The days passed. Once the understanding with Bonhag was reached,
Cowperwood’s wife, mother and sister were allowed to appear on
occasions. His wife and the children were now settled in the little
home for which he was paying, and his financial obligations to her were
satisfied by Wingate, who paid her one hundred and twenty five dollars
a month for him. He realized that he owed her more, but he was sailing
rather close to the wind financially, these days. The final collapse of
his old interests had come in March, when he had been legally declared
a bankrupt, and all his properties forfeited to satisfy the claims
against him. The city’s claim of five hundred thousand dollars would
have eaten up more than could have been realized at the time, had not a
pro rata payment of thirty cents on the dollar been declared. Even then
the city never received its due, for by some hocus-pocus it was
declared to have forfeited its rights. Its claims had not been made at
the proper time in the proper way. This left larger portions of real
money for the others.
Fortunately by now Cowperwood had begun to see that by a little
experimenting his business relations with Wingate were likely to prove
profitable. The broker had made it clear that he intended to be
perfectly straight with him. He had employed Cowperwood’s two brothers,
at very moderate salaries—one to take care of the books and look after
the office, and the other to act on ’change with him, for their seats
in that organization had never been sold. And also, by considerable
effort, he had succeeded in securing Cowperwood, Sr., a place as a
clerk in a bank. For the latter, since the day of his resignation from
the Third National had been in a deep, sad quandary as to what further
to do with his life. His son’s disgrace! The horror of his trial and
incarceration. Since the day of Frank’s indictment and more so, since
his sentence and commitment to the Eastern Penitentiary, he was as one
who walked in a dream. That trial! That charge against Frank! His own
son, a convict in stripes—and after he and Frank had walked so proudly
in the front rank of the successful and respected here. Like so many
others in his hour of distress, he had taken to reading the Bible,
looking into its pages for something of that mind consolation that
always, from youth up, although rather casually in these latter years,
he had imagined was to be found there. The Psalms, Isaiah, the Book of
Job, Ecclesiastes. And for the most part, because of the fraying nature
of his present ills, not finding it.
But day after day secreting himself in his room—a little hall-bedroom
office in his newest home, where to his wife, he pretended that he had
some commercial matters wherewith he was still concerned—and once
inside, the door locked, sitting and brooding on all that had befallen
him—his losses; his good name. Or, after months of this, and because of
the new position secured for him by Wingate—a bookkeeping job in one of
the outlying banks—slipping away early in the morning, and returning
late at night, his mind a gloomy epitome of all that had been or yet
might be.
To see him bustling off from his new but very much reduced home at half
after seven in the morning in order to reach the small bank, which was
some distance away and not accessible by street-car line, was one of
those pathetic sights which the fortunes of trade so frequently offer.
He carried his lunch in a small box because it was inconvenient to
return home in the time allotted for this purpose, and because his new
salary did not permit the extravagance of a purchased one. It was his
one ambition now to eke out a respectable but unseen existence until he
should die, which he hoped would not be long. He was a pathetic figure
with his thin legs and body, his gray hair, and his snow-white
side-whiskers. He was very lean and angular, and, when confronted by a
difficult problem, a little uncertain or vague in his mind. An old
habit which had grown on him in the years of his prosperity of putting
his hand to his mouth and of opening his eyes in an assumption of
surprise, which had no basis in fact, now grew upon him. He really
degenerated, although he did not know it, into a mere automaton. Life
strews its shores with such interesting and pathetic wrecks.
One of the things that caused Cowperwood no little thought at this
time, and especially in view of his present extreme indifference to
her, was how he would bring up this matter of his indifference to his
wife and his desire to end their relationship. Yet apart from the
brutality of the plain truth, he saw no way. As he could plainly see,
she was now persisting in her pretense of devotion, uncolored,
apparently, by any suspicion of what had happened. Yet since his trial
and conviction, she had been hearing from one source and another that
he was still intimate with Aileen, and it was only her thought of his
concurrent woes, and the fact that he might possibly be spared to a
successful financial life, that now deterred her from speaking. He was
shut up in a cell, she said to herself, and she was really very sorry
for him, but she did not love him as she once had. He was really too
deserving of reproach for his general unseemly conduct, and no doubt
this was what was intended, as well as being enforced, by the Governing
Power of the world.
