The growth of a passion is a very peculiar thing. In highly organized
intellectual and artistic types it is so often apt to begin with keen
appreciation of certain qualities, modified by many, many mental
reservations. The egoist, the intellectual, gives but little of himself
and asks much. Nevertheless, the lover of life, male or female, finding
himself or herself in sympathetic accord with such a nature, is apt to
gain much.
Cowperwood was innately and primarily an egoist and intellectual,
though blended strongly therewith, was a humane and democratic spirit.
We think of egoism and intellectualism as closely confined to the arts.
Finance is an art. And it presents the operations of the subtlest of
the intellectuals and of the egoists. Cowperwood was a financier.
Instead of dwelling on the works of nature, its beauty and subtlety, to
his material disadvantage, he found a happy mean, owing to the
swiftness of his intellectual operations, whereby he could,
intellectually and emotionally, rejoice in the beauty of life without
interfering with his perpetual material and financial calculations. And
when it came to women and morals, which involved so much relating to
beauty, happiness, a sense of distinction and variety in living, he was
but now beginning to suspect for himself at least that apart from
maintaining organized society in its present form there was no basis
for this one-life, one-love idea. How had it come about that so many
people agreed on this single point, that it was good and necessary to
marry one woman and cleave to her until death? He did not know. It was
not for him to bother about the subtleties of evolution, which even
then was being noised abroad, or to ferret out the curiosities of
history in connection with this matter. He had no time. Suffice it that
the vagaries of temperament and conditions with which he came into
immediate contact proved to him that there was great dissatisfaction
with that idea. People did not cleave to each other until death; and in
thousands of cases where they did, they did not want to. Quickness of
mind, subtlety of idea, fortuitousness of opportunity, made it possible
for some people to right their matrimonial and social infelicities;
whereas for others, because of dullness of wit, thickness of
comprehension, poverty, and lack of charm, there was no escape from the
slough of their despond. They were compelled by some devilish accident
of birth or lack of force or resourcefulness to stew in their own juice
of wretchedness, or to shuffle off this mortal coil—which under other
circumstances had such glittering possibilities—via the rope, the
knife, the bullet, or the cup of poison.
“I would die, too,” he thought to himself, one day, reading of a man
who, confined by disease and poverty, had lived for twelve years alone
in a back bedroom attended by an old and probably decrepit housekeeper.
A darning-needle forced into his heart had ended his earthly woes. “To
the devil with such a life! Why twelve years? Why not at the end of the
second or third?”
Again, it was so very evident, in so many ways, that force was the
answer—great mental and physical force. Why, these giants of commerce
and money could do as they pleased in this life, and did. He had
already had ample local evidence of it in more than one direction.
Worse—the little guardians of so-called law and morality, the
newspapers, the preachers, the police, and the public moralists
generally, so loud in their denunciation of evil in humble places, were
cowards all when it came to corruption in high ones. They did not dare
to utter a feeble squeak until some giant had accidentally fallen and
they could do so without danger to themselves. Then, O Heavens, the
palaver! What beatings of tom-toms! What mouthings of pharisaical
moralities—platitudes! Run now, good people, for you may see clearly
how evil is dealt with in high places! It made him smile. Such
hypocrisy! Such cant! Still, so the world was organized, and it was not
for him to set it right. Let it wag as it would. The thing for him to
do was to get rich and hold his own—to build up a seeming of virtue and
dignity which would pass muster for the genuine thing. Force would do
that. Quickness of wit. And he had these. “I satisfy myself,” was his
motto; and it might well have been emblazoned upon any coat of arms
which he could have contrived to set forth his claim to intellectual
and social nobility.
But this matter of Aileen was up for consideration and solution at this
present moment, and because of his forceful, determined character he
was presently not at all disturbed by the problem it presented. It was
a problem, like some of those knotty financial complications which
presented themselves daily; but it was not insoluble. What did he want
to do? He couldn’t leave his wife and fly with Aileen, that was
certain. He had too many connections. He had too many social, and
thinking of his children and parents, emotional as well as financial
ties to bind him. Besides, he was not at all sure that he wanted to. He
did not intend to leave his growing interests, and at the same time he
did not intend to give up Aileen immediately. The unheralded
manifestation of interest on her part was too attractive. Mrs.
Cowperwood was no longer what she should be physically and mentally,
and that in itself to him was sufficient to justify his present
interest in this girl. Why fear anything, if only he could figure out a
way to achieve it without harm to himself? At the same time he thought
it might never be possible for him to figure out any practical or
protective program for either himself or Aileen, and that made him
silent and reflective. For by now he was intensely drawn to her, as he
could feel—something chemic and hence dynamic was uppermost in him now
and clamoring for expression.
