The Titan tod-2

by Theodore Dreiser

  “Going to have a nice time, are you?” he asked, genially, politically, eying her in his enigmatic and inscrutable way. “Going to shine among that charming company you keep! I suppose all the standbys will be there—Bliss Bridge, Mr. Knowles, Mr. Cross—dancing attendance on you?”

  He failed to mention Mr. Gurney.

  Stephanie nodded cheerfully. She seemed in an innocent outing mood.

  Cowperwood smiled, thinking how one of these days—very shortly, perhaps—he was certain to take a signal revenge. He would catch her in a lie, in a compromising position somewhere—in this studio, perhaps—and dismiss her with contempt. In an elder day, if they had lived in Turkey, he would have had her strangled, sewn in a sack, and thrown into the Bosporus. As it was, he could only dismiss her. He smiled and smiled, smoothing her hand. “Have a good time,” he called, as she left. Later, at his own home—it was nearly midnight—Mr. Kennedy called him up.

  “Mr. Cowperwood?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know the studio in the New Arts Building?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is occupied now.”

  Cowperwood called a servant to bring him his runabout. He had had a down-town locksmith make a round keystem with a bored clutch at the end of it—a hollow which would fit over the end of such a key as he had to the studio and turn it easily from the outside. He felt in his pocket for it, jumped in his runabout, and hurried away. When he reached the New Arts Building he found Kennedy in the hall and dismissed him. “Thanks,” he observed, brusquely. “I will take care of this.”

  He hurried up the stairs, avoiding the elevator, to the vacant room opposite, and thence reconnoitered the studio door. It was as Kennedy had reported. Stephanie was there, and with Gurney. The pale poet had been brought there to furnish her an evening of delight. Because of the stillness of the building at this hour he could hear their muffled voices speaking alternately, and once Stephanie singing the refrain of a song. He was angry and yet grateful that she had, in her genial way, taken the trouble to call and assure him that she was going to a summer lawn-party and dance. He smiled grimly, sarcastically, as he thought of her surprise. Softly he extracted the clutch-key and inserted it, covering the end of the key on the inside and turning it. It gave solidly without sound. He next tried the knob and turned it, feeling the door spring slightly as he did so. Then inaudibly, because of a gurgled laugh with which he was thoroughly familiar, he opened it and stepped in.

  At his rough, firm cough they sprang up—Gurney to a hiding position behind a curtain, Stephanie to one of concealment behind draperies on the couch. She could not speak, and could scarcely believe that her eyes did not deceive her. Gurney, masculine and defiant, but by no means well composed, demanded: “Who are you? What do you want here?” Cowperwood replied very simply and smilingly: “Not very much. Perhaps Miss Platow there will tell you.” He nodded in her direction.

  Stephanie, fixed by his cold, examining eye, shrank nervously, ignoring Gurney entirely. The latter perceived on the instant that he had a previous liaison to deal with—an angry and outraged lover—and he was not prepared to act either wisely or well.

  “Mr. Gurney,” said Cowperwood, complacently, after staring at Stephanie grimly and scorching her with his scorn, “I have no concern with you, and do not propose to do anything to disturb you or Miss Platow after a very few moments. I am not here without reason. This young woman has been steadily deceiving me. She has lied to me frequently, and pretended an innocence which I did not believe. To-night she told me she was to be at a lawn-party on the West Side. She has been my mistress for months. I have given her money, jewelry, whatever she wanted. Those jade ear-rings, by the way, are one of my gifts.” He nodded cheerfully in Stephanie’s direction. “I have come here simply to prove to her that she cannot lie to me any more. Heretofore, every time I have accused her of things like this she has cried and lied. I do not know how much you know of her, or how fond you are of her. I merely wish her, not you, to know”—and he turned and stared at Stephanie—“that the day of her lying to me is over.”

