cowperwoods at first she had hoped to meet
+a few people, young men and women—and particularly men—who were above
+the station in which she found herself, and to whom her beauty and
+prospective fortune would commend her; but this had not been the case.
+The Cowperwoods themselves, in spite of Frank Cowperwood’s artistic
+proclivities and growing wealth, had not penetrated the inner circle as
+yet. In fact, aside from the subtle, preliminary consideration which
+they were receiving, they were a long way off.
+
+None the less, and instinctively in Cowperwood Aileen recognized a way
+out—a door—and by the same token a subtle, impending artistic future of
+great magnificence. This man would rise beyond anything he now dreamed
+of—she felt it. There was in him, in some nebulous, unrecognizable
+form, a great artistic reality which was finer than anything she could
+plan for herself. She wanted luxury, magnificence, social station.
+Well, if she could get this man they would come to her. There were,
+apparently, insuperable barriers in the way; but hers was no weakling
+nature, and neither was his. They ran together temperamentally from the
+first like two leopards. Her own thoughts—crude, half formulated, half
+spoken—nevertheless matched his to a degree in the equality of their
+force and their raw directness.
+
+“I don’t think papa knows how to do,” she said to him, one day. “It
+isn’t his fault. He can’t help it. He knows that he can’t. And he knows
+that I know it. For years I wanted him to move out of that old house
+there. He knows that he ought to. But even that wouldn’t do much good.”
+
+She paused, looking at him with a straight, clear, vigorous glance. He
+liked the medallion sharpness of her features—their smooth, Greek
+modeling.
+
+“Never mind, pet,” he replied. “We will arrange all these things later.
+I don’t see my way out of this just now; but I think the best thing to
+do is to confess to Lillian some day, and see if some other plan can’t
+be arranged. I want to fix it so the children won’t suffer. I can
+provide for them amply, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Lillian
+would be willing to let me go. She certainly wouldn’t want any
+publicity.”
+
+He was counting practically, and man-fashion, on her love for her
+children.
+
+Aileen looked at him with clear, questioning, uncertain eyes. She was
+not wholly without sympathy, but in a way this situation did not appeal
+to her as needing much. Mrs. Cowperwood was not friendly in her mood
+toward her. It was not based on anything save a difference in their
+point of view. Mrs. Cowperwood could never understand how a girl could
+carry her head so high and “put on such airs,” and Aileen could not
+understand how any one could be so lymphatic and lackadaisical as
+Lillian Cowperwood. Life was made for riding, driving, dancing, going.
+It was made for airs and banter and persiflage and coquetry. To see
+this woman, the wife of a young, forceful man like Cowperwood, acting,
+even though she were five years older and the mother of two children,
+as though life on its romantic and enthusiastic pleasurable side were
+all over was too much for her. Of course Lillian was unsuited to Frank;
+of course he needed a young woman like herself, and fate would surely
+give him to her. Then what a delicious life they would lead!
+
+“Oh, Frank,” she exclaimed to him, over and over, “if we could only
+manage it. Do you think we can?”
+
+“Do I think we can? Certainly I do. It’s only a matter of time. I think
+if I were to put the matter to her clearly, she wouldn’t expect me to
+stay. You look out how you conduct your affairs. If your father or your
+brother should ever suspect me, there’d be an explosion in this town,
+if nothing worse. They’d fight me in all my money deals, if they didn’t
+kill me. Are you thinking carefully of what you are doing?”
+
+“All the time. If anything happens I’ll deny everything. They can’t
+prove it, if I deny it. I’ll come to you in the long run, just the
+same.”
+
+They were in the Tenth Street house at the time. She stroked his cheeks
+with the loving fingers of the wildly enamored woman.
+
+“I’ll do anything for you, sweetheart,” she declared. “I’d die for you
+if I had to. I love you so.”
+
+“Well, pet, no danger. You won’t have to do anything like that. But be
+careful.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII
+
+
+Then, after several years of this secret relationship, in which the
+ties of sympathy and understanding grew stronger instead of weaker,
+came the storm. It burst unexpectedly and out of a clear sky, and bore
+no relation to the intention or volition of any individual. It was
+nothing more than a fire, a distant one—the great Chicago fire, October
+7th, 1871, which burned that city—its vast commercial section—to the
+ground, and instantly and incidentally produced a financial panic,
+vicious though of short duration in various other cities in America.
+The fire began on Saturday and continued apparently unabated until the
+following Wednesday. It destroyed the banks, the commercial houses, the
+shipping conveniences, and vast stretches of property. The heaviest
+loss fell naturally upon the insurance companies, which instantly, in
+many cases—the majority—closed their doors. This threw the loss back on
+the manufacturers and wholesalers in other cities who had had dealings
+with Chicago as well as the merchants of that city. Again, very
+grievous losses were borne by the host of eastern capitalists which had
+for years past partly owned, or held heavy mortgages on, the
+magnificent buildings for business purposes and residences in which
+Chicago was already rivaling every city on the continent.
+Transportation was disturbed, and the keen scent of Wall Street, and
+Third Street in Philadelphia, and State Street in Boston, instantly
+perceived in the early reports the gravity of the situation. Nothing
+could be done on Saturday or Sunday after the exchange closed, for the
+opening reports came too late. On Monday, however, the facts were
+pouring in thick and fast; and the owners of railroad securities,
+government securities, street-car securities, and, indeed, all other
+forms of stocks and bonds, began to throw them on the market in order
+to raise cash. The banks naturally were calling their loans, and the
+result was a stock stampede which equaled the Black Friday of Wall
+Street of two years before.
+
+Cowperwood and his father were out of town at the time the fire began.
+They had gone with several friends—bankers—to look at a proposed route
+of extension of a local steam-railroad, on which a loan was desired. In
+buggies they had driven over a good portion of the route, and were
+returning to Philadelphia late Sunday evening when the cries of
+newsboys hawking an “extra” reached their ears.
+
+“Ho! Extra! Extra! All about the big Chicago fire!”
+
+“Ho! Extra! Extra! Chicago burning down! Extra! Extra!”
+
+The cries were long-drawn-out, ominous, pathetic. In the dusk of the
+dreary Sunday afternoon, when the city had apparently retired to
+Sabbath meditation and prayer, with that tinge of the dying year in the
+foliage and in the air, one caught a sense of something grim and
+gloomy.
+
+“Hey, boy,” called Cowperwood, listening, seeing a shabbily clothed
+misfit of a boy with a bundle of papers under his arm turning a corner.
+“What’s that? Chicago burning!”
+
+He looked at his father and the other men in a significant way as he
+reached for the paper, and then, glancing at the headlines, realized
+the worst.
+
+ALL CHICAGO BURNING
+
+
+FIRE RAGES UNCHECKED IN COMMERCIAL SECTION SINCE YESTERDAY EVENING.
+BANKS, COMMERCIAL HOUSES, PUBLIC BUILDINGS IN RUINS. DIRECT TELEGRAPHIC
+COMMUNICATION SUSPENDED SINCE THREE O’CLOCK TO-DAY. NO END TO PROGRESS
+OF DISASTER IN SIGHT.
+
+
+“That looks rather serious,” he said, calmly, to his companions, a
+cold, commanding force coming into his eyes and voice. To his father he
+said a little later, “It’s panic, unless the majority of the banks and
+brokerage firms stand together.”
+
+He was thinking quickly, brilliantly, resourcefully of his own
+outstanding obligations. His father’s bank was carrying one hundred
+thousand dollars’ worth of his street-railway securities at sixty, and
+fifty thousand dollars’ worth of city loan at seventy. His father had
+“up with him” over forty thousand dollars in cash covering market
+manipulations in these stocks. The banking house of Drexel & Co. was on
+his books as a creditor for one hundred thousand, and that loan would
+be called unless they were especially merciful, which was not likely.
+Jay Cooke & Co. were his creditors for another one hundred and fifty
+thousand. They would want their money. At four smaller banks and three
+brokerage companies he was debtor for sums ranging from fifty thousand
+dollars down. The city treasurer was involved with him to the extent of
+nearly five hundred thousand dollars, and exposure of that would create
+a scandal; the State treasurer for two hundred thousand. There were
+small accounts, hundreds of them, ranging from one hundred dollars up
+to five and ten thousand. A panic would mean not only a withdrawal of
+deposits and a calling of loans, but a heavy depression of securities.
+How could he realize on his securities?—that was the question—how
+without selling so many points off that his fortune would be swept away
+and he would be ruined?
+
+He figured briskly the while he waved adieu to his friends, who hurried
+away, struck with their own predicament.
+
+“You had better go on out to the house, father, and I’ll send some
+telegrams.” (The telephone had not yet been invented.) “I’ll be right
+out and we’ll go into this thing together. It looks like black weather
+to me. Don’t say anything to any one until after we have had our talk;
+then we can decide what to do.”
+
+Cowperwood, Sr., was already plucking at his side-whiskers in a
+confused and troubled way. He was cogitating as to what might happen to
+him in case his son failed, for he was deeply involved with him. He was
+a little gray in his complexion now, frightened, for he had already
+strained many points in his affairs to accommodate his son. If Frank
+should not be able promptly on the morrow to meet the call which the
+bank might have to make for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the
+onus and scandal of the situation would be on him.
+
+On the other hand, his son was meditating on the tangled relation in
+which he now found himself in connection with the city treasurer and
+the fact that it was not possible for him to support the market alone.
+Those who should have been in a position to help him were now as bad
+off as himself. There were many unfavorable points in the whole
+situation. Drexel & Co. had been booming railway stocks—loaning heavily
+on them. Jay Cooke & Co. had been backing Northern Pacific—were
+practically doing their best to build that immense transcontinental
+system alone. Naturally, they were long on that and hence in a ticklish
+position. At the first word they would throw over their surest
+securities—government bonds, and the like—in order to protect their
+more speculative holdings. The bears would see the point. They would
+hammer and hammer, selling short all along the line. But he did not
+dare to do that. He would be breaking his own back quickly, and what he
+needed was time. If he could only get time—three days, a week, ten
+days—this storm would surely blow over.
+
+The thing that was troubling him most was the matter of the
+half-million invested with him by Stener. A fall election was drawing
+near. Stener, although he had served two terms, was slated for
+reelection. A scandal in connection with the city treasury would be a
+very bad thing. It would end Stener’s career as an official—would very
+likely send him to the penitentiary. It might wreck the Republican
+party’s chances to win. It would certainly involve himself as having
+much to do with it. If that happened, he would have the politicians to
+reckon with. For, if he were hard pressed, as he would be, and failed,
+the fact that he had been trying to invade the city street-railway
+preserves which they held sacred to themselves, with borrowed city
+money, and that this borrowing was liable to cost them the city
+election, would all come out. They would not view all that with a
+kindly eye. It would be useless to say, as he could, that he had
+borrowed the money at two per cent. (most of it, to save himself, had
+been covered by a protective clause of that kind), or that he had
+merely acted as an agent for Stener. That might go down with the
+unsophisticated of the outer world, but it would never be swallowed by
+the politicians. They knew better than that.
+
+There was another phase to this situation, however, that encouraged
+him, and that was his knowledge of how city politics were going in
+general. It was useless for any politician, however loftly, to take a
+high and mighty tone in a crisis like this. All of them, great and
+small, were profiting in one way and another through city privileges.
+Butler, Mollenhauer, and Simpson, he knew, made money out of
+contracts—legal enough, though they might be looked upon as rank
+favoritism—and also out of vast sums of money collected in the shape of
+taxes—land taxes, water taxes, etc.—which were deposited in the various
+banks designated by these men and others as legal depositories for city
+money. The banks supposedly carried the city’s money in their vaults as
+a favor, without paying interest of any kind, and then reinvested
+it—for whom? Cowperwood had no complaint to make, for he was being well
+treated, but these men could scarcely expect to monopolize all the
+city’s benefits. He did not know either Mollenhauer or Simpson
+personally—but he knew they as well as Butler had made money out of his
+own manipulation of city loan. Also, Butler was most friendly to him.
+It was not unreasonable for him to think, in a crisis like this, that
+if worst came to worst, he could make a clean breast of it to Butler
+and receive aid. In case he could not get through secretly with
+Stener’s help, Cowperwood made up his mind that he would do this.
+
+His first move, he decided, would be to go at once to Stener’s house
+and demand the loan of an additional three or four hundred thousand
+dollars. Stener had always been very tractable, and in this instance
+would see how important it was that his shortage of half a million
+should not be made public. Then he must get as much more as possible.
+But where to get it? Presidents of banks and trust companies, large
+stock jobbers, and the like, would have to be seen. Then there was a
+loan of one hundred thousand dollars he was carrying for Butler. The
+old contractor might be induced to leave that. He hurried to his home,
+secured his runabout, and drove rapidly to Stener’s.
+
+As it turned out, however, much to his distress and confusion, Stener
+was out of town—down on the Chesapeake with several friends shooting
+ducks and fishing, and was not expected back for several days. He was
+in the marshes back of some small town. Cowperwood sent an urgent wire
+to the nearest point and then, to make assurance doubly sure, to
+several other points in the same neighborhood, asking him to return
+immediately. He was not at all sure, however, that Stener would return
+in time and was greatly nonplussed and uncertain for the moment as to
+what his next step would be. Aid must be forthcoming from somewhere and
+at once.
+
+Suddenly a helpful thought occurred to him. Butler and Mollenhauer and
+Simpson were long on local street-railways. They must combine to
+support the situation and protect their interests. They could see the
+big bankers, Drexel & Co. and Cooke & Co., and others and urge them to
+sustain the market. They could strengthen things generally by
+organizing a buying ring, and under cover of their support, if they
+would, he might sell enough to let him out, and even permit him to go
+short and make something—a whole lot. It was a brilliant thought,
+worthy of a greater situation, and its only weakness was that it was
+not absolutely certain of fulfillment.
+
+He decided to go to Butler at once, the only disturbing thought being
+that he would now be compelled to reveal his own and Stener’s affairs.
+So reentering his runabout he drove swiftly to the Butler home.
+
+When he arrived there the famous contractor was at dinner. He had not
+heard the calling of the extras, and of course, did not understand as
+yet the significance of the fire. The servant’s announcement of
+Cowperwood brought him smiling to the door.
+
+“Won’t you come in and join us? We’re just havin’ a light supper. Have
+a cup of coffee or tea, now—do.”
+
+“I can’t,” replied Cowperwood. “Not to-night, I’m in too much of a
+hurry. I want to see you for just a few moments, and then I’ll be off
+again. I won’t keep you very long.”
+
+“Why, if that’s the case, I’ll come right out.” And Butler returned to
+the dining-room to put down his napkin. Aileen, who was also dining,
+had heard Cowperwood’s voice, and was on the qui vive to see him. She
+wondered what it was that brought him at this time of night to see her
+father. She could not leave the table at once, but hoped to before he
+went. Cowperwood was thinking of her, even in the face of this
+impending storm, as he was of his wife, and many other things. If his
+affairs came down in a heap it would go hard with those attached to
+him. In this first clouding of disaster, he could not tell how things
+would eventuate. He meditated on this desperately, but he was not
+panic-stricken. His naturally even-molded face was set in fine, classic
+lines; his eyes were as hard as chilled steel.
+
+“Well, now,” exclaimed Butler, returning, his countenance manifesting a
+decidedly comfortable relationship with the world as at present
+constituted. “What’s up with you to-night? Nawthin’ wrong, I hope. It’s
+been too fine a day.”
+
+“Nothing very serious, I hope myself,” replied Cowperwood, “But I want
+to talk with you a few minutes, anyhow. Don’t you think we had better
+go up to your room?”
+
+“I was just going to say that,” replied Butler—“the cigars are up
+there.”
+
+They started from the reception-room to the stairs, Butler preceding
+and as the contractor mounted, Aileen came out from the dining-room in
+a frou-frou of silk. Her splendid hair was drawn up from the base of
+the neck and the line of the forehead into some quaint convolutions
+which constituted a reddish-gold crown. Her complexion was glowing, and
+her bare arms and shoulders shone white against the dark red of her
+evening gown. She realized there was something wrong.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Cowperwood, how do you do?” she exclaimed, coming forward and
+holding out her hand as her father went on upstairs. She was delaying
+him deliberately in order to have a word with him and this bold acting
+was for the benefit of the others.
+
+“What’s the trouble, honey?” she whispered, as soon as her father was
+out of hearing. “You look worried.”
+
+“Nothing much, I hope, sweet,” he said. “Chicago is burning up and
+there’s going to be trouble to-morrow. I have to talk to your father.”
+
+She had time only for a sympathetic, distressed “Oh,” before he
+withdrew his hand and followed Butler upstairs. She squeezed his arm,
+and went through the reception-room to the parlor. She sat down,
+thinking, for never before had she seen Cowperwood’s face wearing such
+an expression of stern, disturbed calculation. It was placid, like
+fine, white wax, and quite as cold; and those deep, vague, inscrutable
+eyes! So Chicago was burning. What would happen to him? Was he very
+much involved? He had never told her in detail of his affairs. She
+would not have understood fully any more than would have Mrs.
+Cowperwood. But she was worried, nevertheless, because it was her
+Frank, and because she was bound to him by what to her seemed
+indissoluble ties.
+
+Literature, outside of the masters, has given us but one idea of the
+mistress, the subtle, calculating siren who delights to prey on the
+souls of men. The journalism and the moral pamphleteering of the time
+seem to foster it with almost partisan zeal. It would seem that a
+censorship of life had been established by divinity, and the care of
+its execution given into the hands of the utterly conservative. Yet
+there is that other form of liaison which has nothing to do with
+conscious calculation. In the vast majority of cases it is without
+design or guile. The average woman, controlled by her affections and
+deeply in love, is no more capable than a child of anything save
+sacrificial thought—the desire to give; and so long as this state
+endures, she can only do this. She may change—Hell hath no fury,
+etc.—but the sacrificial, yielding, solicitous attitude is more often
+the outstanding characteristic of the mistress; and it is this very
+attitude in contradistinction to the grasping legality of established
+matrimony that has caused so many wounds in the defenses of the latter.
+The temperament of man, either male or female, cannot help falling down
+before and worshiping this nonseeking, sacrificial note. It approaches
+vast distinction in life. It appears to be related to that last word in
+art, that largeness of spirit which is the first characteristic of the
+great picture, the great building, the great sculpture, the great
+decoration—namely, a giving, freely and without stint, of itself, of
+beauty. Hence the significance of this particular mood in Aileen.
+
+All the subtleties of the present combination were troubling Cowperwood
+as he followed Butler into the room upstairs.
+
+“Sit down, sit down. You won’t take a little somethin’? You never do. I
+remember now. Well, have a cigar, anyhow. Now, what’s this that’s
+troublin’ you to-night?”
+
+Voices could be heard faintly in the distance, far off toward the
+thicker residential sections.
+
+“Extra! Extra! All about the big Chicago fire! Chicago burning down!”
+
+“Just that,” replied Cowperwood, hearkening to them. “Have you heard
+the news?”
+
+“No. What’s that they’re calling?”
+
+“It’s a big fire out in Chicago.”
+
+“Oh,” replied Butler, still not gathering the significance of it.
+
+“It’s burning down the business section there, Mr. Butler,” went on
+Cowperwood ominously, “and I fancy it’s going to disturb financial
+conditions here to-morrow. That is what I have come to see you about.
+How are your investments? Pretty well drawn in?”
+
+Butler suddenly gathered from Cowperwood’s expression that there was
+something very wrong. He put up his large hand as he leaned back in his
+big leather chair, and covered his mouth and chin with it. Over those
+big knuckles, and bigger nose, thick and cartilaginous, his large,
+shaggy-eyebrowed eyes gleamed. His gray, bristly hair stood up stiffly
+in a short, even growth all over his head.
+
+“So that’s it,” he said. “You’re expectin’ trouble to-morrow. How are
+your own affairs?”
+
+“I’m in pretty good shape, I think, all told, if the money element of
+this town doesn’t lose its head and go wild. There has to be a lot of
+common sense exercised to-morrow, or to-night, even. You know we are
+facing a real panic. Mr. Butler, you may as well know that. It may not
+last long, but while it does it will be bad. Stocks are going to drop
+to-morrow ten or fifteen points on the opening. The banks are going to
+call their loans unless some arrangement can be made to prevent them.
+No one man can do that. It will have to be a combination of men. You
+and Mr. Simpson and Mr. Mollenhauer might do it—that is, you could if
+you could persuade the big banking people to combine to back the
+market. There is going to be a raid on local street-railways—all of
+them. Unless they are sustained the bottom is going to drop out. I have
+always known that you were long on those. I thought you and Mr.
+Mollenhauer and some of the others might want to act. If you don’t I
+might as well confess that it is going to go rather hard with me. I am
+not strong enough to face this thing alone.”
+
+He was meditating on how he should tell the whole truth in regard to
+Stener.
+
+“Well, now, that’s pretty bad,” said Butler, calmly and meditatively.
+He was thinking of his own affairs. A panic was not good for him
+either, but he was not in a desperate state. He could not fail. He
+might lose some money, but not a vast amount—before he could adjust
+things. Still he did not care to lose any money.
+
+“How is it you’re so bad off?” he asked, curiously. He was wondering
+how the fact that the bottom was going to drop out of local
+street-railways would affect Cowperwood so seriously. “You’re not
+carryin’ any of them things, are you?” he added.
+
+It was now a question of lying or telling the truth, and Cowperwood was
+literally afraid to risk lying in this dilemma. If he did not gain
+Butler’s comprehending support he might fail, and if he failed the
+truth would come out, anyhow.
+
+“I might as well make a clean breast of this, Mr. Butler,” he said,
+throwing himself on the old man’s sympathies and looking at him with
+that brisk assurance which Butler so greatly admired. He felt as proud
+of Cowperwood at times as he did of his own sons. He felt that he had
+helped to put him where he was.
+
+“The fact is that I have been buying street-railway stocks, but not for
+myself exactly. I am going to do something now which I think I ought
+not to do, but I cannot help myself. If I don’t do it, it will injure
+you and a lot of people whom I do not wish to injure. I know you are
+naturally interested in the outcome of the fall election. The truth is
+I have been carrying a lot of stocks for Mr. Stener and some of his
+friends. I do not know that all the money has come from the city
+treasury, but I think that most of it has. I know what that means to
+Mr. Stener and the Republican party and your interests in case I fail.
+I don’t think Mr. Stener started this of his own accord in the first
+place—I think I am as much to blame as anybody—but it grew out of other
+things. As you know, I handled that matter of city loan for him and
+then some of his friends wanted me to invest in street-railways for
+them. I have been doing that ever since. Personally I have borrowed
+considerable money from Mr. Stener at two per cent. In fact, originally
+the transactions were covered in that way. Now I don’t want to shift
+the blame on any one. It comes back to me and I am willing to let it
+stay there, except that if I fail Mr. Stener will be blamed and that
+will reflect on the administration. Naturally, I don’t want to fail.
+There is no excuse for my doing so. Aside from this panic I have never
+been in a better position in my life. But I cannot weather this storm
+without assistance, and I want to know if you won’t help me. If I pull
+through I will give you my word that I will see that the money which
+has been taken from the treasury is put back there. Mr. Stener is out
+of town or I would have brought him here with me.”
+
+Cowperwood was lying out of the whole cloth in regard to bringing
+Stener with him, and he had no intention of putting the money back in
+the city treasury except by degrees and in such manner as suited his
+convenience; but what he had said sounded well and created a great
+seeming of fairness.
+
+“How much money is it Stener has invested with you?” asked Butler. He
+was a little confused by this curious development. It put Cowperwood
+and Stener in an odd light.
+
+“About five hundred thousand dollars,” replied Cowperwood.
+
+The old man straightened up. “Is it as much as that?” he said.
+
+“Just about—a little more or a little less; I’m not sure which.”
+
+The old contractor listened solemnly to all Cowperwood had to say on
+this score, thinking of the effect on the Republican party and his own
+contracting interests. He liked Cowperwood, but this was a rough thing
+the latter was telling him—rough, and a great deal to ask. He was a
+slow-thinking and a slow-moving man, but he did well enough when he did
+think. He had considerable money invested in Philadelphia
+street-railway stocks—perhaps as much as eight hundred thousand
+dollars. Mollenhauer had perhaps as much more. Whether Senator Simpson
+had much or little he could not tell. Cowperwood had told him in the
+past that he thought the Senator had a good deal. Most of their
+holdings, as in the case of Cowperwood’s, were hypothecated at the
+various banks for loans and these loans invested in other ways. It was
+not advisable or comfortable to have these loans called, though the
+condition of no one of the triumvirate was anything like as bad as that
+of Cowperwood. They could see themselves through without much trouble,
+though not without probable loss unless they took hurried action to
+protect themselves.
+
+He would not have thought so much of it if Cowperwood had told him that
+Stener was involved, say, to the extent of seventy-five or a hundred
+thousand dollars. That might be adjusted. But five hundred thousand
+dollars!
+
+“That’s a lot of money,” said Butler, thinking of the amazing audacity
+of Stener, but failing at the moment to identify it with the astute
+machinations of Cowperwood. “That’s something to think about. There’s
+no time to lose if there’s going to be a panic in the morning. How much
+good will it do ye if we do support the market?”
+
+“A great deal,” returned Cowperwood, “although of course I have to
+raise money in other ways. I have that one hundred thousand dollars of
+yours on deposit. Is it likely that you’ll want that right away?”
+
+“It may be,” said Butler.
+
+“It’s just as likely that I’ll need it so badly that I can’t give it up
+without seriously injuring myself,” added Cowperwood. “That’s just one
+of a lot of things. If you and Senator Simpson and Mr. Mollenhauer were
+to get together—you’re the largest holders of street-railway stocks—and
+were to see Mr. Drexel and Mr. Cooke, you could fix things so that
+matters would be considerably easier. I will be all right if my loans
+are not called, and my loans will not be called if the market does not
+slump too heavily. If it does, all my securities are depreciated, and I
+can’t hold out.”
+
+Old Butler got up. “This is serious business,” he said. “I wish you’d
+never gone in with Stener in that way. It don’t look quite right and it
+can’t be made to. It’s bad, bad business,” he added dourly. “Still,
+I’ll do what I can. I can’t promise much, but I’ve always liked ye and
+I’ll not be turning on ye now unless I have to. But I’m sorry—very. And
+I’m not the only one that has a hand in things in this town.” At the
+same time he was thinking it was right decent of Cowperwood to forewarn
+him this way in regard to his own affairs and the city election, even
+though he was saving his own neck by so doing. He meant to do what he
+could.
+
+“I don’t suppose you could keep this matter of Stener and the city
+treasury quiet for a day or two until I see how I come out?” suggested
+Cowperwood warily.
+
+“I can’t promise that,” replied Butler. “I’ll have to do the best I
+can. I won’t lave it go any further than I can help—you can depend on
+that.” He was thinking how the effect of Stener’s crime could be
+overcome if Cowperwood failed.
+
+“Owen!”
+
+He stepped to the door, and, opening it, called down over the banister.
+
+“Yes, father.”
+
+“Have Dan hitch up the light buggy and bring it around to the door. And
+you get your hat and coat. I want you to go along with me.”
+
+“Yes, father.”
+
+He came back.
+
+“Sure that’s a nice little storm in a teapot, now, isn’t it? Chicago
+begins to burn, and I have to worry here in Philadelphia. Well, well—”
+Cowperwood was up now and moving to the door. “And where are you
+going?”
+
+“Back to the house. I have several people coming there to see me. But
+I’ll come back here later, if I may.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” replied Butler. “To be sure I’ll be here by midnight,
+anyhow. Well, good night. I’ll see you later, then, I suppose. I’ll
+tell you what I find out.”
+
+He went back in his room for something, and Cowperwood descended the
+stair alone. From the hangings of the reception-room entryway Aileen
+signaled him to draw near.
+
+“I hope it’s nothing serious, honey?” she sympathized, looking into his
+solemn eyes.
+
+It was not time for love, and he felt it.
+
+“No,” he said, almost coldly, “I think not.”
+
+“Frank, don’t let this thing make you forget me for long, please. You
+won’t, will you? I love you so.”
+
+“No, no, I won’t!” he replied earnestly, quickly and yet absently.
+
+“I can’t! Don’t you know I won’t?” He had started to kiss her, but a
+noise disturbed him. “Sh!”
+
+He walked to the door, and she followed him with eager, sympathetic
+eyes.
+
+What if anything should happen to her Frank? What if anything could?
+What would she do? That was what was troubling her. What would, what
+could she do to help him? He looked so pale—strained.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV
+
+
+The condition of the Republican party at this time in Philadelphia, its
+relationship to George W. Stener, Edward Malia Butler, Henry A.
+Mollenhauer, Senator Mark Simpson, and others, will have to be briefly
+indicated here, in order to foreshadow Cowperwood’s actual situation.
+Butler, as we have seen, was normally interested in and friendly to
+Cowperwood. Stener was Cowperwood’s tool. Mollenhauer and Senator
+Simpson were strong rivals of Butler for the control of city affairs.
+Simpson represented the Republican control of the State legislature,
+which could dictate to the city if necessary, making new election laws,
+revising the city charter, starting political investigations, and the
+like. He had many influential newspapers, corporations, banks, at his
+beck and call. Mollenhauer represented the Germans, some Americans, and
+some large stable corporations—a very solid and respectable man. All
+three were strong, able, and dangerous politically. The two latter
+counted on Butler’s influence, particularly with the Irish, and a
+certain number of ward leaders and Catholic politicians and laymen, who
+were as loyal to him as though he were a part of the church itself.
+Butler’s return to these followers was protection, influence, aid, and
+good-will generally. The city’s return to him, via Mollenhauer and
+Simpson, was in the shape of contracts—fat ones—street-paving, bridges,
+viaducts, sewers. And in order for him to get these contracts the
+affairs of the Republican party, of which he was a beneficiary as well
+as a leader, must be kept reasonably straight. At the same time it was
+no more a part of his need to keep the affairs of the party straight
+than it was of either Mollenhauer’s or Simpson’s, and Stener was not
+his appointee. The latter was more directly responsible to Mollenhauer
+than to any one else.
+
+As Butler stepped into the buggy with his son he was thinking about
+this, and it was puzzling him greatly.
+
+“Cowperwood’s just been here,” he said to Owen, who had been rapidly
+coming into a sound financial understanding of late, and was already a
+shrewder man politically and socially than his father, though he had
+not the latter’s magnetism. “He’s been tellin’ me that he’s in a rather
+tight place. You hear that?” he continued, as some voice in the
+distance was calling “Extra! Extra!” “That’s Chicago burnin’, and
+there’s goin’ to be trouble on the stock exchange to-morrow. We have a
+lot of our street-railway stocks around at the different banks. If we
+don’t look sharp they’ll be callin’ our loans. We have to ’tend to that
+the first thing in the mornin’. Cowperwood has a hundred thousand of
+mine with him that he wants me to let stay there, and he has some money
+that belongs to Stener, he tells me.”
+
+“Stener?” asked Owen, curiously. “Has he been dabbling in stocks?” Owen
+had heard some rumors concerning Stener and others only very recently,
+which he had not credited nor yet communicated to his father. “How much
+money of his has Cowperwood?” he asked.
+
+Butler meditated. “Quite a bit, I’m afraid,” he finally said. “As a
+matter of fact, it’s a great deal—about five hundred thousand dollars.
+If that should become known, it would be makin’ a good deal of noise,
+I’m thinkin’.”
+
+“Whew!” exclaimed Owen in astonishment. “Five hundred thousand dollars!
+Good Lord, father! Do you mean to say Stener has got away with five
+hundred thousand dollars? Why, I wouldn’t think he was clever enough to
+do that. Five hundred thousand dollars! It will make a nice row if that
+comes out.”
+
+“Aisy, now! Aisy, now!” replied Butler, doing his best to keep all
+phases of the situation in mind. “We can’t tell exactly what the
+circumstances were yet. He mayn’t have meant to take so much. It may
+all come out all right yet. The money’s invested. Cowperwood hasn’t
+failed yet. It may be put back. The thing to be settled on now is
+whether anything can be done to save him. If he’s tellin’ me the
+truth—and I never knew him to lie—he can get out of this if
+street-railway stocks don’t break too heavy in the mornin’. I’m going
+over to see Henry Mollenhauer and Mark Simpson. They’re in on this.
+Cowperwood wanted me to see if I couldn’t get them to get the bankers
+together and have them stand by the market. He thought we might protect
+our loans by comin’ on and buyin’ and holdin’ up the price.”
+
+Owen was running swiftly in his mind over Cowperwood’s affairs—as much
+as he knew of them. He felt keenly that the banker ought to be shaken
+out. This dilemma was his fault, not Stener’s—he felt. It was strange
+to him that his father did not see it and resent it.
+
+“You see what it is, father,” he said, dramatically, after a time.
+“Cowperwood’s been using this money of Stener’s to pick up stocks, and
+he’s in a hole. If it hadn’t been for this fire he’d have got away with
+it; but now he wants you and Simpson and Mollenhauer and the others to
+pull him out. He’s a nice fellow, and I like him fairly well; but
+you’re a fool if you do as he wants you to. He has more than belongs to
+him already. I heard the other day that he has the Front Street line,
+and almost all of Green and Coates; and that he and Stener own the
+Seventeenth and Nineteenth; but I didn’t believe it. I’ve been
+intending to ask you about it. I think Cowperwood has a majority for
+himself stowed away somewhere in every instance. Stener is just a pawn.
+He moves him around where he pleases.”
+
+Owen’s eyes gleamed avariciously, opposingly. Cowperwood ought to be
+punished, sold out, driven out of the street-railway business in which
+Owen was anxious to rise.
+
+“Now you know,” observed Butler, thickly and solemnly, “I always
+thought that young felly was clever, but I hardly thought he was as
+clever as all that. So that’s his game. You’re pretty shrewd yourself,
+aren’t you? Well, we can fix that, if we think well of it. But there’s
+more than that to all this. You don’t want to forget the Republican
+party. Our success goes with the success of that, you know”—and he
+paused and looked at his son. “If Cowperwood should fail and that money
+couldn’t be put back—” He broke off abstractedly. “The thing that’s
+troublin’ me is this matter of Stener and the city treasury. If
+somethin’ ain’t done about that, it may go hard with the party this
+fall, and with some of our contracts. You don’t want to forget that an
+election is comin’ along in November. I’m wonderin’ if I ought to call
+in that one hundred thousand dollars. It’s goin’ to take considerable
+money to meet my loans in the mornin’.”
+
+It is a curious matter of psychology, but it was only now that the real
+difficulties of the situation were beginning to dawn on Butler. In the
+presence of Cowperwood he was so influenced by that young man’s
+personality and his magnetic presentation of his need and his own
+liking for him that he had not stopped to consider all the phases of
+his own relationship to the situation. Out here in the cool night air,
+talking to Owen, who was ambitious on his own account and anything but
+sentimentally considerate of Cowperwood, he was beginning to sober down
+and see things in their true light. He had to admit that Cowperwood had
+seriously compromised the city treasury and the Republican party, and
+incidentally Butler’s own private interests. Nevertheless, he liked
+Cowperwood. He was in no way prepared to desert him. He was now going
+to see Mollenhauer and Simpson as much to save Cowperwood really as the
+party and his own affairs. And yet a scandal. He did not like
+that—resented it. This young scalawag! To think he should be so sly.
+None the less he still liked him, even here and now, and was feeling
+that he ought to do something to help the young man, if anything could
+help him. He might even leave his hundred-thousand-dollar loan with him
+until the last hour, as Cowperwood had requested, if the others were
+friendly.
+
+“Well, father,” said Owen, after a time, “I don’t see why you need to
+worry any more than Mollenhauer or Simpson. If you three want to help
+him out, you can; but for the life of me I don’t see why you should. I
+know this thing will have a bad effect on the election, if it comes out
+before then; but it could be hushed up until then, couldn’t it? Anyhow,
+your street-railway holdings are more important than this election, and
+if you can see your way clear to getting the street-railway lines in
+your hands you won’t need to worry about any elections. My advice to
+you is to call that one-hundred-thousand-dollar loan of yours in the
+morning, and meet the drop in your stocks that way. It may make
+Cowperwood fail, but that won’t hurt you any. You can go into the
+market and buy his stocks. I wouldn’t be surprised if he would run to
+you and ask you to take them. You ought to get Mollenhauer and Simpson
+to scare Stener so that he won’t loan Cowperwood any more money. If you
+don’t, Cowperwood will run there and get more. Stener’s in too far now.
+If Cowperwood won’t sell out, well and good; the chances are he will
+bust, anyhow, and then you can pick up as much on the market as any one
+else. I think he’ll sell. You can’t afford to worry about Stener’s five
+hundred thousand dollars. No one told him to loan it. Let him look out
+for himself. It may hurt the party, but you can look after that later.
+You and Mollenhauer can fix the newspapers so they won’t talk about it
+till after election.”
+
+“Aisy! Aisy!” was all the old contractor would say. He was thinking
+hard.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV
+
+
+The residence of Henry A. Mollenhauer was, at that time, in a section
+of the city which was almost as new as that in which Butler was living.
+It was on South Broad Street, near a handsome library building which
+had been recently erected. It was a spacious house of the type usually
+affected by men of new wealth in those days—a structure four stories in
+height of yellow brick and white stone built after no school which one
+could readily identify, but not unattractive in its architectural
+composition. A broad flight of steps leading to a wide veranda gave
+into a decidedly ornate door, which was set on either side by narrow
+windows and ornamented to the right and left with pale-blue jardinieres
+of considerable charm of outline. The interior, divided into twenty
+rooms, was paneled and parqueted in the most expensive manner for homes
+of that day. There was a great reception-hall, a large parlor or
+drawing-room, a dining-room at least thirty feet square paneled in oak;
+and on the second floor were a music-room devoted to the talents of
+Mollenhauer’s three ambitious daughters, a library and private office
+for himself, a boudoir and bath for his wife, and a conservatory.
+
+Mollenhauer was, and felt himself to be, a very important man. His
+financial and political judgment was exceedingly keen. Although he was
+a German, or rather an American of German parentage, he was a man of a
+rather impressive American presence. He was tall and heavy and shrewd
+and cold. His large chest and wide shoulders supported a head of
+distinguished proportions, both round and long when seen from different
+angles. The frontal bone descended in a protruding curve over the nose,
+and projected solemnly over the eyes, which burned with a shrewd,
+inquiring gaze. And the nose and mouth and chin below, as well as his
+smooth, hard cheeks, confirmed the impression that he knew very well
+what he wished in this world, and was very able without regard to let
+or hindrance to get it. It was a big face, impressive, well modeled. He
+was an excellent friend of Edward Malia Butler’s, as such friendships
+go, and his regard for Mark Simpson was as sincere as that of one tiger
+for another. He respected ability; he was willing to play fair when
+fair was the game. When it was not, the reach of his cunning was not
+easily measured.
+
+When Edward Butler and his son arrived on this Sunday evening, this
+distinguished representative of one-third of the city’s interests was
+not expecting them. He was in his library reading and listening to one
+of his daughters playing the piano. His wife and his other two
+daughters had gone to church. He was of a domestic turn of mind. Still,
+Sunday evening being an excellent one for conference purposes generally
+in the world of politics, he was not without the thought that some one
+or other of his distinguished confreres might call, and when the
+combination footman and butler announced the presence of Butler and his
+son, he was well pleased.
+
+“So there you are,” he remarked to Butler, genially, extending his
+hand. “I’m certainly glad to see you. And Owen! How are you, Owen? What
+will you gentlemen have to drink, and what will you smoke? I know
+you’ll have something. John”—to the servitor—-“see if you can find
+something for these gentlemen. I have just been listening to Caroline
+play; but I think you’ve frightened her off for the time being.”
+
+He moved a chair into position for Butler, and indicated to Owen
+another on the other side of the table. In a moment his servant had
+returned with a silver tray of elaborate design, carrying whiskies and
+wines of various dates and cigars in profusion. Owen was the new type
+of young financier who neither smoked nor drank. His father temperately
+did both.
+
+“It’s a comfortable place you have here,” said Butler, without any
+indication of the important mission that had brought him. “I don’t
+wonder you stay at home Sunday evenings. What’s new in the city?”
+
+“Nothing much, so far as I can see,” replied Mollenhauer, pacifically.
+“Things seem to be running smooth enough. You don’t know anything that
+we ought to worry about, do you?”
+
+“Well, yes,” said Butler, draining off the remainder of a brandy and
+soda that had been prepared for him. “One thing. You haven’t seen an
+avenin’ paper, have you?”
+
+“No, I haven’t,” said Mollenhauer, straightening up. “Is there one out?
+What’s the trouble anyhow?”
+
+“Nothing—except Chicago’s burning, and it looks as though we’d have a
+little money-storm here in the morning.”
+
+“You don’t say! I didn’t hear that. There’s a paper out, is there?
+Well, well—is it much of a fire?”
+
+“The city is burning down, so they say,” put in Owen, who was watching
+the face of the distinguished politician with considerable interest.
+
+“Well, that is news. I must send out and get a paper. John!” he called.
+His man-servant appeared. “See if you can get me a paper somewhere.”
+The servant disappeared. “What makes you think that would have anything
+to do with us?” observed Mollenhauer, returning to Butler.
+
+“Well, there’s one thing that goes with that that I didn’t know till a
+little while ago and that is that our man Stener is apt to be short in
+his accounts, unless things come out better than some people seem to
+think,” suggested Butler, calmly. “That might not look so well before
+election, would it?” His shrewd gray Irish eyes looked into
+Mollenhauer’s, who returned his gaze.
+
+“Where did you get that?” queried Mr. Mollenhauer icily. “He hasn’t
+deliberately taken much money, has he? How much has he taken—do you
+know?”
+
+“Quite a bit,” replied Butler, quietly. “Nearly five hundred thousand,
+so I understand. Only I wouldn’t say that it has been taken as yet.
+It’s in danger of being lost.”
+
+“Five hundred thousand!” exclaimed Mollenhauer in amazement, and yet
+preserving his usual calm. “You don’t tell me! How long has this been
+going on? What has he been doing with the money?”
+
+“He’s loaned a good deal—about five hundred thousand dollars to this
+young Cowperwood in Third Street, that’s been handlin’ city loan.
+They’ve been investin’ it for themselves in one thing and
+another—mostly in buyin’ up street-railways.” (At the mention of
+street-railways Mollenhauer’s impassive countenance underwent a barely
+perceptible change.) “This fire, accordin’ to Cowperwood, is certain to
+produce a panic in the mornin’, and unless he gets considerable help he
+doesn’t see how he’s to hold out. If he doesn’t hold out, there’ll be
+five hundred thousand dollars missin’ from the city treasury which
+can’t be put back. Stener’s out of town and Cowperwood’s come to me to
+see what can be done about it. As a matter of fact, he’s done a little
+business for me in times past, and he thought maybe I could help him
+now—that is, that I might get you and the Senator to see the big
+bankers with me and help support the market in the mornin’. If we don’t
+he’s goin’ to fail, and he thought the scandal would hurt us in the
+election. He doesn’t appear to me to be workin’ any game—just anxious
+to save himself and do the square thing by me—by us, if he can.” Butler
+paused.
+
+Mollenhauer, sly and secretive himself, was apparently not at all moved
+by this unexpected development. At the same time, never having thought
+of Stener as having any particular executive or financial ability, he
+was a little stirred and curious. So his treasurer was using money
+without his knowing it, and now stood in danger of being prosecuted!
+Cowperwood he knew of only indirectly, as one who had been engaged to
+handle city loan. He had profited by his manipulation of city loan.
+Evidently the banker had made a fool of Stener, and had used the money
+for street-railway shares! He and Stener must have quite some private
+holdings then. That did interest Mollenhauer greatly.
+
+“Five hundred thousand dollars!” he repeated, when Butler had finished.
+“That is quite a little money. If merely supporting the market would
+save Cowperwood we might do that, although if it’s a severe panic I do
+not see how anything we can do will be of very much assistance to him.
+If he’s in a very tight place and a severe slump is coming, it will
+take a great deal more than our merely supporting the market to save
+him. I’ve been through that before. You don’t know what his liabilities
+are?”
+
+“I do not,” said Butler.
+
+“He didn’t ask for money, you say?”
+
+“He wants me to l’ave a hundred thousand he has of mine until he sees
+whether he can get through or not.”
+
+“Stener is really out of town, I suppose?” Mollenhauer was innately
+suspicious.
+
+“So Cowperwood says. We can send and find out.”
+
+Mollenhauer was thinking of the various aspects of the case. Supporting
+the market would be all very well if that would save Cowperwood, and
+the Republican party and his treasurer. At the same time Stener could
+then be compelled to restore the five hundred thousand dollars to the
+city treasury, and release his holdings to some one—preferably to
+him—Mollenhauer. But here was Butler also to be considered in this
+matter. What might he not want? He consulted with Butler and learned
+that Cowperwood had agreed to return the five hundred thousand in case
+he could get it together. The various street-car holdings were not
+asked after. But what assurance had any one that Cowperwood could be so
+saved? And could, or would get the money together? And if he were saved
+would he give the money back to Stener? If he required actual money,
+who would loan it to him in a time like this—in case a sharp panic was
+imminent? What security could he give? On the other hand, under
+pressure from the right parties he might be made to surrender all his
+street-railway holdings for a song—his and Stener’s. If he
+(Mollenhauer) could get them he would not particularly care whether the
+election was lost this fall or not, although he felt satisfied, as had
+Owen, that it would not be lost. It could be bought, as usual. The
+defalcation—if Cowperwood’s failure made Stener’s loan into one—could
+be concealed long enough, Mollenhauer thought, to win. Personally as it
+came to him now he would prefer to frighten Stener into refusing
+Cowperwood additional aid, and then raid the latter’s street-railway
+stock in combination with everybody else’s, for that matter—Simpson’s
+and Butler’s included. One of the big sources of future wealth in
+Philadelphia lay in these lines. For the present, however, he had to
+pretend an interest in saving the party at the polls.
+
+“I can’t speak for the Senator, that’s sure,” pursued Mollenhauer,
+reflectively. “I don’t know what he may think. As for myself, I am
+perfectly willing to do what I can to keep up the price of stocks, if
+that will do any good. I would do so naturally in order to protect my
+loans. The thing that we ought to be thinking about, in my judgment, is
+how to prevent exposure, in case Mr. Cowperwood does fail, until after
+election. We have no assurance, of course, that however much we support
+the market we will be able to sustain it.”
+
+“We have not,” replied Butler, solemnly.
+
+Owen thought he could see Cowperwood’s approaching doom quite plainly.
+At that moment the door-bell rang. A maid, in the absence of the
+footman, brought in the name of Senator Simpson.
+
+“Just the man,” said Mollenhauer. “Show him up. You can see what he
+thinks.”
+
+“Perhaps I had better leave you alone now,” suggested Owen to his
+father. “Perhaps I can find Miss Caroline, and she will sing for me.
+I’ll wait for you, father,” he added.
+
+Mollenhauer cast him an ingratiating smile, and as he stepped out
+Senator Simpson walked in.
+
+A more interesting type of his kind than Senator Mark Simpson never
+flourished in the State of Pennsylvania, which has been productive of
+interesting types. Contrasted with either of the two men who now
+greeted him warmly and shook his hand, he was physically unimpressive.
+He was small—five feet nine inches, to Mollenhauer’s six feet and
+Butler’s five feet eleven inches and a half, and then his face was
+smooth, with a receding jaw. In the other two this feature was
+prominent. Nor were his eyes as frank as those of Butler, nor as
+defiant as those of Mollenhauer; but for subtlety they were unmatched
+by either—deep, strange, receding, cavernous eyes which contemplated
+you as might those of a cat looking out of a dark hole, and suggesting
+all the artfulness that has ever distinguished the feline family. He
+had a strange mop of black hair sweeping down over a fine, low, white
+forehead, and a skin as pale and bluish as poor health might make it;
+but there was, nevertheless, resident here a strange, resistant,
+capable force that ruled men—the subtlety with which he knew how to
+feed cupidity with hope and gain and the ruthlessness with which he
+repaid those who said him nay. He was a still man, as such a man might
+well have been—feeble and fish-like in his handshake, wan and slightly
+lackadaisical in his smile, but speaking always with eyes that answered
+for every defect.
+
+“Av’nin’, Mark, I’m glad to see you,” was Butler’s greeting.
+
+“How are you, Edward?” came the quiet reply.
+
+“Well, Senator, you’re not looking any the worse for wear. Can I pour
+you something?”
+
+“Nothing to-night, Henry,” replied Simpson. “I haven’t long to stay. I
+just stopped by on my way home. My wife’s over here at the Cavanaghs’,
+and I have to stop by to fetch her.”
+
+“Well, it’s a good thing you dropped in, Senator, just when you did,”
+began Mollenhauer, seating himself after his guest. “Butler here has
+been telling me of a little political problem that has arisen since I
+last saw you. I suppose you’ve heard that Chicago is burning?”
+
+“Yes; Cavanagh was just telling me. It looks to be quite serious. I
+think the market will drop heavily in the morning.”
+
+“I wouldn’t be surprised myself,” put in Mollenhauer, laconically.
+
+“Here’s the paper now,” said Butler, as John, the servant, came in from
+the street bearing the paper in his hand. Mollenhauer took it and
+spread it out before them. It was among the earliest of the “extras”
+that were issued in this country, and contained a rather impressive
+spread of type announcing that the conflagration in the lake city was
+growing hourly worse since its inception the day before.
+
+“Well, that is certainly dreadful,” said Simpson. “I’m very sorry for
+Chicago. I have many friends there. I shall hope to hear that it is not
+so bad as it seems.”
+
+The man had a rather grandiloquent manner which he never abandoned
+under any circumstances.
+
+“The matter that Butler was telling me about,” continued Mollenhauer,
+“has something to do with this in a way. You know the habit our city
+treasurers have of loaning out their money at two per cent.?”
+
+“Yes?” said Simpson, inquiringly.
+
+“Well, Mr. Stener, it seems, has been loaning out a good deal of the
+city’s money to this young Cowperwood, in Third Street, who has been
+handling city loans.”
+
+“You don’t say!” said Simpson, putting on an air of surprise. “Not
+much, I hope?” The Senator, like Butler and Mollenhauer, was profiting
+greatly by cheap loans from the same source to various designated city
+depositories.
+
+“Well, it seems that Stener has loaned him as much as five hundred
+thousand dollars, and if by any chance Cowperwood shouldn’t be able to
+weather this storm, Stener is apt to be short that amount, and that
+wouldn’t look so good as a voting proposition to the people in
+November, do you think? Cowperwood owes Mr. Butler here one hundred
+thousand dollars, and because of that he came to see him to-night. He
+wanted Butler to see if something couldn’t be done through us to tide
+him over. If not”—he waved one hand suggestively—“well, he might fail.”
+
+Simpson fingered his strange, wide mouth with his delicate hand. “What
+have they been doing with the five hundred thousand dollars?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, the boys must make a little somethin’ on the side,” said Butler,
+cheerfully. “I think they’ve been buyin’ up street-railways, for one
+thing.” He stuck his thumbs in the armholes of his vest. Both
+Mollenhauer and Simpson smiled wan smiles.
+
+“Quite so,” said Mollenhauer. Senator Simpson merely looked the deep
+things that he thought.
+
+He, too, was thinking how useless it was for any one to approach a
+group of politicians with a proposition like this, particularly in a
+crisis such as bid fair to occur. He reflected that if he and Butler
+and Mollenhauer could get together and promise Cowperwood protection in
+return for the surrender of his street-railway holdings it would be a
+very different matter. It would be very easy in this case to carry the
+city treasury loan along in silence and even issue more money to
+support it; but it was not sure, in the first place, that Cowperwood
+could be made to surrender his stocks, and in the second place that
+either Butler or Mollenhauer would enter into any such deal with him,
+Simpson. Butler had evidently come here to say a good word for
+Cowperwood. Mollenhauer and himself were silent rivals. Although they
+worked together politically it was toward essentially different
+financial ends. They were allied in no one particular financial
+proposition, any more than Mollenhauer and Butler were. And besides, in
+all probability Cowperwood was no fool. He was not equally guilty with
+Stener; the latter had loaned him money. The Senator reflected on
+whether he should broach some such subtle solution of the situation as
+had occurred to him to his colleagues, but he decided not. Really
+Mollenhauer was too treacherous a man to work with on a thing of this
+kind. It was a splendid chance but dangerous. He had better go it
+alone. For the present they should demand of Stener that he get
+Cowperwood to return the five hundred thousand dollars if he could. If
+not, Stener could be sacrificed for the benefit of the party, if need
+be. Cowperwood’s stocks, with this tip as to his condition, would,
+Simpson reflected, offer a good opportunity for a little stock-exchange
+work on the part of his own brokers. They could spread rumors as to
+Cowperwood’s condition and then offer to take his shares off his
+hands—for a song, of course. It was an evil moment that led Cowperwood
+to Butler.
+
+“Well, now,” said the Senator, after a prolonged silence, “I might
+sympathize with Mr. Cowperwood in his situation, and I certainly don’t
+blame him for buying up street-railways if he can; but I really don’t
+see what can be done for him very well in this crisis. I don’t know
+about you, gentlemen, but I am rather certain that I am not in a
+position to pick other people’s chestnuts out of the fire if I wanted
+to, just now. It all depends on whether we feel that the danger to the
+party is sufficient to warrant our going down into our pockets and
+assisting him.”
+
+At the mention of real money to be loaned Mollenhauer pulled a long
+face. “I can’t see that I will be able to do very much for Mr.
+Cowperwood,” he sighed.
+
+“Begad,” said Buler, with a keen sense of humor, “it looks to me as if
+I’d better be gettin’ in my one hundred thousand dollars. That’s the
+first business of the early mornin’.” Neither Simpson nor Mollenhauer
+condescended on this occasion to smile even the wan smile they had
+smiled before. They merely looked wise and solemn.
+
+“But this matter of the city treasury, now,” said Senator Simpson,
+after the atmosphere had been allowed to settle a little, “is something
+to which we shall have to devote a little thought. If Mr. Cowperwood
+should fail, and the treasury lose that much money, it would embarrass
+us no little. What lines are they,” he added, as an afterthought, “that
+this man has been particularly interested in?”
+
+“I really don’t know,” replied Butler, who did not care to say what
+Owen had told him on the drive over.
+
+“I don’t see,” said Mollenhauer, “unless we can make Stener get the
+money back before this man Cowperwood fails, how we can save ourselves
+from considerable annoyance later; but if we did anything which would
+look as though we were going to compel restitution, he would probably
+shut up shop anyhow. So there’s no remedy in that direction. And it
+wouldn’t be very kind to our friend Edward here to do it until we hear
+how he comes out on his affair.” He was referring to Butler’s loan.
+
+“Certainly not,” said Senator Simpson, with true political sagacity and
+feeling.
+
+“I’ll have that one hundred thousand dollars in the mornin’,” said
+Butler, “and never fear.”
+
+“I think,” said Simpson, “if anything comes of this matter that we will
+have to do our best to hush it up until after the election. The
+newspapers can just as well keep silent on that score as not. There’s
+one thing I would suggest”—and he was now thinking of the
+street-railway properties which Cowperwood had so judiciously
+collected—“and that is that the city treasurer be cautioned against
+advancing any more money in a situation of this kind. He might readily
+be compromised into advancing much more. I suppose a word from you,
+Henry, would prevent that.”
+
+“Yes; I can do that,” said Mollenhauer, solemnly.
+
+“My judgement would be,” said Butler, in a rather obscure manner,
+thinking of Cowperwood’s mistake in appealing to these noble protectors
+of the public, “that it’s best to let sleepin’ dogs run be thimselves.”
+
+Thus ended Frank Cowperwood’s dreams of what Butler and his political
+associates might do for him in his hour of distress.
+
+The energies of Cowperwood after leaving Butler were devoted to the
+task of seeing others who might be of some assistance to him. He had
+left word with Mrs. Stener that if any message came from her husband he
+was to be notified at once. He hunted up Walter Leigh, of Drexel & Co.,
+Avery Stone of Jay Cooke & Co., and President Davison of the Girard
+National Bank. He wanted to see what they thought of the situation and
+to negotiate a loan with President Davison covering all his real and
+personal property.
+
+“I can’t tell you, Frank,” Walter Leigh insisted, “I don’t know how
+things will be running by to-morrow noon. I’m glad to know how you
+stand. I’m glad you’re doing what you’re doing—getting all your affairs
+in shape. It will help a lot. I’ll favor you all I possibly can. But if
+the chief decides on a certain group of loans to be called, they’ll
+have to be called, that’s all. I’ll do my best to make things look
+better. If the whole of Chicago is wiped out, the insurance
+companies—some of them, anyhow—are sure to go, and then look out. I
+suppose you’ll call in all your loans?”
+
+“Not any more than I have to.”
+
+“Well, that’s just the way it is here—or will be.”
+
+The two men shook hands. They liked each other. Leigh was of the city’s
+fashionable coterie, a society man to the manner born, but with a
+wealth of common sense and a great deal of worldly experience.
+
+“I’ll tell you, Frank,” he observed at parting, “I’ve always thought
+you were carrying too much street-railway. It’s great stuff if you can
+get away with it, but it’s just in a pinch like this that you’re apt to
+get hurt. You’ve been making money pretty fast out of that and city
+loans.”
+
+He looked directly into his long-time friend’s eyes, and they smiled.
+
+It was the same with Avery Stone, President Davison, and others. They
+had all already heard rumors of disaster when he arrived. They were not
+sure what the morrow would bring forth. It looked very unpromising.
+
+Cowperwood decided to stop and see Butler again for he felt certain his
+interview with Mollenhauer and Simpson was now over. Butler, who had
+been meditating what he should say to Cowperwood, was not unfriendly in
+his manner. “So you’re back,” he said, when Cowperwood appeared.
+
+“Yes, Mr. Butler.”
+
+“Well, I’m not sure that I’ve been able to do anything for you. I’m
+afraid not,” Butler said, cautiously. “It’s a hard job you set me.
+Mollenhauer seems to think that he’ll support the market, on his own
+account. I think he will. Simpson has interests which he has to
+protect. I’m going to buy for myself, of course.”
+
+He paused to reflect.
+
+“I couldn’t get them to call a conference with any of the big moneyed
+men as yet,” he added, warily. “They’d rather wait and see what happens
+in the mornin’. Still, I wouldn’t be down-hearted if I were you. If
+things turn out very bad they may change their minds. I had to tell
+them about Stener. It’s pretty bad, but they’re hopin’ you’ll come
+through and straighten that out. I hope so. About my own loan—well,
+I’ll see how things are in the mornin’. If I raisonably can I’ll lave
+it with you. You’d better see me again about it. I wouldn’t try to get
+any more money out of Stener if I were you. It’s pretty bad as it is.”
+
+Cowperwood saw at once that he was to get no aid from the politicians.
+The one thing that disturbed him was this reference to Stener. Had they
+already communicated with him—warned him? If so, his own coming to
+Butler had been a bad move; and yet from the point of view of his
+possible failure on the morrow it had been advisable. At least now the
+politicians knew where he stood. If he got in a very tight corner he
+would come to Butler again—the politicians could assist him or not, as
+they chose. If they did not help him and he failed, and the election
+were lost, it was their own fault. Anyhow, if he could see Stener first
+the latter would not be such a fool as to stand in his own light in a
+crisis like this.
+
+“Things look rather dark to-night, Mr. Butler,” he said, smartly, “but
+I still think I’ll come through. I hope so, anyhow. I’m sorry to have
+put you to so much trouble. I wish, of course, that you gentlemen could
+see your way clear to assist me, but if you can’t, you can’t. I have a
+number of things that I can do. I hope that you will leave your loan as
+long as you can.”
+
+He went briskly out, and Butler meditated. “A clever young chap that,”
+he said. “It’s too bad. But he may come out all right at that.”
+
+Cowperwood hurried to his own home only to find his father awake and
+brooding. To him he talked with that strong vein of sympathy and
+understanding which is usually characteristic of those drawn by ties of
+flesh and blood. He liked his father. He sympathized with his
+painstaking effort to get up in the world. He could not forget that as
+a boy he had had the loving sympathy and interest of his father. The
+loan which he had from the Third National, on somewhat weak Union
+Street Railway shares he could probably replace if stocks did not drop
+too tremendously. He must replace this at all costs. But his father’s
+investments in street-railways, which had risen with his own ventures,
+and which now involved an additional two hundred thousand—how could he
+protect those? The shares were hypothecated and the money was used for
+other things. Additional collateral would have to be furnished the
+several banks carrying them. It was nothing except loans, loans, loans,
+and the need of protecting them. If he could only get an additional
+deposit of two or three hundred thousand dollars from Stener. But that,
+in the face of possible financial difficulties, was rank criminality.
+All depended on the morrow.
+
+Monday, the ninth, dawned gray and cheerless. He was up with the first
+ray of light, shaved and dressed, and went over, under the gray-green
+pergola, to his father’s house. He was up, also, and stirring about,
+for he had not been able to sleep. His gray eyebrows and gray hair
+looked rather shaggy and disheveled, and his side-whiskers anything but
+decorative. The old gentleman’s eyes were tired, and his face was gray.
+Cowperwood could see that he was worrying. He looked up from a small,
+ornate escritoire of buhl, which Ellsworth had found somewhere, and
+where he was quietly tabulating a list of his resources and
+liabilities. Cowperwood winced. He hated to see his father worried, but
+he could not help it. He had hoped sincerely, when they built their
+houses together, that the days of worry for his father had gone
+forever.
+
+“Counting up?” he asked, familiarly, with a smile. He wanted to hearten
+the old gentleman as much as possible.
+
+“I was just running over my affairs again to see where I stood in
+case—” He looked quizzically at his son, and Frank smiled again.
+
+“I wouldn’t worry, father. I told you how I fixed it so that Butler and
+that crowd will support the market. I have Rivers and Targool and Harry
+Eltinge on ’change helping me sell out, and they are the best men
+there. They’ll handle the situation carefully. I couldn’t trust Ed or
+Joe in this case, for the moment they began to sell everybody would
+know what was going on with me. This way my men will seem like bears
+hammering the market, but not hammering too hard. I ought to be able to
+unload enough at ten points off to raise five hundred thousand. The
+market may not go lower than that. You can’t tell. It isn’t going to
+sink indefinitely. If I just knew what the big insurance companies were
+going to do! The morning paper hasn’t come yet, has it?”
+
+He was going to pull a bell, but remembered that the servants would
+scarcely be up as yet. He went to the front door himself. There were
+the Press and the Public Ledger lying damp from the presses. He picked
+them up and glanced at the front pages. His countenance fell. On one,
+the Press, was spread a great black map of Chicago, a most
+funereal-looking thing, the black portion indicating the burned
+section. He had never seen a map of Chicago before in just this clear,
+definite way. That white portion was Lake Michigan, and there was the
+Chicago River dividing the city into three almost equal portions—the
+north side, the west side, the south side. He saw at once that the city
+was curiously arranged, somewhat like Philadelphia, and that the
+business section was probably an area of two or three miles square, set
+at the juncture of the three sides, and lying south of the main stem of
+the river, where it flowed into the lake after the southwest and
+northwest branches had united to form it. This was a significant
+central area; but, according to this map, it was all burned out.
+“Chicago in Ashes” ran a great side-heading set in heavily leaded black
+type. It went on to detail the sufferings of the homeless, the number
+of the dead, the number of those whose fortunes had been destroyed.
+Then it descanted upon the probable effect in the East. Insurance
+companies and manufacturers might not be able to meet the great strain
+of all this.
+
+“Damn!” said Cowperwood gloomily. “I wish I were out of this
+stock-jobbing business. I wish I had never gotten into it.” He returned
+to his drawing-room and scanned both accounts most carefully.
+
+Then, though it was still early, he and his father drove to his office.
+There were already messages awaiting him, a dozen or more, to cancel or
+sell. While he was standing there a messenger-boy brought him three
+more. One was from Stener and said that he would be back by twelve
+o’clock, the very earliest he could make it. Cowperwood was relieved
+and yet distressed. He would need large sums of money to meet various
+loans before three. Every hour was precious. He must arrange to meet
+Stener at the station and talk to him before any one else should see
+him. Clearly this was going to be a hard, dreary, strenuous day.
+
+Third Street, by the time he reached there, was stirring with other
+bankers and brokers called forth by the exigencies of the occasion.
+There was a suspicious hurrying of feet—that intensity which makes all
+the difference in the world between a hundred people placid and a
+hundred people disturbed. At the exchange, the atmosphere was feverish.
+At the sound of the gong, the staccato uproar began. Its metallic
+vibrations were still in the air when the two hundred men who composed
+this local organization at its utmost stress of calculation, threw
+themselves upon each other in a gibbering struggle to dispose of or
+seize bargains of the hour. The interests were so varied that it was
+impossible to say at which pole it was best to sell or buy.
+
+Targool and Rivers had been delegated to stay at the center of things,
+Joseph and Edward to hover around on the outside and to pick up such
+opportunities of selling as might offer a reasonable return on the
+stock. The “bears” were determined to jam things down, and it all
+depended on how well the agents of Mollenhauer, Simpson, Butler, and
+others supported things in the street-railway world whether those
+stocks retained any strength or not. The last thing Butler had said the
+night before was that they would do the best they could. They would buy
+up to a certain point. Whether they would support the market
+indefinitely he would not say. He could not vouch for Mollenhauer and
+Simpson. Nor did he know the condition of their affairs.
+
+While the excitement was at its highest Cowperwood came in. As he stood
+in the door looking to catch the eye of Rivers, the ’change gong
+sounded, and trading stopped. All the brokers and traders faced about
+to the little balcony, where the secretary of the ’change made his
+announcements; and there he stood, the door open behind him, a small,
+dark, clerkly man of thirty-eight or forty, whose spare figure and pale
+face bespoke the methodic mind that knows no venturous thought. In his
+right hand he held a slip of white paper.
+
+“The American Fire Insurance Company of Boston announces its inability
+to meet its obligations.” The gong sounded again.
+
+Immediately the storm broke anew, more voluble than before, because, if
+after one hour of investigation on this Monday morning one insurance
+company had gone down, what would four or five hours or a day or two
+bring forth? It meant that men who had been burned out in Chicago would
+not be able to resume business. It meant that all loans connected with
+this concern had been, or would be called now. And the cries of
+frightened “bulls” offering thousand and five thousand lot holdings in
+Northern Pacific, Illinois Central, Reading, Lake Shore, Wabash; in all
+the local streetcar lines; and in Cowperwood’s city loans at constantly
+falling prices was sufficient to take the heart out of all concerned.
+He hurried to Arthur Rivers’s side in the lull; but there was little he
+could say.
+
+“It looks as though the Mollenhauer and Simpson crowds aren’t doing
+much for the market,” he observed, gravely.
+
+“They’ve had advices from New York,” explained Rivers solemnly. “It
+can’t be supported very well. There are three insurance companies over
+there on the verge of quitting, I understand. I expect to see them
+posted any minute.”
+
+They stepped apart from the pandemonium, to discuss ways and means.
+Under his agreement with Stener, Cowperwood could buy up to one hundred
+thousand dollars of city loan, above the customary wash sales, or
+market manipulation, by which they were making money. This was in case
+the market had to be genuinely supported. He decided to buy sixty
+thousand dollars worth now, and use this to sustain his loans
+elsewhere. Stener would pay him for this instantly, giving him more
+ready cash. It might help him in one way and another; and, anyhow, it
+might tend to strengthen the other securities long enough at least to
+allow him to realize a little something now at better than ruinous
+rates. If only he had the means “to go short” on this market! If only
+doing so did not really mean ruin to his present position. It was
+characteristic of the man that even in this crisis he should be seeing
+how the very thing that of necessity, because of his present
+obligations, might ruin him, might also, under slightly different
+conditions, yield him a great harvest. He could not take advantage of
+it, however. He could not be on both sides of this market. It was
+either “bear” or “bull,” and of necessity he was “bull.” It was strange
+but true. His subtlety could not avail him here. He was about to turn
+and hurry to see a certain banker who might loan him something on his
+house, when the gong struck again. Once more trading ceased. Arthur
+Rivers, from his position at the State securities post, where city loan
+was sold, and where he had started to buy for Cowperwood, looked
+significantly at him. Newton Targool hurried to Cowperwood’s side.
+
+“You’re up against it,” he exclaimed. “I wouldn’t try to sell against
+this market. It’s no use. They’re cutting the ground from under you.
+The bottom’s out. Things are bound to turn in a few days. Can’t you
+hold out? Here’s more trouble.”
+
+He raised his eyes to the announcer’s balcony.
+
+“The Eastern and Western Fire Insurance Company of New York announces
+that it cannot meet its obligations.”
+
+A low sound something like “Haw!” broke forth. The announcer’s gavel
+struck for order.
+
+“The Erie Fire Insurance Company of Rochester announces that it cannot
+meet its obligations.”
+
+Again that “H-a-a-a-w!”
+
+Once more the gavel.
+
+“The American Trust Company of New York has suspended payment.”
+
+“H-a-a-a-w!”
+
+The storm was on.
+
+“What do you think?” asked Targool. “You can’t brave this storm. Can’t
+you quit selling and hold out for a few days? Why not sell short?”
+
+“They ought to close this thing up,” Cowperwood said, shortly. “It
+would be a splendid way out. Then nothing could be done.”
+
+He hurried to consult with those who, finding themselves in a similar
+predicament with himself, might use their influence to bring it about.
+It was a sharp trick to play on those who, now finding the market
+favorable to their designs in its falling condition, were harvesting a
+fortune. But what was that to him? Business was business. There was no
+use selling at ruinous figures, and he gave his lieutenants orders to
+stop. Unless the bankers favored him heavily, or the stock exchange was
+closed, or Stener could be induced to deposit an additional three
+hundred thousand with him at once, he was ruined. He hurried down the
+street to various bankers and brokers suggesting that they do
+this—close the exchange. At a few minutes before twelve o’clock he
+drove rapidly to the station to meet Stener; but to his great
+disappointment the latter did not arrive. It looked as though he had
+missed his train. Cowperwood sensed something, some trick; and decided
+to go to the city hall and also to Stener’s house. Perhaps he had
+returned and was trying to avoid him.
+
+Not finding him at his office, he drove direct to his house. Here he
+was not surprised to meet Stener just coming out, looking very pale and
+distraught. At the sight of Cowperwood he actually blanched.
+
+“Why, hello, Frank,” he exclaimed, sheepishly, “where do you come
+from?”
+
+“What’s up, George?” asked Cowperwood. “I thought you were coming into
+Broad Street.”
+
+“So I was,” returned Stener, foolishly, “but I thought I would get off
+at West Philadelphia and change my clothes. I’ve a lot of things to
+’tend to yet this afternoon. I was coming in to see you.” After
+Cowperwood’s urgent telegram this was silly, but the young banker let
+it pass.
+
+“Jump in, George,” he said. “I have something very important to talk to
+you about. I told you in my telegram about the likelihood of a panic.
+It’s on. There isn’t a moment to lose. Stocks are way down, and most of
+my loans are being called. I want to know if you won’t let me have
+three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a few days at four or five
+per cent. I’ll pay it all back to you. I need it very badly. If I don’t
+get it I’m likely to fail. You know what that means, George. It will
+tie up every dollar I have. Those street-car holdings of yours will be
+tied up with me. I won’t be able to let you realize on them, and that
+will put those loans of mine from the treasury in bad shape. You won’t
+be able to put the money back, and you know what that means. We’re in
+this thing together. I want to see you through safely, but I can’t do
+it without your help. I had to go to Butler last night to see about a
+loan of his, and I’m doing my best to get money from other sources. But
+I can’t see my way through on this, I’m afraid, unless you’re willing
+to help me.” Cowperwood paused. He wanted to put the whole case clearly
+and succinctly to him before he had a chance to refuse—to make him
+realize it as his own predicament.
+
+As a matter of fact, what Cowperwood had keenly suspected was literally
+true. Stener had been reached. The moment Butler and Simpson had left
+him the night before, Mollenhauer had sent for his very able secretary,
+Abner Sengstack, and despatched him to learn the truth about Stener’s
+whereabouts. Sengstack had then sent a long wire to Strobik, who was
+with Stener, urging him to caution the latter against Cowperwood. The
+state of the treasury was known. Stener and Strobik were to be met by
+Sengstack at Wilmington (this to forefend against the possibility of
+Cowperwood’s reaching Stener first)—and the whole state of affairs made
+perfectly plain. No more money was to be used under penalty of
+prosecution. If Stener wanted to see any one he must see Mollenhauer.
+Sengstack, having received a telegram from Strobik informing him of
+their proposed arrival at noon the next day, had proceeded to
+Wilmington to meet them. The result was that Stener did not come direct
+into the business heart of the city, but instead got off at West
+Philadelphia, proposing to go first to his house to change his clothes
+and then to see Mollenhauer before meeting Cowperwood. He was very
+badly frightened and wanted time to think.
+
+“I can’t do it, Frank,” he pleaded, piteously. “I’m in pretty bad in
+this matter. Mollenhauer’s secretary met the train out at Wilmington
+just now to warn me against this situation, and Strobik is against it.
+They know how much money I’ve got outstanding. You or somebody has told
+them. I can’t go against Mollenhauer. I owe everything I’ve got to him,
+in a way. He got me this place.”
+
+“Listen, George. Whatever you do at this time, don’t let this political
+loyalty stuff cloud your judgment. You’re in a very serious position
+and so am I. If you don’t act for yourself with me now no one is going
+to act for you—now or later—no one. And later will be too late. I
+proved that last night when I went to Butler to get help for the two of
+us. They all know about this business of our street-railway holdings
+and they want to shake us out and that’s the big and little of
+it—nothing more and nothing less. It’s a case of dog eat dog in this
+game and this particular situation and it’s up to us to save ourselves
+against everybody or go down together, and that’s just what I’m here to
+tell you. Mollenhauer doesn’t care any more for you to-day than he does
+for that lamp-post. It isn’t that money you’ve paid out to me that’s
+worrying him, but who’s getting something for it and what. Well they
+know that you and I are getting street-railways, don’t you see, and
+they don’t want us to have them. Once they get those out of our hands
+they won’t waste another day on you or me. Can’t you see that? Once
+we’ve lost all we’ve invested, you’re down and so am I—and no one is
+going to turn a hand for you or me politically or in any other way. I
+want you to understand that, George, because it’s true. And before you
+say you won’t or you will do anything because Mollenhauer says so, you
+want to think over what I have to tell you.”
+
+He was in front of Stener now, looking him directly in the eye and by
+the kinetic force of his mental way attempting to make Stener take the
+one step that might save him—Cowperwood—however little in the long run
+it might do for Stener. And, more interesting still, he did not care.
+Stener, as he saw him now, was a pawn in whosoever’s hands he happened
+to be at the time, and despite Mr. Mollenhauer and Mr. Simpson and Mr.
+Butler he proposed to attempt to keep him in his own hands if possible.
+And so he stood there looking at him as might a snake at a bird
+determined to galvanize him into selfish self-interest if possible. But
+Stener was so frightened that at the moment it looked as though there
+was little to be done with him. His face was a grayish-blue: his
+eyelids and eye rings puffy and his hands and lips moist. God, what a
+hole he was in now!
+
+“Say that’s all right, Frank,” he exclaimed desperately. “I know what
+you say is true. But look at me and my position, if I do give you this
+money. What can’t they do to me, and won’t. If you only look at it from
+my point of view. If only you hadn’t gone to Butler before you saw me.”
+
+“As though I could see you, George, when you were off duck shooting and
+when I was wiring everywhere I knew to try to get in touch with you.
+How could I? The situation had to be met. Besides, I thought Butler was
+more friendly to me than he proved. But there’s no use being angry with
+me now, George, for going to Butler as I did, and anyhow you can’t
+afford to be now. We’re in this thing together. It’s a case of sink or
+swim for just us two—not any one else—just us—don’t you get that?
+Butler couldn’t or wouldn’t do what I wanted him to do—get Mollenhauer
+and Simpson to support the market. Instead of that they are hammering
+it. They have a game of their own. It’s to shake us out—can’t you see
+that? Take everything that you and I have gathered. It is up to you and
+me, George, to save ourselves, and that’s what I’m here for now. If you
+don’t let me have three hundred and fifty thousand dollars—three
+hundred thousand, anyhow—you and I are ruined. It will be worse for
+you, George, than for me, for I’m not involved in this thing in any
+way—not legally, anyhow. But that’s not what I’m thinking of. What I
+want to do is to save us both—put us on easy street for the rest of our
+lives, whatever they say or do, and it’s in your power, with my help,
+to do that for both of us. Can’t you see that? I want to save my
+business so then I can help you to save your name and money.” He
+paused, hoping this had convinced Stener, but the latter was still
+shaking.
+
+“But what can I do, Frank?” he pleaded, weakly. “I can’t go against
+Mollenhauer. They can prosecute me if I do that. They can do it,
+anyhow. I can’t do that. I’m not strong enough. If they didn’t know, if
+you hadn’t told them, it might be different, but this way—” He shook
+his head sadly, his gray eyes filled with a pale distress.
+
+“George,” replied Cowperwood, who realized now that only the sternest
+arguments would have any effect here, “don’t talk about what I did.
+What I did I had to do. You’re in danger of losing your head and your
+nerve and making a serious mistake here, and I don’t want to see you
+make it. I have five hundred thousand of the city’s money invested for
+you—partly for me, and partly for you, but more for you than for
+me”—which, by the way, was not true—“and here you are hesitating in an
+hour like this as to whether you will protect your interest or not. I
+can’t understand it. This is a crisis, George. Stocks are tumbling on
+every side—everybody’s stocks. You’re not alone in this—neither am I.
+This is a panic, brought on by a fire, and you can’t expect to come out
+of a panic alive unless you do something to protect yourself. You say
+you owe your place to Mollenhauer and that you’re afraid of what he’ll
+do. If you look at your own situation and mine, you’ll see that it
+doesn’t make much difference what he does, so long as I don’t fail. If
+I fail, where are you? Who’s going to save you from prosecution? Will
+Mollenhauer or any one else come forward and put five hundred thousand
+dollars in the treasury for you? He will not. If Mollenhauer and the
+others have your interests at heart, why aren’t they helping me on
+’change today? I’ll tell you why. They want your street-railway
+holdings and mine, and they don’t care whether you go to jail afterward
+or not. Now if you’re wise you will listen to me. I’ve been loyal to
+you, haven’t I? You’ve made money through me—lots of it. If you’re
+wise, George, you’ll go to your office and write me your check for
+three hundred thousand dollars, anyhow, before you do a single other
+thing. Don’t see anybody and don’t do anything till you’ve done that.
+You can’t be hung any more for a sheep than you can for a lamb. No one
+can prevent you from giving me that check. You’re the city treasurer.
+Once I have that I can see my way out of this, and I’ll pay it all back
+to you next week or the week after—this panic is sure to end in that
+time. With that put back in the treasury we can see them about the five
+hundred thousand a little later. In three months, or less, I can fix it
+so that you can put that back. As a matter of fact, I can do it in
+fifteen days once I am on my feet again. Time is all I want. You won’t
+have lost your holdings and nobody will cause you any trouble if you
+put the money back. They don’t care to risk a scandal any more than you
+do. Now what’ll you do, George? Mollenhauer can’t stop you from doing
+this any more than I can make you. Your life is in your own hands. What
+will you do?”
+
+Stener stood there ridiculously meditating when, as a matter of fact,
+his very financial blood was oozing away. Yet he was afraid to act. He
+was afraid of Mollenhauer, afraid of Cowperwood, afraid of life and of
+himself. The thought of panic, loss, was not so much a definite thing
+connected with his own property, his money, as it was with his social
+and political standing in the community. Few people have the sense of
+financial individuality strongly developed. They do not know what it
+means to be a controller of wealth, to have that which releases the
+sources of social action—its medium of exchange. They want money, but
+not for money’s sake. They want it for what it will buy in the way of
+simple comforts, whereas the financier wants it for what it will
+control—for what it will represent in the way of dignity, force, power.
+Cowperwood wanted money in that way; Stener not. That was why he had
+been so ready to let Cowperwood act for him; and now, when he should
+have seen more clearly than ever the significance of what Cowperwood
+was proposing, he was frightened and his reason obscured by such things
+as Mollenhauer’s probable opposition and rage, Cowperwood’s possible
+failure, his own inability to face a real crisis. Cowperwood’s innate
+financial ability did not reassure Stener in this hour. The banker was
+too young, too new. Mollenhauer was older, richer. So was Simpson; so
+was Butler. These men, with their wealth, represented the big forces,
+the big standards in his world. And besides, did not Cowperwood himself
+confess that he was in great danger—that he was in a corner. That was
+the worst possible confession to make to Stener—although under the
+circumstances it was the only one that could be made—for he had no
+courage to face danger.
+
+So it was that now, Stener stood by Cowperwood meditating—pale,
+flaccid; unable to see the main line of his interests quickly, unable
+to follow it definitely, surely, vigorously—while they drove to his
+office. Cowperwood entered it with him for the sake of continuing his
+plea.
+
+“Well, George,” he said earnestly, “I wish you’d tell me. Time’s short.
+We haven’t a moment to lose. Give me the money, won’t you, and I’ll get
+out of this quick. We haven’t a moment, I tell you. Don’t let those
+people frighten you off. They’re playing their own little game; you
+play yours.”
