In the meantime, his interest in Mrs. Semple had been secretly and
strangely growing. When he received an invitation to call at the Semple
home, he accepted with a great deal of pleasure. Their house was
located not so very far from his own, on North Front Street, in the
neighborhood of what is now known as No. 956. It had, in summer, quite
a wealth of green leaves and vines. The little side porch which
ornamented its south wall commanded a charming view of the river, and
all the windows and doors were topped with lunettes of small-paned
glass. The interior of the house was not as pleasing as he would have
had it. Artistic impressiveness, as to the furniture at least, was
wanting, although it was new and good. The pictures were—well, simply
pictures. There were no books to speak of—the Bible, a few current
novels, some of the more significant histories, and a collection of
antiquated odds and ends in the shape of books inherited from
relatives. The china was good—of a delicate pattern. The carpets and
wall-paper were too high in key. So it went. Still, the personality of
Lillian Semple was worth something, for she was really pleasing to look
upon, making a picture wherever she stood or sat.
There were no children—a dispensation of sex conditions which had
nothing to do with her, for she longed to have them. She was without
any notable experience in social life, except such as had come to the
Wiggin family, of which she was a member—relatives and a few
neighborhood friends visiting. Lillian Wiggin, that was her maiden
name—had two brothers and one sister, all living in Philadelphia and
all married at this time. They thought she had done very well in her
marriage.
It could not be said that she had wildly loved Mr. Semple at any time.
Although she had cheerfully married him, he was not the kind of man who
could arouse a notable passion in any woman. He was practical,
methodic, orderly. His shoe store was a good one—well-stocked with
styles reflecting the current tastes and a model of cleanliness and
what one might term pleasing brightness. He loved to talk, when he
talked at all, of shoe manufacturing, the development of lasts and
styles. The ready-made shoe—machine-made to a certain extent—was just
coming into its own slowly, and outside of these, supplies of which he
kept, he employed bench-making shoemakers, satisfying his customers
with personal measurements and making the shoes to order.
Mrs. Semple read a little—not much. She had a habit of sitting and
apparently brooding reflectively at times, but it was not based on any
deep thought. She had that curious beauty of body, though, that made
her somewhat like a figure on an antique vase, or out of a Greek
chorus. It was in this light, unquestionably, that Cowperwood saw her,
for from the beginning he could not keep his eyes off her. In a way,
she was aware of this but she did not attach any significance to it.
Thoroughly conventional, satisfied now that her life was bound
permanently with that of her husband, she had settled down to a staid
and quiet existence.
At first, when Frank called, she did not have much to say. She was
gracious, but the burden of conversation fell on her husband.
Cowperwood watched the varying expression of her face from time to
time, and if she had been at all psychic she must have felt something.
Fortunately she was not. Semple talked to him pleasantly, because in
the first place Frank was becoming financially significant, was suave
and ingratiating, and in the next place he was anxious to get richer
and somehow Frank represented progress to him in that line. One spring
evening they sat on the porch and talked—nothing very
important—slavery, street-cars, the panic—it was on then, that of
1857—the development of the West. Mr. Semple wanted to know all about
the stock exchange. In return Frank asked about the shoe business,
though he really did not care. All the while, inoffensively, he watched
Mrs. Semple. Her manner, he thought, was soothing, attractive,
delightful. She served tea and cake for them. They went inside after a
time to avoid the mosquitoes. She played the piano. At ten o’clock he
left.
Thereafter, for a year or so, Cowperwood bought his shoes of Mr.
Semple. Occasionally also he stopped in the Chestnut Street store to
exchange the time of the day. Semple asked his opinion as to the
advisability of buying some shares in the Fifth and Sixth Street line,
which, having secured a franchise, was creating great excitement.
Cowperwood gave him his best judgment. It was sure to be profitable. He
himself had purchased one hundred shares at five dollars a share, and
urged Semple to do so. But he was not interested in him personally. He
liked Mrs. Semple, though he did not see her very often.
About a year later, Mr. Semple died. It was an untimely death, one of
those fortuitous and in a way insignificant episodes which are,
nevertheless, dramatic in a dull way to those most concerned. He was
seized with a cold in the chest late in the fall—one of those seizures
ordinarily attributed to wet feet or to going out on a damp day without
an overcoat—and had insisted on going to business when Mrs. Semple
urged him to stay at home and recuperate. He was in his way a very
determined person, not obstreperously so, but quietly and under the
surface. Business was a great urge. He saw himself soon to be worth
about fifty thousand dollars. Then this cold—nine more days of
pneumonia—and he was dead. The shoe store was closed for a few days;
the house was full of sympathetic friends and church people. There was
a funeral, with burial service in the Callowhill Presbyterian Church,
to which they belonged, and then he was buried. Mrs. Semple cried
bitterly. The shock of death affected her greatly and left her for a
time in a depressed state. A brother of hers, David Wiggin, undertook
for the time being to run the shoe business for her. There was no will,
but in the final adjustment, which included the sale of the shoe
business, there being no desire on anybody’s part to contest her right
to all the property, she received over eighteen thousand dollars. She
continued to reside in the Front Street house, and was considered a
charming and interesting widow.
Throughout this procedure young Cowperwood, only twenty years of age,
was quietly manifest. He called during the illness. He attended the
funeral. He helped her brother, David Wiggin, dispose of the shoe
business. He called once or twice after the funeral, then stayed away
for a considerable time. In five months he reappeared, and thereafter
he was a caller at stated intervals—periods of a week or ten days.
