The Titan tod-2

by Theodore Dreiser

  One night, shortly afterward, she was sitting in her boudoir reading, waiting for him to come home, when the telephone-bell sounded and he informed her that he was compelled to remain at the office late. Afterward he said he might be obliged to run on to Pittsburg for thirty-six hours or thereabouts; but he would surely be back on the third day, counting the present as one. Aileen was chagrined. Her voice showed it. They had been scheduled to go to dinner with the Hoecksemas, and afterward to the theater. Cowperwood suggested that she should go alone, but Aileen declined rather sharply; she hung up the receiver without even the pretense of a good-by. And then at ten o’clock he telephoned again, saying that he had changed his mind, and that if she were interested to go anywhere—a later supper, or the like—she should dress, otherwise he would come home expecting to remain.

  Aileen immediately concluded that some scheme he had had to amuse himself had fallen through. Having spoiled her evening, he was coming home to make as much hay as possible out of this bit of sunshine. This infuriated her. The whole business of uncertainty in the matter of his affections was telling on her nerves. A storm was in order, and it had come. He came bustling in a little later, slipped his arms around her as she came forward and kissed her on the mouth. He smoothed her arms in a make-believe and yet tender way, and patted her shoulders. Seeing her frown, he inquired, “What’s troubling Babykins?”

  “Oh, nothing more than usual,” replied Aileen, irritably. “Let’s not talk about that. Have you had your dinner?”

  “Yes, we had it brought in.” He was referring to McKenty, Addison, and himself, and the statement was true. Being in an honest position for once, he felt called upon to justify himself a little. “It couldn’t be avoided to-night. I’m sorry that this business takes up so much of my time, but I’ll get out of it some day soon. Things are bound to ease up.”

  Aileen withdrew from his embrace and went to her dressing-table. A glance showed her that her hair was slightly awry, and she smoothed it into place. She looked at her chin, and then went back to her book—rather sulkily, he thought.

  “Now, Aileen, what’s the trouble?” he inquired. “Aren’t you glad to have me up here? I know you have had a pretty rough road of it of late, but aren’t you willing to let bygones be bygones and trust to the future a little?”

  “The future! The future! Don’t talk to me about the future. It’s little enough it holds in store for me,” she replied.

  Cowperwood saw that she was verging on an emotional storm, but he trusted to his powers of persuasion, and her basic affection for him, to soothe and quell her.

  “I wish you wouldn’t act this way, pet,” he went on. “You know I have always cared for you. You know I always shall. I’ll admit that there are a lot of little things which interfere with my being at home as much as I would like at present; but that doesn’t alter the fact that my feeling is the same. I should think you could see that.”

  “Feeling! Feeling!” taunted Aileen, suddenly. “Yes, I know how much feeling you have. You have feeling enough to give other women sets of jade and jewels, and to run around with every silly little snip you meet. You needn’t come home here at ten o’clock, when you can’t go anywhere else, and talk about feeling for me. I know how much feeling you have. Pshaw!”

  She flung herself irritably back in her chair and opened her book. Cowperwood gazed at her solemnly, for this thrust in regard to Stephanie was a revelation. This woman business could grow peculiarly exasperating at times.

  “What do you mean, anyhow?” he observed, cautiously and with much seeming candor. “I haven’t given any jade or jewels to any one, nor have I been running around with any ‘little snips,’ as you call them. I don’t know what you are talking about, Aileen.”