+
+“I can’t, Frank,” said Stener, finally, very weakly, his sense of his
+own financial future, overcome for the time being by the thought of
+Mollenhauer’s hard, controlling face. “I’ll have to think. I can’t do
+it right now. Strobik just left me before I saw you, and—”
+
+“Good God, George,” exclaimed Cowperwood, scornfully, “don’t talk about
+Strobik! What’s he got to do with it? Think of yourself. Think of where
+you will be. It’s your future—not Strobik’s—that you have to think of.”
+
+“I know, Frank,” persisted Stener, weakly; “but, really, I don’t see
+how I can. Honestly I don’t. You say yourself you’re not sure whether
+you can come out of things all right, and three hundred thousand more
+is three hundred thousand more. I can’t, Frank. I really can’t. It
+wouldn’t be right. Besides, I want to talk to Mollenhauer first,
+anyhow.”
+
+“Good God, how you talk!” exploded Cowperwood, angrily, looking at him
+with ill-concealed contempt. “Go ahead! See Mollenhauer! Let him tell
+you how to cut your own throat for his benefit. It won’t be right to
+loan me three hundred thousand dollars more, but it will be right to
+let the five hundred thousand dollars you have loaned stand unprotected
+and lose it. That’s right, isn’t it? That’s just what you propose to
+do—lose it, and everything else besides. I want to tell you what it is,
+George—you’ve lost your mind. You’ve let a single message from
+Mollenhauer frighten you to death, and because of that you’re going to
+risk your fortune, your reputation, your standing—everything. Do you
+really realize what this means if I fail? You will be a convict, I tell
+you, George. You will go to prison. This fellow Mollenhauer, who is so
+quick to tell you what not to do now, will be the last man to turn a
+hand for you once you’re down. Why, look at me—I’ve helped you, haven’t
+I? Haven’t I handled your affairs satisfactorily for you up to now?
+What in Heaven’s name has got into you? What have you to be afraid of?”
+
+Stener was just about to make another weak rejoinder when the door from
+the outer office opened, and Albert Stires, Stener’s chief clerk,
+entered. Stener was too flustered to really pay any attention to Stires
+for the moment; but Cowperwood took matters in his own hands.
+
+“What is it, Albert?” he asked, familiarly.
+
+“Mr. Sengstack from Mr. Mollenhauer to see Mr. Stener.”
+
+At the sound of this dreadful name Stener wilted like a leaf.
+Cowperwood saw it. He realized that his last hope of getting the three
+hundred thousand dollars was now probably gone. Still he did not
+propose to give up as yet.
+
+“Well, George,” he said, after Albert had gone out with instructions
+that Stener would see Sengstack in a moment. “I see how it is. This man
+has got you mesmerized. You can’t act for yourself now—you’re too
+frightened. I’ll let it rest for the present; I’ll come back. But for
+Heaven’s sake pull yourself together. Think what it means. I’m telling
+you exactly what’s going to happen if you don’t. You’ll be
+independently rich if you do. You’ll be a convict if you don’t.”
+
+And deciding he would make one more effort in the street before seeing
+Butler again, he walked out briskly, jumped into his light spring
+runabout waiting outside—a handsome little yellow-glazed vehicle, with
+a yellow leather cushion seat, drawn by a young, high-stepping bay
+mare—and sent her scudding from door to door, throwing down the lines
+indifferently and bounding up the steps of banks and into office doors.
+
+But all without avail. All were interested, considerate; but things
+were very uncertain. The Girard National Bank refused an hour’s grace,
+and he had to send a large bundle of his most valuable securities to
+cover his stock shrinkage there. Word came from his father at two that
+as president of the Third National he would have to call for his one
+hundred and fifty thousand dollars due there. The directors were
+suspicious of his stocks. He at once wrote a check against fifty
+thousand dollars of his deposits in that bank, took twenty-five
+thousand of his available office funds, called a loan of fifty thousand
+against Tighe & Co., and sold sixty thousand Green & Coates, a line he
+had been tentatively dabbling in, for one-third their value—and,
+combining the general results, sent them all to the Third National. His
+father was immensely relieved from one point of view, but sadly
+depressed from another. He hurried out at the noon-hour to see what his
+own holdings would bring. He was compromising himself in a way by doing
+it, but his parental heart, as well as is own financial interests, were
+involved. By mortgaging his house and securing loans on his furniture,
+carriages, lots, and stocks, he managed to raise one hundred thousand
+in cash, and deposited it in his own bank to Frank’s credit; but it was
+a very light anchor to windward in this swirling storm, at that. Frank
+had been counting on getting all of his loans extended three or four
+days at least. Reviewing his situation at two o’clock of this Monday
+afternoon, he said to himself thoughtfully but grimly: “Well, Stener
+has to loan me three hundred thousand—that’s all there is to it. And
+I’ll have to see Butler now, or he’ll be calling his loan before
+three.”
+
+He hurried out, and was off to Butler’s house, driving like mad.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVI
+
+
+Things had changed greatly since last Cowperwood had talked with
+Butler. Although most friendly at the time the proposition was made
+that he should combine with Mollenhauer and Simpson to sustain the
+market, alas, now on this Monday morning at nine o’clock, an additional
+complication had been added to the already tangled situation which had
+changed Butler’s attitude completely. As he was leaving his home to
+enter his runabout, at nine o’clock in the morning of this same day in
+which Cowperwood was seeking Stener’s aid, the postman, coming up, had
+handed Butler four letters, all of which he paused for a moment to
+glance at. One was from a sub-contractor by the name of O’Higgins, the
+second was from Father Michel, his confessor, of St. Timothy’s,
+thanking him for a contribution to the parish poor fund; a third was
+from Drexel & Co. relating to a deposit, and the fourth was an
+anonymous communication, on cheap stationery from some one who was
+apparently not very literate—a woman most likely—written in a scrawling
+hand, which read:
+
+DEAR SIR—This is to warn you that your daughter Aileen is running
+around with a man that she shouldn’t, Frank A. Cowperwood, the banker.
+If you don’t believe it, watch the house at 931 North Tenth Street.
+Then you can see for yourself.
+
+
+There was neither signature nor mark of any kind to indicate from
+whence it might have come. Butler got the impression strongly that it
+might have been written by some one living in the vicinity of the
+number indicated. His intuitions were keen at times. As a matter of
+fact, it was written by a girl, a member of St. Timothy’s Church, who
+did live in the vicinity of the house indicated, and who knew Aileen by
+sight and was jealous of her airs and her position. She was a thin,
+anemic, dissatisfied creature who had the type of brain which can
+reconcile the gratification of personal spite with a comforting sense
+of having fulfilled a moral duty. Her home was some five doors north of
+the unregistered Cowperwood domicile on the opposite side of the
+street, and by degrees, in the course of time, she made out, or
+imagined that she had, the significance of this institution, piecing
+fact to fancy and fusing all with that keen intuition which is so
+closely related to fact. The result was eventually this letter which
+now spread clear and grim before Butler’s eyes.
+
+The Irish are a philosophic as well as a practical race. Their first
+and strongest impulse is to make the best of a bad situation—to put a
+better face on evil than it normally wears. On first reading these
+lines the intelligence they conveyed sent a peculiar chill over
+Butler’s sturdy frame. His jaw instinctively closed, and his gray eyes
+narrowed. Could this be true? If it were not, would the author of the
+letter say so practically, “If you don’t believe it, watch the house at
+931 North Tenth Street”? Wasn’t that in itself proof positive—the hard,
+matter-of-fact realism of it? And this was the man who had come to him
+the night before seeking aid—whom he had done so much to assist. There
+forced itself into his naturally slow-moving but rather accurate mind a
+sense of the distinction and charm of his daughter—a considerably
+sharper picture than he had ever had before, and at the same time a
+keener understanding of the personality of Frank Algernon Cowperwood.
+How was it he had failed to detect the real subtlety of this man? How
+was it he had never seen any sign of it, if there had been anything
+between Cowperwood and Aileen?
+
+Parents are frequently inclined, because of a time-flattered sense of
+security, to take their children for granted. Nothing ever has
+happened, so nothing ever will happen. They see their children every
+day, and through the eyes of affection; and despite their natural charm
+and their own strong parental love, the children are apt to become not
+only commonplaces, but ineffably secure against evil. Mary is naturally
+a good girl—a little wild, but what harm can befall her? John is a
+straight-forward, steady-going boy—how could he get into trouble? The
+astonishment of most parents at the sudden accidental revelation of
+evil in connection with any of their children is almost invariably
+pathetic. “My John! My Mary! Impossible!” But it is possible. Very
+possible. Decidedly likely. Some, through lack of experience or
+understanding, or both, grow hard and bitter on the instant. They feel
+themselves astonishingly abased in the face of notable tenderness and
+sacrifice. Others collapse before the grave manifestation of the
+insecurity and uncertainty of life—the mystic chemistry of our being.
+Still others, taught roughly by life, or endowed with understanding or
+intuition, or both, see in this the latest manifestation of that
+incomprehensible chemistry which we call _life_ and personality, and,
+knowing that it is quite vain to hope to gainsay it, save by greater
+subtlety, put the best face they can upon the matter and call a truce
+until they can think. We all know that life is unsolvable—we who think.
+The remainder imagine a vain thing, and are full of sound and fury
+signifying nothing.
+
+So Edward Butler, being a man of much wit and hard, grim experience,
+stood there on his doorstep holding in his big, rough hand his thin
+slip of cheap paper which contained such a terrific indictment of his
+daughter. There came to him now a picture of her as she was when she
+was a very little girl—she was his first baby girl—and how keenly he
+had felt about her all these years. She had been a beautiful child—her
+red-gold hair had been pillowed on his breast many a time, and his
+hard, rough fingers had stroked her soft cheeks, lo, these thousands of
+times. Aileen, his lovely, dashing daughter of twenty-three! He was
+lost in dark, strange, unhappy speculations, without any present
+ability to think or say or do the right thing. He did not know what the
+right thing was, he finally confessed to himself. Aileen! Aileen! His
+Aileen! If her mother knew this it would break her heart. She mustn’t!
+She mustn’t! And yet mustn’t she?
+
+The heart of a father! The world wanders into many strange by-paths of
+affection. The love of a mother for her children is dominant, leonine,
+selfish, and unselfish. It is concentric. The love of a husband for his
+wife, or of a lover for his sweetheart, is a sweet bond of agreement
+and exchange trade in a lovely contest. The love of a father for his
+son or daughter, where it is love at all, is a broad, generous, sad,
+contemplative giving without thought of return, a hail and farewell to
+a troubled traveler whom he would do much to guard, a balanced judgment
+of weakness and strength, with pity for failure and pride in
+achievement. It is a lovely, generous, philosophic blossom which rarely
+asks too much, and seeks only to give wisely and plentifully. “That my
+boy may succeed! That my daughter may be happy!” Who has not heard and
+dwelt upon these twin fervors of fatherly wisdom and tenderness?
+
+As Butler drove downtown his huge, slow-moving, in some respects
+chaotic mind turned over as rapidly as he could all of the
+possibilities in connection with this unexpected, sad, and disturbing
+revelation. Why had Cowperwood not been satisfied with his wife? Why
+should he enter into his (Butler’s) home, of all places, to establish a
+clandestine relationship of this character? Was Aileen in any way to
+blame? She was not without mental resources of her own. She must have
+known what she was doing. She was a good Catholic, or, at least, had
+been raised so. All these years she had been going regularly to
+confession and communion. True, of late Butler had noticed that she did
+not care so much about going to church, would sometimes make excuses
+and stay at home on Sundays; but she had gone, as a rule. And now,
+now—his thoughts would come to the end of a blind alley, and then he
+would start back, as it were, mentally, to the center of things, and
+begin all over again.
+
+He went up the stairs to his own office slowly. He went in and sat
+down, and thought and thought. Ten o’clock came, and eleven. His son
+bothered him with an occasional matter of interest, but, finding him
+moody, finally abandoned him to his own speculations. It was twelve,
+and then one, and he was still sitting there thinking, when the
+presence of Cowperwood was announced.
+
+Cowperwood, on finding Butler not at home, and not encountering Aileen,
+had hurried up to the office of the Edward Butler Contracting Company,
+which was also the center of some of Butler’s street-railway interests.
+The floor space controlled by the company was divided into the usual
+official compartments, with sections for the bookkeepers, the
+road-managers, the treasurer, and so on. Owen Butler, and his father
+had small but attractively furnished offices in the rear, where they
+transacted all the important business of the company.
+
+During this drive, curiously, by reason of one of those strange
+psychologic intuitions which so often precede a human difficulty of one
+sort or another, he had been thinking of Aileen. He was thinking of the
+peculiarity of his relationship with her, and of the fact that now he
+was running to her father for assistance. As he mounted the stairs he
+had a peculiar sense of the untoward; but he could not, in his view of
+life, give it countenance. One glance at Butler showed him that
+something had gone amiss. He was not so friendly; his glance was dark,
+and there was a certain sternness to his countenance which had never
+previously been manifested there in Cowperwood’s memory. He perceived
+at once that here was something different from a mere intention to
+refuse him aid and call his loan. What was it? Aileen? It must be that.
+Somebody had suggested something. They had been seen together. Well,
+even so, nothing could be proved. Butler would obtain no sign from him.
+But his loan—that was to be called, surely. And as for an additional
+loan, he could see now, before a word had been said, that that thought
+was useless.
+
+“I came to see you about that loan of yours, Mr. Butler,” he observed,
+briskly, with an old-time, jaunty air. You could not have told from his
+manner or his face that he had observed anything out of the ordinary.
+
+Butler, who was alone in the room—Owen having gone into an adjoining
+room—merely stared at him from under his shaggy brows.
+
+“I’ll have to have that money,” he said, brusquely, darkly.
+
+An old-time Irish rage suddenly welled up in his bosom as he
+contemplated this jaunty, sophisticated undoer of his daughter’s
+virtue. He fairly glared at him as he thought of him and her.
+
+“I judged from the way things were going this morning that you might
+want it,” Cowperwood replied, quietly, without sign of tremor. “The
+bottom’s out, I see.”
+
+“The bottom’s out, and it’ll not be put back soon, I’m thinkin’. I’ll
+have to have what’s belongin’ to me to-day. I haven’t any time to
+spare.”
+
+“Very well,” replied Cowperwood, who saw clearly how treacherous the
+situation was. The old man was in a dour mood. His presence was an
+irritation to him, for some reason—a deadly provocation. Cowperwood
+felt clearly that it must be Aileen, that he must know or suspect
+something.
+
+He must pretend business hurry and end this. “I’m sorry. I thought I
+might get an extension; but that’s all right. I can get the money,
+though. I’ll send it right over.”
+
+He turned and walked quickly to the door.
+
+Butler got up. He had thought to manage this differently.
+
+He had thought to denounce or even assault this man. He was about to
+make some insinuating remark which would compel an answer, some direct
+charge; but Cowperwood was out and away as jaunty as ever.
+
+The old man was flustered, enraged, disappointed. He opened the small
+office door which led into the adjoining room, and called, “Owen!”
+
+“Yes, father.”
+
+“Send over to Cowperwood’s office and get that money.”
+
+“You decided to call it, eh?”
+
+“I have.”
+
+Owen was puzzled by the old man’s angry mood. He wondered what it all
+meant, but thought he and Cowperwood might have had a few words. He
+went out to his desk to write a note and call a clerk. Butler went to
+the window and stared out. He was angry, bitter, brutal in his vein.
+
+“The dirty dog!” he suddenly exclaimed to himself, in a low voice.
+“I’ll take every dollar he’s got before I’m through with him. I’ll send
+him to jail, I will. I’ll break him, I will. Wait!”
+
+He clinched his big fists and his teeth.
+
+“I’ll fix him. I’ll show him. The dog! The damned scoundrel!”
+
+Never in his life before had he been so bitter, so cruel, so relentless
+in his mood.
+
+He walked his office floor thinking what he could do. Question
+Aileen—that was what he would do. If her face, or her lips, told him
+that his suspicion was true, he would deal with Cowperwood later. This
+city treasurer business, now. It was not a crime in so far as
+Cowperwood was concerned; but it might be made to be.
+
+So now, telling the clerk to say to Owen that he had gone down the
+street for a few moments, he boarded a street-car and rode out to his
+home, where he found his elder daughter just getting ready to go out.
+She wore a purple-velvet street dress edged with narrow, flat gilt
+braid, and a striking gold-and-purple turban. She had on dainty new
+boots of bronze kid and long gloves of lavender suede. In her ears was
+one of her latest affectations, a pair of long jet earrings. The old
+Irishman realized on this occasion, when he saw her, perhaps more
+clearly than he ever had in his life, that he had grown a bird of rare
+plumage.
+
+“Where are you going, daughter?” he asked, with a rather unsuccessful
+attempt to conceal his fear, distress, and smoldering anger.
+
+“To the library,” she said easily, and yet with a sudden realization
+that all was not right with her father. His face was too heavy and
+gray. He looked tired and gloomy.
+
+“Come up to my office a minute,” he said. “I want to see you before you
+go.”
+
+Aileen heard this with a strange feeling of curiosity and wonder. It
+was not customary for her father to want to see her in his office just
+when she was going out; and his manner indicated, in this instance,
+that the exceptional procedure portended a strange revelation of some
+kind. Aileen, like every other person who offends against a rigid
+convention of the time, was conscious of and sensitive to the possible
+disastrous results which would follow exposure. She had often thought
+about what her family would think if they knew what she was doing; she
+had never been able to satisfy herself in her mind as to what they
+would do. Her father was a very vigorous man. But she had never known
+him to be cruel or cold in his attitude toward her or any other member
+of the family, and especially not toward her. Always he seemed too fond
+of her to be completely alienated by anything that might happen; yet
+she could not be sure.
+
+Butler led the way, planting his big feet solemnly on the steps as he
+went up. Aileen followed with a single glance at herself in the tall
+pier-mirror which stood in the hall, realizing at once how charming she
+looked and how uncertain she was feeling about what was to follow. What
+could her father want? It made the color leave her cheeks for the
+moment, as she thought what he might want.
+
+Butler strolled into his stuffy room and sat down in the big leather
+chair, disproportioned to everything else in the chamber, but which,
+nevertheless, accompanied his desk. Before him, against the light, was
+the visitor’s chair, in which he liked to have those sit whose faces he
+was anxious to study. When Aileen entered he motioned her to it, which
+was also ominous to her, and said, “Sit down there.”
+
+She took the seat, not knowing what to make of his procedure. On the
+instant her promise to Cowperwood to deny everything, whatever
+happened, came back to her. If her father was about to attack her on
+that score, he would get no satisfaction, she thought. She owed it to
+Frank. Her pretty face strengthened and hardened on the instant. Her
+small, white teeth set themselves in two even rows; and her father saw
+quite plainly that she was consciously bracing herself for an attack of
+some kind. He feared by this that she was guilty, and he was all the
+more distressed, ashamed, outraged, made wholly unhappy. He fumbled in
+the left-hand pocket of his coat and drew forth from among the various
+papers the fatal communication so cheap in its physical texture. His
+big fingers fumbled almost tremulously as he fished the letter-sheet
+out of the small envelope and unfolded it without saying a word. Aileen
+watched his face and his hands, wondering what it could be that he had
+here. He handed the paper over, small in his big fist, and said, “Read
+that.”
+
+Aileen took it, and for a second was relieved to be able to lower her
+eyes to the paper. Her relief vanished in a second, when she realized
+how in a moment she would have to raise them again and look him in the
+face.
+
+DEAR SIR—This is to warn you that your daughter Aileen is running
+around with a man that she shouldn’t, Frank A. Cowperwood, the banker.
+If you don’t believe it, watch the house at 931 North Tenth Street.
+Then you can see for yourself.
+
+
+In spite of herself the color fled from her cheeks instantly, only to
+come back in a hot, defiant wave.
+
+“Why, what a lie!” she said, lifting her eyes to her father’s. “To
+think that any one should write such a thing of me! How dare they! I
+think it’s a shame!”
+
+Old Butler looked at her narrowly, solemnly. He was not deceived to any
+extent by her bravado. If she were really innocent, he knew she would
+have jumped to her feet in her defiant way. Protest would have been
+written all over her. As it was, she only stared haughtily. He read
+through her eager defiance to the guilty truth.
+
+“How do ye know, daughter, that I haven’t had the house watched?” he
+said, quizzically. “How do ye know that ye haven’t been seen goin’ in
+there?”
+
+Only Aileen’s solemn promise to her lover could have saved her from
+this subtle thrust. As it was, she paled nervously; but she saw Frank
+Cowperwood, solemn and distinguished, asking her what she would say if
+she were caught.
+
+“It’s a lie!” she said, catching her breath. “I wasn’t at any house at
+that number, and no one saw me going in there. How can you ask me that,
+father?”
+
+In spite of his mixed feelings of uncertainty and yet unshakable belief
+that his daughter was guilty, he could not help admiring her
+courage—she was so defiant, as she sat there, so set in her
+determination to lie and thus defend herself. Her beauty helped her in
+his mood, raised her in his esteem. After all, what could you do with a
+woman of this kind? She was not a ten-year-old girl any more, as in a
+way he sometimes continued to fancy her.
+
+“Ye oughtn’t to say that if it isn’t true, Aileen,” he said. “Ye
+oughtn’t to lie. It’s against your faith. Why would anybody write a
+letter like that if it wasn’t so?”
+
+“But it’s not so,” insisted Aileen, pretending anger and outraged
+feeling, “and I don’t think you have any right to sit there and say
+that to me. I haven’t been there, and I’m not running around with Mr.
+Cowperwood. Why, I hardly know the man except in a social way.”
+
+Butler shook his head solemnly.
+
+“It’s a great blow to me, daughter. It’s a great blow to me,” he said.
+“I’m willing to take your word if ye say so; but I can’t help thinkin’
+what a sad thing it would be if ye were lyin’ to me. I haven’t had the
+house watched. I only got this this mornin’. And what’s written here
+may not be so. I hope it isn’t. But we’ll not say any more about that
+now. If there is anythin’ in it, and ye haven’t gone too far yet to
+save yourself, I want ye to think of your mother and your sister and
+your brothers, and be a good girl. Think of the church ye was raised
+in, and the name we’ve got to stand up for in the world. Why, if ye
+were doin’ anything wrong, and the people of Philadelphy got a hold of
+it, the city, big as it is, wouldn’t be big enough to hold us. Your
+brothers have got a reputation to make, their work to do here. You and
+your sister want to get married sometime. How could ye expect to look
+the world in the face and do anythin’ at all if ye are doin’ what this
+letter says ye are, and it was told about ye?”
+
+The old man’s voice was thick with a strange, sad, alien emotion. He
+did not want to believe that his daughter was guilty, even though he
+knew she was. He did not want to face what he considered in his
+vigorous, religious way to be his duty, that of reproaching her
+sternly. There were some fathers who would have turned her out, he
+fancied. There were others who might possibly kill Cowperwood after a
+subtle investigation. That course was not for him. If vengeance he was
+to have, it must be through politics and finance—he must drive him out.
+But as for doing anything desperate in connection with Aileen, he could
+not think of it.
+
+“Oh, father,” returned Aileen, with considerable histrionic ability in
+her assumption of pettishness, “how can you talk like this when you
+know I’m not guilty? When I tell you so?”
+
+The old Irishman saw through her make-believe with profound sadness—the
+feeling that one of his dearest hopes had been shattered. He had
+expected so much of her socially and matrimonially. Why, any one of a
+dozen remarkable young men might have married her, and she would have
+had lovely children to comfort him in his old age.
+
+“Well, we’ll not talk any more about it now, daughter,” he said,
+wearily. “Ye’ve been so much to me during all these years that I can
+scarcely belave anythin’ wrong of ye. I don’t want to, God knows. Ye’re
+a grown woman, though, now; and if ye are doin’ anythin’ wrong I don’t
+suppose I could do so much to stop ye. I might turn ye out, of course,
+as many a father would; but I wouldn’t like to do anythin’ like that.
+But if ye are doin’ anythin’ wrong”—and he put up his hand to stop a
+proposed protest on the part of Aileen—“remember, I’m certain to find
+it out in the long run, and Philadelphy won’t be big enough to hold me
+and the man that’s done this thing to me. I’ll get him,” he said,
+getting up dramatically. “I’ll get him, and when I do—” He turned a
+livid face to the wall, and Aileen saw clearly that Cowperwood, in
+addition to any other troubles which might beset him, had her father to
+deal with. Was this why Frank had looked so sternly at her the night
+before?
+
+“Why, your mother would die of a broken heart if she thought there was
+anybody could say the least word against ye,” pursued Butler, in a
+shaken voice. “This man has a family—a wife and children, Ye oughtn’t
+to want to do anythin’ to hurt them. They’ll have trouble enough, if
+I’m not mistaken—facin’ what’s comin’ to them in the future,” and
+Butler’s jaw hardened just a little. “Ye’re a beautiful girl. Ye’re
+young. Ye have money. There’s dozens of young men’d be proud to make ye
+their wife. Whatever ye may be thinkin’ or doin’, don’t throw away your
+life. Don’t destroy your immortal soul. Don’t break my heart entirely.”
+
+Aileen, not ungenerous—fool of mingled affection and passion—could now
+have cried. She pitied her father from her heart; but her allegiance
+was to Cowperwood, her loyalty unshaken. She wanted to say something,
+to protest much more; but she knew that it was useless. Her father knew
+that she was lying.
+
+“Well, there’s no use of my saying anything more, father,” she said,
+getting up. The light of day was fading in the windows. The downstairs
+door closed with a light slam, indicating that one of the boys had come
+in. Her proposed trip to the library was now without interest to her.
+“You won’t believe me, anyhow. I tell you, though, that I’m innocent
+just the same.”
+
+Butler lifted his big, brown hand to command silence. She saw that this
+shameful relationship, as far as her father was concerned, had been
+made quite clear, and that this trying conference was now at an end.
+She turned and walked shamefacedly out. He waited until he heard her
+steps fading into faint nothings down the hall toward her room. Then he
+arose. Once more he clinched his big fists.
+
+“The scoundrel!” he said. “The scoundrel! I’ll drive him out of
+Philadelphy, if it takes the last dollar I have in the world.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVII
+
+
+For the first time in his life Cowperwood felt conscious of having been
+in the presence of that interesting social phenomenon—the outraged
+sentiment of a parent. While he had no absolute knowledge as to why
+Butler had been so enraged, he felt that Aileen was the contributing
+cause. He himself was a father. His boy, Frank, Jr., was to him not so
+remarkable. But little Lillian, with her dainty little slip of a body
+and bright-aureoled head, had always appealed to him. She was going to
+be a charming woman one day, he thought, and he was going to do much to
+establish her safely. He used to tell her that she had “eyes like
+buttons,” “feet like a pussy-cat,” and hands that were “just five
+cents’ worth,” they were so little. The child admired her father and
+would often stand by his chair in the library or the sitting-room, or
+his desk in his private office, or by his seat at the table, asking him
+questions.
+
+This attitude toward his own daughter made him see clearly how Butler
+might feel toward Aileen. He wondered how he would feel if it were his
+own little Lillian, and still he did not believe he would make much
+fuss over the matter, either with himself or with her, if she were as
+old as Aileen. Children and their lives were more or less above the
+willing of parents, anyhow, and it would be a difficult thing for any
+parent to control any child, unless the child were naturally
+docile-minded and willing to be controlled.
+
+It also made him smile, in a grim way, to see how fate was raining
+difficulties on him. The Chicago fire, Stener’s early absence, Butler,
+Mollenhauer, and Simpson’s indifference to Stener’s fate and his. And
+now this probable revelation in connection with Aileen. He could not be
+sure as yet, but his intuitive instincts told him that it must be
+something like this.
+
+Now he was distressed as to what Aileen would do, say if suddenly she
+were confronted by her father. If he could only get to her! But if he
+was to meet Butler’s call for his loan, and the others which would come
+yet to-day or on the morrow, there was not a moment to lose. If he did
+not pay he must assign at once. Butler’s rage, Aileen, his own danger,
+were brushed aside for the moment. His mind concentrated wholly on how
+to save himself financially.
+
+He hurried to visit George Waterman; David Wiggin, his wife’s brother,
+who was now fairly well to do; Joseph Zimmerman, the wealthy dry-goods
+dealer who had dealt with him in the past; Judge Kitchen, a private
+manipulator of considerable wealth; Frederick Van Nostrand, the State
+treasurer, who was interested in local street-railway stocks, and
+others. Of all those to whom he appealed one was actually not in a
+position to do anything for him; another was afraid; a third was
+calculating eagerly to drive a hard bargain; a fourth was too
+deliberate, anxious to have much time. All scented the true value of
+his situation, all wanted time to consider, and he had no time to
+consider. Judge Kitchen did agree to lend him thirty thousand dollars—a
+paltry sum. Joseph Zimmerman would only risk twenty-five thousand
+dollars. He could see where, all told, he might raise seventy-five
+thousand dollars by hypothecating double the amount in shares; but this
+was ridiculously insufficient. He had figured again, to a dollar, and
+he must have at least two hundred and fifty thousand dollars above all
+his present holdings, or he must close his doors. To-morrow at two
+o’clock he would know. If he didn’t he would be written down as
+“failed” on a score of ledgers in Philadelphia.
+
+What a pretty pass for one to come to whose hopes had so recently run
+so high! There was a loan of one hundred thousand dollars from the
+Girard National Bank which he was particularly anxious to clear off.
+This bank was the most important in the city, and if he retained its
+good will by meeting this loan promptly he might hope for favors in the
+future whatever happened. Yet, at the moment, he did not see how he
+could do it. He decided, however, after some reflection, that he would
+deliver the stocks which Judge Kitchen, Zimmerman, and others had
+agreed to take and get their checks or cash yet this night. Then he
+would persuade Stener to let him have a check for the sixty thousand
+dollars’ worth of city loan he had purchased this morning on ’change.
+Out of it he could take twenty-five thousand dollars to make up the
+balance due the bank, and still have thirty-five thousand for himself.
+
+The one unfortunate thing about such an arrangement was that by doing
+it he was building up a rather complicated situation in regard to these
+same certificates. Since their purchase in the morning, he had not
+deposited them in the sinking-fund, where they belonged (they had been
+delivered to his office by half past one in the afternoon), but, on the
+contrary, had immediately hypothecated them to cover another loan. It
+was a risky thing to have done, considering that he was in danger of
+failing and that he was not absolutely sure of being able to take them
+up in time.
+
+But, he reasoned, he had a working agreement with the city treasurer
+(illegal of course), which would make such a transaction rather
+plausible, and almost all right, even if he failed, and that was that
+none of his accounts were supposed necessarily to be put straight until
+the end of the month. If he failed, and the certificates were not in
+the sinking-fund, he could say, as was the truth, that he was in the
+habit of taking his time, and had forgotten. This collecting of a
+check, therefore, for these as yet undeposited certificates would be
+technically, if not legally and morally, plausible. The city would be
+out only an additional sixty thousand dollars—making five hundred and
+sixty thousand dollars all told, which in view of its probable loss of
+five hundred thousand did not make so much difference. But his caution
+clashed with his need on this occasion, and he decided that he would
+not call for the check unless Stener finally refused to aid him with
+three hundred thousand more, in which case he would claim it as his
+right. In all likelihood Stener would not think to ask whether the
+certificates were in the sinking-fund or not. If he did, he would have
+to lie—that was all.
+
+He drove rapidly back to his office, and, finding Butler’s note, as he
+expected, wrote a check on his father’s bank for the one hundred
+thousand dollars which had been placed to his credit by his loving
+parent, and sent it around to Butler’s office. There was another note,
+from Albert Stires, Stener’s secretary, advising him not to buy or sell
+any more city loan—that until further notice such transactions would
+not be honored. Cowperwood immediately sensed the source of this
+warning. Stener had been in conference with Butler or Mollenhauer, and
+had been warned and frightened. Nevertheless, he got in his buggy again
+and drove directly to the city treasurer’s office.
+
+Since Cowperwood’s visit Stener had talked still more with Sengstack,
+Strobik, and others, all sent to see that a proper fear of things
+financial had been put in his heart. The result was decidedly one which
+spelled opposition to Cowperwood.
+
+Strobik was considerably disturbed himself. He and Wycroft and Harmon
+had also been using money out of the treasury—much smaller sums, of
+course, for they had not Cowperwood’s financial imagination—and were
+disturbed as to how they would return what they owed before the storm
+broke. If Cowperwood failed, and Stener was short in his accounts, the
+whole budget might be investigated, and then their loans would be
+brought to light. The thing to do was to return what they owed, and
+then, at least, no charge of malfeasance would lie against them.
+
+“Go to Mollenhauer,” Strobik had advised Stener, shortly after
+Cowperwood had left the latter’s office, “and tell him the whole story.
+He put you here. He was strong for your nomination. Tell him just where
+you stand and ask him what to do. He’ll probably be able to tell you.
+Offer him your holdings to help you out. You have to. You can’t help
+yourself. Don’t loan Cowperwood another damned dollar, whatever you do.
+He’s got you in so deep now you can hardly hope to get out. Ask
+Mollenhauer if he won’t help you to get Cowperwood to put that money
+back. He may be able to influence him.”
+
+There was more in this conversation to the same effect, and then Stener
+hurried as fast as his legs could carry him to Mollenhauer’s office. He
+was so frightened that he could scarcely breathe, and he was quite
+ready to throw himself on his knees before the big German-American
+financier and leader. Oh, if Mr. Mollenhauer would only help him! If he
+could just get out of this without going to jail!
+
+“Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!” he repeated, over and over to himself,
+as he walked. “What shall I do?”
+
+The attitude of Henry A. Mollenhauer, grim, political boss that he
+was—trained in a hard school—was precisely the attitude of every such
+man in all such trying circumstances.
+
+He was wondering, in view of what Butler had told him, just how much he
+could advantage himself in this situation. If he could, he wanted to
+get control of whatever street-railway stock Stener now had, without in
+any way compromising himself. Stener’s shares could easily be
+transferred on ’change through Mollenhauer’s brokers to a dummy, who
+would eventually transfer them to himself (Mollenhauer). Stener must be
+squeezed thoroughly, though, this afternoon, and as for his five
+hundred thousand dollars’ indebtedness to the treasury, Mollenhauer did
+not see what could be done about that. If Cowperwood could not pay it,
+the city would have to lose it; but the scandal must be hushed up until
+after election. Stener, unless the various party leaders had more
+generosity than Mollenhauer imagined, would have to suffer exposure,
+arrest, trial, confiscation of his property, and possibly sentence to
+the penitentiary, though this might easily be commuted by the governor,
+once public excitement died down. He did not trouble to think whether
+Cowperwood was criminally involved or not. A hundred to one he was not.
+Trust a shrewd man like that to take care of himself. But if there was
+any way to shoulder the blame on to Cowperwood, and so clear the
+treasurer and the skirts of the party, he would not object to that. He
+wanted to hear the full story of Stener’s relations with the broker
+first. Meanwhile, the thing to do was to seize what Stener had to
+yield.
+
+The troubled city treasurer, on being shown in Mr. Mollenhauer’s
+presence, at once sank feebly in a chair and collapsed. He was entirely
+done for mentally. His nerve was gone, his courage exhausted like a
+breath.
+
+“Well, Mr. Stener?” queried Mr. Mollenhauer, impressively, pretending
+not to know what brought him.
+
+“I came about this matter of my loans to Mr. Cowperwood.”
+
+“Well, what about them?”
+
+“Well, he owes me, or the city treasury rather, five hundred thousand
+dollars, and I understand that he is going to fail and that he can’t
+pay it back.”
+
+“Who told you that?”
+
+“Mr. Sengstack, and since then Mr. Cowperwood has been to see me. He
+tells me he must have more money or he will fail and he wants to borrow
+three hundred thousand dollars more. He says he must have it.”
+
+“So!” said Mr. Mollenhauer, impressively, and with an air of
+astonishment which he did not feel. “You would not think of doing that,
+of course. You’re too badly involved as it is. If he wants to know why,
+refer him to me. Don’t advance him another dollar. If you do, and this
+case comes to trial, no court would have any mercy on you. It’s going
+to be difficult enough to do anything for you as it is. However, if you
+don’t advance him any more—we will see. It may be possible, I can’t
+say, but at any rate, no more money must leave the treasury to bolster
+up this bad business. It’s much too difficult as it now is.” He stared
+at Stener warningly. And he, shaken and sick, yet because of the faint
+suggestion of mercy involved somewhere in Mollenhauer’s remarks, now
+slipped from his chair to his knees and folded his hands in the
+uplifted attitude of a devotee before a sacred image.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Mollenhauer,” he choked, beginning to cry, “I didn’t mean to
+do anything wrong. Strobik and Wycroft told me it was all right. You
+sent me to Cowperwood in the first place. I only did what I thought the
+others had been doing. Mr. Bode did it, just like I have been doing. He
+dealt with Tighe and Company. I have a wife and four children, Mr.
+Mollenhauer. My youngest boy is only seven years old. Think of them,
+Mr. Mollenhauer! Think of what my arrest will mean to them! I don’t
+want to go to jail. I didn’t think I was doing anything very
+wrong—honestly I didn’t. I’ll give up all I’ve got. You can have all my
+stocks and houses and lots—anything—if you’ll only get me out of this.
+You won’t let ’em send me to jail, will you?”
+
+His fat, white lips were trembling—wabbling nervously—and big hot tears
+were coursing down his previously pale but now flushed cheeks. He
+presented one of those almost unbelievable pictures which are yet so
+intensely human and so true. If only the great financial and political
+giants would for once accurately reveal the details of their lives!
+
+Mollenhauer looked at him calmly, meditatively. How often had he seen
+weaklings no more dishonest than himself, but without his courage and
+subtlety, pleading to him in this fashion, not on their knees exactly,
+but intellectually so! Life to him, as to every other man of large
+practical knowledge and insight, was an inexplicable tangle. What were
+you going to do about the so-called morals and precepts of the world?
+This man Stener fancied that he was dishonest, and that he,
+Mollenhauer, was honest. He was here, self-convicted of sin, pleading
+to him, Mollenhauer, as he would to a righteous, unstained saint. As a
+matter of fact, Mollenhauer knew that he was simply shrewder, more
+far-seeing, more calculating, not less dishonest. Stener was lacking in
+force and brains—not morals. This lack was his principal crime. There
+were people who believed in some esoteric standard of right—some ideal
+of conduct absolutely and very far removed from practical life; but he
+had never seen them practice it save to their own financial (not
+moral—he would not say that) destruction. They were never significant,
+practical men who clung to these fatuous ideals. They were always poor,
+nondescript, negligible dreamers. He could not have made Stener
+understand all this if he had wanted to, and he certainly did not want
+to. It was too bad about Mrs. Stener and the little Steners. No doubt
+she had worked hard, as had Stener, to get up in the world and be
+something—just a little more than miserably poor; and now this
+unfortunate complication had to arise to undo them—this Chicago fire.
+What a curious thing that was! If any one thing more than another made
+him doubt the existence of a kindly, overruling Providence, it was the
+unheralded storms out of clear skies—financial, social, anything you
+choose—that so often brought ruin and disaster to so many.
+
+“Get Up, Stener,” he said, calmly, after a few moments. “You mustn’t
+give way to your feelings like this. You must not cry. These troubles
+are never unraveled by tears. You must do a little thinking for
+yourself. Perhaps your situation isn’t so bad.”
+
+As he was saying this Stener was putting himself back in his chair,
+getting out his handkerchief, and sobbing hopelessly in it.
+
+“I’ll do what I can, Stener. I won’t promise anything. I can’t tell you
+what the result will be. There are many peculiar political forces in
+this city. I may not be able to save you, but I am perfectly willing to
+try. You must put yourself absolutely under my direction. You must not
+say or do anything without first consulting with me. I will send my
+secretary to you from time to time. He will tell you what to do. You
+must not come to me unless I send for you. Do you understand that
+thoroughly?”
+
+“Yes, Mr. Mollenhauer.”
+
+“Well, now, dry your eyes. I don’t want you to go out of this office
+crying. Go back to your office, and I will send Sengstack to see you.
+He will tell you what to do. Follow him exactly. And whenever I send
+for you come at once.”
+
+He got up, large, self-confident, reserved. Stener, buoyed up by the
+subtle reassurance of his remarks, recovered to a degree his
+equanimity. Mr. Mollenhauer, the great, powerful Mr. Mollenhauer was
+going to help him out of his scrape. He might not have to go to jail
+after all. He left after a few moments, his face a little red from
+weeping, but otherwise free of telltale marks, and returned to his
+office.
+
+Three-quarters of an hour later, Sengstack called on him for the second
+time that day—Abner Sengstack, small, dark-faced, club-footed, a great
+sole of leather three inches thick under his short, withered right leg,
+his slightly Slavic, highly intelligent countenance burning with a pair
+of keen, piercing, inscrutable black eyes. Sengstack was a fit
+secretary for Mollenhauer. You could see at one glance that he would
+make Stener do exactly what Mollenhauer suggested. His business was to
+induce Stener to part with his street-railway holdings at once through
+Tighe & Co., Butler’s brokers, to the political sub-agent who would
+eventually transfer them to Mollenhauer. What little Stener received
+for them might well go into the treasury. Tighe & Co. would manage the
+“’change” subtleties of this without giving any one else a chance to
+bid, while at the same time making it appear an open-market
+transaction. At the same time Sengstack went carefully into the state
+of the treasurer’s office for his master’s benefit—finding out what it
+was that Strobik, Wycroft, and Harmon had been doing with their loans.
+Via another source they were ordered to disgorge at once or face
+prosecution. They were a part of Mollenhauer’s political machine. Then,
+having cautioned Stener not to set over the remainder of his property
+to any one, and not to listen to any one, most of all to the
+Machiavellian counsel of Cowperwood, Sengstack left.
+
+Needless to say, Mollenhauer was greatly gratified by this turn of
+affairs. Cowperwood was now most likely in a position where he would
+have to come and see him, or if not, a good share of the properties he
+controlled were already in Mollenhauer’s possession. If by some hook or
+crook he could secure the remainder, Simpson and Butler might well talk
+to him about this street-railway business. His holdings were now as
+large as any, if not quite the largest.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVIII
+
+
+It was in the face of this very altered situation that Cowperwood
+arrived at Stener’s office late this Monday afternoon.
+
+Stener was quite alone, worried and distraught. He was anxious to see
+Cowperwood, and at the same time afraid.
+
+“George,” began Cowperwood, briskly, on seeing him, “I haven’t much
+time to spare now, but I’ve come, finally, to tell you that you’ll have
+to let me have three hundred thousand more if you don’t want me to
+fail. Things are looking very bad today. They’ve caught me in a corner
+on my loans; but this storm isn’t going to last. You can see by the
+very character of it that it can’t.”
+
+He was looking at Stener’s face, and seeing fear and a pained and yet
+very definite necessity for opposition written there. “Chicago is
+burning, but it will be built up again. Business will be all the better
+for it later on. Now, I want you to be reasonable and help me. Don’t
+get frightened.”
+
+Stener stirred uneasily. “Don’t let these politicians scare you to
+death. It will all blow over in a few days, and then we’ll be better
+off than ever. Did you see Mollenhauer?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, what did he have to say?”
+
+“He said just what I thought he’d say. He won’t let me do this. I
+can’t, Frank, I tell you!” exclaimed Stener, jumping up. He was so
+nervous that he had had a hard time keeping his seat during this short,
+direct conversation. “I can’t! They’ve got me in a corner! They’re
+after me! They all know what we’ve been doing. Oh, say, Frank”—he threw
+up his arms wildly—“you’ve got to get me out of this. You’ve got to let
+me have that five hundred thousand back and get me out of this. If you
+don’t, and you should fail, they’ll send me to the penitentiary. I’ve
+got a wife and four children, Frank. I can’t go on in this. It’s too
+big for me. I never should have gone in on it in the first place. I
+never would have if you hadn’t persuaded me, in a way. I never thought
+when I began that I would ever get in as bad as all this. I can’t go
+on, Frank. I can’t! I’m willing you should have all my stock. Only give
+me back that five hundred thousand, and we’ll call it even.” His voice
+rose nervously as he talked, and he wiped his wet forehead with his
+hand and stared at Cowperwood pleadingly, foolishly.
+
+Cowperwood stared at him in return for a few moments with a cold, fishy
+eye. He knew a great deal about human nature, and he was ready for and
+expectant of any queer shift in an individual’s attitude, particularly
+in time of panic; but this shift of Stener’s was quite too much. “Whom
+else have you been talking to, George, since I saw you? Whom have you
+seen? What did Sengstack have to say?”
+
+“He says just what Mollenhauer does, that I mustn’t loan any more money
+under any circumstances, and he says I ought to get that five hundred
+thousand back as quickly as possible.”
+
+“And you think Mollenhauer wants to help you, do you?” inquired
+Cowperwood, finding it hard to efface the contempt which kept forcing
+itself into his voice.
+
+“I think he does, yes. I don’t know who else will, Frank, if he don’t.
+He’s one of the big political forces in this town.”
+
+“Listen to me,” began Cowperwood, eyeing him fixedly. Then he paused.
+“What did he say you should do about your holdings?”
+
+“Sell them through Tighe & Company and put the money back in the
+treasury, if you won’t take them.”
+
+“Sell them to whom?” asked Cowperwood, thinking of Stener’s last words.
+
+“To any one on ’change who’ll take them, I suppose. I don’t know.”
+
+“I thought so,” said Cowperwood, comprehendingly. “I might have known
+as much. They’re working you, George. They’re simply trying to get your
+stocks away from you. Mollenhauer is leading you on. He knows I can’t
+do what you want—give you back the five hundred thousand dollars. He
+wants you to throw your stocks on the market so that he can pick them
+up. Depend on it, that’s all arranged for already. When you do, he’s
+got me in his clutches, or he thinks he has—he and Butler and Simpson.
+They want to get together on this local street-railway situation, and I
+know it, I feel it. I’ve felt it coming all along. Mollenhauer hasn’t
+any more intention of helping you than he has of flying. Once you’ve
+sold your stocks he’s through with you—mark my word. Do you think he’ll
+turn a hand to keep you out of the penitentiary once you’re out of this
+street-railway situation? He will not. And if you think so, you’re a
+bigger fool than I take you to be, George. Don’t go crazy. Don’t lose
+your head. Be sensible. Look the situation in the face. Let me explain
+it to you. If you don’t help me now—if you don’t let me have three
+hundred thousand dollars by to-morrow noon, at the very latest, I’m
+through, and so are you. There is not a thing the matter with our
+situation. Those stocks of ours are as good to-day as they ever were.
+Why, great heavens, man, the railways are there behind them. They’re
+paying. The Seventeenth and Nineteenth Street line is earning one
+thousand dollars a day right now. What better evidence do you want than
+that? Green & Coates is earning five hundred dollars. You’re
+frightened, George. These damned political schemers have scared you.
+Why, you’ve as good a right to loan that money as Bode and Murtagh had
+before you. They did it. You’ve been doing it for Mollenhauer and the
+others, only so long as you do it for them it’s all right. What’s a
+designated city depository but a loan?”
+
+Cowperwood was referring to the system under which certain portions of
+city money, like the sinking-fund, were permitted to be kept in certain
+banks at a low rate of interest or no rate—banks in which Mollenhauer
+and Butler and Simpson were interested. This was their safe graft.
+
+“Don’t throw your chances away, George. Don’t quit now. You’ll be worth
+millions in a few years, and you won’t have to turn a hand. All you
+will have to do will be to keep what you have. If you don’t help me,
+mark my word, they’ll throw you over the moment I’m out of this, and
+they’ll let you go to the penitentiary. Who’s going to put up five
+hundred thousand dollars for you, George? Where is Mollenhauer going to
+get it, or Butler, or anybody, in these times? They can’t. They don’t
+intend to. When I’m through, you’re through, and you’ll be exposed
+quicker than any one else. They can’t hurt me, George. I’m an agent. I
+didn’t ask you to come to me. You came to me in the first place of your
+own accord. If you don’t help me, you’re through, I tell you, and
+you’re going to be sent to the penitentiary as sure as there are jails.
+Why don’t you take a stand, George? Why don’t you stand your ground?
+You have your wife and children to look after. You can’t be any worse
+off loaning me three hundred thousand more than you are right now. What
+difference does it make—five hundred thousand or eight hundred
+thousand? It’s all one and the same thing, if you’re going to be tried
+for it. Besides, if you loan me this, there isn’t going to be any
+trial. I’m not going to fail. This storm will blow over in a week or
+ten days, and we’ll be rich again. For Heaven’s sake, George, don’t go
+to pieces this way! Be sensible! Be reasonable!”
+
+He paused, for Stener’s face had become a jelly-like mass of woe.
+
+“I can’t, Frank,” he wailed. “I tell you I can’t. They’ll punish me
+worse than ever if I do that. They’ll never let up on me. You don’t
+know these people.”
+
+In Stener’s crumpling weakness Cowperwood read his own fate. What could
+you do with a man like that? How brace him up? You couldn’t! And with a
+gesture of infinite understanding, disgust, noble indifference, he
+threw up his hands and started to walk out. At the door he turned.
+
+“George,” he said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for you, not for myself. I’ll
+come out of things all right, eventually. I’ll be rich. But, George,
+you’re making the one great mistake of your life. You’ll be poor;
+you’ll be a convict, and you’ll have only yourself to blame. There
+isn’t a thing the matter with this money situation except the fire.
+There isn’t a thing wrong with my affairs except this slump in
+stocks—this panic. You sit there, a fortune in your hands, and you
+allow a lot of schemers, highbinders, who don’t know any more of your
+affairs or mine than a rabbit, and who haven’t any interest in you
+except to plan what they can get out of you, to frighten you and
+prevent you from doing the one thing that will save your life. Three
+hundred thousand paltry dollars that in three or four weeks from now I
+can pay back to you four and five times over, and for that you will see
+me go broke and yourself to the penitentiary. I can’t understand it,
+George. You’re out of your mind. You’re going to rue this the longest
+day that you live.”
+
+He waited a few moments to see if this, by any twist of chance, would
+have any effect; then, noting that Stener still remained a wilted,
+helpless mass of nothing, he shook his head gloomily and walked out.
+
+It was the first time in his life that Cowperwood had ever shown the
+least sign of weakening or despair. He had felt all along as though
+there were nothing to the Greek theory of being pursued by the furies.
+Now, however, there seemed an untoward fate which was pursuing him. It
+looked that way. Still, fate or no fate, he did not propose to be
+daunted. Even in this very beginning of a tendency to feel despondent
+he threw back his head, expanded his chest, and walked as briskly as
+ever.
+
+In the large room outside Stener’s private office he encountered Albert
+Stires, Stener’s chief clerk and secretary. He and Albert had exchanged
+many friendly greetings in times past, and all the little minor
+transactions in regard to city loan had been discussed between them,
+for Albert knew more of the intricacies of finance and financial
+bookkeeping than Stener would ever know.
+
+At the sight of Stires the thought in regard to the sixty thousand
+dollars’ worth of city loan certificates, previously referred to,
+flashed suddenly through his mind. He had not deposited them in the
+sinking-fund, and did not intend to for the present—could not, unless
+considerable free money were to reach him shortly—for he had used them
+to satisfy other pressing demands, and had no free money to buy them
+back—or, in other words, release them. And he did not want to just at
+this moment. Under the law governing transactions of this kind with the
+city treasurer, he was supposed to deposit them at once to the credit
+of the city, and not to draw his pay therefor from the city treasurer
+until he had. To be very exact, the city treasurer, under the law, was
+not supposed to pay him for any transaction of this kind until he or
+his agents presented a voucher from the bank or other organization
+carrying the sinking-fund for the city showing that the certificates so
+purchased had actually been deposited there. As a matter of fact, under
+the custom which had grown up between him and Stener, the law had long
+been ignored in this respect. He could buy certificates of city loan
+for the sinking-fund up to any reasonable amount, hypothecate them
+where he pleased, and draw his pay from the city without presenting a
+voucher. At the end of the month sufficient certificates of city loan
+could usually be gathered from one source and another to make up the
+deficiency, or the deficiency could actually be ignored, as had been
+done on more than one occasion, for long periods of time, while he used
+money secured by hypothecating the shares for speculative purposes.
+This was actually illegal; but neither Cowperwood nor Stener saw it in
+that light or cared.
+
+The trouble with this particular transaction was the note that he had
+received from Stener ordering him to stop both buying and selling,
+which put his relations with the city treasury on a very formal basis.
+He had bought these certificates before receiving this note, but had
+not deposited them. He was going now to collect his check; but perhaps
+the old, easy system of balancing matters at the end of the month might
+not be said to obtain any longer. Stires might ask him to present a
+voucher of deposit. If so, he could not now get this check for sixty
+thousand dollars, for he did not have the certificates to deposit. If
+not, he might get the money; but, also, it might constitute the basis
+of some subsequent legal action. If he did not eventually deposit the
+certificates before failure, some charge such as that of larceny might
+be brought against him. Still, he said to himself, he might not really
+fail even yet. If any of his banking associates should, for any reason,
+modify their decision in regard to calling his loans, he would not.
+Would Stener make a row about this if he so secured this check? Would
+the city officials pay any attention to him if he did? Could you get
+any district attorney to take cognizance of such a transaction, if
+Stener did complain? No, not in all likelihood; and, anyhow, nothing
+would come of it. No jury would punish him in the face of the
+understanding existing between him and Stener as agent or broker and
+principal. And, once he had the money, it was a hundred to one Stener
+would think no more about it. It would go in among the various
+unsatisfied liabilities, and nothing more would be thought about it.
+Like lightning the entire situation hashed through his mind. He would
+risk it. He stopped before the chief clerk’s desk.
+
+“Albert,” he said, in a low voice, “I bought sixty thousand dollars’
+worth of city loan for the sinking-fund this morning. Will you give my
+boy a check for it in the morning, or, better yet, will you give it to
+me now? I got your note about no more purchases. I’m going back to the
+office. You can just credit the sinking-fund with eight hundred
+certificates at from seventy-five to eighty. I’ll send you the itemized
+list later.”
+
+“Certainly, Mr. Cowperwood, certainly,” replied Albert, with alacrity.
+“Stocks are getting an awful knock, aren’t they? I hope you’re not very
+much troubled by it?”
+
+“Not very, Albert,” replied Cowperwood, smiling, the while the chief
+clerk was making out his check. He was wondering if by any chance
+Stener would appear and attempt to interfere with this. It was a legal
+transaction. He had a right to the check provided he deposited the
+certificates, as was his custom, with the trustee of the fund. He
+waited tensely while Albert wrote, and finally, with the check actually
+in his hand, breathed a sigh of relief. Here, at least, was sixty
+thousand dollars, and to-night’s work would enable him to cash the
+seventy-five thousand that had been promised him. To-morrow, once more
+he must see Leigh, Kitchen, Jay Cooke & Co., Edward Clark & Co.—all the
+long list of people to whom he owed loans and find out what could be
+done. If he could only get time! If he could get just a week!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIX
+
+
+But time was not a thing to be had in this emergency. With the
+seventy-five thousand dollars his friends had extended to him, and
+sixty thousand dollars secured from Stires, Cowperwood met the Girard
+call and placed the balance, thirty-five thousand dollars, in a private
+safe in his own home. He then made a final appeal to the bankers and
+financiers, but they refused to help him. He did not, however,
+commiserate himself in this hour. He looked out of his office window
+into the little court, and sighed. What more could he do? He sent a
+note to his father, asking him to call for lunch. He sent a note to his
+lawyer, Harper Steger, a man of his own age whom he liked very much,
+and asked him to call also. He evolved in his own mind various plans of
+delay, addresses to creditors and the like, but alas! he was going to
+fail. And the worst of it was that this matter of the city treasurer’s
+loans was bound to become a public, and more than a public, a
+political, scandal. And the charge of conniving, if not illegally, at
+least morally, at the misuse of the city’s money was the one thing that
+would hurt him most.
+
+How industriously his rivals would advertise this fact! He might get on
+his feet again if he failed; but it would be uphill work. And his
+father! His father would be pulled down with him. It was probable that
+he would be forced out of the presidency of his bank. With these
+thoughts Cowperwood sat there waiting. As he did so Aileen Butler was
+announced by his office-boy, and at the same time Albert Stires.
+
+“Show in Miss Butler,” he said, getting up. “Tell Mr. Stires to wait.”
+Aileen came briskly, vigorously in, her beautiful body clothed as
+decoratively as ever. The street suit that she wore was of a light
+golden-brown broadcloth, faceted with small, dark-red buttons. Her head
+was decorated with a brownish-red shake of a type she had learned was
+becoming to her, brimless and with a trailing plume, and her throat was
+graced by a three-strand necklace of gold beads. Her hands were
+smoothly gloved as usual, and her little feet daintily shod. There was
+a look of girlish distress in her eyes, which, however, she was trying
+hard to conceal.
+
+“Honey,” she exclaimed, on seeing him, her arms extended—“what is the
+trouble? I wanted so much to ask you the other night. You’re not going
+to fail, are you? I heard father and Owen talking about you last
+night.”
+
+“What did they say?” he inquired, putting his arm around her and
+looking quietly into her nervous eyes.
+
+“Oh, you know, I think papa is very angry with you. He suspects. Some
+one sent him an anonymous letter. He tried to get it out of me last
+night, but he didn’t succeed. I denied everything. I was in here twice
+this morning to see you, but you were out. I was so afraid that he
+might see you first, and that you might say something.”
+
+“Me, Aileen?”
+
+“Well, no, not exactly. I didn’t think that. I don’t know what I
+thought. Oh, honey, I’ve been so worried. You know, I didn’t sleep at
+all. I thought I was stronger than that; but I was so worried about
+you. You know, he put me in a strong light by his desk, where he could
+see my face, and then he showed me the letter. I was so astonished for
+a moment I hardly know what I said or how I looked.”
+
+“What did you say?”
+
+“Why, I said: ‘What a shame! It isn’t so!’ But I didn’t say it right
+away. My heart was going like a trip-hammer. I’m afraid he must have
+been able to tell something from my face. I could hardly get my
+breath.”
+
+“He’s a shrewd man, your father,” he commented. “He knows something
+about life. Now you see how difficult these situations are. It’s a
+blessing he decided to show you the letter instead of watching the
+house. I suppose he felt too bad to do that. He can’t prove anything
+now. But he knows. You can’t deceive him.”
+
+“How do you know he knows?”
+
+“I saw him yesterday.”
+
+“Did he talk to you about it?”
+
+“No; I saw his face. He simply looked at me.”
+
+“Honey! I’m so sorry for him!”
+
+“I know you are. So am I. But it can’t be helped now. We should have
+thought of that in the first place.”
+
+“But I love you so. Oh, honey, he will never forgive me. He loves me
+so. He mustn’t know. I won’t admit anything. But, oh, dear!”
+
+She put her hands tightly together on his bosom, and he looked
+consolingly into her eyes. Her eyelids, were trembling, and her lips.
+She was sorry for her father, herself, Cowperwood. Through her he could
+sense the force of Butler’s parental affection; the volume and danger
+of his rage. There were so many, many things as he saw it now
+converging to make a dramatic denouement.
+
+“Never mind,” he replied; “it can’t be helped now. Where is my strong,
+determined Aileen? I thought you were going to be so brave? Aren’t you
+going to be? I need to have you that way now.”
+
+“Do you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Are you in trouble?”
+
+“I think I am going to fail, dear.”
+
+“Oh, no!”
+
+“Yes, honey. I’m at the end of my rope. I don’t see any way out just at
+present. I’ve sent for my father and my lawyer. You mustn’t stay here,
+sweet. Your father may come in here at any time. We must meet
+somewhere—to-morrow, say—to-morrow afternoon. You remember Indian Rock,
+out on the Wissahickon?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Could you be there at four?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Look out for who’s following. If I’m not there by four-thirty, don’t
+wait. You know why. It will be because I think some one is watching.
+There won’t be, though, if we work it right. And now you must run,
+sweet. We can’t use Nine-thirty-one any more. I’ll have to rent another
+place somewhere else.”
+
+“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”
+
+“Aren’t you going to be strong and brave? You see, I need you to be.”
+
+He was almost, for the first time, a little sad in his mood.
+
+“Yes, dear, yes,” she declared, slipping her arms under his and pulling
+him tight. “Oh, yes! You can depend on me. Oh, Frank, I love you so!
+I’m so sorry. Oh, I do hope you don’t fail! But it doesn’t make any
+difference, dear, between you and me, whatever happens, does it? We
+will love each other just the same. I’ll do anything for you, honey!
+I’ll do anything you say. You can trust me. They sha’n’t know anything
+from me.”
+
+She looked at his still, pale face, and a sudden strong determination
+to fight for him welled up in her heart. Her love was unjust, illegal,
+outlawed; but it was love, just the same, and had much of the fiery
+daring of the outcast from justice.
+
+“I love you! I love you! I love you, Frank!” she declared. He unloosed
+her hands.
+
+“Run, sweet. To-morrow at four. Don’t fail. And don’t talk. And don’t
+admit anything, whatever you do.”
+
+“I won’t.”
+
+“And don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right.”
+
+He barely had time to straighten his tie, to assume a nonchalant
+attitude by the window, when in hurried Stener’s chief clerk—pale,
+disturbed, obviously out of key with himself.
+
+“Mr. Cowperwood! You know that check I gave you last night? Mr. Stener
+says it’s illegal, that I shouldn’t have given it to you, that he will
+hold me responsible. He says I can be arrested for compounding a
+felony, and that he will discharge me and have me sent to prison if I
+don’t get it back. Oh, Mr. Cowperwood, I am only a young man! I’m just
+really starting out in life. I’ve got my wife and little boy to look
+after. You won’t let him do that to me? You’ll give me that check back,
+won’t you? I can’t go back to the office without it. He says you’re
+going to fail, and that you knew it, and that you haven’t any right to
+it.”
+
+Cowperwood looked at him curiously. He was surprised at the variety and
+character of these emissaries of disaster. Surely, when troubles chose
+to multiply they had great skill in presenting themselves in rapid
+order. Stener had no right to make any such statement. The transaction
+was not illegal. The man had gone wild. True, he, Cowperwood, had
+received an order after these securities were bought not to buy or sell
+any more city loan, but that did not invalidate previous purchases.
+Stener was browbeating and frightening his poor underling, a better man
+than himself, in order to get back this sixty-thousand-dollar check.
+What a petty creature he was! How true it was, as somebody had
+remarked, that you could not possibly measure the petty meannesses to
+which a fool could stoop!
+
+“You go back to Mr. Stener, Albert, and tell him that it can’t be done.
+The certificates of loan were purchased before his order arrived, and
+the records of the exchange will prove it. There is no illegality here.
+I am entitled to that check and could have collected it in any
+qualified court of law. The man has gone out of his head. I haven’t
+failed yet. You are not in any danger of any legal proceedings; and if
+you are, I’ll help defend you. I can’t give you the check back because
+I haven’t it to give; and if I had, I wouldn’t. That would be allowing
+a fool to make a fool of me. I’m sorry, very, but I can’t do anything
+for you.”
+
+“Oh, Mr. Cowperwood!” Tears were in Stires’s eyes. “He’ll discharge me!
+He’ll forfeit my sureties. I’ll be turned out into the street. I have
+only a little property of my own—outside of my salary!”
+
+He wrung his hands, and Cowperwood shook his head sadly.
+
+“This isn’t as bad as you think, Albert. He won’t do what he says. He
+can’t. It’s unfair and illegal. You can bring suit and recover your
+salary. I’ll help you in that as much as I’m able. But I can’t give you
+back this sixty-thousand-dollar check, because I haven’t it to give. I
+couldn’t if I wanted to. It isn’t here any more. I’ve paid for the
+securities I bought with it. The securities are not here. They’re in
+the sinking-fund, or will be.”
+
+He paused, wishing he had not mentioned that fact. It was a slip of the
+tongue, one of the few he ever made, due to the peculiar pressure of
+the situation. Stires pleaded longer. It was no use, Cowperwood told
+him. Finally he went away, crestfallen, fearsome, broken. There were
+tears of suffering in his eyes. Cowperwood was very sorry. And then his
+father was announced.
+
+The elder Cowperwood brought a haggard face. He and Frank had had a
+long conversation the evening before, lasting until early morning, but
+it had not been productive of much save uncertainty.
+
+“Hello, father!” exclaimed Cowperwood, cheerfully, noting his father’s
+gloom. He was satisfied that there was scarcely a coal of hope to be
+raked out of these ashes of despair, but there was no use admitting it.
+
+“Well?” said his father, lifting his sad eyes in a peculiar way.
+
+“Well, it looks like stormy weather, doesn’t it? I’ve decided to call a
+meeting of my creditors, father, and ask for time. There isn’t anything
+else to do. I can’t realize enough on anything to make it worth while
+talking about. I thought Stener might change his mind, but he’s worse
+rather than better. His head bookkeeper just went out of here.”
+
+“What did he want?” asked Henry Cowperwood.
+
+“He wanted me to give him back a check for sixty thousand that he paid
+me for some city loan I bought yesterday morning.” Frank did not
+explain to his father, however, that he had hypothecated the
+certificates this check had paid for, and used the check itself to
+raise money enough to pay the Girard National Bank and to give himself
+thirty-five thousand in cash besides.
+
+“Well, I declare!” replied the old man. “You’d think he’d have better
+sense than that. That’s a perfectly legitimate transaction. When did
+you say he notified you not to buy city loan?”
+
+“Yesterday noon.”
+
+“He’s out of his mind,” Cowperwood, Sr., commented, laconically.
+
+“It’s Mollenhauer and Simpson and Butler, I know. They want my
+street-railway lines. Well, they won’t get them. They’ll get them
+through a receivership, and after the panic’s all over. Our creditors
+will have first chance at these. If they buy, they’ll buy from them. If
+it weren’t for that five-hundred-thousand-dollar loan I wouldn’t think
+a thing of this. My creditors would sustain me nicely. But the moment
+that gets noised around!... And this election! I hypothecated those
+city loan certificates because I didn’t want to get on the wrong side
+of Davison. I expected to take in enough by now to take them up. They
+ought to be in the sinking-fund, really.”
+
+The old gentleman saw the point at once, and winced.
+
+“They might cause you trouble, there, Frank.”
+
+“It’s a technical question,” replied his son. “I might have been
+intending to take them up. As a matter of fact, I will if I can before
+three. I’ve been taking eight and ten days to deposit them in the past.
+In a storm like this I’m entitled to move my pawns as best I can.”
+
+Cowperwood, the father, put his hand over his mouth again. He felt very
+disturbed about this. He saw no way out, however. He was at the end of
+his own resources. He felt the side-whiskers on his left cheek. He
+looked out of the window into the little green court. Possibly it was a
+technical question, who should say. The financial relations of the city
+treasury with other brokers before Frank had been very lax. Every
+banker knew that. Perhaps precedent would or should govern in this
+case. He could not say. Still, it was dangerous—not straight. If Frank
+could get them out and deposit them it would be so much better.
+
+“I’d take them up if I were you and I could,” he added.
+
+“I will if I can.”
+
+“How much money have you?”
+
+“Oh, twenty thousand, all told. If I suspend, though, I’ll have to have
+a little ready cash.”
+
+“I have eight or ten thousand, or will have by night, I hope.”
+
+He was thinking of some one who would give him a second mortgage on his
+house.
+
+Cowperwood looked quietly at him. There was nothing more to be said to
+his father. “I’m going to make one more appeal to Stener after you
+leave here,” he said. “I’m going over there with Harper Steger when he
+comes. If he won’t change I’ll send out notice to my creditors, and
+notify the secretary of the exchange. I want you to keep a stiff upper
+lip, whatever happens. I know you will, though. I’m going into the
+thing head down. If Stener had any sense—” He paused. “But what’s the
+use talking about a damn fool?”
+
+He turned to the window, thinking of how easy it would have been, if
+Aileen and he had not been exposed by this anonymous note, to have
+arranged all with Butler. Rather than injure the party, Butler, in
+extremis, would have assisted him. Now...!
+
+His father got up to go. He was as stiff with despair as though he were
+suffering from cold.
+
+“Well,” he said, wearily.
+
+Cowperwood suffered intensely for him. What a shame! His father! He
+felt a great surge of sorrow sweep over him but a moment later mastered
+it, and settled to his quick, defiant thinking. As the old man went
+out, Harper Steger was brought in. They shook hands, and at once
+started for Stener’s office. But Stener had sunk in on himself like an
+empty gas-bag, and no efforts were sufficient to inflate him. They went
+out, finally, defeated.
+
+“I tell you, Frank,” said Steger, “I wouldn’t worry. We can tie this
+thing up legally until election and after, and that will give all this
+row a chance to die down. Then you can get your people together and
+talk sense to them. They’re not going to give up good properties like
+this, even if Stener does go to jail.”
+
+Steger did not know of the sixty thousand dollars’ worth of
+hypothecated securities as yet. Neither did he know of Aileen Butler
+and her father’s boundless rage.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXX
+
+
+There was one development in connection with all of this of which
+Cowperwood was as yet unaware. The same day that brought Edward Butler
+the anonymous communication in regard to his daughter, brought almost a
+duplicate of it to Mrs. Frank Algernon Cowperwood, only in this case
+the name of Aileen Butler had curiously been omitted.
+
+Perhaps you don’t know that your husband is running with another woman.
+If you don’t believe it, watch the house at 931 North Tenth Street.
+
+
+Mrs. Cowperwood was in the conservatory watering some plants when this
+letter was brought by her maid Monday morning. She was most placid in
+her thoughts, for she did not know what all the conferring of the night
+before meant. Frank was occasionally troubled by financial storms, but
+they did not see to harm him.
+
+“Lay it on the table in the library, Annie. I’ll get it.”
+
+She thought it was some social note.
+
+In a little while (such was her deliberate way), she put down her
+sprinkling-pot and went into the library. There it was lying on the
+green leather sheepskin which constituted a part of the ornamentation
+of the large library table. She picked it up, glanced at it curiously
+because it was on cheap paper, and then opened it. Her face paled
+slightly as she read it; and then her hand trembled—not much. Hers was
+not a soul that ever loved passionately, hence she could not suffer
+passionately. She was hurt, disgusted, enraged for the moment, and
+frightened; but she was not broken in spirit entirely. Thirteen years
+of life with Frank Cowperwood had taught her a number of things. He was
+selfish, she knew now, self-centered, and not as much charmed by her as
+he had been. The fear she had originally felt as to the effect of her
+preponderance of years had been to some extent justified by the lapse
+of time. Frank did not love her as he had—he had not for some time; she
+had felt it. What was it?—she had asked herself at times—almost, who
+was it? Business was engrossing him so.
+
+Finance was his master. Did this mean the end of her regime, she
+queried. Would he cast her off? Where would she go? What would she do?
+She was not helpless, of course, for she had money of her own which he
+was manipulating for her. Who was this other woman? Was she young,
+beautiful, of any social position? Was it—? Suddenly she stopped. Was
+it? Could it be, by any chance—her mouth opened—Aileen Butler?
+
+She stood still, staring at this letter, for she could scarcely
+countenance her own thought. She had observed often, in spite of all
+their caution, how friendly Aileen had been to him and he to her. He
+liked her; he never lost a chance to defend her. Lillian had thought of
+them at times as being curiously suited to each other temperamentally.
+He liked young people. But, of course, he was married, and Aileen was
+infinitely beneath him socially, and he had two children and herself.
+And his social and financial position was so fixed and stable that he
+did not dare trifle with it. Still she paused; for forty years and two
+children, and some slight wrinkles, and the suspicion that we may be no
+longer loved as we once were, is apt to make any woman pause, even in
+the face of the most significant financial position. Where would she go
+if she left him? What would people think? What about the children?
+Could she prove this liaison? Could she entrap him in a compromising
+situation? Did she want to?
+
+She saw now that she did not love him as some women love their
+husbands. She was not wild about him. In a way she had been taking him
+for granted all these years, had thought that he loved her enough not
+to be unfaithful to her; at least fancied that he was so engrossed with
+the more serious things of life that no petty liaison such as this
+letter indicated would trouble him or interrupt his great career.
+Apparently this was not true. What should she do? What say? How act?
+Her none too brilliant mind was not of much service in this crisis. She
+did not know very well how either to plan or to fight.
+
+The conventional mind is at best a petty piece of machinery. It is
+oyster-like in its functioning, or, perhaps better, clam-like. It has
+its little siphon of thought-processes forced up or down into the
+mighty ocean of fact and circumstance; but it uses so little, pumps so
+faintly, that the immediate contiguity of the vast mass is not
+disturbed. Nothing of the subtlety of life is perceived. No least
+inkling of its storms or terrors is ever discovered except through
+accident. When some crude, suggestive fact, such as this letter proved
+to be, suddenly manifests itself in the placid flow of events, there is
+great agony or disturbance and clogging of the so-called normal
+processes. The siphon does not work right. It sucks in fear and
+distress. There is great grinding of maladjusted parts—not unlike sand
+in a machine—and life, as is so often the case, ceases or goes lamely
+ever after.
+
+Mrs. Cowperwood was possessed of a conventional mind. She really knew
+nothing about life. And life could not teach her. Reaction in her from
+salty thought-processes was not possible. She was not alive in the
+sense that Aileen Butler was, and yet she thought that she was very
+much alive. All illusion. She wasn’t. She was charming if you loved
+placidity. If you did not, she was not. She was not engaging,
+brilliant, or forceful. Frank Cowperwood might well have asked himself
+in the beginning why he married her. He did not do so now because he
+did not believe it was wise to question the past as to one’s failures
+and errors. It was, according to him, most unwise to regret. He kept
+his face and thoughts to the future.
+
+But Mrs. Cowperwood was truly distressed in her way, and she went about
+the house thinking, feeling wretchedly. She decided, since the letter
+asked her to see for herself, to wait. She must think how she would
+watch this house, if at all. Frank must not know. If it were Aileen
+Butler by any chance—but surely not—she thought she would expose her to
+her parents. Still, that meant exposing herself. She determined to
+conceal her mood as best she could at dinner-time—but Cowperwood was
+not able to be there. He was so rushed, so closeted with individuals,
+so closely in conference with his father and others, that she scarcely
+saw him this Monday night, nor the next day, nor for many days.
+
+For on Tuesday afternoon at two-thirty he issued a call for a meeting
+of his creditors, and at five-thirty he decided to go into the hands of
+a receiver. And yet, as he stood before his principal creditors—a group
+of thirty men—in his office, he did not feel that his life was ruined.
+He was temporarily embarrassed. Certainly things looked very black. The
+city-treasurership deal would make a great fuss. Those hypothecated
+city loan certificates, to the extent of sixty thousand, would make
+another, if Stener chose. Still, he did not feel that he was utterly
+destroyed.
+
+“Gentlemen,” he said, in closing his address of explanation at the
+meeting, quite as erect, secure, defiant, convincing as he had ever
+been, “you see how things are. These securities are worth just as much
+as they ever were. There is nothing the matter with the properties
+behind them. If you will give me fifteen days or twenty, I am satisfied
+that I can straighten the whole matter out. I am almost the only one
+who can, for I know all about it. The market is bound to recover.
+Business is going to be better than ever. It’s time I want. Time is the
+only significant factor in this situation. I want to know if you won’t
+give me fifteen or twenty days—a month, if you can. That is all I
+want.”
+
+He stepped aside and out of the general room, where the blinds were
+drawn, into his private office, in order to give his creditors an
+opportunity to confer privately in regard to his situation. He had
+friends in the meeting who were for him. He waited one, two, nearly
+three hours while they talked. Finally Walter Leigh, Judge Kitchen,
+Avery Stone, of Jay Cooke & Co., and several others came in. They were
+a committee appointed to gather further information.
+
+“Nothing more can be done to-day, Frank,” Walter Leigh informed him,
+quietly. “The majority want the privilege of examining the books. There
+is some uncertainty about this entanglement with the city treasurer
+which you say exists. They feel that you’d better announce a temporary
+suspension, anyhow; and if they want to let you resume later they can
+do so.”
+
+“I’m sorry for that, gentlemen,” replied Cowperwood, the least bit
+depressed. “I would rather do anything than suspend for one hour, if I
+could help it, for I know just what it means. You will find assets here
+far exceeding the liabilities if you will take the stocks at their
+normal market value; but that won’t help any if I close my doors. The
+public won’t believe in me. I ought to keep open.”
+
+“Sorry, Frank, old boy,” observed Leigh, pressing his hand
+affectionately. “If it were left to me personally, you could have all
+the time you want. There’s a crowd of old fogies out there that won’t
+listen to reason. They’re panic-struck. I guess they’re pretty hard hit
+themselves. You can scarcely blame them. You’ll come out all right,
+though I wish you didn’t have to shut up shop. We can’t do anything
+with them, however. Why, damn it, man, I don’t see how you can fail,
+really. In ten days these stocks will be all right.”
+
+Judge Kitchen commiserated with him also; but what good did that do? He
+was being compelled to suspend. An expert accountant would have to come
+in and go over his books. Butler might spread the news of this
+city-treasury connection. Stener might complain of this last city-loan
+transaction. A half-dozen of his helpful friends stayed with him until
+four o’clock in the morning; but he had to suspend just the same. And
+when he did that, he knew he was seriously crippled if not ultimately
+defeated in his race for wealth and fame.
+
+When he was really and finally quite alone in his private bedroom he
+stared at himself in the mirror. His face was pale and tired, he
+thought, but strong and effective. “Pshaw!” he said to himself, “I’m
+not whipped. I’m still young. I’ll get out of this in some way yet.
+Certainly I will. I’ll find some way out.”
+
+And so, cogitating heavily, wearily, he began to undress. Finally he
+sank upon his bed, and in a little while, strange as it may seem, with
+all the tangle of trouble around him, slept. He could do that—sleep and
+gurgle most peacefully, the while his father paced the floor in his
+room, refusing to be comforted. All was dark before the older man—the
+future hopeless. Before the younger man was still hope.
+
+And in her room Lillian Cowperwood turned and tossed in the face of
+this new calamity. For it had suddenly appeared from news from her
+father and Frank and Anna and her mother-in-law that Frank was about to
+fail, or would, or had—it was almost impossible to say just how it was.
+Frank was too busy to explain. The Chicago fire was to blame. There was
+no mention as yet of the city treasurership. Frank was caught in a
+trap, and was fighting for his life.
+
+In this crisis, for the moment, she forgot about the note as to his
+infidelity, or rather ignored it. She was astonished, frightened,
+dumbfounded, confused. Her little, placid, beautiful world was going
+around in a dizzy ring. The charming, ornate ship of their fortune was
+being blown most ruthlessly here and there. She felt it a sort of duty
+to stay in bed and try to sleep; but her eyes were quite wide, and her
+brain hurt her. Hours before Frank had insisted that she should not
+bother about him, that she could do nothing; and she had left him,
+wondering more than ever what and where was the line of her duty. To
+stick by her husband, convention told her; and so she decided. Yes,
+religion dictated that, also custom. There were the children. They must
+not be injured. Frank must be reclaimed, if possible. He would get over
+this. But what a blow!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXI
+
+
+The suspension of the banking house of Frank A. Cowperwood & Co.
+created a great stir on ’change and in Philadelphia generally. It was
+so unexpected, and the amount involved was comparatively so large.
+Actually he failed for one million two hundred and fifty thousand
+dollars; and his assets, under the depressed condition of stock values,
+barely totaled seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. There had been
+considerable work done on the matter of his balance-sheet before it was
+finally given to the public; but when it was, stocks dropped an
+additional three points generally, and the papers the next day devoted
+notable headlines to it. Cowperwood had no idea of failing permanently;
+he merely wished to suspend temporarily, and later, if possible, to
+persuade his creditors to allow him to resume. There were only two
+things which stood in the way of this: the matter of the five hundred
+thousand dollars borrowed from the city treasury at a ridiculously low
+rate of interest, which showed plainer than words what had been going
+on, and the other, the matter of the sixty-thousand-dollar check. His
+financial wit had told him there were ways to assign his holdings in
+favor of his largest creditors, which would tend to help him later to
+resume; and he had been swift to act. Indeed, Harper Steger had drawn
+up documents which named Jay Cooke & Co., Edward Clark & Co., Drexel &
+Co., and others as preferred. He knew that even though dissatisfied
+holders of smaller shares in his company brought suit and compelled
+readjustment or bankruptcy later, the intention shown to prefer some of
+his most influential aids was important. They would like it, and might
+help him later when all this was over. Besides, suits in plenty are an
+excellent way of tiding over a crisis of this kind until stocks and
+common sense are restored, and he was for many suits. Harper Steger
+smiled once rather grimly, even in the whirl of the financial chaos
+where smiles were few, as they were figuring it out.
+
+“Frank,” he said, “you’re a wonder. You’ll have a network of suits
+spread here shortly, which no one can break through. They’ll all be
+suing each other.”
+
+Cowperwood smiled.
+
+“I only want a little time, that’s all,” he replied. Nevertheless, for
+the first time in his life he was a little depressed; for now this
+business, to which he had devoted years of active work and thought, was
+ended.
