by Theodore Dreiser 41 страница

put her arms around him and stroke his head, murmuring: "My poor boy--my

darling. Is this what they have done to you? Oh, my poor darling." She

held his head while Cowperwood, anxious to retain his composure, winced

and trembled, too. Her love was so full--so genuine. It was so soothing

at the same time that it was unmanning, as now he could see, making of

him a child again. And for the first time in his life, some inexplicable

trick of chemistry--that chemistry of the body, of blind forces which so

readily supersedes reason at times--he lost his self-control. The

depth of Aileen's feelings, the cooing sound of her voice, the velvety

tenderness of her hands, that beauty that had drawn him all the

time--more radiant here perhaps within these hard walls, and in the

face of his physical misery, than it had ever been before--completely

unmanned him. He did not understand how it could; he tried to defy the

moods, but he could not. When she held his head close and caressed it,

of a sudden, in spite of himself, his breast felt thick and stuffy, and

his throat hurt him. He felt, for him, an astonishingly strange feeling,

a desire to cry, which he did his best to overcome; it shocked him so.

There then combined and conspired to defeat him a strange, rich picture

of the great world he had so recently lost, of the lovely, magnificent

world which he hoped some day to regain. He felt more poignantly at this

moment than ever he had before the degradation of the clog shoes, the

cotton shirt, the striped suit, the reputation of a convict, permanent

and not to be laid aside. He drew himself quickly away from her, turned

his back, clinched his hands, drew his muscles taut; but it was too

late. He was crying, and he could not stop.

"Oh, damn it!" he exclaimed, half angrily, half self-commiseratingly, in

combined rage and shame. "Why should I cry? What the devil's the matter

with me, anyhow?"

Aileen saw it. She fairly flung herself in front of him, seized his head

with one hand, his shabby waist with the other, and held him tight in a

grip that he could not have readily released.

"Oh, honey, honey, honey!" she exclaimed, pityingly feverishly. "I love

you, I adore you. They could cut my body into bits if it would do you

any good. To think that they should make you cry! Oh, my sweet, my

sweet, my darling boy!"

She pulled his still shaking body tighter, and with her free hand

caressed his head. She kissed his eyes, his hair, his cheeks. He pulled

himself loose again after a moment, exclaiming, "What the devil's got

into me?" but she drew him back.

"Never mind, honey darling, don't you be ashamed to cry. Cry here on my

shoulder. Cry here with me. My baby--my honey pet!"

He quieted down after a few moments, cautioning her against Bonhag, and

regaining his former composure, which he was so ashamed to have lost.

"You're a great girl, pet," he said, with a tender and yet apologetic

smile. "You're all right--all that I need--a great help to me; but don't

worry any longer about me, dear. I'm all right. It isn't as bad as you

think. How are you?"

Aileen on her part was not to be soothed so easily. His many woes,

including his wretched position here, outraged her sense of justice and

decency. To think her fine, wonderful Frank should be compelled to come

to this--to cry. She stroked his head, tenderly, while wild, deadly,

unreasoning opposition to life and chance and untoward opposition surged

in her brain. Her father--damn him! Her family--pooh! What did she

care? Her Frank--her Frank. How little all else mattered where he was

concerned. Never, never, never would she desert him--never--come what

might. And now she clung to him in silence while she fought in her

brain an awful battle with life and law and fate and circumstance.

Law--nonsense! People--they were brutes, devils, enemies, hounds! She

was delighted, eager, crazy to make a sacrifice of herself. She would go

anywhere for or with her Frank now. She would do anything for him.

Her family was nothing--life nothing, nothing, nothing. She would do

anything he wished, nothing more, nothing less; anything she could do to

save him, to make his life happier, but nothing for any one else.

Chapter LVI

The days passed. Once the understanding with Bonhag was reached,

Cowperwood's wife, mother and sister were allowed to appear on

occasions. His wife and the children were now settled in the little

home for which he was paying, and his financial obligations to her were

satisfied by Wingate, who paid her one hundred and twenty five dollars

a month for him. He realized that he owed her more, but he was sailing

rather close to the wind financially, these days. The final collapse of

his old interests had come in March, when he had been legally declared a

bankrupt, and all his properties forfeited to satisfy the claims against

him. The city's claim of five hundred thousand dollars would have eaten

up more than could have been realized at the time, had not a pro rata

payment of thirty cents on the dollar been declared. Even then the city

never received its due, for by some hocus-pocus it was declared to have

forfeited its rights. Its claims had not been made at the proper time in

the proper way. This left larger portions of real money for the others.