  During this very peculiar harangue Stephanie, who, nervous, fearful, fixed, and yet beautiful, remained curled up in the corner of the suggestive oriental divan, had been gazing at Cowperwood in a way which plainly attested, trifle as she might with others, that she was nevertheless fond of him—intensely so. His strong, solid figure, confronting her so ruthlessly, gripped her imagination, of which she had a world. She had managed to conceal her body in part, but her brown arms and shoulders, her bosom, trim knees, and feet were exposed in part. Her black hair and naive face were now heavy, distressed, sad. She was frightened really, for Cowperwood at bottom had always overawed her—a strange, terrible, fascinating man. Now she sat and looked, seeking still to lure him by the pathetic cast of her face and soul, while Cowperwood, scornful of her, and almost openly contemptuous of her lover, and his possible opposition, merely stood smiling before them. It came over her very swiftly now just what it was she was losing—a grim, wonderful man. Beside him Gurney, the pale poet, was rather thin—a mere breath of romance. She wanted to say something, to make a plea; but it was so plain Cowperwood would have none of it, and, besides, here was Gurney. Her throat clogged, her eyes filled, even here, and a mystical bog-fire state of emotion succeeded the primary one of opposition. Cowperwood knew the look well. It gave him the only sense of triumph he had.

  “Stephanie,” he remarked, “I have just one word to say to you now. We will not meet any more, of course. You are a good actress. Stick to your profession. You may shine in it if you do not merge it too completely with your loves. As for being a free lover, it isn’t incompatible with what you are, perhaps, but it isn’t socially advisable for you. Good night.”

  He turned and walked quickly out.

  “Oh, Frank,” called Stephanie, in a strange, magnetized, despairing way, even in the face of her astonished lover. Gurney stared with his mouth open.

  Cowperwood paid no heed. Out he went through the dark hall and down the stairs. For once the lure of a beautiful, enigmatic, immoral, and promiscuous woman—poison flower though she was—was haunting him. “D— her!” he exclaimed. “D— the little beast, anyhow! The ——! The ——!” He used terms so hard, so vile, so sad, all because he knew for once what it was to love and lose—to want ardently in his way and not to have—now or ever after. He was determined that his path and that of Stephanie Platow should never be allowed to cross again.

  Chapter XXIX.

  A Family Quarrel

  It chanced that shortly before this liaison was broken off, some troubling information was quite innocently conveyed to Aileen by Stephanie Platow’s own mother. One day Mrs. Platow, in calling on Mrs. Cowperwood, commented on the fact that Stephanie was gradually improving in her art, that the Garrick Players had experienced a great deal of trouble, and that Stephanie was shortly to appear in a new role—something Chinese.

  “That was such a charming set of jade you gave her,” she volunteered, genially. “I only saw it the other day for the first time. She never told me about it before. She prizes it so very highly, that I feel as though I ought to thank you myself.”

  Aileen opened her eyes. “Jade!” she observed, curiously. “Why, I don’t remember.” Recalling Cowperwood’s proclivities on the instant, she was suspicious, distraught. Her face showed her perplexity.

  “Why, yes,” replied Mrs. Platow, Aileen’s show of surprise troubling her. “The ear-rings and necklet, you know. She said you gave them to her.”

  “To be sure,” answered Aileen, catching herself as by a hair. “I do recall it now. But it was Frank who really gave them. I hope she likes them.”

  She smiled sweetly.

  “She thinks they’re beautiful, and they do become her,” continued Mrs. Platow, pleasantly, understanding it all, as she fancied. The truth was that Stephanie, having forgotten, had left her make-up box open one day at home, and her mother, rummaging in her room for something, had di
scovered them and genially confronted her with them, for she knew the value of jade. Nonplussed for the moment, Stephanie had lost her mental, though not her outward, composure and referred them back casually to an evening at the Cowperwood home when Aileen had been present and the gauds had been genially forced upon her.

  Unfortunately for Aileen, the matter was not to be allowed to rest just so, for going one afternoon to a reception given by Rhees Crier, a young sculptor of social proclivities, who had been introduced to her by Taylor Lord, she was given a taste of what it means to be a neglected wife from a public point of view. As she entered on this occasion she happened to overhear two women talking in a corner behind a screen erected to conceal wraps. “Oh, here comes Mrs. Cowperwood,” said one. “She’s the street-railway magnate’s wife. Last winter and spring he was running with that Platow girl—of the Garrick Players, you know.”