+
+The thing that was troubling him most in all of this was not the five
+hundred thousand dollars which was owing the city treasury, and which
+he knew would stir political and social life to the center once it was
+generally known—that was a legal or semi-legal transaction, at
+least—but rather the matter of the sixty thousand dollars’ worth of
+unrestored city loan certificates which he had not been able to replace
+in the sinking-fund and could not now even though the necessary money
+should fall from heaven. The fact of their absence was a matter of
+source. He pondered over the situation a good deal. The thing to do, he
+thought, if he went to Mollenhauer or Simpson, or both (he had never
+met either of them, but in view of Butler’s desertion they were his
+only recourse), was to say that, although he could not at present
+return the five hundred thousand dollars, if no action were taken
+against him now, which would prevent his resuming his business on a
+normal scale a little later, he would pledge his word that every dollar
+of the involved five hundred thousand dollars would eventually be
+returned to the treasury. If they refused, and injury was done him, he
+proposed to let them wait until he was “good and ready,” which in all
+probability would be never. But, really, it was not quite clear how
+action against him was to be prevented—even by them. The money was down
+on his books as owing the city treasury, and it was down on the city
+treasury’s books as owing from him. Besides, there was a local
+organization known as the Citizens’ Municipal Reform Association which
+occasionally conducted investigations in connection with public
+affairs. His defalcation would be sure to come to the ears of this body
+and a public investigation might well follow. Various private
+individuals knew of it already. His creditors, for instance, who were
+now examining his books.
+
+This matter of seeing Mollenhauer or Simpson, or both, was important,
+anyhow, he thought; but before doing so he decided to talk it all over
+with Harper Steger. So several days after he had closed his doors, he
+sent for Steger and told him all about the transaction, except that he
+did not make it clear that he had not intended to put the certificates
+in the sinking-fund unless he survived quite comfortably.
+
+Harper Steger was a tall, thin, graceful, rather elegant man, of gentle
+voice and perfect manners, who walked always as though he were a cat,
+and a dog were prowling somewhere in the offing. He had a longish, thin
+face of a type that is rather attractive to women. His eyes were blue,
+his hair brown, with a suggestion of sandy red in it. He had a steady,
+inscrutable gaze which sometimes came to you over a thin, delicate
+hand, which he laid meditatively over his mouth. He was cruel to the
+limit of the word, not aggressively but indifferently; for he had no
+faith in anything. He was not poor. He had not even been born poor. He
+was just innately subtle, with the rather constructive thought, which
+was about the only thing that compelled him to work, that he ought to
+be richer than he was—more conspicuous. Cowperwood was an excellent
+avenue toward legal prosperity. Besides, he was a fascinating customer.
+Of all his clients, Steger admired Cowperwood most.
+
+“Let them proceed against you,” he said on this occasion, his brilliant
+legal mind taking in all the phases of the situation at once. “I don’t
+see that there is anything more here than a technical charge. If it
+ever came to anything like that, which I don’t think it will, the
+charge would be embezzlement or perhaps larceny as bailee. In this
+instance, you were the bailee. And the only way out of that would be to
+swear that you had received the check with Stener’s knowledge and
+consent. Then it would only be a technical charge of irresponsibility
+on your part, as I see it, and I don’t believe any jury would convict
+you on the evidence of how this relationship was conducted. Still, it
+might; you never can tell what a jury is going to do. All this would
+have to come out at a trial, however. The whole thing, it seems to me,
+would depend on which of you two—yourself or Stener—the jury would be
+inclined to believe, and on how anxious this city crowd is to find a
+scapegoat for Stener. This coming election is the rub. If this panic
+had come at any other time—”
+
+Cowperwood waved for silence. He knew all about that. “It all depends
+on what the politicians decide to do. I’m doubtful. The situation is
+too complicated. It can’t be hushed up.” They were in his private
+office at his house. “What will be will be,” he added.
+
+“What would that mean, Harper, legally, if I were tried on a charge of
+larceny as bailee, as you put it, and convicted? How many years in the
+penitentiary at the outside?”
+
+Steger thought a minute, rubbing his chin with his hand. “Let me see,”
+he said, “that is a serious question, isn’t it? The law says one to
+five years at the outside; but the sentences usually average from one
+to three years in embezzlement cases. Of course, in this case—”
+
+“I know all about that,” interrupted Cowperwood, irritably. “My case
+isn’t any different from the others, and you know it. Embezzlement is
+embezzlement if the politicians want to have it so.” He fell to
+thinking, and Steger got up and strolled about leisurely. He was
+thinking also.
+
+“And would I have to go to jail at any time during the
+proceedings—before a final adjustment of the case by the higher
+courts?” Cowperwood added, directly, grimly, after a time.
+
+“Yes, there is one point in all legal procedure of the kind,” replied
+Steger, cautiously, now rubbing his ear and trying to put the matter as
+delicately as possible. “You can avoid jail sentences all through the
+earlier parts of a case like this; but if you are once tried and
+convicted it’s pretty hard to do anything—as a matter of fact, it
+becomes absolutely necessary then to go to jail for a few days, five or
+so, pending the motion for a new trial and the obtaining of a
+certificate of reasonable doubt. It usually takes that long.”
+
+The young banker sat there staring out of the window, and Steger
+observed, “It is a bit complicated, isn’t it?”
+
+“Well, I should say so,” returned Frank, and he added to himself:
+“Jail! Five days in prison!” That would be a terrific slap, all things
+considered. Five days in jail pending the obtaining of a certificate of
+reasonable doubt, if one could be obtained! He must avoid this! Jail!
+The penitentiary! His commercial reputation would never survive that.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXII
+
+
+The necessity of a final conference between Butler, Mollenhauer, and
+Simpson was speedily reached, for this situation was hourly growing
+more serious. Rumors were floating about in Third Street that in
+addition to having failed for so large an amount as to have further
+unsettled the already panicky financial situation induced by the
+Chicago fire, Cowperwood and Stener, or Stener working with Cowperwood,
+or the other way round, had involved the city treasury to the extent of
+five hundred thousand dollars. And the question was how was the matter
+to be kept quiet until after election, which was still three weeks
+away. Bankers and brokers were communicating odd rumors to each other
+about a check that had been taken from the city treasury after
+Cowperwood knew he was to fail, and without Stener’s consent. Also that
+there was danger that it would come to the ears of that very
+uncomfortable political organization known as the Citizens’ Municipal
+Reform Association, of which a well-known iron-manufacturer of great
+probity and moral rectitude, one Skelton C. Wheat, was president. Wheat
+had for years been following on the trail of the dominant Republican
+administration in a vain attempt to bring it to a sense of some of its
+political iniquities. He was a serious and austere man—-one of those
+solemn, self-righteous souls who see life through a peculiar veil of
+duty, and who, undisturbed by notable animal passions of any kind, go
+their way of upholding the theory of the Ten Commandments over the
+order of things as they are.
+
+The committee in question had originally been organized to protest
+against some abuses in the tax department; but since then, from
+election to election, it had been drifting from one subject to another,
+finding an occasional evidence of its worthwhileness in some newspaper
+comment and the frightened reformation of some minor political official
+who ended, usually, by taking refuge behind the skirts of some higher
+political power—in the last reaches, Messrs. Butler, Mollenhauer, and
+Simpson. Just now it was without important fuel or ammunition; and this
+assignment of Cowperwood, with its attendant crime, so far as the city
+treasury was concerned, threatened, as some politicians and bankers saw
+it, to give it just the club it was looking for.
+
+However, the decisive conference took place between Cowperwood and the
+reigning political powers some five days after Cowperwood’s failure, at
+the home of Senator Simpson, which was located in Rittenhouse Square—a
+region central for the older order of wealth in Philadelphia. Simpson
+was a man of no little refinement artistically, of Quaker extraction,
+and of great wealth-breeding judgment which he used largely to satisfy
+his craving for political predominance. He was most liberal where money
+would bring him a powerful or necessary political adherent. He fairly
+showered offices—commissionerships, trusteeships, judgeships, political
+nominations, and executive positions generally—on those who did his
+bidding faithfully and without question. Compared with Butler and
+Mollenhauer he was more powerful than either, for he represented the
+State and the nation. When the political authorities who were trying to
+swing a national election were anxious to discover what the State of
+Pennsylvania would do, so far as the Republican party was concerned, it
+was to Senator Simpson that they appealed. In the literal sense of the
+word, he knew. The Senator had long since graduated from State to
+national politics, and was an interesting figure in the United States
+Senate at Washington, where his voice in all the conservative and
+moneyed councils of the nation was of great weight.
+
+The house that he occupied, of Venetian design, and four stories in
+height, bore many architectural marks of distinction, such as the
+floriated window, the door with the semipointed arch, and medallions of
+colored marble set in the walls. The Senator was a great admirer of
+Venice. He had been there often, as he had to Athens and Rome, and had
+brought back many artistic objects representative of the civilizations
+and refinements of older days. He was fond, for one thing, of the
+stern, sculptured heads of the Roman emperors, and the fragments of
+gods and goddesses which are the best testimony of the artistic
+aspirations of Greece. In the entresol of this house was one of his
+finest treasures—a carved and floriated base bearing a tapering
+monolith some four feet high, crowned by the head of a peculiarly
+goatish Pan, by the side of which were the problematic remains of a
+lovely nude nymph—just the little feet broken off at the ankles. The
+base on which the feet of the nymph and the monolith stood was
+ornamented with carved ox-skulls intertwined with roses. In his
+reception hall were replicas of Caligula, Nero, and other Roman
+emperors; and on his stair-walls reliefs of dancing nymphs in
+procession, and priests bearing offerings of sheep and swine to the
+sacrificial altars. There was a clock in some corner of the house which
+chimed the quarter, the half, the three-quarters, and the hour in
+strange, euphonious, and pathetic notes. On the walls of the rooms were
+tapestries of Flemish origin, and in the reception-hall, the library,
+the living-room, and the drawing-room, richly carved furniture after
+the standards of the Italian Renaissance. The Senator’s taste in the
+matter of paintings was inadequate, and he mistrusted it; but such as
+he had were of distinguished origin and authentic. He cared more for
+his curio-cases filled with smaller imported bronzes, Venetian glass,
+and Chinese jade. He was not a collector of these in any notable
+sense—merely a lover of a few choice examples. Handsome tiger and
+leopard skin rugs, the fur of a musk-ox for his divan, and tanned and
+brown-stained goat and kid skins for his tables, gave a sense of
+elegance and reserved profusion. In addition the Senator had a
+dining-room done after the Jacobean idea of artistic excellence, and a
+wine-cellar which the best of the local vintners looked after with
+extreme care. He was a man who loved to entertain lavishly; and when
+his residence was thrown open for a dinner, a reception, or a ball, the
+best of local society was to be found there.
+
+The conference was in the Senator’s library, and he received his
+colleagues with the genial air of one who has much to gain and little
+to lose. There were whiskies, wines, cigars on the table, and while
+Mollenhauer and Simpson exchanged the commonplaces of the day awaiting
+the arrival of Butler, they lighted cigars and kept their inmost
+thoughts to themselves.
+
+It so happened that upon the previous afternoon Butler had learned from
+Mr. David Pettie, the district attorney, of the
+sixty-thousand-dollar-check transaction. At the same time the matter
+had been brought to Mollenhauer’s attention by Stener himself. It was
+Mollenhauer, not Butler who saw that by taking advantage of
+Cowperwood’s situation, he might save the local party from blame, and
+at the same time most likely fleece Cowperwood out of his
+street-railway shares without letting Butler or Simpson know anything
+about it. The thing to do was to terrorize him with a private threat of
+prosecution.
+
+Butler was not long in arriving, and apologized for the delay.
+Concealing his recent grief behind as jaunty an air as possible, he
+began with:
+
+“It’s a lively life I’m leadin’, what with every bank in the city
+wantin’ to know how their loans are goin’ to be taken care of.” He took
+a cigar and struck a match.
+
+“It does look a little threatening,” said Senator Simpson, smiling.
+“Sit down. I have just been talking with Avery Stone, of Jay Cooke &
+Company, and he tells me that the talk in Third Street about Stener’s
+connection with this Cowperwood failure is growing very strong, and
+that the newspapers are bound to take up the matter shortly, unless
+something is done about it. I am sure that the news will also reach Mr.
+Wheat, of the Citizens’ Reform Association, very shortly. We ought to
+decide now, gentlemen, what we propose to do. One thing, I am sure, is
+to eliminate Stener from the ticket as quietly as possible. This really
+looks to me as if it might become a very serious issue, and we ought to
+be doing what we can now to offset its effect later.”
+
+Mollenhauer pulled a long breath through his cigar, and blew it out in
+a rolling steel-blue cloud. He studied the tapestry on the opposite
+wall but said nothing.
+
+“There is one thing sure,” continued Senator Simpson, after a time,
+seeing that no one else spoke, “and that is, if we do not begin a
+prosecution on our own account within a reasonable time, some one else
+is apt to; and that would put rather a bad face on the matter. My own
+opinion would be that we wait until it is very plain that prosecution
+is going to be undertaken by some one else—possibly the Municipal
+Reform Association—but that we stand ready to step in and act in such a
+way as to make it look as though we had been planning to do it all the
+time. The thing to do is to gain time; and so I would suggest that it
+be made as difficult as possible to get at the treasurer’s books. An
+investigation there, if it begins at all—as I think is very
+likely—should be very slow in producing the facts.”
+
+The Senator was not at all for mincing words with his important
+confreres, when it came to vital issues. He preferred, in his
+grandiloquent way, to call a spade a spade.
+
+“Now that sounds like very good sense to me,” said Butler, sinking a
+little lower in his chair for comfort’s sake, and concealing his true
+mood in regard to all this. “The boys could easily make that
+investigation last three weeks, I should think. They’re slow enough
+with everything else, if me memory doesn’t fail me.” At the same time
+he was cogitating as to how to inject the personality of Cowperwood and
+his speedy prosecution without appearing to be neglecting the general
+welfare of the local party too much.
+
+“Yes, that isn’t a bad idea,” said Mollenhauer, solemnly, blowing a
+ring of smoke, and thinking how to keep Cowperwood’s especial offense
+from coming up at this conference and until after he had seen him.
+
+“We ought to map out our program very carefully,” continued Senator
+Simpson, “so that if we are compelled to act we can do so very quickly.
+I believe myself that this thing is certain to come to an issue within
+a week, if not sooner, and we have no time to lose. If my advice were
+followed now, I should have the mayor write the treasurer a letter
+asking for information, and the treasurer write the mayor his answer,
+and also have the mayor, with the authority of the common council,
+suspend the treasurer for the time being—I think we have the authority
+to do that—or, at least, take over his principal duties but without for
+the time being, anyhow, making any of these transactions public—until
+we have to, of course. We ought to be ready with these letters to show
+to the newspapers at once, in case this action is forced upon us.”
+
+“I could have those letters prepared, if you gentlemen have no
+objection,” put in Mollenhauer, quietly, but quickly.
+
+“Well, that strikes me as sinsible,” said Butler, easily. “It’s about
+the only thing we can do under the circumstances, unless we could find
+some one else to blame it on, and I have a suggestion to make in that
+direction. Maybe we’re not as helpless as we might be, all things
+considered.”
+
+There was a slight gleam of triumph in his eye as he said this, at the
+same time that there was a slight shadow of disappointment in
+Mollenhauer’s. So Butler knew, and probably Simpson, too.
+
+“Just what do you mean?” asked the Senator, looking at Butler
+interestedly. He knew nothing of the sixty-thousand-dollar check
+transaction. He had not followed the local treasury dealings very
+closely, nor had he talked to either of his confreres since the
+original conference between them. “There haven’t been any outside
+parties mixed up with this, have there?” His own shrewd, political mind
+was working.
+
+“No-o. I wouldn’t call him an outside party, exactly, Senator,” went on
+Butler suavely. “It’s Cowperwood himself I’m thinkin’ of. There’s
+somethin’ that has come up since I saw you gentlemen last that makes me
+think that perhaps that young man isn’t as innocent as he might be. It
+looks to me as though he was the ringleader in this business, as though
+he had been leadin’ Stener on against his will. I’ve been lookin’ into
+the matter on me own account, and as far as I can make out this man
+Stener isn’t as much to blame as I thought. From all I can learn,
+Cowperwood’s been threatenin’ Stener with one thing and another if he
+didn’t give him more money, and only the other day he got a big sum on
+false pretinses, which might make him equally guilty with Stener.
+There’s sixty-thousand dollars of city loan certificates that has been
+paid for that aren’t in the sinking-fund. And since the reputation of
+the party’s in danger this fall, I don’t see that we need to have any
+particular consideration for him.” He paused, strong in the conviction
+that he had sent a most dangerous arrow flying in the direction of
+Cowperwood, as indeed he had. Yet at this moment, both the Senator and
+Mollenhauer were not a little surprised, seeing at their last meeting
+he had appeared rather friendly to the young banker, and this recent
+discovery seemed scarcely any occasion for a vicious attitude on his
+part. Mollenhauer in particular was surprised, for he had been looking
+on Butler’s friendship for Cowperwood as a possible stumbling block.
+
+“Um-m, you don’t tell me,” observed Senator Simpson, thoughtfully,
+stroking his mouth with his pale hand.
+
+“Yes, I can confirm that,” said Mollenhauer, quietly, seeing his own
+little private plan of browbeating Cowperwood out of his street-railway
+shares going glimmering. “I had a talk with Stener the other day about
+this very matter, and he told me that Cowperwood had been trying to
+force him to give him three hundred thousand dollars more, and that
+when he refused Cowperwood managed to get sixty thousand dollars
+further without his knowledge or consent.”
+
+“How could he do that?” asked Senator Simpson, incredulously.
+Mollenhauer explained the transaction.
+
+“Oh,” said the Senator, when Mollenhauer had finished, “that indicates
+a rather sharp person, doesn’t it? And the certificates are not in the
+sinking-fund, eh?”
+
+“They’re not,” chimed in Butler, with considerable enthusiasm.
+
+“Well, I must say,” said Simpson, rather relieved in his manner, “this
+looks like a rather good thing than not to me. A scapegoat possibly. We
+need something like this. I see no reason under the circumstances for
+trying to protect Mr. Cowperwood. We might as well try to make a point
+of that, if we have to. The newspapers might just as well talk loud
+about that as anything else. They are bound to talk; and if we give
+them the right angle, I think that the election might well come and go
+before the matter could be reasonably cleared up, even though Mr. Wheat
+does interfere. I will be glad to undertake to see what can be done
+with the papers.”
+
+“Well, that bein’ the case,” said Butler, “I don’t see that there’s so
+much more we can do now; but I do think it will be a mistake if
+Cowperwood isn’t punished with the other one. He’s equally guilty with
+Stener, if not more so, and I for one want to see him get what he
+deserves. He belongs in the penitentiary, and that’s where he’ll go if
+I have my say.” Both Mollenhauer and Simpson turned a reserved and
+inquiring eye on their usually genial associate. What could be the
+reason for his sudden determination to have Cowperwood punished?
+Cowperwood, as Mollenhauer and Simpson saw it, and as Butler would
+ordinarily have seen it, was well within his human, if not his strictly
+legal rights. They did not blame him half as much for trying to do what
+he had done as they blamed Stener for letting him do it. But, since
+Butler felt as he did, and there was an actual technical crime here,
+they were perfectly willing that the party should have the advantage of
+it, even if Cowperwood went to the penitentiary.
+
+“You may be right,” said Senator Simpson, cautiously. “You might have
+those letters prepared, Henry; and if we have to bring any action at
+all against anybody before election, it would, perhaps, be advisable to
+bring it against Cowperwood. Include Stener if you have to but not
+unless you have to. I leave it to you two, as I am compelled to start
+for Pittsburg next Friday; but I know you will not overlook any point.”
+
+The Senator arose. His time was always valuable. Butler was highly
+gratified by what he had accomplished. He had succeeded in putting the
+triumvirate on record against Cowperwood as the first victim, in case
+of any public disturbance or demonstration against the party. All that
+was now necessary was for that disturbance to manifest itself; and,
+from what he could see of local conditions, it was not far off. There
+was now the matter of Cowperwood’s disgruntled creditors to look into;
+and if by buying in these he should succeed in preventing the financier
+from resuming business, he would have him in a very precarious
+condition indeed. It was a sad day for Cowperwood, Butler thought—the
+day he had first tried to lead Aileen astray—and the time was not far
+off when he could prove it to him.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIII
+
+
+In the meantime Cowperwood, from what he could see and hear, was
+becoming more and more certain that the politicians would try to make a
+scapegoat of him, and that shortly. For one thing, Stires had called
+only a few days after he closed his doors and imparted a significant
+bit of information. Albert was still connected with the city treasury,
+as was Stener, and engaged with Sengstack and another personal
+appointee of Mollenhauer’s in going over the treasurer’s books and
+explaining their financial significance. Stires had come to Cowperwood
+primarily to get additional advice in regard to the
+sixty-thousand-dollar check and his personal connection with it.
+Stener, it seemed, was now threatening to have his chief clerk
+prosecuted, saying that he was responsible for the loss of the money
+and that his bondsmen could be held responsible. Cowperwood had merely
+laughed and assured Stires that there was nothing to this.
+
+“Albert,” he had said, smilingly, “I tell you positively, there’s
+nothing in it. You’re not responsible for delivering that check to me.
+I’ll tell you what you do, now. Go and consult my lawyer—Steger. It
+won’t cost you a cent, and he’ll tell you exactly what to do. Now go on
+back and don’t worry any more about it. I am sorry this move of mine
+has caused you so much trouble, but it’s a hundred to one you couldn’t
+have kept your place with a new city treasurer, anyhow, and if I see
+any place where you can possibly fit in later, I’ll let you know.”
+
+Another thing that made Cowperwood pause and consider at this time was
+a letter from Aileen, detailing a conversation which had taken place at
+the Butler dinner table one evening when Butler, the elder, was not at
+home. She related how her brother Owen in effect had stated that
+they—the politicians—her father, Mollenhauer, and Simpson, were going
+to “get him yet” (meaning Cowperwood), for some criminal financial
+manipulation of something—she could not explain what—a check or
+something. Aileen was frantic with worry. Could they mean the
+penitentiary, she asked in her letter? Her dear lover! Her beloved
+Frank! Could anything like this really happen to him?
+
+His brow clouded, and he set his teeth with rage when he read her
+letter. He would have to do something about this—see Mollenhauer or
+Simpson, or both, and make some offer to the city. He could not promise
+them money for the present—only notes—but they might take them. Surely
+they could not be intending to make a scapegoat of him over such a
+trivial and uncertain matter as this check transaction! When there was
+the five hundred thousand advanced by Stener, to say nothing of all the
+past shady transactions of former city treasurers! How rotten! How
+political, but how real and dangerous.
+
+But Simpson was out of the city for a period of ten days, and
+Mollenhauer, having in mind the suggestion made by Butler in regard to
+utilizing Cowperwood’s misdeed for the benefit of the party, had
+already moved as they had planned. The letters were ready and waiting.
+Indeed, since the conference, the smaller politicians, taking their cue
+from the overlords, had been industriously spreading the story of the
+sixty-thousand-dollar check, and insisting that the burden of guilt for
+the treasury defalcation, if any, lay on the banker. The moment
+Mollenhauer laid eyes on Cowperwood he realized, however, that he had a
+powerful personality to deal with. Cowperwood gave no evidence of
+fright. He merely stated, in his bland way, that he had been in the
+habit of borrowing money from the city treasury at a low rate of
+interest, and that this panic had involved him so that he could not
+possibly return it at present.
+
+“I have heard rumors, Mr. Mollenhauer,” he said, “to the effect that
+some charge is to be brought against me as a partner with Mr. Stener in
+this matter; but I am hoping that the city will not do that, and I
+thought I might enlist your influence to prevent it. My affairs are not
+in a bad way at all, if I had a little time to arrange matters. I am
+making all of my creditors an offer of fifty cents on the dollar now,
+and giving notes at one, two, and three years; but in this matter of
+the city treasury loans, if I could come to terms, I would be glad to
+make it a hundred cents—only I would want a little more time. Stocks
+are bound to recover, as you know, and, barring my losses at this time,
+I will be all right. I realize that the matter has gone pretty far
+already. The newspapers are likely to start talking at any time, unless
+they are stopped by those who can control them.” (He looked at
+Mollenhauer in a complimentary way.) “But if I could be kept out of the
+general proceedings as much as possible, my standing would not be
+injured, and I would have a better chance of getting on my feet. It
+would be better for the city, for then I could certainly pay it what I
+owe it.” He smiled his most winsome and engaging smile. And Mollenhauer
+seeing him for the first time, was not unimpressed. Indeed he looked at
+this young financial David with an interested eye. If he could have
+seen a way to accept this proposition of Cowperwood’s, so that the
+money offered would have been eventually payable to him, and if
+Cowperwood had had any reasonable prospect of getting on his feet soon,
+he would have considered carefully what he had to say. For then
+Cowperwood could have assigned his recovered property to him. As it
+was, there was small likelihood of this situation ever being
+straightened out. The Citizens’ Municipal Reform Association, from all
+he could hear, was already on the move—investigating, or about to, and
+once they had set their hands to this, would unquestionably follow it
+closely to the end.
+
+“The trouble with this situation, Mr. Cowperwood,” he said, affably,
+“is that it has gone so far that it is practically out of my hands. I
+really have very little to do with it. I don’t suppose, though, really,
+it is this matter of the five-hundred-thousand-dollar loan that is
+worrying you so much, as it is this other matter of the
+sixty-thousand-dollar check you received the other day. Mr. Stener
+insists that you secured that illegally, and he is very much wrought up
+about it. The mayor and the other city officials know of it now, and
+they may force some action. I don’t know.”
+
+Mollenhauer was obviously not frank in his attitude—a little bit
+evasive in his sly reference to his official tool, the mayor; and
+Cowperwood saw it. It irritated him greatly, but he was tactful enough
+to be quite suave and respectful.
+
+“I did get a check for sixty thousand dollars, that’s true,” he
+replied, with apparent frankness, “the day before I assigned. It was
+for certificates I had purchased, however, on Mr. Stener’s order, and
+was due me. I needed the money, and asked for it. I don’t see that
+there is anything illegal in that.”
+
+“Not if the transaction was completed in all its details,” replied
+Mollenhauer, blandly. “As I understand it, the certificates were bought
+for the sinking-fund, and they are not there. How do you explain that?”
+
+“An oversight, merely,” replied Cowperwood, innocently, and quite as
+blandly as Mollenhauer. “They would have been there if I had not been
+compelled to assign so unexpectedly. It was not possible for me to
+attend to everything in person. It has not been our custom to deposit
+them at once. Mr. Stener will tell you that, if you ask him.”
+
+“You don’t say,” replied Mollenhauer. “He did not give me that
+impression. However, they are not there, and I believe that that makes
+some difference legally. I have no interest in the matter one way or
+the other, more than that of any other good Republican. I don’t see
+exactly what I can do for you. What did you think I could do?”
+
+“I don’t believe you can do anything for me, Mr. Mollenhauer,” replied
+Cowperwood, a little tartly, “unless you are willing to deal quite
+frankly with me. I am not a beginner in politics in Philadelphia. I
+know something about the powers in command. I thought that you could
+stop any plan to prosecute me in this matter, and give me time to get
+on my feet again. I am not any more criminally responsible for that
+sixty thousand dollars than I am for the five hundred thousand dollars
+that I had as loan before it—not as much so. I did not create this
+panic. I did not set Chicago on fire. Mr. Stener and his friends have
+been reaping some profit out of dealing with me. I certainly was
+entitled to make some effort to save myself after all these years of
+service, and I can’t understand why I should not receive some courtesy
+at the hands of the present city administration, after I have been so
+useful to it. I certainly have kept city loan at par; and as for Mr.
+Stener’s money, he has never wanted for his interest on that, and more
+than his interest.”
+
+“Quite so,” replied Mollenhauer, looking Cowperwood in the eye steadily
+and estimating the force and accuracy of the man at their real value.
+“I understand exactly how it has all come about, Mr. Cowperwood. No
+doubt Mr. Stener owes you a debt of gratitude, as does the remainder of
+the city administration. I’m not saying what the city administration
+ought or ought not do. All I know is that you find yourself wittingly
+or unwittingly in a dangerous situation, and that public sentiment in
+some quarters is already very strong against you. I personally have no
+feeling one way or the other, and if it were not for the situation
+itself, which looks to be out of hand, would not be opposed to
+assisting you in any reasonable way. But how? The Republican party is
+in a very bad position, so far as this election is concerned. In a way,
+however innocently, you have helped to put it there, Mr. Cowperwood.
+Mr. Butler, for some reason to which I am not a party, seems deeply and
+personally incensed. And Mr. Butler is a great power here—” (Cowperwood
+began to wonder whether by any chance Butler had indicated the nature
+of his social offense against himself, but he could not bring himself
+to believe that. It was not probable.) “I sympathize with you greatly,
+Mr. Cowperwood, but what I suggest is that you first See Mr. Butler and
+Mr. Simpson. If they agree to any program of aid, I will not be opposed
+to joining. But apart from that I do not know exactly what I can do. I
+am only one of those who have a slight say in the affairs of
+Philadelphia.”
+
+At this point, Mollenhauer rather expected Cowperwood to make an offer
+of his own holdings, but he did not. Instead he said, “I’m very much
+obliged to you, Mr. Mollenhauer, for the courtesy of this interview. I
+believe you would help me if you could. I shall just have to fight it
+out the best way I can. Good day.”
+
+And he bowed himself out. He saw clearly how hopeless was his quest.
+
+In the meanwhile, finding that the rumors were growing in volume and
+that no one appeared to be willing to take steps to straighten the
+matter out, Mr. Skelton C. Wheat, President of the Citizens’ Municipal
+Reform Association, was, at last and that by no means against his will,
+compelled to call together the committee of ten estimable
+Philadelphians of which he was chairman, in a local committee-hall on
+Market Street, and lay the matter of the Cowperwood failure before it.
+
+“It strikes me, gentlemen,” he announced, “that this is an occasion
+when this organization can render a signal service to the city and the
+people of Philadelphia, and prove the significance and the merit of the
+title originally selected for it, by making such a thoroughgoing
+investigation as will bring to light all the facts in this case, and
+then by standing vigorously behind them insist that such nefarious
+practices as we are informed were indulged in in this case shall cease.
+I know it may prove to be a difficult task. The Republican party and
+its local and State interests are certain to be against us. Its leaders
+are unquestionably most anxious to avoid comment and to have their
+ticket go through undisturbed, and they will not contemplate with any
+equanimity our opening activity in this matter; but if we persevere,
+great good will surely come of it. There is too much dishonesty in
+public life as it is. There is a standard of right in these matters
+which cannot permanently be ignored, and which must eventually be
+fulfilled. I leave this matter to your courteous consideration.”
+
+Mr. Wheat sat down, and the body before him immediately took the matter
+which he proposed under advisement. It was decided to appoint a
+subcommittee “to investigate” (to quote the statement eventually given
+to the public) “the peculiar rumors now affecting one of the most
+important and distinguished offices of our municipal government,” and
+to report at the next meeting, which was set for the following evening
+at nine o’clock. The meeting adjourned, and the following night at nine
+reassembled, four individuals of very shrewd financial judgment having
+meantime been about the task assigned them. They drew up a very
+elaborate statement, not wholly in accordance with the facts, but as
+nearly so as could be ascertained in so short a space of time.
+
+“It appears [read the report, after a preamble which explained why the
+committee had been appointed] that it has been the custom of city
+treasurers for years, when loans have been authorized by councils, to
+place them in the hands of some favorite broker for sale, the broker
+accounting to the treasurer for the moneys received by such sales at
+short periods, generally the first of each month. In the present case
+Frank A. Cowperwood has been acting as such broker for the city
+treasurer. But even this vicious and unbusiness-like system appears not
+to have been adhered to in the case of Mr. Cowperwood. The accident of
+the Chicago fire, the consequent depression of stock values, and the
+subsequent failure of Mr. Frank A. Cowperwood have so involved matters
+temporarily that the committee has not been able to ascertain with
+accuracy that regular accounts have been rendered; but from the manner
+in which Mr. Cowperwood has had possession of bonds (city loan) for
+hypothecation, etc., it would appear that he has been held to no
+responsibility in these matters, and that there have always been under
+his control several hundred thousand dollars of cash or securities
+belonging to the city, which he has manipulated for various purposes;
+but the details of the results of these transactions are not easily
+available.
+    “Some of the operations consisted of hypothecation of large amounts
+    of these loans before the certificates were issued, the lender
+    seeing that the order for the hypothecated securities was duly made
+    to him on the books of the treasurer. Such methods appear to have
+    been occurring for a long time, and it being incredible that the
+    city treasurer could be unaware of the nature of the business,
+    there is indication of a complicity between him and Mr. Cowperwood
+    to benefit by the use of the city credit, in violation of the law.
+    “Furthermore, at the very time these hypothecations were being
+    made, and the city paying interest upon such loans, the money
+    representing them was in the hands of the treasurer’s broker and
+    bearing no interest to the city. The payment of municipal warrants
+    was postponed, and they were being purchased at a discount in large
+    amounts by Mr. Cowperwood with the very money that should have been
+    in the city treasury. The _bona fide_ holders of the orders for
+    certificates of loans are now unable to obtain them, and thus the
+    city’s credit is injured to a greater extent than the present
+    defalcation, which amounts to over five hundred thousand dollars.
+    An accountant is now at work on the treasurer’s books, and a few
+    days should make clear the whole _modus operandi_. It is hoped that
+    the publicity thus obtained will break up such vicious practices.”
+
+
+There was appended to this report a quotation from the law governing
+the abuse of a public trust; and the committee went on to say that,
+unless some taxpayer chose to initiate proceedings for the prosecution
+of those concerned, the committee itself would be called upon to do so,
+although such action hardly came within the object for which it was
+formed.
+
+This report was immediately given to the papers. Though some sort of a
+public announcement had been anticipated by Cowperwood and the
+politicians, this was, nevertheless, a severe blow. Stener was beside
+himself with fear. He broke into a cold sweat when he saw the
+announcement which was conservatively headed, “Meeting of the Municipal
+Reform Association.” All of the papers were so closely identified with
+the political and financial powers of the city that they did not dare
+to come out openly and say what they thought. The chief facts had
+already been in the hands of the various editors and publishers for a
+week and more, but word had gone around from Mollenhauer, Simpson, and
+Butler to use the soft pedal for the present. It was not good for
+Philadelphia, for local commerce, etc., to make a row. The fair name of
+the city would be smirched. It was the old story.
+
+At once the question was raised as to who was really guilty, the city
+treasurer or the broker, or both. How much money had actually been
+lost? Where had it gone? Who was Frank Algernon Cowperwood, anyway? Why
+was he not arrested? How did he come to be identified so closely with
+the financial administration of the city? And though the day of what
+later was termed “yellow journalism” had not arrived, and the local
+papers were not given to such vital personal comment as followed later,
+it was not possible, even bound as they were, hand and foot, by the
+local political and social magnates, to avoid comment of some sort.
+Editorials had to be written. Some solemn, conservative references to
+the shame and disgrace which one single individual could bring to a
+great city and a noble political party had to be ventured upon.
+
+That desperate scheme to cast the blame on Cowperwood temporarily,
+which had been concocted by Mollenhauer, Butler, and Simpson, to get
+the odium of the crime outside the party lines for the time being, was
+now lugged forth and put in operation. It was interesting and strange
+to note how quickly the newspapers, and even the Citizens’ Municipal
+Reform Association, adopted the argument that Cowperwood was largely,
+if not solely, to blame. Stener had loaned him the money, it is
+true—had put bond issues in his hands for sale, it is true, but somehow
+every one seemed to gain the impression that Cowperwood had desperately
+misused the treasurer. The fact that he had taken a
+sixty-thousand-dollar check for certificates which were not in the
+sinking-fund was hinted at, though until they could actually confirm
+this for themselves both the newspapers and the committee were too
+fearful of the State libel laws to say so.
+
+In due time there were brought forth several noble municipal letters,
+purporting to be a stern call on the part of the mayor, Mr. Jacob
+Borchardt, on Mr. George W. Stener for an immediate explanation of his
+conduct, and the latter’s reply, which were at once given to the
+newspapers and the Citizens’ Municipal Reform Association. These
+letters were enough to show, so the politicians figured, that the
+Republican party was anxious to purge itself of any miscreant within
+its ranks, and they also helped to pass the time until after election.
+
+OFFICE OF THE MAYOR OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA
+
+
+GEORGE W. STENER, ESQ.,                    _October_ 18, 1871.
+City Treasurer.
+
+    DEAR SIR,—Information has been given me that certificates of city
+    loan to a large amount, issued by you for sale on account of the
+    city, and, I presume, after the usual requisition from the mayor of
+    the city, have passed out of your custody, and that the proceeds of
+    the sale of said certificates have not been paid into the city
+    treasury.
+    I have also been informed that a large amount of the city’s money
+    has been permitted to pass into the hands of some one or more
+    brokers or bankers doing business on Third Street, and that said
+    brokers or bankers have since met with financial difficulties,
+    whereby, and by reason of the above generally, the interests of the
+    city are likely to be very seriously affected.
+    I have therefore to request that you will promptly advise me of the
+    truth or falsity of these statements, so that such duties as
+    devolve upon me as the chief magistrate of the city, in view of
+    such facts, if they exist, may be intelligently discharged. Yours
+    respectfully,
+
+
+JACOB BORCHARDT,
+_Mayor of Philadelphia._
+
+
+OFFICE OF THE TREASURER OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA
+
+
+HON. JACOB BORCHARDT.                    _October_ 19, 1871.
+
+    DEAR SIR,—I have to acknowledge the receipt of your communication
+    of the 21st instant, and to express my regret that I cannot at this
+    time give you the information you ask. There is undoubtedly an
+    embarrassment in the city treasury, owing to the delinquency of the
+    broker who for several years past has negotiated the city loans,
+    and I have been, since the discovery of this fact, and still am
+    occupied in endeavoring to avert or lessen the loss with which the
+    city is threatened.
+
+
+I am, very respectfully,
+GEORGE W. STENER.
+
+
+OFFICE OF THE MAYOR OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA
+
+
+GEORGE W. STENER, ESQ.,                    _October_ 21, 1871.
+City Treasurer.
+
+    DEAR SIR—Under the existing circumstances you will consider this as
+    a notice of withdrawal and revocation of any requisition or
+    authority by me for the sale of loan, so far as the same has not
+    been fulfilled. Applications for loans may for the present be made
+    at this office.
+
+
+Very respectfully,
+JACOB BORCHARDT,
+_Mayor of Philadelphia._
+
+
+And did Mr. Jacob Borchardt write the letters to which his name was
+attached? He did not. Mr. Abner Sengstack wrote them in Mr.
+Mollenhauer’s office, and Mr. Mollenhauer’s comment when he saw them
+was that he thought they would do—that they were very good, in fact.
+And did Mr. George W. Stener, city treasurer of Philadelphia, write
+that very politic reply? He did not. Mr. Stener was in a state of
+complete collapse, even crying at one time at home in his bathtub. Mr.
+Abner Sengstack wrote that also, and had Mr. Stener sign it. And Mr.
+Mollenhauer’s comment on that, before it was sent, was that he thought
+it was “all right.” It was a time when all the little rats and mice
+were scurrying to cover because of the presence of a great, fiery-eyed
+public cat somewhere in the dark, and only the older and wiser rats
+were able to act.
+
+Indeed, at this very time and for some days past now, Messrs.
+Mollenhauer, Butler, and Simpson were, and had been, considering with
+Mr. Pettie, the district attorney, just what could be done about
+Cowperwood, if anything, and in order to further emphasize the blame in
+that direction, and just what defense, if any, could be made for
+Stener. Butler, of course, was strong for Cowperwood’s prosecution.
+Pettie did not see that any defense could be made for Stener, since
+various records of street-car stocks purchased for him were spread upon
+Cowperwood’s books; but for Cowperwood—“Let me see,” he said. They were
+speculating, first of all, as to whether it might not be good policy to
+arrest Cowperwood, and if necessary try him, since his mere arrest
+would seem to the general public, at least, positive proof of his
+greater guilt, to say nothing of the virtuous indignation of the
+administration, and in consequence might tend to divert attention from
+the evil nature of the party until after election.
+
+So finally, on the afternoon of October 26, 1871, Edward Strobik,
+president of the common council of Philadelphia, appeared before the
+mayor, as finally ordered by Mollenhauer, and charged by affidavit that
+Frank A. Cowperwood, as broker, employed by the treasurer to sell the
+bonds of the city, had committed embezzlement and larceny as bailee. It
+did not matter that he charged George W. Stener with embezzlement at
+the same time. Cowperwood was the scapegoat they were after.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIV
+
+
+The contrasting pictures presented by Cowperwood and Stener at this
+time are well worth a moment’s consideration. Stener’s face was
+grayish-white, his lips blue. Cowperwood, despite various solemn
+thoughts concerning a possible period of incarceration which this hue
+and cry now suggested, and what that meant to his parents, his wife and
+children, his business associates, and his friends, was as calm and
+collected as one might assume his great mental resources would permit
+him to be. During all this whirl of disaster he had never once lost his
+head or his courage. That thing conscience, which obsesses and rides
+some people to destruction, did not trouble him at all. He had no
+consciousness of what is currently known as sin. There were just two
+faces to the shield of life from the point of view of his peculiar
+mind-strength and weakness. Right and wrong? He did not know about
+those. They were bound up in metaphysical abstrusities about which he
+did not care to bother. Good and evil? Those were toys of clerics, by
+which they made money. And as for social favor or social ostracism
+which, on occasion, so quickly followed upon the heels of disaster of
+any kind, well, what was social ostracism? Had either he or his parents
+been of the best society as yet? And since not, and despite this
+present mix-up, might not the future hold social restoration and
+position for him? It might. Morality and immorality? He never
+considered them. But strength and weakness—oh, yes! If you had strength
+you could protect yourself always and be something. If you were
+weak—pass quickly to the rear and get out of the range of the guns. He
+was strong, and he knew it, and somehow he always believed in his star.
+Something—he could not say what—it was the only metaphysics he bothered
+about—was doing something for him. It had always helped him. It made
+things come out right at times. It put excellent opportunities in his
+way. Why had he been given so fine a mind? Why always favored
+financially, personally? He had not deserved it—earned it. Accident,
+perhaps, but somehow the thought that he would always be
+protected—these intuitions, the “hunches” to act which he frequently
+had—could not be so easily explained. Life was a dark, insoluble
+mystery, but whatever it was, strength and weakness were its two
+constituents. Strength would win—weakness lose. He must rely on
+swiftness of thought, accuracy, his judgment, and on nothing else. He
+was really a brilliant picture of courage and energy—moving about
+briskly in a jaunty, dapper way, his mustaches curled, his clothes
+pressed, his nails manicured, his face clean-shaven and tinted with
+health.
+
+In the meantime, Cowperwood had gone personally to Skelton C. Wheat and
+tried to explain his side of the situation, alleging that he had done
+no differently from many others before him, but Wheat was dubious. He
+did not see how it was that the sixty thousand dollars’ worth of
+certificates were not in the sinking-fund. Cowperwood’s explanation of
+custom did not avail. Nevertheless, Mr. Wheat saw that others in
+politics had been profiting quite as much as Cowperwood in other ways
+and he advised Cowperwood to turn state’s evidence. This, however, he
+promptly refused to do—he was no “squealer,” and indicated as much to
+Mr. Wheat, who only smiled wryly.
+
+Butler, Sr., was delighted (concerned though he was about party success
+at the polls), for now he had this villain in the toils and he would
+have a fine time getting out of this. The incoming district attorney to
+succeed David Pettie if the Republican party won would be, as was now
+planned, an appointee of Butler’s—a young Irishman who had done
+considerable legal work for him—one Dennis Shannon. The other two party
+leaders had already promised Butler that. Shannon was a smart,
+athletic, good-looking fellow, all of five feet ten inches in height,
+sandy-haired, pink-cheeked, blue-eyed, considerable of an orator and a
+fine legal fighter. He was very proud to be in the old man’s favor—to
+be promised a place on the ticket by him—and would, he said, if
+elected, do his bidding to the best of his knowledge and ability.
+
+There was only one fly in the ointment, so far as some of the
+politicians were concerned, and that was that if Cowperwood were
+convicted, Stener must needs be also. There was no escape in so far as
+any one could see for the city treasurer. If Cowperwood was guilty of
+securing by trickery sixty thousand dollars’ worth of the city money,
+Stener was guilty of securing five hundred thousand dollars. The prison
+term for this was five years. He might plead not guilty, and by
+submitting as evidence that what he did was due to custom save himself
+from the odious necessity of pleading guilty; but he would be convicted
+nevertheless. No jury could get by the fact in regard to him. In spite
+of public opinion, when it came to a trial there might be considerable
+doubt in Cowperwood’s case. There was none in Stener’s.
+
+The practical manner in which the situation was furthered, after
+Cowperwood and Stener were formally charged may be quickly noted.
+Steger, Cowperwood’s lawyer, learned privately beforehand that
+Cowperwood was to be prosecuted. He arranged at once to have his client
+appear before any warrant could be served, and to forestall the
+newspaper palaver which would follow it if he had to be searched for.
+
+The mayor issued a warrant for Cowperwood’s arrest, and, in accordance
+with Steger’s plan, Cowperwood immediately appeared before Borchardt in
+company with his lawyer and gave bail in twenty thousand dollars (W. C.
+Davison, president of the Girard National Bank, being his surety), for
+his appearance at the central police station on the following Saturday
+for a hearing. Marcus Oldslaw, a lawyer, had been employed by Strobik
+as president of the common council, to represent him in prosecuting the
+case for the city. The mayor looked at Cowperwood curiously, for he,
+being comparatively new to the political world of Philadelphia, was not
+so familiar with him as others were; and Cowperwood returned the look
+pleasantly enough.
+
+“This is a great dumb show, Mr. Mayor,” he observed once to Borchardt,
+quietly, and the latter replied, with a smile and a kindly eye, that as
+far as he was concerned, it was a form of procedure which was
+absolutely unavoidable at this time.
+
+“You know how it is, Mr. Cowperwood,” he observed. The latter smiled.
+“I do, indeed,” he said.
+
+Later there followed several more or less perfunctory appearances in a
+local police court, known as the Central Court, where when arraigned he
+pleaded not guilty, and finally his appearance before the November
+grand jury, where, owing to the complicated nature of the charge drawn
+up against him by Pettie, he thought it wise to appear. He was properly
+indicted by the latter body (Shannon, the newly elected district
+attorney, making a demonstration in force), and his trial ordered for
+December 5th before a certain Judge Payderson in Part I of Quarter
+Sessions, which was the local branch of the State courts dealing with
+crimes of this character. His indictment did not occur, however, before
+the coming and going of the much-mooted fall election, which resulted,
+thanks to the clever political manipulations of Mollenhauer and Simpson
+(ballot-box stuffing and personal violence at the polls not barred), in
+another victory, by, however, a greatly reduced majority. The Citizens’
+Municipal Reform Association, in spite of a resounding defeat at the
+polls, which could not have happened except by fraud, continued to fire
+courageously away at those whom it considered to be the chief
+malefactors.
+
+Aileen Butler, during all this time, was following the trend of
+Cowperwood’s outward vicissitudes as heralded by the newspapers and the
+local gossip with as much interest and bias and enthusiasm for him as
+her powerful physical and affectional nature would permit. She was no
+great reasoner where affection entered in, but shrewd enough without
+it; and, although she saw him often and he told her much—as much as his
+natural caution would permit—she yet gathered from the newspapers and
+private conversation, at her own family’s table and elsewhere, that, as
+bad as they said he was, he was not as bad as he might be. One item
+only, clipped from the Philadelphia Public Ledger soon after Cowperwood
+had been publicly accused of embezzlement, comforted and consoled her.
+She cut it out and carried it in her bosom; for, somehow, it seemed to
+show that her adored Frank was far more sinned against than sinning. It
+was a part of one of those very numerous pronunciamientos or reports
+issued by the Citizens’ Municipal Reform Association, and it ran:
+
+“The aspects of the case are graver than have yet been allowed to reach
+the public. Five hundred thousand dollars of the deficiency arises not
+from city bonds sold and not accounted for, but from loans made by the
+treasurer to his broker. The committee is also informed, on what it
+believes to be good authority, that the loans sold by the broker were
+accounted for in the monthly settlements at the lowest prices current
+during the month, and that the difference between this rate and that
+actually realized was divided between the treasurer and the broker,
+thus making it to the interest of both parties to ‘bear’ the market at
+some time during the month, so as to obtain a low quotation for
+settlement. Nevertheless, the committee can only regard the prosecution
+instituted against the broker, Mr. Cowperwood, as an effort to divert
+public attention from more guilty parties while those concerned may be
+able to ‘fix’ matters to suit themselves.”
+
+
+“There,” thought Aileen, when she read it, “there you have it.” These
+politicians—her father among them as she gathered after his
+conversation with her—were trying to put the blame of their own evil
+deeds on her Frank. He was not nearly as bad as he was painted. The
+report said so. She gloated over the words “an effort to divert public
+attention from more guilty parties.” That was just what her Frank had
+been telling her in those happy, private hours when they had been
+together recently in one place and another, particularly the new
+rendezvous in South Sixth Street which he had established, since the
+old one had to be abandoned. He had stroked her rich hair, caressed her
+body, and told her it was all a prearranged political scheme to cast
+the blame as much as possible on him and make it as light as possible
+for Stener and the party generally. He would come out of it all right,
+he said, but he cautioned her not to talk. He did not deny his long and
+profitable relations with Stener. He told her exactly how it was. She
+understood, or thought she did. Anyhow, her Frank was telling her, and
+that was enough.
+
+As for the two Cowperwood households, so recently and pretentiously
+joined in success, now so gloomily tied in failure, the life was going
+out of them. Frank Algernon was that life. He was the courage and force
+of his father: the spirit and opportunity of his brothers, the hope of
+his children, the estate of his wife, the dignity and significance of
+the Cowperwood name. All that meant opportunity, force, emolument,
+dignity, and happiness to those connected with him, he was. And his
+marvelous sun was waning apparently to a black eclipse.
+
+Since the fatal morning, for instance, when Lillian Cowperwood had
+received that utterly destructive note, like a cannonball ripping
+through her domestic affairs, she had been walking like one in a
+trance. Each day now for weeks she had been going about her duties
+placidly enough to all outward seeming, but inwardly she was running
+with a troubled tide of thought. She was so utterly unhappy. Her
+fortieth year had come for her at a time when life ought naturally to
+stand fixed and firm on a solid base, and here she was about to be torn
+bodily from the domestic soil in which she was growing and blooming,
+and thrown out indifferently to wither in the blistering noonday sun of
+circumstance.
+
+As for Cowperwood, Senior, his situation at his bank and elsewhere was
+rapidly nearing a climax. As has been said, he had had tremendous faith
+in his son; but he could not help seeing that an error had been
+committed, as he thought, and that Frank was suffering greatly for it
+now. He considered, of course, that Frank had been entitled to try to
+save himself as he had; but he so regretted that his son should have
+put his foot into the trap of any situation which could stir up
+discussion of the sort that was now being aroused. Frank was
+wonderfully brilliant. He need never have taken up with the city
+treasurer or the politicians to have succeeded marvelously. Local
+street-railways and speculative politicians were his undoing. The old
+man walked the floor all of the days, realizing that his sun was
+setting, that with Frank’s failure he failed, and that this
+disgrace—these public charges—meant his own undoing. His hair had grown
+very gray in but a few weeks, his step slow, his face pallid, his eyes
+sunken. His rather showy side-whiskers seemed now like flags or
+ornaments of a better day that was gone. His only consolation through
+it all was that Frank had actually got out of his relationship with the
+Third National Bank without owing it a single dollar. Still as he knew
+the directors of that institution could not possibly tolerate the
+presence of a man whose son had helped loot the city treasury, and
+whose name was now in the public prints in this connection. Besides,
+Cowperwood, Sr., was too old. He ought to retire.
+
+The crisis for him therefore came on the day when Frank was arrested on
+the embezzlement charge. The old man, through Frank, who had it from
+Steger, knew it was coming, still had the courage to go to the bank but
+it was like struggling under the weight of a heavy stone to do it. But
+before going, and after a sleepless night, he wrote his resignation to
+Frewen Kasson, the chairman of the board of directors, in order that he
+should be prepared to hand it to him, at once. Kasson, a stocky,
+well-built, magnetic man of fifty, breathed an inward sigh of relief at
+the sight of it.
+
+“I know it’s hard, Mr. Cowperwood,” he said, sympathetically. “We—and I
+can speak for the other members of the board—we feel keenly the
+unfortunate nature of your position. We know exactly how it is that
+your son has become involved in this matter. He is not the only banker
+who has been involved in the city’s affairs. By no means. It is an old
+system. We appreciate, all of us, keenly, the services you have
+rendered this institution during the past thirty-five years. If there
+were any possible way in which we could help to tide you over the
+difficulties at this time, we would be glad to do so, but as a banker
+yourself you must realize just how impossible that would be. Everything
+is in a turmoil. If things were settled—if we knew how soon this would
+blow over—” He paused, for he felt that he could not go on and say that
+he or the bank was sorry to be forced to lose Mr. Cowperwood in this
+way at present. Mr. Cowperwood himself would have to speak.
+
+During all this Cowperwood, Sr., had been doing his best to pull
+himself together in order to be able to speak at all. He had gotten out
+a large white linen handkerchief and blown his nose, and had
+straightened himself in his chair, and laid his hands rather peacefully
+on his desk. Still he was intensely wrought up.
+
+“I can’t stand this!” he suddenly exclaimed. “I wish you would leave me
+alone now.”
+
+Kasson, very carefully dressed and manicured, arose and walked out of
+the room for a few moments. He appreciated keenly the intensity of the
+strain he had just witnessed. The moment the door was closed Cowperwood
+put his head in his hands and shook convulsively. “I never thought I’d
+come to this,” he muttered. “I never thought it.” Then he wiped away
+his salty hot tears, and went to the window to look out and to think of
+what else to do from now on.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXV
+
+
+As time went on Butler grew more and more puzzled and restive as to his
+duty in regard to his daughter. He was sure by her furtive manner and
+her apparent desire to avoid him, that she was still in touch with
+Cowperwood in some way, and that this would bring about a social
+disaster of some kind. He thought once of going to Mrs. Cowperwood and
+having her bring pressure to bear on her husband, but afterwards he
+decided that that would not do. He was not really positive as yet that
+Aileen was secretly meeting Cowperwood, and, besides, Mrs. Cowperwood
+might not know of her husband’s duplicity. He thought also of going to
+Cowperwood personally and threatening him, but that would be a severe
+measure, and again, as in the other case, he lacked proof. He hesitated
+to appeal to a detective agency, and he did not care to take the other
+members of the family into his confidence. He did go out and scan the
+neighborhood of 931 North Tenth Street once, looking at the house; but
+that helped him little. The place was for rent, Cowperwood having
+already abandoned his connection with it.
+
+Finally he hit upon the plan of having Aileen invited to go somewhere
+some distance off—Boston or New Orleans, where a sister of his wife
+lived. It was a delicate matter to engineer, and in such matters he was
+not exactly the soul of tact; but he undertook it. He wrote personally
+to his wife’s sister at New Orleans, and asked her if she would,
+without indicating in any way that she had heard from him, write his
+wife and ask if she would not permit Aileen to come and visit her,
+writing Aileen an invitation at the same time; but he tore the letter
+up. A little later he learned accidentally that Mrs. Mollenhauer and
+her three daughters, Caroline, Felicia, and Alta, were going to Europe
+early in December to visit Paris, the Riviera, and Rome; and he decided
+to ask Mollenhauer to persuade his wife to invite Norah and Aileen, or
+Aileen only, to go along, giving as an excuse that his own wife would
+not leave him, and that the girls ought to go. It would be a fine way
+of disposing of Aileen for the present. The party was to be gone six
+months. Mollenhauer was glad to do so, of course. The two families were
+fairly intimate. Mrs. Mollenhauer was willing—delighted from a politic
+point of view—and the invitation was extended. Norah was overjoyed. She
+wanted to see something of Europe, and had always been hoping for some
+such opportunity. Aileen was pleased from the point of view that Mrs.
+Mollenhauer should invite her. Years before she would have accepted in
+a flash. But now she felt that it only came as a puzzling interruption,
+one more of the minor difficulties that were tending to interrupt her
+relations with Cowperwood. She immediately threw cold water on the
+proposition, which was made one evening at dinner by Mrs. Butler, who
+did not know of her husband’s share in the matter, but had received a
+call that afternoon from Mrs. Mollenhauer, when the invitation had been
+extended.
+
+“She’s very anxious to have you two come along, if your father don’t
+mind,” volunteered the mother, “and I should think ye’d have a fine
+time. They’re going to Paris and the Riveera.”
+
+“Oh, fine!” exclaimed Norah. “I’ve always wanted to go to Paris.
+Haven’t you, Ai? Oh, wouldn’t that be fine?”
+
+“I don’t know that I want to go,” replied Aileen. She did not care to
+compromise herself by showing any interest at the start. “It’s coming
+on winter, and I haven’t any clothes. I’d rather wait and go some other
+time.”
+
+“Oh, Aileen Butler!” exclaimed Norah. “How you talk! I’ve heard you say
+a dozen times you’d like to go abroad some winter. Now when the chance
+comes—besides you can get your clothes made over there.”
+
+“Couldn’t you get somethin’ over there?” inquired Mrs. Butler.
+“Besides, you’ve got two or three weeks here yet.”
+
+“They wouldn’t want a man around as a sort of guide and adviser, would
+they, mother?” put in Callum.
+
+“I might offer my services in that capacity myself,” observed Owen,
+reservedly.
+
+“I’m sure I don’t know,” returned Mrs. Butler, smiling, and at the same
+time chewing a lusty mouthful. “You’ll have to ast ’em, my sons.”
+
+Aileen still persisted. She did not want to go. It was too sudden. It
+was this. It was that. Just then old Butler came in and took his seat
+at the head of the table. Knowing all about it, he was most anxious to
+appear not to.
+
+“You wouldn’t object, Edward, would you?” queried his wife, explaining
+the proposition in general.
+
+“Object!” he echoed, with a well simulated but rough attempt at gayety.
+“A fine thing I’d be doing for meself—objectin’. I’d be glad if I could
+get shut of the whole pack of ye for a time.”
+
+“What talk ye have!” said his wife. “A fine mess you’d make of it
+livin’ alone.”
+
+“I’d not be alone, belave me,” replied Butler. “There’s many a place
+I’d be welcome in this town—no thanks to ye.”
+
+“And there’s many a place ye wouldn’t have been if it hadn’t been for
+me. I’m tellin’ ye that,” retorted Mrs. Butler, genially.
+
+“And that’s not stretchin’ the troot much, aither,” he answered,
+fondly.
+
+Aileen was adamant. No amount of argument both on the part of Norah and
+her mother had any effect whatever. Butler witnessed the failure of his
+plan with considerable dissatisfaction, but he was not through. When he
+was finally convinced that there was no hope of persuading her to
+accept the Mollenhauer proposition, he decided, after a while, to
+employ a detective.
+
+At that time, the reputation of William A. Pinkerton, of detective
+fame, and of his agency was great. The man had come up from poverty
+through a series of vicissitudes to a high standing in his peculiar
+and, to many, distasteful profession; but to any one in need of such in
+themselves calamitous services, his very famous and decidedly patriotic
+connection with the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln was a recommendation.
+He, or rather his service, had guarded the latter all his stormy
+incumbency at the executive mansion. There were offices for the
+management of the company’s business in Philadelphia, Washington, and
+New York, to say nothing of other places. Butler was familiar with the
+Philadelphia sign, but did not care to go to the office there. He
+decided, once his mind was made up on this score, that he would go over
+to New York, where he was told the principal offices were.
+
+He made the simple excuse one day of business, which was common enough
+in his case, and journeyed to New York—nearly five hours away as the
+trains ran then—arriving at two o’clock. At the offices on lower
+Broadway, he asked to see the manager, whom he found to be a large,
+gross-featured, heavy-bodied man of fifty, gray-eyed, gray-haired,
+puffily outlined as to countenance, but keen and shrewd, and with
+short, fat-fingered hands, which drummed idly on his desk as he talked.
+He was dressed in a suit of dark-brown wool cloth, which struck Butler
+as peculiarly showy, and wore a large horseshoe diamond pin. The old
+man himself invariably wore conservative gray.
+
+“How do you do?” said Butler, when a boy ushered him into the presence
+of this worthy, whose name was Martinson—Gilbert Martinson, of American
+and Irish extraction. The latter nodded and looked at Butler shrewdly,
+recognizing him at once as a man of force and probably of position. He
+therefore rose and offered him a chair.
+
+“Sit down,” he said, studying the old Irishman from under thick, bushy
+eyebrows. “What can I do for you?”
+
+“You’re the manager, are you?” asked Butler, solemnly, eyeing the man
+with a shrewd, inquiring eye.
+
+“Yes, sir,” replied Martinson, simply. “That’s my position here.”
+
+“This Mr. Pinkerton that runs this agency—he wouldn’t be about this
+place, now, would he?” asked Butler, carefully. “I’d like to talk to
+him personally, if I might, meaning no offense to you.”
+
+“Mr. Pinkerton is in Chicago at present,” replied Mr. Martinson. “I
+don’t expect him back for a week or ten days. You can talk to me,
+though, with the same confidence that you could to him. I’m the
+responsible head here. However, you’re the best judge of that.”
+
+Butler debated with himself in silence for a few moments, estimating
+the man before him. “Are you a family man yourself?” he asked, oddly.
+
+“Yes, sir, I’m married,” replied Martinson, solemnly. “I have a wife
+and two children.”
+
+Martinson, from long experience conceived that this must be a matter of
+family misconduct—a son, daughter, wife. Such cases were not
+infrequent.
+
+“I thought I would like to talk to Mr. Pinkerton himself, but if you’re
+the responsible head—” Butler paused.
+
+“I am,” replied Martinson. “You can talk to me with the same freedom
+that you could to Mr. Pinkerton. Won’t you come into my private office?
+We can talk more at ease in there.”
+
+He led the way into an adjoining room which had two windows looking
+down into Broadway; an oblong table, heavy, brown, smoothly polished;
+four leather-backed chairs; and some pictures of the Civil War battles
+in which the North had been victorious. Butler followed doubtfully. He
+hated very much to take any one into his confidence in regard to
+Aileen. He was not sure that he would, even now. He wanted to “look
+these fellys over,” as he said in his mind. He would decide then what
+he wanted to do. He went to one of the windows and looked down into the
+street, where there was a perfect swirl of omnibuses and vehicles of
+all sorts. Mr. Martinson quietly closed the door.
+
+“Now then, if there’s anything I can do for you,” Mr. Martinson paused.
+He thought by this little trick to elicit Buder’s real name—it often
+“worked”—but in this instance the name was not forthcoming. Butler was
+too shrewd.
+
+“I’m not so sure that I want to go into this,” said the old man
+solemnly. “Certainly not if there’s any risk of the thing not being
+handled in the right way. There’s somethin’ I want to find out
+about—somethin’ that I ought to know; but it’s a very private matter
+with me, and—” He paused to think and conjecture, looking at Mr.
+Martinson the while. The latter understood his peculiar state of mind.
+He had seen many such cases.
+
+“Let me say right here, to begin with, Mr.—”
+
+“Scanlon,” interpolated Butler, easily; “that’s as good a name as any
+if you want to use one. I’m keepin’ me own to meself for the present.”
+
+“Scanlon,” continued Martinson, easily. “I really don’t care whether
+it’s your right name or not. I was just going to say that it might not
+be necessary to have your right name under any circumstances—it all
+depends upon what you want to know. But, so far as your private affairs
+are concerned, they are as safe with us, as if you had never told them
+to any one. Our business is built upon confidence, and we never betray
+it. We wouldn’t dare. We have men and women who have been in our employ
+for over thirty years, and we never retire any one except for cause,
+and we don’t pick people who are likely to need to be retired for
+cause. Mr. Pinkerton is a good judge of men. There are others here who
+consider that they are. We handle over ten thousand separate cases in
+all parts of the United States every year. We work on a case only so
+long as we are wanted. We try to find out only such things as our
+customers want. We do not pry unnecessarily into anybody’s affairs. If
+we decide that we cannot find out what you want to know, we are the
+first to say so. Many cases are rejected right here in this office
+before we ever begin. Yours might be such a one. We don’t want cases
+merely for the sake of having them, and we are frank to say so. Some
+matters that involve public policy, or some form of small persecution,
+we don’t touch at all—we won’t be a party to them. You can see how that
+is. You look to me to be a man of the world. I hope I am one. Does it
+strike you that an organization like ours would be likely to betray any
+one’s confidence?” He paused and looked at Butler for confirmation of
+what he had just said.
+
+“It wouldn’t seem likely,” said the latter; “that’s the truth. It’s not
+aisy to bring your private affairs into the light of day, though,”
+added the old man, sadly.
+
+They both rested.
+
+“Well,” said Butler, finally, “you look to me to be all right, and I’d
+like some advice. Mind ye, I’m willing to pay for it well enough; and
+it isn’t anything that’ll be very hard to find out. I want to know
+whether a certain man where I live is goin’ with a certain woman, and
+where. You could find that out aisy enough, I belave—couldn’t you?”
+
+“Nothing easier,” replied Martinson. “We are doing it all the time. Let
+me see if I can help you just a moment, Mr. Scanlon, in order to make
+it easier for you. It is very plain to me that you don’t care to tell
+any more than you can help, and we don’t care to have you tell any more
+than we absolutely need. We will have to have the name of the city, of
+course, and the name of either the man or the woman; but not
+necessarily both of them, unless you want to help us in that way.
+Sometimes if you give us the name of one party—say the man, for
+illustration—and the description of the woman—an accurate one—or a
+photograph, we can tell you after a little while exactly what you want
+to know. Of course, it’s always better if we have full information. You
+suit yourself about that. Tell me as much or as little as you please,
+and I’ll guarantee that we will do our best to serve you, and that you
+will be satisfied afterward.”
+
+He smiled genially.
+
+“Well, that bein’ the case,” said Butler, finally taking the leap, with
+many mental reservations, however, “I’ll be plain with you. My name’s
+not Scanlon. It’s Butler. I live in Philadelphy. There’s a man there, a
+banker by the name of Cowperwood—Frank A. Cowperwood—”
+
+“Wait a moment,” said Martinson, drawing an ample pad out of his pocket
+and producing a lead-pencil; “I want to get that. How do you spell it?”
+
+Butler told him.
+
+“Yes; now go on.”
+
+“He has a place in Third Street—Frank A. Cowperwood—any one can show
+you where it is. He’s just failed there recently.”
+
+“Oh, that’s the man,” interpolated Martinson. “I’ve heard of him. He’s
+mixed up in some city embezzlement case over there. I suppose the
+reason you didn’t go to our Philadelphia office is because you didn’t
+want our local men over there to know anything about it. Isn’t that
+it?”
+
+“That’s the man, and that’s the reason,” said Butler. “I don’t care to
+have anything of this known in Philadelphy. That’s why I’m here. This
+man has a house on Girard Avenue—Nineteen-thirty-seven. You can find
+that out, too, when you get over there.”
+
+“Yes,” agreed Mr. Martinson.
+
+“Well, it’s him that I want to know about—him—and a certain woman, or
+girl, rather.” The old man paused and winced at this necessity of
+introducing Aileen into the case. He could scarcely think of it—he was
+so fond of her. He had been so proud of Aileen. A dark, smoldering rage
+burned in his heart against Cowperwood.
+
+“A relative of yours—possibly, I suppose,” remarked Martinson,
+tactfully. “You needn’t tell me any more—just give me a description if
+you wish. We may be able to work from that.” He saw quite clearly what
+a fine old citizen in his way he was dealing with here, and also that
+the man was greatly troubled. Butler’s heavy, meditative face showed
+it. “You can be quite frank with me, Mr. Butler,” he added; “I think I
+understand. We only want such information as we must have to help you,
+nothing more.”
+
+“Yes,” said the old man, dourly. “She is a relative. She’s me daughter,
+in fact. You look to me like a sensible, honest man. I’m her father,
+and I wouldn’t do anything for the world to harm her. It’s tryin’ to
+save her I am. It’s him I want.” He suddenly closed one big fist
+forcefully.
+
+Martinson, who had two daughters of his own, observed the suggestive
+movement.
+
+“I understand how you feel, Mr. Butler,” he observed. “I am a father
+myself. We’ll do all we can for you. If you can give me an accurate
+description of her, or let one of my men see her at your house or
+office, accidentally, of course, I think we can tell you in no time at
+all if they are meeting with any regularity. That’s all you want to
+know, is it—just that?”
+
+“That’s all,” said Butler, solemnly.
+
+“Well, that oughtn’t to take any time at all, Mr. Butler—three or four
+days possibly, if we have any luck—a week, ten days, two weeks. It
+depends on how long you want us to shadow him in case there is no
+evidence the first few days.”
+
+“I want to know, however long it takes,” replied Butler, bitterly. “I
+want to know, if it takes a month or two months or three to find out. I
+want to know.” The old man got up as he said this, very positive, very
+rugged. “And don’t send me men that haven’t sinse—lots of it, plase. I
+want men that are fathers, if you’ve got ’em—and that have sinse enough
+to hold their tongues—not b’ys.”
+
+“I understand, Mr. Butler,” Martinson replied. “Depend on it, you’ll
+have the best we have, and you can trust them. They’ll be discreet. You
+can depend on that. The way I’ll do will be to assign just one man to
+the case at first, some one you can see for yourself whether you like
+or not. I’ll not tell him anything. You can talk to him. If you like
+him, tell him, and he’ll do the rest. Then, if he needs any more help,
+he can get it. What is your address?”
+
+Butler gave it to him.
+
+“And there’ll be no talk about this?”
+
+“None whatever—I assure you.”
+
+“And when’ll he be comin’ along?”
+
+“To-morrow, if you wish. I have a man I could send to-night. He isn’t
+here now or I’d have him talk with you. I’ll talk to him, though, and
+make everything clear. You needn’t worry about anything. Your
+daughter’s reputation will be safe in his hands.”
+
+“Thank you kindly,” commented Butler, softening the least bit in a
+gingerly way. “I’m much obliged to you. I’ll take it as a great favor,
+and pay you well.”
+
+“Never mind about that, Mr. Butler,” replied Martinson. “You’re welcome
+to anything this concern can do for you at its ordinary rates.”
+
+He showed Butler to the door, and the old man went out. He was feeling
+very depressed over this—very shabby. To think he should have to put
+detectives on the track of his Aileen, his daughter!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVI
+
+
+The very next day there called at Butler’s office a long,
+preternaturally solemn man of noticeable height and angularity,
+dark-haired, dark-eyed, sallow, with a face that was long and leathery,
+and particularly hawk-like, who talked with Butler for over an hour and
+then departed. That evening he came to the Butler house around
+dinner-time, and, being shown into Butler’s room, was given a look at
+Aileen by a ruse. Butler sent for her, standing in the doorway just far
+enough to one side to yield a good view of her. The detective stood
+behind one of the heavy curtains which had already been put up for the
+winter, pretending to look out into the street.
+
+“Did any one drive Sissy this mornin’?” asked Butler of Aileen,
+inquiring after a favorite family horse. Butler’s plan, in case the
+detective was seen, was to give the impression that he was a horseman
+who had come either to buy or to sell. His name was Jonas Alderson, and
+be looked sufficiently like a horsetrader to be one.
+
+“I don’t think so, father,” replied Aileen. “I didn’t. I’ll find out.”
+
+“Never mind. What I want to know is did you intend using her
+to-morrow?”
+
+“No, not if you want her. Jerry suits me just as well.”
+
+“Very well, then. Leave her in the stable.” Butler quietly closed the
+door. Aileen concluded at once that it was a horse conference. She knew
+he would not dispose of any horse in which she was interested without
+first consulting her, and so she thought no more about it.
+
+After she was gone Alderson stepped out and declared that he was
+satisfied. “That’s all I need to know,” he said. “I’ll let you know in
+a few days if I find out anything.”
+
+He departed, and within thirty-six hours the house and office of
+Cowperwood, the house of Butler, the office of Harper Steger,
+Cowperwood’s lawyer, and Cowperwood and Aileen separately and
+personally were under complete surveillance. It took six men to do it
+at first, and eventually a seventh, when the second meeting-place,
+which was located in South Sixth Street, was discovered. All the
+detectives were from New York. In a week all was known to Alderson. It
+bad been agreed between him and Butler that if Aileen and Cowperwood
+were discovered to have any particular rendezvous Butler was to be
+notified some time when she was there, so that he might go immediately
+and confront her in person, if he wished. He did not intend to kill
+Cowperwood—and Alderson would have seen to it that he did not in his
+presence at least, but he would give him a good tongue-lashing, fell
+him to the floor, in all likelihood, and march Aileen away. There would
+be no more lying on her part as to whether she was or was not going
+with Cowperwood. She would not be able to say after that what she would
+or would not do. Butler would lay down the law to her. She would
+reform, or he would send her to a reformatory. Think of her influence
+on her sister, or on any good girl—knowing what she knew, or doing what
+she was doing! She would go to Europe after this, or any place he chose
+to send her.
+
+In working out his plan of action it was necessary for Butler to take
+Alderson into his confidence and the detective made plain his
+determination to safeguard Cowperwood’s person.
+
+“We couldn’t allow you to strike any blows or do any violence,”
+Alderson told Butler, when they first talked about it. “It’s against
+the rules. You can go in there on a search-warrant, if we have to have
+one. I can get that for you without anybody’s knowing anything about
+your connection with the case. We can say it’s for a girl from New
+York. But you’ll have to go in in the presence of my men. They won’t
+permit any trouble. You can get your daughter all right—we’ll bring her
+away, and him, too, if you say so; but you’ll have to make some charge
+against him, if we do. Then there’s the danger of the neighbors seeing.
+You can’t always guarantee you won’t collect a crowd that way.” Butler
+had many misgivings about the matter. It was fraught with great danger
+of publicity. Still he wanted to know. He wanted to terrify Aileen if
+he could—to reform her drastically.
+
+Within a week Alderson learned that Aileen and Cowperwood were visiting
+an apparently private residence, which was anything but that. The house
+on South Sixth Street was one of assignation purely; but in its way it
+was superior to the average establishment of its kind—of red brick,
+white-stone trimmings, four stories high, and all the rooms, some
+eighteen in number, furnished in a showy but cleanly way. It’s
+patronage was highly exclusive, only those being admitted who were
+known to the mistress, having been introduced by others. This
+guaranteed that privacy which the illicit affairs of this world so
+greatly required. The mere phrase, “I have an appointment,” was
+sufficient, where either of the parties was known, to cause them to be
+shown to a private suite. Cowperwood had known of the place from
+previous experiences, and when it became necessary to abandon the North
+Tenth Street house, he had directed Aileen to meet him here.
+
+The matter of entering a place of this kind and trying to find any one
+was, as Alderson informed Butler on hearing of its character,
+exceedingly difficult. It involved the right of search, which was
+difficult to get. To enter by sheer force was easy enough in most
+instances where the business conducted was in contradistinction to the
+moral sentiment of the community; but sometimes one encountered violent
+opposition from the tenants themselves. It might be so in this case.
+The only sure way of avoiding such opposition would be to take the
+woman who ran the place into one’s confidence, and by paying her
+sufficiently insure silence. “But I do not advise that in this
+instance,” Alderson had told Butler, “for I believe this woman is
+particularly friendly to your man. It might be better, in spite of the
+risk, to take it by surprise.” To do that, he explained, it would be
+necessary to have at least three men in addition to the leader—perhaps
+four, who, once one man had been able to make his entrance into the
+hallway, on the door being opened in response to a ring, would appear
+quickly and enter with and sustain him. Quickness of search was the
+next thing—the prompt opening of all doors. The servants, if any, would
+have to be overpowered and silenced in some way. Money sometimes did
+this; force accomplished it at other times. Then one of the detectives
+simulating a servant could tap gently at the different doors—Butler and
+the others standing by—and in case a face appeared identify it or not,
+as the case might be. If the door was not opened and the room was not
+empty, it could eventually be forced. The house was one of a solid
+block, so that there was no chance of escape save by the front and rear
+doors, which were to be safe-guarded. It was a daringly conceived
+scheme. In spite of all this, secrecy in the matter of removing Aileen
+was to be preserved.
+
+When Butler heard of this he was nervous about the whole terrible
+procedure. He thought once that without going to the house he would
+merely talk to his daughter declaring that he knew and that she could
+not possibly deny it. He would then give her her choice between going
+to Europe or going to a reformatory. But a sense of the raw brutality
+of Aileen’s disposition, and something essentially coarse in himself,
+made him eventually adopt the other method. He ordered Alderson to
+perfect his plan, and once he found Aileen or Cowperwood entering the
+house to inform him quickly. He would then drive there, and with the
+assistance of these men confront her.
+
+It was a foolish scheme, a brutalizing thing to do, both from the point
+of view of affection and any corrective theory he might have had. No
+good ever springs from violence. But Butler did not see that. He wanted
+to frighten Aileen, to bring her by shock to a realization of the
+enormity of the offense she was committing. He waited fully a week
+after his word had been given; and then, one afternoon, when his nerves
+were worn almost thin from fretting, the climax came. Cowperwood had
+already been indicted, and was now awaiting trial. Aileen had been
+bringing him news, from time to time, of just how she thought her
+father was feeling toward him. She did not get this evidence direct
+from Butler, of course—he was too secretive, in so far as she was
+concerned, to let her know how relentlessly he was engineering
+Cowperwood’s final downfall—but from odd bits confided to Owen, who
+confided them to Callum, who in turn, innocently enough, confided them
+to Aileen. For one thing, she had learned in this way of the new
+district attorney elect—his probable attitude—for he was a constant
+caller at the Butler house or office. Owen had told Callum that he
+thought Shannon was going to do his best to send Cowperwood “up”—that
+the old man thought he deserved it.
+
+In the next place she had learned that her father did not want
+Cowperwood to resume business—did not feel he deserved to be allowed
+to. “It would be a God’s blessing if the community were shut of him,”
+he had said to Owen one morning, apropos of a notice in the papers of
+Cowperwood’s legal struggles; and Owen had asked Callum why he thought
+the old man was so bitter. The two sons could not understand it.
+Cowperwood heard all this from her, and more—bits about Judge
+Payderson, the judge who was to try him, who was a friend of
+Butler’s—also about the fact that Stener might be sent up for the full
+term of his crime, but that he would be pardoned soon afterward.
+
+Apparently Cowperwood was not very much frightened. He told her that he
+had powerful financial friends who would appeal to the governor to
+pardon him in case he was convicted; and, anyhow, that he did not think
+that the evidence was strong enough to convict him. He was merely a
+political scapegoat through public clamor and her father’s influence;
+since the latter’s receipt of the letter about them he had been the
+victim of Butler’s enmity, and nothing more. “If it weren’t for your
+father, honey,” he declared, “I could have this indictment quashed in
+no time. Neither Mollenhauer nor Simpson has anything against me
+personally, I am sure. They want me to get out of the street-railway
+business here in Philadelphia, and, of course, they wanted to make
+things look better for Stener at first; but depend upon it, if your
+father hadn’t been against me they wouldn’t have gone to any such
+length in making me the victim. Your father has this fellow Shannon and
+these minor politicians just where he wants them, too. That’s where the
+trouble lies. They have to go on.”
+
+“Oh, I know,” replied Aileen. “It’s me, just me, that’s all. If it
+weren’t for me and what he suspects he’d help you in a minute.
+Sometimes, you know, I think I’ve been very bad for you. I don’t know
+what I ought to do. If I thought it would help you any I’d not see you
+any more for a while, though I don’t see what good that would do now.
+Oh, I love you, love you, Frank! I would do anything for you. I don’t
+care what people think or say. I love you.”
+
+“Oh, you just think you do,” he replied, jestingly. “You’ll get over
+it. There are others.”
+
+“Others!” echoed Aileen, resentfully and contemptuously. “After you
+there aren’t any others. I just want one man, my Frank. If you ever
+desert me, I’ll go to hell. You’ll see.”
+
+“Don’t talk like that, Aileen,” he replied, almost irritated. “I don’t
+like to hear you. You wouldn’t do anything of the sort. I love you. You
+know I’m not going to desert you. It would pay you to desert me just
+now.”
+
+“Oh, how you talk!” she exclaimed. “Desert you! It’s likely, isn’t it?
+But if ever you desert me, I’ll do just what I say. I swear it.”
+
+“Don’t talk like that. Don’t talk nonsense.”
+
+“I swear it. I swear by my love. I swear by your success—my own
+happiness. I’ll do just what I say. I’ll go to hell.”
+
+Cowperwood got up. He was a little afraid now of this deep-seated
+passion he had aroused. It was dangerous. He could not tell where it
+would lead.
+
+It was a cheerless afternoon in November, when Alderson, duly informed
+of the presence of Aileen and Cowperwood in the South Sixth Street
+house by the detective on guard drove rapidly up to Butler’s office and
+invited him to come with him. Yet even now Butler could scarcely
+believe that he was to find his daughter there. The shame of it. The
+horror. What would he say to her? How reproach her? What would he do to
+Cowperwood? His large hands shook as he thought. They drove rapidly to
+within a few doors of the place, where a second detective on guard
+across the street approached. Butler and Alderson descended from the
+vehicle, and together they approached the door. It was now almost
+four-thirty in the afternoon. In a room within the house, Cowperwood,
+his coat and vest off, was listening to Aileen’s account of her
+troubles.
+
+The room in which they were sitting at the time was typical of the
+rather commonplace idea of luxury which then prevailed. Most of the
+“sets” of furniture put on the market for general sale by the furniture
+companies were, when they approached in any way the correct idea of
+luxury, imitations of one of the Louis periods. The curtains were
+always heavy, frequently brocaded, and not infrequently red. The
+carpets were richly flowered in high colors with a thick, velvet nap.