Fortunately by now Cowperwood had begun to see that by a little

experimenting his business relations with Wingate were likely to

prove profitable. The broker had made it clear that he intended to be

perfectly straight with him. He had employed Cowperwood's two brothers,

at very moderate salaries--one to take care of the books and look after

the office, and the other to act on 'change with him, for their seats in

that organization had never been sold. And also, by considerable effort,

he had succeeded in securing Cowperwood, Sr., a place as a clerk in a

bank. For the latter, since the day of his resignation from the Third

National had been in a deep, sad quandary as to what further to do with

his life. His son's disgrace! The horror of his trial and incarceration.

Since the day of Frank's indictment and more so, since his sentence and

commitment to the Eastern Penitentiary, he was as one who walked in a

dream. That trial! That charge against Frank! His own son, a convict in

stripes--and after he and Frank had walked so proudly in the front rank

of the successful and respected here. Like so many others in his hour of

distress, he had taken to reading the Bible, looking into its pages for

something of that mind consolation that always, from youth up, although

rather casually in these latter years, he had imagined was to be found

there. The Psalms, Isaiah, the Book of Job, Ecclesiastes. And for

the most part, because of the fraying nature of his present ills, not

finding it.

But day after day secreting himself in his room--a little hall-bedroom

office in his newest home, where to his wife, he pretended that he

had some commercial matters wherewith he was still concerned--and once

inside, the door locked, sitting and brooding on all that had befallen

him--his losses; his good name. Or, after months of this, and because of

the new position secured for him by Wingate--a bookkeeping job in one

of the outlying banks--slipping away early in the morning, and returning

late at night, his mind a gloomy epitome of all that had been or yet

might be.

To see him bustling off from his new but very much reduced home at half

after seven in the morning in order to reach the small bank, which was

some distance away and not accessible by street-car line, was one of

those pathetic sights which the fortunes of trade so frequently offer.

He carried his lunch in a small box because it was inconvenient to

return home in the time allotted for this purpose, and because his new

salary did not permit the extravagance of a purchased one. It was his

one ambition now to eke out a respectable but unseen existence until he

should die, which he hoped would not be long. He was a pathetic

figure with his thin legs and body, his gray hair, and his snow-white

side-whiskers. He was very lean and angular, and, when confronted by a

difficult problem, a little uncertain or vague in his mind. An old habit

which had grown on him in the years of his prosperity of putting his

hand to his mouth and of opening his eyes in an assumption of surprise,

which had no basis in fact, now grew upon him. He really degenerated,

although he did not know it, into a mere automaton. Life strews its

shores with such interesting and pathetic wrecks.

One of the things that caused Cowperwood no little thought at this time,

and especially in view of his present extreme indifference to her, was

how he would bring up this matter of his indifference to his wife and

his desire to end their relationship. Yet apart from the brutality of

the plain truth, he saw no way. As he could plainly see, she was now

persisting in her pretense of devotion, uncolored, apparently, by any

suspicion of what had happened. Yet since his trial and conviction, she

had been hearing from one source and another that he was still intimate

with Aileen, and it was only her thought of his concurrent woes, and the

fact that he might possibly be spared to a successful financial life,

that now deterred her from speaking. He was shut up in a cell, she said

to herself, and she was really very sorry for him, but she did not love

him as she once had. He was really too deserving of reproach for his

general unseemly conduct, and no doubt this was what was intended, as

well as being enforced, by the Governing Power of the world.