  The other nodded, studying Aileen’s splendiferous green-velvet gown with envy.

  “I wonder if she’s faithful to him?” she queried, while Aileen strained to hear. “She looks daring enough.”

  Aileen managed to catch a glimpse of her observers later, when they were not looking, and her face showed her mingled resentment and feeling; but it did no good. The wretched gossipers had wounded her in the keenest way. She was hurt, angry, nonplussed. To think that Cowperwood by his variability should expose her to such gossip as this!

  One day not so long after her conversation with Mrs. Platow, Aileen happened to be standing outside the door of her own boudoir, the landing of which commanded the lower hall, and there overheard two of her servants discussing the Cowperwood menage in particular and Chicago life in general. One was a tall, angular girl of perhaps twenty-seven or eight, a chambermaid, the other a short, stout woman of forty who held the position of assistant housekeeper. They were pretending to dust, though gossip conducted in a whisper was the matter for which they were foregathered. The tall girl had recently been employed in the family of Aymar Cochrane, the former president of the Chicago West Division Railway, and now a director of the new West Chicago Street Railway Company.

  “And I was that surprised,” Aileen heard this girl saying, “to think I should be coming here. I cud scarcely believe me ears when they told me. Why, Miss Florence was runnin’ out to meet him two and three times in the week. The wonder to me was that her mother never guessed.”

  “Och,” replied the other, “he’s the very divil and all when it comes to the wimmin.” (Aileen did not see the upward lift of the hand that accompanied this). “There was a little girl that used to come here. Her father lives up the street here. Haguenin is his name. He owns that morning paper, the Press, and has a fine house up the street here a little way. Well, I haven’t seen her very often of late, but more than once I saw him kissing her in this very room. Sure his wife knows all about it. Depend on it. She had an awful fight with some woman here onct, so I hear, some woman that he was runnin’ with and bringin’ here to the house. I hear it’s somethin’ terrible the way she beat her up—screamin’ and carryin’ on. Oh, they’re the divil, these men, when it comes to the wimmin.”

  A slight rustling sound from somewhere sent the two gossipers on their several ways, but Aileen had heard enough to understand. What was she to do? How was she to learn more of these new women, of whom she had never heard at all? She at once suspected Florence Cochrane, for she knew that this servant had worked in the Cochrane family. And then Cecily Haguenin, the daughter of the editor with whom they were on the friendliest terms! Cowperwood kissing her! Was there no end to his liaisons—his infidelity?

  She returned, fretting and grieving, to her room, where she meditated and meditated, wondering whether she should leave him, wondering whether she should reproach him openly, wondering whether she should employ more detectives. What good would it do? She had employed detectives once. Had it prevented the Stephanie Platow incident? Not at all. Would it prevent other liaisons in the future? Very likely not. Obviously her home life with Cowperwood was coming to a complete and disastrous end. Things could not go on in this way. She had done wrong, possibly, in taking him away from Mrs. Cowperwood number one, though she could scarcely believe that, for Mrs. Lillian Cowperwood was so unsuited to him—but this repayment! If she had been at all superstitious or religious, and had known her Bible, which she didn’t, she might have quoted to herself that very fatalistic statement of the New Testament, “With what measure ye mete it shall be measured unto you again.”

  The truth was that Cowperwood’s continued propensity to rove at liberty among the fair sex could not in the long run fail of some results of an unsatisfactory character. Coincident with the disappearance of Stephanie Platow, he launched upon a variety of episodes, the charming daughter of so worthy a man as Editor Haguenin, his sincerest and most sympathetic journalistic supporter; and the daughter of Aymar Cochrane, falling victims, among others, to what many would have called his wiles. As a matter of fact, in most cases he was as much sinned against as sinning, since the provocation was as much offered as given.