+The furniture, of whatever wood it might be made, was almost invariably
+heavy, floriated, and cumbersome. This room contained a heavily
+constructed bed of walnut, with washstand, bureau, and wardrobe to
+match. A large, square mirror in a gold frame was hung over the
+washstand. Some poor engravings of landscapes and several nude figures
+were hung in gold frames on the wall. The gilt-framed chairs were
+upholstered in pink-and-white-flowered brocade, with polished brass
+tacks. The carpet was of thick Brussels, pale cream and pink in hue,
+with large blue jardinieres containing flowers woven in as ornaments.
+The general effect was light, rich, and a little stuffy.
+
+“You know I get desperately frightened, sometimes,” said Aileen.
+“Father might be watching us, you know. I’ve often wondered what I’d do
+if he caught us. I couldn’t lie out of this, could I?”
+
+“You certainly couldn’t,” said Cowperwood, who never failed to respond
+to the incitement of her charms. She had such lovely smooth arms, a
+full, luxuriously tapering throat and neck; her golden-red hair floated
+like an aureole about her head, and her large eyes sparkled. The
+wondrous vigor of a full womanhood was hers—errant, ill-balanced,
+romantic, but exquisite, “but you might as well not cross that bridge
+until you come to it,” he continued. “I myself have been thinking that
+we had better not go on with this for the present. That letter ought to
+have been enough to stop us for the time.”
+
+He came over to where she stood by the dressing-table, adjusting her
+hair.
+
+“You’re such a pretty minx,” he said. He slipped his arm about her and
+kissed her pretty mouth. “Nothing sweeter than you this side of
+Paradise,” he whispered in her ear.
+
+While this was enacting, Butler and the extra detective had stepped out
+of sight, to one side of the front door of the house, while Alderson,
+taking the lead, rang the bell. A negro servant appeared.
+
+“Is Mrs. Davis in?” he asked, genially, using the name of the woman in
+control. “I’d like to see her.”
+
+“Just come in,” said the maid, unsuspectingly, and indicated a
+reception-room on the right. Alderson took off his soft, wide-brimmed
+hat and entered. When the maid went up-stairs he immediately returned
+to the door and let in Butler and two detectives. The four stepped into
+the reception-room unseen. In a few moments the “madam” as the current
+word characterized this type of woman, appeared. She was tall, fair,
+rugged, and not at all unpleasant to look upon. She had light-blue eyes
+and a genial smile. Long contact with the police and the brutalities of
+sex in her early life had made her wary, a little afraid of how the
+world would use her. This particular method of making a living being
+illicit, and she having no other practical knowledge at her command,
+she was as anxious to get along peacefully with the police and the
+public generally as any struggling tradesman in any walk of life might
+have been. She had on a loose, blue-flowered peignoir, or
+dressing-gown, open at the front, tied with blue ribbons and showing a
+little of her expensive underwear beneath. A large opal ring graced her
+left middle finger, and turquoises of vivid blue were pendent from her
+ears. She wore yellow silk slippers with bronze buckles; and altogether
+her appearance was not out of keeping with the character of the
+reception-room itself, which was a composite of gold-flowered
+wall-paper, blue and cream-colored Brussels carpet, heavily gold-framed
+engravings of reclining nudes, and a gilt-framed pier-glass, which rose
+from the floor to the ceiling. Needless to say, Butler was shocked to
+the soul of him by this suggestive atmosphere which was supposed to
+include his daughter in its destructive reaches.
+
+Alderson motioned one of his detectives to get behind the woman—between
+her and the door—which he did.
+
+“Sorry to trouble you, Mrs. Davis,” he said, “but we are looking for a
+couple who are in your house here. We’re after a runaway girl. We don’t
+want to make any disturbance—merely to get her and take her away.” Mrs.
+Davis paled and opened her mouth. “Now don’t make any noise or try to
+scream, or we’ll have to stop you. My men are all around the house.
+Nobody can get out. Do you know anybody by the name of Cowperwood?”
+
+Mrs. Davis, fortunately from one point of view, was not of a
+particularly nervous nor yet contentious type. She was more or less
+philosophic. She was not in touch with the police here in Philadelphia,
+hence subject to exposure. What good would it do to cry out? she
+thought. The place was surrounded. There was no one in the house at the
+time to save Cowperwood and Aileen. She did not know Cowperwood by his
+name, nor Aileen by hers. They were a Mr. and Mrs. Montague to her.
+
+“I don’t know anybody by that name,” she replied nervously.
+
+“Isn’t there a girl here with red hair?” asked one of Alderson’s
+assistants. “And a man with a gray suit and a light-brown mustache?
+They came in here half an hour ago. You remember them, don’t you?”
+
+“There’s just one couple in the house, but I’m not sure whether they’re
+the ones you want. I’ll ask them to come down if you wish. Oh, I wish
+you wouldn’t make any disturbance. This is terrible.”
+
+“We’ll not make any disturbance,” replied Alderson, “if you don’t. Just
+you be quiet. We merely want to see the girl and take her away. Now,
+you stay where you are. What room are they in?”
+
+“In the second one in the rear up-stairs. Won’t you let me go, though?
+It will be so much better. I’ll just tap and ask them to come out.”
+
+“No. We’ll tend to that. You stay where you are. You’re not going to
+get into any trouble. You just stay where you are,” insisted Alderson.
+
+He motioned to Butler, who, however, now that he had embarked on his
+grim task, was thinking that he had made a mistake. What good would it
+do him to force his way in and make her come out, unless he intended to
+kill Cowperwood? If she were made to come down here, that would be
+enough. She would then know that he knew all. He did not care to
+quarrel with Cowperwood, in any public way, he now decided. He was
+afraid to. He was afraid of himself.
+
+“Let her go,” he said grimly, doggedly referring to Mrs. Davis, “But
+watch her. Tell the girl to come down-stairs to me.”
+
+Mrs. Davis, realizing on the moment that this was some family tragedy,
+and hoping in an agonized way that she could slip out of it peacefully,
+started upstairs at once with Alderson and his assistants who were
+close at his heels. Reaching the door of the room occupied by
+Cowperwood and Aileen, she tapped lightly. At the time Aileen and
+Cowperwood were sitting in a big arm-chair. At the first knock Aileen
+blanched and leaped to her feet. Usually not nervous, to-day, for some
+reason, she anticipated trouble. Cowperwood’s eyes instantly hardened.
+
+“Don’t be nervous,” he said, “no doubt it’s only the servant. I’ll go.”
+
+He started, but Aileen interfered. “Wait,” she said. Somewhat
+reassured, she went to the closet, and taking down a dressing-gown,
+slipped it on. Meanwhile the tap came again. Then she went to the door
+and opened it the least bit.
+
+“Mrs. Montague,” exclaimed Mrs. Davis, in an obviously nervous, forced
+voice, “there’s a gentleman downstairs who wishes to see you.”
+
+“A gentleman to see me!” exclaimed Aileen, astonished and paling. “Are
+you sure?”
+
+“Yes; he says he wants to see you. There are several other men with
+him. I think it’s some one who belongs to you, maybe.”
+
+Aileen realized on the instant, as did Cowperwood, what had in all
+likelihood happened. Butler or Mrs. Cowperwood had trailed them—in all
+probability her father. He wondered now what he should do to protect
+her, not himself. He was in no way deeply concerned for himself, even
+here. Where any woman was concerned he was too chivalrous to permit
+fear. It was not at all improbable that Butler might want to kill him;
+but that did not disturb him. He really did not pay any attention to
+that thought, and he was not armed.
+
+“I’ll dress and go down,” he said, when he saw Aileen’s pale face. “You
+stay here. And don’t you worry in any way for I’ll get you out of
+this—now, don’t worry. This is my affair. I got you in it and I’ll get
+you out of it.” He went for his hat and coat and added, as he did so,
+“You go ahead and dress; but let me go first.”
+
+Aileen, the moment the door closed, had begun to put on her clothes
+swiftly and nervously. Her mind was working like a rapidly moving
+machine. She was wondering whether this really could be her father.
+Perhaps it was not. Might there be some other Mrs. Montague—a real one?
+Supposing it was her father—he had been so nice to her in not telling
+the family, in keeping her secret thus far. He loved her—she knew that.
+It makes all the difference in the world in a child’s attitude on an
+occasion like this whether she has been loved and petted and spoiled,
+or the reverse. Aileen had been loved and petted and spoiled. She could
+not think of her father doing anything terrible physically to her or to
+any one else. But it was so hard to confront him—to look into his eyes.
+When she had attained a proper memory of him, her fluttering wits told
+her what to do.
+
+“No, Frank,” she whispered, excitedly; “if it’s father, you’d better
+let me go. I know how to talk to him. He won’t say anything to me. You
+stay here. I’m not afraid—really, I’m not. If I want you, I’ll call
+you.”
+
+He had come over and taken her pretty chin in his hands, and was
+looking solemnly into her eyes.
+
+“You mustn’t be afraid,” he said. “I’ll go down. If it’s your father,
+you can go away with him. I don’t think he’ll do anything either to you
+or to me. If it is he, write me something at the office. I’ll be there.
+If I can help you in any way, I will. We can fix up something. There’s
+no use trying to explain this. Say nothing at all.”
+
+He had on his coat and overcoat, and was standing with his hat in his
+hand. Aileen was nearly dressed, struggling with the row of red
+current-colored buttons which fastened her dress in the back.
+Cowperwood helped her. When she was ready—hat, gloves, and all—he said:
+
+“Now let me go first. I want to see.”
+
+“No; please, Frank,” she begged, courageously. “Let me, I know it’s
+father. Who else could it be?” She wondered at the moment whether her
+father had brought her two brothers but would not now believe it. He
+would not do that, she knew. “You can come if I call.” She went on.
+“Nothing’s going to happen, though. I understand him. He won’t do
+anything to me. If you go it will only make him angry. Let me go. You
+stand in the door here. If I don’t call, it’s all right. Will you?”
+
+She put her two pretty hands on his shoulders, and he weighed the
+matter very carefully. “Very well,” he said, “only I’ll go to the foot
+of the stairs with you.”
+
+They went to the door and he opened it. Outside were Alderson with two
+other detectives and Mrs. Davis, standing perhaps five feet away.
+
+“Well,” said Cowperwood, commandingly, looking at Alderson.
+
+“There’s a gentleman down-stairs wishes to see the lady,” said
+Alderson. “It’s her father, I think,” he added quietly.
+
+Cowperwood made way for Aileen, who swept by, furious at the presence
+of men and this exposure. Her courage had entirely returned. She was
+angry now to think her father would make a public spectacle of her.
+Cowperwood started to follow.
+
+“I’d advise you not to go down there right away,” cautioned Alderson,
+sagely. “That’s her father. Butler’s her name, isn’t it? He don’t want
+you so much as he wants her.”
+
+Cowperwood nevertheless walked slowly toward the head of the stairs,
+listening.
+
+“What made you come here, father?” he heard Aileen ask.
+
+Butler’s reply he could not hear, but he was now at ease for he knew
+how much Butler loved his daughter.
+
+Confronted by her father, Aileen was now attempting to stare defiantly,
+to look reproachful, but Butler’s deep gray eyes beneath their shaggy
+brows revealed such a weight of weariness and despair as even she, in
+her anger and defiance, could not openly flaunt. It was all too sad.
+
+“I never expected to find you in a place like this, daughter,” he said.
+“I should have thought you would have thought better of yourself.” His
+voice choked and he stopped.
+
+“I know who you’re here with,” he continued, shaking his head sadly.
+“The dog! I’ll get him yet. I’ve had men watchin’ you all the time. Oh,
+the shame of this day! The shame of this day! You’ll be comin’ home
+with me now.”
+
+“That’s just it, father,” began Aileen. “You’ve had men watching me. I
+should have thought—” She stopped, because he put up his hand in a
+strange, agonized, and yet dominating way.
+
+“None of that! none of that!” he said, glowering under his strange,
+sad, gray brows. “I can’t stand it! Don’t tempt me! We’re not out of
+this place yet. He’s not! You’ll come home with me now.”
+
+Aileen understood. It was Cowperwood he was referring to. That
+frightened her.
+
+“I’m ready,” she replied, nervously.
+
+The old man led the way broken-heartedly. He felt he would never live
+to forget the agony of this hour.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVII
+
+
+In spite of Butler’s rage and his determination to do many things to
+the financier, if he could, he was so wrought up and shocked by the
+attitude of Aileen that he could scarcely believe he was the same man
+he had been twenty-four hours before. She was so nonchalant, so
+defiant. He had expected to see her wilt completely when confronted
+with her guilt. Instead, he found, to his despair, after they were once
+safely out of the house, that he had aroused a fighting quality in the
+girl which was not incomparable to his own. She had some of his own and
+Owen’s grit. She sat beside him in the little runabout—not his own—in
+which he was driving her home, her face coloring and blanching by
+turns, as different waves of thought swept over her, determined to
+stand her ground now that her father had so plainly trapped her, to
+declare for Cowperwood and her love and her position in general. What
+did she care, she asked herself, what her father thought now? She was
+in this thing. She loved Cowperwood; she was permanently disgraced in
+her father’s eyes. What difference could it all make now? He had fallen
+so low in his parental feeling as to spy on her and expose her before
+other men—strangers, detectives, Cowperwood. What real affection could
+she have for him after this? He had made a mistake, according to her.
+He had done a foolish and a contemptible thing, which was not warranted
+however bad her actions might have been. What could he hope to
+accomplish by rushing in on her in this way and ripping the veil from
+her very soul before these other men—these crude detectives? Oh, the
+agony of that walk from the bedroom to the reception-room! She would
+never forgive her father for this—never, never, never! He had now
+killed her love for him—that was what she felt. It was to be a battle
+royal between them from now on. As they rode—in complete silence for a
+while—her hands clasped and unclasped defiantly, her nails cutting her
+palms, and her mouth hardened.
+
+It is an open question whether raw opposition ever accomplishes
+anything of value in this world. It seems so inherent in this mortal
+scheme of things that it appears to have a vast validity. It is more
+than likely that we owe this spectacle called life to it, and that this
+can be demonstrated scientifically; but when that is said and done,
+what is the value? What is the value of the spectacle? And what the
+value of a scene such as this enacted between Aileen and her father?
+
+The old man saw nothing for it, as they rode on, save a grim contest
+between them which could end in what? What could he do with her? They
+were riding away fresh from this awful catastrophe, and she was not
+saying a word! She had even asked him why he had come there! How was he
+to subdue her, when the very act of trapping her had failed to do so?
+His ruse, while so successful materially, had failed so utterly
+spiritually. They reached the house, and Aileen got out. The old man,
+too nonplussed to wish to go further at this time, drove back to his
+office. He then went out and walked—a peculiar thing for him to do; he
+had done nothing like that in years and years—walking to think. Coming
+to an open Catholic church, he went in and prayed for enlightenment,
+the growing dusk of the interior, the single everlasting lamp before
+the repository of the chalice, and the high, white altar set with
+candles soothing his troubled feelings.
+
+He came out of the church after a time and returned home. Aileen did
+not appear at dinner, and he could not eat. He went into his private
+room and shut the door—thinking, thinking, thinking. The dreadful
+spectacle of Aileen in a house of ill repute burned in his brain. To
+think that Cowperwood should have taken her to such a place—his Aileen,
+his and his wife’s pet. In spite of his prayers, his uncertainty, her
+opposition, the puzzling nature of the situation, she must be got out
+of this. She must go away for a while, give the man up, and then the
+law should run its course with him. In all likelihood Cowperwood would
+go to the penitentiary—if ever a man richly deserved to go, it was he.
+Butler would see that no stone was left unturned. He would make it a
+personal issue, if necessary. All he had to do was to let it be known
+in judicial circles that he wanted it so. He could not suborn a jury,
+that would be criminal; but he could see that the case was properly and
+forcefully presented; and if Cowperwood were convicted, Heaven help
+him. The appeal of his financial friends would not save him. The judges
+of the lower and superior courts knew on which side their bread was
+buttered. They would strain a point in favor of the highest political
+opinion of the day, and he certainly could influence that. Aileen
+meanwhile was contemplating the peculiar nature of her situation. In
+spite of their silence on the way home, she knew that a conversation
+was coming with her father. It had to be. He would want her to go
+somewhere. Most likely he would revive the European trip in some
+form—she now suspected the invitation of Mrs. Mollenhauer as a trick;
+and she had to decide whether she would go. Would she leave Cowperwood
+just when he was about to be tried? She was determined she would not.
+She wanted to see what was going to happen to him. She would leave home
+first—run to some relative, some friend, some stranger, if necessary,
+and ask to be taken in. She had some money—a little. Her father had
+always been very liberal with her. She could take a few clothes and
+disappear. They would be glad enough to send for her after she had been
+gone awhile. Her mother would be frantic; Norah and Callum and Owen
+would be beside themselves with wonder and worry; her father—she could
+see him. Maybe that would bring him to his senses. In spite of all her
+emotional vagaries, she was the pride and interest of this home, and
+she knew it.
+
+It was in this direction that her mind was running when her father, a
+few days after the dreadful exposure in the Sixth Street house, sent
+for her to come to him in his room. He had come home from his office
+very early in the afternoon, hoping to find Aileen there, in order that
+he might have a private interview with her, and by good luck found her
+in. She had had no desire to go out into the world these last few
+days—she was too expectant of trouble to come. She had just written
+Cowperwood asking for a rendezvous out on the Wissahickon the following
+afternoon, in spite of the detectives. She must see him. Her father,
+she said, had done nothing; but she was sure he would attempt to do
+something. She wanted to talk to Cowperwood about that.
+
+“I’ve been thinkin’ about ye, Aileen, and what ought to be done in this
+case,” began her father without preliminaries of any kind once they
+were in his “office room” in the house together. “You’re on the road to
+ruin if any one ever was. I tremble when I think of your immortal soul.
+I want to do somethin’ for ye, my child, before it’s too late. I’ve
+been reproachin’ myself for the last month and more, thinkin’, perhaps,
+it was somethin’ I had done, or maybe had failed to do, aither me or
+your mother, that has brought ye to the place where ye are to-day.
+Needless to say, it’s on me conscience, me child. It’s a heartbroken
+man you’re lookin’ at this day. I’ll never be able to hold me head up
+again. Oh, the shame—the shame! That I should have lived to see it!”
+
+“But father,” protested Aileen, who was a little distraught at the
+thought of having to listen to a long preachment which would relate to
+her duty to God and the Church and her family and her mother and him.
+She realized that all these were important in their way; but Cowperwood
+and his point of view had given her another outlook on life. They had
+discussed this matter of families—parents, children, husbands, wives,
+brothers, sisters—from almost every point of view. Cowperwood’s
+laissez-faire attitude had permeated and colored her mind completely.
+She saw things through his cold, direct “I satisfy myself” attitude. He
+was sorry for all the little differences of personality that sprang up
+between people, causing quarrels, bickerings, oppositions, and
+separation; but they could not be helped. People outgrew each other.
+Their points of view altered at varying ratios—hence changes.
+Morals—those who had them had them; those who hadn’t, hadn’t. There was
+no explaining. As for him, he saw nothing wrong in the sex
+relationship. Between those who were mutually compatible it was
+innocent and delicious. Aileen in his arms, unmarried, but loved by
+him, and he by her, was as good and pure as any living woman—a great
+deal purer than most. One found oneself in a given social order,
+theory, or scheme of things. For purposes of social success, in order
+not to offend, to smooth one’s path, make things easy, avoid useless
+criticism, and the like, it was necessary to create an outward
+seeming—ostensibly conform. Beyond that it was not necessary to do
+anything. Never fail, never get caught. If you did, fight your way out
+silently and say nothing. That was what he was doing in connection with
+his present financial troubles; that was what he had been ready to do
+the other day when they were caught. It was something of all this that
+was coloring Aileen’s mood as she listened at present.
+
+“But father,” she protested, “I love Mr. Cowperwood. It’s almost the
+same as if I were married to him. He will marry me some day when he
+gets a divorce from Mrs. Cowperwood. You don’t understand how it is.
+He’s very fond of me, and I love him. He needs me.”
+
+Butler looked at her with strange, non-understanding eyes. “Divorce,
+did you say,” he began, thinking of the Catholic Church and its dogma
+in regard to that. “He’ll divorce his own wife and children—and for
+you, will he? He needs you, does he?” he added, sarcastically. “What
+about his wife and children? I don’t suppose they need him, do they?
+What talk have ye?”
+
+Aileen flung her head back defiantly. “It’s true, nevertheless,” she
+reiterated. “You just don’t understand.”
+
+Butler could scarcely believe his ears. He had never heard such talk
+before in his life from any one. It amazed and shocked him. He was
+quite aware of all the subtleties of politics and business, but these
+of romance were too much for him. He knew nothing about them. To think
+a daughter of his should be talking like this, and she a Catholic! He
+could not understand where she got such notions unless it was from the
+Machiavellian, corrupting brain of Cowperwood himself.
+
+“How long have ye had these notions, my child?” he suddenly asked,
+calmly and soberly. “Where did ye get them? Ye certainly never heard
+anything like that in this house, I warrant. Ye talk as though ye had
+gone out of yer mind.”
+
+“Oh, don’t talk nonsense, father,” flared Aileen, angrily, thinking how
+hopeless it was to talk to her father about such things anyhow. “I’m
+not a child any more. I’m twenty-four years of age. You just don’t
+understand. Mr. Cowperwood doesn’t like his wife. He’s going to get a
+divorce when he can, and will marry me. I love him, and he loves me,
+and that’s all there is to it.”
+
+“Is it, though?” asked Butler, grimly determined by hook or by crook,
+to bring this girl to her senses. “Ye’ll be takin’ no thought of his
+wife and children then? The fact that he’s goin’ to jail, besides, is
+nawthin’ to ye, I suppose. Ye’d love him just as much in convict
+stripes, I suppose—more, maybe.” (The old man was at his best, humanly
+speaking, when he was a little sarcastic.) “Ye’ll have him that way,
+likely, if at all.”
+
+Aileen blazed at once to a furious heat. “Yes, I know,” she sneered.
+“That’s what you would like. I know what you’ve been doing. Frank does,
+too. You’re trying to railroad him to prison for something he didn’t
+do—and all on account of me. Oh, I know. But you won’t hurt him. You
+can’t! He’s bigger and finer than you think he is and you won’t hurt
+him in the long run. He’ll get out again. You want to punish him on my
+account; but he doesn’t care. I’ll marry him anyhow. I love him, and
+I’ll wait for him and marry him, and you can do what you please. So
+there!”
+
+“Ye’ll marry him, will you?” asked Butler, nonplussed and further
+astounded. “So ye’ll wait for him and marry him? Ye’ll take him away
+from his wife and children, where, if he were half a man, he’d be
+stayin’ this minute instead of gallivantin’ around with you. And marry
+him? Ye’d disgrace your father and yer mother and yer family? Ye’ll
+stand here and say this to me, I that have raised ye, cared for ye, and
+made somethin’ of ye? Where would you be if it weren’t for me and your
+poor, hard-workin’ mother, schemin’ and plannin’ for you year in and
+year out? Ye’re smarter than I am, I suppose. Ye know more about the
+world than I do, or any one else that might want to say anythin’ to ye.
+I’ve raised ye to be a fine lady, and this is what I get. Talk about me
+not bein’ able to understand, and ye lovin’ a convict-to-be, a robber,
+an embezzler, a bankrupt, a lyin’, thavin’—”
+
+“Father!” exclaimed Aileen, determinedly. “I’ll not listen to you
+talking that way. He’s not any of the things that you say. I’ll not
+stay here.” She moved toward the door; but Butler jumped up now and
+stopped her. His face for the moment was flushed and swollen with
+anger.
+
+“But I’m not through with him yet,” he went on, ignoring her desire to
+leave, and addressing her direct—confident now that she was as capable
+as another of understanding him. “I’ll get him as sure as I have a
+name. There’s law in this land, and I’ll have it on him. I’ll show him
+whether he’ll come sneakin’ into dacent homes and robbin’ parents of
+their children.”
+
+He paused after a time for want of breath and Aileen stared, her face
+tense and white. Her father could be so ridiculous. He was, contrasted
+with Cowperwood and his views, so old-fashioned. To think he could be
+talking of some one coming into their home and stealing her away from
+him, when she had been so willing to go. What silliness! And yet, why
+argue? What good could be accomplished, arguing with him here in this
+way? And so for the moment, she said nothing more—merely looked. But
+Butler was by no means done. His mood was too stormy even though he was
+doing his best now to subdue himself.
+
+“It’s too bad, daughter,” he resumed quietly, once he was satisfied
+that she was going to have little, if anything, to say. “I’m lettin’ my
+anger get the best of me. It wasn’t that I intended talkin’ to ye about
+when I ast ye to come in. It’s somethin’ else I have on me mind. I was
+thinkin’, perhaps, ye’d like to go to Europe for the time bein’ to
+study music. Ye’re not quite yourself just at present. Ye’re needin’ a
+rest. It would be good for ye to go away for a while. Ye could have a
+nice time over there. Norah could go along with ye, if you would, and
+Sister Constantia that taught you. Ye wouldn’t object to havin’ her, I
+suppose?”
+
+At the mention of this idea of a trip of Europe again, with Sister
+Constantia and music thrown in to give it a slightly new form, Aileen
+bridled, and yet half-smiled to herself now. It was so ridiculous—so
+tactless, really, for her father to bring up this now, and especially
+after denouncing Cowperwood and her, and threatening all the things he
+had. Had he no diplomacy at all where she was concerned? It was really
+too funny! But she restrained herself here again, because she felt as
+well as saw, that argument of this kind was all futile now.
+
+“I wish you wouldn’t talk about that, father,” she began, having
+softened under his explanation. “I don’t want to go to Europe now. I
+don’t want to leave Philadelphia. I know you want me to go; but I don’t
+want to think of going now. I can’t.”
+
+Butler’s brow darkened again. What was the use of all this opposition
+on her part? Did she really imagine that she was going to master
+him—her father, and in connection with such an issue as this? How
+impossible! But tempering his voice as much as possible, he went on,
+quite softly, in fact. “But it would be so fine for ye, Aileen. Ye
+surely can’t expect to stay here after—” He paused, for he was going to
+say “what has happened.” He knew she was very sensitive on that point.
+His own conduct in hunting her down had been such a breach of fatherly
+courtesy that he knew she felt resentful, and in a way properly so.
+Still, what could be greater than her own crime? “After,” he concluded,
+“ye have made such a mistake ye surely wouldn’t want to stay here. Ye
+won’t be wantin’ to keep up that—committin’ a mortal sin. It’s against
+the laws of God and man.”
+
+He did so hope the thought of sin would come to Aileen—the enormity of
+her crime from a spiritual point of view—but Aileen did not see it at
+all.
+
+“You don’t understand me, father,” she exclaimed, hopelessly toward the
+end. “You can’t. I have one idea, and you have another. But I don’t
+seem to be able to make you understand now. The fact is, if you want to
+know it, I don’t believe in the Catholic Church any more, so there.”
+
+The moment Aileen had said this she wished she had not. It was a slip
+of the tongue. Butler’s face took on an inexpressibly sad, despairing
+look.
+
+“Ye don’t believe in the Church?” he asked.
+
+“No, not exactly—not like you do.”
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“The harm that has come to yer soul!” he replied. “It’s plain to me,
+daughter, that somethin’ terrible has happened to ye. This man has
+ruined ye, body and soul. Somethin’ must be done. I don’t want to be
+hard on ye, but ye must leave Philadelphy. Ye can’t stay here. I can’t
+permit ye. Ye can go to Europe, or ye can go to yer aunt’s in New
+Orleans; but ye must go somewhere. I can’t have ye stayin’ here—it’s
+too dangerous. It’s sure to be comin’ out. The papers’ll be havin’ it
+next. Ye’re young yet. Yer life is before you. I tremble for yer soul;
+but so long as ye’re young and alive ye may come to yer senses. It’s me
+duty to be hard. It’s my obligation to you and the Church. Ye must quit
+this life. Ye must lave this man. Ye must never see him any more. I
+can’t permit ye. He’s no good. He has no intintion of marrying ye, and
+it would be a crime against God and man if he did. No, no! Never that!
+The man’s a bankrupt, a scoundrel, a thafe. If ye had him, ye’d soon be
+the unhappiest woman in the world. He wouldn’t be faithful to ye. No,
+he couldn’t. He’s not that kind.” He paused, sick to the depths of his
+soul. “Ye must go away. I say it once and for all. I mane it kindly,
+but I want it. I have yer best interests at heart. I love ye; but ye
+must. I’m sorry to see ye go—I’d rather have ye here. No one will be
+sorrier; but ye must. Ye must make it all seem natcheral and ordinary
+to yer mother; but ye must go—d’ye hear? Ye must.”
+
+He paused, looking sadly but firmly at Aileen under his shaggy
+eyebrows. She knew he meant this. It was his most solemn, his most
+religious expression. But she did not answer. She could not. What was
+the use? Only she was not going. She knew that—and so she stood there
+white and tense.
+
+“Now get all the clothes ye want,” went on Butler, by no means grasping
+her true mood. “Fix yourself up in any way you plase. Say where ye want
+to go, but get ready.”
+
+“But I won’t, father,” finally replied Aileen, equally solemnly,
+equally determinedly. “I won’t go! I won’t leave Philadelphia.”
+
+“Ye don’t mane to say ye will deliberately disobey me when I’m asking
+ye to do somethin’ that’s intended for yer own good, will ye daughter?”
+
+“Yes, I will,” replied Aileen, determinedly. “I won’t go! I’m sorry,
+but I won’t!”
+
+“Ye really mane that, do ye?” asked Butler, sadly but grimly.
+
+“Yes, I do,” replied Aileen, grimly, in return.
+
+“Then I’ll have to see what I can do, daughter,” replied the old man.
+“Ye’re still my daughter, whatever ye are, and I’ll not see ye come to
+wreck and ruin for want of doin’ what I know to be my solemn duty. I’ll
+give ye a few more days to think this over, but go ye must. There’s an
+end of that. There are laws in this land still. There are things that
+can be done to those who won’t obey the law. I found ye this time—much
+as it hurt me to do it. I’ll find ye again if ye try to disobey me. Ye
+must change yer ways. I can’t have ye goin’ on as ye are. Ye understand
+now. It’s the last word. Give this man up, and ye can have anything ye
+choose. Ye’re my girl—I’ll do everything I can in this world to make ye
+happy. Why, why shouldn’t I? What else have I to live for but me
+children? It’s ye and the rest of them that I’ve been workin’ and
+plannin’ for all these years. Come now, be a good girl. Ye love your
+old father, don’t ye? Why, I rocked ye in my arms as a baby, Aileen.
+I’ve watched over ye when ye were not bigger than what would rest in me
+two fists here. I’ve been a good father to ye—ye can’t deny that. Look
+at the other girls you’ve seen. Have any of them had more nor what ye
+have had? Ye won’t go against me in this. I’m sure ye won’t. Ye can’t.
+Ye love me too much—surely ye do—don’t ye?” His voice weakened. His
+eyes almost filled.
+
+He paused and put a big, brown, horny hand on Aileen’s arm. She had
+listened to his plea not unmoved—really more or less softened—because
+of the hopelessness of it. She could not give up Cowperwood. Her father
+just did not understand. He did not know what love was. Unquestionably
+he had never loved as she had.
+
+She stood quite silent while Butler appealed to her.
+
+“I’d like to, father,” she said at last and softly, tenderly. “Really I
+would. I do love you. Yes, I do. I want to please you; but I can’t in
+this—I can’t! I love Frank Cowperwood. You don’t understand—really you
+don’t!”
+
+At the repetition of Cowperwood’s name Butler’s mouth hardened. He
+could see that she was infatuated—that his carefully calculated plea
+had failed. So he must think of some other way.
+
+“Very well, then,” he said at last and sadly, oh, so sadly, as Aileen
+turned away. “Have it yer own way, if ye will. Ye must go, though,
+willy-nilly. It can’t be any other way. I wish to God it could.”
+
+Aileen went out, very solemn, and Butler went over to his desk and sat
+down. “Such a situation!” he said to himself. “Such a complication!”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVIII
+
+
+The situation which confronted Aileen was really a trying one. A girl
+of less innate courage and determination would have weakened and
+yielded. For in spite of her various social connections and
+acquaintances, the people to whom Aileen could run in an emergency of
+the present kind were not numerous. She could scarcely think of any one
+who would be likely to take her in for any lengthy period, without
+question. There were a number of young women of her own age, married
+and unmarried, who were very friendly to her, but there were few with
+whom she was really intimate. The only person who stood out in her
+mind, as having any real possibility of refuge for a period, was a
+certain Mary Calligan, better known as “Mamie” among her friends, who
+had attended school with Aileen in former years and was now a teacher
+in one of the local schools.
+
+The Calligan family consisted of Mrs. Katharine Calligan, the mother, a
+dressmaker by profession and a widow—her husband, a house-mover by
+trade, having been killed by a falling wall some ten years before—and
+Mamie, her twenty-three-year-old daughter. They lived in a small
+two-story brick house in Cherry Street, near Fifteenth. Mrs. Calligan
+was not a very good dressmaker, not good enough, at least, for the
+Butler family to patronize in their present exalted state. Aileen went
+there occasionally for gingham house-dresses, underwear, pretty
+dressing-gowns, and alterations on some of her more important clothing
+which was made by a very superior modiste in Chestnut Street. She
+visited the house largely because she had gone to school with Mamie at
+St. Agatha’s, when the outlook of the Calligan family was much more
+promising. Mamie was earning forty dollars a month as the teacher of a
+sixth-grade room in one of the nearby public schools, and Mrs. Calligan
+averaged on the whole about two dollars a day—sometimes not so much.
+The house they occupied was their own, free and clear, and the
+furniture which it contained suggested the size of their joint income,
+which was somewhere near eighty dollars a month.
+
+Mamie Calligan was not good-looking, not nearly as good-looking as her
+mother had been before her. Mrs. Calligan was still plump, bright, and
+cheerful at fifty, with a fund of good humor. Mamie was somewhat duller
+mentally and emotionally. She was serious-minded—made so, perhaps, as
+much by circumstances as by anything else, for she was not at all
+vivid, and had little sex magnetism. Yet she was kindly, honest,
+earnest, a good Catholic, and possessed of that strangely excessive
+ingrowing virtue which shuts so many people off from the world—a sense
+of duty. To Mamie Calligan duty (a routine conformity to such theories
+and precepts as she had heard and worked by since her childhood) was
+the all-important thing, her principal source of comfort and relief;
+her props in a queer and uncertain world being her duty to her Church;
+her duty to her school; her duty to her mother; her duty to her
+friends, etc. Her mother often wished for Mamie’s sake that she was
+less dutiful and more charming physically, so that the men would like
+her.
+
+In spite of the fact that her mother was a dressmaker, Mamie’s clothes
+never looked smart or attractive—she would have felt out of keeping
+with herself if they had. Her shoes were rather large, and ill-fitting;
+her skirt hung in lifeless lines from her hips to her feet, of good
+material but seemingly bad design. At that time the colored “jersey,”
+so-called, was just coming into popular wear, and, being close-fitting,
+looked well on those of good form. Alas for Mamie Calligan! The mode of
+the time compelled her to wear one; but she had neither the arms nor
+the chest development which made this garment admirable. Her hat, by
+choice, was usually a pancake affair with a long, single feather, which
+somehow never seemed to be in exactly the right position, either to her
+hair or her face. At most times she looked a little weary; but she was
+not physically weary so much as she was bored. Her life held so little
+of real charm; and Aileen Butler was unquestionably the most
+significant element of romance in it.
+
+Mamie’s mother’s very pleasant social disposition, the fact that they
+had a very cleanly, if poor little home, that she could entertain them
+by playing on their piano, and that Mrs. Calligan took an adoring
+interest in the work she did for her, made up the sum and substance of
+the attraction of the Calligan home for Aileen. She went there
+occasionally as a relief from other things, and because Mamie Calligan
+had a compatible and very understanding interest in literature.
+Curiously, the books Aileen liked she liked—_Jane Eyre, Kenelm
+Chillingly, Tricotrin_, and _A Bow of Orange Ribbon_. Mamie
+occasionally recommended to Aileen some latest effusion of this
+character; and Aileen, finding her judgment good, was constrained to
+admire her.
+
+In this crisis it was to the home of the Calligans that Aileen turned
+in thought. If her father really was not nice to her, and she had to
+leave home for a time, she could go to the Calligans. They would
+receive her and say nothing. They were not sufficiently well known to
+the other members of the Butler family to have the latter suspect that
+she had gone there. She might readily disappear into the privacy of
+Cherry Street and not be seen or heard of for weeks. It is an
+interesting fact to contemplate that the Calligans, like the various
+members of the Butler family, never suspected Aileen of the least
+tendency toward a wayward existence. Hence her flight from her own
+family, if it ever came, would be laid more to the door of a
+temperamental pettishness than anything else.
+
+On the other hand, in so far as the Butler family as a unit was
+concerned, it needed Aileen more than she needed it. It needed the
+light of her countenance to keep it appropriately cheerful, and if she
+went away there would be a distinct gulf that would not soon be
+overcome.
+
+Butler, senior, for instance, had seen his little daughter grow into
+radiantly beautiful womanhood. He had seen her go to school and convent
+and learn to play the piano—to him a great accomplishment. Also he had
+seen her manner change and become very showy and her knowledge of life
+broaden, apparently, and become to him, at least, impressive. Her
+smart, dogmatic views about most things were, to him, at least, well
+worth listening to. She knew more about books and art than Owen or
+Callum, and her sense of social manners was perfect. When she came to
+the table—breakfast, luncheon, or dinner—she was to him always a
+charming object to see. He had produced Aileen—he congratulated
+himself. He had furnished her the money to be so fine. He would
+continue to do so. No second-rate upstart of a man should be allowed to
+ruin her life. He proposed to take care of her always—to leave her so
+much money in a legally involved way that a failure of a husband could
+not possibly affect her. “You’re the charming lady this evenin’, I’m
+thinkin’,” was one of his pet remarks; and also, “My, but we’re that
+fine!” At table almost invariably she sat beside him and looked out for
+him. That was what he wanted. He had put her there beside him at his
+meals years before when she was a child.
+
+Her mother, too, was inordinately fond of her, and Callum and Owen
+appropriately brotherly. So Aileen had thus far at least paid back with
+beauty and interest quite as much as she received, and all the family
+felt it to be so. When she was away for a day or two the house seemed
+glum—the meals less appetizing. When she returned, all were happy and
+gay again.
+
+Aileen understood this clearly enough in a way. Now, when it came to
+thinking of leaving and shifting for herself, in order to avoid a trip
+which she did not care to be forced into, her courage was based largely
+on this keen sense of her own significance to the family. She thought
+over what her father had said, and decided she must act at once. She
+dressed for the street the next morning, after her father had gone, and
+decided to step in at the Calligans’ about noon, when Mamie would be at
+home for luncheon. Then she would take up the matter casually. If they
+had no objection, she would go there. She sometimes wondered why
+Cowperwood did not suggest, in his great stress, that they leave for
+some parts unknown; but she also felt that he must know best what he
+could do. His increasing troubles depressed her.
+
+Mrs. Calligan was alone when she arrived and was delighted to see her.
+After exchanging the gossip of the day, and not knowing quite how to
+proceed in connection with the errand which had brought her, she went
+to the piano and played a melancholy air.
+
+“Sure, it’s lovely the way you play, Aileen,” observed Mrs. Calligan
+who was unduly sentimental herself. “I love to hear you. I wish you’d
+come oftener to see us. You’re so rarely here nowadays.”
+
+“Oh, I’ve been so busy, Mrs. Calligan,” replied Aileen. “I’ve had so
+much to do this fall, I just couldn’t. They wanted me to go to Europe;
+but I didn’t care to. Oh, dear!” she sighed, and in her playing swept
+off with a movement of sad, romantic significance. The door opened and
+Mamie came in. Her commonplace face brightened at the sight of Aileen.
+
+“Well, Aileen Butler!” she exclaimed. “Where did you come from? Where
+have you been keeping yourself so long?”
+
+Aileen rose to exchange kisses. “Oh, I’ve been very busy, Mamie. I’ve
+just been telling your mother. How are you, anyway? How are you getting
+along in your work?”
+
+Mamie recounted at once some school difficulties which were puzzling
+her—the growing size of classes and the amount of work expected. While
+Mrs. Calligan was setting the table Mamie went to her room and Aileen
+followed her.
+
+As she stood before her mirror arranging her hair Aileen looked at her
+meditatively.
+
+“What’s the matter with you, Aileen, to-day?” Mamie asked. “You look
+so—” She stopped to give her a second glance.
+
+“How do I look?” asked Aileen.
+
+“Well, as if you were uncertain or troubled about something. I never
+saw you look that way before. What’s the matter?”
+
+“Oh, nothing,” replied Aileen. “I was just thinking.” She went to one
+of the windows which looked into the little yard, meditating on whether
+she could endure living here for any length of time. The house was so
+small, the furnishings so very simple.
+
+“There is something the matter with you to-day, Aileen,” observed
+Mamie, coming over to her and looking in her face. “You’re not like
+yourself at all.”
+
+“I’ve got something on my mind,” replied Aileen—“something that’s
+worrying me. I don’t know just what to do—that’s what’s the matter.”
+
+“Well, whatever can it be?” commented Mamie. “I never saw you act this
+way before. Can’t you tell me? What is it?”
+
+“No, I don’t think I can—not now, anyhow.” Aileen paused. “Do you
+suppose your mother would object,” she asked, suddenly, “if I came here
+and stayed a little while? I want to get away from home for a time for
+a certain reason.”
+
+“Why, Aileen Butler, how you talk!” exclaimed her friend. “Object! You
+know she’d be delighted, and so would I. Oh, dear—can you come? But
+what makes you want to leave home?”
+
+“That’s just what I can’t tell you—not now, anyhow. Not you, so much,
+but your mother. You know, I’m afraid of what she’d think,” replied
+Aileen. “But, you mustn’t ask me yet, anyhow. I want to think. Oh,
+dear! But I want to come, if you’ll let me. Will you speak to your
+mother, or shall I?”
+
+“Why, I will,” said Mamie, struck with wonder at this remarkable
+development; “but it’s silly to do it. I know what she’ll say before I
+tell her, and so do you. You can just bring your things and come.
+That’s all. She’d never say anything or ask anything, either, and you
+know that—if you didn’t want her to.” Mamie was all agog and aglow at
+the idea. She wanted the companionship of Aileen so much.
+
+Aileen looked at her solemnly, and understood well enough why she was
+so enthusiastic—both she and her mother. Both wanted her presence to
+brighten their world. “But neither of you must tell anybody that I’m
+here, do you hear? I don’t want any one to know—particularly no one of
+my family. I’ve a reason, and a good one, but I can’t tell you what it
+is—not now, anyhow. You’ll promise not to tell any one.”
+
+“Oh, of course,” replied Mamie eagerly. “But you’re not going to run
+away for good, are you, Aileen?” she concluded curiously and gravely.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know; I don’t know what I’ll do yet. I only know that I
+want to get away for a while, just now—that’s all.” She paused, while
+Mamie stood before her, agape.
+
+“Well, of all things,” replied her friend. “Wonders never cease, do
+they, Aileen? But it will be so lovely to have you here. Mama will be
+so pleased. Of course, we won’t tell anybody if you don’t want us to.
+Hardly any one ever comes here; and if they do, you needn’t see them.
+You could have this big room next to me. Oh, wouldn’t that be nice? I’m
+perfectly delighted.” The young school-teacher’s spirits rose to a
+decided height. “Come on, why not tell mama right now?”
+
+Aileen hesitated because even now she was not positive whether she
+should do this, but finally they went down the stairs together, Aileen
+lingering behind a little as they neared the bottom. Mamie burst in
+upon her mother with: “Oh, mama, isn’t it lovely? Aileen’s coming to
+stay with us for a while. She doesn’t want any one to know, and she’s
+coming right away.” Mrs. Calligan, who was holding a sugarbowl in her
+hand, turned to survey her with a surprised but smiling face. She was
+immediately curious as to why Aileen should want to come—why leave
+home. On the other hand, her feeling for Aileen was so deep that she
+was greatly and joyously intrigued by the idea. And why not? Was not
+the celebrated Edward Butler’s daughter a woman grown, capable of
+regulating her own affairs, and welcome, of course, as the honored
+member of so important a family. It was very flattering to the
+Calligans to think that she would want to come under any circumstances.
+
+“I don’t see how your parents can let you go, Aileen; but you’re
+certainly welcome here as long as you want to stay, and that’s forever,
+if you want to.” And Mrs. Calligan beamed on her welcomingly. The idea
+of Aileen Butler asking to be permitted to come here! And the hearty,
+comprehending manner in which she said this, and Mamie’s enthusiasm,
+caused Aileen to breathe a sigh of relief. The matter of the expense of
+her presence to the Calligans came into her mind.
+
+“I want to pay you, of course,” she said to Mrs. Calligan, “if I come.”
+
+“The very idea, Aileen Butler!” exclaimed Mamie. “You’ll do nothing of
+the sort. You’ll come here and live with me as my guest.”
+
+“No, I won’t! If I can’t pay I won’t come,” replied Aileen. “You’ll
+have to let me do that.” She knew that the Calligans could not afford
+to keep her.
+
+“Well, we’ll not talk about that now, anyhow,” replied Mrs. Calligan.
+“You can come when you like and stay as long as you like. Reach me some
+clean napkins, Mamie.” Aileen remained for luncheon, and left soon
+afterward to keep her suggested appointment with Cowperwood, feeling
+satisfied that her main problem had been solved. Now her way was clear.
+She could come here if she wanted to. It was simply a matter of
+collecting a few necessary things or coming without bringing anything.
+Perhaps Frank would have something to suggest.
+
+In the meantime Cowperwood made no effort to communicate with Aileen
+since the unfortunate discovery of their meeting place, but had awaited
+a letter from her, which was not long in coming. And, as usual, it was
+a long, optimistic, affectionate, and defiant screed in which she
+related all that had occurred to her and her present plan of leaving
+home. This last puzzled and troubled him not a little.
+
+Aileen in the bosom of her family, smart and well-cared for, was one
+thing. Aileen out in the world dependent on him was another. He had
+never imagined that she would be compelled to leave before he was
+prepared to take her; and if she did now, it might stir up
+complications which would be anything but pleasant to contemplate.
+Still he was fond of her, very, and would do anything to make her
+happy. He could support her in a very respectable way even now, if he
+did not eventually go to prison, and even there he might manage to make
+some shift for her. It would be so much better, though, if he could
+persuade her to remain at home until he knew exactly what his fate was
+to be. He never doubted but that some day, whatever happened, within a
+reasonable length of time, he would be rid of all these complications
+and well-to-do again, in which case, if he could get a divorce, he
+wanted to marry Aileen. If not, he would take her with him anyhow, and
+from this point of view it might be just as well as if she broke away
+from her family now. But from the point of view of present
+complications—the search Butler would make—it might be dangerous. He
+might even publicly charge him with abduction. He therefore decided to
+persuade Aileen to stay at home, drop meetings and communications for
+the time being, and even go abroad. He would be all right until she
+came back and so would she—common sense ought to rule in this case.
+
+With all this in mind he set out to keep the appointment she suggested
+in her letter, nevertheless feeling it a little dangerous to do so.
+
+“Are you sure,” he asked, after he had listened to her description of
+the Calligan homestead, “that you would like it there? It sounds rather
+poor to me.”
+
+“Yes, but I like them so much,” replied Aileen.
+
+“And you’re sure they won’t tell on you?”
+
+“Oh, no; never, never!”
+
+“Very well,” he concluded. “You know what you’re doing. I don’t want to
+advise you against your will. If I were you, though, I’d take your
+father’s advice and go away for a while. He’ll get over this then, and
+I’ll still be here. I can write you occasionally, and you can write
+me.”
+
+The moment Cowperwood said this Aileen’s brow clouded. Her love for him
+was so great that there was something like a knife thrust in the merest
+hint at an extended separation. Her Frank here and in trouble—on trial
+maybe and she away! Never! What could he mean by suggesting such a
+thing? Could it be that he didn’t care for her as much as she did for
+him? Did he really love her? she asked herself. Was he going to desert
+her just when she was going to do the thing which would bring them
+nearer together? Her eyes clouded, for she was terribly hurt.
+
+“Why, how you talk!” she exclaimed. “You know I won’t leave
+Philadelphia now. You certainly don’t expect me to leave you.”
+
+Cowperwood saw it all very clearly. He was too shrewd not to. He was
+immensely fond of her. Good heaven, he thought, he would not hurt her
+feelings for the world!
+
+“Honey,” he said, quickly, when he saw her eyes, “you don’t understand.
+I want you to do what you want to do. You’ve planned this out in order
+to be with me; so now you do it. Don’t think any more about me or
+anything I’ve said. I was merely thinking that it might make matters
+worse for both of us; but I don’t believe it will. You think your
+father loves you so much that after you’re gone he’ll change his mind.
+Very good; go. But we must be very careful, sweet—you and I—really we
+must. This thing is getting serious. If you should go and your father
+should charge me with abduction—take the public into his confidence and
+tell all about this, it would be serious for both of us—as much for you
+as for me, for I’d be convicted sure then, just on that account, if
+nothing else. And then what? You’d better not try to see me often for
+the present—not any oftener than we can possibly help. If we had used
+common sense and stopped when your father got that letter, this
+wouldn’t have happened. But now that it has happened, we must be as
+wise as we can, don’t you see? So, think it over, and do what you think
+best and then write me and whatever you do will be all right with me—do
+you hear?” He drew her to him and kissed her. “You haven’t any money,
+have you?” he concluded wisely.
+
+Aileen, deeply moved by all he had just said, was none the less
+convinced once she had meditated on it a moment, that her course was
+best. Her father loved her too much. He would not do anything to hurt
+her publicly and so he would not attack Cowperwood through her openly.
+More than likely, as she now explained to Frank, he would plead with
+her to come back. And he, listening, was compelled to yield. Why argue?
+She would not leave him anyhow.
+
+He went down in his pocket for the first time since he had known Aileen
+and produced a layer of bills. “Here’s two hundred dollars, sweet,” he
+said, “until I see or hear from you. I’ll see that you have whatever
+you need; and now don’t think that I don’t love you. You know I do. I’m
+crazy about you.”
+
+Aileen protested that she did not need so much—that she did not really
+need any—she had some at home; but he put that aside. He knew that she
+must have money.
+
+“Don’t talk, honey,” he said. “I know what you need.” She had been so
+used to receiving money from her father and mother in comfortable
+amounts from time to time that she thought nothing of it. Frank loved
+her so much that it made everything right between them. She softened in
+her mood and they discussed the matter of letters, reaching the
+conclusion that a private messenger would be safest. When finally they
+parted, Aileen, from being sunk in the depths by his uncertain
+attitude, was now once more on the heights. She decided that he did
+love her, and went away smiling. She had her Frank to fall back on—she
+would teach her father. Cowperwood shook his head, following her with
+his eyes. She represented an additional burden, but give her up, he
+certainly could not. Tear the veil from this illusion of affection and
+make her feel so wretched when he cared for her so much? No. There was
+really nothing for him to do but what he had done. After all, he
+reflected, it might not work out so badly. Any detective work that
+Butler might choose to do would prove that she had not run to him. If
+at any moment it became necessary to bring common sense into play to
+save the situation from a deadly climax, he could have the Butlers
+secretly informed as to Aileen’s whereabouts. That would show he had
+little to do with it, and they could try to persuade Aileen to come
+home again. Good might result—one could not tell. He would deal with
+the evils as they arose. He drove quickly back to his office, and
+Aileen returned to her home determined to put her plan into action. Her
+father had given her some little time in which to decide—possibly he
+would give her longer—but she would not wait. Having always had her
+wish granted in everything, she could not understand why she was not to
+have her way this time. It was about five o’clock now. She would wait
+until all the members of the family were comfortably seated at the
+dinner-table, which would be about seven o’clock, and then slip out.
+
+On arriving home, however, she was greeted by an unexpected reason for
+suspending action. This was the presence of a certain Mr. and Mrs.
+Steinmetz—the former a well-known engineer who drew the plans for many
+of the works which Butler undertook. It was the day before
+Thanksgiving, and they were eager to have Aileen and Norah accompany
+them for a fortnight’s stay at their new home in West Chester—a
+structure concerning the charm of which Aileen had heard much. They
+were exceedingly agreeable people—comparatively young and surrounded by
+a coterie of interesting friends. Aileen decided to delay her flight
+and go. Her father was most cordial. The presence and invitation of the
+Steinmetzes was as much a relief to him as it was to Aileen. West
+Chester being forty miles from Philadelphia, it was unlikely that
+Aileen would attempt to meet Cowperwood while there.
+
+She wrote Cowperwood of the changed condition and departed, and he
+breathed a sigh of relief, fancying at the time that this storm had
+permanently blown over.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIX
+
+
+In the meanwhile the day of Cowperwood’s trial was drawing near. He was
+under the impression that an attempt was going to be made to convict
+him whether the facts warranted it or not. He did not see any way out
+of his dilemma, however, unless it was to abandon everything and leave
+Philadelphia for good, which was impossible. The only way to guard his
+future and retain his financial friends was to stand trial as quickly
+as possible, and trust them to assist him to his feet in the future in
+case he failed. He discussed the possibilities of an unfair trial with
+Steger, who did not seem to think that there was so much to that. In
+the first place, a jury could not easily be suborned by any one. In the
+next place, most judges were honest, in spite of their political
+cleavage, and would go no further than party bias would lead them in
+their rulings and opinions, which was, in the main, not so far. The
+particular judge who was to sit in this case, one Wilbur Payderson, of
+the Court of Quarter Sessions, was a strict party nominee, and as such
+beholden to Mollenhauer, Simpson, and Butler; but, in so far as Steger
+had ever heard, he was an honest man.
+
+“What I can’t understand,” said Steger, “is why these fellows should be
+so anxious to punish you, unless it is for the effect on the State at
+large. The election’s over. I understand there’s a movement on now to
+get Stener out in case he is convicted, which he will be. They have to
+try him. He won’t go up for more than a year, or two or three, and if
+he does he’ll be pardoned out in half the time or less. It would be the
+same in your case, if you were convicted. They couldn’t keep you in and
+let him out. But it will never get that far—take my word for it. We’ll
+win before a jury, or we’ll reverse the judgment of conviction before
+the State Supreme Court, certain. Those five judges up there are not
+going to sustain any such poppycock idea as this.”
+
+Steger actually believed what he said, and Cowperwood was pleased. Thus
+far the young lawyer had done excellently well in all of his cases.
+Still, he did not like the idea of being hunted down by Butler. It was
+a serious matter, and one of which Steger was totally unaware.
+Cowperwood could never quite forget that in listening to his lawyer’s
+optimistic assurances.
+
+The actual beginning of the trial found almost all of the inhabitants
+of this city of six hundred thousand “keyed up.” None of the women of
+Cowperwood’s family were coming into court. He had insisted that there
+should be no family demonstration for the newspapers to comment upon.
+His father was coming, for he might be needed as a witness. Aileen had
+written him the afternoon before saying she had returned from West
+Chester and wishing him luck. She was so anxious to know what was to
+become of him that she could not stay away any longer and had
+returned—not to go to the courtroom, for he did not want her to do
+that, but to be as near as possible when his fate was decided,
+adversely or otherwise. She wanted to run and congratulate him if he
+won, or to console with him if he lost. She felt that her return would
+be likely to precipitate a collision with her father, but she could not
+help that.
+
+The position of Mrs. Cowperwood was most anomalous. She had to go
+through the formality of seeming affectionate and tender, even when she
+knew that Frank did not want her to be. He felt instinctively now that
+she knew of Aileen. He was merely awaiting the proper hour in which to
+spread the whole matter before her. She put her arms around him at the
+door on the fateful morning, in the somewhat formal manner into which
+they had dropped these later years, and for a moment, even though she
+was keenly aware of his difficulties, she could not kiss him. He did
+not want to kiss her, but he did not show it. She did kiss him, though,
+and added: “Oh, I do hope things come out all right.”
+
+“You needn’t worry about that, I think, Lillian,” he replied,
+buoyantly. “I’ll be all right.”
+
+He ran down the steps and walked out on Girard Avenue to his former car
+line, where he boarded a car. He was thinking of Aileen and how keenly
+she was feeling for him, and what a mockery his married life now was,
+and whether he would face a sensible jury, and so on and so forth. If
+he didn’t—if he didn’t—this day was crucial!
+
+He stepped off the car at Third and Market and hurried to his office.
+Steger was already there. “Well, Harper,” observed Cowperwood,
+courageously, “today’s the day.”
+
+The Court of Quarter Sessions, Part I, where this trial was to take
+place, was held in famous Independence Hall, at Sixth and Chestnut
+Streets, which was at this time, as it had been for all of a century
+before, the center of local executive and judicial life. It was a low
+two-story building of red brick, with a white wooden central tower of
+old Dutch and English derivation, compounded of the square, the circle,
+and the octagon. The total structure consisted of a central portion and
+two T-shaped wings lying to the right and left, whose small,
+oval-topped old-fashioned windows and doors were set with those
+many-paned sashes so much admired by those who love what is known as
+Colonial architecture. Here, and in an addition known as State House
+Row (since torn down), which extended from the rear of the building
+toward Walnut Street, were located the offices of the mayor, the chief
+of police, the city treasurer, the chambers of council, and all the
+other important and executive offices of the city, together with the
+four branches of Quarter Sessions, which sat to hear the growing docket
+of criminal cases. The mammoth city hall which was subsequently
+completed at Broad and Market Streets was then building.
+
+An attempt had been made to improve the reasonably large courtrooms by
+putting in them raised platforms of dark walnut surmounted by large,
+dark walnut desks, behind which the judges sat; but the attempt was not
+very successful. The desks, jury-boxes, and railings generally were
+made too large, and so the general effect was one of disproportion. A
+cream-colored wall had been thought the appropriate thing to go with
+black walnut furniture, but time and dust had made the combination
+dreary. There were no pictures or ornaments of any kind, save the
+stalky, over-elaborated gas-brackets which stood on his honor’s desk,
+and the single swinging chandelier suspended from the center of the
+ceiling. Fat bailiffs and court officers, concerned only in holding
+their workless jobs, did not add anything to the spirit of the scene.
+Two of them in the particular court in which this trial was held
+contended hourly as to which should hand the judge a glass of water.
+One preceded his honor like a fat, stuffy, dusty majordomo to and from
+his dressing-room. His business was to call loudly, when the latter
+entered, “His honor the Court, hats off. Everybody please rise,” while
+a second bailiff, standing at the left of his honor when he was seated,
+and between the jury-box and the witness-chair, recited in an
+absolutely unintelligible way that beautiful and dignified statement of
+collective society’s obligation to the constituent units, which begins,
+“Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye!” and ends, “All those of you having just
+cause for complaint draw near and ye shall be heard.” However, you
+would have thought it was of no import here. Custom and indifference
+had allowed it to sink to a mumble. A third bailiff guarded the door of
+the jury-room; and in addition to these there were present a court
+clerk—small, pale, candle-waxy, with colorless milk-and-water eyes, and
+thin, pork-fat-colored hair and beard, who looked for all the world
+like an Americanized and decidedly decrepit Chinese mandarin—and a
+court stenographer.
+
+Judge Wilbur Payderson, a lean herring of a man, who had sat in this
+case originally as the examining judge when Cowperwood had been
+indicted by the grand jury, and who had bound him over for trial at
+this term, was a peculiarly interesting type of judge, as judges go. He
+was so meager and thin-blooded that he was arresting for those
+qualities alone. Technically, he was learned in the law; actually, so
+far as life was concerned, absolutely unconscious of that subtle
+chemistry of things that transcends all written law and makes for the
+spirit and, beyond that, the inutility of all law, as all wise judges
+know. You could have looked at his lean, pedantic body, his frizzled
+gray hair, his fishy, blue-gray eyes, without any depth of speculation
+in them, and his nicely modeled but unimportant face, and told him that
+he was without imagination; but he would not have believed you—would
+have fined you for contempt of court. By the careful garnering of all
+his little opportunities, the furbishing up of every meager advantage;
+by listening slavishly to the voice of party, and following as nearly
+as he could the behests of intrenched property, he had reached his
+present state. It was not very far along, at that. His salary was only
+six thousand dollars a year. His little fame did not extend beyond the
+meager realm of local lawyers and judges. But the sight of his name
+quoted daily as being about his duties, or rendering such and such a
+decision, was a great satisfaction to him. He thought it made him a
+significant figure in the world. “Behold I am not as other men,” he
+often thought, and this comforted him. He was very much flattered when
+a prominent case came to his calendar; and as he sat enthroned before
+the various litigants and lawyers he felt, as a rule, very significant
+indeed. Now and then some subtlety of life would confuse his really
+limited intellect; but in all such cases there was the letter of the
+law. He could hunt in the reports to find out what really thinking men
+had decided. Besides, lawyers everywhere are so subtle. They put the
+rules of law, favorable or unfavorable, under the judge’s thumb and
+nose. “Your honor, in the thirty-second volume of the Revised Reports
+of Massachusetts, page so and so, line so and so, in Arundel versus
+Bannerman, you will find, etc.” How often have you heard that in a
+court of law? The reasoning that is left to do in most cases is not
+much. And the sanctity of the law is raised like a great banner by
+which the pride of the incumbent is strengthened.
+
+Payderson, as Steger had indicated, could scarcely be pointed to as an
+unjust judge. He was a party judge—Republican in principle, or rather
+belief, beholden to the dominant party councils for his personal
+continuance in office, and as such willing and anxious to do whatever
+he considered that he reasonably could do to further the party welfare
+and the private interests of his masters. Most people never trouble to
+look into the mechanics of the thing they call their conscience too
+closely. Where they do, too often they lack the skill to disentangle
+the tangled threads of ethics and morals. Whatever the opinion of the
+time is, whatever the weight of great interests dictates, that they
+conscientiously believe. Some one has since invented the phrase “a
+corporation-minded judge.” There are many such.
+
+Payderson was one. He fairly revered property and power. To him Butler
+and Mollenhauer and Simpson were great men—reasonably sure to be right
+always because they were so powerful. This matter of Cowperwood’s and
+Stener’s defalcation he had long heard of. He knew by associating with
+one political light and another just what the situation was. The party,
+as the leaders saw it, had been put in a very bad position by
+Cowperwood’s subtlety. He had led Stener astray—more than an ordinary
+city treasurer should have been led astray—and, although Stener was
+primarily guilty as the original mover in the scheme, Cowperwood was
+more so for having led him imaginatively to such disastrous lengths.
+Besides, the party needed a scapegoat—that was enough for Payderson, in
+the first place. Of course, after the election had been won, and it
+appeared that the party had not suffered so much, he did not understand
+quite why it was that Cowperwood was still so carefully included in the
+Proceedings; but he had faith to believe that the leaders had some just
+grounds for not letting him off. From one source and another he learned
+that Butler had some private grudge against Cowperwood. What it was no
+one seemed to know exactly. The general impression was that Cowperwood
+had led Butler into some unwholesome financial transactions. Anyhow, it
+was generally understood that for the good of the party, and in order
+to teach a wholesome lesson to dangerous subordinates—it had been
+decided to allow these several indictments to take their course.
+Cowperwood was to be punished quite as severely as Stener for the moral
+effect on the community. Stener was to be sentenced the maximum
+sentence for his crime in order that the party and the courts should
+appear properly righteous. Beyond that he was to be left to the mercy
+of the governor, who could ease things up for him if he chose, and if
+the leaders wished. In the silly mind of the general public the various
+judges of Quarter Sessions, like girls incarcerated in
+boarding-schools, were supposed in their serene aloofness from life not
+to know what was going on in the subterranean realm of politics; but
+they knew well enough, and, knowing particularly well from whence came
+their continued position and authority, they were duly grateful.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XL
+
+
+When Cowperwood came into the crowded courtroom with his father and
+Steger, quite fresh and jaunty (looking the part of the shrewd
+financier, the man of affairs), every one stared. It was really too
+much to expect, most of them thought, that a man like this would be
+convicted. He was, no doubt, guilty; but, also, no doubt, he had ways
+and means of evading the law. His lawyer, Harper Steger, looked very
+shrewd and canny to them. It was very cold, and both men wore long,
+dark, bluish-gray overcoats, cut in the latest mode. Cowperwood was
+given to small boutonnieres in fair weather, but to-day he wore none.
+His tie, however, was of heavy, impressive silk, of lavender hue, set
+with a large, clear, green emerald. He wore only the thinnest of
+watch-chains, and no other ornament of any kind. He always looked
+jaunty and yet reserved, good-natured, and yet capable and
+self-sufficient. Never had he looked more so than he did to-day.
+
+He at once took in the nature of the scene, which had a peculiar
+interest for him. Before him was the as yet empty judge’s rostrum, and
+at its right the empty jury-box, between which, and to the judge’s
+left, as he sat facing the audience, stood the witness-chair where he
+must presently sit and testify. Behind it, already awaiting the arrival
+of the court, stood a fat bailiff, one John Sparkheaver whose business
+it was to present the aged, greasy Bible to be touched by the witnesses
+in making oath, and to say, “Step this way,” when the testimony was
+over. There were other bailiffs—one at the gate giving into the railed
+space before the judge’s desk, where prisoners were arraigned, lawyers
+sat or pleaded, the defendant had a chair, and so on; another in the
+aisle leading to the jury-room, and still another guarding the door by
+which the public entered. Cowperwood surveyed Stener, who was one of
+the witnesses, and who now, in his helpless fright over his own fate,
+was without malice toward any one. He had really never borne any. He
+wished if anything now that he had followed Cowperwood’s advice, seeing
+where he now was, though he still had faith that Mollenhauer and the
+political powers represented by him would do something for him with the
+governor, once he was sentenced. He was very pale and comparatively
+thin. Already he had lost that ruddy bulk which had been added during
+the days of his prosperity. He wore a new gray suit and a brown tie,
+and was clean-shaven. When his eye caught Cowperwood’s steady beam, it
+faltered and drooped. He rubbed his ear foolishly. Cowperwood nodded.
+
+“You know,” he said to Steger, “I feel sorry for George. He’s such a
+fool. Still I did all I could.”
+
+Cowperwood also watched Mrs. Stener out of the tail of his eye—an
+undersized, peaked, and sallow little woman, whose clothes fitted her
+abominably. It was just like Stener to marry a woman like that, he
+thought. The scrubby matches of the socially unelect or unfit always
+interested, though they did not always amuse, him. Mrs. Stener had no
+affection for Cowperwood, of course, looking on him, as she did, as the
+unscrupulous cause of her husband’s downfall. They were now quite poor
+again, about to move from their big house into cheaper quarters; and
+this was not pleasing for her to contemplate.
+
+Judge Payderson came in after a time, accompanied by his undersized but
+stout court attendant, who looked more like a pouter-pigeon than a
+human being; and as they came, Bailiff Sparkheaver rapped on the
+judge’s desk, beside which he had been slumbering, and mumbled, “Please
+rise!” The audience arose, as is the rule of all courts. Judge
+Payderson stirred among a number of briefs that were lying on his desk,
+and asked, briskly, “What’s the first case, Mr. Protus?” He was
+speaking to his clerk.
+
+During the long and tedious arrangement of the day’s docket and while
+the various minor motions of lawyers were being considered, this
+courtroom scene still retained interest for Cowperwood. He was so eager
+to win, so incensed at the outcome of untoward events which had brought
+him here. He was always intensely irritated, though he did not show it,
+by the whole process of footing delays and queries and quibbles, by
+which legally the affairs of men were too often hampered. Law, if you
+had asked him, and he had accurately expressed himself, was a mist
+formed out of the moods and the mistakes of men, which befogged the sea
+of life and prevented plain sailing for the little commercial and
+social barques of men; it was a miasma of misinterpretation where the
+ills of life festered, and also a place where the accidentally wounded
+were ground between the upper and the nether millstones of force or
+chance; it was a strange, weird, interesting, and yet futile battle of
+wits where the ignorant and the incompetent and the shrewd and the
+angry and the weak were made pawns and shuttlecocks for men—lawyers,
+who were playing upon their moods, their vanities, their desires, and
+their necessities. It was an unholy and unsatisfactory disrupting and
+delaying spectacle, a painful commentary on the frailties of life, and
+men, a trick, a snare, a pit and gin. In the hands of the strong, like
+himself when he was at his best, the law was a sword and a shield, a
+trap to place before the feet of the unwary; a pit to dig in the path
+of those who might pursue. It was anything you might choose to make of
+it—a door to illegal opportunity; a cloud of dust to be cast in the
+eyes of those who might choose, and rightfully, to see; a veil to be
+dropped arbitrarily between truth and its execution, justice and its
+judgment, crime and punishment. Lawyers in the main were intellectual
+mercenaries to be bought and sold in any cause. It amused him to hear
+the ethical and emotional platitudes of lawyers, to see how readily
+they would lie, steal, prevaricate, misrepresent in almost any cause
+and for any purpose. Great lawyers were merely great unscrupulous
+subtleties, like himself, sitting back in dark, close-woven lairs like
+spiders and awaiting the approach of unwary human flies. Life was at
+best a dark, inhuman, unkind, unsympathetic struggle built of cruelties
+and the law, and its lawyers were the most despicable representatives
+of the whole unsatisfactory mess. Still he used law as he would use any
+other trap or weapon to rid him of a human ill; and as for lawyers, he
+picked them up as he would any club or knife wherewith to defend
+himself. He had no particular respect for any of them—not even Harper
+Steger, though he liked him. They were tools to be used—knives, keys,
+clubs, anything you will; but nothing more. When they were through they
+were paid and dropped—put aside and forgotten. As for judges, they were
+merely incompetent lawyers, at a rule, who were shelved by some
+fortunate turn of chance, and who would not, in all likelihood, be as
+efficient as the lawyers who pleaded before them if they were put in
+the same position. He had no respect for judges—he knew too much about
+them. He knew how often they were sycophants, political climbers,
+political hacks, tools, time-servers, judicial door-mats lying before
+the financially and politically great and powerful who used them as
+such. Judges were fools, as were most other people in this dusty,
+shifty world. Pah! His inscrutable eyes took them all in and gave no
+sign. His only safety lay, he thought, in the magnificent subtley of
+his own brain, and nowhere else. You could not convince Cowperwood of
+any great or inherent virtue in this mortal scheme of things. He knew
+too much; he knew himself.
+
+When the judge finally cleared away the various minor motions pending,
+he ordered his clerk to call the case of the City of Philadelphia
+versus Frank A. Cowperwood, which was done in a clear voice. Both
+Dennis Shannon, the new district attorney, and Steger, were on their
+feet at once. Steger and Cowperwood, together with Shannon and Strobik,
+who had now come in and was standing as the representative of the State
+of Pennsylvania—the complainant—had seated themselves at the long table
+inside the railing which inclosed the space before the judge’s desk.
+Steger proposed to Judge Payderson, for effect’s sake more than
+anything else, that this indictment be quashed, but was overruled.
+
+A jury to try the case was now quickly impaneled—twelve men out of the
+usual list called to serve for the month—and was then ready to be
+challenged by the opposing counsel. The business of impaneling a jury
+was a rather simple thing so far as this court was concerned. It
+consisted in the mandarin-like clerk taking the names of all the jurors
+called to serve in this court for the month—some fifty in all—and
+putting them, each written on a separate slip of paper, in a whirling
+drum, spinning it around a few times, and then lifting out the first
+slip which his hand encountered, thus glorifying chance and settling on
+who should be juror No. 1. His hand reaching in twelve times drew out
+the names of the twelve jurymen, who as their names were called, were
+ordered to take their places in the jury-box.
+
+Cowperwood observed this proceeding with a great deal of interest. What
+could be more important than the men who were going to try him? The
+process was too swift for accurate judgment, but he received a faint
+impression of middle-class men. One man in particular, however, an old
+man of sixty-five, with iron-gray hair and beard, shaggy eyebrows,
+sallow complexion, and stooped shoulders, struck him as having that
+kindness of temperament and breadth of experience which might under
+certain circumstances be argumentatively swayed in his favor. Another,
+a small, sharp-nosed, sharp-chinned commercial man of some kind, he
+immediately disliked.
+
+“I hope I don’t have to have that man on my jury,” he said to Steger,
+quietly.
+
+“You don’t,” replied Steger. “I’ll challenge him. We have the right to
+fifteen peremptory challenges on a case like this, and so has the
+prosecution.”
+
+When the jury-box was finally full, the two lawyers waited for the
+clerk to bring them the small board upon which slips of paper bearing
+the names of the twelve jurors were fastened in rows in order of their
+selection—jurors one, two, and three being in the first row; four,
+five, and six in the second, and so on. It being the prerogative of the
+attorney for the prosecution to examine and challenge the jurors first,
+Shannon arose, and, taking the board, began to question them as to
+their trades or professions, their knowledge of the case before the
+court, and their possible prejudice for or against the prisoner.
+
+It was the business of both Steger and Shannon to find men who knew a
+little something of finance and could understand a peculiar situation
+of this kind without any of them (looking at it from Steger’s point of
+view) having any prejudice against a man’s trying to assist himself by
+reasonable means to weather a financial storm or (looking at it from
+Shannon’s point of view) having any sympathy with such means, if they
+bore about them the least suspicion of chicanery, jugglery, or
+dishonest manipulation of any kind. As both Shannon and Steger in due
+course observed for themselves in connection with this jury, it was
+composed of that assorted social fry which the dragnets of the courts,
+cast into the ocean of the city, bring to the surface for purposes of
+this sort. It was made up in the main of managers, agents, tradesmen,
+editors, engineers, architects, furriers, grocers, traveling salesmen,
+authors, and every other kind of working citizen whose experience had
+fitted him for service in proceedings of this character. Rarely would
+you have found a man of great distinction; but very frequently a group
+of men who were possessed of no small modicum of that interesting
+quality known as hard common sense.
+
+Throughout all this Cowperwood sat quietly examining the men. A young
+florist, with a pale face, a wide speculative forehead, and anemic
+hands, struck him as being sufficiently impressionable to his personal
+charm to be worth while. He whispered as much to Steger. There was a
+shrewd Jew, a furrier, who was challenged because he had read all of
+the news of the panic and had lost two thousand dollars in
+street-railway stocks. There was a stout wholesale grocer, with red
+cheeks, blue eyes, and flaxen hair, who Cowperwood said he thought was
+stubborn. He was eliminated. There was a thin, dapper manager of a
+small retail clothing store, very anxious to be excused, who declared,
+falsely, that he did not believe in swearing by the Bible. Judge
+Payderson, eyeing him severely, let him go. There were some ten more in
+all—men who knew of Cowperwood, men who admitted they were prejudiced,
+men who were hidebound Republicans and resentful of this crime, men who
+knew Stener—who were pleasantly eliminated.
+
+By twelve o’clock, however, a jury reasonably satisfactory to both
+sides had been chosen.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLI
+
+
+At two o’clock sharp Dennis Shannon, as district attorney, began his
+opening address. He stated in a very simple, kindly way—for he had a
+most engaging manner—that the indictment as here presented charged Mr.
+Frank A. Cowperwood, who was sitting at the table inside the jury-rail,
+first with larceny, second with embezzlement, third with larceny as
+bailee, and fourth with embezzlement of a certain sum of money—a
+specific sum, to wit, sixty thousand dollars—on a check given him
+(drawn to his order) October 9, 1871, which was intended to reimburse
+him for a certain number of certificates of city loan, which he as
+agent or bailee of the check was supposed to have purchased for the
+city sinking-fund on the order of the city treasurer (under some form
+of agreement which had been in existence between them, and which had
+been in force for some time)—said fund being intended to take up such
+certificates as they might mature in the hands of holders and be
+presented for payment—for which purpose, however, the check in question
+had never been used.
+
+“Now, gentlemen,” said Mr. Shannon, very quietly, “before we go into
+this very simple question of whether Mr. Cowperwood did or did not on
+the date in question get from the city treasurer sixty thousand
+dollars, for which he made no honest return, let me explain to you just
+what the people mean when they charge him first with larceny, second
+with embezzlement, third with larceny as bailee, and fourth with
+embezzlement on a check. Now, as you see, there are four counts here,
+as we lawyers term them, and the reason there are four counts is as
+follows: A man may be guilty of larceny and embezzlement at the same
+time, or of larceny or embezzlement separately, and without being
+guilty of the other, and the district attorney representing the people
+might be uncertain, not that he was not guilty of both, but that it
+might not be possible to present the evidence under one count, so as to
+insure his adequate punishment for a crime which in a way involved
+both. In such cases, gentlemen, it is customary to indict a man under
+separate counts, as has been done in this case. Now, the four counts in
+this case, in a way, overlap and confirm each other, and it will be
+your duty, after we have explained their nature and character and
+presented the evidence, to say whether the defendant is guilty on one
+count or the other, or on two or three of the counts, or on all four,
+just as you see fit and proper—or, to put it in a better way, as the
+evidence warrants. Larceny, as you may or may not know, is the act of
+taking away the goods or chattels of another without his knowledge or
+consent, and embezzlement is the fraudulent appropriation to one’s own
+use of what is intrusted to one’s care and management, especially
+money. Larceny as bailee, on the other hand, is simply a more definite
+form of larceny wherein one fixes the act of carrying away the goods of
+another without his knowledge or consent on the person to whom the
+goods were delivered in trust that is, the agent or bailee.
+Embezzlement on a check, which constitutes the fourth charge, is simply
+a more definite form of fixing charge number two in an exact way and
+signifies appropriating the money on a check given for a certain
+definite purpose. All of these charges, as you can see, gentlemen, are
+in a way synonymous. They overlap and overlay each other. The people,
+through their representative, the district attorney, contend that Mr.
+Cowperwood, the defendant here, is guilty of all four charges. So now,
+gentlemen, we will proceed to the history of this crime, which proves
+to me as an individual that this defendant has one of the most subtle
+and dangerous minds of the criminal financier type, and we hope by
+witnesses to prove that to you, also.”
+
+Shannon, because the rules of evidence and court procedure here
+admitted of no interruption of the prosecution in presenting a case,
+then went on to describe from his own point of view how Cowperwood had
+first met Stener; how he had wormed himself into his confidence; how
+little financial knowledge Stener had, and so forth; coming down
+finally to the day the check for sixty thousand dollars was given
+Cowperwood; how Stener, as treasurer, claimed that he knew nothing of
+its delivery, which constituted the base of the charge of larceny; how
+Cowperwood, having it, misappropriated the certificates supposed to
+have been purchased for the sinking-fund, if they were purchased at
+all—all of which Shannon said constituted the crimes with which the
+defendant was charged, and of which he was unquestionably guilty.
+
+“We have direct and positive evidence of all that we have thus far
+contended, gentlemen,” Mr. Shannon concluded violently. “This is not a
+matter of hearsay or theory, but of fact. You will be shown by direct
+testimony which cannot be shaken just how it was done. If, after you
+have heard all this, you still think this man is innocent—that he did
+not commit the crimes with which he is charged—it is your business to
+acquit him. On the other hand, if you think the witnesses whom we shall
+put on the stand are telling the truth, then it is your business to
+convict him, to find a verdict for the people as against the defendant.
+I thank you for your attention.”
+
+The jurors stirred comfortably and took positions of ease, in which
+they thought they were to rest for the time; but their idle comfort was
+of short duration for Shannon now called out the name of George W.
+Stener, who came hurrying forward very pale, very flaccid, very
+tired-looking. His eyes, as he took his seat in the witness-chair,
+laying his hand on the Bible and swearing to tell the truth, roved in a
+restless, nervous manner.
+
+His voice was a little weak as he started to give his testimony. He
+told first how he had met Cowperwood in the early months of 1866—he
+could not remember the exact day; it was during his first term as city
+treasurer—he had been elected to the office in the fall of 1864. He had
+been troubled about the condition of city loan, which was below par,
+and which could not be sold by the city legally at anything but par.
+Cowperwood had been recommended to him by some one—Mr. Strobik, he
+believed, though he couldn’t be sure. It was the custom of city
+treasurers to employ brokers, or a broker, in a crisis of this kind,
+and he was merely following what had been the custom. He went on to
+describe, under steady promptings and questions from the incisive mind
+of Shannon, just what the nature of this first conversation was—he
+remembered it fairly well; how Mr. Cowperwood had said he thought he
+could do what was wanted; how he had gone away and drawn up a plan or
+thought one out; and how he had returned and laid it before Stener.
+Under Shannon’s skillful guidance Stener elucidated just what this
+scheme was—which wasn’t exactly so flattering to the honesty of men in
+general as it was a testimonial to their subtlety and skill.
+
+After much discussion of Stener’s and Cowperwood’s relations the story
+finally got down to the preceding October, when by reason of
+companionship, long business understanding, mutually prosperous
+relationship, etc., the place had been reached where, it was explained,
+Cowperwood was not only handling several millions of city loan
+annually, buying and selling for the city and trading in it generally,
+but in the bargain had secured one five hundred thousand dollars’ worth
+of city money at an exceedingly low rate of interest, which was being
+invested for himself and Stener in profitable street-car ventures of
+one kind and another. Stener was not anxious to be altogether clear on
+this point; but Shannon, seeing that he was later to prosecute Stener
+himself for this very crime of embezzlement, and that Steger would soon
+follow in cross-examination, was not willing to let him be hazy.