One can imagine how much such an attitude as this would appeal to

Cowperwood, once he had detected it. By a dozen little signs, in spite

of the fact that she brought him delicacies, and commiserated on his

fate, he could see that she felt not only sad, but reproachful, and if

there was one thing that Cowperwood objected to at all times it was

the moral as well as the funereal air. Contrasted with the cheerful

combative hopefulness and enthusiasm of Aileen, the wearied uncertainty

of Mrs. Cowperwood was, to say the least, a little tame. Aileen, after

her first burst of rage over his fate, which really did not develop any

tears on her part, was apparently convinced that he would get out and

be very successful again. She talked success and his future all the time

because she believed in it. Instinctively she seemed to realize that

prison walls could not make a prison for him. Indeed, on the first day

she left she handed Bonhag ten dollars, and after thanking him in her

attractive voice--without showing her face, however--for his obvious

kindness to her, bespoke his further favor for Cowperwood--"a very great

man," as she described him, which sealed that ambitious materialist's

fate completely. There was nothing the overseer would not do for the

young lady in the dark cloak. She might have stayed in Cowperwood's cell

for a week if the visiting-hours of the penitentiary had not made it

impossible.

The day that Cowperwood decided to discuss with his wife the weariness

of his present married state and his desire to be free of it was some

four months after he had entered the prison. By that time he had become

inured to his convict life. The silence of his cell and the menial tasks

he was compelled to perform, which had at first been so distressing,

banal, maddening, in their pointless iteration, had now become merely

commonplace--dull, but not painful. Furthermore he had learned many of

the little resources of the solitary convict, such as that of using his

lamp to warm up some delicacy which he had saved from a previous meal or

from some basket which had been sent him by his wife or Aileen. He had

partially gotten rid of the sickening odor of his cell by persuading

Bonhag to bring him small packages of lime; which he used with great

freedom. Also he succeeded in defeating some of the more venturesome

rats with traps; and with Bonhag's permission, after his cell door had

been properly locked at night, and sealed with the outer wooden door, he

would take his chair, if it were not too cold, out into the little back

yard of his cell and look at the sky, where, when the nights were clear,

the stars were to be seen. He had never taken any interest in astronomy

as a scientific study, but now the Pleiades, the belt of Orion, the Big

Dipper and the North Star, to which one of its lines pointed, caught his

attention, almost his fancy. He wondered why the stars of the belt of

Orion came to assume the peculiar mathematical relation to each other

which they held, as far as distance and arrangement were concerned,

and whether that could possibly have any intellectual significance. The

nebulous conglomeration of the suns in Pleiades suggested a soundless

depth of space, and he thought of the earth floating like a little ball

in immeasurable reaches of ether. His own life appeared very trivial

in view of these things, and he found himself asking whether it was all

really of any significance or importance. He shook these moods off with

ease, however, for the man was possessed of a sense of grandeur,

largely in relation to himself and his affairs; and his temperament was

essentially material and vital. Something kept telling him that whatever

his present state he must yet grow to be a significant personage, one

whose fame would be heralded the world over--who must try, try, try. It

was not given all men to see far or to do brilliantly; but to him it

was given, and he must be what he was cut out to be. There was no more

escaping the greatness that was inherent in him than there was for so

many others the littleness that was in them.

Mrs. Cowperwood came in that afternoon quite solemnly, bearing several

changes of linen, a pair of sheets, some potted meat and a pie. She was

not exactly doleful, but Cowperwood thought that she was tending toward

it, largely because of her brooding over his relationship to Aileen,

which he knew that she knew. Something in her manner decided him to

speak before she left; and after asking her how the children were, and

listening to her inquiries in regard to the things that he needed, he

said to her, sitting on his single chair while she sat on his bed:

"Lillian, there's something I've been wanting to talk with you about

for some time. I should have done it before, but it's better late than

never. I know that you know that there is something between Aileen

Butler and me, and we might as well have it open and aboveboard. It's

true I am very fond of her and she is very devoted to me, and if ever I

get out of here I want to arrange it so that I can marry her. That means

that you will have to give me a divorce, if you will; and I want to talk

to you about that now. This can't be so very much of a surprise to you,

because you must have seen this long while that our relationship hasn't

been all that it might have been, and under the circumstances this can't

prove such a very great hardship to you--I am sure." He paused, waiting,

for Mrs. Cowperwood at first said nothing.

