by Theodore Dreiser 44 страница

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?

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