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+The Project Gutenberg Etext:  The Financier, by Theodore Dreiser
+#2 in our series by Theodore Dreiser
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+The Financier
+
+by Theodore Dreiser
+
+August, 1999  [Etext #1840]
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext:  The Financier, by Theodore Dreiser
+******This file should be named tfncr10.txt or tfncr10.zip******
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+Prepared by Kirk Pearson <Kirk.Pearson@Central.Sun.COM>
+
+
+
+
+
+The Financier
+by Theodore Dreiser
+
+
+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
+marmer; 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," be 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 conferencee 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 be 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 bearded 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 bad 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 buiness, 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 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.  Instinctly 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 be 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 semipatronizing 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 ail 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 Etext:  The Financier, by Theodore Dreiser
+
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