+Shannon wanted to fix Cowperwood in the minds of the jury as a clever,
+tricky person, and by degrees he certainly managed to indicate a very
+subtle-minded man. Occasionally, as one sharp point after another of
+Cowperwood’s skill was brought out and made moderately clear, one juror
+or another turned to look at Cowperwood. And he noting this and in
+order to impress them all as favorably as possible merely gazed
+Stenerward with a steady air of intelligence and comprehension.
+
+The examination now came down to the matter of the particular check for
+sixty thousand dollars which Albert Stires had handed Cowperwood on the
+afternoon—late—of October 9, 1871. Shannon showed Stener the check
+itself. Had he ever seen it? Yes. Where? In the office of District
+Attorney Pettie on October 20th, or thereabouts last. Was that the
+first time he had seen it? Yes. Had he ever heard about it before then?
+Yes. When? On October 10th last. Would he kindly tell the jury in his
+own way just how and under what circumstances he first heard of it
+then? Stener twisted uncomfortably in his chair. It was a hard thing to
+do. It was not a pleasant commentary on his own character and degree of
+moral stamina, to say the least. However, he cleared his throat again
+and began a description of that small but bitter section of his life’s
+drama in which Cowperwood, finding himself in a tight place and about
+to fail, had come to him at his office and demanded that he loan him
+three hundred thousand dollars more in one lump sum.
+
+There was considerable bickering just at this point between Steger and
+Shannon, for the former was very anxious to make it appear that Stener
+was lying out of the whole cloth about this. Steger got in his
+objection at this point, and created a considerable diversion from the
+main theme, because Stener kept saying he “thought” or he “believed.”
+
+“Object!” shouted Steger, repeatedly. “I move that that be stricken
+from the record as incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial. The witness
+is not allowed to say what he thinks, and the prosecution knows it very
+well.”
+
+“Your honor,” insisted Shannon, “I am doing the best I can to have the
+witness tell a plain, straightforward story, and I think that it is
+obvious that he is doing so.”
+
+“Object!” reiterated Steger, vociferously. “Your honor, I insist that
+the district attorney has no right to prejudice the minds of the jury
+by flattering estimates of the sincerity of the witness. What he thinks
+of the witness and his sincerity is of no importance in this case. I
+must ask that your honor caution him plainly in this matter.”
+
+“Objection sustained,” declared Judge Payderson, “the prosecution will
+please be more explicit”; and Shannon went on with his case.
+
+Stener’s testimony, in one respect, was most important, for it made
+plain what Cowperwood did not want brought out—namely, that he and
+Stener had had a dispute before this; that Stener had distinctly told
+Cowperwood that he would not loan him any more money; that Cowperwood
+had told Stener, on the day before he secured this check, and again on
+that very day, that he was in a very desperate situation financially,
+and that if he were not assisted to the extent of three hundred
+thousand dollars he would fail, and that then both he and Stener would
+be ruined. On the morning of this day, according to Stener, he had sent
+Cowperwood a letter ordering him to cease purchasing city loan
+certificates for the sinking-fund. It was after their conversation on
+the same afternoon that Cowperwood surreptitiously secured the check
+for sixty thousand dollars from Albert Stires without his (Stener’s)
+knowledge; and it was subsequent to this latter again that Stener,
+sending Albert to demand the return of the check, was refused, though
+the next day at five o’clock in the afternoon Cowperwood made an
+assignment. And the certificates for which the check had been purloined
+were not in the sinking-fund as they should have been. This was dark
+testimony for Cowperwood.
+
+If any one imagines that all this was done without many vehement
+objections and exceptions made and taken by Steger, and subsequently
+when he was cross-examining Stener, by Shannon, he errs greatly. At
+times the chamber was coruscating with these two gentlemen’s bitter
+wrangles, and his honor was compelled to hammer his desk with his
+gavel, and to threaten both with contempt of court, in order to bring
+them to a sense of order. Indeed while Payderson was highly incensed,
+the jury was amused and interested.
+
+“You gentlemen will have to stop this, or I tell you now that you will
+both be heavily fined. This is a court of law, not a bar-room. Mr.
+Steger, I expect you to apologize to me and your colleague at once. Mr.
+Shannon, I must ask that you use less aggressive methods. Your manner
+is offensive to me. It is not becoming to a court of law. I will not
+caution either of you again.”
+
+Both lawyers apologized as lawyers do on such occasions, but it really
+made but little difference. Their individual attitudes and moods
+continued about as before.
+
+“What did he say to you,” asked Shannon of Stener, after one of these
+troublesome interruptions, “on that occasion, October 9th last, when he
+came to you and demanded the loan of an additional three hundred
+thousand dollars? Give his words as near as you can remember—exactly,
+if possible.”
+
+“Object!” interposed Steger, vigorously. “His exact words are not
+recorded anywhere except in Mr. Stener’s memory, and his memory of them
+cannot be admitted in this case. The witness has testified to the
+general facts.”
+
+Judge Payderson smiled grimly. “Objection overruled,” he returned.
+
+“Exception!” shouted Steger.
+
+“He said, as near as I can remember,” replied Stener, drumming on the
+arms of the witness-chair in a nervous way, “that if I didn’t give him
+three hundred thousand dollars he was going to fail, and I would be
+poor and go to the penitentiary.”
+
+“Object!” shouted Stager, leaping to his feet. “Your honor, I object to
+the whole manner in which this examination is being conducted by the
+prosecution. The evidence which the district attorney is here trying to
+extract from the uncertain memory of the witness is in defiance of all
+law and precedent, and has no definite bearing on the facts of the
+case, and could not disprove or substantiate whether Mr. Cowperwood
+thought or did not think that he was going to fail. Mr. Stener might
+give one version of this conversation or any conversation that took
+place at this time, and Mr. Cowperwood another. As a matter of fact,
+their versions are different. I see no point in Mr. Shannon’s line of
+inquiry, unless it is to prejudice the jury’s minds towards accepting
+certain allegations which the prosecution is pleased to make and which
+it cannot possibly substantiate. I think you ought to caution the
+witness to testify only in regard to things that he recalls exactly,
+not to what he thinks he remembers; and for my part I think that all
+that has been testified to in the last five minutes might be well
+stricken out.”
+
+“Objection overruled,” replied Judge Payderson, rather indifferently;
+and Steger who had been talking merely to overcome the weight of
+Stener’s testimony in the minds of the jury, sat down.
+
+Shannon once more approached Stener.
+
+“Now, as near as you can remember, Mr. Stener, I wish you would tell
+the jury what else it was that Mr. Cowperwood said on that occasion. He
+certainly didn’t stop with the remark that you would be ruined and go
+to the penitentiary. Wasn’t there other language that was employed on
+that occasion?”
+
+“He said, as far as I can remember,” replied Stener, “that there were a
+lot of political schemers who were trying to frighten me, that if I
+didn’t give him three hundred thousand dollars we would both be ruined,
+and that I might as well be tried for stealing a sheep as a lamb.”
+
+“Ha!” yelled Shannon. “He said that, did he?”
+
+“Yes, sir; he did,” said Stener.
+
+“How did he say it, exactly? What were his exact words?” Shannon
+demanded, emphatically, pointing a forceful forefinger at Stener in
+order to key him up to a clear memory of what had transpired.
+
+“Well, as near as I can remember, he said just that,” replied Stener,
+vaguely. “You might as well be tried for stealing a sheep as a lamb.”
+
+“Exactly!” exclaimed Shannon, whirling around past the jury to look at
+Cowperwood. “I thought so.”
+
+“Pure pyrotechnics, your honor,” said Steger, rising to his feet on the
+instant. “All intended to prejudice the minds of the jury. Acting. I
+wish you would caution the counsel for the prosecution to confine
+himself to the evidence in hand, and not act for the benefit of his
+case.”
+
+The spectators smiled; and Judge Payderson, noting it, frowned
+severely. “Do you make that as an objection, Mr. Steger?” he asked.
+
+“I certainly do, your honor,” insisted Steger, resourcefully.
+
+“Objection overruled. Neither counsel for the prosecution nor for the
+defense is limited to a peculiar routine of expression.”
+
+Steger himself was ready to smile, but he did not dare to.
+
+Cowperwood fearing the force of such testimony and regretting it, still
+looked at Stener, pityingly. The feebleness of the man; the weakness of
+the man; the pass to which his cowardice had brought them both!
+
+When Shannon was through bringing out this unsatisfactory data, Steger
+took Stener in hand; but he could not make as much out of him as he
+hoped. In so far as this particular situation was concerned, Stener was
+telling the exact truth; and it is hard to weaken the effect of the
+exact truth by any subtlety of interpretation, though it can,
+sometimes, be done. With painstaking care Steger went over all the
+ground of Stener’s long relationship with Cowperwood, and tried to make
+it appear that Cowperwood was invariably the disinterested agent—not
+the ringleader in a subtle, really criminal adventure. It was hard to
+do, but he made a fine impression. Still the jury listened with
+skeptical minds. It might not be fair to punish Cowperwood for seizing
+with avidity upon a splendid chance to get rich quick, they thought;
+but it certainly was not worth while to throw a veil of innocence over
+such palpable human cupidity. Finally, both lawyers were through with
+Stener for the time being, anyhow, and then Albert Stires was called to
+the stand.
+
+He was the same thin, pleasant, alert, rather agreeable soul that he
+had been in the heyday of his clerkly prosperity—a little paler now,
+but not otherwise changed. His small property had been saved for him by
+Cowperwood, who had advised Steger to inform the Municipal Reform
+Association that Stires’ bondsmen were attempting to sequestrate it for
+their own benefit, when actually it should go to the city if there were
+any real claim against him—which there was not. That watchful
+organization had issued one of its numerous reports covering this
+point, and Albert had had the pleasure of seeing Strobik and the others
+withdraw in haste. Naturally he was grateful to Cowperwood, even though
+once he had been compelled to cry in vain in his presence. He was
+anxious now to do anything he could to help the banker, but his
+naturally truthful disposition prevented him from telling anything
+except the plain facts, which were partly beneficial and partly not.
+
+Stires testified that he recalled Cowperwood’s saying that he had
+purchased the certificates, that he was entitled to the money, that
+Stener was unduly frightened, and that no harm would come to him,
+Albert. He identified certain memoranda in the city treasurer’s books,
+which were produced, as being accurate, and others in Cowperwood’s
+books, which were also produced, as being corroborative. His testimony
+as to Stener’s astonishment on discovering that his chief clerk had
+given Cowperwood a check was against the latter; but Cowperwood hoped
+to overcome the effect of this by his own testimony later.
+
+Up to now both Steger and Cowperwood felt that they were doing fairly
+well, and that they need not be surprised if they won their case.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLII
+
+
+The trial moved on. One witness for the prosecution after another
+followed until the State had built up an arraignment that satisfied
+Shannon that he had established Cowperwood’s guilt, whereupon he
+announced that he rested. Steger at once arose and began a long
+argument for the dismissal of the case on the ground that there was no
+evidence to show this, that and the other, but Judge Payderson would
+have none of it. He knew how important the matter was in the local
+political world.
+
+“I don’t think you had better go into all that now, Mr. Steger,” he
+said, wearily, after allowing him to proceed a reasonable distance. “I
+am familiar with the custom of the city, and the indictment as here
+made does not concern the custom of the city. Your argument is with the
+jury, not with me. I couldn’t enter into that now. You may renew your
+motion at the close of the defendants’ case. Motion denied.”
+
+District-Attorney Shannon, who had been listening attentively, sat
+down. Steger, seeing there was no chance to soften the judge’s mind by
+any subtlety of argument, returned to Cowperwood, who smiled at the
+result.
+
+“We’ll just have to take our chances with the jury,” he announced.
+
+“I was sure of it,” replied Cowperwood.
+
+Steger then approached the jury, and, having outlined the case briefly
+from his angle of observation, continued by telling them what he was
+sure the evidence would show from his point of view.
+
+“As a matter of fact, gentlemen, there is no essential difference in
+the evidence which the prosecution can present and that which we, the
+defense, can present. We are not going to dispute that Mr. Cowperwood
+received a check from Mr. Stener for sixty thousand dollars, or that he
+failed to put the certificate of city loan which that sum of money
+represented, and to which he was entitled in payment as agent, in the
+sinking-fund, as the prosecution now claims he should have done; but we
+are going to claim and prove also beyond the shadow of a reasonable
+doubt that he had a right, as the agent of the city, doing business
+with the city through its treasury department for four years, to
+withhold, under an agreement which he had with the city treasurer, all
+payments of money and all deposits of certificates in the sinking-fund
+until the first day of each succeeding month—the first month following
+any given transaction. As a matter of fact we can and will bring many
+traders and bankers who have had dealings with the city treasury in the
+past in just this way to prove this. The prosecution is going to ask
+you to believe that Mr. Cowperwood knew at the time he received this
+check that he was going to fail; that he did not buy the certificates,
+as he claimed, with the view of placing them in the sinking-fund; and
+that, knowing he was going to fail, and that he could not subsequently
+deposit them, he deliberately went to Mr. Albert Stires, Mr. Stener’s
+secretary, told him that he had purchased such certificates, and on the
+strength of a falsehood, implied if not actually spoken, secured the
+check, and walked away.
+
+“Now, gentlemen, I am not going to enter into a long-winded discussion
+of these points at this time, since the testimony is going to show very
+rapidly what the facts are. We have a number of witnesses here, and we
+are all anxious to have them heard. What I am going to ask you to
+remember is that there is not one scintilla of testimony outside of
+that which may possibly be given by Mr. George W. Stener, which will
+show either that Mr. Cowperwood knew, at the time he called on the city
+treasurer, that he was going to fail, or that he had not purchased the
+certificates in question, or that he had not the right to withhold them
+from the sinking-fund as long as he pleased up to the first of the
+month, the time he invariably struck a balance with the city. Mr.
+Stener, the ex-city treasurer, may possibly testify one way. Mr.
+Cowperwood, on his own behalf, will testify another. It will then be
+for you gentlemen to decide between them, to decide which one you
+prefer to believe—Mr. George W. Stener, the ex-city treasurer, the
+former commercial associate of Mr. Cowperwood, who, after years and
+years of profit, solely because of conditions of financial stress,
+fire, and panic, preferred to turn on his one-time associate from whose
+labors he had reaped so much profit, or Mr. Frank A. Cowperwood, the
+well-known banker and financier, who did his best to weather the storm
+alone, who fulfilled to the letter every agreement he ever had with the
+city, who has even until this hour been busy trying to remedy the
+unfair financial difficulties forced upon him by fire and panic, and
+who only yesterday made an offer to the city that, if he were allowed
+to continue in uninterrupted control of his affairs he would gladly
+repay as quickly as possible every dollar of his indebtedness (which is
+really not all his), including the five hundred thousand dollars under
+discussion between him and Mr. Stener and the city, and so prove by his
+works, not talk, that there was no basis for this unfair suspicion of
+his motives. As you perhaps surmise, the city has not chosen to accept
+his offer, and I shall try and tell you why later, gentlemen. For the
+present we will proceed with the testimony, and for the defense all I
+ask is that you give very close attention to all that is testified to
+here to-day. Listen very carefully to Mr. W. C. Davison when he is put
+on the stand. Listen equally carefully to Mr. Cowperwood when we call
+him to testify. Follow the other testimony closely, and then you will
+be able to judge for yourselves. See if you can distinguish a just
+motive for this prosecution. I can’t. I am very much obliged to you for
+listening to me, gentlemen, so attentively.”
+
+He then put on Arthur Rivers, who had acted for Cowperwood on ’change
+as special agent during the panic, to testify to the large quantities
+of city loan he had purchased to stay the market; and then after him,
+Cowperwood’s brothers, Edward and Joseph, who testified to instructions
+received from Rivers as to buying and selling city loan on that
+occasion—principally buying.
+
+The next witness was President W. C. Davison of the Girard National
+Bank. He was a large man physically, not so round of body as full and
+broad. His shoulders and chest were ample. He had a big blond head,
+with an ample breadth of forehead, which was high and sane-looking. He
+had a thick, squat nose, which, however, was forceful, and thin, firm,
+even lips. There was the faintest touch of cynical humor in his hard
+blue eyes at times; but mostly he was friendly, alert, placid-looking,
+without seeming in the least sentimental or even kindly. His business,
+as one could see plainly, was to insist on hard financial facts, and
+one could see also how he would naturally be drawn to Frank Algernon
+Cowperwood without being mentally dominated or upset by him. As he took
+the chair very quietly, and yet one might say significantly, it was
+obvious that he felt that this sort of legal-financial palaver was
+above the average man and beneath the dignity of a true financier—in
+other words, a bother. The drowsy Sparkheaver holding up a Bible beside
+him for him to swear by might as well have been a block of wood. His
+oath was a personal matter with him. It was good business to tell the
+truth at times. His testimony was very direct and very simple.
+
+He had known Mr. Frank Algernon Cowperwood for nearly ten years. He had
+done business with or through him nearly all of that time. He knew
+nothing of his personal relations with Mr. Stener, and did not know Mr.
+Stener personally. As for the particular check of sixty thousand
+dollars—yes, he had seen it before. It had come into the bank on
+October 10th along with other collateral to offset an overdraft on the
+part of Cowperwood & Co. It was placed to the credit of Cowperwood &
+Co. on the books of the bank, and the bank secured the cash through the
+clearing-house. No money was drawn out of the bank by Cowperwood & Co.
+after that to create an overdraft. The bank’s account with Cowperwood
+was squared.
+
+Nevertheless, Mr. Cowperwood might have drawn heavily, and nothing
+would have been thought of it. Mr. Davison did not know that Mr.
+Cowperwood was going to fail—did not suppose that he could, so quickly.
+He had frequently overdrawn his account with the bank; as a matter of
+fact, it was the regular course of his business to overdraw it. It kept
+his assets actively in use, which was the height of good business. His
+overdrafts were protected by collateral, however, and it was his custom
+to send bundles of collateral or checks, or both, which were variously
+distributed to keep things straight. Mr. Cowperwood’s account was the
+largest and most active in the bank, Mr. Davison kindly volunteered.
+When Mr. Cowperwood had failed there had been over ninety thousand
+dollars’ worth of certificates of city loan in the bank’s possession
+which Mr Cowperwood had sent there as collateral. Shannon, on
+cross-examination, tried to find out for the sake of the effect on the
+jury, whether Mr. Davison was not for some ulterior motive especially
+favorable to Cowperwood. It was not possible for him to do that. Steger
+followed, and did his best to render the favorable points made by Mr.
+Davison in Cowperwood’s behalf perfectly clear to the jury by having
+him repeat them. Shannon objected, of course, but it was of no use.
+Steger managed to make his point.
+
+He now decided to have Cowperwood take the stand, and at the mention of
+his name in this connection the whole courtroom bristled.
+
+Cowperwood came forward briskly and quickly. He was so calm, so jaunty,
+so defiant of life, and yet so courteous to it. These lawyers, this
+jury, this straw-and-water judge, these machinations of fate, did not
+basically disturb or humble or weaken him. He saw through the mental
+equipment of the jury at once. He wanted to assist his counsel in
+disturbing and confusing Shannon, but his reason told him that only an
+indestructible fabric of fact or seeming would do it. He believed in
+the financial rightness of the thing he had done. He was entitled to do
+it. Life was war—particularly financial life; and strategy was its
+keynote, its duty, its necessity. Why should he bother about petty,
+picayune minds which could not understand this? He went over his
+history for Steger and the jury, and put the sanest, most comfortable
+light on it that he could. He had not gone to Mr. Stener in the first
+place, he said—he had been called. He had not urged Mr. Stener to
+anything. He had merely shown him and his friends financial
+possibilities which they were only too eager to seize upon. And they
+had seized upon them. (It was not possible for Shannon to discover at
+this period how subtly he had organized his street-car companies so
+that he could have “shaken out” Stener and his friends without their
+being able to voice a single protest, so he talked of these things as
+opportunities which he had made for Stener and others. Shannon was not
+a financier, neither was Steger. They had to believe in a way, though
+they doubted it, partly—particularly Shannon.) He was not responsible
+for the custom prevailing in the office of the city treasurer, he said.
+He was a banker and broker.
+
+The jury looked at him, and believed all except this matter of the
+sixty-thousand-dollar check. When it came to that he explained it all
+plausibly enough. When he had gone to see Stener those several last
+days, he had not fancied that he was really going to fail. He had asked
+Stener for some money, it is true—not so very much, all things
+considered—one hundred and fifty thousand dollars; but, as Stener
+should have testified, he (Cowperwood) was not disturbed in his manner.
+Stener had merely been one resource of his. He was satisfied at that
+time that he had many others. He had not used the forceful language or
+made the urgent appeal which Stener said he had, although he had
+pointed out to Stener that it was a mistake to become panic-stricken,
+also to withhold further credit. It was true that Stener was his
+easiest, his quickest resource, but not his only one. He thought, as a
+matter of fact, that his credit would be greatly extended by his
+principal money friends if necessary, and that he would have ample time
+to patch up his affairs and keep things going until the storm should
+blow over. He had told Stener of his extended purchase of city loan to
+stay the market on the first day of the panic, and of the fact that
+sixty thousand dollars was due him. Stener had made no objection. It
+was just possible that he was too mentally disturbed at the time to pay
+close attention. After that, to his, Cowperwood’s, surprise, unexpected
+pressure on great financial houses from unexpected directions had
+caused them to be not willingly but unfortunately severe with him. This
+pressure, coming collectively the next day, had compelled him to close
+his doors, though he had not really expected to up to the last moment.
+His call for the sixty-thousand-dollar check at the time had been
+purely fortuitous. He needed the money, of course, but it was due him,
+and his clerks were all very busy. He merely asked for and took it
+personally to save time. Stener knew if it had been refused him he
+would have brought suit. The matter of depositing city loan
+certificates in the sinking-fund, when purchased for the city, was
+something to which he never gave any personal attention whatsoever. His
+bookkeeper, Mr. Stapley, attended to all that. He did not know, as a
+matter of fact, that they had not been deposited. (This was a barefaced
+lie. He did know.) As for the check being turned over to the Girard
+National Bank, that was fortuitous. It might just as well have been
+turned over to some other bank if the conditions had been different.
+
+Thus on and on he went, answering all of Steger’s and Shannon’s
+searching questions with the most engaging frankness, and you could
+have sworn from the solemnity with which he took it all—the serious
+business attention—that he was the soul of so-called commercial honor.
+And to say truly, he did believe in the justice as well as the
+necessity and the importance of all that he had done and now described.
+He wanted the jury to see it as he saw it—put itself in his place and
+sympathize with him.
+
+He was through finally, and the effect on the jury of his testimony and
+his personality was peculiar. Philip Moultrie, juror No. 1, decided
+that Cowperwood was lying. He could not see how it was possible that he
+could not know the day before that he was going to fail. He must have
+known, he thought. Anyhow, the whole series of transactions between him
+and Stener seemed deserving of some punishment, and all during this
+testimony he was thinking how, when he got in the jury-room, he would
+vote guilty. He even thought of some of the arguments he would use to
+convince the others that Cowperwood was guilty. Juror No. 2, on the
+contrary, Simon Glassberg, a clothier, thought he understood how it all
+came about, and decided to vote for acquittal. He did not think
+Cowperwood was innocent, but he did not think he deserved to be
+punished. Juror No. 3, Fletcher Norton, an architect, thought
+Cowperwood was guilty, but at the same time that he was too talented to
+be sent to prison. Juror No. 4, Charles Hillegan, an Irishman, a
+contractor, and a somewhat religious-minded person, thought Cowperwood
+was guilty and ought to be punished. Juror No. 5, Philip Lukash, a coal
+merchant, thought he was guilty. Juror No. 6, Benjamin Fraser, a mining
+expert, thought he was probably guilty, but he could not be sure.
+Uncertain what he would do, juror No. 7, J. J. Bridges, a broker in
+Third Street, small, practical, narrow, thought Cowperwood was shrewd
+and guilty and deserved to be punished. He would vote for his
+punishment. Juror No. 8, Guy E. Tripp, general manager of a small
+steamboat company, was uncertain. Juror No. 9, Joseph Tisdale, a
+retired glue manufacturer, thought Cowperwood was probably guilty as
+charged, but to Tisdale it was no crime. Cowperwood was entitled to do
+as he had done under the circumstances. Tisdale would vote for his
+acquittal. Juror No. 10, Richard Marsh, a young florist, was for
+Cowperwood in a sentimental way. He had, as a matter of fact, no real
+convictions. Juror No. 11, Richard Webber, a grocer, small financially,
+but heavy physically, was for Cowperwood’s conviction. He thought him
+guilty. Juror No. 12, Washington B. Thomas, a wholesale flour merchant,
+thought Cowperwood was guilty, but believed in a recommendation to
+mercy after pronouncing him so. Men ought to be reformed, was his
+slogan.
+
+So they stood, and so Cowperwood left them, wondering whether any of
+his testimony had had a favorable effect.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIII
+
+
+Since it is the privilege of the lawyer for the defense to address the
+jury first, Steger bowed politely to his colleague and came forward.
+Putting his hands on the jury-box rail, he began in a very quiet,
+modest, but impressive way:
+
+“Gentlemen of the jury, my client, Mr. Frank Algernon Cowperwood, a
+well-known banker and financier of this city, doing business in Third
+Street, is charged by the State of Pennsylvania, represented by the
+district attorney of this district, with fraudulently transferring from
+the treasury of the city of Philadelphia to his own purse the sum of
+sixty thousand dollars, in the form of a check made out to his order,
+dated October 9, 1871, and by him received from one Albert Stires, the
+private secretary and head bookkeeper of the treasurer of this city, at
+the time in question. Now, gentlemen, what are the facts in this
+connection? You have heard the various witnesses and know the general
+outlines of the story. Take the testimony of George W. Stener, to begin
+with. He tells you that sometime back in the year 1866 he was greatly
+in need of some one, some banker or broker, who would tell him how to
+bring city loan, which was selling very low at the time, to par—who
+would not only tell him this, but proceed to demonstrate that his
+knowledge was accurate by doing it. Mr. Stener was an inexperienced man
+at the time in the matter of finance. Mr. Cowperwood was an active
+young man with an enviable record as a broker and a trader on ’change.
+He proceeded to demonstrate to Mr. Stener not only in theory, but in
+fact, how this thing of bringing city loan to par could be done. He
+made an arrangement at that time with Mr. Stener, the details of which
+you have heard from Mr. Stener himself, the result of which was that a
+large amount of city loan was turned over to Mr. Cowperwood by Mr.
+Stener for sale, and by adroit manipulation—methods of buying and
+selling which need not be gone into here, but which are perfectly sane
+and legitimate in the world in which Mr. Cowperwood operated, did bring
+that loan to par, and kept it there year after year as you have all
+heard here testified to.
+
+“Now what is the bone of contention here, gentlemen, the significant
+fact which brings Mr. Stener into this court at this time charging his
+old-time agent and broker with larceny and embezzlement, and alleging
+that he has transferred to his own use without a shadow of return sixty
+thousand dollars of the money which belongs to the city treasury? What
+is it? Is it that Mr. Cowperwood secretly, with great stealth, as it
+were, at some time or other, unknown to Mr. Stener or to his
+assistants, entered the office of the treasurer and forcibly, and with
+criminal intent, carried away sixty thousand dollars’ worth of the
+city’s money? Not at all. The charge is, as you have heard the district
+attorney explain, that Mr. Cowperwood came in broad daylight at between
+four and five o’clock of the afternoon preceeding the day of his
+assignment; was closeted with Mr. Stener for a half or three-quarters
+of an hour; came out; explained to Mr. Albert Stires that he had
+recently bought sixty thousand dollars’ worth of city loan for the city
+sinking-fund, for which he had not been paid; asked that the amount be
+credited on the city’s books to him, and that he be given a check,
+which was his due, and walked out. Anything very remarkable about that,
+gentlemen? Anything very strange? Has it been testified here to-day
+that Mr. Cowperwood was not the agent of the city for the transaction
+of just such business as he said on that occasion that he had
+transacted? Did any one say here on the witness-stand that he had not
+bought city loan as he said he had?
+
+“Why is it then that Mr. Stener charges Mr. Cowperwood with larcenously
+securing and feloniously disposing of a check for sixty thousand
+dollars for certificates which he had a right to buy, and which it has
+not been contested here that he did buy? The reason lies just
+here—listen—just here. At the time my client asked for the check and
+took it away with him and deposited it in his own bank to his own
+account, he failed, so the prosecution insists, to put the sixty
+thousand dollars’ worth of certificates for which he had received the
+check, in the sinking-fund; and having failed to do that, and being
+compelled by the pressure of financial events the same day to suspend
+payment generally, he thereby, according to the prosecution and the
+anxious leaders of the Republican party in the city, became an
+embezzler, a thief, a this or that—anything you please so long as you
+find a substitute for George W. Stener and the indifferent leaders of
+the Republican party in the eyes of the people.”
+
+And here Mr. Steger proceeded boldly and defiantly to outline the
+entire political situation as it had manifested itself in connection
+with the Chicago fire, the subsequent panic and its political
+consequences, and to picture Cowperwood as the unjustly maligned agent,
+who before the fire was valuable and honorable enough to suit any of
+the political leaders of Philadelphia, but afterward, and when
+political defeat threatened, was picked upon as the most available
+scapegoat anywhere within reach.
+
+And it took him a half hour to do that. And afterward but only after he
+had pointed to Stener as the true henchman and stalking horse, who had,
+in turn, been used by political forces above him to accomplish certain
+financial results, which they were not willing to have ascribed to
+themselves, he continued with:
+
+“But now, in the light of all this, only see how ridiculous all this
+is! How silly! Frank A. Cowperwood had always been the agent of the
+city in these matters for years and years. He worked under certain
+rules which he and Mr. Stener had agreed upon in the first place, and
+which obviously came from others, who were above Mr. Stener, since they
+were hold-over customs and rules from administrations, which had been
+long before Mr. Stener ever appeared on the scene as city treasurer.
+One of them was that he could carry all transactions over until the
+first of the month following before he struck a balance. That is, he
+need not pay any money over for anything to the city treasurer, need
+not send him any checks or deposit any money or certificates in the
+sinking-fund until the first of the month because—now listen to this
+carefully, gentlemen; it is important—because his transactions in
+connection with city loan and everything else that he dealt in for the
+city treasurer were so numerous, so swift, so uncalculated beforehand,
+that he had to have a loose, easy system of this kind in order to do
+his work properly—to do business at all. Otherwise he could not very
+well have worked to the best advantage for Mr. Stener, or for any one
+else. It would have meant too much bookkeeping for him—too much for the
+city treasurer. Mr. Stener has testified to that in the early part of
+his story. Albert Stires has indicated that that was his understanding
+of it. Well, then what? Why, just this. Would any jury suppose, would
+any sane business man believe that if such were the case Mr. Cowperwood
+would be running personally with all these items of deposit, to the
+different banks or the sinking-fund or the city treasurer’s office, or
+would be saying to his head bookkeeper, ‘Here, Stapley, here is a check
+for sixty thousand dollars. See that the certificates of loan which
+this represents are put in the sinking-fund to-day’? And why not? What
+a ridiculous supposition any other supposition is! As a matter of
+course and as had always been the case, Mr. Cowperwood had a system.
+When the time came, this check and these certificates would be
+automatically taken care of. He handed his bookkeeper the check and
+forgot all about it. Would you imagine a banker with a vast business of
+this kind doing anything else?”
+
+Mr. Steger paused for breath and inquiry, and then, having satisfied
+himself that his point had been sufficiently made, he continued:
+
+“Of course the answer is that he knew he was going to fail. Well, Mr.
+Cowperwood’s reply is that he didn’t know anything of the sort. He has
+personally testified here that it was only at the last moment before it
+actually happened that he either thought or knew of such an occurrence.
+Why, then, this alleged refusal to let him have the check to which he
+was legally entitled? I think I know. I think I can give a reason if
+you will hear me out.”
+
+Steger shifted his position and came at the jury from another
+intellectual angle:
+
+“It was simply because Mr. George W. Stener at that time, owing to a
+recent notable fire and a panic, imagined for some reason—perhaps
+because Mr. Cowperwood cautioned him not to become frightened over
+local developments generally—that Mr. Cowperwood was going to close his
+doors; and having considerable money on deposit with him at a low rate
+of interest, Mr. Stener decided that Mr. Cowperwood must not have any
+more money—not even the money that was actually due him for services
+rendered, and that had nothing whatsoever to do with the money loaned
+him by Mr. Stener at two and one-half per cent. Now isn’t that a
+ridiculous situation? But it was because Mr. George W. Stener was
+filled with his own fears, based on a fire and a panic which had
+absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Cowperwood’s solvency in the
+beginning that he decided not to let Frank A. Cowperwood have the money
+that was actually due him, because he, Stener, was criminally using the
+city’s money to further his own private interests (through Mr.
+Cowperwood as a broker), and in danger of being exposed and possibly
+punished. Now where, I ask you, does the good sense of that decision
+come in? Is it apparent to you, gentlemen? Was Mr. Cowperwood still an
+agent for the city at the time he bought the loan certificates as here
+testified? He certainly was. If so, was he entitled to that money? Who
+is going to stand up here and deny it? Where is the question then, as
+to his right or his honesty in this matter? How does it come in here at
+all? I can tell you. It sprang solely from one source and from nowhere
+else, and that is the desire of the politicians of this city to find a
+scapegoat for the Republican party.
+
+“Now you may think I am going rather far afield for an explanation of
+this very peculiar decision to prosecute Mr. Cowperwood, an agent of
+the city, for demanding and receiving what actually belonged to him.
+But I’m not. Consider the position of the Republican party at that
+time. Consider the fact that an exposure of the truth in regard to the
+details of a large defalcation in the city treasury would have a very
+unsatisfactory effect on the election about to be held. The Republican
+party had a new city treasurer to elect, a new district attorney. It
+had been in the habit of allowing its city treasurers the privilege of
+investing the funds in their possession at a low rate of interest for
+the benefit of themselves and their friends. Their salaries were small.
+They had to have some way of eking out a reasonable existence. Was Mr.
+George Stener responsible for this custom of loaning out the city
+money? Not at all. Was Mr. Cowperwood? Not at all. The custom had been
+in vogue long before either Mr. Cowperwood or Mr. Stener came on the
+scene. Why, then, this great hue and cry about it now? The entire
+uproar sprang solely from the fear of Mr. Stener at this juncture, the
+fear of the politicians at this juncture, of public exposure. No city
+treasurer had ever been exposed before. It was a new thing to face
+exposure, to face the risk of having the public’s attention called to a
+rather nefarious practice of which Mr. Stener was taking advantage,
+that was all. A great fire and a panic were endangering the security
+and well-being of many a financial organization in the city—Mr.
+Cowperwood’s among others. It meant many possible failures, and many
+possible failures meant one possible failure. If Frank A. Cowperwood
+failed, he would fail owing the city of Philadelphia five hundred
+thousand dollars, borrowed from the city treasurer at the very low rate
+of interest of two and one-half per cent. Anything very detrimental to
+Mr. Cowperwood in that? Had he gone to the city treasurer and asked to
+be loaned money at two and one-half per cent.? If he had, was there
+anything criminal in it from a business point of view? Isn’t a man
+entitled to borrow money from any source he can at the lowest possible
+rate of interest? Did Mr. Stener have to loan it to Mr. Cowperwood if
+he did not want to? As a matter of fact didn’t he testify here to-day
+that he personally had sent for Mr. Cowperwood in the first place? Why,
+then, in Heaven’s name, this excited charge of larceny, larceny as
+bailee, embezzlement, embezzlement on a check, etc., etc.?
+
+“Once more, gentlemen, listen. I’ll tell you why. The men who stood
+behind Stener, and whose bidding he was doing, wanted to make a
+political scapegoat of some one—of Frank Algernon Cowperwood, if they
+couldn’t get any one else. That’s why. No other reason under God’s blue
+sky, not one. Why, if Mr. Cowperwood needed more money just at that
+time to tide him over, it would have been good policy for them to have
+given it to him and hushed this matter up. It would have been
+illegal—though not any more illegal than anything else that has ever
+been done in this connection—but it would have been safer. Fear,
+gentlemen, fear, lack of courage, inability to meet a great crisis when
+a great crisis appears, was all that really prevented them from doing
+this. They were afraid to place confidence in a man who had never
+heretofore betrayed their trust and from whose loyalty and great
+financial ability they and the city had been reaping large profits. The
+reigning city treasurer of the time didn’t have the courage to go on in
+the face of fire and panic and the rumors of possible failure, and
+stick by his illegal guns; and so he decided to draw in his horns as
+testified here to-day—to ask Mr. Cowperwood to return all or at least a
+big part of the five hundred thousand dollars he had loaned him, and
+which Cowperwood had been actually using for his, Stener’s benefit, and
+to refuse him in addition the money that was actually due him for an
+authorized purchase of city loan. Was Cowperwood guilty as an agent in
+any of these transactions? Not in the least. Was there any suit pending
+to make him return the five hundred thousand dollars of city money
+involved in his present failure? Not at all. It was simply a case of
+wild, silly panic on the part of George W. Stener, and a strong desire
+on the part of the Republican party leaders, once they discovered what
+the situation was, to find some one outside of Stener, the party
+treasurer, upon whom they could blame the shortage in the treasury. You
+heard what Mr. Cowperwood testified to here in this case to-day—that he
+went to Mr. Stener to forfend against any possible action of this kind
+in the first place. And it was because of this very warning that Mr.
+Stener became wildly excited, lost his head, and wanted Mr. Cowperwood
+to return him all his money, all the five hundred thousand dollars he
+had loaned him at two and one-half per cent. Isn’t that silly financial
+business at the best? Wasn’t that a fine time to try to call a
+perfectly legal loan?
+
+“But now to return to this particular check of sixty thousand dollars.
+When Mr. Cowperwood called that last afternoon before he failed, Mr.
+Stener testified that he told him that he couldn’t have any more money,
+that it was impossible, and that then Mr. Cowperwood went out into his
+general office and without his knowledge or consent persuaded his chief
+clerk and secretary, Mr. Albert Stires, to give him a check for sixty
+thousand dollars, to which he was not entitled and on which he, Stener,
+would have stopped payment if he had known.
+
+“What nonsense! Why didn’t he know? The books were there, open to him.
+Mr. Stires told him the first thing the next morning. Mr. Cowperwood
+thought nothing of it, for he was entitled to it, and could collect it
+in any court of law having jurisdiction in such cases, failure or no
+failure. It is silly for Mr. Stener to say he would have stopped
+payment. Such a claim was probably an after-thought of the next morning
+after he had talked with his friends, the politicians, and was all a
+part, a trick, a trap, to provide the Republican party with a scapegoat
+at this time. Nothing more and nothing less; and you may be sure no one
+knew it better than the people who were most anxious to see Mr.
+Cowperwood convicted.”
+
+Steger paused and looked significantly at Shannon.
+
+“Gentlemen of the jury [he finally concluded, quietly and earnestly],
+you are going to find, when you think it over in the jury-room this
+evening, that this charge of larceny and larceny as bailee, and
+embezzlement of a check for sixty thousand dollars, which are contained
+in this indictment, and which represent nothing more than the eager
+effort of the district attorney to word this one act in such a way that
+it will look like a crime, represents nothing more than the excited
+imagination of a lot of political refugees who are anxious to protect
+their own skirts at the expense of Mr. Cowperwood, and who care for
+nothing—honor, fair play, or anything else, so long as they are let off
+scot-free. They don’t want the Republicans of Pennsylvania to think too
+ill of the Republican party management and control in this city. They
+want to protect George W. Stener as much as possible and to make a
+political scapegoat of my client. It can’t be done, and it won’t be
+done. As honorable, intelligent men you won’t permit it to be done. And
+I think with that thought I can safely leave you.”
+
+Steger suddenly turned from the jury-box and walked to his seat beside
+Cowperwood, while Shannon arose, calm, forceful, vigorous, much
+younger.
+
+As between man and man, Shannon was not particularly opposed to the
+case Steger had made out for Cowperwood, nor was he opposed to
+Cowperwood’s having made money as he did. As a matter of fact, Shannon
+actually thought that if he had been in Cowperwood’s position he would
+have done exactly the same thing. However, he was the newly elected
+district attorney. He had a record to make; and, besides, the political
+powers who were above him were satisfied that Cowperwood ought to be
+convicted for the looks of the thing. Therefore he laid his hands
+firmly on the rail at first, looked the jurors steadily in the eyes for
+a time, and, having framed a few thoughts in his mind began:
+
+“Now, gentlemen of the jury, it seems to me that if we all pay strict
+attention to what has transpired here to-day, we will have no
+difficulty in reaching a conclusion; and it will be a very satisfactory
+one, if we all try to interpret the facts correctly. This defendant,
+Mr. Cowperwood, comes into this court to-day charged, as I have stated
+to you before, with larceny, with larceny as bailee, with embezzlement,
+and with embezzlement of a specific check—namely, one dated October 9,
+1871, drawn to the order of Frank A. Cowperwood & Company for the sum
+of sixty thousand dollars by the secretary of the city treasurer for
+the city treasurer, and by him signed, as he had a perfect right to
+sign it, and delivered to the said Frank A. Cowperwood, who claims that
+he was not only properly solvent at the time, but had previously
+purchased certificates of city loan to the value of sixty thousand
+dollars, and had at that time or would shortly thereafter, as was his
+custom, deposit them to the credit of the city in the city
+sinking-fund, and thus close what would ordinarily be an ordinary
+transaction—namely, that of Frank A. Cowperwood & Company as bankers
+and brokers for the city buying city loan for the city, depositing it
+in the sinking-fund, and being promptly and properly reimbursed. Now,
+gentlemen, what are the actual facts in this case? Was the said Frank
+A. Cowperwood & Company—there is no company, as you well know, as you
+have heard testified here to-day, only Frank A. Cowperwood—was the said
+Frank A. Cowperwood a fit person to receive the check at this time in
+the manner he received it—that is, was he authorized agent of the city
+at the time, or was he not? Was he solvent? Did he actually himself
+think he was going to fail, and was this sixty-thousand-dollar check a
+last thin straw which he was grabbing at to save his financial life
+regardless of what it involved legally, morally, or otherwise; or had
+he actually purchased certificates of city loan to the amount he said
+he had in the way he said he had, at the time he said he had, and was
+he merely collecting his honest due? Did he intend to deposit these
+certificates of loans in the city sinking-fund, as he said he would—as
+it was understood naturally and normally that he would—or did he not?
+Were his relations with the city treasurer as broker and agent the same
+as they had always been on the day that he secured this particular
+check for sixty thousand dollars, or were they not? Had they been
+terminated by a conversation fifteen minutes before or two days before
+or two weeks before—it makes no difference when, so long as they had
+been properly terminated—or had they not? A business man has a right to
+abrogate an agreement at any time where there is no specific form of
+contract and no fixed period of operation entered into—as you all must
+know. You must not forget that in considering the evidence in this
+case. Did George W. Stener, knowing or suspecting that Frank A.
+Cowperwood was in a tight place financially, unable to fulfill any
+longer properly and honestly the duties supposedly devolving on him by
+this agreement, terminate it then and there on October 9, 1871, before
+this check for sixty thousand dollars was given, or did he not? Did Mr.
+Frank A. Cowperwood then and there, knowing that he was no longer an
+agent of the city treasurer and the city, and knowing also that he was
+insolvent (having, as Mr. Stener contends, admitted to him that he was
+so), and having no intention of placing the certificates which he
+subsequently declared he had purchased in the sinking-fund, go out into
+Mr. Stener’s general office, meet his secretary, tell him he had
+purchased sixty thousand dollars’ worth of city loan, ask for the
+check, get it, put it in his pocket, walk off, and never make any
+return of any kind in any manner, shape, or form to the city, and then,
+subsequently, twenty-four hours later, fail, owing this and five
+hundred thousand dollars more to the city treasury, or did he not? What
+are the facts in this case? What have the witnesses testified to? What
+has George W. Stener testified to, Albert Stires, President Davison,
+Mr. Cowperwood himself? What are the interesting, subtle facts in this
+case, anyhow? Gentlemen, you have a very curious problem to decide.”
+
+He paused and gazed at the jury, adjusting his sleeves as he did so,
+and looking as though he knew for certain that he was on the trail of a
+slippery, elusive criminal who was in a fair way to foist himself upon
+an honorable and decent community and an honorable and innocent jury as
+an honest man.
+
+Then he continued:
+
+“Now, gentlemen, what are the facts? You can see for yourselves exactly
+how this whole situation has come about. You are sensible men. I don’t
+need to tell you. Here are two men, one elected treasurer of the city
+of Philadelphia, sworn to guard the interests of the city and to
+manipulate its finances to the best advantage, and the other called in
+at a time of uncertain financial cogitation to assist in unraveling a
+possibly difficult financial problem; and then you have a case of a
+quiet, private financial understanding being reached, and of subsequent
+illegal dealings in which one man who is shrewder, wiser, more versed
+in the subtle ways of Third Street leads the other along over seemingly
+charming paths of fortunate investment into an accidental but none the
+less criminal mire of failure and exposure and public calumny and what
+not. And then they get to the place where the more vulnerable
+individual of the two—the man in the most dangerous position, the city
+treasurer of Philadelphia, no less—can no longer reasonably or, let us
+say, courageously, follow the other fellow; and then you have such a
+spectacle as was described here this afternoon in the witness-chair by
+Mr. Stener—that is, you have a vicious, greedy, unmerciful financial
+wolf standing over a cowering, unsophisticated commercial lamb, and
+saying to him, his white, shiny teeth glittering all the while, ‘If you
+don’t advance me the money I ask for—the three hundred thousand dollars
+I now demand—you will be a convict, your children will be thrown in the
+street, you and your wife and your family will be in poverty again, and
+there will be no one to turn a hand for you.’ That is what Mr. Stener
+says Mr. Cowperwood said to him. I, for my part, haven’t a doubt in the
+world that he did. Mr. Steger, in his very guarded references to his
+client, describes him as a nice, kind, gentlemanly agent, a broker
+merely on whom was practically forced the use of five hundred thousand
+dollars at two and a half per cent. when money was bringing from ten to
+fifteen per cent. in Third Street on call loans, and even more. But I
+for one don’t choose to believe it. The thing that strikes me as
+strange in all of this is that if he was so nice and kind and gentle
+and remote—a mere hired and therefore subservient agent—how is it that
+he could have gone to Mr. Stener’s office two or three days before the
+matter of this sixty-thousand-dollar check came up and say to him, as
+Mr. Stener testifies under oath that he did say to him, ‘If you don’t
+give me three hundred thousand dollars’ worth more of the city’s money
+at once, to-day, I will fail, and you will be a convict. You will go to
+the penitentiary.’? That’s what he said to him. ‘I will fail and you
+will be a convict. They can’t touch me, but they will arrest you. I am
+an agent merely.’ Does that sound like a nice, mild, innocent,
+well-mannered agent, a hired broker, or doesn’t it sound like a hard,
+defiant, contemptuous master—a man in control and ready to rule and win
+by fair means or foul?
+
+“Gentlemen, I hold no brief for George W. Stener. In my judgment he is
+as guilty as his smug co-partner in crime—if not more so—this oily
+financier who came smiling and in sheep’s clothing, pointing out subtle
+ways by which the city’s money could be made profitable for both; but
+when I hear Mr. Cowperwood described as I have just heard him
+described, as a nice, mild, innocent agent, my gorge rises. Why,
+gentlemen, if you want to get a right point of view on this whole
+proposition you will have to go back about ten or twelve years and see
+Mr. George W. Stener as he was then, a rather poverty-stricken beginner
+in politics, and before this very subtle and capable broker and agent
+came along and pointed out ways and means by which the city’s money
+could be made profitable; George W. Stener wasn’t very much of a
+personage then, and neither was Frank A. Cowperwood when he found
+Stener newly elected to the office of city treasurer. Can’t you see him
+arriving at that time nice and fresh and young and well dressed, as
+shrewd as a fox, and saying: ‘Come to me. Let me handle city loan. Loan
+me the city’s money at two per cent. or less.’ Can’t you hear him
+suggesting this? Can’t you see him?
+
+“George W. Stener was a poor man, comparatively a very poor man, when
+he first became city treasurer. All he had was a small real-estate and
+insurance business which brought him in, say, twenty-five hundred
+dollars a year. He had a wife and four children to support, and he had
+never had the slightest taste of what for him might be called luxury or
+comfort. Then comes Mr. Cowperwood—at his request, to be sure, but on
+an errand which held no theory of evil gains in Mr. Stener’s mind at
+the time—and proposes his grand scheme of manipulating all the city
+loan to their mutual advantage. Do you yourselves think, gentlemen,
+from what you have seen of George W. Stener here on the witness-stand,
+that it was he who proposed this plan of ill-gotten wealth to that
+gentleman over there?”
+
+He pointed to Cowperwood.
+
+“Does he look to you like a man who would be able to tell that
+gentleman anything about finance or this wonderful manipulation that
+followed? I ask you, does he look clever enough to suggest all the
+subtleties by which these two subsequently made so much money? Why, the
+statement of this man Cowperwood made to his creditors at the time of
+his failure here a few weeks ago showed that he considered himself to
+be worth over one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and
+he is only a little over thirty-four years old to-day. How much was he
+worth at the time he first entered business relations with the ex-city
+treasurer? Have you any idea? I can tell. I had the matter looked up
+almost a month ago on my accession to office. Just a little over two
+hundred thousand dollars, gentlemen—just a little over two hundred
+thousand dollars. Here is an abstract from the files of Dun & Company
+for that year. Now you can see how rapidly our Caesar has grown in
+wealth since then. You can see how profitable these few short years
+have been to him. Was George W. Stener worth any such sum up to the
+time he was removed from his office and indicted for embezzlement? Was
+he? I have here a schedule of his liabilities and assets made out at
+the time. You can see it for yourselves, gentlemen. Just two hundred
+and twenty thousand dollars measured the sum of all his property three
+weeks ago; and it is an accurate estimate, as I have reason to know.
+Why was it, do you suppose, that Mr. Cowperwood grew so fast in wealth
+and Mr. Stener so slowly? They were partners in crime. Mr. Stener was
+loaning Mr. Cowperwood vast sums of the city’s money at two per cent.
+when call-rates for money in Third Street were sometimes as high as
+sixteen and seventeen per cent. Don’t you suppose that Mr. Cowperwood
+sitting there knew how to use this very cheaply come-by money to the
+very best advantage? Does he look to you as though he didn’t? You have
+seen him on the witness-stand. You have heard him testify. Very suave,
+very straightforward-seeming, very innocent, doing everything as a
+favor to Mr. Stener and his friends, of course, and yet making a
+million in a little over six years and allowing Mr. Stener to make one
+hundred and sixty thousand dollars or less, for Mr. Stener had some
+little money at the time this partnership was entered into—a few
+thousand dollars.”
+
+Shannon now came to the vital transaction of October 9th, when
+Cowperwood called on Stener and secured the check for sixty thousand
+dollars from Albert Stires. His scorn for this (as he appeared to
+think) subtle and criminal transaction was unbounded. It was plain
+larceny, stealing, and Cowperwood knew it when he asked Stires for the
+check.
+
+“Think of it! [Shannon exclaimed, turning and looking squarely at
+Cowperwood, who faced him quite calmly, undisturbed and unashamed.]
+Think of it! Think of the colossal nerve of the man—the Machiavellian
+subtlety of his brain. He knew he was going to fail. He knew after two
+days of financial work—after two days of struggle to offset the
+providential disaster which upset his nefarious schemes—that he had
+exhausted every possible resource save one, the city treasury, and that
+unless he could compel aid there he was going to fail. He already owed
+the city treasury five hundred thousand dollars. He had already used
+the city treasurer as a cat’s-paw so much, had involved him so deeply,
+that the latter, because of the staggering size of the debt, was
+becoming frightened. Did that deter Mr. Cowperwood? Not at all.”
+
+He shook his finger ominously in Cowperwood’s face, and the latter
+turned irritably away. “He is showing off for the benefit of his
+future,” he whispered to Steger. “I wish you could tell the jury that.”
+
+“I wish I could,” replied Steger, smiling scornfully, “but my hour is
+over.”
+
+“Why [continued Mr. Shannon, turning once more to the jury], think of
+the colossal, wolfish nerve that would permit a man to say to Albert
+Stires that he had just purchased sixty thousand dollars’ worth
+additional of city loan, and that he would then and there take the
+check for it! Had he actually purchased this city loan as he said he
+had? Who can tell? Could any human being wind through all the mazes of
+the complicated bookkeeping system which he ran, and actually tell? The
+best answer to that is that if he did purchase the certificates he
+intended that it should make no difference to the city, for he made no
+effort to put the certificates in the sinking-fund, where they
+belonged. His counsel says, and he says, that he didn’t have to until
+the first of the month, although the law says that he must do it at
+once, and he knew well enough that legally he was bound to do it. His
+counsel says, and he says, that he didn’t know he was going to fail.
+Hence there was no need of worrying about it. I wonder if any of you
+gentlemen really believed that? Had he ever asked for a check like that
+so quick before in his life? In all the history of these nefarious
+transactions was there another incident like that? You know there
+wasn’t. He had never before, on any occasion, asked personally for a
+check for anything in this office, and yet on this occasion he did it.
+Why? Why should he ask for it this time? A few hours more, according to
+his own statement, wouldn’t have made any difference one way or the
+other, would it? He could have sent a boy for it, as usual. That was
+the way it had always been done before. Why anything different now?
+I’ll tell you why! [Shannon suddenly shouted, varying his voice
+tremendously.] I’ll tell you why! He knew that he was a ruined man! He
+knew that his last semi-legitimate avenue of escape—the favor of George
+W. Stener—had been closed to him! He knew that honestly, by open
+agreement, he could not extract another single dollar from the treasury
+of the city of Philadelphia. He knew that if he left the office without
+this check and sent a boy for it, the aroused city treasurer would have
+time to inform his clerks, and that then no further money could be
+obtained. That’s why! That’s why, gentlemen, if you really want to
+know.
+
+“Now, gentlemen of the jury, I am about done with my arraignment of
+this fine, honorable, virtuous citizen whom the counsel for the
+defense, Mr. Steger, tells you you cannot possibly convict without
+doing a great injustice. All I have to say is that you look to me like
+sane, intelligent men—just the sort of men that I meet everywhere in
+the ordinary walks of life, doing an honorable American business in an
+honorable American way. Now, gentlemen of the jury [he was very
+soft-spoken now], all I have to say is that if, after all you have
+heard and seen here to-day, you still think that Mr. Frank A.
+Cowperwood is an honest, honorable man—that he didn’t steal, willfully
+and knowingly, sixty thousand dollars from the Philadelphia city
+treasury; that he had actually bought the certificates he said he had,
+and had intended to put them in the sinking-fund, as he said he did,
+then don’t you dare to do anything except turn him loose, and that
+speedily, so that he can go on back to-day into Third Street, and start
+to straighten out his much-entangled financial affairs. It is the only
+thing for honest, conscientious men to do—to turn him instantly loose
+into the heart of this community, so that some of the rank injustice
+that my opponent, Mr. Steger, alleges has been done him will be a
+little made up to him. You owe him, if that is the way you feel, a
+prompt acknowledgment of his innocence. Don’t worry about George W.
+Stener. His guilt is established by his own confession. He admits he is
+guilty. He will be sentenced without trial later on. But this man—he
+says he is an honest, honorable man. He says he didn’t think he was
+going to fail. He says he used all that threatening, compelling,
+terrifying language, not because he was in danger of failing, but
+because he didn’t want the bother of looking further for aid. What do
+you think? Do you really think that he had purchased sixty thousand
+dollars more of certificates for the sinking-fund, and that he was
+entitled to the money? If so, why didn’t he put them in the
+sinking-fund? They’re not there now, and the sixty thousand dollars is
+gone. Who got it? The Girard National Bank, where he was overdrawn to
+the extent of one hundred thousand dollars! Did it get it and forty
+thousand dollars more in other checks and certificates? Certainly. Why?
+Do you suppose the Girard National Bank might be in any way grateful
+for this last little favor before he closed his doors? Do you think
+that President Davison, whom you saw here testifying so kindly in this
+case feels at all friendly, and that that may possibly—I don’t say that
+it does—explain his very kindly interpretation of Mr. Cowperwood’s
+condition? It might be. You can think as well along that line as I can.
+Anyhow, gentlemen, President Davison says Mr. Cowperwood is an
+honorable, honest man, and so does his counsel, Mr. Steger. You have
+heard the testimony. Now you think it over. If you want to turn him
+loose—turn him loose. [He waved his hand wearily.] You’re the judges. I
+wouldn’t; but then I am merely a hard-working lawyer—one person, one
+opinion. You may think differently—that’s your business. [He waved his
+hand suggestively, almost contemptuously.] However, I’m through, and I
+thank you for your courtesy. Gentlemen, the decision rests with you.”
+
+He turned away grandly, and the jury stirred—so did the idle spectators
+in the court. Judge Payderson sighed a sigh of relief. It was now quite
+dark, and the flaring gas forms in the court were all brightly lighted.
+Outside one could see that it was snowing. The judge stirred among his
+papers wearily, and turning to the jurors solemnly, began his customary
+explanation of the law, after which they filed out to the jury-room.
+
+Cowperwood turned to his father who now came over across the
+fast-emptying court, and said:
+
+“Well, we’ll know now in a little while.”
+
+“Yes,” replied Cowperwood, Sr., a little wearily. “I hope it comes out
+right. I saw Butler back there a little while ago.”
+
+“Did you?” queried Cowperwood, to whom this had a peculiar interest.
+
+“Yes,” replied his father. “He’s just gone.”
+
+So, Cowperwood thought, Butler was curious enough as to his fate to
+want to come here and watch him tried. Shannon was his tool. Judge
+Payderson was his emissary, in a way. He, Cowperwood, might defeat him
+in the matter of his daughter, but it was not so easy to defeat him
+here unless the jury should happen to take a sympathetic attitude. They
+might convict him, and then Butler’s Judge Payderson would have the
+privilege of sentencing him—giving him the maximum sentence. That would
+not be so nice—five years! He cooled a little as he thought of it, but
+there was no use worrying about what had not yet happened. Steger came
+forward and told him that his bail was now ended—had been the moment
+the jury left the room—and that he was at this moment actually in the
+care of the sheriff, of whom he knew—Sheriff Adlai Jaspers. Unless he
+were acquitted by the jury, Steger added, he would have to remain in
+the sheriff’s care until an application for a certificate of reasonable
+doubt could be made and acted upon.
+
+“It would take all of five days, Frank,” Steger said, “but Jaspers
+isn’t a bad sort. He’d be reasonable. Of course if we’re lucky you
+won’t have to visit him. You will have to go with this bailiff now,
+though. Then if things come out right we’ll go home. Say, I’d like to
+win this case,” he said. “I’d like to give them the laugh and see you
+do it. I consider you’ve been pretty badly treated, and I think I made
+that perfectly clear. I can reverse this verdict on a dozen grounds if
+they happen to decide against you.”
+
+He and Cowperwood and the latter’s father now stalked off with the
+sheriff’s subordinate—a small man by the name of “Eddie” Zanders, who
+had approached to take charge. They entered a small room called the pen
+at the back of the court, where all those on trial whose liberty had
+been forfeited by the jury’s leaving the room had to wait pending its
+return. It was a dreary, high-ceiled, four-square place, with a window
+looking out into Chestnut Street, and a second door leading off into
+somewhere—one had no idea where. It was dingy, with a worn wooden
+floor, some heavy, plain, wooden benches lining the four sides, no
+pictures or ornaments of any kind. A single two-arm gas-pipe descended
+from the center of the ceiling. It was permeated by a peculiarly stale
+and pungent odor, obviously redolent of all the flotsam and jetsam of
+life—criminal and innocent—that had stood or sat in here from time to
+time, waiting patiently to learn what a deliberating fate held in
+store.
+
+Cowperwood was, of course, disgusted; but he was too self-reliant and
+capable to show it. All his life he had been immaculate, almost
+fastidious in his care of himself. Here he was coming, perforce, in
+contact with a form of life which jarred upon him greatly. Steger, who
+was beside him, made some comforting, explanatory, apologetic remarks.
+
+“Not as nice as it might be,” he said, “but you won’t mind waiting a
+little while. The jury won’t be long, I fancy.”
+
+“That may not help me,” he replied, walking to the window. Afterward he
+added: “What must be, must be.”
+
+His father winced. Suppose Frank was on the verge of a long prison
+term, which meant an atmosphere like this? Heavens! For a moment, he
+trembled, then for the first time in years he made a silent prayer.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIV
+
+
+Meanwhile the great argument had been begun in the jury-room, and all
+the points that had been meditatively speculated upon in the jury-box
+were now being openly discussed.
+
+It is amazingly interesting to see how a jury will waver and speculate
+in a case like this—how curious and uncertain is the process by which
+it makes up its so-called mind. So-called truth is a nebulous thing at
+best; facts are capable of such curious inversion and interpretation,
+honest and otherwise. The jury had a strongly complicated problem
+before it, and it went over it and over it.
+
+Juries reach not so much definite conclusions as verdicts, in a curious
+fashion and for curious reasons. Very often a jury will have concluded
+little so far as its individual members are concerned and yet it will
+have reached a verdict. The matter of time, as all lawyers know, plays
+a part in this. Juries, speaking of the members collectively and
+frequently individually, object to the amount of time it takes to
+decide a case. They do not enjoy sitting and deliberating over a
+problem unless it is tremendously fascinating. The ramifications or the
+mystery of a syllogism can become a weariness and a bore. The jury-room
+itself may and frequently does become a dull agony.
+
+On the other hand, no jury contemplates a disagreement with any degree
+of satisfaction. There is something so inherently constructive in the
+human mind that to leave a problem unsolved is plain misery. It haunts
+the average individual like any other important task left unfinished.
+Men in a jury-room, like those scientifically demonstrated atoms of a
+crystal which scientists and philosophers love to speculate upon, like
+finally to arrange themselves into an orderly and artistic whole, to
+present a compact, intellectual front, to be whatever they have set out
+to be, properly and rightly—a compact, sensible jury. One sees this
+same instinct magnificently displayed in every other phase of nature—in
+the drifting of sea-wood to the Sargasso Sea, in the geometric
+interrelation of air-bubbles on the surface of still water, in the
+marvelous unreasoned architecture of so many insects and atomic forms
+which make up the substance and the texture of this world. It would
+seem as though the physical substance of life—this apparition of form
+which the eye detects and calls real were shot through with some vast
+subtlety that loves order, that is order. The atoms of our so-called
+being, in spite of our so-called reason—the dreams of a mood—know where
+to go and what to do. They represent an order, a wisdom, a willing that
+is not of us. They build orderly in spite of us. So the subconscious
+spirit of a jury. At the same time, one does not forget the strange
+hypnotic effect of one personality on another, the varying effects of
+varying types on each other, until a solution—to use the word in its
+purely chemical sense—is reached. In a jury-room the thought or
+determination of one or two or three men, if it be definite enough, is
+likely to pervade the whole room and conquer the reason or the
+opposition of the majority. One man “standing out” for the definite
+thought that is in him is apt to become either the triumphant leader of
+a pliant mass or the brutally battered target of a flaming,
+concentrated intellectual fire. Men despise dull opposition that is
+without reason. In a jury-room, of all places, a man is expected to
+give a reason for the faith that is in him—if one is demanded. It will
+not do to say, “I cannot agree.” Jurors have been known to fight.
+Bitter antagonisms lasting for years have been generated in these close
+quarters. Recalcitrant jurors have been hounded commercially in their
+local spheres for their unreasoned oppositions or conclusions.
+
+After reaching the conclusion that Cowperwood unquestionably deserved
+some punishment, there was wrangling as to whether the verdict should
+be guilty on all four counts, as charged in the indictment. Since they
+did not understand how to differentiate between the various charges
+very well, they decided it should be on all four, and a recommendation
+to mercy added. Afterward this last was eliminated, however; either he
+was guilty or he was not. The judge could see as well as they could all
+the extenuating circumstances—perhaps better. Why tie his hands? As a
+rule no attention was paid to such recommendations, anyhow, and it only
+made the jury look wabbly.
+
+So, finally, at ten minutes after twelve that night, they were ready to
+return a verdict; and Judge Payderson, who, because of his interest in
+the case and the fact that he lived not so far away, had decided to
+wait up this long, was recalled. Steger and Cowperwood were sent for.
+The court-room was fully lighted. The bailiff, the clerk, and the
+stenographer were there. The jury filed in, and Cowperwood, with Steger
+at his right, took his position at the gate which gave into the railed
+space where prisoners always stand to hear the verdict and listen to
+any commentary of the judge. He was accompanied by his father, who was
+very nervous.
+
+For the first time in his life he felt as though he were walking in his
+sleep. Was this the real Frank Cowperwood of two months before—so
+wealthy, so progressive, so sure? Was this only December 5th or 6th now
+(it was after midnight)? Why was it the jury had deliberated so long?
+What did it mean? Here they were now, standing and gazing solemnly
+before them; and here now was Judge Payderson, mounting the steps of
+his rostrum, his frizzled hair standing out in a strange, attractive
+way, his familiar bailiff rapping for order. He did not look at
+Cowperwood—it would not be courteous—but at the jury, who gazed at him
+in return. At the words of the clerk, “Gentlemen of the jury, have you
+agreed upon a verdict?” the foreman spoke up, “We have.”
+
+“Do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?”
+
+“We find the defendant guilty as charged in the indictment.”
+
+How had they come to do this? Because he had taken a check for sixty
+thousand dollars which did not belong to him? But in reality it did.
+Good Lord, what was sixty thousand dollars in the sum total of all the
+money that had passed back and forth between him and George W. Stener?
+Nothing, nothing! A mere bagatelle in its way; and yet here it had
+risen up, this miserable, insignificant check, and become a mountain of
+opposition, a stone wall, a prison-wall barring his further progress.
+It was astonishing. He looked around him at the court-room. How large
+and bare and cold it was! Still he was Frank A. Cowperwood. Why should
+he let such queer thoughts disturb him? His fight for freedom and
+privilege and restitution was not over yet. Good heavens! It had only
+begun. In five days he would be out again on bail. Steger would take an
+appeal. He would be out, and he would have two long months in which to
+make an additional fight. He was not down yet. He would win his
+liberty. This jury was all wrong. A higher court would say so. It would
+reverse their verdict, and he knew it. He turned to Steger, where the
+latter was having the clerk poll the jury, in the hope that some one
+juror had been over-persuaded, made to vote against his will.
+
+“Is that your verdict?” he heard the clerk ask of Philip Moultrie,
+juror No. 1.
+
+“It is,” replied that worthy, solemnly.
+
+“Is that your verdict?” The clerk was pointing to Simon Glassberg.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Is that your verdict?” He pointed to Fletcher Norton.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+So it went through the whole jury. All the men answered firmly and
+clearly, though Steger thought it might barely be possible that one
+would have changed his mind. The judge thanked them and told them that
+in view of their long services this night, they were dismissed for the
+term. The only thing remaining to be done now was for Steger to
+persuade Judge Payderson to grant a stay of sentence pending the
+hearing of a motion by the State Supreme Court for a new trial.
+
+The Judge looked at Cowperwood very curiously as Steger made this
+request in proper form, and owing to the importance of the case and the
+feeling he had that the Supreme Court might very readily grant a
+certificate of reasonable doubt in this case, he agreed. There was
+nothing left, therefore, but for Cowperwood to return at this late hour
+with the deputy sheriff to the county jail, where he must now remain
+for five days at least—possibly longer.
+
+The jail in question, which was known locally as Moyamensing Prison,
+was located at Tenth and Reed Streets, and from an architectural and
+artistic point of view was not actually displeasing to the eye. It
+consisted of a central portion—prison, residence for the sheriff or
+what you will—three stories high, with a battlemented cornice and a
+round battlemented tower about one-third as high as the central portion
+itself, and two wings, each two stories high, with battlemented turrets
+at either end, giving it a highly castellated and consequently, from
+the American point of view, a very prison-like appearance. The facade
+of the prison, which was not more than thirty-five feet high for the
+central portion, nor more than twenty-five feet for the wings, was set
+back at least a hundred feet from the street, and was continued at
+either end, from the wings to the end of the street block, by a stone
+wall all of twenty feet high. The structure was not severely
+prison-like, for the central portion was pierced by rather large,
+unbarred apertures hung on the two upper stories with curtains, and
+giving the whole front a rather pleasant and residential air. The wing
+to the right, as one stood looking in from the street, was the section
+known as the county jail proper, and was devoted to the care of
+prisoners serving short-term sentences on some judicial order. The wing
+to the left was devoted exclusively to the care and control of untried
+prisoners. The whole building was built of a smooth, light-colored
+stone, which on a snowy night like this, with the few lamps that were
+used in it glowing feebly in the dark, presented an eery, fantastic,
+almost supernatural appearance.
+
+It was a rough and blowy night when Cowperwood started for this
+institution under duress. The wind was driving the snow before it in
+curious, interesting whirls. Eddie Zanders, the sheriff’s deputy on
+guard at the court of Quarter Sessions, accompanied him and his father
+and Steger. Zanders was a little man, dark, with a short, stubby
+mustache, and a shrewd though not highly intelligent eye. He was
+anxious first to uphold his dignity as a deputy sheriff, which was a
+very important position in his estimation, and next to turn an honest
+penny if he could. He knew little save the details of his small world,
+which consisted of accompanying prisoners to and from the courts and
+the jails, and seeing that they did not get away. He was not unfriendly
+to a particular type of prisoner—the well-to-do or moderately
+prosperous—for he had long since learned that it paid to be so.
+To-night he offered a few sociable suggestions—viz., that it was rather
+rough, that the jail was not so far but that they could walk, and that
+Sheriff Jaspers would, in all likelihood, be around or could be
+aroused. Cowperwood scarcely heard. He was thinking of his mother and
+his wife and of Aileen.
+
+When the jail was reached he was led to the central portion, as it was
+here that the sheriff, Adlai Jaspers, had his private office. Jaspers
+had recently been elected to office, and was inclined to conform to all
+outward appearances, in so far as the proper conduct of his office was
+concerned, without in reality inwardly conforming. Thus it was
+generally known among the politicians that one way he had of fattening
+his rather lean salary was to rent private rooms and grant special
+privileges to prisoners who had the money to pay for the same. Other
+sheriffs had done it before him. In fact, when Jaspers was inducted
+into office, several prisoners were already enjoying these privileges,
+and it was not a part of his scheme of things to disturb them. The
+rooms that he let to the “right parties,” as he invariably put it, were
+in the central portion of the jail, where were his own private living
+quarters. They were unbarred, and not at all cell-like. There was no
+particular danger of escape, for a guard stood always at his private
+door instructed “to keep an eye” on the general movements of all the
+inmates. A prisoner so accommodated was in many respects quite a free
+person. His meals were served to him in his room, if he wished. He
+could read or play cards, or receive guests; and if he had any favorite
+musical instrument, that was not denied him. There was just one rule
+that had to be complied with. If he were a public character, and any
+newspaper men called, he had to be brought down-stairs into the private
+interviewing room in order that they might not know that he was not
+confined in a cell like any other prisoner.
+
+Nearly all of these facts had been brought to Cowperwood’s attention
+beforehand by Steger; but for all that, when he crossed the threshold
+of the jail a peculiar sensation of strangeness and defeat came over
+him. He and his party were conducted to a little office to the left of
+the entrance, where were only a desk and a chair, dimly lighted by a
+low-burning gas-jet. Sheriff Jaspers, rotund and ruddy, met them,
+greeting them in quite a friendly way. Zanders was dismissed, and went
+briskly about his affairs.
+
+“A bad night, isn’t it?” observed Jaspers, turning up the gas and
+preparing to go through the routine of registering his prisoner. Steger
+came over and held a short, private conversation with him in his
+corner, over his desk which resulted presently in the sheriff’s face
+lighting up.
+
+“Oh, certainly, certainly! That’s all right, Mr. Steger, to be sure!
+Why, certainly!”
+
+Cowperwood, eyeing the fat sheriff from his position, understood what
+it was all about. He had regained completely his critical attitude, his
+cool, intellectual poise. So this was the jail, and this was the fat
+mediocrity of a sheriff who was to take care of him. Very good. He
+would make the best of it. He wondered whether he was to be
+searched—prisoners usually were—but he soon discovered that he was not
+to be.
+
+“That’s all right, Mr. Cowperwood,” said Jaspers, getting up. “I guess
+I can make you comfortable, after a fashion. We’re not running a hotel
+here, as you know”—he chuckled to himself—“but I guess I can make you
+comfortable. John,” he called to a sleepy factotum, who appeared from
+another room, rubbing his eyes, “is the key to Number Six down here?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Let me have it.”
+
+John disappeared and returned, while Steger explained to Cowperwood
+that anything he wanted in the way of clothing, etc., could be brought
+in. Steger himself would stop round next morning and confer with him,
+as would any of the members of Cowperwood’s family whom he wished to
+see. Cowperwood immediately explained to his father his desire for as
+little of this as possible. Joseph or Edward might come in the morning
+and bring a grip full of underwear, etc.; but as for the others, let
+them wait until he got out or had to remain permanently. He did think
+of writing Aileen, cautioning her to do nothing; but the sheriff now
+beckoned, and he quietly followed. Accompanied by his father and
+Steger, he ascended to his new room.
+
+It was a simple, white-walled chamber fifteen by twenty feet in size,
+rather high-ceiled, supplied with a high-backed, yellow wooden bed, a
+yellow bureau, a small imitation-cherry table, three very ordinary
+cane-seated chairs with carved hickory-rod backs, cherry-stained also,
+and a wash-stand of yellow-stained wood to match the bed, containing a
+washbasin, a pitcher, a soap-dish, uncovered, and a small, cheap,
+pink-flowered tooth and shaving brush mug, which did not match the
+other ware and which probably cost ten cents. The value of this room to
+Sheriff Jaspers was what he could get for it in cases like
+this—twenty-five to thirty-five dollars a week. Cowperwood would pay
+thirty-five.
+
+Cowperwood walked briskly to the window, which gave out on the lawn in
+front, now embedded in snow, and said he thought this was all right.
+Both his father and Steger were willing and anxious to confer with him
+for hours, if he wished; but there was nothing to say. He did not wish
+to talk.
+
+“Let Ed bring in some fresh linen in the morning and a couple of suits
+of clothes, and I will be all right. George can get my things
+together.” He was referring to a family servant who acted as valet and
+in other capacities. “Tell Lillian not to worry. I’m all right. I’d
+rather she would not come here so long as I’m going to be out in five
+days. If I’m not, it will be time enough then. Kiss the kids for me.”
+And he smiled good-naturedly.
+
+After his unfulfilled predictions in regard to the result of this
+preliminary trial Steger was almost afraid to suggest confidently what
+the State Supreme Court would or would not do; but he had to say
+something.
+
+“I don’t think you need worry about what the outcome of my appeal will
+be, Frank. I’ll get a certificate of reasonable doubt, and that’s as
+good as a stay of two months, perhaps longer. I don’t suppose the bail
+will be more than thirty thousand dollars at the outside. You’ll be out
+again in five or six days, whatever happens.”
+
+Cowperwood said that he hoped so, and suggested that they drop matters
+for the night. After a few fruitless parleys his father and Steger
+finally said good night, leaving him to his own private reflections. He
+was tired, however, and throwing off his clothes, tucked himself in his
+mediocre bed, and was soon fast asleep.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLV
+
+
+Say what one will about prison life in general, modify it ever so much
+by special chambers, obsequious turnkeys, a general tendency to make
+one as comfortable as possible, a jail is a jail, and there is no
+getting away from that. Cowperwood, in a room which was not in any way
+inferior to that of the ordinary boarding-house, was nevertheless
+conscious of the character of that section of this real prison which
+was not yet his portion. He knew that there were cells there, probably
+greasy and smelly and vermin-infested, and that they were enclosed by
+heavy iron bars, which would have as readily clanked on him as on those
+who were now therein incarcerated if he had not had the price to pay
+for something better. So much for the alleged equality of man, he
+thought, which gave to one man, even within the grim confines of the
+machinery of justice, such personal liberty as he himself was now
+enjoying, and to another, because he chanced to lack wit or presence or
+friends or wealth, denied the more comfortable things which money would
+buy.
+
+The morning after the trial, on waking, he stirred curiously, and then
+it suddenly came to him that he was no longer in the free and
+comfortable atmosphere of his own bedroom, but in a jail-cell, or
+rather its very comfortable substitute, a sheriff’s rented bedroom. He
+got up and looked out the window. The ground outside and Passayunk
+Avenue were white with snow. Some wagons were silently lumbering by. A
+few Philadelphians were visible here and there, going to and fro on
+morning errands. He began to think at once what he must do, how he must
+act to carry on his business, to rehabilitate himself; and as he did so
+he dressed and pulled the bell-cord, which had been indicated to him,
+and which would bring him an attendant who would build him a fire and
+later bring him something to eat. A shabby prison attendant in a blue
+uniform, conscious of Cowperwood’s superiority because of the room he
+occupied, laid wood and coal in the grate and started a fire, and later
+brought him his breakfast, which was anything but prison fare, though
+poor enough at that.
+
+After that he was compelled to wait in patience several hours, in spite
+of the sheriff’s assumption of solicitous interest, before his brother
+Edward was admitted with his clothes. An attendant, for a
+consideration, brought him the morning papers, and these, except for
+the financial news, he read indifferently. Late in the afternoon Steger
+arrived, saying he had been busy having certain proceedings postponed,
+but that he had arranged with the sheriff for Cowperwood to be
+permitted to see such of those as had important business with him.
+
+By this time, Cowperwood had written Aileen under no circumstances to
+try to see him, as he would be out by the tenth, and that either that
+day, or shortly after, they would meet. As he knew, she wanted greatly
+to see him, but he had reason to believe she was under surveillance by
+detectives employed by her father. This was not true, but it was
+preying on her fancy, and combined with some derogatory remarks dropped
+by Owen and Callum at the dinner table recently, had proved almost too
+much for her fiery disposition. But, because of Cowperwood’s letter
+reaching her at the Calligans’, she made no move until she read on the
+morning of the tenth that Cowperwood’s plea for a certificate of
+reasonable doubt had been granted, and that he would once more, for the
+time being at least, be a free man. This gave her courage to do what
+she had long wanted to do, and that was to teach her father that she
+could get along without him and that he could not make her do anything
+she did not want to do. She still had the two hundred dollars
+Cowperwood had given her and some additional cash of her own—perhaps
+three hundred and fifty dollars in all. This she thought would be
+sufficient to see her to the end of her adventure, or at least until
+she could make some other arrangement for her personal well-being. From
+what she knew of the feeling of her family for her, she felt that the
+agony would all be on their side, not hers. Perhaps when her father saw
+how determined she was he would decide to let her alone and make peace
+with her. She was determined to try it, anyhow, and immediately sent
+word to Cowperwood that she was going to the Calligans and would
+welcome him to freedom.
+
+In a way, Cowperwood was rather gratified by Aileen’s message, for he
+felt that his present plight, bitter as it was, was largely due to
+Butler’s opposition and he felt no compunction in striking him through
+his daughter. His former feeling as to the wisdom of not enraging
+Butler had proved rather futile, he thought, and since the old man
+could not be placated it might be just as well to have Aileen
+demonstrate to him that she was not without resources of her own and
+could live without him. She might force him to change his attitude
+toward her and possibly even to modify some of his political
+machinations against him, Cowperwood. Any port in a storm—and besides,
+he had now really nothing to lose, and instinct told him that her move
+was likely to prove more favorable than otherwise—so he did nothing to
+prevent it.
+
+She took her jewels, some underwear, a couple of dresses which she
+thought would be serviceable, and a few other things, and packed them
+in the most capacious portmanteau she had. Shoes and stockings came
+into consideration, and, despite her efforts, she found that she could
+not get in all that she wished. Her nicest hat, which she was
+determined to take, had to be carried outside. She made a separate
+bundle of it, which was not pleasant to contemplate. Still she decided
+to take it. She rummaged in a little drawer where she kept her money
+and jewels, and found the three hundred and fifty dollars and put it in
+her purse. It wasn’t much, as Aileen could herself see, but Cowperwood
+would help her. If he did not arrange to take care of her, and her
+father would not relent, she would have to get something to do. Little
+she knew of the steely face the world presents to those who have not
+been practically trained and are not economically efficient. She did
+not understand the bitter reaches of life at all. She waited, humming
+for effect, until she heard her father go downstairs to dinner on this
+tenth day of December, then leaned over the upper balustrade to make
+sure that Owen, Callum, Norah, and her mother were at the table, and
+that Katy, the housemaid, was not anywhere in sight. Then she slipped
+into her father’s den, and, taking a note from inside her dress, laid
+it on his desk, and went out. It was addressed to “Father,” and read:
+
+Dear Father,—I just cannot do what you want me to. I have made up my
+mind that I love Mr. Cowperwood too much, so I am going away. Don’t
+look for me with him. You won’t find me where you think. I am not going
+to him; I will not be there. I am going to try to get along by myself
+for a while, until he wants me and can marry me. I’m terribly sorry;
+but I just can’t do what you want. I can’t ever forgive you for the way
+you acted to me. Tell mama and Norah and the boys good-by for me.
+
+
+Aileen
+
+
+To insure its discovery, she picked up Butler’s heavy-rimmed spectacles
+which he employed always when reading, and laid them on it. For a
+moment she felt very strange, somewhat like a thief—a new sensation for
+her. She even felt a momentary sense of ingratitude coupled with pain.