Her thought, when he first broached this, was that she ought to make

some demonstration of astonishment or wrath: but when she looked into

his steady, examining eyes, so free from the illusion of or interest in

demonstrations of any kind, she realized how useless it would be. He was

so utterly matter-of-fact in what seemed to her quite private and secret

affairs--very shameless. She had never been able to understand quite how

he could take the subtleties of life as he did, anyhow. Certain things

which she always fancied should be hushed up he spoke of with the

greatest nonchalance. Her ears tingled sometimes at his frankness

in disposing of a social situation; but she thought this must be

characteristic of notable men, and so there was nothing to be said about

it. Certain men did as they pleased; society did not seem to be able to

deal with them in any way. Perhaps God would, later--she was not sure.

Anyhow, bad as he was, direct as he was, forceful as he was, he was far

more interesting than most of the more conservative types in whom the

social virtues of polite speech and modest thoughts were seemingly

predominate.

"I know," she said, rather peacefully, although with a touch of anger

and resentment in her voice. "I've known all about it all this time. I

expected you would say something like this to me some day. It's a nice

reward for all my devotion to you; but it's just like you, Frank. When

you are set on something, nothing can stop you. It wasn't enough that

you were getting along so nicely and had two children whom you ought to

love, but you had to take up with this Butler creature until her name

and yours are a by-word throughout the city. I know that she comes

to this prison. I saw her out here one day as I was coming in, and I

suppose every one else knows it by now. She has no sense of decency and

she does not care--the wretched, vain thing--but I would have thought

that you would be ashamed, Frank, to go on the way that you have, when

you still have me and the children and your father and mother and when

you are certain to have such a hard fight to get yourself on your feet,

as it is. If she had any sense of decency she would not have anything to

do with you--the shameless thing."

Cowperwood looked at his wife with unflinching eyes. He read in her

remarks just what his observation had long since confirmed--that she was

sympathetically out of touch with him. She was no longer so attractive

physically, and intellectually she was not Aileen's equal. Also that

contact with those women who had deigned to grace his home in his

greatest hour of prosperity had proved to him conclusively she was

lacking in certain social graces. Aileen was by no means so vastly

better, still she was young and amenable and adaptable, and could still

be improved. Opportunity as he now chose to think, might make Aileen,

whereas for Lillian--or at least, as he now saw it--it could do nothing.

"I'll tell you how it is, Lillian," he said; "I'm not sure that you

are going to get what I mean exactly, but you and I are not at all well

suited to each other any more."

"You didn't seem to think that three or four years ago," interrupted his

wife, bitterly.

"I married you when I was twenty-one," went on Cowperwood, quite

brutally, not paying any attention to her interruption, "and I was

really too young to know what I was doing. I was a mere boy. It doesn't

make so much difference about that. I am not using that as an excuse.

The point that I am trying to make is this--that right or wrong,

important or not important, I have changed my mind since. I don't love

you any more, and I don't feel that I want to keep up a relationship,

however it may look to the public, that is not satisfactory to me. You

have one point of view about life, and I have another. You think your

point of view is the right one, and there are thousands of people who

will agree with you; but I don't think so. We have never quarreled about

these things, because I didn't think it was important to quarrel about

them. I don't see under the circumstances that I am doing you any great

injustice when I ask you to let me go. I don't intend to desert you or

the children--you will get a good living-income from me as long as I

have the money to give it to you--but I want my personal freedom when

I come out of here, if ever I do, and I want you to let me have it. The

money that you had and a great deal more, once I am out of here, you

will get back when I am on my feet again. But not if you oppose me--only

if you help me. I want, and intend to help you always--but in my way."

He smoothed the leg of his prison trousers in a thoughtful way, and

plucked at the sleeve of his coat. Just now he looked very much like

a highly intelligent workman as he sat here, rather than like the

important personage that he was. Mrs. Cowperwood was very resentful.

"That's a nice way to talk to me, and a nice way to treat me!" she

exclaimed dramatically, rising and walking the short space--some two

steps--that lay between the wall and the bed. "I might have known that

you were too young to know your own mind when you married me. Money,

of course, that's all you think of and your own gratification. I don't

believe you have any sense of justice in you. I don't believe you ever

had. You only think of yourself, Frank. I never saw such a man as you.

You have treated me like a dog all through this affair; and all the

while you have been running with that little snip of an Irish thing,

and telling her all about your affairs, I suppose. You let me go on

believing that you cared for me up to the last moment, and then you

suddenly step up and tell me that you want a divorce. I'll not do it.