  “Oh, Frank,” commented Aileen, wearily and incredulously, “you lie so! Why do you stand there and lie? I’m so tired of it; I’m so sick of it all. How should the servants know of so many things to talk of here if they weren’t true? I didn’t invite Mrs. Platow to come and ask me why you had given her daughter a set of jade. I know why you lie; you want to hush me up and keep quiet. You’re afraid I’ll go to Mr. Haguenin or Mr. Cochrane or Mr. Platow, or to all three. Well, you can rest your soul on that score. I won’t. I’m sick of you and your lies. Stephanie Platow—the thin stick! Cecily Haguenin—the little piece of gum! And Florence Cochrane—she looks like a dead fish!” (Aileen had a genius for characterization at times.) “If it just weren’t for the way I acted toward my family in Philadelphia, and the talk it would create, and the injury it would do you financially, I’d act to-morrow. I’d leave you—that’s what I’d do. And to think that I should ever have believed that you really loved me, or could care for any woman permanently. Bosh! But I don’t care. Go on! Only I’ll tell you one thing. You needn’t think I’m going to go on enduring all this as I have in the past. I’m not. You’re not going to deceive me always. I’m not going to stand it. I’m not so old yet. There are plenty of men who will be glad to pay me attention if you won’t. I told you once that I wouldn’t be faithful to you if you weren’t to me, and I won’t be. I’ll show you. I’ll go with other men. I will! I will! I swear it.”

  “Aileen,” he asked, softly, pleadingly, realizing the futility of additional lies under such circumstances, “won’t you forgive me this time? Bear with me for the present. I scarcely understand myself at times. I am not like other men. You and I have run together a long time now. Why not wait awhile? Give me a chance! See if I do not change. I may.”

  “Oh yes, wait! Change. You may change. Haven’t I waited? Haven’t I walked the floor night after night! when you haven’t been here? Bear with you—yes, yes! Who’s to bear with me when my heart is breaking? Oh, God!” she suddenly added, with passionate vigor, “I’m miserable! I’m miserable! My heart aches! It aches!”

  She clutched her breast and swung from the room, moving with that vigorous stride that had once appealed to him so, and still did. Alas, alas! it touched him now, but only as a part of a very shifty and cruel world. He hurried out of the room after her, and (as at the time of the Rita Sohlberg incident) slipped his arm about her waist; but she pulled away irritably. “No, no!” she exclaimed. “Let me alone. I’m tired of that.”

  “You’re really not fair to me, Aileen,” with a great show of feeling and sincerity. “You’re letting one affair that came between us blind your whole point of view. I give you my word I haven’t been unfaithful to you with Stephanie Platow or any other woman. I may have flirted with them a little, but that is really nothing. Why not be sensible? I’m not as black as you paint me. I’m moving in big matters that are as much for your concern and future as for mine. Be sensible, be liberal.”

  There was much argument—the usual charges and countercharges—but, finally, because of her weariness of heart, his petting, the unsolvability of it all, she permitted him for the time being to persuade her that there were still some crumbs of affection left. She was soul-sick, heartsick. Even he, as he attempted to soothe her, realized clearly that to establish the reality of his love in her belief he would have to make some much greater effort to entertain and comfort her, and that this, in his present mood, and with his leaning toward promiscuity, was practically impossible. For the time being a peace might be patched up, but in view of what she expected of him—her passion and selfish individuality—it could not be. He would have to go on, and she would have to leave him, if needs be; but he could not cease or go back. He was too passionate, too radiant, too individual and complex to belong to any one single individual alone.

  Chapter XXX.

  Obstacles

  The impediments that can arise to baffle a great and swelling career are strange and various. In some instances all the cross-waves of life must be cut by the strong swimmer. With other personalities there is a chance, or force, that happily allies itself with them; or they quite unconsciously ally themselves with it, and find that there is a tide that bears them on. Divine will? Not necessarily. There is no unders
tanding of it. Guardian spirits? There are many who so believe, to their utter undoing. (Witness Macbeth). An unconscious drift in the direction of right, virtue, duty? These are banners of mortal manufacture. Nothing is proved; all is permitted.