At the same time, in contemplating his wife in connection with all
this, he had many qualms, some emotional, some financial. While she had
yielded to his youthful enthusiasm for her after her husband’s death,
he had only since learned that she was a natural conservator of public
morals—the cold purity of the snowdrift in so far as the world might
see, combined at times with the murky mood of the wanton. And yet, as
he had also learned, she was ashamed of the passion that at times swept
and dominated her. This irritated Cowperwood, as it would always
irritate any strong, acquisitive, direct-seeing temperament. While he
had no desire to acquaint the whole world with his feelings, why should
there be concealment between them, or at least mental evasion of a fact
which physically she subscribed to? Why do one thing and think another?
To be sure, she was devoted to him in her quiet way, not passionately
(as he looked back he could not say that she had ever been that), but
intellectually. Duty, as she understood it, played a great part in
this. She was dutiful. And then what people thought, what the
time-spirit demanded—these were the great things. Aileen, on the
contrary, was probably not dutiful, and it was obvious that she had no
temperamental connection with current convention. No doubt she had been
as well instructed as many another girl, but look at her. She was not
obeying her instructions.
In the next three months this relationship took on a more flagrant
form. Aileen, knowing full well what her parents would think, how
unspeakable in the mind of the current world were the thoughts she was
thinking, persisted, nevertheless, in so thinking and longing.
Cowperwood, now that she had gone thus far and compromised herself in
intention, if not in deed, took on a peculiar charm for her. It was not
his body—great passion is never that, exactly. The flavor of his spirit
was what attracted and compelled, like the glow of a flame to a moth.
There was a light of romance in his eyes, which, however governed and
controlled—was directive and almost all-powerful to her.
When he touched her hand at parting, it was as though she had received
an electric shock, and she recalled that it was very difficult for her
to look directly into his eyes. Something akin to a destructive force
seemed to issue from them at times. Other people, men particularly,
found it difficult to face Cowperwood’s glazed stare. It was as though
there were another pair of eyes behind those they saw, watching through
thin, obscuring curtains. You could not tell what he was thinking.
And during the next few months she found herself coming closer and
closer to Cowperwood. At his home one evening, seated at the piano, no
one else being present at the moment, he leaned over and kissed her.
There was a cold, snowy street visible through the interstices of the
hangings of the windows, and gas-lamps flickering outside. He had come
in early, and hearing Aileen, he came to where she was seated at the
piano. She was wearing a rough, gray wool cloth dress, ornately banded
with fringed Oriental embroidery in blue and burnt-orange, and her
beauty was further enhanced by a gray hat planned to match her dress,
with a plume of shaded orange and blue. On her fingers were four or
five rings, far too many—an opal, an emerald, a ruby, and a
diamond—flashing visibly as she played.
She knew it was he, without turning. He came beside her, and she looked
up smiling, the reverie evoked by Schubert partly vanishing—or melting
into another mood. Suddenly he bent over and pressed his lips firmly to
hers. His mustache thrilled her with its silky touch. She stopped
playing and tried to catch her breath, for, strong as she was, it
affected her breathing. Her heart was beating like a triphammer. She
did not say, “Oh,” or, “You mustn’t,” but rose and walked over to a
window, where she lifted a curtain, pretending to look out. She felt as
though she might faint, so intensely happy was she.
Cowperwood followed her quickly. Slipping his arms about her waist, he
looked at her flushed cheeks, her clear, moist eyes and red mouth.
“You love me?” he whispered, stern and compelling because of his
desire.
“Yes! Yes! You know I do.”
He crushed her face to his, and she put up her hands and stroked his
hair.
A thrilling sense of possession, mastery, happiness and understanding,
love of her and of her body, suddenly overwhelmed him.
“I love you,” he said, as though he were surprised to hear himself say
it. “I didn’t think I did, but I do. You’re beautiful. I’m wild about
you.”
“And I love you” she answered. “I can’t help it. I know I shouldn’t,
but—oh—” Her hands closed tight over his ears and temples. She put her
lips to his and dreamed into his eyes. Then she stepped away quickly,
looking out into the street, and he walked back into the living-room.
They were quite alone. He was debating whether he should risk anything
further when Norah, having been in to see Anna next door, appeared and
not long afterward Mrs. Cowperwood. Then Aileen and Norah left.