I'll not give you a divorce, and you needn't think it."

Cowperwood listened in silence. His position, in so far as this marital

tangle was concerned, as he saw, was very advantageous. He was a

convict, constrained by the exigencies of his position to be out of

personal contact with his wife for a long period of time to come, which

should naturally tend to school her to do without him. When he came

out, it would be very easy for her to get a divorce from a convict,

particularly if she could allege misconduct with another woman, which he

would not deny. At the same time, he hoped to keep Aileen's name out of

it. Mrs. Cowperwood, if she would, could give any false name if he made

no contest. Besides, she was not a very strong person, intellectually

speaking. He could bend her to his will. There was no need of saying

much more now; the ice had been broken, the situation had been put

before her, and time should do the rest.

"Don't be dramatic, Lillian," he commented, indifferently. "I'm not such

a loss to you if you have enough to live on. I don't think I want to

live in Philadelphia if ever I come out of here. My idea now is to go

west, and I think I want to go alone. I sha'n't get married right away

again even if you do give me a divorce. I don't care to take anybody

along. It would be better for the children if you would stay here and

divorce me. The public would think better of them and you."

"I'll not do it," declared Mrs. Cowperwood, emphatically. "I'll never

do it, never; so there! You can say what you choose. You owe it to me to

stick by me and the children after all I've done for you, and I'll not

do it. You needn't ask me any more; I'll not do it."

"Very well," replied Cowperwood, quietly, getting up. "We needn't talk

about it any more now. Your time is nearly up, anyhow." (Twenty minutes

was supposed to be the regular allotment for visitors.) "Perhaps you'll

change your mind sometime."

She gathered up her muff and the shawl-strap in which she had carried

her gifts, and turned to go. It had been her custom to kiss Cowperwood

in a make-believe way up to this time, but now she was too angry to make

this pretense. And yet she was sorry, too--sorry for herself and, she

thought, for him.

"Frank," she declared, dramatically, at the last moment, "I never saw

such a man as you. I don't believe you have any heart. You're not worthy

of a good wife. You're worthy of just such a woman as you're getting.

The idea!" Suddenly tears came to her eyes, and she flounced scornfully

and yet sorrowfully out.

Cowperwood stood there. At least there would be no more useless kissing

between them, he congratulated himself. It was hard in a way, but purely

from an emotional point of view. He was not doing her any essential

injustice, he reasoned--not an economic one--which was the important

thing. She was angry to-day, but she would get over it, and in time

might come to see his point of view. Who could tell? At any rate he had

made it plain to her what he intended to do and that was something as he

saw it. He reminded one of nothing so much, as he stood there, as of

a young chicken picking its way out of the shell of an old estate.

Although he was in a cell of a penitentiary, with nearly four years more

to serve, yet obviously he felt, within himself, that the whole world

was still before him. He could go west if he could not reestablish

himself in Philadelphia; but he must stay here long enough to win the

approval of those who had known him formerly--to obtain, as it were, a

letter of credit which he could carry to other parts.

"Hard words break no bones," he said to himself, as his wife went out.

"A man's never done till he's done. I'll show some of these people yet."

Of Bonhag, who came to close the cell door, he asked whether it was

going to rain, it looked so dark in the hall.

"It's sure to before night," replied Bonhag, who was always wondering

over Cowperwood's tangled affairs as he heard them retailed here and

there.

Chapter LVII

The time that Cowperwood spent in the Eastern Penitentiary of

Pennsylvania was exactly thirteen months from the day of his entry

to his discharge. The influences which brought about this result were

partly of his willing, and partly not. For one thing, some six months

after his incarceration, Edward Malia Butler died, expired sitting in

his chair in his private office at his home. The conduct of Aileen had

been a great strain on him. From the time Cowperwood had been sentenced,

and more particularly after the time he had cried on Aileen's shoulder

in prison, she had turned on her father in an almost brutal way. Her

attitude, unnatural for a child, was quite explicable as that of a

tortured sweetheart. Cowperwood had told her that he thought Butler was

using his influence to withhold a pardon for him, even though one were

granted to Stener, whose life in prison he had been following with

considerable interest; and this had enraged her beyond measure. She lost

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