+Perhaps she was doing wrong. Her father had been very good to her. Her
+mother would feel so very bad. Norah would be sorry, and Callum and
+Owen. Still, they did not understand her any more. She was resentful of
+her father’s attitude. He might have seen what the point was; but no,
+he was too old, too hidebound in religion and conventional ideas—he
+never would. He might never let her come back. Very well, she would get
+along somehow. She would show him. She might get a place as a
+school-teacher, and live with the Calligans a long while, if necessary,
+or teach music.
+
+She stole downstairs and out into the vestibule, opening the outer door
+and looking out into the street. The lamps were already flaring in the
+dark, and a cool wind was blowing. Her portmanteau was heavy, but she
+was quite strong. She walked briskly to the corner, which was some
+fifty feet away, and turned south, walking rather nervously and
+irritably, for this was a new experience for her, and it all seemed so
+undignified, so unlike anything she was accustomed to doing. She put
+her bag down on a street corner, finally, to rest. A boy whistling in
+the distance attracted her attention, and as he drew near she called to
+him: “Boy! Oh, boy!”
+
+He came over, looking at her curiously.
+
+“Do you want to earn some money?”
+
+“Yes, ma’am,” he replied politely, adjusting a frowsy cap over one ear.
+
+“Carry this bag for me,” said Aileen, and he picked it up and marched
+off.
+
+In due time she arrived at the Calligans’, and amid much excitement was
+installed in the bosom of her new home. She took her situation with
+much nonchalance, once she was properly placed, distributing her toilet
+articles and those of personal wear with quiet care. The fact that she
+was no longer to have the services of Kathleen, the maid who had served
+her and her mother and Norah jointly, was odd, though not trying. She
+scarcely felt that she had parted from these luxuries permanently, and
+so made herself comfortable.
+
+Mamie Calligan and her mother were adoring slaveys, so she was not
+entirely out of the atmosphere which she craved and to which she was
+accustomed.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVI
+
+
+Meanwhile, in the Butler home the family was assembling for dinner.
+Mrs. Butler was sitting in rotund complacency at the foot of the table,
+her gray hair combed straight back from her round, shiny forehead. She
+had on a dark-gray silk dress, trimmed with gray-and-white striped
+ribbon. It suited her florid temperament admirably. Aileen had dictated
+her mother’s choice, and had seen that it had been properly made. Norah
+was refreshingly youthful in a pale-green dress, with red-velvet cuffs
+and collar. She looked young, slender, gay. Her eyes, complexion and
+hair were fresh and healthy. She was trifling with a string of coral
+beads which her mother had just given her.
+
+“Oh, look, Callum,” she said to her brother opposite her, who was
+drumming idly on the table with his knife and fork. “Aren’t they
+lovely? Mama gave them to me.”
+
+“Mama does more for you than I would. You know what you’d get from me,
+don’t you?”
+
+“What?”
+
+He looked at her teasingly. For answer Norah made a face at him. Just
+then Owen came in and took his place at the table. Mrs. Butler saw
+Norah’s grimace.
+
+“Well, that’ll win no love from your brother, ye can depend on that,”
+she commented.
+
+“Lord, what a day!” observed Owen, wearily, unfolding his napkin. “I’ve
+had my fill of work for once.”
+
+“What’s the trouble?” queried his mother, feelingly.
+
+“No real trouble, mother,” he replied. “Just everything—ducks and
+drakes, that’s all.”
+
+“Well, ye must ate a good, hearty meal now, and that’ll refresh ye,”
+observed his mother, genially and feelingly. “Thompson”—she was
+referring to the family grocer—“brought us the last of his beans. You
+must have some of those.”
+
+“Sure, beans’ll fix it, whatever it is, Owen,” joked Callum. “Mother’s
+got the answer.”
+
+“They’re fine, I’d have ye know,” replied Mrs. Butler, quite
+unconscious of the joke.
+
+“No doubt of it, mother,” replied Callum. “Real brain-food. Let’s feed
+some to Norah.”
+
+“You’d better eat some yourself, smarty. My, but you’re gay! I suppose
+you’re going out to see somebody. That’s why.”
+
+“Right you are, Norah. Smart girl, you. Five or six. Ten to fifteen
+minutes each. I’d call on you if you were nicer.”
+
+“You would if you got the chance,” mocked Norah. “I’d have you know I
+wouldn’t let you. I’d feel very bad if I couldn’t get somebody better
+than you.”
+
+“As good as, you mean,” corrected Callum.
+
+“Children, children!” interpolated Mrs. Butler, calmly, looking about
+for old John, the servant. “You’ll be losin’ your tempers in a minute.
+Hush now. Here comes your father. Where’s Aileen?”
+
+Butler walked heavily in and took his seat.
+
+John, the servant, appeared bearing a platter of beans among other
+things, and Mrs. Butler asked him to send some one to call Aileen.
+
+“It’s gettin’ colder, I’m thinkin’,” said Butler, by way of
+conversation, and eyeing Aileen’s empty chair. She would come soon
+now—his heavy problem. He had been very tactful these last two
+months—avoiding any reference to Cowperwood in so far as he could help
+in her presence.
+
+“It’s colder,” remarked Owen, “much colder. We’ll soon see real winter
+now.”
+
+Old John began to offer the various dishes in order; but when all had
+been served Aileen had not yet come.
+
+“See where Aileen is, John,” observed Mrs. Butler, interestedly. “The
+meal will be gettin’ cold.”
+
+Old John returned with the news that Aileen was not in her room.
+
+“Sure she must be somewhere,” commented Mrs. Butler, only slightly
+perplexed. “She’ll be comin’, though, never mind, if she wants to. She
+knows it’s meal-time.”
+
+The conversation drifted from a new water-works that was being planned
+to the new city hall, then nearing completion; Cowperwood’s financial
+and social troubles, and the state of the stock market generally; a new
+gold-mine in Arizona; the departure of Mrs. Mollenhauer the following
+Tuesday for Europe, with appropriate comments by Norah and Callum; and
+a Christmas ball that was going to be given for charity.
+
+“Aileen’ll be wantin’ to go to that,” commented Mrs. Butler.
+
+“I’m going, you bet,” put in Norah.
+
+“Who’s going to take you?” asked Callum.
+
+“That’s my affair, mister,” she replied, smartly.
+
+The meal was over, and Mrs. Butler strolled up to Aileen’s room to see
+why she had not come down to dinner. Butler entered his den, wishing so
+much that he could take his wife into his confidence concerning all
+that was worrying him. On his desk, as he sat down and turned up the
+light, he saw the note. He recognized Aileen’s handwriting at once.
+What could she mean by writing him? A sense of the untoward came to
+him, and he tore it open slowly, and, putting on his glasses,
+contemplated it solemnly.
+
+So Aileen was gone. The old man stared at each word as if it had been
+written in fire. She said she had not gone with Cowperwood. It was
+possible, just the same, that he had run away from Philadelphia and
+taken her with him. This was the last straw. This ended it. Aileen
+lured away from home—to where—to what? Butler could scarcely believe,
+though, that Cowperwood had tempted her to do this. He had too much at
+stake; it would involve his own and Butler’s families. The papers would
+be certain to get it quickly. He got up, crumpling the paper in his
+hand, and turned about at a noise. His wife was coming in. He pulled
+himself together and shoved the letter in his pocket.
+
+“Aileen’s not in her room,” she said, curiously. “She didn’t say
+anything to you about going out, did she?”
+
+“No,” he replied, truthfully, wondering how soon he should have to tell
+his wife.
+
+“That’s odd,” observed Mrs. Butler, doubtfully. “She must have gone out
+after somethin’. It’s a wonder she wouldn’t tell somebody.”
+
+Butler gave no sign. He dared not. “She’ll be back,” he said, more in
+order to gain time than anything else. He was sorry to have to pretend.
+Mrs. Butler went out, and he closed the door. Then he took out the
+letter and read it again. The girl was crazy. She was doing an
+absolutely wild, inhuman, senseless thing. Where could she go, except
+to Cowperwood? She was on the verge of a public scandal, and this would
+produce it. There was just one thing to do as far as he could see.
+Cowperwood, if he were still in Philadelphia, would know. He would go
+to him—threaten, cajole, actually destroy him, if necessary. Aileen
+must come back. She need not go to Europe, perhaps, but she must come
+back and behave herself at least until Cowperwood could legitimately
+marry her. That was all he could expect now. She would have to wait,
+and some day perhaps he could bring himself to accept her wretched
+proposition. Horrible thought! It would kill her mother, disgrace her
+sister. He got up, took down his hat, put on his overcoat, and started
+out.
+
+Arriving at the Cowperwood home he was shown into the reception-room.
+Cowperwood at the time was in his den looking over some private papers.
+When the name of Butler was announced he immediately went down-stairs.
+It was characteristic of the man that the announcement of Butler’s
+presence created no stir in him whatsoever. So Butler had come. That
+meant, of course, that Aileen had gone. Now for a battle, not of words,
+but of weights of personalities. He felt himself to be intellectually,
+socially, and in every other way the more powerful man of the two. That
+spiritual content of him which we call life hardened to the texture of
+steel. He recalled that although he had told his wife and his father
+that the politicians, of whom Butler was one, were trying to make a
+scapegoat of him, Butler, nevertheless, was not considered to be wholly
+alienated as a friend, and civility must prevail. He would like very
+much to placate him if he could, to talk out the hard facts of life in
+a quiet and friendly way. But this matter of Aileen had to be adjusted
+now once and for all. And with that thought in his mind he walked
+quickly into Butler’s presence.
+
+The old man, when he learned that Cowperwood was in and would see him,
+determined to make his contact with the financier as short and
+effective as possible. He moved the least bit when he heard
+Cowperwood’s step, as light and springy as ever.
+
+“Good evening, Mr. Butler,” said Cowperwood, cheerfully, when he saw
+him, extending his hand. “What can I do for you?”
+
+“Ye can take that away from in front of me, for one thing,” said
+Butler, grimly referring to his hand. “I have no need of it. It’s my
+daughter I’ve come to talk to ye about, and I want plain answers. Where
+is she?”
+
+“You mean Aileen?” said Cowperwood, looking at him with steady,
+curious, unrevealing eyes, and merely interpolating this to obtain a
+moment for reflection. “What can I tell you about her?”
+
+“Ye can tell me where she is, that I know. And ye can make her come
+back to her home, where she belongs. It was bad fortune that ever
+brought ye across my doorstep; but I’ll not bandy words with ye here.
+Ye’ll tell me where my daughter is, and ye’ll leave her alone from now,
+or I’ll—” The old man’s fists closed like a vise, and his chest heaved
+with suppressed rage. “Ye’ll not be drivin’ me too far, man, if ye’re
+wise,” he added, after a time, recovering his equanimity in part. “I
+want no truck with ye. I want my daughter.”
+
+“Listen, Mr. Butler,” said Cowperwood, quite calmly, relishing the
+situation for the sheer sense of superiority it gave him. “I want to be
+perfectly frank with you, if you will let me. I may know where your
+daughter is, and I may not. I may wish to tell you, and I may not. She
+may not wish me to. But unless you wish to talk with me in a civil way
+there is no need of our going on any further. You are privileged to do
+what you like. Won’t you come up-stairs to my room? We can talk more
+comfortably there.”
+
+Butler looked at his former protege in utter astonishment. He had never
+before in all his experience come up against a more ruthless
+type—suave, bland, forceful, unterrified. This man had certainly come
+to him as a sheep, and had turned out to be a ravening wolf. His
+incarceration had not put him in the least awe.
+
+“I’ll not come up to your room,” Butler said, “and ye’ll not get out of
+Philadelphy with her if that’s what ye’re plannin’. I can see to that.
+Ye think ye have the upper hand of me, I see, and ye’re anxious to make
+something of it. Well, ye’re not. It wasn’t enough that ye come to me
+as a beggar, cravin’ the help of me, and that I took ye in and helped
+ye all I could—ye had to steal my daughter from me in the bargain. If
+it wasn’t for the girl’s mother and her sister and her
+brothers—dacenter men than ever ye’ll know how to be—I’d brain ye where
+ye stand. Takin’ a young, innocent girl and makin’ an evil woman out of
+her, and ye a married man! It’s a God’s blessin’ for ye that it’s me,
+and not one of me sons, that’s here talkin’ to ye, or ye wouldn’t be
+alive to say what ye’d do.”
+
+The old man was grim but impotent in his rage.
+
+“I’m sorry, Mr. Butler,” replied Cowperwood, quietly. “I’m willing to
+explain, but you won’t let me. I’m not planning to run away with your
+daughter, nor to leave Philadelphia. You ought to know me well enough
+to know that I’m not contemplating anything of that kind; my interests
+are too large. You and I are practical men. We ought to be able to talk
+this matter over together and reach an understanding. I thought once of
+coming to you and explaining this; but I was quite sure you wouldn’t
+listen to me. Now that you are here I would like to talk to you. If you
+will come up to my room I will be glad to—otherwise not. Won’t you come
+up?”
+
+Butler saw that Cowperwood had the advantage. He might as well go up.
+Otherwise it was plain he would get no information.
+
+“Very well,” he said.
+
+Cowperwood led the way quite amicably, and, having entered his private
+office, closed the door behind him.
+
+“We ought to be able to talk this matter over and reach an
+understanding,” he said again, when they were in the room and he had
+closed the door. “I am not as bad as you think, though I know I appear
+very bad.” Butler stared at him in contempt. “I love your daughter, and
+she loves me. I know you are asking yourself how I can do this while I
+am still married; but I assure you I can, and that I do. I am not
+happily married. I had expected, if this panic hadn’t come along, to
+arrange with my wife for a divorce and marry Aileen. My intentions are
+perfectly good. The situation which you can complain of, of course, is
+the one you encountered a few weeks ago. It was indiscreet, but it was
+entirely human. Your daughter does not complain—she understands.” At
+the mention of his daughter in this connection Butler flushed with rage
+and shame, but he controlled himself.
+
+“And ye think because she doesn’t complain that it’s all right, do ye?”
+he asked, sarcastically.
+
+“From my point of view, yes; from yours no. You have one view of life,
+Mr. Butler, and I have another.”
+
+“Ye’re right there,” put in Butler, “for once, anyhow.”
+
+“That doesn’t prove that either of us is right or wrong. In my judgment
+the present end justifies the means. The end I have in view is to marry
+Aileen. If I can possibly pull myself out of this financial scrape that
+I am in I will do so. Of course, I would like to have your consent for
+that—so would Aileen; but if we can’t, we can’t.” (Cowperwood was
+thinking that while this might not have a very soothing effect on the
+old contractor’s point of view, nevertheless it must make some appeal
+to his sense of the possible or necessary. Aileen’s present situation
+was quite unsatisfactory without marriage in view. And even if he,
+Cowperwood, was a convicted embezzler in the eyes of the public, that
+did not make him so. He might get free and restore himself—would
+certainly—and Aileen ought to be glad to marry him if she could under
+the circumstances. He did not quite grasp the depth of Butler’s
+religious and moral prejudices.) “Lately,” he went on, “you have been
+doing all you can, as I understand it, to pull me down, on account of
+Aileen, I suppose; but that is simply delaying what I want to do.”
+
+“Ye’d like me to help ye do that, I suppose?” suggested Butler, with
+infinite disgust and patience.
+
+“I want to marry Aileen,” Cowperwood repeated, for emphasis’ sake. “She
+wants to marry me. Under the circumstances, however you may feel, you
+can have no real objection to my doing that, I am sure; yet you go on
+fighting me—making it hard for me to do what you really know ought to
+be done.”
+
+“Ye’re a scoundrel,” said Butler, seeing through his motives quite
+clearly. “Ye’re a sharper, to my way of thinkin’, and it’s no child of
+mine I want connected with ye. I’m not sayin’, seein’ that things are
+as they are, that if ye were a free man it wouldn’t be better that she
+should marry ye. It’s the one dacent thing ye could do—if ye would,
+which I doubt. But that’s nayther here nor there now. What can ye want
+with her hid away somewhere? Ye can’t marry her. Ye can’t get a
+divorce. Ye’ve got your hands full fightin’ your lawsuits and kapin’
+yourself out of jail. She’ll only be an added expense to ye, and ye’ll
+be wantin’ all the money ye have for other things, I’m thinkin’. Why
+should ye want to be takin’ her away from a dacent home and makin’
+something out of her that ye’d be ashamed to marry if you could? The
+laist ye could do, if ye were any kind of a man at all, and had any of
+that thing that ye’re plased to call love, would be to lave her at home
+and keep her as respectable as possible. Mind ye, I’m not thinkin’ she
+isn’t ten thousand times too good for ye, whatever ye’ve made of her.
+But if ye had any sinse of dacency left, ye wouldn’t let her shame her
+family and break her old mother’s heart, and that for no purpose except
+to make her worse than she is already. What good can ye get out of it,
+now? What good can ye expect to come of it? Be hivins, if ye had any
+sinse at all I should think ye could see that for yerself. Ye’re only
+addin’ to your troubles, not takin’ away from them—and she’ll not thank
+ye for that later on.”
+
+He stopped, rather astonished that he should have been drawn into an
+argument. His contempt for this man was so great that he could scarcely
+look at him, but his duty and his need was to get Aileen back.
+Cowperwood looked at him as one who gives serious attention to another.
+He seemed to be thinking deeply over what Butler had said.
+
+“To tell you the truth, Mr. Butler,” he said, “I did not want Aileen to
+leave your home at all; and she will tell you so, if you ever talk to
+her about it. I did my best to persuade her not to, and when she
+insisted on going the only thing I could do was to be sure she would be
+comfortable wherever she went. She was greatly outraged to think you
+should have put detectives on her trail. That, and the fact that you
+wanted to send her away somewhere against her will, was the principal
+reasons for her leaving. I assure you I did not want her to go. I think
+you forget sometimes, Mr. Butler, that Aileen is a grown woman, and
+that she has a will of her own. You think I control her to her great
+disadvantage. As a matter of fact, I am very much in love with her, and
+have been for three or four years; and if you know anything about love
+you know that it doesn’t always mean control. I’m not doing Aileen any
+injustice when I say that she has had as much influence on me as I have
+had on her. I love her, and that’s the cause of all the trouble. You
+come and insist that I shall return your daughter to you. As a matter
+of fact, I don’t know whether I can or not. I don’t know that she would
+go if I wanted her to. She might turn on me and say that I didn’t care
+for her any more. That is not true, and I would not want her to feel
+that way. She is greatly hurt, as I told you, by what you did to her,
+and the fact that you want her to leave Philadelphia. You can do as
+much to remedy that as I can. I could tell you where she is, but I do
+not know that I want to. Certainly not until I know what your attitude
+toward her and this whole proposition is to be.”
+
+He paused and looked calmly at the old contractor, who eyed him grimly
+in return.
+
+“What proposition are ye talkin’ about?” asked Butler, interested by
+the peculiar developments of this argument. In spite of himself he was
+getting a slightly different angle on the whole situation. The scene
+was shifting to a certain extent. Cowperwood appeared to be reasonably
+sincere in the matter. His promises might all be wrong, but perhaps he
+did love Aileen; and it was possible that he did intend to get a
+divorce from his wife some time and marry her. Divorce, as Butler knew,
+was against the rules of the Catholic Church, which he so much revered.
+The laws of God and any sense of decency commanded that Cowperwood
+should not desert his wife and children and take up with another
+woman—not even Aileen, in order to save her. It was a criminal thing to
+plan, sociologically speaking, and showed what a villain Cowperwood
+inherently was; but, nevertheless, Cowperwood was not a Catholic, his
+views of life were not the same as his own, Butler’s, and besides and
+worst of all (no doubt due in part to Aileen’s own temperament), he had
+compromised her situation very materially. She might not easily be
+restored to a sense of the normal and decent, and so the matter was
+worth taking into thought. Butler knew that ultimately he could not
+countenance any such thing—certainly not, and keep his faith with the
+Church—but he was human enough none the less to consider it. Besides,
+he wanted Aileen to come back; and Aileen from now on, he knew, would
+have some say as to what her future should be.
+
+“Well, it’s simple enough,” replied Cowperwood. “I should like to have
+you withdraw your opposition to Aileen’s remaining in Philadelphia, for
+one thing; and for another, I should like you to stop your attacks on
+me.” Cowperwood smiled in an ingratiating way. He hoped really to
+placate Butler in part by his generous attitude throughout this
+procedure. “I can’t make you do that, of course, unless you want to. I
+merely bring it up, Mr. Butler, because I am sure that if it hadn’t
+been for Aileen you would not have taken the course you have taken
+toward me. I understood you received an anonymous letter, and that
+afternoon you called your loan with me. Since then I have heard from
+one source and another that you were strongly against me, and I merely
+wish to say that I wish you wouldn’t be. I am not guilty of embezzling
+any sixty thousand dollars, and you know it. My intentions were of the
+best. I did not think I was going to fail at the time I used those
+certificates, and if it hadn’t been for several other loans that were
+called I would have gone on to the end of the month and put them back
+in time, as I always had. I have always valued your friendship very
+highly, and I am very sorry to lose it. Now I have said all I am going
+to say.”
+
+Butler looked at Cowperwood with shrewd, calculating eyes. The man had
+some merit, but much unconscionable evil in him. Butler knew very well
+how he had taken the check, and a good many other things in connection
+with it. The manner in which he had played his cards to-night was on a
+par with the way he had run to him on the night of the fire. He was
+just shrewd and calculating and heartless.
+
+“I’ll make ye no promise,” he said. “Tell me where my daughter is, and
+I’ll think the matter over. Ye have no claim on me now, and I owe ye no
+good turn. But I’ll think it over, anyhow.”
+
+“That’s quite all right,” replied Cowperwood. “That’s all I can expect.
+But what about Aileen? Do you expect her to leave Philadelphia?”
+
+“Not if she settles down and behaves herself: but there must be an end
+of this between you and her. She’s disgracin’ her family and ruinin’
+her soul in the bargain. And that’s what you are doin’ with yours.
+It’ll be time enough to talk about anything else when you’re a free
+man. More than that I’ll not promise.”
+
+Cowperwood, satisfied that this move on Aileen’s part had done her a
+real service if it had not aided him especially, was convinced that it
+would be a good move for her to return to her home at once. He could
+not tell how his appeal to the State Supreme Court would eventuate. His
+motion for a new trial which was now to be made under the privilege of
+the certificate of reasonable doubt might not be granted, in which case
+he would have to serve a term in the penitentiary. If he were compelled
+to go to the penitentiary she would be safer—better off in the bosom of
+her family. His own hands were going to be exceedingly full for the
+next two months until he knew how his appeal was coming out. And after
+that—well, after that he would fight on, whatever happened.
+
+During all the time that Cowperwood had been arguing his case in this
+fashion he had been thinking how he could adjust this compromise so as
+to retain the affection of Aileen and not offend her sensibilities by
+urging her to return. He knew that she would not agree to give up
+seeing him, and he was not willing that she should. Unless he had a
+good and sufficient reason, he would be playing a wretched part by
+telling Butler where she was. He did not intend to do so until he saw
+exactly how to do it—the way that would make it most acceptable to
+Aileen. He knew that she would not long be happy where she was. Her
+flight was due in part to Butler’s intense opposition to himself and in
+part to his determination to make her leave Philadelphia and behave;
+but this last was now in part obviated. Butler, in spite of his words,
+was no longer a stern Nemesis. He was a melting man—very anxious to
+find his daughter, very willing to forgive her. He was whipped,
+literally beaten, at his own game, and Cowperwood could see it in the
+old man’s eyes. If he himself could talk to Aileen personally and
+explain just how things were, he felt sure he could make her see that
+it would be to their mutual advantage, for the present at least, to
+have the matter amicably settled. The thing to do was to make Butler
+wait somewhere—here, possibly—while he went and talked to her. When she
+learned how things were she would probably acquiesce.
+
+“The best thing that I can do under the circumstances,” he said, after
+a time, “would be to see Aileen in two or three days, and ask her what
+she wishes to do. I can explain the matter to her, and if she wants to
+go back, she can. I will promise to tell her anything that you say.”
+
+“Two or three days!” exclaimed Butler, irritably. “Two or three
+fiddlesticks! She must come home to-night. Her mother doesn’t know
+she’s left the place yet. To-night is the time! I’ll go and fetch her
+meself to-night.”
+
+“No, that won’t do,” said Cowperwood. “I shall have to go myself. If
+you wish to wait here I will see what can be done, and let you know.”
+
+“Very well,” grunted Butler, who was now walking up and down with his
+hands behind his back. “But for Heaven’s sake be quick about it.
+There’s no time to lose.” He was thinking of Mrs. Butler. Cowperwood
+called the servant, ordered his runabout, and told George to see that
+his private office was not disturbed. Then, as Butler strolled to and
+fro in this, to him, objectionable room, Cowperwood drove rapidly away.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVII
+
+
+Although it was nearly eleven o’clock when he arrived at the
+Calligans’, Aileen was not yet in bed. In her bedroom upstairs she was
+confiding to Mamie and Mrs. Calligan some of her social experiences
+when the bell rang, and Mrs. Calligan went down and opened the door to
+Cowperwood.
+
+“Miss Butler is here, I believe,” he said. “Will you tell her that
+there is some one here from her father?” Although Aileen had instructed
+that her presence here was not to be divulged even to the members of
+her family the force of Cowperwood’s presence and the mention of
+Butler’s name cost Mrs. Calligan her presence of mind. “Wait a moment,”
+she said; “I’ll see.”
+
+She stepped back, and Cowperwood promptly stepped in, taking off his
+hat with the air of one who was satisfied that Aileen was there. “Say
+to her that I only want to speak to her for a few moments,” he called,
+as Mrs. Calligan went up-stairs, raising his voice in the hope that
+Aileen might hear. She did, and came down promptly. She was very much
+astonished to think that he should come so soon, and fancied, in her
+vanity, that there must be great excitement in her home. She would have
+greatly grieved if there had not been.
+
+The Calligans would have been pleased to hear, but Cowperwood was
+cautious. As she came down the stairs he put his finger to his lips in
+sign for silence, and said, “This is Miss Butler, I believe.”
+
+“Yes,” replied Aileen, with a secret smile. Her one desire was to kiss
+him. “What’s the trouble darling?” she asked, softly.
+
+“You’ll have to go back, dear, I’m afraid,” whispered Cowperwood.
+“You’ll have everything in a turmoil if you don’t. Your mother doesn’t
+know yet, it seems, and your father is over at my place now, waiting
+for you. It may be a good deal of help to me if you do. Let me tell
+you—” He went off into a complete description of his conversation with
+Butler and his own views in the matter. Aileen’s expression changed
+from time to time as the various phases of the matter were put before
+her; but, persuaded by the clearness with which he put the matter, and
+by his assurance that they could continue their relations as before
+uninterrupted, once this was settled, she decided to return. In a way,
+her father’s surrender was a great triumph. She made her farewells to
+the Calligans, saying, with a smile, that they could not do without her
+at home, and that she would send for her belongings later, and returned
+with Cowperwood to his own door. There he asked her to wait in the
+runabout while he sent her father down.
+
+“Well?” said Butler, turning on him when he opened the door, and not
+seeing Aileen.
+
+“You’ll find her outside in my runabout,” observed Cowperwood. “You may
+use that if you choose. I will send my man for it.”
+
+“No, thank you; we’ll walk,” said Butler.
+
+Cowperwood called his servant to take charge of the vehicle, and Butler
+stalked solemnly out.
+
+He had to admit to himself that the influence of Cowperwood over his
+daughter was deadly, and probably permanent. The best he could do would
+be to keep her within the precincts of the home, where she might still,
+possibly, be brought to her senses. He held a very guarded conversation
+with her on his way home, for fear that she would take additional
+offense. Argument was out of the question.
+
+“Ye might have talked with me once more, Aileen,” he said, “before ye
+left. Yer mother would be in a terrible state if she knew ye were gone.
+She doesn’t know yet. Ye’ll have to say ye stayed somewhere to dinner.”
+
+“I was at the Calligans,” replied Aileen. “That’s easy enough. Mama
+won’t think anything about it.”
+
+“It’s a sore heart I have, Aileen. I hope ye’ll think over your ways
+and do better. I’ll not say anythin’ more now.”
+
+Aileen returned to her room, decidedly triumphant in her mood for the
+moment, and things went on apparently in the Butler household as
+before. But those who imagine that this defeat permanently altered the
+attitude of Butler toward Cowperwood are mistaken.
+
+In the meanwhile between the day of his temporary release and the
+hearing of his appeal which was two months off, Cowperwood was going on
+doing his best to repair his shattered forces. He took up his work
+where he left off; but the possibility of reorganizing his business was
+distinctly modified since his conviction. Because of his action in
+trying to protect his largest creditors at the time of his failure, he
+fancied that once he was free again, if ever he got free, his credit,
+other things being equal, would be good with those who could help him
+most—say, Cooke & Co., Clark & Co., Drexel & Co., and the Girard
+National Bank—providing his personal reputation had not been too badly
+injured by his sentence. Fortunately for his own hopefulness of mind,
+he failed fully to realize what a depressing effect a legal decision of
+this character, sound or otherwise, had on the minds of even his most
+enthusiastic supporters.
+
+His best friends in the financial world were by now convinced that his
+was a sinking ship. A student of finance once observed that nothing is
+so sensitive as money, and the financial mind partakes largely of the
+quality of the thing in which it deals. There was no use trying to do
+much for a man who might be going to prison for a term of years.
+Something might be done for him possibly in connection with the
+governor, providing he lost his case before the Supreme Court and was
+actually sentenced to prison; but that was two months off, or more, and
+they could not tell what the outcome of that would be. So Cowperwood’s
+repeated appeals for assistance, extension of credit, or the acceptance
+of some plan he had for his general rehabilitation, were met with the
+kindly evasions of those who were doubtful. They would think it over.
+They would see about it. Certain things were standing in the way. And
+so on, and so forth, through all the endless excuses of those who do
+not care to act. In these days he went about the money world in his
+customary jaunty way, greeting all those whom he had known there many
+years and pretending, when asked, to be very hopeful, to be doing very
+well; but they did not believe him, and he really did not care whether
+they did or not. His business was to persuade or over-persuade any one
+who could really be of assistance to him, and at this task he worked
+untiringly, ignoring all others.
+
+“Why, hello, Frank,” his friends would call, on seeing him. “How are
+you getting on?”
+
+“Fine! Fine!” he would reply, cheerfully. “Never better,” and he would
+explain in a general way how his affairs were being handled. He
+conveyed much of his own optimism to all those who knew him and were
+interested in his welfare, but of course there were many who were not.
+
+In these days also, he and Steger were constantly to be met with in
+courts of law, for he was constantly being reexamined in some petition
+in bankruptcy. They were heartbreaking days, but he did not flinch. He
+wanted to stay in Philadelphia and fight the thing to a finish—putting
+himself where he had been before the fire; rehabilitating himself in
+the eyes of the public. He felt that he could do it, too, if he were
+not actually sent to prison for a long term; and even then, so
+naturally optimistic was his mood, when he got out again. But, in so
+far as Philadelphia was concerned, distinctly he was dreaming vain
+dreams.
+
+One of the things militating against him was the continued opposition
+of Butler and the politicians. Somehow—no one could have said exactly
+why—the general political feeling was that the financier and the former
+city treasurer would lose their appeals and eventually be sentenced
+together. Stener, in spite of his original intention to plead guilty
+and take his punishment without comment, had been persuaded by some of
+his political friends that it would be better for his future’s sake to
+plead not guilty and claim that his offense had been due to custom,
+rather than to admit his guilt outright and so seem not to have had any
+justification whatsoever. This he did, but he was convicted
+nevertheless. For the sake of appearances, a trumped-up appeal was made
+which was now before the State Supreme Court.
+
+Then, too, due to one whisper and another, and these originating with
+the girl who had written Butler and Cowperwood’s wife, there was at
+this time a growing volume of gossip relating to the alleged relations
+of Cowperwood with Butler’s daughter, Aileen. There had been a house in
+Tenth Street. It had been maintained by Cowperwood for her. No wonder
+Butler was so vindictive. This, indeed, explained much. And even in the
+practical, financial world, criticism was now rather against Cowperwood
+than his enemies. For, was it not a fact, that at the inception of his
+career, he had been befriended by Butler? And what a way to reward that
+friendship! His oldest and firmest admirers wagged their heads. For
+they sensed clearly that this was another illustration of that innate
+“I satisfy myself” attitude which so regulated Cowperwood’s conduct. He
+was a strong man, surely—and a brilliant one. Never had Third Street
+seen a more pyrotechnic, and yet fascinating and financially
+aggressive, and at the same time, conservative person. Yet might one
+not fairly tempt Nemesis by a too great daring and egotism? Like Death,
+it loves a shining mark. He should not, perhaps, have seduced Butler’s
+daughter; unquestionably he should not have so boldly taken that check,
+especially after his quarrel and break with Stener. He was a little too
+aggressive. Was it not questionable whether—with such a record—he could
+be restored to his former place here? The bankers and business men who
+were closest to him were decidedly dubious.
+
+But in so far as Cowperwood and his own attitude toward life was
+concerned, at this time—the feeling he had—“to satisfy myself”—when
+combined with his love of beauty and love and women, still made him
+ruthless and thoughtless. Even now, the beauty and delight of a girl
+like Aileen Butler were far more important to him than the good-will of
+fifty million people, if he could evade the necessity of having their
+good-will. Previous to the Chicago fire and the panic, his star had
+been so rapidly ascending that in the helter-skelter of great and
+favorable events he had scarcely taken thought of the social
+significance of the thing he was doing. Youth and the joy of life were
+in his blood. He felt so young, so vigorous, so like new grass looks
+and feels. The freshness of spring evenings was in him, and he did not
+care. After the crash, when one might have imagined he would have seen
+the wisdom of relinquishing Aileen for the time being, anyhow, he did
+not care to. She represented the best of the wonderful days that had
+gone before. She was a link between him and the past and a still-to-be
+triumphant future.
+
+His worst anxiety was that if he were sent to the penitentiary, or
+adjudged a bankrupt, or both, he would probably lose the privilege of a
+seat on ’change, and that would close to him the most distinguished
+avenue of his prosperity here in Philadelphia for some time, if not
+forever. At present, because of his complications, his seat had been
+attached as an asset, and he could not act. Edward and Joseph, almost
+the only employees he could afford, were still acting for him in a
+small way; but the other members on ’change naturally suspected his
+brothers as his agents, and any talk that they might raise of going
+into business for themselves merely indicated to other brokers and
+bankers that Cowperwood was contemplating some concealed move which
+would not necessarily be advantageous to his creditors, and against the
+law anyhow. Yet he must remain on ’change, whatever happened,
+potentially if not actively; and so in his quick mental searchings he
+hit upon the idea that in order to forfend against the event of his
+being put into prison or thrown into bankruptcy, or both, he ought to
+form a subsidiary silent partnership with some man who was or would be
+well liked on ’change, and whom he could use as a cat’s-paw and a
+dummy.
+
+Finally he hit upon a man who he thought would do. He did not amount to
+much—had a small business; but he was honest, and he liked Cowperwood.
+His name was Wingate—Stephen Wingate—and he was eking out a not too
+robust existence in South Third Street as a broker. He was forty-five
+years of age, of medium height, fairly thick-set, not at all
+unprepossessing, and rather intelligent and active, but not too
+forceful and pushing in spirit. He really needed a man like Cowperwood
+to make him into something, if ever he was to be made. He had a seat on
+’change, and was well thought of; respected, but not so very
+prosperous. In times past he had asked small favors of Cowperwood—the
+use of small loans at a moderate rate of interest, tips, and so forth;
+and Cowperwood, because he liked him and felt a little sorry for him,
+had granted them. Now Wingate was slowly drifting down toward a none
+too successful old age, and was as tractable as such a man would
+naturally be. No one for the time being would suspect him of being a
+hireling of Cowperwood’s, and the latter could depend on him to execute
+his orders to the letter. He sent for him and had a long conversation
+with him. He told him just what the situation was, what he thought he
+could do for him as a partner, how much of his business he would want
+for himself, and so on, and found him agreeable.
+
+“I’ll be glad to do anything you say, Mr. Cowperwood,” he assured the
+latter. “I know whatever happens that you’ll protect me, and there’s
+nobody in the world I would rather work with or have greater respect
+for. This storm will all blow over, and you’ll be all right. We can try
+it, anyhow. If it don’t work out you can see what you want to do about
+it later.”
+
+And so this relationship was tentatively entered into and Cowperwood
+began to act in a small way through Wingate.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVIII
+
+
+By the time the State Supreme Court came to pass upon Cowperwood’s plea
+for a reversal of the lower court and the granting of a new trial, the
+rumor of his connection with Aileen had spread far and wide. As has
+been seen, it had done and was still doing him much damage. It
+confirmed the impression, which the politicians had originally tried to
+create, that Cowperwood was the true criminal and Stener the victim.
+His semi-legitimate financial subtlety, backed indeed by his financial
+genius, but certainly on this account not worse than that being
+practiced in peace and quiet and with much applause in many other
+quarters—was now seen to be Machiavellian trickery of the most
+dangerous type. He had a wife and two children; and without knowing
+what his real thoughts had been the fruitfully imaginative public
+jumped to the conclusion that he had been on the verge of deserting
+them, divorcing Lillian, and marrying Aileen. This was criminal enough
+in itself, from the conservative point of view; but when taken in
+connection with his financial record, his trial, conviction, and
+general bankruptcy situation, the public was inclined to believe that
+he was all the politicians said he was. He ought to be convicted. The
+Supreme Court ought not to grant his prayer for a new trial. It is thus
+that our inmost thoughts and intentions burst at times via no known
+material agency into public thoughts. People know, when they cannot
+apparently possibly know why they know. There is such a thing as
+thought-transference and transcendentalism of ideas.
+
+It reached, for one thing, the ears of the five judges of the State
+Supreme Court and of the Governor of the State.
+
+During the four weeks Cowperwood had been free on a certificate of
+reasonable doubt both Harper Steger and Dennis Shannon appeared before
+the judges of the State Supreme Court, and argued pro and con as to the
+reasonableness of granting a new trial. Through his lawyer, Cowperwood
+made a learned appeal to the Supreme Court judges, showing how he had
+been unfairly indicted in the first place, how there was no real
+substantial evidence on which to base a charge of larceny or anything
+else. It took Steger two hours and ten minutes to make his argument,
+and District-Attorney Shannon longer to make his reply, during which
+the five judges on the bench, men of considerable legal experience but
+no great financial understanding, listened with rapt attention. Three
+of them, Judges Smithson, Rainey, and Beckwith, men most amenable to
+the political feeling of the time and the wishes of the bosses, were
+little interested in this story of Cowperwood’s transaction,
+particularly since his relations with Butler’s daughter and Butler’s
+consequent opposition to him had come to them. They fancied that in a
+way they were considering the whole matter fairly and impartially; but
+the manner in which Cowperwood had treated Butler was never out of
+their minds. Two of them, Judges Marvin and Rafalsky, who were men of
+larger sympathies and understanding, but of no greater political
+freedom, did feel that Cowperwood had been badly used thus far, but
+they did not see what they could do about it. He had put himself in a
+most unsatisfactory position, politically and socially. They understood
+and took into consideration his great financial and social losses which
+Steger described accurately; and one of them, Judge Rafalsky, because
+of a similar event in his own life in so far as a girl was concerned,
+was inclined to argue strongly against the conviction of Cowperwood;
+but, owing to his political connections and obligations, he realized
+that it would not be wise politically to stand out against what was
+wanted. Still, when he and Marvin learned that Judges Smithson, Rainey,
+and Beckwith were inclined to convict Cowperwood without much argument,
+they decided to hand down a dissenting opinion. The point involved was
+a very knotty one. Cowperwood might carry it to the Supreme Court of
+the United States on some fundamental principle of liberty of action.
+Anyhow, other judges in other courts in Pennsylvania and elsewhere
+would be inclined to examine the decision in this case, it was so
+important. The minority decided that it would not do them any harm to
+hand down a dissenting opinion. The politicians would not mind as long
+as Cowperwood was convicted—would like it better, in fact. It looked
+fairer. Besides, Marvin and Rafalsky did not care to be included, if
+they could help it, with Smithson, Rainey, and Beckwith in a sweeping
+condemnation of Cowperwood. So all five judges fancied they were
+considering the whole matter rather fairly and impartially, as men will
+under such circumstances. Smithson, speaking for himself and Judges
+Rainey and Beckwith on the eleventh of February, 1872, said:
+
+“The defendant, Frank A. Cowperwood, asks that the finding of the jury
+in the lower court (the State of Pennsylvania vs. Frank A. Cowperwood)
+be reversed and a new trial granted. This court cannot see that any
+substantial injustice has been done the defendant. [Here followed a
+rather lengthy resume of the history of the case, in which it was
+pointed out that the custom and precedent of the treasurer’s office, to
+say nothing of Cowperwood’s easy method of doing business with the city
+treasury, could have nothing to do with his responsibility for failure
+to observe both the spirit and the letter of the law.] The obtaining of
+goods under color of legal process [went on Judge Smithson, speaking
+for the majority] may amount to larceny. In the present case it was the
+province of the jury to ascertain the felonious intent. They have
+settled that against the defendant as a question of fact, and the court
+cannot say that there was not sufficient evidence to sustain the
+verdict. For what purpose did the defendant get the check? He was upon
+the eve of failure. He had already hypothecated for his own debts the
+loan of the city placed in his hands for sale—he had unlawfully
+obtained five hundred thousand dollars in cash as loans; and it is
+reasonable to suppose that he could obtain nothing more from the city
+treasury by any ordinary means. Then it is that he goes there, and, by
+means of a falsehood implied if not actual, obtains sixty thousand
+dollars more. The jury has found the intent with which this was done.”
+
+It was in these words that Cowperwood’s appeal for a new trial was
+denied by the majority.
+
+For himself and Judge Rafalsky, Judge Marvin, dissenting, wrote:
+
+“It is plain from the evidence in the case that Mr. Cowperwood did not
+receive the check without authority as agent to do so, and it has not
+been clearly demonstrated that within his capacity as agent he did not
+perform or intend to perform the full measure of the obligation which
+the receipt of this check implied. It was shown in the trial that as a
+matter of policy it was understood that purchases for the sinking-fund
+should not be known or understood in the market or by the public in
+that light, and that Mr. Cowperwood as agent was to have an absolutely
+free hand in the disposal of his assets and liabilities so long as the
+ultimate result was satisfactory. There was no particular time when the
+loan was to be bought, nor was there any particular amount mentioned at
+any time to be purchased. Unless the defendant intended at the time he
+received the check fraudulently to appropriate it he could not be
+convicted even on the first count. The verdict of the jury does not
+establish this fact; the evidence does not show conclusively that it
+could be established; and the same jury, upon three other counts, found
+the defendant guilty without the semblance of shadow of evidence. How
+can we say that their conclusions upon the first count are unerring
+when they so palpably erred on the other counts? It is the opinion of
+the minority that the verdict of the jury in charging larceny on the
+first count is not valid, and that that verdict should be set aside and
+a new trial granted.”
+
+
+Judge Rafalsky, a meditative and yet practical man of Jewish extraction
+but peculiarly American appearance, felt called upon to write a third
+opinion which should especially reflect his own cogitation and be a
+criticism on the majority as well as a slight variation from and
+addition to the points on which he agreed with Judge Marvin. It was a
+knotty question, this, of Cowperwood’s guilt, and, aside from the
+political necessity of convicting him, nowhere was it more clearly
+shown than in these varying opinions of the superior court. Judge
+Rafalsky held, for instance, that if a crime had been committed at all,
+it was not that known as larceny, and he went on to add:
+
+“It is impossible, from the evidence, to come to the conclusion either
+that Cowperwood did not intend shortly to deliver the loan or that
+Albert Stires, the chief clerk, or the city treasurer did not intend to
+part not only with the possession, but also and absolutely with the
+property in the check and the money represented by it. It was testified
+by Mr. Stires that Mr. Cowperwood said he had bought certificates of
+city loan to this amount, and it has not been clearly demonstrated that
+he had not. His non-placement of the same in the sinking-fund must in
+all fairness, the letter of the law to the contrary notwithstanding, be
+looked upon and judged in the light of custom. Was it his custom so to
+do? In my judgment the doctrine now announced by the majority of the
+court extends the crime of constructive larceny to such limits that any
+business man who engages in extensive and perfectly legitimate stock
+transactions may, before he knows it, by a sudden panic in the market
+or a fire, as in this instance, become a felon. When a principle is
+asserted which establishes such a precedent, and may lead to such
+results, it is, to say the least, startling.”
+
+
+While he was notably comforted by the dissenting opinions of the judges
+in minority, and while he had been schooling himself to expect the
+worst in this connection and had been arranging his affairs as well as
+he could in anticipation of it, Cowperwood was still bitterly
+disappointed. It would be untrue to say that, strong and self-reliant
+as he normally was, he did not suffer. He was not without sensibilities
+of the highest order, only they were governed and controlled in him by
+that cold iron thing, his reason, which never forsook him. There was no
+further appeal possible save to the United States Supreme Court, as
+Steger pointed out, and there only on the constitutionality of some
+phase of the decision and his rights as a citizen, of which the Supreme
+Court of the United States must take cognizance. This was a tedious and
+expensive thing to do. It was not exactly obvious at the moment on what
+point he could make an appeal. It would involve a long delay—perhaps a
+year and a half, perhaps longer, at the end of which period he might
+have to serve his prison term anyhow, and pending which he would
+certainly have to undergo incarceration for a time.
+
+Cowperwood mused speculatively for a few moments after hearing Steger’s
+presentation of the case. Then he said: “Well, it looks as if I have to
+go to jail or leave the country, and I’ve decided on jail. I can fight
+this out right here in Philadelphia in the long run and win. I can get
+that decision reversed in the Supreme Court, or I can get the Governor
+to pardon me after a time, I think. I’m not going to run away, and
+everybody knows I’m not. These people who think they have me down
+haven’t got one corner of me whipped. I’ll get out of this thing after
+a while, and when I do I’ll show some of these petty little politicians
+what it means to put up a real fight. They’ll never get a damned dollar
+out of me now—not a dollar! I did intend to pay that five hundred
+thousand dollars some time if they had let me go. Now they can
+whistle!”
+
+He set his teeth and his gray eyes fairly snapped their determination.
+
+“Well, I’ve done all I can, Frank,” pleaded Steger, sympathetically.
+“You’ll do me the justice to say that I put up the best fight I knew
+how. I may not know how—you’ll have to answer for that—but within my
+limits I’ve done the best I can. I can do a few things more to carry
+this thing on, if you want me to, but I’m going to leave it to you now.
+Whatever you say goes.”
+
+“Don’t talk nonsense at this stage, Harper,” replied Cowperwood almost
+testily. “I know whether I’m satisfied or not, and I’d soon tell you if
+I wasn’t. I think you might as well go on and see if you can find some
+definite grounds for carrying it to the Supreme Court, but meanwhile
+I’ll begin my sentence. I suppose Payderson will be naming a day to
+have me brought before him now shortly.”
+
+“It depends on how you’d like to have it, Frank. I could get a stay of
+sentence for a week maybe, or ten days, if it will do you any good.
+Shannon won’t make any objection to that, I’m sure. There’s only one
+hitch. Jaspers will be around here tomorrow looking for you. It’s his
+duty to take you into custody again, once he’s notified that your
+appeal has been denied. He’ll be wanting to lock you up unless you pay
+him, but we can fix that. If you do want to wait, and want any time
+off, I suppose he’ll arrange to let you out with a deputy; but I’m
+afraid you’ll have to stay there nights. They’re pretty strict about
+that since that Albertson case of a few years ago.”
+
+Steger referred to the case of a noted bank cashier who, being let out
+of the county jail at night in the alleged custody of a deputy, was
+permitted to escape. There had been emphatic and severe condemnation of
+the sheriff’s office at the time, and since then, repute or no repute,
+money or no money, convicted criminals were supposed to stay in the
+county jail at night at least.
+
+Cowperwood meditated this calmly, looking out of the lawyer’s window
+into Second Street. He did not much fear anything that might happen to
+him in Jaspers’s charge since his first taste of that gentleman’s
+hospitality, although he did object to spending nights in the county
+jail when his general term of imprisonment was being reduced no whit
+thereby. All that he could do now in connection with his affairs,
+unless he could have months of freedom, could be as well adjusted from
+a prison cell as from his Third Street office—not quite, but nearly so.
+Anyhow, why parley? He was facing a prison term, and he might as well
+accept it without further ado. He might take a day or two finally to
+look after his affairs; but beyond that, why bother?
+
+“When, in the ordinary course of events, if you did nothing at all,
+would I come up for sentence?”
+
+“Oh, Friday or Monday, I fancy,” replied Steger. “I don’t know what
+move Shannon is planning to make in this matter. I thought I’d walk
+around and see him in a little while.”
+
+“I think you’d better do that,” replied Cowperwood. “Friday or Monday
+will suit me, either way. I’m really not particular. Better make it
+Monday if you can. You don’t suppose there is any way you can induce
+Jaspers to keep his hands off until then? He knows I’m perfectly
+responsible.”
+
+“I don’t know, Frank, I’m sure; I’ll see. I’ll go around and talk to
+him to-night. Perhaps a hundred dollars will make him relax the rigor
+of his rules that much.”
+
+Cowperwood smiled grimly.
+
+“I fancy a hundred dollars would make Jaspers relax a whole lot of
+rules,” he replied, and he got up to go.
+
+Steger arose also. “I’ll see both these people, and then I’ll call
+around at your house. You’ll be in, will you, after dinner?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+They slipped on their overcoats and went out into the cold February
+day, Cowperwood back to his Third Street office, Steger to see Shannon
+and Jaspers.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIX
+
+
+The business of arranging Cowperwood’s sentence for Monday was soon
+disposed of through Shannon, who had no personal objection to any
+reasonable delay.
+
+Steger next visited the county jail, close on to five o’clock, when it
+was already dark. Sheriff Jaspers came lolling out from his private
+library, where he had been engaged upon the work of cleaning his pipe.
+
+“How are you, Mr. Steger?” he observed, smiling blandly. “How are you?
+Glad to see you. Won’t you sit down? I suppose you’re round here again
+on that Cowperwood matter. I just received word from the district
+attorney that he had lost his case.”
+
+“That’s it, Sheriff,” replied Steger, ingratiatingly. “He asked me to
+step around and see what you wanted him to do in the matter. Judge
+Payderson has just fixed the sentence time for Monday morning at ten
+o’clock. I don’t suppose you’ll be much put out if he doesn’t show up
+here before Monday at eight o’clock, will you, or Sunday night, anyhow?
+He’s perfectly reliable, as you know.” Steger was sounding Jaspers out,
+politely trying to make the time of Cowperwood’s arrival a trivial
+matter in order to avoid paying the hundred dollars, if possible. But
+Jaspers was not to be so easily disposed of. His fat face lengthened
+considerably. How could Steger ask him such a favor and not even
+suggest the slightest form of remuneration?
+
+“It’s ag’in’ the law, Mr. Steger, as you know,” he began, cautiously
+and complainingly. “I’d like to accommodate him, everything else being
+equal, but since that Albertson case three years ago we’ve had to run
+this office much more careful, and—”
+
+“Oh, I know, Sheriff,” interrupted Steger, blandly, “but this isn’t an
+ordinary case in any way, as you can see for yourself. Mr. Cowperwood
+is a very important man, and he has a great many things to attend to.
+Now if it were only a mere matter of seventy-five or a hundred dollars
+to satisfy some court clerk with, or to pay a fine, it would be easy
+enough, but—” He paused and looked wisely away, and Mr. Jaspers’s face
+began to relax at once. The law against which it was ordinarily so hard
+to offend was not now so important. Steger saw that it was needless to
+introduce any additional arguments.
+
+“It’s a very ticklish business, this, Mr. Steger,” put in the sheriff,
+yieldingly, and yet with a slight whimper in his voice. “If anything
+were to happen, it would cost me my place all right. I don’t like to do
+it under any circumstances, and I wouldn’t, only I happen to know both
+Mr. Cowperwood and Mr. Stener, and I like ’em both. I don’ think they
+got their rights in this matter, either. I don’t mind making an
+exception in this case if Mr. Cowperwood don’t go about too publicly. I
+wouldn’t want any of the men in the district attorney’s office to know
+this. I don’t suppose he’ll mind if I keep a deputy somewhere near all
+the time for looks’ sake. I have to, you know, really, under the law.
+He won’t bother him any. Just keep on guard like.” Jaspers looked at
+Mr. Steger very flatly and wisely—almost placatingly under the
+circumstances—and Steger nodded.
+
+“Quite right, Sheriff, quite right. You’re quite right,” and he drew
+out his purse while the sheriff led the way very cautiously back into
+his library.
+
+“I’d like to show you the line of law-books I’m fixing up for myself in
+here, Mr. Steger,” he observed, genially, but meanwhile closing his
+fingers gently on the small roll of ten-dollar bills Steger was handing
+him. “We have occasional use for books of that kind here, as you see. I
+thought it a good sort of thing to have them around.” He waved one arm
+comprehensively at the line of State reports, revised statutes, prison
+regulations, etc., the while he put the money in his pocket and Steger
+pretended to look.
+
+“A good idea, I think, Sheriff. Very good, indeed. So you think if Mr.
+Cowperwood gets around here very early Monday morning, say eight or
+eight-thirty, that it will be all right?”
+
+“I think so,” replied the sheriff, curiously nervous, but agreeable,
+anxious to please. “I don’t think that anything will come up that will
+make me want him earlier. If it does I’ll let you know, and you can
+produce him. I don’t think so, though, Mr. Steger; I think everything
+will be all right.” They were once more in the main hall now. “Glad to
+have seen you again, Mr. Steger—very glad,” he added. “Call again some
+day.”
+
+Waving the sheriff a pleasant farewell, he hurried on his way to
+Cowperwood’s house.
+
+You would not have thought, seeing Cowperwood mount the front steps of
+his handsome residence in his neat gray suit and well-cut overcoat on
+his return from his office that evening, that he was thinking that this
+might be his last night here. His air and walk indicated no weakening
+of spirit. He entered the hall, where an early lamp was aglow, and
+encountered “Wash” Sims, an old negro factotum, who was just coming up
+from the basement, carrying a bucket of coal for one of the fireplaces.
+
+“Mahty cold out, dis evenin’, Mistah Coppahwood,” said Wash, to whom
+anything less than sixty degrees was very cold. His one regret was that
+Philadelphia was not located in North Carolina, from whence he came.
+
+“’Tis sharp, Wash,” replied Cowperwood, absentmindedly. He was thinking
+for the moment of the house and how it had looked, as he came toward it
+west along Girard Avenue—what the neighbors were thinking of him, too,
+observing him from time to time out of their windows. It was clear and
+cold. The lamps in the reception-hall and sitting-room had been lit,
+for he had permitted no air of funereal gloom to settle down over this
+place since his troubles had begun. In the far west of the street a
+last tingling gleam of lavender and violet was showing over the cold
+white snow of the roadway. The house of gray-green stone, with its
+lighted windows, and cream-colored lace curtains, had looked especially
+attractive. He had thought for the moment of the pride he had taken in
+putting all this here, decorating and ornamenting it, and whether,
+ever, he could secure it for himself again. “Where is your mistress?”
+he added to Wash, when he bethought himself.
+
+“In the sitting-room, Mr. Coppahwood, ah think.”
+
+Cowperwood ascended the stairs, thinking curiously that Wash would soon
+be out of a job now, unless Mrs. Cowperwood, out of all the wreck of
+other things, chose to retain him, which was not likely. He entered the
+sitting-room, and there sat his wife by the oblong center-table, sewing
+a hook and eye on one of Lillian, second’s, petticoats. She looked up,
+at his step, with the peculiarly uncertain smile she used these
+days—indication of her pain, fear, suspicion—and inquired, “Well, what
+is new with you, Frank?” Her smile was something like a hat or belt or
+ornament which one puts on or off at will.
+
+“Nothing in particular,” he replied, in his offhand way, “except that I
+understand I have lost that appeal of mine. Steger is coming here in a
+little while to let me know. I had a note from him, and I fancy it’s
+about that.”
+
+He did not care to say squarely that he had lost. He knew that she was
+sufficiently distressed as it was, and he did not care to be too abrupt
+just now.
+
+“You don’t say!” replied Lillian, with surprise and fright in her
+voice, and getting up.
+
+She had been so used to a world where prisons were scarcely thought of,
+where things went on smoothly from day to day without any noticeable
+intrusion of such distressing things as courts, jails, and the like,
+that these last few months had driven her nearly mad. Cowperwood had so
+definitely insisted on her keeping in the background—he had told her so
+very little that she was all at sea anyhow in regard to the whole
+procedure. Nearly all that she had had in the way of intelligence had
+been from his father and mother and Anna, and from a close and almost
+secret scrutiny of the newspapers.
+
+At the time he had gone to the county jail she did not even know
+anything about it until his father had come back from the court-room
+and the jail and had broken the news to her. It had been a terrific
+blow to her. Now to have this thing suddenly broken to her in this
+offhand way, even though she had been expecting and dreading it hourly,
+was too much.
+
+She was still a decidedly charming-looking woman as she stood holding
+her daughter’s garment in her hand, even if she was forty years old to
+Cowperwood’s thirty-five. She was robed in one of the creations of
+their late prosperity, a cream-colored gown of rich silk, with dark
+brown trimmings—a fetching combination for her. Her eyes were a little
+hollow, and reddish about the rims, but otherwise she showed no sign of
+her keen mental distress. There was considerable evidence of the former
+tranquil sweetness that had so fascinated him ten years before.
+
+“Isn’t that terrible?” she said, weakly, her hands trembling in a
+nervous way. “Isn’t it dreadful? Isn’t there anything more you can do,
+truly? You won’t really have to go to prison, will you?” He objected to
+her distress and her nervous fears. He preferred a stronger, more
+self-reliant type of woman, but still she was his wife, and in his day
+he had loved her much.
+
+“It looks that way, Lillian,” he said, with the first note of real
+sympathy he had used in a long while, for he felt sorry for her now. At
+the same time he was afraid to go any further along that line, for fear
+it might give her a false sense as to his present attitude toward her
+which was one essentially of indifference. But she was not so dull but
+what she could see that the consideration in his voice had been brought
+about by his defeat, which meant hers also. She choked a little—and
+even so was touched. The bare suggestion of sympathy brought back the
+old days so definitely gone forever. If only they could be brought
+back!
+
+“I don’t want you to feel distressed about me, though,” he went on,
+before she could say anything to him. “I’m not through with my
+fighting. I’ll get out of this. I have to go to prison, it seems, in
+order to get things straightened out properly. What I would like you to
+do is to keep up a cheerful appearance in front of the rest of the
+family—father and mother particularly. They need to be cheered up.” He
+thought once of taking her hand, then decided not. She noted mentally
+his hesitation, the great difference between his attitude now and that
+of ten or twelve years before. It did not hurt her now as much as she
+once would have thought. She looked at him, scarcely knowing what to
+say. There was really not so much to say.
+
+“Will you have to go soon, if you do have to go?” she ventured,
+wearily.
+
+“I can’t tell yet. Possibly to-night. Possibly Friday. Possibly not
+until Monday. I’m waiting to hear from Steger. I expect him here any
+minute.”
+
+To prison! To prison! Her Frank Cowperwood, her husband—the substance
+of their home here—and all their soul destruction going to prison. And
+even now she scarcely grasped why! She stood there wondering what she
+could do.
+
+“Is there anything I can get for you?” she asked, starting forward as
+if out of a dream. “Do you want me to do anything? Don’t you think
+perhaps you had better leave Philadelphia, Frank? You needn’t go to
+prison unless you want to.”
+
+She was a little beside herself, for the first time in her life shocked
+out of a deadly calm.
+
+He paused and looked at her for a moment in his direct, examining way,
+his hard commercial business judgment restored on the instant.
+
+“That would be a confession of guilt, Lillian, and I’m not guilty,” he
+replied, almost coldly. “I haven’t done anything that warrants my
+running away or going to prison, either. I’m merely going there to save
+time at present. I can’t be litigating this thing forever. I’ll get
+out—be pardoned out or sued out in a reasonable length of time. Just
+now it’s better to go, I think. I wouldn’t think of running away from
+Philadelphia. Two of five judges found for me in the decision. That’s
+pretty fair evidence that the State has no case against me.”
+
+His wife saw she had made a mistake. It clarified her judgment on the
+instant. “I didn’t mean in that way, Frank,” she replied,
+apologetically. “You know I didn’t. Of course I know you’re not guilty.
+Why should I think you were, of all people?”
+
+She paused, expecting some retort, some further argument—a kind word
+maybe. A trace of the older, baffling love, but he had quietly turned
+to his desk and was thinking of other things.
+
+At this point the anomaly of her own state came over her again. It was
+all so sad and so hopeless. And what was she to do in the future? And
+what was he likely to do? She paused half trembling and yet decided,
+because of her peculiarly nonresisting nature—why trespass on his time?
+Why bother? No good would really come of it. He really did not care for
+her any more—that was it. Nothing could make him, nothing could bring
+them together again, not even this tragedy. He was interested in
+another woman—Aileen—and so her foolish thoughts and explanations, her
+fear, sorrow, distress, were not important to him. He could take her
+agonized wish for his freedom as a comment on his probable guilt, a
+doubt of his innocence, a criticism of him! She turned away for a
+minute, and he started to leave the room.
+
+“I’ll be back again in a few moments,” he volunteered. “Are the
+children here?”
+
+“Yes, they’re up in the play-room,” she answered, sadly, utterly
+nonplussed and distraught.
+
+“Oh, Frank!” she had it on her lips to cry, but before she could utter
+it he had bustled down the steps and was gone. She turned back to the
+table, her left hand to her mouth, her eyes in a queer, hazy,
+melancholy mist. Could it be, she thought, that life could really come
+to this—that love could so utterly, so thoroughly die? Ten years
+before—but, oh, why go back to that? Obviously it could, and thoughts
+concerning that would not help now. Twice now in her life her affairs
+had seemed to go to pieces—once when her first husband had died, and
+now when her second had failed her, had fallen in love with another and
+was going to be sent off to prison. What was it about her that caused
+such things? Was there anything wrong with her? What was she going to
+do? Where go? She had no idea, of course, for how long a term of years
+he would be sent away. It might be one year or it might be five years,
+as the papers had said. Good heavens! The children could almost come to
+forget him in five years. She put her other hand to her mouth, also,
+and then to her forehead, where there was a dull ache. She tried to
+think further than this, but somehow, just now, there was no further
+thought. Suddenly quite outside of her own volition, with no thought
+that she was going to do such a thing, her bosom began to heave, her
+throat contracted in four or five short, sharp, aching spasms, her eyes
+burned, and she shook in a vigorous, anguished, desperate, almost one
+might have said dry-eyed, cry, so hot and few were the tears. She could
+not stop for the moment, just stood there and shook, and then after a
+while a dull ache succeeded, and she was quite as she had been before.
+
+“Why cry?” she suddenly asked herself, fiercely—for her. “Why break
+down in this stormy, useless way? Would it help?”
+
+But, in spite of her speculative, philosophic observations to herself,
+she still felt the echo, the distant rumble, as it were, of the storm
+in her own soul. “Why cry? Why not cry?” She might have said—but
+wouldn’t, and in spite of herself and all her logic, she knew that this
+tempest which had so recently raged over her was now merely circling
+around her soul’s horizon and would return to break again.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter L
+
+
+The arrival of Steger with the information that no move of any kind
+would be made by the sheriff until Monday morning, when Cowperwood
+could present himself, eased matters. This gave him time to think—to
+adjust home details at his leisure. He broke the news to his father and
+mother in a consoling way and talked with his brothers and father about
+getting matters immediately adjusted in connection with the smaller
+houses to which they were now shortly to be compelled to move. There
+was much conferring among the different members of this collapsing
+organization in regard to the minor details; and what with his
+conferences with Steger, his seeing personally Davison, Leigh, Avery
+Stone, of Jay Cooke & Co., George Waterman (his old-time employer Henry
+was dead), ex-State Treasurer Van Nostrand, who had gone out with the
+last State administration, and others, he was very busy. Now that he
+was really going into prison, he wanted his financial friends to get
+together and see if they could get him out by appealing to the
+Governor. The division of opinion among the judges of the State Supreme
+Court was his excuse and strong point. He wanted Steger to follow this
+up, and he spared no pains in trying to see all and sundry who might be
+of use to him—Edward Tighe, of Tighe & Co., who was still in business
+in Third Street; Newton Targool; Arthur Rivers; Joseph Zimmerman, the
+dry-goods prince, now a millionaire; Judge Kitchen; Terrence Relihan,
+the former representative of the money element at Harrisburg; and many
+others.
+
+Cowperwood wanted Relihan to approach the newspapers and see if he
+could not readjust their attitude so as to work to get him out, and he
+wanted Walter Leigh to head the movement of getting up a signed
+petition which should contain all the important names of moneyed people
+and others, asking the Governor to release him. Leigh agreed to this
+heartily, as did Relihan, and many others.
+
+And, afterwards there was really nothing else to do, unless it was to
+see Aileen once more, and this, in the midst of his other complications
+and obligations, seemed all but impossible at times—and yet he did
+achieve that, too—so eager was he to be soothed and comforted by the
+ignorant and yet all embracing volume of her love. Her eyes these days!
+The eager, burning quest of him and his happiness that blazed in them.
+To think that he should be tortured so—her Frank! Oh, she knew—whatever
+he said, and however bravely and jauntily he talked. To think that her
+love for him should have been the principal cause of his being sent to
+jail, as she now believed. And the cruelty of her father! And the
+smallness of his enemies—that fool Stener, for instance, whose pictures
+she had seen in the papers. Actually, whenever in the presence of her
+Frank, she fairly seethed in a chemic agony for him—her strong,
+handsome lover—the strongest, bravest, wisest, kindest, handsomest man
+in the world. Oh, didn’t she know! And Cowperwood, looking in her eyes
+and realizing this reasonless, if so comforting fever for him, smiled
+and was touched. Such love! That of a dog for a master; that of a
+mother for a child. And how had he come to evoke it? He could not say,
+but it was beautiful.
+
+And so, now, in these last trying hours, he wished to see her much—and
+did—meeting her at least four times in the month in which he had been
+free, between his conviction and the final dismissal of his appeal. He
+had one last opportunity of seeing her—and she him—just before his
+entrance into prison this last time—on the Saturday before the Monday
+of his sentence. He had not come in contact with her since the decision
+of the Supreme Court had been rendered, but he had had a letter from
+her sent to a private mail-box, and had made an appointment for
+Saturday at a small hotel in Camden, which, being across the river, was
+safer, in his judgment, than anything in Philadelphia. He was a little
+uncertain as to how she would take the possibility of not seeing him
+soon again after Monday, and how she would act generally once he was
+where she could not confer with him as often as she chose. And in
+consequence, he was anxious to talk to her. But on this occasion, as he
+anticipated, and even feared, so sorry for her was he, she was not less
+emphatic in her protestations than she had ever been; in fact, much
+more so. When she saw him approaching in the distance, she went forward
+to meet him in that direct, forceful way which only she could attempt
+with him, a sort of mannish impetuosity which he both enjoyed and
+admired, and slipping her arms around his neck, said: “Honey, you
+needn’t tell me. I saw it in the papers the other morning. Don’t you
+mind, honey. I love you. I’ll wait for you. I’ll be with you yet, if it
+takes a dozen years of waiting. It doesn’t make any difference to me if
+it takes a hundred, only I’m so sorry for you, sweetheart. I’ll be with
+you every day through this, darling, loving you with all my might.”
+
+She caressed him while he looked at her in that quiet way which
+betokened at once his self-poise and yet his interest and satisfaction
+in her. He couldn’t help loving Aileen, he thought who could? She was
+so passionate, vibrant, desireful. He couldn’t help admiring her
+tremendously, now more than ever, because literally, in spite of all
+his intellectual strength, he really could not rule her. She went at
+him, even when he stood off in a calm, critical way, as if he were her
+special property, her toy. She would talk to him always, and
+particularly when she was excited, as if he were just a baby, her pet;
+and sometimes he felt as though she would really overcome him mentally,
+make him subservient to her, she was so individual, so sure of her
+importance as a woman.
+
+Now on this occasion she went babbling on as if he were broken-hearted,
+in need of her greatest care and tenderness, although he really wasn’t
+at all; and for the moment she actually made him feel as though he was.
+
+“It isn’t as bad as that, Aileen,” he ventured to say, eventually; and
+with a softness and tenderness almost unusual for him, even where she
+was concerned, but she went on forcefully, paying no heed to him.
+
+“Oh, yes, it is, too, honey. I know. Oh, my poor Frank! But I’ll see
+you. I know how to manage, whatever happens. How often do they let
+visitors come out to see the prisoners there?”
+
+“Only once in three months, pet, so they say, but I think we can fix
+that after I get there; only do you think you had better try to come
+right away, Aileen? You know what the feeling now is. Hadn’t you better
+wait a while? Aren’t you in danger of stirring up your father? He might
+cause a lot of trouble out there if he were so minded.”
+
+“Only once in three months!” she exclaimed, with rising emphasis, as he
+began this explanation. “Oh, Frank, no! Surely not! Once in three
+months! Oh, I can’t stand that! I won’t! I’ll go and see the warden
+myself. He’ll let me see you. I’m sure he will, if I talk to him.”
+
+She fairly gasped in her excitement, not willing to pause in her
+tirade, but Cowperwood interposed with her, “You’re not thinking what
+you’re saying, Aileen. You’re not thinking. Remember your father!
+Remember your family! Your father may know the warden out there. You
+don’t want it to get all over town that you’re running out there to see
+me, do you? Your father might cause you trouble. Besides you don’t know
+the small party politicians as I do. They gossip like a lot of old
+women. You’ll have to be very careful what you do and how you do it. I
+don’t want to lose you. I want to see you. But you’ll have to mind what
+you’re doing. Don’t try to see me at once. I want you to, but I want to
+find out how the land lies, and I want you to find out too. You won’t
+lose me. I’ll be there, well enough.”
+
+He paused as he thought of the long tier of iron cells which must be
+there, one of which would be his—for how long?—and of Aileen seeing him
+through the door of it or in it. At the same time he was thinking, in
+spite of all his other calculations, how charming she was looking
+to-day. How young she kept, and how forceful! While he was nearing his
+full maturity she was a comparatively young girl, and as beautiful as
+ever. She was wearing a black-and-white-striped silk in the curious
+bustle style of the times, and a set of sealskin furs, including a
+little sealskin cap set jauntily on top her red-gold hair.
+
+“I know, I know,” replied Aileen, firmly. “But think of three months!
+Honey, I can’t! I won’t! It’s nonsense. Three months! I know that my
+father wouldn’t have to wait any three months if he wanted to see
+anybody out there, nor anybody else that he wanted to ask favors for.
+And I won’t, either. I’ll find some way.”
+
+Cowperwood had to smile. You could not defeat Aileen so easily.
+
+“But you’re not your father, honey; and you don’t want him to know.”
+
+“I know I don’t, but they don’t need to know who I am. I can go heavily
+veiled. I don’t think that the warden knows my father. He may. Anyhow,
+he doesn’t know me; and he wouldn’t tell on me if he did if I talked to
+him.”
+
+Her confidence in her charms, her personality, her earthly privileges
+was quite anarchistic. Cowperwood shook his head.
+
+“Honey, you’re about the best and the worst there is when it comes to a
+woman,” he observed, affectionately, pulling her head down to kiss her,
+“but you’ll have to listen to me just the same. I have a lawyer,
+Steger—you know him. He’s going to take up this matter with the warden
+out there—is doing it today. He may be able to fix things, and he may
+not. I’ll know to-morrow or Sunday, and I’ll write you. But don’t go
+and do anything rash until you hear. I’m sure I can cut that visiting
+limit in half, and perhaps down to once a month or once in two weeks
+even. They only allow me to write one letter in three months”—Aileen
+exploded again—“and I’m sure I can have that made different—some; but
+don’t write me until you hear, or at least don’t sign any name or put
+any address in. They open all mail and read it. If you see me or write
+me you’ll have to be cautious, and you’re not the most cautious person
+in the world. Now be good, will you?”
+
+They talked much more—of his family, his court appearance Monday,
+whether he would get out soon to attend any of the suits still pending,
+or be pardoned. Aileen still believed in his future. She had read the
+opinions of the dissenting judges in his favor, and that of the three
+agreed judges against him. She was sure his day was not over in
+Philadelphia, and that he would some time reestablish himself and then
+take her with him somewhere else. She was sorry for Mrs. Cowperwood,
+but she was convinced that she was not suited to him—that Frank needed
+some one more like herself, some one with youth and beauty and
+force—her, no less. She clung to him now in ecstatic embraces until it
+was time to go. So far as a plan of procedure could have been adjusted
+in a situation so incapable of accurate adjustment, it had been done.
+She was desperately downcast at the last moment, as was he, over their
+parting; but she pulled herself together with her usual force and faced
+the dark future with a steady eye.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LI
+
+
+Monday came and with it his final departure. All that could be done had
+been done. Cowperwood said his farewells to his mother and father, his
+brothers and sister. He had a rather distant but sensible and
+matter-of-fact talk with his wife. He made no special point of saying
+good-by to his son or his daughter; when he came in on Thursday,
+Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings, after he had learned that he was
+to depart Monday, it was with the thought of talking to them a little
+in an especially affectionate way. He realized that his general moral
+or unmoral attitude was perhaps working them a temporary injustice.
+Still he was not sure. Most people did fairly well with their lives,
+whether coddled or deprived of opportunity. These children would
+probably do as well as most children, whatever happened—and then,
+anyhow, he had no intention of forsaking them financially, if he could
+help it. He did not want to separate his wife from her children, nor
+them from her. She should keep them. He wanted them to be comfortable
+with her. He would like to see them, wherever they were with her,
+occasionally. Only he wanted his own personal freedom, in so far as she
+and they were concerned, to go off and set up a new world and a new
+home with Aileen. So now on these last days, and particularly this last
+Sunday night, he was rather noticeably considerate of his boy and girl,
+without being too openly indicative of his approaching separation from
+them.
+
+“Frank,” he said to his notably lackadaisical son on this occasion,
+“aren’t you going to straighten up and be a big, strong, healthy
+fellow? You don’t play enough. You ought to get in with a gang of boys
+and be a leader. Why don’t you fit yourself up a gymnasium somewhere
+and see how strong you can get?”
+
+They were in the senior Cowperwood’s sitting-room, where they had all
+rather consciously gathered on this occasion.
+
+Lillian, second, who was on the other side of the big library table
+from her father, paused to survey him and her brother with interest.
+Both had been carefully guarded against any real knowledge of their
+father’s affairs or his present predicament. He was going away on a
+journey for about a month or so they understood. Lillian was reading in
+a Chatterbox book which had been given her the previous Christmas.
+
+“He won’t do anything,” she volunteered, looking up from her reading in
+a peculiarly critical way for her. “Why, he won’t ever run races with
+me when I want him to.”
+
+“Aw, who wants to run races with you, anyhow?” returned Frank, junior,
+sourly. “You couldn’t run if I did want to run with you.”
+
+“Couldn’t I?” she replied. “I could beat you, all right.”
+
+“Lillian!” pleaded her mother, with a warning sound in her voice.
+
+Cowperwood smiled, and laid his hand affectionately on his son’s head.
+“You’ll be all right, Frank,” he volunteered, pinching his ear lightly.
+“Don’t worry—just make an effort.”
+
+The boy did not respond as warmly as he hoped. Later in the evening
+Mrs. Cowperwood noticed that her husband squeezed his daughter’s slim
+little waist and pulled her curly hair gently. For the moment she was
+jealous of her daughter.
+
+“Going to be the best kind of a girl while I’m away?” he said to her,
+privately.
+
+“Yes, papa,” she replied, brightly.
+
+“That’s right,” he returned, and leaned over and kissed her mouth
+tenderly. “Button Eyes,” he said.
+
+Mrs. Cowperwood sighed after he had gone. “Everything for the children,
+nothing for me,” she thought, though the children had not got so vastly
+much either in the past.
+
+Cowperwood’s attitude toward his mother in this final hour was about as
+tender and sympathetic as any he could maintain in this world. He
+understood quite clearly the ramifications of her interests, and how
+she was suffering for him and all the others concerned. He had not
+forgotten her sympathetic care of him in his youth; and if he could
+have done anything to have spared her this unhappy breakdown of her
+fortunes in her old age, he would have done so. There was no use crying
+over spilled milk. It was impossible at times for him not to feel
+intensely in moments of success or failure; but the proper thing to do
+was to bear up, not to show it, to talk little and go your way with an
+air not so much of resignation as of self-sufficiency, to whatever was
+awaiting you. That was his attitude on this morning, and that was what
+he expected from those around him—almost compelled, in fact, by his own
+attitude.
+
+“Well, mother,” he said, genially, at the last moment—he would not let
+her nor his wife nor his sister come to court, maintaining that it
+would make not the least difference to him and would only harrow their
+own feelings uselessly—“I’m going now. Don’t worry. Keep up your
+spirits.”
+
+He slipped his arm around his mother’s waist, and she gave him a long,
+unrestrained, despairing embrace and kiss.
+
+“Go on, Frank,” she said, choking, when she let him go. “God bless you.
+I’ll pray for you.” He paid no further attention to her. He didn’t
+dare.
+
+“Good-by, Lillian,” he said to his wife, pleasantly, kindly. “I’ll be
+back in a few days, I think. I’ll be coming out to attend some of these
+court proceedings.”
+
+To his sister he said: “Good-by, Anna. Don’t let the others get too
+down-hearted.”
+
+“I’ll see you three afterward,” he said to his father and brothers; and
+so, dressed in the very best fashion of the time, he hurried down into
+the reception-hall, where Steger was waiting, and was off. His family,
+hearing the door close on him, suffered a poignant sense of desolation.
+They stood there for a moment, his mother crying, his father looking as
+though he had lost his last friend but making a great effort to seem
+self-contained and equal to his troubles, Anna telling Lillian not to
+mind, and the latter staring dumbly into the future, not knowing what
+to think. Surely a brilliant sun had set on their local scene, and in a
+very pathetic way.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LII
+
+
+When Cowperwood reached the jail, Jaspers was there, glad to see him
+but principally relieved to feel that nothing had happened to mar his
+own reputation as a sheriff. Because of the urgency of court matters
+generally, it was decided to depart for the courtroom at nine o’clock.
+Eddie Zanders was once more delegated to see that Cowperwood was
+brought safely before Judge Payderson and afterward taken to the
+penitentiary. All of the papers in the case were put in his care to be
+delivered to the warden.
+
+“I suppose you know,” confided Sheriff Jaspers to Steger, “that Stener
+is here. He ain’t got no money now, but I gave him a private room just
+the same. I didn’t want to put a man like him in no cell.” Sheriff
+Jaspers sympathized with Stener.
+
+“That’s right. I’m glad to hear that,” replied Steger, smiling to
+himself.
+
+“I didn’t suppose from what I’ve heard that Mr. Cowperwood would want
+to meet Stener here, so I’ve kept ’em apart. George just left a minute
+ago with another deputy.”
+
+“That’s good. That’s the way it ought to be,” replied Steger. He was
+glad for Cowperwood’s sake that the sheriff had so much tact. Evidently
+George and the sheriff were getting along in a very friendly way, for
+all the former’s bitter troubles and lack of means.
+
+The Cowperwood party walked, the distance not being great, and as they
+did so they talked of rather simple things to avoid the more serious.
+
+“Things aren’t going to be so bad,” Edward said to his father. “Steger
+says the Governor is sure to pardon Stener in a year or less, and if he
+does he’s bound to let Frank out too.”
+
+Cowperwood, the elder, had heard this over and over, but he was never
+tired of hearing it. It was like some simple croon with which babies
+are hushed to sleep. The snow on the ground, which was enduring
+remarkably well for this time of year, the fineness of the day, which
+had started out to be clear and bright, the hope that the courtroom
+might not be full, all held the attention of the father and his two
+sons. Cowperwood, senior, even commented on some sparrows fighting over
+a piece of bread, marveling how well they did in winter, solely to ease
+his mind. Cowperwood, walking on ahead with Steger and Zanders, talked
+of approaching court proceedings in connection with his business and
+what ought to be done.
+
+When they reached the court the same little pen in which Cowperwood had
+awaited the verdict of his jury several months before was waiting to
+receive him.
+
+Cowperwood, senior, and his other sons sought places in the courtroom
+proper. Eddie Zanders remained with his charge. Stener and a deputy by
+the name of Wilkerson were in the room; but he and Cowperwood pretended
+now not to see each other. Frank had no objection to talking to his
+former associate, but he could see that Stener was diffident and
+ashamed. So he let the situation pass without look or word of any kind.
+After some three-quarters of an hour of dreary waiting the door leading
+into the courtroom proper opened and a bailiff stepped in.
+
+“All prisoners up for sentence,” he called.
+
+There were six, all told, including Cowperwood and Stener. Two of them
+were confederate housebreakers who had been caught red-handed at their
+midnight task.