Again, it would be hard to say what he saw in Semple. Her prettiness,
wax-like in its quality, fascinated him; her indifference aroused
perhaps his combative soul. He could not have explained why, but he
wanted her in an urgent, passionate way. He could not think of her
reasonably, and he did not talk of her much to any one. His family knew
that he went to see her, but there had grown up in the Cowperwood
family a deep respect for the mental force of Frank. He was genial,
cheerful, gay at most times, without being talkative, and he was
decidedly successful. Everybody knew he was making money now. His
salary was fifty dollars a week, and he was certain soon to get more.
Some lots of his in West Philadelphia, bought three years before, had
increased notably in value. His street-car holdings, augmented by still
additional lots of fifty and one hundred and one hundred and fifty
shares in new lines incorporated, were slowly rising, in spite of hard
times, from the initiative five dollars in each case to ten, fifteen,
and twenty-five dollars a share—all destined to go to par. He was liked
in the financial district and he was sure that he had a successful
future. Because of his analysis of the brokerage situation he had come
to the conclusion that he did not want to be a stock gambler. Instead,
he was considering the matter of engaging in bill-brokering, a business
which he had observed to be very profitable and which involved no risk
as long as one had capital. Through his work and his father’s
connections he had met many people—merchants, bankers, traders. He
could get their business, or a part of it, he knew. People in Drexel &
Co. and Clark & Co. were friendly to him. Jay Cooke, a rising banking
personality, was a personal friend of his.
Meanwhile he called on Mrs. Semple, and the more he called the better
he liked her. There was no exchange of brilliant ideas between them;
but he had a way of being comforting and social when he wished. He
advised her about her business affairs in so intelligent a way that
even her relatives approved of it. She came to like him, because he was
so considerate, quiet, reassuring, and so ready to explain over and
over until everything was quite plain to her. She could see that he was
looking on her affairs quite as if they were his own, trying to make
them safe and secure.
“You’re so very kind, Frank,” she said to him, one night. “I’m awfully
grateful. I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t been for
you.”
She looked at his handsome face, which was turned to hers, with
child-like simplicity.
“Not at all. Not at all. I want to do it. I wouldn’t have been happy if
I couldn’t.”
His eyes had a peculiar, subtle ray in them—not a gleam. She felt warm
toward him, sympathetic, quite satisfied that she could lean on him.
“Well, I am very grateful just the same. You’ve been so good. Come out
Sunday again, if you want to, or any evening. I’ll be home.”
It was while he was calling on her in this way that his Uncle Seneca
died in Cuba and left him fifteen thousand dollars. This money made him
worth nearly twenty-five thousand dollars in his own right, and he knew
exactly what to do with it. A panic had come since Mr. Semple had died,
which had illustrated to him very clearly what an uncertain thing the
brokerage business was. There was really a severe business depression.
Money was so scarce that it could fairly be said not to exist at all.
Capital, frightened by uncertain trade and money conditions,
everywhere, retired to its hiding-places in banks, vaults, tea-kettles,
and stockings. The country seemed to be going to the dogs. War with the
South or secession was vaguely looming up in the distance. The temper
of the whole nation was nervous. People dumped their holdings on the
market in order to get money. Tighe discharged three of his clerks. He
cut down his expenses in every possible way, and used up all his
private savings to protect his private holdings. He mortgaged his
house, his land holdings—everything; and in many instances young
Cowperwood was his intermediary, carrying blocks of shares to different
banks to get what he could on them.
“See if your father’s bank won’t loan me fifteen thousand on these,” he
said to Frank, one day, producing a bundle of Philadelphia & Wilmington
shares. Frank had heard his father speak of them in times past as
excellent.
“They ought to be good,” the elder Cowperwood said, dubiously, when
shown the package of securities. “At any other time they would be. But
money is so tight. We find it awfully hard these days to meet our own
obligations. I’ll talk to Mr. Kugel.” Mr. Kugel was the president.
There was a long conversation—a long wait. His father came back to say
it was doubtful whether they could make the loan. Eight per cent., then
being secured for money, was a small rate of interest, considering its
need. For ten per cent. Mr. Kugel might make a call-loan. Frank went
back to his employer, whose commercial choler rose at the report.
“For Heaven’s sake, is there no money at all in the town?” he demanded,
contentiously. “Why, the interest they want is ruinous! I can’t stand
that. Well, take ’em back and bring me the money. Good God, this’ll
never do at all, at all!”
Frank went back. “He’ll pay ten per cent.,” he said, quietly.
Tighe was credited with a deposit of fifteen thousand dollars, with
privilege to draw against it at once. He made out a check for the total
fifteen thousand at once to the Girard National Bank to cover a
shrinkage there. So it went.
During all these days young Cowperwood was following these financial
complications with interest. He was not disturbed by the cause of
slavery, or the talk of secession, or the general progress or decline
of the country, except in so far as it affected his immediate
interests. He longed to become a stable financier; but, now that he saw
the inside of the brokerage business, he was not so sure that he wanted
to stay in it. Gambling in stocks, according to conditions produced by
this panic, seemed very hazardous. A number of brokers failed. He saw
them rush in to Tighe with anguished faces and ask that certain trades
be canceled. Their very homes were in danger, they said. They would be
wiped out, their wives and children put out on the street.
This panic, incidentally, only made Frank more certain as to what he
really wanted to do—now that he had this free money, he would go into
business for himself. Even Tighe’s offer of a minor partnership failed
to tempt him.
“I think you have a nice business,” he explained, in refusing, “but I
want to get in the note-brokerage business for myself. I don’t trust
this stock game. I’d rather have a little business of my own than all
the floor work in this world.”
“But you’re pretty young, Frank,” argued his employer. “You have lots
of time to work for yourself.” In the end he parted friends with both
Tighe and Rivers. “That’s a smart young fellow,” observed Tighe,
ruefully.
“He’ll make his mark,” rejoined Rivers. “He’s the shrewdest boy of his
age I ever saw.”