  Not long after Cowperwood’s accession to control on the West Side, for instance, a contest took place between his corporation and a citizen by the name of Redmond Purdy—real-estate investor, property-trader, and money-lender—which set Chicago by the ears. The La Salle and Washington Street tunnels were now in active service, but because of the great north and south area of the West Side, necessitating the cabling of Van Buren Street and Blue Island Avenue, there was need of a third tunnel somewhere south of Washington Street, preferably at Van Buren Street, because the business heart was thus more directly reached. Cowperwood was willing and anxious to build this tunnel, though he was puzzled how to secure from the city a right of way under Van Buren Street, where a bridge loaded with heavy traffic now swung. There were all sorts of complications. In the first place, the consent of the War Department at Washington had to be secured in order to tunnel under the river at all. Secondly, the excavation, if directly under the bridge, might prove an intolerable nuisance, necessitating the closing or removal of the bridge. Owing to the critical, not to say hostile, attitude of the newspapers which, since the La Salle and Washington tunnel grants, were following his every move with a searchlight, Cowperwood decided not to petition the city for privileges in this case, but instead to buy the property rights of sufficient land just north of the bridge, where the digging of the tunnel could proceed without interference.

  The piece of land most suitable for this purpose, a lot 150 x 150, lying a little way from the river-bank, and occupied by a seven-story loft-building, was owned by the previously mentioned Redmond Purdy, a long, thin, angular, dirty person, who wore celluloid collars and cuffs and spoke with a nasal intonation.

  Cowperwood had the customary overtures made by seemingly disinterested parties endeavoring to secure the land at a fair price. But Purdy, who was as stingy as a miser and as incisive as a rat-trap, had caught wind of the proposed tunnel scheme. He was all alive for a fine profit. “No, no, no,” he declared, over and over, when approached by the representatives of Mr. Sylvester Toomey, Cowperwood’s ubiquitous land-agent. “I don’t want to sell. Go away.”

  Mr. Sylvester Toomey was finally at his wit’s end, and complained to Cowperwood, who at once sent for those noble beacons of dark and stormy waters, General Van Sickle and the Hon. Kent Barrows McKibben. The General was now becoming a little dolty, and Cowperwood was thinking of pensioning him; but McKibben was in his prime—smug, handsome, deadly, smooth. After talking it over with Mr. Toomey they returned to Cowperwood’s office with a promising scheme. The Hon. Nahum Dickensheets, one of the judges of the State Court of Appeals, and a man long since attached, by methods which need not here be described, to Cowperwood’s star, had been persuaded to bring his extensive technical knowledge to bear on the emergency. At his suggestion the work of digging the tunnel was at once begun—first at the east or Franklin Street end; then, after eight months’ digging, at the west or Canal Street end. A shaft was actually sunk some thirty feet back of Mr. Purdy’s building—between it and the river—while that gentleman watched with a quizzical gleam in his eye this defiant procedure. He was sure that when it came to the necessity of annexing his property the North and West Chicago Street Railways would be obliged to pay through the nose.

  “Well, I’ll be cussed,” he frequently observed to himself, for he could not see how his exaction of a pound of flesh was to be evaded, and yet he felt strangely restless at times. Finally, when it became absolutely necessary for Cowperwood to secure without further delay this coveted strip, he sent for its occupant, who called in pleasant anticipation of a profitable conversation; this should be worth a small fortune to him.

  “Mr. Purdy,” observed Cowperwood, glibly, “you have a piece of land on the other side of the river that I need. Why don’t you sell it to me? Can’t we fix this up now in some amicable way?”

  He smiled while Purdy cast shrewd, wolfish glances about the place, wondering how much he could really hope to exact. The building, with all its interior equipment, land, and all, was worth in the neighborhood of two hundred thousand dollars.

  “Why should I sell? The building is a good building. It’s as useful to me as it would be to you. I’m making money out of it.”

  “Quite true,” replied Cowperwood, “but I am willing to pay you a fair price for it. A public utility is involved. This tunnel will be a good thing for the West Side and any other land you may own over there. With what I will pay you you can buy more land in that neighborhood or elsewhere, and make a good thing out of it. We need to put this tunnel just where it is, or I wouldn’t trouble to argue with you.”

  “That’s just it,” replied Purdy, fixedly. “You’ve gone ahead and dug your tunnel without consulting me, and now you expect me to get out of the way. Well, I don’t see that I’m called on to get out of there just to please you.”

  “But I’ll pay you a fair price.”

  “How much will you pay me?”

  “How much do you want?”

