by Theodore Dreiser 28 страница

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

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