+
+Another prisoner was no more and no less than a plain horse-thief, a
+young man of twenty-six, who had been convicted by a jury of stealing a
+grocer’s horse and selling it. The last man was a negro, a tall,
+shambling, illiterate, nebulous-minded black, who had walked off with
+an apparently discarded section of lead pipe which he had found in a
+lumber-yard. His idea was to sell or trade it for a drink. He really
+did not belong in this court at all; but, having been caught by an
+undersized American watchman charged with the care of the property, and
+having at first refused to plead guilty, not quite understanding what
+was to be done with him, he had been perforce bound over to this court
+for trial. Afterward he had changed his mind and admitted his guilt, so
+he now had to come before Judge Payderson for sentence or dismissal.
+The lower court before which he had originally been brought had lost
+jurisdiction by binding him over to to higher court for trial. Eddie
+Zanders, in his self-appointed position as guide and mentor to
+Cowperwood, had confided nearly all of this data to him as he stood
+waiting.
+
+The courtroom was crowded. It was very humiliating to Cowperwood to
+have to file in this way along the side aisle with these others,
+followed by Stener, well dressed but sickly looking and disconsolate.
+
+The negro, Charles Ackerman, was the first on the list.
+
+“How is it this man comes before me?” asked Payderson, peevishly, when
+he noted the value of the property Ackerman was supposed to have
+stolen.
+
+“Your honor,” the assistant district attorney explained, promptly,
+“this man was before a lower court and refused, because he was drunk,
+or something, to plead guilty. The lower court, because the complainant
+would not forego the charge, was compelled to bind him over to this
+court for trial. Since then he has changed his mind and has admitted
+his guilt to the district attorney. He would not be brought before you
+except we have no alternative. He has to be brought here now in order
+to clear the calendar.”
+
+Judge Payderson stared quizzically at the negro, who, obviously not
+very much disturbed by this examination, was leaning comfortably on the
+gate or bar before which the average criminal stood erect and
+terrified. He had been before police-court magistrates before on one
+charge and another—drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and the like—but
+his whole attitude was one of shambling, lackadaisical, amusing
+innocence.
+
+“Well, Ackerman,” inquired his honor, severely, “did you or did you not
+steal this piece of lead pipe as charged here—four dollars and eighty
+cents’ worth?”
+
+“Yassah, I did,” he began. “I tell you how it was, jedge. I was
+a-comin’ along past dat lumber-yard one Saturday afternoon, and I
+hadn’t been wuckin’, an’ I saw dat piece o’ pipe thoo de fence, lyin’
+inside, and I jes’ reached thoo with a piece o’ boad I found dey and
+pulled it over to me an’ tuck it. An’ aftahwahd dis Mistah Watchman
+man”—he waved his hand oratorically toward the witness-chair, where, in
+case the judge might wish to ask him some questions, the complainant
+had taken his stand—“come around tuh where I live an’ accused me of
+done takin’ it.”
+
+“But you did take it, didn’t you?”
+
+“Yassah, I done tuck it.”
+
+“What did you do with it?”
+
+“I traded it foh twenty-five cents.”
+
+“You mean you sold it,” corrected his honor.
+
+“Yassah, I done sold it.”
+
+“Well, don’t you know it’s wrong to do anything like that? Didn’t you
+know when you reached through that fence and pulled that pipe over to
+you that you were stealing? Didn’t you?”
+
+“Yassah, I knowed it was wrong,” replied Ackerman, sheepishly. “I didn’
+think ’twuz stealin’ like zackly, but I done knowed it was wrong. I
+done knowed I oughtn’ take it, I guess.”
+
+“Of course you did. Of course you did. That’s just it. You knew you
+were stealing, and still you took it. Has the man to whom this negro
+sold the lead pipe been apprehended yet?” the judge inquired sharply of
+the district attorney. “He should be, for he’s more guilty than this
+negro, a receiver of stolen goods.”
+
+“Yes, sir,” replied the assistant. “His case is before Judge Yawger.”
+
+“Quite right. It should be,” replied Payderson, severely. “This matter
+of receiving stolen property is one of the worst offenses, in my
+judgment.”
+
+He then turned his attention to Ackerman again. “Now, look here,
+Ackerman,” he exclaimed, irritated at having to bother with such a
+pretty case, “I want to say something to you, and I want you to pay
+strict attention to me. Straighten up, there! Don’t lean on that gate!
+You are in the presence of the law now.” Ackerman had sprawled himself
+comfortably down on his elbows as he would have if he had been leaning
+over a back-fence gate talking to some one, but he immediately drew
+himself straight, still grinning foolishly and apologetically, when he
+heard this. “You are not so dull but that you can understand what I am
+going to say to you. The offense you have committed—stealing a piece of
+lead pipe—is a crime. Do you hear me? A criminal offense—one that I
+could punish you very severely for. I could send you to the
+penitentiary for one year if I chose—the law says I may—one year at
+hard labor for stealing a piece of lead pipe. Now, if you have any
+sense you will pay strict attention to what I am going to tell you. I
+am not going to send you to the penitentiary right now. I’m going to
+wait a little while. I am going to sentence you to one year in the
+penitentiary—one year. Do you understand?” Ackerman blanched a little
+and licked his lips nervously. “And then I am going to suspend that
+sentence—hold it over your head, so that if you are ever caught taking
+anything else you will be punished for this offense and the next one
+also at one and the same time. Do you understand that? Do you know what
+I mean? Tell me. Do you?”
+
+“Yessah! I does, sir,” replied the negro. “You’se gwine to let me go
+now—tha’s it.”
+
+The audience grinned, and his honor made a wry face to prevent his own
+grim grin.
+
+“I’m going to let you go only so long as you don’t steal anything
+else,” he thundered. “The moment you steal anything else, back you come
+to this court, and then you go to the penitentiary for a year and
+whatever more time you deserve. Do you understand that? Now, I want you
+to walk straight out of this court and behave yourself. Don’t ever
+steal anything. Get something to do! Don’t steal, do you hear? Don’t
+touch anything that doesn’t belong to you! Don’t come back here! If you
+do, I’ll send you to the penitentiary, sure.”
+
+“Yassah! No, sah, I won’t,” replied Ackerman, nervously. “I won’t take
+nothin’ more that don’t belong tuh me.”
+
+He shuffled away, after a moment, urged along by the guiding hand of a
+bailiff, and was put safely outside the court, amid a mixture of smiles
+and laughter over his simplicity and Payderson’s undue severity of
+manner. But the next case was called and soon engrossed the interest of
+the audience.
+
+It was that of the two housebreakers whom Cowperwood had been and was
+still studying with much curiosity. In all his life before he had never
+witnessed a sentencing scene of any kind. He had never been in police
+or criminal courts of any kind—rarely in any of the civil ones. He was
+glad to see the negro go, and gave Payderson credit for having some
+sense and sympathy—more than he had expected.
+
+He wondered now whether by any chance Aileen was here. He had objected
+to her coming, but she might have done so. She was, as a matter of
+fact, in the extreme rear, pocketed in a crowd near the door, heavily
+veiled, but present. She had not been able to resist the desire to know
+quickly and surely her beloved’s fate—to be near him in his hour of
+real suffering, as she thought. She was greatly angered at seeing him
+brought in with a line of ordinary criminals and made to wait in this,
+to her, shameful public manner, but she could not help admiring all the
+more the dignity and superiority of his presence even here. He was not
+even pale, as she saw, just the same firm, calm soul she had always
+known him to be. If he could only see her now; if he would only look so
+she could lift her veil and smile! He didn’t, though; he wouldn’t. He
+didn’t want to see her here. But she would tell him all about it when
+she saw him again just the same.
+
+The two burglars were quickly disposed of by the judge, with a sentence
+of one year each, and they were led away, uncertain, and apparently not
+knowing what to think of their crime or their future.
+
+When it came to Cowperwood’s turn to be called, his honor himself
+stiffened and straightened up, for this was a different type of man and
+could not be handled in the usual manner. He knew exactly what he was
+going to say. When one of Mollenhauer’s agents, a close friend of
+Butler’s, had suggested that five years for both Cowperwood and Stener
+would be about right, he knew exactly what to do. “Frank Algernon
+Cowperwood,” called the clerk.
+
+Cowperwood stepped briskly forward, sorry for himself, ashamed of his
+position in a way, but showing it neither in look nor manner. Payderson
+eyed him as he had the others.
+
+“Name?” asked the bailiff, for the benefit of the court stenographer.
+
+“Frank Algernon Cowperwood.”
+
+“Residence?”
+
+“1937 Girard Avenue.”
+
+“Occupation?”
+
+“Banker and broker.”
+
+Steger stood close beside him, very dignified, very forceful, ready to
+make a final statement for the benefit of the court and the public when
+the time should come. Aileen, from her position in the crowd near the
+door, was for the first time in her life biting her fingers nervously
+and there were great beads of perspiration on her brow. Cowperwood’s
+father was tense with excitement and his two brothers looked quickly
+away, doing their best to hide their fear and sorrow.
+
+“Ever convicted before?”
+
+“Never,” replied Steger for Cowperwood, quietly.
+
+“Frank Algernon Cowperwood,” called the clerk, in his nasal, singsong
+way, coming forward, “have you anything to say why judgment should not
+now be pronounced upon you? If so, speak.”
+
+Cowperwood started to say no, but Steger put up his hand.
+
+“If the court pleases, my client, Mr. Cowperwood, the prisoner at the
+bar, is neither guilty in his own estimation, nor in that of two-fifths
+of the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court—the court of last resort in
+this State,” he exclaimed, loudly and clearly, so that all might hear.
+
+One of the interested listeners and spectators at this point was Edward
+Malia Butler, who had just stepped in from another courtroom where he
+had been talking to a judge. An obsequious court attendant had warned
+him that Cowperwood was about to be sentenced. He had really come here
+this morning in order not to miss this sentence, but he cloaked his
+motive under the guise of another errand. He did not know that Aileen
+was there, nor did he see her.
+
+“As he himself testified at the time of his trial,” went on Steger,
+“and as the evidence clearly showed, he was never more than an agent
+for the gentleman whose offense was subsequently adjudicated by this
+court; and as an agent he still maintains, and two-fifths of the State
+Supreme Court agree with him, that he was strictly within his rights
+and privileges in not having deposited the sixty thousand dollars’
+worth of city loan certificates at the time, and in the manner which
+the people, acting through the district attorney, complained that he
+should have. My client is a man of rare financial ability. By the
+various letters which have been submitted to your honor in his behalf,
+you will see that he commands the respect and the sympathy of a large
+majority of the most forceful and eminent men in his particular world.
+He is a man of distinguished social standing and of notable
+achievements. Only the most unheralded and the unkindest thrust of
+fortune has brought him here before you today—a fire and its consequent
+panic which involved a financial property of the most thorough and
+stable character. In spite of the verdict of the jury and the decision
+of three-fifths of the State Supreme Court, I maintain that my client
+is not an embezzler, that he has not committed larceny, that he should
+never have been convicted, and that he should not now be punished for
+something of which he is not guilty.
+
+“I trust that your honor will not misunderstand me or my motives when I
+point out in this situation that what I have said is true. I do not
+wish to cast any reflection on the integrity of the court, nor of any
+court, nor of any of the processes of law. But I do condemn and deplore
+the untoward chain of events which has built up a seeming situation,
+not easily understood by the lay mind, and which has brought my
+distinguished client within the purview of the law. I think it is but
+fair that this should be finally and publicly stated here and now. I
+ask that your honor be lenient, and that if you cannot conscientiously
+dismiss this charge you will at least see that the facts, as I have
+indicated them, are given due weight in the measure of the punishment
+inflicted.”
+
+Steger stepped back and Judge Payderson nodded, as much as to say he
+had heard all the distinguished lawyer had to say, and would give it
+such consideration as it deserved—no more. Then he turned to
+Cowperwood, and, summoning all his judicial dignity to his aid, he
+began:
+
+“Frank Algernon Cowperwood, you have been convicted by a jury of your
+own selection of the offense of larceny. The motion for a new trial,
+made in your behalf by your learned counsel, has been carefully
+considered and overruled, the majority of the court being entirely
+satisfied with the propriety of the conviction, both upon the law and
+the evidence. Your offense was one of more than usual gravity, the more
+so that the large amount of money which you obtained belonged to the
+city. And it was aggravated by the fact that you had in addition
+thereto unlawfully used and converted to your own use several hundred
+thousand dollars of the loan and money of the city. For such an offense
+the maximum punishment affixed by the law is singularly merciful.
+Nevertheless, the facts in connection with your hitherto distinguished
+position, the circumstances under which your failure was brought about,
+and the appeals of your numerous friends and financial associates, will
+be given due consideration by this court. It is not unmindful of any
+important fact in your career.” Payderson paused as if in doubt, though
+he knew very well how he was about to proceed. He knew what his
+superiors expected of him.
+
+“If your case points no other moral,” he went on, after a moment,
+toying with the briefs, “it will at least teach the lesson much needed
+at the present time, that the treasury of the city is not to be invaded
+and plundered with impunity under the thin disguise of a business
+transaction, and that there is still a power in the law to vindicate
+itself and to protect the public.
+
+“The sentence of the court,” he added, solemnly, the while Cowperwood
+gazed unmoved, “is, therefore, that you pay a fine of five thousand
+dollars to the commonwealth for the use of the county, that you pay the
+costs of prosecution, and that you undergo imprisonment in the State
+Penitentiary for the Eastern District by separate or solitary
+confinement at labor for a period of four years and three months, and
+that you stand committed until this sentence is complied with.”
+
+Cowperwood’s father, on hearing this, bowed his head to hide his tears.
+Aileen bit her lower lip and clenched her hands to keep down her rage
+and disappointment and tears. Four years and three months! That would
+make a terrible gap in his life and hers. Still, she could wait. It was
+better than eight or ten years, as she had feared it might be. Perhaps
+now, once this was really over and he was in prison, the Governor would
+pardon him.
+
+The judge now moved to pick up the papers in connection with Stener’s
+case, satisfied that he had given the financiers no chance to say he
+had not given due heed to their plea in Cowperwood’s behalf and yet
+certain that the politicians would be pleased that he had so nearly
+given Cowperwood the maximum while appearing to have heeded the pleas
+for mercy. Cowperwood saw through the trick at once, but it did not
+disturb him. It struck him as rather weak and contemptible. A bailiff
+came forward and started to hurry him away.
+
+“Allow the prisoner to remain for a moment,” called the judge.
+
+The name, of George W. Stener had been called by the clerk and
+Cowperwood did not quite understand why he was being detained, but he
+soon learned. It was that he might hear the opinion of the court in
+connection with his copartner in crime. The latter’s record was taken.
+Roger O’Mara, the Irish political lawyer who had been his counsel all
+through his troubles, stood near him, but had nothing to say beyond
+asking the judge to consider Stener’s previously honorable career.
+
+“George W. Stener,” said his honor, while the audience, including
+Cowperwood, listened attentively. “The motion for a new trial as well
+as an arrest of judgment in your case having been overruled, it remains
+for the court to impose such sentence as the nature of your offense
+requires. I do not desire to add to the pain of your position by any
+extended remarks of my own; but I cannot let the occasion pass without
+expressing my emphatic condemnation of your offense. The misapplication
+of public money has become the great crime of the age. If not promptly
+and firmly checked, it will ultimately destroy our institutions. When a
+republic becomes honeycombed with corruption its vitality is gone. It
+must crumble upon the first pressure.
+
+“In my opinion, the public is much to blame for your offense and others
+of a similar character. Heretofore, official fraud has been regarded
+with too much indifference. What we need is a higher and purer
+political morality—a state of public opinion which would make the
+improper use of public money a thing to be execrated. It was the lack
+of this which made your offense possible. Beyond that I see nothing of
+extenuation in your case.” Judge Payderson paused for emphasis. He was
+coming to his finest flight, and he wanted it to sink in.
+
+“The people had confided to you the care of their money,” he went on,
+solemnly. “It was a high, a sacred trust. You should have guarded the
+door of the treasury even as the cherubim protected the Garden of Eden,
+and should have turned the flaming sword of impeccable honesty against
+every one who approached it improperly. Your position as the
+representative of a great community warranted that.
+
+“In view of all the facts in your case the court can do no less than
+impose a major penalty. The seventy-fourth section of the Criminal
+Procedure Act provides that no convict shall be sentenced by the court
+of this commonwealth to either of the penitentiaries thereof, for any
+term which shall expire between the fifteenth of November and the
+fifteenth day of February of any year, and this provision requires me
+to abate three months from the maximum of time which I would affix in
+your case—namely, five years. The sentence of the court is, therefore,
+that you pay a fine of five thousand dollars to the commonwealth for
+the use of the county”—Payderson knew well enough that Stener could
+never pay that sum—“and that you undergo imprisonment in the State
+Penitentiary for the Eastern District, by separate and solitary
+confinement at labor, for the period of four years and nine months, and
+that you stand committed until this sentence is complied with.” He laid
+down the briefs and rubbed his chin reflectively while both Cowperwood
+and Stener were hurried out. Butler was the first to leave after the
+sentence—quite satisfied. Seeing that all was over so far as she was
+concerned, Aileen stole quickly out; and after her, in a few moments,
+Cowperwood’s father and brothers. They were to await him outside and go
+with him to the penitentiary. The remaining members of the family were
+at home eagerly awaiting intelligence of the morning’s work, and Joseph
+Cowperwood was at once despatched to tell them.
+
+The day had now become cloudy, lowery, and it looked as if there might
+be snow. Eddie Zanders, who had been given all the papers in the case,
+announced that there was no need to return to the county jail. In
+consequence the five of them—Zanders, Steger, Cowperwood, his father,
+and Edward—got into a street-car which ran to within a few blocks of
+the prison. Within half an hour they were at the gates of the Eastern
+Penitentiary.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIII
+
+
+The Eastern District Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, standing at
+Fairmount Avenue and Twenty-first Street in Philadelphia, where
+Cowperwood was now to serve his sentence of four years and three
+months, was a large, gray-stone structure, solemn and momentous in its
+mien, not at all unlike the palace of Sforzas at Milan, although not so
+distinguished. It stretched its gray length for several blocks along
+four different streets, and looked as lonely and forbidding as a prison
+should. The wall which inclosed its great area extending over ten acres
+and gave it so much of its solemn dignity was thirty-five feet high and
+some seven feet thick. The prison proper, which was not visible from
+the outside, consisted of seven arms or corridors, ranged octopus-like
+around a central room or court, and occupying in their sprawling length
+about two-thirds of the yard inclosed within the walls, so that there
+was but little space for the charm of lawn or sward. The corridors,
+forty-two feet wide from outer wall to outer wall, were one hundred and
+eighty feet in length, and in four instances two stories high, and
+extended in their long reach in every direction. There were no windows
+in the corridors, only narrow slits of skylights, three and one-half
+feet long by perhaps eight inches wide, let in the roof; and the
+ground-floor cells were accompanied in some instances by a small yard
+ten by sixteen—the same size as the cells proper—which was surrounded
+by a high brick wall in every instance. The cells and floors and roofs
+were made of stone, and the corridors, which were only ten feet wide
+between the cells, and in the case of the single-story portion only
+fifteen feet high, were paved with stone. If you stood in the central
+room, or rotunda, and looked down the long stretches which departed
+from you in every direction, you had a sense of narrowness and
+confinement not compatible with their length. The iron doors, with
+their outer accompaniment of solid wooden ones, the latter used at
+times to shut the prisoner from all sight and sound, were grim and
+unpleasing to behold. The halls were light enough, being whitewashed
+frequently and set with the narrow skylights, which were closed with
+frosted glass in winter; but they were, as are all such matter-of-fact
+arrangements for incarceration, bare—wearisome to look upon. Life
+enough there was in all conscience, seeing that there were four hundred
+prisoners here at that time, and that nearly every cell was occupied;
+but it was a life of which no one individual was essentially aware as a
+spectacle. He was of it; but he was not. Some of the prisoners, after
+long service, were used as “trusties” or “runners,” as they were
+locally called; but not many. There was a bakery, a machine-shop, a
+carpenter-shop, a store-room, a flour-mill, and a series of gardens, or
+truck patches; but the manipulation of these did not require the
+services of a large number.
+
+The prison proper dated from 1822, and it had grown, wing by wing,
+until its present considerable size had been reached. Its population
+consisted of individuals of all degrees of intelligence and crime, from
+murderers to minor practitioners of larceny. It had what was known as
+the “Pennsylvania System” of regulation for its inmates, which was
+nothing more nor less than solitary confinement for all concerned—a
+life of absolute silence and separate labor in separate cells.
+
+Barring his comparatively recent experience in the county jail, which
+after all was far from typical, Cowperwood had never been in a prison
+in his life. Once, when a boy, in one of his perambulations through
+several of the surrounding towns, he had passed a village “lock-up,” as
+the town prisons were then called—a small, square, gray building with
+long iron-barred windows, and he had seen, at one of these rather
+depressing apertures on the second floor, a none too prepossessing
+drunkard or town ne’er-do-well who looked down on him with bleary eyes,
+unkempt hair, and a sodden, waxy, pallid face, and called—for it was
+summer and the jail window was open:
+
+“Hey, sonny, get me a plug of tobacco, will you?”
+
+Cowperwood, who had looked up, shocked and disturbed by the man’s
+disheveled appearance, had called back, quite without stopping to
+think:
+
+“Naw, I can’t.”
+
+“Look out you don’t get locked up yourself sometime, you little runt,”
+the man had replied, savagely, only half recovered from his debauch of
+the day before.
+
+He had not thought of this particular scene in years, but now suddenly
+it came back to him. Here he was on his way to be locked up in this
+dull, somber prison, and it was snowing, and he was being cut out of
+human affairs as much as it was possible for him to be cut out.
+
+No friends were permitted to accompany him beyond the outer gate—not
+even Steger for the time being, though he might visit him later in the
+day. This was an inviolable rule. Zanders being known to the
+gate-keeper, and bearing his commitment paper, was admitted at once.
+The others turned solemnly away. They bade a gloomy if affectionate
+farewell to Cowperwood, who, on his part, attempted to give it all an
+air of inconsequence—as, in part and even here, it had for him.
+
+“Well, good-by for the present,” he said, shaking hands. “I’ll be all
+right and I’ll get out soon. Wait and see. Tell Lillian not to worry.”
+
+He stepped inside, and the gate clanked solemnly behind him. Zanders
+led the way through a dark, somber hall, wide and high-ceiled, to a
+farther gate, where a second gateman, trifling with a large key,
+unlocked a barred door at his bidding. Once inside the prison yard,
+Zanders turned to the left into a small office, presenting his prisoner
+before a small, chest-high desk, where stood a prison officer in
+uniform of blue. The latter, the receiving overseer of the prison—a
+thin, practical, executive-looking person with narrow gray eyes and
+light hair, took the paper which the sheriff’s deputy handed him and
+read it. This was his authority for receiving Cowperwood. In his turn
+he handed Zanders a slip, showing that he had so received the prisoner;
+and then Zanders left, receiving gratefully the tip which Cowperwood
+pressed in his hand.
+
+“Well, good-by, Mr. Cowperwood,” he said, with a peculiar twist of his
+detective-like head. “I’m sorry. I hope you won’t find it so bad here.”
+
+He wanted to impress the receiving overseer with his familiarity with
+this distinguished prisoner, and Cowperwood, true to his policy of
+make-believe, shook hands with him cordially.
+
+“I’m much obliged to you for your courtesy, Mr. Zanders,” he said, then
+turned to his new master with the air of a man who is determined to
+make a good impression. He was now in the hands of petty officials, he
+knew, who could modify or increase his comfort at will. He wanted to
+impress this man with his utter willingness to comply and obey—his
+sense of respect for his authority—without in any way demeaning
+himself. He was depressed but efficient, even here in the clutch of
+that eventual machine of the law, the State penitentiary, which he had
+been struggling so hard to evade.
+
+The receiving overseer, Roger Kendall, though thin and clerical, was a
+rather capable man, as prison officials go—shrewd, not particularly
+well educated, not over-intelligent naturally, not over-industrious,
+but sufficiently energetic to hold his position. He knew something
+about convicts—considerable—for he had been dealing with them for
+nearly twenty-six years. His attitude toward them was cold, cynical,
+critical.
+
+He did not permit any of them to come into personal contact with him,
+but he saw to it that underlings in his presence carried out the
+requirements of the law.
+
+When Cowperwood entered, dressed in his very good clothing—a dark
+gray-blue twill suit of pure wool, a light, well-made gray overcoat, a
+black derby hat of the latest shape, his shoes new and of good leather,
+his tie of the best silk, heavy and conservatively colored, his hair
+and mustache showing the attention of an intelligent barber, and his
+hands well manicured—the receiving overseer saw at once that he was in
+the presence of some one of superior intelligence and force, such a man
+as the fortune of his trade rarely brought into his net.
+
+Cowperwood stood in the middle of the room without apparently looking
+at any one or anything, though he saw all. “Convict number 3633,”
+Kendall called to a clerk, handing him at the same time a yellow slip
+of paper on which was written Cowperwood’s full name and his record
+number, counting from the beginning of the penitentiary itself.
+
+The underling, a convict, took it and entered it in a book, reserving
+the slip at the same time for the penitentiary “runner” or “trusty,”
+who would eventually take Cowperwood to the “manners” gallery.
+
+“You will have to take off your clothes and take a bath,” said Kendall
+to Cowperwood, eyeing him curiously. “I don’t suppose you need one, but
+it’s the rule.”
+
+“Thank you,” replied Cowperwood, pleased that his personality was
+counting for something even here. “Whatever the rules are, I want to
+obey.”
+
+When he started to take off his coat, however, Kendall put up his hand
+delayingly and tapped a bell. There now issued from an adjoining room
+an assistant, a prison servitor, a weird-looking specimen of the genus
+“trusty.” He was a small, dark, lopsided individual, one leg being
+slightly shorter, and therefore one shoulder lower, than the other. He
+was hollow-chested, squint-eyed, and rather shambling, but spry enough
+withal. He was dressed in a thin, poorly made, baggy suit of striped
+jeans, the prison stripes of the place, showing a soft roll-collar
+shirt underneath, and wearing a large, wide-striped cap, peculiarly
+offensive in its size and shape to Cowperwood. He could not help
+thinking how uncanny the man’s squint eyes looked under its straight
+outstanding visor. The trusty had a silly, sycophantic manner of
+raising one hand in salute. He was a professional “second-story man,”
+“up” for ten years, but by dint of good behavior he had attained to the
+honor of working about this office without the degrading hood customary
+for prisoners to wear over the cap. For this he was properly grateful.
+He now considered his superior with nervous dog-like eyes, and looked
+at Cowperwood with a certain cunning appreciation of his lot and a show
+of initial mistrust.
+
+One prisoner is as good as another to the average convict; as a matter
+of fact, it is their only consolation in their degradation that all who
+come here are no better than they. The world may have misused them; but
+they misuse their confreres in their thoughts. The “holier than thou”
+attitude, intentional or otherwise, is quite the last and most deadly
+offense within prison walls. This particular “trusty” could no more
+understand Cowperwood than could a fly the motions of a fly-wheel; but
+with the cocky superiority of the underling of the world he did not
+hesitate to think that he could. A crook was a crook to him—Cowperwood
+no less than the shabbiest pickpocket. His one feeling was that he
+would like to demean him, to pull him down to his own level.
+
+“You will have to take everything you have out of your pockets,”
+Kendall now informed Cowperwood. Ordinarily he would have said, “Search
+the prisoner.”
+
+Cowperwood stepped forward and laid out a purse with twenty-five
+dollars in it, a pen-knife, a lead-pencil, a small note-book, and a
+little ivory elephant which Aileen had given him once, “for luck,” and
+which he treasured solely because she gave it to him. Kendall looked at
+the latter curiously. “Now you can go on,” he said to the “trusty,”
+referring to the undressing and bathing process which was to follow.
+
+“This way,” said the latter, addressing Cowperwood, and preceding him
+into an adjoining room, where three closets held three old-fashioned,
+iron-bodied, wooden-top bath-tubs, with their attendant shelves for
+rough crash towels, yellow soap, and the like, and hooks for clothes.
+
+“Get in there,” said the trusty, whose name was Thomas Kuby, pointing
+to one of the tubs.
+
+Cowperwood realized that this was the beginning of petty official
+supervision; but he deemed it wise to appear friendly even here.
+
+“I see,” he said. “I will.”
+
+“That’s right,” replied the attendant, somewhat placated. “What did you
+bring?”
+
+Cowperwood looked at him quizzically. He did not understand. The prison
+attendant realized that this man did not know the lingo of the place.
+“What did you bring?” he repeated. “How many years did you get?”
+
+“Oh!” exclaimed Cowperwood, comprehendingly. “I understand. Four and
+three months.”
+
+He decided to humor the man. It would probably be better so.
+
+“What for?” inquired Kuby, familiarly.
+
+Cowperwood’s blood chilled slightly. “Larceny,” he said.
+
+“Yuh got off easy,” commented Kuby. “I’m up for ten. A rube judge did
+that to me.”
+
+Kuby had never heard of Cowperwood’s crime. He would not have
+understood its subtleties if he had. Cowperwood did not want to talk to
+this man; he did not know how. He wished he would go away; but that was
+not likely. He wanted to be put in his cell and let alone.
+
+“That’s too bad,” he answered; and the convict realized clearly that
+this man was really not one of them, or he would not have said anything
+like that. Kuby went to the two hydrants opening into the bath-tub and
+turned them on. Cowperwood had been undressing the while, and now stood
+naked, but not ashamed, in front of this eighth-rate intelligence.
+
+“Don’t forget to wash your head, too,” said Kuby, and went away.
+
+Cowperwood stood there while the water ran, meditating on his fate. It
+was strange how life had dealt with him of late—so severely. Unlike
+most men in his position, he was not suffering from a consciousness of
+evil. He did not think he was evil. As he saw it, he was merely
+unfortunate. To think that he should be actually in this great, silent
+penitentiary, a convict, waiting here beside this cheap iron bathtub,
+not very sweet or hygienic to contemplate, with this crackbrained
+criminal to watch over him!
+
+He stepped into the tub and washed himself briskly with the biting
+yellow soap, drying himself on one of the rough, only partially
+bleached towels. He looked for his underwear, but there was none. At
+this point the attendant looked in again. “Out here,” he said,
+inconsiderately.
+
+Cowperwood followed, naked. He was led through the receiving overseer’s
+office into a room, where were scales, implements of measurement, a
+record-book, etc. The attendant who stood guard at the door now came
+over, and the clerk who sat in a corner automatically took down a
+record-blank. Kendall surveyed Cowperwood’s decidedly graceful figure,
+already inclining to a slight thickening around the waist, and approved
+of it as superior to that of most who came here. His skin, as he
+particularly noted, was especially white.
+
+“Step on the scale,” said the attendant, brusquely.
+
+Cowperwood did so, The former adjusted the weights and scanned the
+record carefully.
+
+“Weight, one hundred and seventy-five,” he called. “Now step over
+here.”
+
+He indicated a spot in the side wall where was fastened in a thin
+slat—which ran from the floor to about seven and one half feet above,
+perpendicularly—a small movable wooden indicator, which, when a man was
+standing under it, could be pressed down on his head. At the side of
+the slat were the total inches of height, laid off in halves, quarters,
+eighths, and so on, and to the right a length measurement for the arm.
+Cowperwood understood what was wanted and stepped under the indicator,
+standing quite straight.
+
+“Feet level, back to the wall,” urged the attendant. “So. Height, five
+feet nine and ten-sixteenths,” he called. The clerk in the corner noted
+it. He now produced a tape-measure and began measuring Cowperwood’s
+arms, legs, chest, waist, hips, etc. He called out the color of his
+eyes, his hair, his mustache, and, looking into his mouth, exclaimed,
+“Teeth, all sound.”
+
+After Cowperwood had once more given his address, age, profession,
+whether he knew any trade, etc.—which he did not—he was allowed to
+return to the bathroom, and put on the clothing which the prison
+provided for him—first the rough, prickly underwear, then the cheap
+soft roll-collar, white-cotton shirt, then the thick bluish-gray cotton
+socks of a quality such as he had never worn in his life, and over
+these a pair of indescribable rough-leather clogs, which felt to his
+feet as though they were made of wood or iron—oily and heavy. He then
+drew on the shapeless, baggy trousers with their telltale stripes, and
+over his arms and chest the loose-cut shapeless coat and waistcoat. He
+felt and knew of course that he looked very strange, wretched. And as
+he stepped out into the overseer’s room again he experienced a peculiar
+sense of depression, a gone feeling which before this had not assailed
+him and which now he did his best to conceal. This, then, was what
+society did to the criminal, he thought to himself. It took him and
+tore away from his body and his life the habiliments of his proper
+state and left him these. He felt sad and grim, and, try as he would—he
+could not help showing it for a moment. It was always his business and
+his intention to conceal his real feelings, but now it was not quite
+possible. He felt degraded, impossible, in these clothes, and he knew
+that he looked it. Nevertheless, he did his best to pull himself
+together and look unconcerned, willing, obedient, considerate of those
+above him. After all, he said to himself, it was all a play of sorts, a
+dream even, if one chose to view it so, a miasma even, from which, in
+the course of time and with a little luck one might emerge safely
+enough. He hoped so. It could not last. He was only acting a strange,
+unfamiliar part on the stage, this stage of life that he knew so well.
+
+Kendall did not waste any time looking at him, however. He merely said
+to his assistant, “See if you can find a cap for him,” and the latter,
+going to a closet containing numbered shelves, took down a cap—a
+high-crowned, straight-visored, shabby, striped affair which Cowperwood
+was asked to try on. It fitted well enough, slipping down close over
+his ears, and he thought that now his indignities must be about
+complete. What could be added? There could be no more of these
+disconcerting accoutrements. But he was mistaken. “Now, Kuby, you take
+him to Mr. Chapin,” said Kendall.
+
+Kuby understood. He went back into the wash-room and produced what
+Cowperwood had heard of but never before seen—a blue-and-white-striped
+cotton bag about half the length of an ordinary pillow-case and half
+again as wide, which Kuby now unfolded and shook out as he came toward
+him. It was a custom. The use of this hood, dating from the earliest
+days of the prison, was intended to prevent a sense of location and
+direction and thereby obviate any attempt to escape. Thereafter during
+all his stay he was not supposed to walk with or talk to or see another
+prisoner—not even to converse with his superiors, unless addressed. It
+was a grim theory, and yet one definitely enforced here, although as he
+was to learn later even this could be modified here.
+
+“You’ll have to put this on,” Kuby said, and opened it in such a way
+that it could be put over Cowperwood’s head.
+
+Cowperwood understood. He had heard of it in some way, in times past.
+He was a little shocked—looked at it first with a touch of real
+surprise, but a moment after lifted his hands and helped pull it down.
+
+“Never mind,” cautioned the guard, “put your hands down. I’ll get it
+over.”
+
+Cowperwood dropped his arms. When it was fully on, it came to about his
+chest, giving him little means of seeing anything. He felt very
+strange, very humiliated, very downcast. This simple thing of a
+blue-and-white striped bag over his head almost cost him his sense of
+self-possession. Why could not they have spared him this last
+indignity, he thought?
+
+“This way,” said his attendant, and he was led out to where he could
+not say.
+
+“If you hold it out in front you can see to walk,” said his guide; and
+Cowperwood pulled it out, thus being able to discern his feet and a
+portion of the floor below. He was thus conducted—seeing nothing in his
+transit—down a short walk, then through a long corridor, then through a
+room of uniformed guards, and finally up a narrow flight of iron steps,
+leading to the overseer’s office on the second floor of one of the
+two-tier blocks. There, he heard the voice of Kuby saying: “Mr. Chapin,
+here’s another prisoner for you from Mr. Kendall.”
+
+“I’ll be there in a minute,” came a peculiarly pleasant voice from the
+distance. Presently a big, heavy hand closed about his arm, and he was
+conducted still further.
+
+“You hain’t got far to go now,” the voice said, “and then I’ll take
+that bag off,” and Cowperwood felt for some reason a sense of sympathy,
+perhaps—as though he would choke. The further steps were not many.
+
+A cell door was reached and unlocked by the inserting of a great iron
+key. It was swung open, and the same big hand guided him through. A
+moment later the bag was pulled easily from his head, and he saw that
+he was in a narrow, whitewashed cell, rather dim, windowless, but
+lighted from the top by a small skylight of frosted glass three and one
+half feet long by four inches wide. For a night light there was a
+tin-bodied lamp swinging from a hook near the middle of one of the side
+walls. A rough iron cot, furnished with a straw mattress and two pairs
+of dark blue, probably unwashed blankets, stood in one corner. There
+was a hydrant and small sink in another. A small shelf occupied the
+wall opposite the bed. A plain wooden chair with a homely round back
+stood at the foot of the bed, and a fairly serviceable broom was
+standing in one corner. There was an iron stool or pot for excreta,
+giving, as he could see, into a large drain-pipe which ran along the
+inside wall, and which was obviously flushed by buckets of water being
+poured into it. Rats and other vermin infested this, and it gave off an
+unpleasant odor which filled the cell. The floor was of stone.
+Cowperwood’s clear-seeing eyes took it all in at a glance. He noted the
+hard cell door, which was barred and cross-barred with great round rods
+of steel, and fastened with a thick, highly polished lock. He saw also
+that beyond this was a heavy wooden door, which could shut him in even
+more completely than the iron one. There was no chance for any clear,
+purifying sunlight here. Cleanliness depended entirely on whitewash,
+soap and water and sweeping, which in turn depended on the prisoners
+themselves.
+
+He also took in Chapin, the homely, good-natured, cell overseer whom he
+now saw for the first time—a large, heavy, lumbering man, rather dusty
+and misshapen-looking, whose uniform did not fit him well, and whose
+manner of standing made him look as though he would much prefer to sit
+down. He was obviously bulky, but not strong, and his kindly face was
+covered with a short growth of grayish-brown whiskers. His hair was cut
+badly and stuck out in odd strings or wisps from underneath his big
+cap. Nevertheless, Cowperwood was not at all unfavorably
+impressed—quite the contrary—and he felt at once that this man might be
+more considerate of him than the others had been. He hoped so, anyhow.
+He did not know that he was in the presence of the overseer of the
+“manners squad,” who would have him in charge for two weeks only,
+instructing him in the rules of the prison, and that he was only one of
+twenty-six, all told, who were in Chapin’s care.
+
+That worthy, by way of easy introduction, now went over to the bed and
+seated himself on it. He pointed to the hard wooden chair, which
+Cowperwood drew out and sat on.
+
+“Well, now you’re here, hain’t yuh?” he asked, and answered himself
+quite genially, for he was an unlettered man, generously disposed, of
+long experience with criminals, and inclined to deal kindly with kindly
+temperament and a form of religious belief—Quakerism—had inclined him
+to be merciful, and yet his official duties, as Cowperwood later found
+out, seemed to have led him to the conclusion that most criminals were
+innately bad. Like Kendall, he regarded them as weaklings and
+ne’er-do-wells with evil streaks in them, and in the main he was not
+mistaken. Yet he could not help being what he was, a fatherly, kindly
+old man, having faith in those shibboleths of the weak and
+inexperienced mentally—human justice and human decency.
+
+“Yes, I’m here, Mr. Chapin,” Cowperwood replied, simply, remembering
+his name from the attendant, and flattering the keeper by the use of
+it.
+
+To old Chapin the situation was more or less puzzling. This was the
+famous Frank A. Cowperwood whom he had read about, the noted banker and
+treasury-looter. He and his co-partner in crime, Stener, were destined
+to serve, as he had read, comparatively long terms here. Five hundred
+thousand dollars was a large sum of money in those days, much more than
+five million would have been forty years later. He was awed by the
+thought of what had become of it—how Cowperwood managed to do all the
+things the papers had said he had done. He had a little formula of
+questions which he usually went through with each new prisoner—asking
+him if he was sorry now for the crime he had committed, if he meant to
+do better with a new chance, if his father and mother were alive, etc.;
+and by the manner in which they answered these questions—simply,
+regretfully, defiantly, or otherwise—he judged whether they were being
+adequately punished or not. Yet he could not talk to Cowperwood as he
+now saw or as he would to the average second-story burglar,
+store-looter, pickpocket, and plain cheap thief and swindler. And yet
+he scarcely knew how else to talk.
+
+“Well, now,” he went on, “I don’t suppose you ever thought you’d get to
+a place like this, did you, Mr. Cowperwood?”
+
+“I never did,” replied Frank, simply. “I wouldn’t have believed it a
+few months ago, Mr. Chapin. I don’t think I deserve to be here now,
+though of course there is no use of my telling you that.”
+
+He saw that old Chapin wanted to moralize a little, and he was only too
+glad to fall in with his mood. He would soon be alone with no one to
+talk to perhaps, and if a sympathetic understanding could be reached
+with this man now, so much the better. Any port in a storm; any straw
+to a drowning man.
+
+“Well, no doubt all of us makes mistakes,” continued Mr. Chapin,
+superiorly, with an amusing faith in his own value as a moral guide and
+reformer. “We can’t just always tell how the plans we think so fine are
+coming out, can we? You’re here now, an’ I suppose you’re sorry certain
+things didn’t come out just as you thought; but if you had a chance I
+don’t suppose you’d try to do just as you did before, now would yuh?”
+
+“No, Mr. Chapin, I wouldn’t, exactly,” said Cowperwood, truly enough,
+“though I believed I was right in everything I did. I don’t think legal
+justice has really been done me.”
+
+“Well, that’s the way,” continued Chapin, meditatively, scratching his
+grizzled head and looking genially about. “Sometimes, as I allers says
+to some of these here young fellers that comes in here, we don’t know
+as much as we thinks we does. We forget that others are just as smart
+as we are, and that there are allers people that are watchin’ us all
+the time. These here courts and jails and detectives—they’re here all
+the time, and they get us. I gad”—Chapin’s moral version of “by
+God”—“they do, if we don’t behave.”
+
+“Yes,” Cowperwood replied, “that’s true enough, Mr. Chapin.”
+
+“Well,” continued the old man after a time, after he had made a few
+more solemn, owl-like, and yet well-intentioned remarks, “now here’s
+your bed, and there’s your chair, and there’s your wash-stand, and
+there’s your water-closet. Now keep ’em all clean and use ’em right.”
+(You would have thought he was making Cowperwood a present of a
+fortune.) “You’re the one’s got to make up your bed every mornin’ and
+keep your floor swept and your toilet flushed and your cell clean.
+There hain’t anybody here’ll do that for yuh. You want to do all them
+things the first thing in the mornin’ when you get up, and afterward
+you’ll get sumpin’ to eat, about six-thirty. You’re supposed to get up
+at five-thirty.”
+
+“Yes, Mr. Chapin,” Cowperwood said, politely. “You can depend on me to
+do all those things promptly.”
+
+“There hain’t so much more,” added Chapin. “You’re supposed to wash
+yourself all over once a week an’ I’ll give you a clean towel for that.
+Next you gotta wash this floor up every Friday mornin’.” Cowperwood
+winced at that. “You kin have hot water for that if you want it. I’ll
+have one of the runners bring it to you. An’ as for your friends and
+relations”—he got up and shook himself like a big Newfoundland dog.
+“You gotta wife, hain’t you?”
+
+“Yes,” replied Cowperwood.
+
+“Well, the rules here are that your wife or your friends kin come to
+see you once in three months, and your lawyer—you gotta lawyer hain’t
+yuh?”
+
+“Yes, sir,” replied Cowperwood, amused.
+
+“Well, he kin come every week or so if he likes—every day, I
+guess—there hain’t no rules about lawyers. But you kin only write one
+letter once in three months yourself, an’ if you want anything like
+tobaccer or the like o’ that, from the store-room, you gotta sign an
+order for it, if you got any money with the warden, an’ then I can git
+it for you.”
+
+The old man was really above taking small tips in the shape of money.
+He was a hold-over from a much more severe and honest regime, but
+subsequent presents or constant flattery were not amiss in making him
+kindly and generous. Cowperwood read him accurately.
+
+“Very well, Mr. Chapin; I understand,” he said, getting up as the old
+man did.
+
+“Then when you have been here two weeks,” added Chapin, rather
+ruminatively (he had forgot to state this to Cowperwood before), “the
+warden ’ll come and git yuh and give yuh yer regular cell summers
+down-stairs. Yuh kin make up yer mind by that time what y’u’d like tuh
+do, what y’u’d like to work at. If you behave yourself proper, more’n
+like they’ll give yuh a cell with a yard. Yuh never can tell.”
+
+He went out, locking the door with a solemn click; and Cowperwood stood
+there, a little more depressed than he had been, because of this latest
+intelligence. Only two weeks, and then he would be transferred from
+this kindly old man’s care to another’s, whom he did not know and with
+whom he might not fare so well.
+
+“If ever you want me for anything—if ye’re sick or sumpin’ like that,”
+Chapin now returned to say, after he had walked a few paces away, “we
+have a signal here of our own. Just hang your towel out through these
+here bars. I’ll see it, and I’ll stop and find out what yuh want, when
+I’m passin’.”
+
+Cowperwood, whose spirits had sunk, revived for the moment.
+
+“Yes, sir,” he replied; “thank you, Mr. Chapin.”
+
+The old man walked away, and Cowperwood heard his steps dying down the
+cement-paved hall. He stood and listened, his ears being greeted
+occasionally by a distant cough, a faint scraping of some one’s feet,
+the hum or whir of a machine, or the iron scratch of a key in a lock.
+None of the noises was loud. Rather they were all faint and far away.
+He went over and looked at the bed, which was not very clean and
+without linen, and anything but wide or soft, and felt it curiously. So
+here was where he was to sleep from now on—he who so craved and
+appreciated luxury and refinement. If Aileen or some of his rich
+friends should see him here. Worse, he was sickened by the thought of
+possible vermin. How could he tell? How would he do? The one chair was
+abominable. The skylight was weak. He tried to think of himself as
+becoming accustomed to the situation, but he re-discovered the offal
+pot in one corner, and that discouraged him. It was possible that rats
+might come up here—it looked that way. No pictures, no books, no scene,
+no person, no space to walk—just the four bare walls and silence, which
+he would be shut into at night by the thick door. What a horrible fate!
+
+He sat down and contemplated his situation. So here he was at last in
+the Eastern Penitentiary, and doomed, according to the judgment of the
+politicians (Butler among others), to remain here four long years and
+longer. Stener, it suddenly occurred to him, was probably being put
+through the same process he had just gone through. Poor old Stener!
+What a fool he had made of himself. But because of his foolishness he
+deserved all he was now getting. But the difference between himself and
+Stener was that they would let Stener out. It was possible that already
+they were easing his punishment in some way that he, Cowperwood, did
+not know. He put his hand to his chin, thinking—his business, his
+house, his friends, his family, Aileen. He felt for his watch, but
+remembered that they had taken that. There was no way of telling the
+time. Neither had he any notebook, pen, or pencil with which to amuse
+or interest himself. Besides he had had nothing to eat since morning.
+Still, that mattered little. What did matter was that he was shut up
+here away from the world, quite alone, quite lonely, without knowing
+what time it was, and that he could not attend to any of the things he
+ought to be attending to—his business affairs, his future. True, Steger
+would probably come to see him after a while. That would help a little.
+But even so—think of his position, his prospects up to the day of the
+fire and his state now. He sat looking at his shoes; his suit. God! He
+got up and walked to and fro, to and fro, but his own steps and
+movements sounded so loud. He walked to the cell door and looked out
+through the thick bars, but there was nothing to see—nothing save a
+portion of two cell doors opposite, something like his own. He came
+back and sat in his single chair, meditating, but, getting weary of
+that finally, stretched himself on the dirty prison bed to try it. It
+was not uncomfortable entirely. He got up after a while, however, and
+sat, then walked, then sat. What a narrow place to walk, he thought.
+This was horrible—something like a living tomb. And to think he should
+be here now, day after day and day after day, until—until what? Until
+the Governor pardoned him or his time was up, or his fortune eaten
+away—or—
+
+So he cogitated while the hours slipped by. It was nearly five o’clock
+before Steger was able to return, and then only for a little while. He
+had been arranging for Cowperwood’s appearance on the following
+Thursday, Friday, and Monday in his several court proceedings. When he
+was gone, however, and the night fell and Cowperwood had to trim his
+little, shabby oil-lamp and to drink the strong tea and eat the rough,
+poor bread made of bran and white flour, which was shoved to him
+through the small aperture in the door by the trencher trusty, who was
+accompanied by the overseer to see that it was done properly, he really
+felt very badly. And after that the center wooden door of his cell was
+presently closed and locked by a trusty who slammed it rudely and said
+no word. Nine o’clock would be sounded somewhere by a great bell, he
+understood, when his smoky oil-lamp would have to be put out promptly
+and he would have to undress and go to bed. There were punishments, no
+doubt, for infractions of these rules—reduced rations, the
+strait-jacket, perhaps stripes—he scarcely knew what. He felt
+disconsolate, grim, weary. He had put up such a long, unsatisfactory
+fight. After washing his heavy stone cup and tin plate at the hydrant,
+he took off the sickening uniform and shoes and even the drawers of the
+scratching underwear, and stretched himself wearily on the bed. The
+place was not any too warm, and he tried to make himself comfortable
+between the blankets—but it was of little use. His soul was cold.
+
+“This will never do,” he said to himself. “This will never do. I’m not
+sure whether I can stand much of this or not.” Still he turned his face
+to the wall, and after several hours sleep eventually came.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIV
+
+
+Those who by any pleasing courtesy of fortune, accident of birth,
+inheritance, or the wisdom of parents or friends, have succeeded in
+avoiding making that anathema of the prosperous and comfortable, “a
+mess of their lives,” will scarcely understand the mood of Cowperwood,
+sitting rather gloomily in his cell these first days, wondering what,
+in spite of his great ingenuity, was to become of him. The strongest
+have their hours of depression. There are times when life to those
+endowed with the greatest intelligence—perhaps mostly to those—takes on
+a somber hue. They see so many phases of its dreary subtleties. It is
+only when the soul of man has been built up into some strange
+self-confidence, some curious faith in its own powers, based, no doubt,
+on the actual presence of these same powers subtly involved in the
+body, that it fronts life unflinchingly. It would be too much to say
+that Cowperwood’s mind was of the first order. It was subtle enough in
+all conscience—and involved, as is common with the executively great,
+with a strong sense of personal advancement. It was a powerful mind,
+turning, like a vast searchlight, a glittering ray into many a dark
+corner; but it was not sufficiently disinterested to search the
+ultimate dark. He realized, in a way, what the great astronomers,
+sociologists, philosophers, chemists, physicists, and physiologists
+were meditating; but he could not be sure in his own mind that,
+whatever it was, it was important for him. No doubt life held many
+strange secrets. Perhaps it was essential that somebody should
+investigate them. However that might be, the call of his own soul was
+in another direction. His business was to make money—to organize
+something which would make him much money, or, better yet, save the
+organization he had begun.
+
+But this, as he now looked upon it, was almost impossible. It had been
+too disarranged and complicated by unfortunate circumstances. He might,
+as Steger pointed out to him, string out these bankruptcy proceedings
+for years, tiring out one creditor and another, but in the meantime the
+properties involved were being seriously damaged. Interest charges on
+his unsatisfied loans were making heavy inroads; court costs were
+mounting up; and, to cap it all, he had discovered with Steger that
+there were a number of creditors—those who had sold out to Butler, and
+incidentally to Mollenhauer—who would never accept anything except the
+full value of their claims. His one hope now was to save what he could
+by compromise a little later, and to build up some sort of profitable
+business through Stephen Wingate. The latter was coming in a day or
+two, as soon as Steger had made some working arrangement for him with
+Warden Michael Desmas who came the second day to have a look at the new
+prisoner.
+
+Desmas was a large man physically—Irish by birth, a politician by
+training—who had been one thing and another in Philadelphia from a
+policeman in his early days and a corporal in the Civil War to a ward
+captain under Mollenhauer. He was a canny man, tall, raw-boned,
+singularly muscular-looking, who for all his fifty-seven years looked
+as though he could give a splendid account of himself in a physical
+contest. His hands were large and bony, his face more square than
+either round or long, and his forehead high. He had a vigorous growth
+of short-clipped, iron-gray hair, and a bristly iron-gray mustache,
+very short, keen, intelligent blue-gray eyes; a florid complexion; and
+even-edged, savage-looking teeth, which showed the least bit in a
+slightly wolfish way when he smiled. However, he was not as cruel a
+person as he looked to be; temperamental, to a certain extent hard, and
+on occasions savage, but with kindly hours also. His greatest weakness
+was that he was not quite mentally able to recognize that there were
+mental and social differences between prisoners, and that now and then
+one was apt to appear here who, with or without political influences,
+was eminently worthy of special consideration. What he could recognize
+was the differences pointed out to him by the politicians in special
+cases, such as that of Stener—not Cowperwood. However, seeing that the
+prison was a public institution apt to be visited at any time by
+lawyers, detectives, doctors, preachers, propagandists, and the public
+generally, and that certain rules and regulations had to be enforced
+(if for no other reason than to keep a moral and administrative control
+over his own help), it was necessary to maintain—and that even in the
+face of the politician—a certain amount of discipline, system, and
+order, and it was not possible to be too liberal with any one. There
+were, however, exceptional cases—men of wealth and refinement, victims
+of those occasional uprisings which so shocked the political leaders
+generally—who had to be looked after in a friendly way.
+
+Desmas was quite aware, of course, of the history of Cowperwood and
+Stener. The politicians had already given him warning that Stener,
+because of his past services to the community, was to be treated with
+special consideration. Not so much was said about Cowperwood, although
+they did admit that his lot was rather hard. Perhaps he might do a
+little something for him but at his own risk.
+
+“Butler is down on him,” Strobik said to Desmas, on one occasion. “It’s
+that girl of his that’s at the bottom of it all. If you listened to
+Butler you’d feed him on bread and water, but he isn’t a bad fellow. As
+a matter of fact, if George had had any sense Cowperwood wouldn’t be
+where he is to-day. But the big fellows wouldn’t let Stener alone. They
+wouldn’t let him give Cowperwood any money.”
+
+Although Strobik had been one of those who, under pressure from
+Mollenhauer, had advised Stener not to let Cowperwood have any more
+money, yet here he was pointing out the folly of the victim’s course.
+The thought of the inconsistency involved did not trouble him in the
+least.
+
+Desmas decided, therefore, that if Cowperwood were persona non grata to
+the “Big Three,” it might be necessary to be indifferent to him, or at
+least slow in extending him any special favors. For Stener a good
+chair, clean linen, special cutlery and dishes, the daily papers,
+privileges in the matter of mail, the visits of friends, and the like.
+For Cowperwood—well, he would have to look at Cowperwood and see what
+he thought. At the same time, Steger’s intercessions were not without
+their effect on Desmas. So the morning after Cowperwood’s entrance the
+warden received a letter from Terrence Relihan, the Harrisburg
+potentate, indicating that any kindness shown to Mr. Cowperwood would
+be duly appreciated by him. Upon the receipt of this letter Desmas went
+up and looked through Cowperwood’s iron door. On the way he had a brief
+talk with Chapin, who told him what a nice man he thought Cowperwood
+was.
+
+Desmas had never seen Cowperwood before, but in spite of the shabby
+uniform, the clog shoes, the cheap shirt, and the wretched cell, he was
+impressed. Instead of the weak, anaemic body and the shifty eyes of the
+average prisoner, he saw a man whose face and form blazed energy and
+power, and whose vigorous erectness no wretched clothes or conditions
+could demean. He lifted his head when Desmas appeared, glad that any
+form should have appeared at his door, and looked at him with large,
+clear, examining eyes—those eyes that in the past had inspired so much
+confidence and surety in all those who had known him. Desmas was
+stirred. Compared with Stener, whom he knew in the past and whom he had
+met on his entry, this man was a force. Say what you will, one vigorous
+man inherently respects another. And Desmas was vigorous physically. He
+eyed Cowperwood and Cowperwood eyed him. Instinctively Desmas liked
+him. He was like one tiger looking at another.
+
+Instinctively Cowperwood knew that he was the warden. “This is Mr.
+Desmas, isn’t it?” he asked, courteously and pleasantly.
+
+“Yes, sir, I’m the man,” replied Desmas interestedly. “These rooms are
+not as comfortable as they might be, are they?” The warden’s even teeth
+showed in a friendly, yet wolfish, way.
+
+“They certainly are not, Mr. Desmas,” replied Cowperwood, standing very
+erect and soldier-like. “I didn’t imagine I was coming to a hotel,
+however.” He smiled.
+
+“There isn’t anything special I can do for you, is there, Mr.
+Cowperwood?” began Desmas curiously, for he was moved by a thought that
+at some time or other a man such as this might be of service to him.
+“I’ve been talking to your lawyer.” Cowperwood was intensely gratified
+by the Mr. So that was the way the wind was blowing. Well, then, within
+reason, things might not prove so bad here. He would see. He would
+sound this man out.
+
+“I don’t want to be asking anything, Warden, which you cannot
+reasonably give,” he now returned politely. “But there are a few
+things, of course, that I would change if I could. I wish I might have
+sheets for my bed, and I could afford better underwear if you would let
+me wear it. This that I have on annoys me a great deal.”
+
+“They’re not the best wool, that’s true enough,” replied Desmas,
+solemnly. “They’re made for the State out here in Pennsylvania
+somewhere. I suppose there’s no objection to your wearing your own
+underwear if you want to. I’ll see about that. And the sheets, too. We
+might let you use them if you have them. We’ll have to go a little slow
+about this. There are a lot of people that take a special interest in
+showing the warden how to tend to his business.”
+
+“I can readily understand that, Warden,” went on Cowperwood briskly,
+“and I’m certainly very much obliged to you. You may be sure that
+anything you do for me here will be appreciated, and not misused, and
+that I have friends on the outside who can reciprocate for me in the
+course of time.” He talked slowly and emphatically, looking Desmas
+directly in the eye all of the time. Desmas was very much impressed.
+
+“That’s all right,” he said, now that he had gone so far as to be
+friendly. “I can’t promise much. Prison rules are prison rules. But
+there are some things that can be done, because it’s the rule to do
+them for other men when they behave themselves. You can have a better
+chair than that, if you want it, and something to read too. If you’re
+in business yet, I wouldn’t want to do anything to stop that. We can’t
+have people running in and out of here every fifteen minutes, and you
+can’t turn a cell into a business office—that’s not possible. It would
+break up the order of the place. Still, there’s no reason why you
+shouldn’t see some of your friends now and then. As for your mail—well,
+that will have to be opened in the ordinary way for the time being,
+anyhow. I’ll have to see about that. I can’t promise too much. You’ll
+have to wait until you come out of this block and down-stairs. Some of
+the cells have a yard there; if there are any empty—” The warden cocked
+his eye wisely, and Cowperwood saw that his tot was not to be as bad as
+he had anticipated—though bad enough. The warden spoke to him about the
+different trades he might follow, and asked him to think about the one
+he would prefer. “You want to have something to keep your hands busy,
+whatever else you want. You’ll find you’ll need that. Everybody here
+wants to work after a time. I notice that.”
+
+Cowperwood understood and thanked Desmas profusely. The horror of
+idleness in silence and in a cell scarcely large enough to turn around
+in comfortably had already begun to creep over him, and the thought of
+being able to see Wingate and Steger frequently, and to have his mail
+reach him, after a time, untampered with, was a great relief. He was to
+have his own underwear, silk and wool—thank God!—and perhaps they would
+let him take off these shoes after a while. With these modifications
+and a trade, and perhaps the little yard which Desmas had referred to,
+his life would be, if not ideal, at least tolerable. The prison was
+still a prison, but it looked as though it might not be so much of a
+terror to him as obviously it must be to many.
+
+During the two weeks in which Cowperwood was in the “manners squad,” in
+care of Chapin, he learned nearly as much as he ever learned of the
+general nature of prison life; for this was not an ordinary
+penitentiary in the sense that the prison yard, the prison squad, the
+prison lock-step, the prison dining-room, and prison associated labor
+make the ordinary penitentiary. There was, for him and for most of
+those confined there, no general prison life whatsoever. The large
+majority were supposed to work silently in their cells at the
+particular tasks assigned them, and not to know anything of the
+remainder of the life which went on around them, the rule of this
+prison being solitary confinement, and few being permitted to work at
+the limited number of outside menial tasks provided. Indeed, as he
+sensed and as old Chapin soon informed him, not more than seventy-five
+of the four hundred prisoners confined here were so employed, and not
+all of these regularly—cooking, gardening in season, milling, and
+general cleaning being the only avenues of escape from solitude. Even
+those who so worked were strictly forbidden to talk, and although they
+did not have to wear the objectionable hood when actually employed,
+they were supposed to wear it in going to and from their work.
+Cowperwood saw them occasionally tramping by his cell door, and it
+struck him as strange, uncanny, grim. He wished sincerely at times
+since old Chapin was so genial and talkative that he were to be under
+him permanently; but it was not to be.
+
+His two weeks soon passed—drearily enough in all conscience but they
+passed, interlaced with his few commonplace tasks of bed-making,
+floor-sweeping, dressing, eating, undressing, rising at five-thirty,
+and retiring at nine, washing his several dishes after each meal, etc.
+He thought he would never get used to the food. Breakfast, as has been
+said, was at six-thirty, and consisted of coarse black bread made of
+bran and some white flour, and served with black coffee. Dinner was at
+eleven-thirty, and consisted of bean or vegetable soup, with some
+coarse meat in it, and the same bread. Supper was at six, of tea and
+bread, very strong tea and the same bread—no butter, no milk, no sugar.
+Cowperwood did not smoke, so the small allowance of tobacco which was
+permitted was without value to him. Steger called in every day for two
+or three weeks, and after the second day, Stephen Wingate, as his new
+business associate, was permitted to see him also—once every day, if he
+wished, Desmas stated, though the latter felt he was stretching a point
+in permitting this so soon. Both of these visits rarely occupied more
+than an hour, or an hour and a half, and after that the day was long.
+He was taken out on several days on a court order, between nine and
+five, to testify in the bankruptcy proceedings against him, which
+caused the time in the beginning to pass quickly.
+
+It was curious, once he was in prison, safely shut from the world for a
+period of years apparently, how quickly all thought of assisting him
+departed from the minds of those who had been most friendly. He was
+done, so most of them thought. The only thing they could do now would
+be to use their influence to get him out some time; how soon, they
+could not guess. Beyond that there was nothing. He would really never
+be of any great importance to any one any more, or so they thought. It
+was very sad, very tragic, but he was gone—his place knew him not.
+
+“A bright young man, that,” observed President Davison of the Girard
+National, on reading of Cowperwood’s sentence and incarceration. “Too
+bad! Too bad! He made a great mistake.”
+
+Only his parents, Aileen, and his wife—the latter with mingled feelings
+of resentment and sorrow—really missed him. Aileen, because of her
+great passion for him, was suffering most of all. Four years and three
+months; she thought. If he did not get out before then she would be
+nearing twenty-nine and he would be nearing forty. Would he want her
+then? Would she be so attractive? And would nearly five years change
+his point of view? He would have to wear a convict suit all that time,
+and be known as a convict forever after. It was hard to think about,
+but only made her more than ever determined to cling to him, whatever
+happened, and to help him all she could.
+
+Indeed the day after his incarceration she drove out and looked at the
+grim, gray walls of the penitentiary. Knowing nothing absolutely of the
+vast and complicated processes of law and penal servitude, it seemed
+especially terrible to her. What might not they be doing to her Frank?
+Was he suffering much? Was he thinking of her as she was of him? Oh,
+the pity of it all! The pity! The pity of herself—her great love for
+him! She drove home, determined to see him; but as he had originally
+told her that visiting days were only once in three months, and that he
+would have to write her when the next one was, or when she could come,
+or when he could see her on the outside, she scarcely knew what to do.
+Secrecy was the thing.
+
+The next day, however, she wrote him just the same, describing the
+drive she had taken on the stormy afternoon before—the terror of the
+thought that he was behind those grim gray walls—and declaring her
+determination to see him soon. And this letter, under the new
+arrangement, he received at once. He wrote her in reply, giving the
+letter to Wingate to mail. It ran:
+
+My sweet girl:—I fancy you are a little downhearted to think I cannot
+be with you any more soon, but you mustn’t be. I suppose you read all
+about the sentence in the paper. I came out here the same
+morning—nearly noon. If I had time, dearest, I’d write you a long
+letter describing the situation so as to ease your mind; but I haven’t.
+It’s against the rules, and I am really doing this secretly. I’m here,
+though, safe enough, and wish I were out, of course. Sweetest, you must
+be careful how you try to see me at first. You can’t do me much service
+outside of cheering me up, and you may do yourself great harm. Besides,
+I think I have done you far more harm than I can ever make up to you
+and that you had best give me up, although I know you do not think so,
+and I would be sad, if you did. I am to be in the Court of Special
+Pleas, Sixth and Chestnut, on Friday at two o’clock; but you cannot see
+me there. I’ll be out in charge of my counsel. You must be careful.
+Perhaps you’ll think better, and not come here.
+
+
+This last touch was one of pure gloom, the first Cowperwood had ever
+introduced into their relationship but conditions had changed him.
+Hitherto he had been in the position of the superior being, the one who
+was being sought—although Aileen was and had been well worth
+seeking—and he had thought that he might escape unscathed, and so grow
+in dignity and power until she might not possibly be worthy of him any
+longer. He had had that thought. But here, in stripes, it was a
+different matter. Aileen’s position, reduced in value as it was by her
+long, ardent relationship with him, was now, nevertheless, superior to
+his—apparently so. For after all, was she not Edward Butler’s daughter,
+and might she, after she had been away from him a while, wish to become
+a convict’s bride. She ought not to want to, and she might not want to,
+for all he knew; she might change her mind. She ought not to wait for
+him. Her life was not yet ruined. The public did not know, so he
+thought—not generally anyhow—that she had been his mistress. She might
+marry. Why not, and so pass out of his life forever. And would not that
+be sad for him? And yet did he not owe it to her, to a sense of fair
+play in himself to ask her to give him up, or at least think over the
+wisdom of doing so?
+
+He did her the justice to believe that she would not want to give him
+up; and in his position, however harmful it might be to her, it was an
+advantage, a connecting link with the finest period of his past life,
+to have her continue to love him. He could not, however, scribbling
+this note in his cell in Wingate’s presence, and giving it to him to
+mail (Overseer Chapin was kindly keeping a respectful distance, though
+he was supposed to be present), refrain from adding, at the last
+moment, this little touch of doubt which, when she read it, struck
+Aileen to the heart. She read it as gloom on his part—as great
+depression. Perhaps, after all, the penitentiary and so soon, was
+really breaking his spirit, and he had held up so courageously so long.
+Because of this, now she was madly eager to get to him, to console him,
+even though it was difficult, perilous. She must, she said.
+
+In regard to visits from the various members of his family—his mother
+and father, his brother, his wife, and his sister—Cowperwood made it
+plain to them on one of the days on which he was out attending a
+bankruptcy hearing, that even providing it could be arranged he did not
+think they should come oftener than once in three months, unless he
+wrote them or sent word by Steger. The truth was that he really did not
+care to see much of any of them at present. He was sick of the whole
+social scheme of things. In fact he wanted to be rid of the turmoil he
+had been in, seeing it had proved so useless. He had used nearly
+fifteen thousand dollars thus far in defending himself—court costs,
+family maintenance, Steger, etc.; but he did not mind that. He expected
+to make some little money working through Wingate. His family were not
+utterly without funds, sufficient to live on in a small way. He had
+advised them to remove into houses more in keeping with their reduced
+circumstances, which they had done—his mother and father and brothers
+and sister to a three-story brick house of about the caliber of the old
+Buttonwood Street house, and his wife to a smaller, less expensive
+two-story one on North Twenty-first Street, near the penitentiary, a
+portion of the money saved out of the thirty-five thousand dollars
+extracted from Stener under false pretenses aiding to sustain it. Of
+course all this was a terrible descent from the Girard Avenue mansion
+for the elder Cowperwood; for here was none of the furniture which
+characterized the other somewhat gorgeous domicile—merely store-bought,
+ready-made furniture, and neat but cheap hangings and fixtures
+generally. The assignees, to whom all Cowperwood’s personal property
+belonged, and to whom Cowperwood, the elder, had surrendered all his
+holdings, would not permit anything of importance to be removed. It had
+all to be sold for the benefit of creditors. A few very small things,
+but only a few, had been kept, as everything had been inventoried some
+time before. One of the things which old Cowperwood wanted was his own
+desk which Frank had had designed for him; but as it was valued at five
+hundred dollars and could not be relinquished by the sheriff except on
+payment of that sum, or by auction, and as Henry Cowperwood had no such
+sum to spare, he had to let the desk go. There were many things they
+all wanted, and Anna Adelaide had literally purloined a few though she
+did not admit the fact to her parents until long afterward.
+
+There came a day when the two houses in Girard Avenue were the scene of
+a sheriffs sale, during which the general public, without let or
+hindrance, was permitted to tramp through the rooms and examine the
+pictures, statuary, and objects of art generally, which were auctioned
+off to the highest bidder. Considerable fame had attached to
+Cowperwood’s activities in this field, owing in the first place to the
+real merit of what he had brought together, and in the next place to
+the enthusiastic comment of such men as Wilton Ellsworth, Fletcher
+Norton, Gordon Strake—architects and art dealers whose judgment and
+taste were considered important in Philadelphia. All of the lovely
+things by which he had set great store—small bronzes, representative of
+the best period of the Italian Renaissance; bits of Venetian glass
+which he had collected with great care—a full curio case; statues by
+Powers, Hosmer, and Thorwaldsen—things which would be smiled at thirty
+years later, but which were of high value then; all of his pictures by
+representative American painters from Gilbert to Eastman Johnson,
+together with a few specimens of the current French and English
+schools, went for a song. Art judgment in Philadelphia at this time was
+not exceedingly high; and some of the pictures, for lack of
+appreciative understanding, were disposed of at much too low a figure.
+Strake, Norton, and Ellsworth were all present and bought liberally.
+Senator Simpson, Mollenhauer, and Strobik came to see what they could
+see. The small-fry politicians were there, en masse. But Simpson, calm
+judge of good art, secured practically the best of all that was
+offered. To him went the curio case of Venetian glass; one pair of tall
+blue-and-white Mohammedan cylindrical vases; fourteen examples of
+Chinese jade, including several artists’ water-dishes and a pierced
+window-screen of the faintest tinge of green. To Mollenhauer went the
+furniture and decorations of the entry-hall and reception-room of Henry
+Cowperwood’s house, and to Edward Strobik two of Cowperwood’s
+bird’s-eye maple bedroom suites for the most modest of prices. Adam
+Davis was present and secured the secretaire of buhl which the elder
+Cowperwood prized so highly. To Fletcher Norton went the four Greek
+vases—a kylix, a water-jar, and two amphorae—which he had sold to
+Cowperwood and which he valued highly. Various objects of art,
+including a Sevres dinner set, a Gobelin tapestry, Barye bronzes and
+pictures by Detaille, Fortuny, and George Inness, went to Walter Leigh,
+Arthur Rivers, Joseph Zimmerman, Judge Kitchen, Harper Steger, Terrence
+Relihan, Trenor Drake, Mr. and Mrs. Simeon Jones, W. C. Davison, Frewen
+Kasson, Fletcher Norton, and Judge Rafalsky.
+
+Within four days after the sale began the two houses were bare of their
+contents. Even the objects in the house at 931 North Tenth Street had
+been withdrawn from storage where they had been placed at the time it
+was deemed advisable to close this institution, and placed on sale with
+the other objects in the two homes. It was at this time that the senior
+Cowperwoods first learned of something which seemed to indicate a
+mystery which had existed in connection with their son and his wife. No
+one of all the Cowperwoods was present during all this gloomy
+distribution; and Aileen, reading of the disposition of all the wares,
+and knowing their value to Cowperwood, to say nothing of their charm
+for her, was greatly depressed; yet she was not long despondent, for
+she was convinced that Cowperwood would some day regain his liberty and
+attain a position of even greater significance in the financial world.
+She could not have said why but she was sure of it.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LV
+
+
+In the meanwhile Cowperwood had been transferred to a new overseer and
+a new cell in Block 3 on the ground door, which was like all the others
+in size, ten by sixteen, but to which was attached the small yard
+previously mentioned. Warden Desmas came up two days before he was
+transferred, and had another short conversation with him through his
+cell door.
+
+“You’ll be transferred on Monday,” he said, in his reserved, slow way.
+“They’ll give you a yard, though it won’t be much good to you—we only
+allow a half-hour a day in it. I’ve told the overseer about your
+business arrangements. He’ll treat you right in that matter. Just be
+careful not to take up too much time that way, and things will work
+out. I’ve decided to let you learn caning chairs. That’ll be the best
+for you. It’s easy, and it’ll occupy your mind.”
+
+The warden and some allied politicians made a good thing out of this
+prison industry. It was really not hard labor—the tasks set were simple
+and not oppressive, but all of the products were promptly sold, and the
+profits pocketed. It was good, therefore, to see all the prisoners
+working, and it did them good. Cowperwood was glad of the chance to do
+something, for he really did not care so much for books, and his
+connection with Wingate and his old affairs were not sufficient to
+employ his mind in a satisfactory way. At the same time, he could not
+help thinking, if he seemed strange to himself, now, how much stranger
+he would seem then, behind these narrow bars working at so commonplace
+a task as caning chairs. Nevertheless, he now thanked Desmas for this,
+as well as for the sheets and the toilet articles which had just been
+brought in.
+
+“That’s all right,” replied the latter, pleasantly and softly, by now
+much intrigued by Cowperwood. “I know that there are men and men here,
+the same as anywhere. If a man knows how to use these things and wants
+to be clean, I wouldn’t be one to put anything in his way.”
+
+The new overseer with whom Cowperwood had to deal was a very different
+person from Elias Chapin. His name was Walter Bonhag, and he was not
+more than thirty-seven years of age—a big, flabby sort of person with a
+crafty mind, whose principal object in life was to see that this prison
+situation as he found it should furnish him a better income than his
+normal salary provided. A close study of Bonhag would have seemed to
+indicate that he was a stool-pigeon of Desmas, but this was really not
+true except in a limited way. Because Bonhag was shrewd and
+sycophantic, quick to see a point in his or anybody else’s favor,
+Desmas instinctively realized that he was the kind of man who could be
+trusted to be lenient on order or suggestion. That is, if Desmas had
+the least interest in a prisoner he need scarcely say so much to
+Bonhag; he might merely suggest that this man was used to a different
+kind of life, or that, because of some past experience, it might go
+hard with him if he were handled roughly; and Bonhag would strain
+himself to be pleasant. The trouble was that to a shrewd man of any
+refinement his attentions were objectionable, being obviously offered
+for a purpose, and to a poor or ignorant man they were brutal and
+contemptuous. He had built up an extra income for himself inside the
+prison by selling the prisoners extra allowances of things which he
+secretly brought into the prison. It was strictly against the rules, in
+theory at least, to bring in anything which was not sold in the
+store-room—tobacco, writing paper, pens, ink, whisky, cigars, or
+delicacies of any kind. On the other hand, and excellently well for
+him, it was true that tobacco of an inferior grade was provided, as
+well as wretched pens, ink and paper, so that no self-respecting man,
+if he could help it, would endure them. Whisky was not allowed at all,
+and delicacies were abhorred as indicating rank favoritism;
+nevertheless, they were brought in. If a prisoner had the money and was
+willing to see that Bonhag secured something for his trouble, almost
+anything would be forthcoming. Also the privilege of being sent into
+the general yard as a “trusty,” or being allowed to stay in the little
+private yard which some cells possessed, longer than the half-hour
+ordinarily permitted, was sold.
+
+One of the things curiously enough at this time, which worked in
+Cowperwood’s favor, was the fact that Bonhag was friendly with the
+overseer who had Stener in charge, and Stener, because of his political
+friends, was being liberally treated, and Bonhag knew of this. He was
+not a careful reader of newspapers, nor had he any intellectual grasp
+of important events; but he knew by now that both Stener and Cowperwood
+were, or had been, individuals of great importance in the community;
+also that Cowperwood had been the more important of the two. Better
+yet, as Bonhag now heard, Cowperwood still had money. Some prisoner,
+who was permitted to read the paper, told him so. And so, entirely
+aside from Warden Desmas’s recommendation, which was given in a very
+quiet, noncommittal way, Bonhag was interested to see what he could do
+for Cowperwood for a price.
+
+The day Cowperwood was installed in his new cell, Bonhag lolled up to
+the door, which was open, and said, in a semi-patronizing way, “Got all
+your things over yet?” It was his business to lock the door once
+Cowperwood was inside it.
+
+“Yes, sir,” replied Cowperwood, who had been shrewd enough to get the
+new overseer’s name from Chapin; “this is Mr. Bonhag, I presume?”
+
+“That’s me,” replied Bonhag, not a little flattered by the recognition,
+but still purely interested by the practical side of this encounter. He
+was anxious to study Cowperwood, to see what type of man he was.
+
+“You’ll find it a little different down here from up there,” observed
+Bonhag. “It ain’t so stuffy. These doors out in the yards make a
+difference.”
+
+“Oh, yes,” said Cowperwood, observantly and shrewdly, “that is the yard
+Mr. Desmas spoke of.”
+
+At the mention of the magic name, if Bonhag had been a horse, his ears
+would have been seen to lift. For, of course, if Cowperwood was so
+friendly with Desmas that the latter had described to him the type of
+cell he was to have beforehand, it behooved Bonhag to be especially
+careful.
+
+“Yes, that’s it, but it ain’t much,” he observed. “They only allow a
+half-hour a day in it. Still it would be all right if a person could
+stay out there longer.”
+
+This was his first hint at graft, favoritism; and Cowperwood distinctly
+caught the sound of it in his voice.
+
+“That’s too bad,” he said. “I don’t suppose good conduct helps a person
+to get more.” He waited to hear a reply, but instead Bonhag continued
+with: “I’d better teach you your new trade now. You’ve got to learn to
+cane chairs, so the warden says. If you want, we can begin right away.”
+But without waiting for Cowperwood to acquiesce, he went off, returning
+after a time with three unvarnished frames of chairs and a bundle of
+cane strips or withes, which he deposited on the floor. Having so
+done—and with a flourish—he now continued: “Now I’ll show you if you’ll
+watch me,” and he began showing Cowperwood how the strips were to be
+laced through the apertures on either side, cut, and fastened with
+little hickory pegs. This done, he brought a forcing awl, a small
+hammer, a box of pegs, and a pair of clippers. After several brief
+demonstrations with different strips, as to how the geometric forms
+were designed, he allowed Cowperwood to take the matter in hand,
+watching over his shoulder. The financier, quick at anything, manual or
+mental, went at it in his customary energetic fashion, and in five
+minutes demonstrated to Bonhag that, barring skill and speed, which
+could only come with practice, he could do it as well as another.
+“You’ll make out all right,” said Bonhag. “You’re supposed to do ten of
+those a day. We won’t count the next few days, though, until you get
+your hand in. After that I’ll come around and see how you’re getting
+along. You understand about the towel on the door, don’t you?” he
+inquired.
+
+“Yes, Mr. Chapin explained that to me,” replied Cowperwood. “I think I
+know what most of the rules are now. I’ll try not to break any of
+them.”
+
+The days which followed brought a number of modifications of his prison
+lot, but not sufficient by any means to make it acceptable to him.
+Bonhag, during the first few days in which he trained Cowperwood in the
+art of caning chairs, managed to make it perfectly clear that there
+were a number of things he would be willing to do for him. One of the
+things that moved him to this, was that already he had been impressed
+by the fact that Stener’s friends were coming to see him in larger
+numbers than Cowperwood’s, sending him an occasional basket of fruit,
+which he gave to the overseers, and that his wife and children had been
+already permitted to visit him outside the regular visiting-day. This
+was a cause for jealousy on Bonhag’s part. His fellow-overseer was
+lording it over him—telling him, as it were, of the high jinks in Block
+4. Bonhag really wanted Cowperwood to spruce up and show what he could
+do, socially or otherwise.
+
+And so now he began with: “I see you have your lawyer and your partner
+here every day. There ain’t anybody else you’d like to have visit you,
+is there? Of course, it’s against the rules to have your wife or sister
+or anybody like that, except on visiting days—” And here he paused and
+rolled a large and informing eye on Cowperwood—such an eye as was
+supposed to convey dark and mysterious things. “But all the rules ain’t
+kept around here by a long shot.”
+
+Cowperwood was not the man to lose a chance of this kind. He smiled a
+little—enough to relieve himself, and to convey to Bonhag that he was
+gratified by the information, but vocally he observed: “I’ll tell you
+how it is, Mr. Bonhag. I believe you understand my position better than
+most men would, and that I can talk to you. There are people who would
+like to come here, but I have been afraid to let them come. I did not
+know that it could be arranged. If it could be, I would be very
+grateful. You and I are practical men—I know that if any favors are
+extended some of those who help to bring them about must be looked
+after. If you can do anything to make it a little more comfortable for
+me here I will show you that I appreciate it. I haven’t any money on my
+person, but I can always get it, and I will see that you are properly
+looked after.”
+
+Bonhag’s short, thick ears tingled. This was the kind of talk he liked
+to hear. “I can fix anything like that, Mr. Cowperwood,” he replied,
+servilely. “You leave it to me. If there’s any one you want to see at
+any time, just let me know. Of course I have to be very careful, and so
+do you, but that’s all right, too. If you want to stay out in that yard
+a little longer in the mornings or get out there afternoons or
+evenings, from now on, why, go ahead. It’s all right. I’ll just leave
+the door open. If the warden or anybody else should be around, I’ll
+just scratch on your door with my key, and you come in and shut it. If
+there’s anything you want from the outside I can get it for you—jelly
+or eggs or butter or any little thing like that. You might like to fix
+up your meals a little that way.”