  Mr. Purdy scratched a fox-like ear. “One million dollars.”

  “One million dollars!” exclaimed Cowperwood. “Don’t you think that’s a little steep, Mr. Purdy?”

  “No,” replied Purdy, sagely. “It’s not any more than it’s worth.”

  Cowperwood sighed.

  “I’m sorry,” he replied, meditatively, “but this is really too much. Wouldn’t you take three hundred thousand dollars in cash now and consider this thing closed?”

  “One million,” replied Purdy, looking sternly at the ceiling. “Very well, Mr. Purdy,” replied Cowperwood. “I’m very sorry. It’s plain to me that we can’t do business as I had hoped. I’m willing to pay you a reasonable sum; but what you ask is far too much—preposterous! Don’t you think you’d better reconsider? We might move the tunnel even yet.”

  “One million dollars,” said Purdy.

  “It can’t be done, Mr. Purdy. It isn’t worth it. Why won’t you be fair? Call it three hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars cash, and my check to-night.”

  “I wouldn’t take five or six hundred thousand dollars if you were to offer it to me, Mr. Cowperwood, to-night or any other time. I know my rights.”

  “Very well, then,” replied Cowperwood, “that’s all I can say. If you won’t sell, you won’t sell. Perhaps you’ll change your mind later.”

  Mr. Purdy went out, and Cowperwood called in his lawyers and his engineers. One Saturday afternoon, a week or two later, when the building in question had been vacated for the day, a company of three hundred laborers, with wagons, picks, shovels, and dynamite sticks, arrived. By sundown of the next day (which, being Sunday, was a legal holiday, with no courts open or sitting to issue injunctions) this comely structure, the private property of Mr. Redmond Purdy, was completely razed and a large excavation substituted in its stead. The gentleman of the celluloid cuffs and collars, when informed about nine o’clock of this same Sunday morning that his building had been almost completely removed, was naturally greatly perturbed. A portion of the wall was still standing when he arrived, hot and excited, and the police were appealed to.

  But, strange to say, this was of little avail, for they were shown a writ of injunction issued by the court of highest jurisdiction, presided over by the Hon. Nahum Dickensheets, which restrained all and sundry from interfering. (Subsequently on demand of another court this remarkable document was discovered to have disappeared; the contention was that it had never really existed or been produced at all.)

  The demolition and digging proceeded. Then began a scurrying of lawyers to the door of one friendly judge after another. There were apoplectic cheeks, blazing eyes, and gasps for breath while the enormity of the offense was being noised abroad. Law is law, however. Procedure is procedure, and no writ of injunction was
either issuable or returnable on a legal holiday, when no courts were sitting. Nevertheless, by three o’clock in the afternoon an obliging magistrate was found who consented to issue an injunction staying this terrible crime. By this time, however, the building was gone, the excavation complete. It remained merely for the West Chicago Street Railway Company to secure an injunction vacating the first injunction, praying that its rights, privileges, liberties, etc., be not interfered with, and so creating a contest which naturally threw the matter into the State Court of Appeals, where it could safely lie. For several years there were numberless injunctions, writs of errors, doubts, motions to reconsider, threats to carry the matter from the state to the federal courts on a matter of constitutional privilege, and the like. The affair was finally settled out of court, for Mr. Purdy by this time was a more sensible man. In the mean time, however, the newspapers had been given full details of the transaction, and a storm of words against Cowperwood ensued.

  But more disturbing than the Redmond Purdy incident was the rivalry of a new Chicago street-railway company. It appeared first as an idea in the brain of one James Furnivale Woolsen, a determined young Westerner from California, and developed by degrees into consents and petitions from fully two-thirds of the residents of various streets in the extreme southwest section of the city where it was proposed the new line should be located. This same James Furnivale Woolsen, being an ambitious person, was not to be so easily put down. Besides the consent and petitions, which Cowperwood could not easily get away from him, he had a new form of traction then being tried out in several minor cities—a form of electric propulsion by means of an overhead wire and a traveling pole, which was said to be very economical, and to give a service better than cables and cheaper even than horses.