  The manner in which he came to get in with Cecily Haguenin was simple enough. Being an old friend of the family, and a frequent visitor at her father’s house, he found this particular daughter of desire an easy victim. She was a vigorous blonde creature of twenty at this time, very full and plump, with large, violet eyes, and with considerable alertness of mind—a sort of doll girl with whom Cowperwood found it pleasant to amuse himself. A playful gamboling relationship had existed between them when she was a mere child attending school, and had continued through her college years whenever she happened to be at home on a vacation. In these very latest days when Cowperwood on occasion sat in the Haguenin library consulting with the journalist-publisher concerning certain moves which he wished to have put right before the public he saw considerably more of Cecily. One night, when her father had gone out to look up the previous action of the city council in connection with some matter of franchises, a series of more or less sympathetic and understanding glances suddenly culminated in Cecily’s playfully waving a new novel, which she happened to have in her hand, in Cowperwood’s face; and he, in reply, laid hold caressingly of her arms.

  “You can’t stop me so easily,” she observed, banteringly.

  “Oh yes, I can,” he replied.

  A slight struggle ensued, in which he, with her semiwilful connivance, managed to manoeuver her into his arms, her head backward against his shoulder.

  “Well,” she said, looking up at him with a semi-nervous, semi-provocative glance, “now what? You’ll just have to let me go.”

  “Not very soon, though.”

  “Oh yes, you will. My father will be here in a moment.”

  “Well, not until then, anyhow. You’re getting to be the sweetest girl.”

  She did not resist, but remained gazing half nervously, half dreamily at him, whereupon he smoothed her cheek, and then kissed her. Her father’s returning step put an end to this; but from this point on ascent or descent to a perfect understanding was easily made.

  In the matter of Florence Cochrane, the daughter of Aymar Cochrane, the president of the Chicago West Division Company—a second affair of the period—the approach was only slightly different, the result the same. This girl, to furnish only a brief impression, was a blonde of a different type from Cecily—delicate, picturesque, dreamy. She was mildly intellectual at this time, engaged in reading Marlowe and Jonson; and Cowperwood, busy in the matter of the West Chicago Street Railway, and conferring with her father, was conceived by her as a great personage of the Elizabethan order. In a tentative way she was in revolt against an apple-pie order of existence which was being forced upon her. Cowperwood recognized the mood, trifled with her spiritedly, looked into her eyes, and found the response he wanted. Neither old Aymar Cochrane nor his impeccably respectable wife ever discovered.

  Subsequently Aileen, reflecting upon these latest developments, was from one point of view actually pleased or eased. There is alwa
ys safety in numbers, and she felt that if Cowperwood were going to go on like this it would not be possible for him in the long run to take a definite interest in any one; and so, all things considered, and other things being equal, he would probably just as leave remain married to her as not.

  But what a comment, she could not help reflecting, on her own charms! What an end to an ideal union that had seemed destined to last all their days! She, Aileen Butler, who in her youth had deemed herself the peer of any girl in charm, force, beauty, to be shoved aside thus early in her life—she was only forty—by the younger generation. And such silly snips as they were—Stephanie Platow! and Cecily Haguenin! and Florence Cochrane, in all likelihood another pasty-faced beginner! And here she was—vigorous, resplendent, smooth of face and body, her forehead, chin, neck, eyes without a wrinkle, her hair a rich golden reddish glow, her step springing, her weight no more than one hundred and fifty pounds for her very normal height, with all the advantages of a complete toilet cabinet, jewels, clothing, taste, and skill in material selection—being elbowed out by these upstarts. It was almost unbelievable. It was so unfair. Life was so cruel, Cowperwood so temperamentally unbalanced. Dear God! to think that this should be true! Why should he not love her? She studied her beauty in the mirror from time to time, and raged and raged. Why was her body not sufficient for him? Why should he deem any one more beautiful? Why should he not be true to his reiterated protestations that he cared for her? Other men were true to other women. Her father had been faithful to her mother. At the thought of her own father and his opinion of her conduct she winced, but it did not change her point of view as to her present rights. See her hair! See her eyes! See her smooth, resplendent arms! Why should Cowperwood not love her? Why, indeed?