+
+“I’m certainly most grateful, Mr. Bonhag,” returned Cowperwood in his
+grandest manner, and with a desire to smile, but he kept a straight
+face.
+
+“In regard to that other matter,” went on Bonhag, referring to the
+matter of extra visitors, “I can fix that any time you want to. I know
+the men out at the gate. If you want anybody to come here, just write
+’em a note and give it to me, and tell ’em to ask for me when they
+come. That’ll get ’em in all right. When they get here you can talk to
+’em in your cell. See! Only when I tap they have to come out. You want
+to remember that. So just you let me know.”
+
+Cowperwood was exceedingly grateful. He said so in direct, choice
+language. It occurred to him at once that this was Aileen’s
+opportunity, and that he could now notify her to come. If she veiled
+herself sufficiently she would probably be safe enough. He decided to
+write her, and when Wingate came he gave him a letter to mail.
+
+Two days later, at three o’clock in the afternoon—the time appointed by
+him—Aileen came to see him. She was dressed in gray broadcloth with
+white-velvet trimmings and cut-steel buttons which glistened like
+silver, and wore, as additional ornaments, as well as a protection
+against the cold, a cap, stole, and muff of snow-white ermine. Over
+this rather striking costume she had slipped a long dark circular
+cloak, which she meant to lay off immediately upon her arrival. She had
+made a very careful toilet as to her shoes, gloves, hair, and the gold
+ornaments which she wore. Her face was concealed by a thick green veil,
+as Cowperwood had suggested; and she arrived at an hour when, as near
+as he had been able to prearrange, he would be alone. Wingate usually
+came at four, after business, and Steger in the morning, when he came
+at all. She was very nervous over this strange adventure, leaving the
+street-car in which she had chosen to travel some distance away and
+walking up a side street. The cold weather and the gray walls under a
+gray sky gave her a sense of defeat, but she had worked very hard to
+look nice in order to cheer her lover up. She knew how readily he
+responded to the influence of her beauty when properly displayed.
+
+Cowperwood, in view of her coming, had made his cell as acceptable as
+possible. It was clean, because he had swept it himself and made his
+own bed; and besides he had shaved and combed his hair, and otherwise
+put himself to rights. The caned chairs on which he was working had
+been put in the corner at the end of the bed. His few dishes were
+washed and hung up, and his clogs brushed with a brush which he now
+kept for the purpose. Never before, he thought to himself, with a
+peculiar feeling of artistic degradation, had Aileen seen him like
+this. She had always admired his good taste in clothes, and the way he
+carried himself in them; and now she was to see him in garments which
+no dignity of body could make presentable. Only a stoic sense of his
+own soul-dignity aided him here. After all, as he now thought, he was
+Frank A. Cowperwood, and that was something, whatever he wore. And
+Aileen knew it. Again, he might be free and rich some day, and he knew
+that she believed that. Best of all, his looks under these or any other
+circumstances, as he knew, would make no difference to Aileen. She
+would only love him the more. It was her ardent sympathy that he was
+afraid of. He was so glad that Bonhag had suggested that she might
+enter the cell, for it would be a grim procedure talking to her through
+a barred door.
+
+When Aileen arrived she asked for Mr. Bonhag, and was permitted to go
+to the central rotunda, where he was sent for. When he came she
+murmured: “I wish to see Mr. Cowperwood, if you please”; and he
+exclaimed, “Oh, yes, just come with me.” As he came across the rotunda
+floor from his corridor he was struck by the evident youth of Aileen,
+even though he could not see her face. This now was something in
+accordance with what he had expected of Cowperwood. A man who could
+steal five hundred thousand dollars and set a whole city by the ears
+must have wonderful adventures of all kinds, and Aileen looked like a
+true adventure. He led her to the little room where he kept his desk
+and detained visitors, and then bustled down to Cowperwood’s cell,
+where the financier was working on one of his chairs and scratching on
+the door with his key, called: “There’s a young lady here to see you.
+Do you want to let her come inside?”
+
+“Thank you, yes,” replied Cowperwood; and Bonhag hurried away,
+unintentionally forgetting, in his boorish incivility, to unlock the
+cell door, so that he had to open it in Aileen’s presence. The long
+corridor, with its thick doors, mathematically spaced gratings and
+gray-stone pavement, caused Aileen to feel faint at heart. A prison,
+iron cells! And he was in one of them. It chilled her usually
+courageous spirit. What a terrible place for her Frank to be! What a
+horrible thing to have put him here! Judges, juries, courts, laws,
+jails seemed like so many foaming ogres ranged about the world, glaring
+down upon her and her love-affair. The clank of the key in the lock,
+and the heavy outward swinging of the door, completed her sense of the
+untoward. And then she saw Cowperwood.
+
+Because of the price he was to receive, Bonhag, after admitting her,
+strolled discreetly away. Aileen looked at Cowperwood from behind her
+veil, afraid to speak until she was sure Bonhag had gone. And
+Cowperwood, who was retaining his self-possession by an effort,
+signaled her but with difficulty after a moment or two. “It’s all
+right,” he said. “He’s gone away.” She lifted her veil, removed her
+cloak, and took in, without seeming to, the stuffy, narrow thickness of
+the room, his wretched shoes, the cheap, misshapen suit, the iron door
+behind him leading out into the little yard attached to his cell.
+Against such a background, with his partially caned chairs visible at
+the end of the bed, he seemed unnatural, weird even. Her Frank! And in
+this condition. She trembled and it was useless for her to try to
+speak. She could only put her arms around him and stroke his head,
+murmuring: “My poor boy—my darling. Is this what they have done to you?
+Oh, my poor darling.” She held his head while Cowperwood, anxious to
+retain his composure, winced and trembled, too. Her love was so full—so
+genuine. It was so soothing at the same time that it was unmanning, as
+now he could see, making of him a child again. And for the first time
+in his life, some inexplicable trick of chemistry—that chemistry of the
+body, of blind forces which so readily supersedes reason at times—he
+lost his self-control. The depth of Aileen’s feelings, the cooing sound
+of her voice, the velvety tenderness of her hands, that beauty that had
+drawn him all the time—more radiant here perhaps within these hard
+walls, and in the face of his physical misery, than it had ever been
+before—completely unmanned him. He did not understand how it could; he
+tried to defy the moods, but he could not. When she held his head close
+and caressed it, of a sudden, in spite of himself, his breast felt
+thick and stuffy, and his throat hurt him. He felt, for him, an
+astonishingly strange feeling, a desire to cry, which he did his best
+to overcome; it shocked him so. There then combined and conspired to
+defeat him a strange, rich picture of the great world he had so
+recently lost, of the lovely, magnificent world which he hoped some day
+to regain. He felt more poignantly at this moment than ever he had
+before the degradation of the clog shoes, the cotton shirt, the striped
+suit, the reputation of a convict, permanent and not to be laid aside.
+He drew himself quickly away from her, turned his back, clinched his
+hands, drew his muscles taut; but it was too late. He was crying, and
+he could not stop.
+
+“Oh, damn it!” he exclaimed, half angrily, half self-commiseratingly,
+in combined rage and shame. “Why should I cry? What the devil’s the
+matter with me, anyhow?”
+
+Aileen saw it. She fairly flung herself in front of him, seized his
+head with one hand, his shabby waist with the other, and held him tight
+in a grip that he could not have readily released.
+
+“Oh, honey, honey, honey!” she exclaimed, pityingly feverishly. “I love
+you, I adore you. They could cut my body into bits if it would do you
+any good. To think that they should make you cry! Oh, my sweet, my
+sweet, my darling boy!”
+
+She pulled his still shaking body tighter, and with her free hand
+caressed his head. She kissed his eyes, his hair, his cheeks. He pulled
+himself loose again after a moment, exclaiming, “What the devil’s got
+into me?” but she drew him back.
+
+“Never mind, honey darling, don’t you be ashamed to cry. Cry here on my
+shoulder. Cry here with me. My baby—my honey pet!”
+
+He quieted down after a few moments, cautioning her against Bonhag, and
+regaining his former composure, which he was so ashamed to have lost.
+
+“You’re a great girl, pet,” he said, with a tender and yet apologetic
+smile. “You’re all right—all that I need—a great help to me; but don’t
+worry any longer about me, dear. I’m all right. It isn’t as bad as you
+think. How are you?”
+
+Aileen on her part was not to be soothed so easily. His many woes,
+including his wretched position here, outraged her sense of justice and
+decency. To think her fine, wonderful Frank should be compelled to come
+to this—to cry. She stroked his head, tenderly, while wild, deadly,
+unreasoning opposition to life and chance and untoward opposition
+surged in her brain. Her father—damn him! Her family—pooh! What did she
+care? Her Frank—her Frank. How little all else mattered where he was
+concerned. Never, never, never would she desert him—never—come what
+might. And now she clung to him in silence while she fought in her
+brain an awful battle with life and law and fate and circumstance.
+Law—nonsense! People—they were brutes, devils, enemies, hounds! She was
+delighted, eager, crazy to make a sacrifice of herself. She would go
+anywhere for or with her Frank now. She would do anything for him. Her
+family was nothing—life nothing, nothing, nothing. She would do
+anything he wished, nothing more, nothing less; anything she could do
+to save him, to make his life happier, but nothing for any one else.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVI
+
+
+The days passed. Once the understanding with Bonhag was reached,
+Cowperwood’s wife, mother and sister were allowed to appear on
+occasions. His wife and the children were now settled in the little
+home for which he was paying, and his financial obligations to her were
+satisfied by Wingate, who paid her one hundred and twenty five dollars
+a month for him. He realized that he owed her more, but he was sailing
+rather close to the wind financially, these days. The final collapse of
+his old interests had come in March, when he had been legally declared
+a bankrupt, and all his properties forfeited to satisfy the claims
+against him. The city’s claim of five hundred thousand dollars would
+have eaten up more than could have been realized at the time, had not a
+pro rata payment of thirty cents on the dollar been declared. Even then
+the city never received its due, for by some hocus-pocus it was
+declared to have forfeited its rights. Its claims had not been made at
+the proper time in the proper way. This left larger portions of real
+money for the others.
+
+Fortunately by now Cowperwood had begun to see that by a little
+experimenting his business relations with Wingate were likely to prove
+profitable. The broker had made it clear that he intended to be
+perfectly straight with him. He had employed Cowperwood’s two brothers,
+at very moderate salaries—one to take care of the books and look after
+the office, and the other to act on ’change with him, for their seats
+in that organization had never been sold. And also, by considerable
+effort, he had succeeded in securing Cowperwood, Sr., a place as a
+clerk in a bank. For the latter, since the day of his resignation from
+the Third National had been in a deep, sad quandary as to what further
+to do with his life. His son’s disgrace! The horror of his trial and
+incarceration. Since the day of Frank’s indictment and more so, since
+his sentence and commitment to the Eastern Penitentiary, he was as one
+who walked in a dream. That trial! That charge against Frank! His own
+son, a convict in stripes—and after he and Frank had walked so proudly
+in the front rank of the successful and respected here. Like so many
+others in his hour of distress, he had taken to reading the Bible,
+looking into its pages for something of that mind consolation that
+always, from youth up, although rather casually in these latter years,
+he had imagined was to be found there. The Psalms, Isaiah, the Book of
+Job, Ecclesiastes. And for the most part, because of the fraying nature
+of his present ills, not finding it.
+
+But day after day secreting himself in his room—a little hall-bedroom
+office in his newest home, where to his wife, he pretended that he had
+some commercial matters wherewith he was still concerned—and once
+inside, the door locked, sitting and brooding on all that had befallen
+him—his losses; his good name. Or, after months of this, and because of
+the new position secured for him by Wingate—a bookkeeping job in one of
+the outlying banks—slipping away early in the morning, and returning
+late at night, his mind a gloomy epitome of all that had been or yet
+might be.
+
+To see him bustling off from his new but very much reduced home at half
+after seven in the morning in order to reach the small bank, which was
+some distance away and not accessible by street-car line, was one of
+those pathetic sights which the fortunes of trade so frequently offer.
+He carried his lunch in a small box because it was inconvenient to
+return home in the time allotted for this purpose, and because his new
+salary did not permit the extravagance of a purchased one. It was his
+one ambition now to eke out a respectable but unseen existence until he
+should die, which he hoped would not be long. He was a pathetic figure
+with his thin legs and body, his gray hair, and his snow-white
+side-whiskers. He was very lean and angular, and, when confronted by a
+difficult problem, a little uncertain or vague in his mind. An old
+habit which had grown on him in the years of his prosperity of putting
+his hand to his mouth and of opening his eyes in an assumption of
+surprise, which had no basis in fact, now grew upon him. He really
+degenerated, although he did not know it, into a mere automaton. Life
+strews its shores with such interesting and pathetic wrecks.
+
+One of the things that caused Cowperwood no little thought at this
+time, and especially in view of his present extreme indifference to
+her, was how he would bring up this matter of his indifference to his
+wife and his desire to end their relationship. Yet apart from the
+brutality of the plain truth, he saw no way. As he could plainly see,
+she was now persisting in her pretense of devotion, uncolored,
+apparently, by any suspicion of what had happened. Yet since his trial
+and conviction, she had been hearing from one source and another that
+he was still intimate with Aileen, and it was only her thought of his
+concurrent woes, and the fact that he might possibly be spared to a
+successful financial life, that now deterred her from speaking. He was
+shut up in a cell, she said to herself, and she was really very sorry
+for him, but she did not love him as she once had. He was really too
+deserving of reproach for his general unseemly conduct, and no doubt
+this was what was intended, as well as being enforced, by the Governing
+Power of the world.
+
+One can imagine how much such an attitude as this would appeal to
+Cowperwood, once he had detected it. By a dozen little signs, in spite
+of the fact that she brought him delicacies, and commiserated on his
+fate, he could see that she felt not only sad, but reproachful, and if
+there was one thing that Cowperwood objected to at all times it was the
+moral as well as the funereal air. Contrasted with the cheerful
+combative hopefulness and enthusiasm of Aileen, the wearied uncertainty
+of Mrs. Cowperwood was, to say the least, a little tame. Aileen, after
+her first burst of rage over his fate, which really did not develop any
+tears on her part, was apparently convinced that he would get out and
+be very successful again. She talked success and his future all the
+time because she believed in it. Instinctively she seemed to realize
+that prison walls could not make a prison for him. Indeed, on the first
+day she left she handed Bonhag ten dollars, and after thanking him in
+her attractive voice—without showing her face, however—for his obvious
+kindness to her, bespoke his further favor for Cowperwood—“a very great
+man,” as she described him, which sealed that ambitious materialist’s
+fate completely. There was nothing the overseer would not do for the
+young lady in the dark cloak. She might have stayed in Cowperwood’s
+cell for a week if the visiting-hours of the penitentiary had not made
+it impossible.
+
+The day that Cowperwood decided to discuss with his wife the weariness
+of his present married state and his desire to be free of it was some
+four months after he had entered the prison. By that time he had become
+inured to his convict life. The silence of his cell and the menial
+tasks he was compelled to perform, which had at first been so
+distressing, banal, maddening, in their pointless iteration, had now
+become merely commonplace—dull, but not painful. Furthermore he had
+learned many of the little resources of the solitary convict, such as
+that of using his lamp to warm up some delicacy which he had saved from
+a previous meal or from some basket which had been sent him by his wife
+or Aileen. He had partially gotten rid of the sickening odor of his
+cell by persuading Bonhag to bring him small packages of lime; which he
+used with great freedom. Also he succeeded in defeating some of the
+more venturesome rats with traps; and with Bonhag’s permission, after
+his cell door had been properly locked at night, and sealed with the
+outer wooden door, he would take his chair, if it were not too cold,
+out into the little back yard of his cell and look at the sky, where,
+when the nights were clear, the stars were to be seen. He had never
+taken any interest in astronomy as a scientific study, but now the
+Pleiades, the belt of Orion, the Big Dipper and the North Star, to
+which one of its lines pointed, caught his attention, almost his fancy.
+He wondered why the stars of the belt of Orion came to assume the
+peculiar mathematical relation to each other which they held, as far as
+distance and arrangement were concerned, and whether that could
+possibly have any intellectual significance. The nebulous
+conglomeration of the suns in Pleiades suggested a soundless depth of
+space, and he thought of the earth floating like a little ball in
+immeasurable reaches of ether. His own life appeared very trivial in
+view of these things, and he found himself asking whether it was all
+really of any significance or importance. He shook these moods off with
+ease, however, for the man was possessed of a sense of grandeur,
+largely in relation to himself and his affairs; and his temperament was
+essentially material and vital. Something kept telling him that
+whatever his present state he must yet grow to be a significant
+personage, one whose fame would be heralded the world over—who must
+try, try, try. It was not given all men to see far or to do
+brilliantly; but to him it was given, and he must be what he was cut
+out to be. There was no more escaping the greatness that was inherent
+in him than there was for so many others the littleness that was in
+them.
+
+Mrs. Cowperwood came in that afternoon quite solemnly, bearing several
+changes of linen, a pair of sheets, some potted meat and a pie. She was
+not exactly doleful, but Cowperwood thought that she was tending toward
+it, largely because of her brooding over his relationship to Aileen,
+which he knew that she knew. Something in her manner decided him to
+speak before she left; and after asking her how the children were, and
+listening to her inquiries in regard to the things that he needed, he
+said to her, sitting on his single chair while she sat on his bed:
+
+“Lillian, there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk with you about
+for some time. I should have done it before, but it’s better late than
+never. I know that you know that there is something between Aileen
+Butler and me, and we might as well have it open and aboveboard. It’s
+true I am very fond of her and she is very devoted to me, and if ever I
+get out of here I want to arrange it so that I can marry her. That
+means that you will have to give me a divorce, if you will; and I want
+to talk to you about that now. This can’t be so very much of a surprise
+to you, because you must have seen this long while that our
+relationship hasn’t been all that it might have been, and under the
+circumstances this can’t prove such a very great hardship to you—I am
+sure.” He paused, waiting, for Mrs. Cowperwood at first said nothing.
+
+Her thought, when he first broached this, was that she ought to make
+some demonstration of astonishment or wrath: but when she looked into
+his steady, examining eyes, so free from the illusion of or interest in
+demonstrations of any kind, she realized how useless it would be. He
+was so utterly matter-of-fact in what seemed to her quite private and
+secret affairs—very shameless. She had never been able to understand
+quite how he could take the subtleties of life as he did, anyhow.
+Certain things which she always fancied should be hushed up he spoke of
+with the greatest nonchalance. Her ears tingled sometimes at his
+frankness in disposing of a social situation; but she thought this must
+be characteristic of notable men, and so there was nothing to be said
+about it. Certain men did as they pleased; society did not seem to be
+able to deal with them in any way. Perhaps God would, later—she was not
+sure. Anyhow, bad as he was, direct as he was, forceful as he was, he
+was far more interesting than most of the more conservative types in
+whom the social virtues of polite speech and modest thoughts were
+seemingly predominate.
+
+“I know,” she said, rather peacefully, although with a touch of anger
+and resentment in her voice. “I’ve known all about it all this time. I
+expected you would say something like this to me some day. It’s a nice
+reward for all my devotion to you; but it’s just like you, Frank. When
+you are set on something, nothing can stop you. It wasn’t enough that
+you were getting along so nicely and had two children whom you ought to
+love, but you had to take up with this Butler creature until her name
+and yours are a by-word throughout the city. I know that she comes to
+this prison. I saw her out here one day as I was coming in, and I
+suppose every one else knows it by now. She has no sense of decency and
+she does not care—the wretched, vain thing—but I would have thought
+that you would be ashamed, Frank, to go on the way that you have, when
+you still have me and the children and your father and mother and when
+you are certain to have such a hard fight to get yourself on your feet,
+as it is. If she had any sense of decency she would not have anything
+to do with you—the shameless thing.”
+
+Cowperwood looked at his wife with unflinching eyes. He read in her
+remarks just what his observation had long since confirmed—that she was
+sympathetically out of touch with him. She was no longer so attractive
+physically, and intellectually she was not Aileen’s equal. Also that
+contact with those women who had deigned to grace his home in his
+greatest hour of prosperity had proved to him conclusively she was
+lacking in certain social graces. Aileen was by no means so vastly
+better, still she was young and amenable and adaptable, and could still
+be improved. Opportunity as he now chose to think, might make Aileen,
+whereas for Lillian—or at least, as he now saw it—it could do nothing.
+
+“I’ll tell you how it is, Lillian,” he said; “I’m not sure that you are
+going to get what I mean exactly, but you and I are not at all well
+suited to each other any more.”
+
+“You didn’t seem to think that three or four years ago,” interrupted
+his wife, bitterly.
+
+“I married you when I was twenty-one,” went on Cowperwood, quite
+brutally, not paying any attention to her interruption, “and I was
+really too young to know what I was doing. I was a mere boy. It doesn’t
+make so much difference about that. I am not using that as an excuse.
+The point that I am trying to make is this—that right or wrong,
+important or not important, I have changed my mind since. I don’t love
+you any more, and I don’t feel that I want to keep up a relationship,
+however it may look to the public, that is not satisfactory to me. You
+have one point of view about life, and I have another. You think your
+point of view is the right one, and there are thousands of people who
+will agree with you; but I don’t think so. We have never quarreled
+about these things, because I didn’t think it was important to quarrel
+about them. I don’t see under the circumstances that I am doing you any
+great injustice when I ask you to let me go. I don’t intend to desert
+you or the children—you will get a good living-income from me as long
+as I have the money to give it to you—but I want my personal freedom
+when I come out of here, if ever I do, and I want you to let me have
+it. The money that you had and a great deal more, once I am out of
+here, you will get back when I am on my feet again. But not if you
+oppose me—only if you help me. I want, and intend to help you
+always—but in my way.”
+
+He smoothed the leg of his prison trousers in a thoughtful way, and
+plucked at the sleeve of his coat. Just now he looked very much like a
+highly intelligent workman as he sat here, rather than like the
+important personage that he was. Mrs. Cowperwood was very resentful.
+
+“That’s a nice way to talk to me, and a nice way to treat me!” she
+exclaimed dramatically, rising and walking the short space—some two
+steps—that lay between the wall and the bed. “I might have known that
+you were too young to know your own mind when you married me. Money, of
+course, that’s all you think of and your own gratification. I don’t
+believe you have any sense of justice in you. I don’t believe you ever
+had. You only think of yourself, Frank. I never saw such a man as you.
+You have treated me like a dog all through this affair; and all the
+while you have been running with that little snip of an Irish thing,
+and telling her all about your affairs, I suppose. You let me go on
+believing that you cared for me up to the last moment, and then you
+suddenly step up and tell me that you want a divorce. I’ll not do it.
+I’ll not give you a divorce, and you needn’t think it.”
+
+Cowperwood listened in silence. His position, in so far as this marital
+tangle was concerned, as he saw, was very advantageous. He was a
+convict, constrained by the exigencies of his position to be out of
+personal contact with his wife for a long period of time to come, which
+should naturally tend to school her to do without him. When he came
+out, it would be very easy for her to get a divorce from a convict,
+particularly if she could allege misconduct with another woman, which
+he would not deny. At the same time, he hoped to keep Aileen’s name out
+of it. Mrs. Cowperwood, if she would, could give any false name if he
+made no contest. Besides, she was not a very strong person,
+intellectually speaking. He could bend her to his will. There was no
+need of saying much more now; the ice had been broken, the situation
+had been put before her, and time should do the rest.
+
+“Don’t be dramatic, Lillian,” he commented, indifferently. “I’m not
+such a loss to you if you have enough to live on. I don’t think I want
+to live in Philadelphia if ever I come out of here. My idea now is to
+go west, and I think I want to go alone. I sha’n’t get married right
+away again even if you do give me a divorce. I don’t care to take
+anybody along. It would be better for the children if you would stay
+here and divorce me. The public would think better of them and you.”
+
+“I’ll not do it,” declared Mrs. Cowperwood, emphatically. “I’ll never
+do it, never; so there! You can say what you choose. You owe it to me
+to stick by me and the children after all I’ve done for you, and I’ll
+not do it. You needn’t ask me any more; I’ll not do it.”
+
+“Very well,” replied Cowperwood, quietly, getting up. “We needn’t talk
+about it any more now. Your time is nearly up, anyhow.” (Twenty minutes
+was supposed to be the regular allotment for visitors.) “Perhaps you’ll
+change your mind sometime.”
+
+She gathered up her muff and the shawl-strap in which she had carried
+her gifts, and turned to go. It had been her custom to kiss Cowperwood
+in a make-believe way up to this time, but now she was too angry to
+make this pretense. And yet she was sorry, too—sorry for herself and,
+she thought, for him.
+
+“Frank,” she declared, dramatically, at the last moment, “I never saw
+such a man as you. I don’t believe you have any heart. You’re not
+worthy of a good wife. You’re worthy of just such a woman as you’re
+getting. The idea!” Suddenly tears came to her eyes, and she flounced
+scornfully and yet sorrowfully out.
+
+Cowperwood stood there. At least there would be no more useless kissing
+between them, he congratulated himself. It was hard in a way, but
+purely from an emotional point of view. He was not doing her any
+essential injustice, he reasoned—not an economic one—which was the
+important thing. She was angry to-day, but she would get over it, and
+in time might come to see his point of view. Who could tell? At any
+rate he had made it plain to her what he intended to do and that was
+something as he saw it. He reminded one of nothing so much, as he stood
+there, as of a young chicken picking its way out of the shell of an old
+estate. Although he was in a cell of a penitentiary, with nearly four
+years more to serve, yet obviously he felt, within himself, that the
+whole world was still before him. He could go west if he could not
+reestablish himself in Philadelphia; but he must stay here long enough
+to win the approval of those who had known him formerly—to obtain, as
+it were, a letter of credit which he could carry to other parts.
+
+“Hard words break no bones,” he said to himself, as his wife went out.
+“A man’s never done till he’s done. I’ll show some of these people
+yet.” Of Bonhag, who came to close the cell door, he asked whether it
+was going to rain, it looked so dark in the hall.
+
+“It’s sure to before night,” replied Bonhag, who was always wondering
+over Cowperwood’s tangled affairs as he heard them retailed here and
+there.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVII
+
+
+The time that Cowperwood spent in the Eastern Penitentiary of
+Pennsylvania was exactly thirteen months from the day of his entry to
+his discharge. The influences which brought about this result were
+partly of his willing, and partly not. For one thing, some six months
+after his incarceration, Edward Malia Butler died, expired sitting in
+his chair in his private office at his home. The conduct of Aileen had
+been a great strain on him. From the time Cowperwood had been
+sentenced, and more particularly after the time he had cried on
+Aileen’s shoulder in prison, she had turned on her father in an almost
+brutal way. Her attitude, unnatural for a child, was quite explicable
+as that of a tortured sweetheart. Cowperwood had told her that he
+thought Butler was using his influence to withhold a pardon for him,
+even though one were granted to Stener, whose life in prison he had
+been following with considerable interest; and this had enraged her
+beyond measure. She lost no chance of being practically insulting to
+her father, ignoring him on every occasion, refusing as often as
+possible to eat at the same table, and when she did, sitting next her
+mother in the place of Norah, with whom she managed to exchange. She
+refused to sing or play any more when he was present, and persistently
+ignored the large number of young political aspirants who came to the
+house, and whose presence in a way had been encouraged for her benefit.
+Old Butler realized, of course, what it was all about. He said nothing.
+He could not placate her.
+
+Her mother and brothers did not understand it at all at first. (Mrs.
+Butler never understood.) But not long after Cowperwood’s incarceration
+Callum and Owen became aware of what the trouble was. Once, when Owen
+was coming away from a reception at one of the houses where his growing
+financial importance made him welcome, he heard one of two men whom he
+knew casually, say to the other, as they stood at the door adjusting
+their coats, “You saw where this fellow Cowperwood got four years,
+didn’t you?”
+
+“Yes,” replied the other. “A clever devil that—wasn’t he? I knew that
+girl he was in with, too—you know who I mean. Miss Butler—wasn’t that
+her name?”
+
+Owen was not sure that he had heard right. He did not get the
+connection until the other guest, opening the door and stepping out,
+remarked: “Well, old Butler got even, apparently. They say he sent him
+up.”
+
+Owen’s brow clouded. A hard, contentious look came into his eyes. He
+had much of his father’s force. What in the devil were they talking
+about? What Miss Butler did they have in mind? Could this be Aileen or
+Norah, and how could Cowperwood come to be in with either of them? It
+could not possibly be Norah, he reflected; she was very much infatuated
+with a young man whom he knew, and was going to marry him. Aileen had
+been most friendly with the Cowperwoods, and had often spoken well of
+the financier. Could it be she? He could not believe it. He thought
+once of overtaking the two acquaintances and demanding to know what
+they meant, but when he came out on the step they were already some
+distance down the street and in the opposite direction from that in
+which he wished to go. He decided to ask his father about this.
+
+On demand, old Butler confessed at once, but insisted that his son keep
+silent about it.
+
+“I wish I’d have known,” said Owen, grimly. “I’d have shot the dirty
+dog.”
+
+“Aisy, aisy,” said Butler. “Yer own life’s worth more than his, and
+ye’d only be draggin’ the rest of yer family in the dirt with him. He’s
+had somethin’ to pay him for his dirty trick, and he’ll have more. Just
+ye say nothin’ to no one. Wait. He’ll be wantin’ to get out in a year
+or two. Say nothin’ to her aither. Talkin’ won’t help there. She’ll
+come to her sinses when he’s been away long enough, I’m thinkin’.” Owen
+had tried to be civil to his sister after that, but since he was a
+stickler for social perfection and advancement, and so eager to get up
+in the world himself, he could not understand how she could possibly
+have done any such thing. He resented bitterly the stumbling-block she
+had put in his path. Now, among other things, his enemies would have
+this to throw in his face if they wanted to—and they would want to,
+trust life for that.
+
+Callum reached his knowledge of the matter in quite another manner, but
+at about the same time. He was a member of an athletic club which had
+an attractive building in the city, and a fine country club, where he
+went occasionally to enjoy the swimming-pool and the Turkish bath
+connected with it. One of his friends approached him there in the
+billiard-room one evening and said, “Say, Butler, you know I’m a good
+friend of yours, don’t you?”
+
+“Why, certainly, I know it,” replied Callum. “What’s the matter?”
+
+“Well, you know,” said the young individual, whose name was Richard
+Pethick, looking at Callum with a look of almost strained affection, “I
+wouldn’t come to you with any story that I thought would hurt your
+feelings or that you oughtn’t to know about, but I do think you ought
+to know about this.” He pulled at a high white collar which was choking
+his neck.
+
+“I know you wouldn’t, Pethick,” replied Callum; very much interested.
+“What is it? What’s the point?”
+
+“Well, I don’t like to say anything,” replied Pethick, “but that fellow
+Hibbs is saying things around here about your sister.”
+
+“What’s that?” exclaimed Callum, straightening up in the most dynamic
+way and bethinking him of the approved social procedure in all such
+cases. He should be very angry. He should demand and exact proper
+satisfaction in some form or other—by blows very likely if his honor
+had been in any way impugned. “What is it he says about my sister? What
+right has he to mention her name here, anyhow? He doesn’t know her.”
+
+Pethick affected to be greatly concerned lest he cause trouble between
+Callum and Hibbs. He protested that he did not want to, when, in
+reality, he was dying to tell. At last he came out with, “Why, he’s
+circulated the yarn that your sister had something to do with this man
+Cowperwood, who was tried here recently, and that that’s why he’s just
+gone to prison.”
+
+“What’s that?” exclaimed Callum, losing the make-believe of the
+unimportant, and taking on the serious mien of some one who feels
+desperately. “He says that, does he? Where is he? I want to see if
+he’ll say that to me.”
+
+Some of the stern fighting ability of his father showed in his slender,
+rather refined young face.
+
+“Now, Callum,” insisted Pethick, realizing the genuine storm he had
+raised, and being a little fearful of the result, “do be careful what
+you say. You mustn’t have a row in here. You know it’s against the
+rules. Besides he may be drunk. It’s just some foolish talk he’s heard,
+I’m sure. Now, for goodness’ sake, don’t get so excited.” Pethick,
+having evoked the storm, was not a little nervous as to its results in
+his own case. He, too, as well as Callum, himself as the tale-bearer,
+might now be involved.
+
+But Callum by now was not so easily restrained. His face was quite
+pale, and he was moving toward the old English grill-room, where Hibbs
+happened to be, consuming a brandy-and-soda with a friend of about his
+own age. Callum entered and called him.
+
+“Oh, Hibbs!” he said.
+
+Hibbs, hearing his voice and seeing him in the door, arose and came
+over. He was an interesting youth of the collegiate type, educated at
+Princeton. He had heard the rumor concerning Aileen from various
+sources—other members of the club, for one—and had ventured to repeat
+it in Pethick’s presence.
+
+“What’s that you were just saying about my sister?” asked Callum,
+grimly, looking Hibbs in the eye.
+
+“Why—I—” hesitated Hibbs, who sensed trouble and was eager to avoid it.
+He was not exceptionally brave and looked it. His hair was
+straw-colored, his eyes blue, and his cheeks pink. “Why—nothing in
+particular. Who said I was talking about her?” He looked at Pethick,
+whom he knew to be the tale-bearer, and the latter exclaimed,
+excitedly:
+
+“Now don’t you try to deny it, Hibbs. You know I heard you?”
+
+“Well, what did I say?” asked Hibbs, defiantly.
+
+“Well, what did you say?” interrupted Callum, grimly, transferring the
+conversation to himself. “That’s just what I want to know.”
+
+“Why,” stammered Hibbs, nervously, “I don’t think I’ve said anything
+that anybody else hasn’t said. I just repeated that some one said that
+your sister had been very friendly with Mr. Cowperwood. I didn’t say
+any more than I have heard other people say around here.”
+
+“Oh, you didn’t, did you?” exclaimed Callum, withdrawing his hand from
+his pocket and slapping Hibbs in the face. He repeated the blow with
+his left hand, fiercely. “Perhaps that’ll teach you to keep my sister’s
+name out of your mouth, you pup!”
+
+Hibbs’s arms flew up. He was not without pugilistic training, and he
+struck back vigorously, striking Callum once in the chest and once in
+the neck. In an instant the two rooms of this suite were in an uproar.
+Tables and chairs were overturned by the energy of men attempting to
+get to the scene of action. The two combatants were quickly separated;
+sides were taken by the friends of each, excited explanations attempted
+and defied. Callum was examining the knuckles of his left hand, which
+were cut from the blow he had delivered. He maintained a gentlemanly
+calm. Hibbs, very much flustered and excited, insisted that he had been
+most unreasonably used. The idea of attacking him here. And, anyhow, as
+he maintained now, Pethick had been both eavesdropping and lying about
+him. Incidentally, the latter was protesting to others that he had done
+the only thing which an honorable friend could do. It was a nine days’
+wonder in the club, and was only kept out of the newspapers by the most
+strenuous efforts on the part of the friends of both parties. Callum
+was so outraged on discovering that there was some foundation for the
+rumor at the club in a general rumor which prevailed that he tendered
+his resignation, and never went there again.
+
+“I wish to heaven you hadn’t struck that fellow,” counseled Owen, when
+the incident was related to him. “It will only make more talk. She
+ought to leave this place; but she won’t. She’s struck on that fellow
+yet, and we can’t tell Norah and mother. We will never hear the last of
+this, you and I—believe me.”
+
+“Damn it, she ought to be made to go,” exclaimed Callum.
+
+“Well, she won’t,” replied Owen. “Father has tried making her, and she
+won’t go. Just let things stand. He’s in the penitentiary now, and
+that’s probably the end of him. The public seem to think that father
+put him there, and that’s something. Maybe we can persuade her to go
+after a while. I wish to God we had never had sight of that fellow. If
+ever he comes out, I’ve a good notion to kill him.”
+
+“Oh, I wouldn’t do anything like that,” replied Callum. “It’s useless.
+It would only stir things up afresh. He’s done for, anyhow.”
+
+They planned to urge Norah to marry as soon as possible. And as for
+their feelings toward Aileen, it was a very chilly atmosphere which
+Mrs. Butler contemplated from now on, much to her confusion, grief, and
+astonishment.
+
+In this divided world it was that Butler eventually found himself, all
+at sea as to what to think or what to do. He had brooded so long now,
+for months, and as yet had found no solution. And finally, in a form of
+religious despair, sitting at his desk, in his business chair, he had
+collapsed—a weary and disconsolate man of seventy. A lesion of the left
+ventricle was the immediate physical cause, although brooding over
+Aileen was in part the mental one. His death could not have been laid
+to his grief over Aileen exactly, for he was a very large
+man—apoplectic and with sclerotic veins and arteries. For a great many
+years now he had taken very little exercise, and his digestion had been
+considerably impaired thereby. He was past seventy, and his time had
+been reached. They found him there the next morning, his hands folded
+in his lap, his head on his bosom, quite cold.
+
+He was buried with honors out of St. Timothy’s Church, the funeral
+attended by a large body of politicians and city officials, who
+discussed secretly among themselves whether his grief over his daughter
+had anything to do with his end. All his good deeds were remembered, of
+course, and Mollenhauer and Simpson sent great floral emblems in
+remembrance. They were very sorry that he was gone, for they had been a
+cordial three. But gone he was, and that ended their interest in the
+matter. He left all of his property to his wife in one of the shortest
+wills ever recorded locally.
+
+“I give and bequeath to my beloved wife, Norah, all my property of
+whatsoever kind to be disposed of as she may see fit.”
+
+There was no misconstruing this. A private paper drawn secretly for her
+sometime before by Butler, explained how the property should be
+disposed of by her at her death. It was Butler’s real will masquerading
+as hers, and she would not have changed it for worlds; but he wanted
+her left in undisturbed possession of everything until she should die.
+Aileen’s originally assigned portion had never been changed. According
+to her father’s will, which no power under the sun could have made Mrs.
+Butler alter, she was left $250,000 to be paid at Mrs. Butler’s death.
+Neither this fact nor any of the others contained in the paper were
+communicated by Mrs. Butler, who retained it to be left as her will.
+Aileen often wondered, but never sought to know, what had been left
+her. Nothing she fancied—but felt that she could not help this.
+
+Butler’s death led at once to a great change in the temper of the home.
+After the funeral the family settled down to a seemingly peaceful
+continuance of the old life; but it was a matter of seeming merely. The
+situation stood with Callum and Owen manifesting a certain degree of
+contempt for Aileen, which she, understanding, reciprocated. She was
+very haughty. Owen had plans of forcing her to leave after Butler’s
+death, but he finally asked himself what was the use. Mrs. Butler, who
+did not want to leave the old home, was very fond of Aileen, so therein
+lay a reason for letting her remain. Besides, any move to force her out
+would have entailed an explanation to her mother, which was not deemed
+advisable. Owen himself was interested in Caroline Mollenhauer, whom he
+hoped some day to marry—as much for her prospective wealth as for any
+other reason, though he was quite fond of her. In the January following
+Butler’s death, which occurred in August, Norah was married very
+quietly, and the following spring Callum embarked on a similar venture.
+
+In the meanwhile, with Butler’s death, the control of the political
+situation had shifted considerably. A certain Tom Collins, formerly one
+of Butler’s henchmen, but latterly a power in the First, Second, Third,
+and Fourth Wards, where he had numerous saloons and control of other
+forms of vice, appeared as a claimant for political recognition.
+Mollenhauer and Simpson had to consult him, as he could make very
+uncertain the disposition of some hundred and fifteen thousand votes, a
+large number of which were fraudulent, but which fact did not modify
+their deadly character on occasion. Butler’s sons disappeared as
+possible political factors, and were compelled to confine themselves to
+the street-railway and contracting business. The pardon of Cowperwood
+and Stener, which Butler would have opposed, because by keeping Stener
+in he kept Cowperwood in, became a much easier matter. The scandal of
+the treasury defalcation was gradually dying down; the newspapers had
+ceased to refer to it in any way. Through Steger and Wingate, a large
+petition signed by all important financiers and brokers had been sent
+to the Governor pointing out that Cowperwood’s trial and conviction had
+been most unfair, and asking that he be pardoned. There was no need of
+any such effort, so far as Stener was concerned; whenever the time
+seemed ripe the politicians were quite ready to say to the Governor
+that he ought to let him go. It was only because Butler had opposed
+Cowperwood’s release that they had hesitated. It was really not
+possible to let out the one and ignore the other; and this petition,
+coupled with Butler’s death, cleared the way very nicely.
+
+Nevertheless, nothing was done until the March following Butler’s
+death, when both Stener and Cowperwood had been incarcerated thirteen
+months—a length of time which seemed quite sufficient to appease the
+anger of the public at large. In this period Stener had undergone a
+considerable change physically and mentally. In spite of the fact that
+a number of the minor aldermen, who had profited in various ways by his
+largess, called to see him occasionally, and that he had been given, as
+it were, almost the liberty of the place, and that his family had not
+been allowed to suffer, nevertheless he realized that his political and
+social days were over. Somebody might now occasionally send him a
+basket of fruit and assure him that he would not be compelled to suffer
+much longer; but when he did get out, he knew that he had nothing to
+depend on save his experience as an insurance agent and real-estate
+dealer. That had been precarious enough in the days when he was trying
+to get some small political foothold. How would it be when he was known
+only as the man who had looted the treasury of five hundred thousand
+dollars and been sent to the penitentiary for five years? Who would
+lend him the money wherewith to get a little start, even so much as
+four or five thousand dollars? The people who were calling to pay their
+respects now and then, and to assure him that he had been badly
+treated? Never. All of them could honestly claim that they had not so
+much to spare. If he had good security to offer—yes; but if he had good
+security he would not need to go to them at all. The man who would have
+actually helped him if he had only known was Frank A. Cowperwood.
+Stener could have confessed his mistake, as Cowperwood saw it, and
+Cowperwood would have given him the money gladly, without any thought
+of return. But by his poor understanding of human nature, Stener
+considered that Cowperwood must be an enemy of his, and he would not
+have had either the courage or the business judgment to approach him.
+
+During his incarceration Cowperwood had been slowly accumulating a
+little money through Wingate. He had paid Steger considerable sums from
+time to time, until that worthy finally decided that it would not be
+fair to take any more.
+
+“If ever you get on your feet, Frank,” he said, “you can remember me if
+you want to, but I don’t think you’ll want to. It’s been nothing but
+lose, lose, lose for you through me. I’ll undertake this matter of
+getting that appeal to the Governor without any charge on my part.
+Anything I can do for you from now on is free gratis for nothing.”
+
+“Oh, don’t talk nonsense, Harper,” replied Cowperwood. “I don’t know of
+anybody that could have done better with my case. Certainly there isn’t
+anybody that I would have trusted as much. I don’t like lawyers you
+know.”
+
+“Yes—well,” said Steger, “they’ve got nothing on financiers, so we’ll
+call it even.” And they shook hands.
+
+So when it was finally decided to pardon Stener, which was in the early
+part of March, 1873—Cowperwood’s pardon was necessarily but gingerly
+included. A delegation, consisting of Strobik, Harmon, and Winpenny,
+representing, as it was intended to appear, the unanimous wishes of the
+council and the city administration, and speaking for Mollenhauer and
+Simpson, who had given their consent, visited the Governor at
+Harrisburg and made the necessary formal representations which were
+intended to impress the public. At the same time, through the agency of
+Steger, Davison, and Walter Leigh, the appeal in behalf of Cowperwood
+was made. The Governor, who had had instructions beforehand from
+sources quite superior to this committee, was very solemn about the
+whole procedure. He would take the matter under advisement. He would
+look into the history of the crimes and the records of the two men. He
+could make no promises—he would see. But in ten days, after allowing
+the petitions to gather considerable dust in one of his pigeonholes and
+doing absolutely nothing toward investigating anything, he issued two
+separate pardons in writing. One, as a matter of courtesy, he gave into
+the hands of Messrs. Strobik, Harmon, and Winpenny, to bear personally
+to Mr. Stener, as they desired that he should. The other, on Steger’s
+request, he gave to him. The two committees which had called to receive
+them then departed; and the afternoon of that same day saw Strobik,
+Harmon, and Winpenny arrive in one group, and Steger, Wingate, and
+Walter Leigh in another, at the prison gate, but at different hours.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVIII
+
+
+This matter of the pardon of Cowperwood, the exact time of it, was kept
+a secret from him, though the fact that he was to be pardoned soon, or
+that he had a very excellent chance of being, had not been
+denied—rather had been made much of from time to time. Wingate had kept
+him accurately informed as to the progress being made, as had Steger;
+but when it was actually ascertained, from the Governor’s private
+secretary, that a certain day would see the pardon handed over to them,
+Steger, Wingate, and Walter Leigh had agreed between themselves that
+they would say nothing, taking Cowperwood by surprise. They even went
+so far—that is, Steger and Wingate did—as to indicate to Cowperwood
+that there was some hitch to the proceedings and that he might not now
+get out so soon. Cowperwood was somewhat depressed, but properly
+stoical; he assured himself that he could wait, and that he would be
+all right sometime. He was rather surprised therefore, one Friday
+afternoon, to see Wingate, Steger, and Leigh appear at his cell door,
+accompanied by Warden Desmas.
+
+The warden was quite pleased to think that Cowperwood should finally be
+going out—he admired him so much—and decided to come along to the cell,
+to see how he would take his liberation. On the way Desmas commented on
+the fact that he had always been a model prisoner. “He kept a little
+garden out there in that yard of his,” he confided to Walter Leigh. “He
+had violets and pansies and geraniums out there, and they did very
+well, too.”
+
+Leigh smiled. It was like Cowperwood to be industrious and tasteful,
+even in prison. Such a man could not be conquered. “A very remarkable
+man, that,” he remarked to Desmas.
+
+“Very,” replied the warden. “You can tell that by looking at him.”
+
+The four looked in through the barred door where he was working,
+without being observed, having come up quite silently.
+
+“Hard at it, Frank?” asked Steger.
+
+Cowperwood glanced over his shoulder and got up. He had been thinking,
+as always these days, of what he would do when he did get out.
+
+“What is this,” he asked—“a political delegation?” He suspected
+something on the instant. All four smiled cheeringly, and Bonhag
+unlocked the door for the warden.
+
+“Nothing very much, Frank,” replied Stager, gleefully, “only you’re a
+free man. You can gather up your traps and come right along, if you
+wish.”
+
+Cowperwood surveyed his friends with a level gaze. He had not expected
+this so soon after what had been told him. He was not one to be very
+much interested in the practical joke or the surprise, but this pleased
+him—the sudden realization that he was free. Still, he had anticipated
+it so long that the charm of it had been discounted to a certain
+extent. He had been unhappy here, and he had not. The shame and
+humiliation of it, to begin with, had been much. Latterly, as he had
+become inured to it all, the sense of narrowness and humiliation had
+worn off. Only the consciousness of incarceration and delay irked him.
+Barring his intense desire for certain things—success and vindication,
+principally—he found that he could live in his narrow cell and be
+fairly comfortable. He had long since become used to the limy smell
+(used to defeat a more sickening one), and to the numerous rats which
+he quite regularly trapped. He had learned to take an interest in
+chair-caning, having become so proficient that he could seat twenty in
+a day if he chose, and in working in the little garden in spring,
+summer, and fall. Every evening he had studied the sky from his narrow
+yard, which resulted curiously in the gift in later years of a great
+reflecting telescope to a famous university. He had not looked upon
+himself as an ordinary prisoner, by any means—had not felt himself to
+be sufficiently punished if a real crime had been involved. From Bonhag
+he had learned the history of many criminals here incarcerated, from
+murderers up and down, and many had been pointed out to him from time
+to time. He had been escorted into the general yard by Bonhag, had seen
+the general food of the place being prepared, had heard of Stener’s
+modified life here, and so forth. It had finally struck him that it was
+not so bad, only that the delay to an individual like himself was
+wasteful. He could do so much now if he were out and did not have to
+fight court proceedings. Courts and jails! He shook his head when he
+thought of the waste involved in them.
+
+“That’s all right,” he said, looking around him in an uncertain way.
+“I’m ready.”
+
+He stepped out into the hall, with scarcely a farewell glance, and to
+Bonhag, who was grieving greatly over the loss of so profitable a
+customer, he said: “I wish you would see that some of these things are
+sent over to my house, Walter. You’re welcome to the chair, that clock,
+this mirror, those pictures—all of these things in fact, except my
+linen, razors, and so forth.”
+
+The last little act of beneficence soothed Bonhag’s lacerated soul a
+little. They went out into the receiving overseer’s office, where
+Cowperwood laid aside his prison suit and the soft shirt with a
+considerable sense of relief. The clog shoes had long since been
+replaced by a better pair of his own. He put on the derby hat and gray
+overcoat he had worn the year before, on entering, and expressed
+himself as ready. At the entrance of the prison he turned and looked
+back—one last glance—at the iron door leading into the garden.
+
+“You don’t regret leaving that, do you, Frank?” asked Steger,
+curiously.
+
+“I do not,” replied Cowperwood. “It wasn’t that I was thinking of. It
+was just the appearance of it, that’s all.”
+
+In another minute they were at the outer gate, where Cowperwood shook
+the warden finally by the hand. Then entering a carriage outside the
+large, impressive, Gothic entrance, the gates were locked behind them
+and they were driven away.
+
+“Well, there’s an end of that, Frank,” observed Steger, gayly; “that
+will never bother you any more.”
+
+“Yes,” replied Cowperwood. “It’s worse to see it coming than going.”
+
+“It seems to me we ought to celebrate this occasion in some way,”
+observed Walter Leigh. “It won’t do just to take Frank home. Why don’t
+we all go down to Green’s? That’s a good idea.”
+
+“I’d rather not, if you don’t mind,” replied Cowperwood, feelingly.
+“I’ll get together with you all, later. Just now I’d like to go home
+and change these clothes.”
+
+He was thinking of Aileen and his children and his mother and father
+and of his whole future. Life was going to broaden out for him
+considerably from now on, he was sure of it. He had learned so much
+about taking care of himself in those thirteen months. He was going to
+see Aileen, and find how she felt about things in general, and then he
+was going to resume some such duties as he had had in his own concern,
+with Wingate & Co. He was going to secure a seat on ’change again,
+through his friends; and, to escape the effect of the prejudice of
+those who might not care to do business with an ex-convict, he was
+going to act as general outside man, and floor man on ’charge, for
+Wingate & Co. His practical control of that could not be publicly
+proved. Now for some important development in the market—some slump or
+something. He would show the world whether he was a failure or not.
+
+They let him down in front of his wife’s little cottage, and he entered
+briskly in the gathering gloom.
+
+On September 18, 1873, at twelve-fifteen of a brilliant autumn day, in
+the city of Philadelphia, one of the most startling financial tragedies
+that the world has ever seen had its commencement. The banking house of
+Jay Cooke & Co., the foremost financial organization of America, doing
+business at Number 114 South Third Street in Philadelphia, and with
+branches in New York, Washington, and London, closed its doors. Those
+who know anything about the financial crises of the United States know
+well the significance of the panic which followed. It is spoken of in
+all histories as the panic of 1873, and the widespread ruin and
+disaster which followed was practically unprecedented in American
+history.
+
+At this time Cowperwood, once more a broker—ostensibly a broker’s
+agent—was doing business in South Third Street, and representing
+Wingate & Co. on ’change. During the six months which had elapsed since
+he had emerged from the Eastern Penitentiary he had been quietly
+resuming financial, if not social, relations with those who had known
+him before.
+
+Furthermore, Wingate & Co. were prospering, and had been for some time,
+a fact which redounded to his credit with those who knew. Ostensibly he
+lived with his wife in a small house on North Twenty-first Street. In
+reality he occupied a bachelor apartment on North Fifteenth Street, to
+which Aileen occasionally repaired. The difference between himself and
+his wife had now become a matter of common knowledge in the family,
+and, although there were some faint efforts made to smooth the matter
+over, no good resulted. The difficulties of the past two years had so
+inured his parents to expect the untoward and exceptional that,
+astonishing as this was, it did not shock them so much as it would have
+years before. They were too much frightened by life to quarrel with its
+weird developments. They could only hope and pray for the best.
+
+The Butler family, on the other hand, what there was of it, had become
+indifferent to Aileen’s conduct. She was ignored by her brothers and
+Norah, who now knew all; and her mother was so taken up with religious
+devotions and brooding contemplation of her loss that she was not as
+active in her observation of Aileen’s life as she might have been.
+Besides, Cowperwood and his mistress were more circumspect in their
+conduct than they had ever been before. Their movements were more
+carefully guarded, though the result was the same. Cowperwood was
+thinking of the West—of reaching some slight local standing here in
+Philadelphia, and then, with perhaps one hundred thousand dollars in
+capital, removing to the boundless prairies of which he had heard so
+much—Chicago, Fargo, Duluth, Sioux City, places then heralded in
+Philadelphia and the East as coming centers of great life—and taking
+Aileen with him. Although the problem of marriage with her was
+insoluble unless Mrs. Cowperwood should formally agree to give him up—a
+possibility which was not manifest at this time, neither he nor Aileen
+were deterred by that thought. They were going to build a future
+together—or so they thought, marriage or no marriage. The only thing
+which Cowperwood could see to do was to take Aileen away with him, and
+to trust to time and absence to modify his wife’s point of view.
+
+This particular panic, which was destined to mark a notable change in
+Cowperwood’s career, was one of those peculiar things which spring
+naturally out of the optimism of the American people and the
+irrepressible progress of the country. It was the result, to be
+accurate, of the prestige and ambition of Jay Cooke, whose early
+training and subsequent success had all been acquired in Philadelphia,
+and who had since become the foremost financial figure of his day. It
+would be useless to attempt to trace here the rise of this man to
+distinction; it need only be said that by suggestions which he made and
+methods which he devised the Union government, in its darkest hours,
+was able to raise the money wherewith to continue the struggle against
+the South. After the Civil War this man, who had built up a tremendous
+banking business in Philadelphia, with great branches in New York and
+Washington, was at a loss for some time for some significant thing to
+do, some constructive work which would be worthy of his genius. The war
+was over; the only thing which remained was the finances of peace, and
+the greatest things in American financial enterprise were those related
+to the construction of transcontinental railway lines. The Union
+Pacific, authorized in 1860, was already building; the Northern Pacific
+and the Southern Pacific were already dreams in various pioneer minds.
+The great thing was to connect the Atlantic and the Pacific by steel,
+to bind up the territorially perfected and newly solidified Union, or
+to enter upon some vast project of mining, of which gold and silver
+were the most important. Actually railway-building was the most
+significant of all, and railroad stocks were far and away the most
+valuable and important on every exchange in America. Here in
+Philadelphia, New York Central, Rock Island, Wabash, Central Pacific,
+St. Paul, Hannibal & St. Joseph, Union Pacific, and Ohio & Mississippi
+were freely traded in. There were men who were getting rich and famous
+out of handling these things; and such towering figures as Cornelius
+Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, Daniel Drew, James Fish, and others in the East,
+and Fair, Crocker, W. R. Hearst, and Collis P. Huntington, in the West,
+were already raising their heads like vast mountains in connection with
+these enterprises. Among those who dreamed most ardently on this score
+was Jay Cooke, who without the wolfish cunning of a Gould or the
+practical knowledge of a Vanderbilt, was ambitious to thread the
+northern reaches of America with a band of steel which should be a
+permanent memorial to his name.
+
+The project which fascinated him most was one that related to the
+development of the territory then lying almost unexplored between the
+extreme western shore of Lake Superior, where Duluth now stands, and
+that portion of the Pacific Ocean into which the Columbia River
+empties—the extreme northern one-third of the United States. Here, if a
+railroad were built, would spring up great cities and prosperous towns.
+There were, it was suspected, mines of various metals in the region of
+the Rockies which this railroad would traverse, and untold wealth to be
+reaped from the fertile corn and wheat lands. Products brought only so
+far east as Duluth could then be shipped to the Atlantic, via the Great
+Lakes and the Erie Canal, at a greatly reduced cost. It was a vision of
+empire, not unlike the Panama Canal project of the same period, and one
+that bade fair apparently to be as useful to humanity. It had aroused
+the interest and enthusiasm of Cooke. Because of the fact that the
+government had made a grant of vast areas of land on either side of the
+proposed track to the corporation that should seriously undertake it
+and complete it within a reasonable number of years, and because of the
+opportunity it gave him of remaining a distinguished public figure, he
+had eventually shouldered the project. It was open to many objections
+and criticisms; but the genius which had been sufficient to finance the
+Civil War was considered sufficient to finance the Northern Pacific
+Railroad. Cooke undertook it with the idea of being able to put the
+merits of the proposition before the people direct—not through the
+agency of any great financial corporation—and of selling to the
+butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker the stock or shares that
+he wished to dispose of.
+
+It was a brilliant chance. His genius had worked out the sale of great
+government loans during the Civil War to the people direct in this
+fashion. Why not Northern Pacific certificates? For several years he
+conducted a pyrotechnic campaign, surveying the territory in question,
+organizing great railway-construction corps, building hundreds of miles
+of track under most trying conditions, and selling great blocks of his
+stock, on which interest of a certain percentage was guaranteed. If it
+had not been that he knew little of railroad-building, personally, and
+that the project was so vast that it could not well be encompassed by
+one man, even so great a man it might have proved successful, as under
+subsequent management it did. However, hard times, the war between
+France and Germany, which tied up European capital for the time being
+and made it indifferent to American projects, envy, calumny, a certain
+percentage of mismanagement, all conspired to wreck it. On September
+18, 1873, at twelve-fifteen noon, Jay Cooke & Co. failed for
+approximately eight million dollars and the Northern Pacific for all
+that had been invested in it—some fifty million dollars more.
+
+One can imagine what the result was—the most important financier and
+the most distinguished railway enterprise collapsing at one and the
+same time. “A financial thunderclap in a clear sky,” said the
+Philadelphia Press. “No one could have been more surprised,” said the
+Philadelphia Inquirer, “if snow had fallen amid the sunshine of a
+summer noon.” The public, which by Cooke’s previous tremendous success
+had been lulled into believing him invincible, could not understand it.
+It was beyond belief. Jay Cooke fail? Impossible, or anything connected
+with him. Nevertheless, he had failed; and the New York Stock Exchange,
+after witnessing a number of crashes immediately afterward, closed for
+eight days. The Lake Shore Railroad failed to pay a call-loan of one
+million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars; and the Union Trust
+Company, allied to the Vanderbilt interests, closed its doors after
+withstanding a prolonged run. The National Trust Company of New York
+had eight hundred thousand dollars of government securities in its
+vaults, but not a dollar could be borrowed upon them; and it suspended.
+Suspicion was universal, rumor affected every one.
+
+In Philadelphia, when the news reached the stock exchange, it came
+first in the form of a brief despatch addressed to the stock board from
+the New York Stock Exchange—“Rumor on street of failure of Jay Cooke &
+Co. Answer.” It was not believed, and so not replied to. Nothing was
+thought of it. The world of brokers paid scarcely any attention to it.
+Cowperwood, who had followed the fortunes of Jay Cooke & Co. with
+considerable suspicion of its president’s brilliant theory of vending
+his wares direct to the people—was perhaps the only one who had
+suspicions. He had once written a brilliant criticism to some inquirer,
+in which he had said that no enterprise of such magnitude as the
+Northern Pacific had ever before been entirely dependent upon one
+house, or rather upon one man, and that he did not like it. “I am not
+sure that the lands through which the road runs are so unparalleled in
+climate, soil, timber, minerals, etc., as Mr. Cooke and his friends
+would have us believe. Neither do I think that the road can at present,
+or for many years to come, earn the interest which its great issues of
+stock call for. There is great danger and risk there.” So when the
+notice was posted, he looked at it, wondering what the effect would be
+if by any chance Jay Cooke & Co. should fail.
+
+He was not long in wonder. A second despatch posted on ’change read:
+“New York, September 18th. Jay Cooke & Co. have suspended.”
+
+Cowperwood could not believe it. He was beside himself with the thought
+of a great opportunity. In company with every other broker, he hurried
+into Third Street and up to Number 114, where the famous old banking
+house was located, in order to be sure. Despite his natural dignity and
+reserve, he did not hesitate to run. If this were true, a great hour
+had struck. There would be wide-spread panic and disaster. There would
+be a terrific slump in prices of all stocks. He must be in the thick of
+it. Wingate must be on hand, and his two brothers. He must tell them
+how to sell and when and what to buy. His great hour had come!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIX
+
+
+The banking house of Jay Cooke & Co., in spite of its tremendous
+significance as a banking and promoting concern, was a most
+unpretentious affair, four stories and a half in height of gray stone
+and red brick. It had never been deemed a handsome or comfortable
+banking house. Cowperwood had been there often. Wharf-rats as long as
+the forearm of a man crept up the culverted channels of Dock Street to
+run through the apartments at will. Scores of clerks worked under
+gas-jets, where light and air were not any too abundant, keeping track
+of the firm’s vast accounts. It was next door to the Girard National
+Bank, where Cowperwood’s friend Davison still flourished, and where the
+principal financial business of the street converged. As Cowperwood ran
+he met his brother Edward, who was coming to the stock exchange with
+some word for him from Wingate.
+
+“Run and get Wingate and Joe,” he said. “There’s something big on this
+afternoon. Jay Cooke has failed.”
+
+Edward waited for no other word, but hurried off as directed.
+
+Cowperwood reached Cooke & Co. among the earliest. To his utter
+astonishment, the solid brown-oak doors, with which he was familiar,
+were shut, and a notice posted on them, which he quickly read, ran:
+
+_September_ 18, 1873.
+To the Public—We regret to be obliged to announce that, owing to
+unexpected demands on us, our firm has been obliged to suspend payment.
+In a few days we will be able to present a statement to our creditors.
+Until which time we must ask their patient consideration. We believe
+our assets to be largely in excess of our liabilities.
+
+
+Jay Cooke & Co.
+
+
+A magnificent gleam of triumph sprang into Cowperwood’s eye. In company
+with many others he turned and ran back toward the exchange, while a
+reporter, who had come for information knocked at the massive doors of
+the banking house, and was told by a porter, who peered out of a
+diamond-shaped aperture, that Jay Cooke had gone home for the day and
+was not to be seen.
+
+“Now,” thought Cowperwood, to whom this panic spelled opportunity, not
+ruin, “I’ll get my innings. I’ll go short of this—of everything.”
+
+Before, when the panic following the Chicago fire had occurred, he had
+been long—had been compelled to stay long of many things in order to
+protect himself. To-day he had nothing to speak of—perhaps a paltry
+seventy-five thousand dollars which he had managed to scrape together.
+Thank God! he had only the reputation of Wingate’s old house to lose,
+if he lost, which was nothing. With it as a trading agency behind
+him—with it as an excuse for his presence, his right to buy and sell—he
+had everything to gain. Where many men were thinking of ruin, he was
+thinking of success. He would have Wingate and his two brothers under
+him to execute his orders exactly. He could pick up a fourth and a
+fifth man if necessary. He would give them orders to
+sell—everything—ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty points off, if necessary,
+in order to trap the unwary, depress the market, frighten the fearsome
+who would think he was too daring; and then he would buy, buy, buy,
+below these figures as much as possible, in order to cover his sales
+and reap a profit.
+
+His instinct told him how widespread and enduring this panic would be.
+The Northern Pacific was a hundred-million-dollar venture. It involved
+the savings of hundreds of thousands of people—small bankers,
+tradesmen, preachers, lawyers, doctors, widows, institutions all over
+the land, and all resting on the faith and security of Jay Cooke. Once,
+not unlike the Chicago fire map, Cowperwood had seen a grand prospectus
+and map of the location of the Northern Pacific land-grant which Cooke
+had controlled, showing a vast stretch or belt of territory extending
+from Duluth—“The Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas,” as Proctor Knott,
+speaking in the House of Representatives, had sarcastically called
+it—through the Rockies and the headwaters of the Missouri to the
+Pacific Ocean. He had seen how Cooke had ostensibly managed to get
+control of this government grant, containing millions upon millions of
+acres and extending fourteen hundred miles in length; but it was only a
+vision of empire. There might be silver and gold and copper mines
+there. The land was usable—would some day be usable. But what of it
+now? It would do to fire the imaginations of fools with—nothing more.
+It was inaccessible, and would remain so for years to come. No doubt
+thousands had subscribed to build this road; but, too, thousands would
+now fail if it had failed. Now the crash had come. The grief and the
+rage of the public would be intense. For days and days and weeks and
+months, normal confidence and courage would be gone. This was his hour.
+This was his great moment. Like a wolf prowling under glittering,
+bitter stars in the night, he was looking down into the humble folds of
+simple men and seeing what their ignorance and their unsophistication
+would cost them.
+
+He hurried back to the exchange, the very same room in which only two
+years before he had fought his losing fight, and, finding that his
+partner and his brother had not yet come, began to sell everything in
+sight. Pandemonium had broken loose. Boys and men were fairly tearing
+in from all sections with orders from panic-struck brokers to sell,
+sell, sell, and later with orders to buy; the various trading-posts
+were reeling, swirling masses of brokers and their agents. Outside in
+the street in front of Jay Cooke & Co., Clark & Co., the Girard
+National Bank, and other institutions, immense crowds were beginning to
+form. They were hurrying here to learn the trouble, to withdraw their
+deposits, to protect their interests generally. A policeman arrested a
+boy for calling out the failure of Jay Cooke & Co., but nevertheless
+the news of the great disaster was spreading like wild-fire.
+
+Among these panic-struck men Cowperwood was perfectly calm, deadly
+cold, the same Cowperwood who had pegged solemnly at his ten chairs
+each day in prison, who had baited his traps for rats, and worked in
+the little garden allotted him in utter silence and loneliness. Now he
+was vigorous and energetic. He had been just sufficiently about this
+exchange floor once more to have made his personality impressive and
+distinguished. He forced his way into the center of swirling crowds of
+men already shouting themselves hoarse, offering whatever was being
+offered in quantities which were astonishing, and at prices which
+allured the few who were anxious to make money out of the tumbling
+prices to buy. New York Central had been standing at 104 7/8 when the
+failure was announced; Rhode Island at 108 7/8; Western Union at 92
+1/2; Wabash at 70 1/4; Panama at 117 3/8; Central Pacific at 99 5/8;
+St. Paul at 51; Hannibal & St. Joseph at 48; Northwestern at 63; Union
+Pacific at 26 3/4; Ohio and Mississippi at 38 3/4. Cowperwood’s house
+had scarcely any of the stocks on hand. They were not carrying them for
+any customers, and yet he sold, sold, sold, to whoever would take, at
+prices which he felt sure would inspire them.
+
+“Five thousand of New York Central at ninety-nine, ninety-eight,
+ninety-seven, ninety-six, ninety-five, ninety-four, ninety-three,
+ninety-two, ninety-one, ninety, eighty-nine,” you might have heard him
+call; and when his sales were not sufficiently brisk he would turn to
+something else—Rock Island, Panama, Central Pacific, Western Union,
+Northwestern, Union Pacific. He saw his brother and Wingate hurrying
+in, and stopped in his work long enough to instruct them. “Sell
+everything you can,” he cautioned them quietly, “at fifteen points off
+if you have to—no lower than that now—and buy all you can below it. Ed,
+you see if you cannot buy up some local street-railways at fifteen off.
+Joe, you stay near me and buy when I tell you.”
+
+The secretary of the board appeared on his little platform.
+
+“E. W. Clark & Company,” he announced, at one-thirty, “have just closed
+their doors.”
+
+“Tighe & Company,” he called at one-forty-five, “announce that they are
+compelled to suspend.”
+
+“The First National Bank of Philadelphia,” he called, at two o’clock,
+“begs to state that it cannot at present meet its obligations.”
+
+After each announcement, always, as in the past, when the gong had
+compelled silence, the crowd broke into an ominous “Aw, aw, aw.”
+
+“Tighe & Company,” thought Cowperwood, for a single second, when he
+heard it. “There’s an end of him.” And then he returned to his task.
+
+When the time for closing came, his coat torn, his collar twisted
+loose, his necktie ripped, his hat lost, he emerged sane, quiet,
+steady-mannered.
+
+“Well, Ed,” he inquired, meeting his brother, “how’d you make out?” The
+latter was equally torn, scratched, exhausted.
+
+“Christ,” he replied, tugging at his sleeves, “I never saw such a place
+as this. They almost tore my clothes off.”
+
+“Buy any local street-railways?”
+
+“About five thousand shares.”
+
+“We’d better go down to Green’s,” Frank observed, referring to the
+lobby of the principal hotel. “We’re not through yet. There’ll be more
+trading there.”
+
+He led the way to find Wingate and his brother Joe, and together they
+were off, figuring up some of the larger phases of their purchases and
+sales as they went.
+
+And, as he predicted, the excitement did not end with the coming of the
+night. The crowd lingered in front of Jay Cooke & Co.’s on Third Street
+and in front of other institutions, waiting apparently for some
+development which would be favorable to them. For the initiated the
+center of debate and agitation was Green’s Hotel, where on the evening
+of the eighteenth the lobby and corridors were crowded with bankers,
+brokers, and speculators. The stock exchange had practically adjourned
+to that hotel en masse. What of the morrow? Who would be the next to
+fail? From whence would money be forthcoming? These were the topics
+from each mind and upon each tongue. From New York was coming
+momentarily more news of disaster. Over there banks and trust companies
+were falling like trees in a hurricane. Cowperwood in his
+perambulations, seeing what he could see and hearing what he could
+hear, reaching understandings which were against the rules of the
+exchange, but which were nevertheless in accord with what every other
+person was doing, saw about him men known to him as agents of
+Mollenhauer and Simpson, and congratulated himself that he would have
+something to collect from them before the week was over. He might not
+own a street-railway, but he would have the means to. He learned from
+hearsay, and information which had been received from New York and
+elsewhere, that things were as bad as they could be, and that there was
+no hope for those who expected a speedy return of normal conditions. No
+thought of retiring for the night entered until the last man was gone.
+It was then practically morning.
+
+The next day was Friday, and suggested many ominous things. Would it be
+another Black Friday? Cowperwood was at his office before the street
+was fairly awake. He figured out his program for the day to a nicety,
+feeling strangely different from the way he had felt two years before
+when the conditions were not dissimilar. Yesterday, in spite of the
+sudden onslaught, he had made one hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
+and he expected to make as much, if not more, to-day. There was no
+telling what he could make, he thought, if he could only keep his small
+organization in perfect trim and get his assistants to follow his
+orders exactly. Ruin for others began early with the suspension of Fisk
+& Hatch, Jay Cooke’s faithful lieutenants during the Civil War. They
+had calls upon them for one million five hundred thousand dollars in
+the first fifteen minutes after opening the doors, and at once closed
+them again, the failure being ascribed to Collis P. Huntington’s
+Central Pacific Railroad and the Chesapeake & Ohio. There was a
+long-continued run on the Fidelity Trust Company. News of these facts,
+and of failures in New York posted on ’change, strengthened the cause
+Cowperwood was so much interested in; for he was selling as high as he
+could and buying as low as he could on a constantly sinking scale. By
+twelve o’clock he figured with his assistants that he had cleared one
+hundred thousand dollars; and by three o’clock he had two hundred
+thousand dollars more. That afternoon between three and seven he spent
+adjusting his trades, and between seven and one in the morning, without
+anything to eat, in gathering as much additional information as he
+could and laying his plans for the future. Saturday morning came, and
+he repeated his performance of the day before, following it up with
+adjustments on Sunday and heavy trading on Monday. By Monday afternoon
+at three o’clock he figured that, all losses and uncertainties to one
+side, he was once more a millionaire, and that now his future lay clear
+and straight before him.
+
+As he sat at his desk late that afternoon in his office looking out
+into Third Street, where a hurrying of brokers, messengers, and anxious
+depositors still maintained, he had the feeling that so far as
+Philadelphia and the life here was concerned, his day and its day with
+him was over. He did not care anything about the brokerage business
+here any more or anywhere. Failures such as this, and disasters such as
+the Chicago fire, that had overtaken him two years before, had cured
+him of all love of the stock exchange and all feeling for Philadelphia.
+He had been very unhappy here in spite of all his previous happiness;
+and his experience as a convict had made, him, he could see quite
+plainly, unacceptable to the element with whom he had once hoped to
+associate. There was nothing else to do, now that he had reestablished
+himself as a Philadelphia business man and been pardoned for an offense
+which he hoped to make people believe he had never committed, but to
+leave Philadelphia to seek a new world.
+
+“If I get out of this safely,” he said to himself, “this is the end. I
+am going West, and going into some other line of business.” He thought
+of street-railways, land speculation, some great manufacturing project
+of some kind, even mining, on a legitimate basis.
+
+“I have had my lesson,” he said to himself, finally getting up and
+preparing to leave. “I am as rich as I was, and only a little older.
+They caught me once, but they will not catch me again.” He talked to
+Wingate about following up the campaign on the lines in which he had
+started, and he himself intended to follow it up with great energy; but
+all the while his mind was running with this one rich thought: “I am a
+millionaire. I am a free man. I am only thirty-six, and my future is
+all before me.”
+
+It was with this thought that he went to visit Aileen, and to plan for
+the future.
+
+It was only three months later that a train, speeding through the
+mountains of Pennsylvania and over the plains of Ohio and Indiana, bore
+to Chicago and the West the young financial aspirant who, in spite of
+youth and wealth and a notable vigor of body, was a solemn,
+conservative speculator as to what his future might be. The West, as he
+had carefully calculated before leaving, held much. He had studied the
+receipts of the New York Clearing House recently and the disposition of
+bank-balances and the shipment of gold, and had seen that vast
+quantities of the latter metal were going to Chicago. He understood
+finance accurately. The meaning of gold shipments was clear. Where
+money was going trade was—a thriving, developing life. He wished to see
+clearly for himself what this world had to offer.
+
+Two years later, following the meteoric appearance of a young
+speculator in Duluth, and after Chicago had seen the tentative opening
+of a grain and commission company labeled Frank A. Cowperwood & Co.,
+which ostensibly dealt in the great wheat crops of the West, a quiet
+divorce was granted Mrs. Frank A. Cowperwood in Philadelphia, because
+apparently she wished it. Time had not seemingly dealt badly with her.
+Her financial affairs, once so bad, were now apparently all
+straightened out, and she occupied in West Philadelphia, near one of
+her sisters, a new and interesting home which was fitted with all the
+comforts of an excellent middle-class residence. She was now quite
+religious once more. The two children, Frank and Lillian, were in
+private schools, returning evenings to their mother. “Wash” Sims was
+once more the negro general factotum. Frequent visitors on Sundays were
+Mr. and Mrs. Henry Worthington Cowperwood, no longer distressed
+financially, but subdued and wearied, the wind completely gone from
+their once much-favored sails. Cowperwood, senior, had sufficient money
+wherewith to sustain himself, and that without slaving as a petty
+clerk, but his social joy in life was gone. He was old, disappointed,
+sad. He could feel that with his quondam honor and financial glory, he
+was the same—and he was not. His courage and his dreams were gone, and
+he awaited death.
+
+Here, too, came Anna Adelaide Cowperwood on occasion, a clerk in the
+city water office, who speculated much as to the strange vicissitudes
+of life. She had great interest in her brother, who seemed destined by
+fate to play a conspicuous part in the world; but she could not
+understand him. Seeing that all those who were near to him in any way
+seemed to rise or fall with his prosperity, she did not understand how
+justice and morals were arranged in this world. There seemed to be
+certain general principles—or people assumed there were—but apparently
+there were exceptions. Assuredly her brother abided by no known rule,
+and yet he seemed to be doing fairly well once more. What did this
+mean? Mrs. Cowperwood, his former wife, condemned his actions, and yet
+accepted of his prosperity as her due. What were the ethics of that?
+
+Cowperwood’s every action was known to Aileen Butler, his present
+whereabouts and prospects. Not long after his wife’s divorce, and after
+many trips to and from this new world in which he was now living, these
+two left Philadelphia together one afternoon in the winter. Aileen
+explained to her mother, who was willing to go and live with Norah,
+that she had fallen in love with the former banker and wished to marry
+him. The old lady, gathering only a garbled version of it at first,
+consented.
+
+Thus ended forever for Aileen this long-continued relationship with
+this older world. Chicago was before her—a much more distinguished
+career, Frank told her, than ever they could have had in Philadelphia.
+
+“Isn’t it nice to be finally going?” she commented.
+
+“It is advantageous, anyhow,” he said.
+
+
+
+
+Concerning Mycteroperca Bonaci
+
+
+There is a certain fish, the scientific name of which is Mycteroperca
+Bonaci, its common name Black Grouper, which is of considerable value
+as an afterthought in this connection, and which deserves to be better
+known. It is a healthy creature, growing quite regularly to a weight of
+two hundred and fifty pounds, and lives a comfortable, lengthy
+existence because of its very remarkable ability to adapt itself to
+conditions. That very subtle thing which we call the creative power,
+and which we endow with the spirit of the beatitudes, is supposed to
+build this mortal life in such fashion that only honesty and virtue
+shall prevail. Witness, then, the significant manner in which it has
+fashioned the black grouper. One might go far afield and gather less
+forceful indictments—the horrific spider spinning his trap for the
+unthinking fly; the lovely Drosera (Sundew) using its crimson calyx for
+a smothering-pit in which to seal and devour the victim of its beauty;
+the rainbow-colored jellyfish that spreads its prismed tentacles like
+streamers of great beauty, only to sting and torture all that falls
+within their radiant folds. Man himself is busy digging the pit and
+fashioning the snare, but he will not believe it. His feet are in the
+trap of circumstance; his eyes are on an illusion.
+
+Mycteroperca moving in its dark world of green waters is as fine an
+illustration of the constructive genius of nature, which is not
+beatific, as any which the mind of man may discover. Its great
+superiority lies in an almost unbelievable power of simulation, which
+relates solely to the pigmentation of its skin. In electrical mechanics
+we pride ourselves on our ability to make over one brilliant scene into
+another in the twinkling of an eye, and flash before the gaze of an
+onlooker picture after picture, which appear and disappear as we look.
+The directive control of Mycteroperca over its appearance is much more
+significant. You cannot look at it long without feeling that you are
+witnessing something spectral and unnatural, so brilliant is its power
+to deceive. From being black it can become instantly white; from being
+an earth-colored brown it can fade into a delightful water-colored
+green. Its markings change as the clouds of the sky. One marvels at the
+variety and subtlety of its power.
+
+Lying at the bottom of a bay, it can simulate the mud by which it is
+surrounded. Hidden in the folds of glorious leaves, it is of the same
+markings. Lurking in a flaw of light, it is like the light itself
+shining dimly in water. Its power to elude or strike unseen is of the
+greatest.
+
+What would you say was the intention of the overruling, intelligent,
+constructive force which gives to Mycteroperca this ability? To fit it
+to be truthful? To permit it to present an unvarying appearance which
+all honest life-seeking fish may know? Or would you say that subtlety,
+chicanery, trickery, were here at work? An implement of illusion one
+might readily suspect it to be, a living lie, a creature whose business
+it is to appear what it is not, to simulate that with which it has
+nothing in common, to get its living by great subtlety, the power of
+its enemies to forefend against which is little. The indictment is
+fair.
+
+Would you say, in the face of this, that a beatific, beneficent
+creative, overruling power never wills that which is either tricky or
+deceptive? Or would you say that this material seeming in which we
+dwell is itself an illusion? If not, whence then the Ten Commandments
+and the illusion of justice? Why were the Beatitudes dreamed of and how
+do they avail?
+
+
+
+
+The Magic Crystal
+
+
+If you had been a mystic or a soothsayer or a member of that mysterious
+world which divines by incantations, dreams, the mystic bowl, or the
+crystal sphere, you might have looked into their mysterious depths at
+this time and foreseen a world of happenings which concerned these two,
+who were now apparently so fortunately placed. In the fumes of the
+witches’ pot, or the depths of the radiant crystal, might have been
+revealed cities, cities, cities; a world of mansions, carriages,
+jewels, beauty; a vast metropolis outraged by the power of one man; a
+great state seething with indignation over a force it could not
+control; vast halls of priceless pictures; a palace unrivaled for its
+magnificence; a whole world reading with wonder, at times, of a given
+name. And sorrow, sorrow, sorrow.
+
+The three witches that hailed Macbeth upon the blasted heath might in
+turn have called to Cowperwood, “Hail to you, Frank Cowperwood, master
+of a great railway system! Hail to you, Frank Cowperwood, builder of a
+priceless mansion! Hail to you, Frank Cowperwood, patron of arts and
+possessor of endless riches! You shall be famed hereafter.” But like
+the Weird Sisters, they would have lied, for in the glory was also the
+ashes of Dead Sea fruit—an understanding that could neither be inflamed
+by desire nor satisfied by luxury; a heart that was long since wearied
+by experience; a soul that was as bereft of illusion as a windless
+moon. And to Aileen, as to Macduff, they might have spoken a more
+pathetic promise, one that concerned hope and failure. To have and not
+to have! All the seeming, and yet the sorrow of not having! Brilliant
+society that shone in a mirage, yet locked its doors; love that eluded
+as a will-o’-the-wisp and died in the dark. “Hail to you, Frank
+Cowperwood, master and no master, prince of a world of dreams whose
+reality was disillusion!” So might the witches have called, the bowl
+have danced with figures, the fumes with vision, and it would have been
+true. What wise man might not read from such a beginning, such an end?
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Financier, by Theodore Dreiser
+
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