One can imagine how much such an attitude as this would appeal to
Cowperwood, once he had detected it. By a dozen little signs, in spite
of the fact that she brought him delicacies, and commiserated on his
fate, he could see that she felt not only sad, but reproachful, and if
there was one thing that Cowperwood objected to at all times it was the
moral as well as the funereal air. Contrasted with the cheerful
combative hopefulness and enthusiasm of Aileen, the wearied uncertainty
of Mrs. Cowperwood was, to say the least, a little tame. Aileen, after
her first burst of rage over his fate, which really did not develop any
tears on her part, was apparently convinced that he would get out and
be very successful again. She talked success and his future all the
time because she believed in it. Instinctively she seemed to realize
that prison walls could not make a prison for him. Indeed, on the first
day she left she handed Bonhag ten dollars, and after thanking him in
her attractive voice—without showing her face, however—for his obvious
kindness to her, bespoke his further favor for Cowperwood—“a very great
man,” as she described him, which sealed that ambitious materialist’s
fate completely. There was nothing the overseer would not do for the
young lady in the dark cloak. She might have stayed in Cowperwood’s
cell for a week if the visiting-hours of the penitentiary had not made
it impossible.
The day that Cowperwood decided to discuss with his wife the weariness
of his present married state and his desire to be free of it was some
four months after he had entered the prison. By that time he had become
inured to his convict life. The silence of his cell and the menial
tasks he was compelled to perform, which had at first been so
distressing, banal, maddening, in their pointless iteration, had now
become merely commonplace—dull, but not painful. Furthermore he had
learned many of the little resources of the solitary convict, such as
that of using his lamp to warm up some delicacy which he had saved from
a previous meal or from some basket which had been sent him by his wife
or Aileen. He had partially gotten rid of the sickening odor of his
cell by persuading Bonhag to bring him small packages of lime; which he
used with great freedom. Also he succeeded in defeating some of the
more venturesome rats with traps; and with Bonhag’s permission, after
his cell door had been properly locked at night, and sealed with the
outer wooden door, he would take his chair, if it were not too cold,
out into the little back yard of his cell and look at the sky, where,
when the nights were clear, the stars were to be seen. He had never
taken any interest in astronomy as a scientific study, but now the
Pleiades, the belt of Orion, the Big Dipper and the North Star, to
which one of its lines pointed, caught his attention, almost his fancy.
He wondered why the stars of the belt of Orion came to assume the
peculiar mathematical relation to each other which they held, as far as
distance and arrangement were concerned, and whether that could
possibly have any intellectual significance. The nebulous
conglomeration of the suns in Pleiades suggested a soundless depth of
space, and he thought of the earth floating like a little ball in
immeasurable reaches of ether. His own life appeared very trivial in
view of these things, and he found himself asking whether it was all
really of any significance or importance. He shook these moods off with
ease, however, for the man was possessed of a sense of grandeur,
largely in relation to himself and his affairs; and his temperament was
essentially material and vital. Something kept telling him that
whatever his present state he must yet grow to be a significant
personage, one whose fame would be heralded the world over—who must
try, try, try. It was not given all men to see far or to do
brilliantly; but to him it was given, and he must be what he was cut
out to be. There was no more escaping the greatness that was inherent
in him than there was for so many others the littleness that was in
them.
Mrs. Cowperwood came in that afternoon quite solemnly, bearing several
changes of linen, a pair of sheets, some potted meat and a pie. She was
not exactly doleful, but Cowperwood thought that she was tending toward
it, largely because of her brooding over his relationship to Aileen,
which he knew that she knew. Something in her manner decided him to
speak before she left; and after asking her how the children were, and
listening to her inquiries in regard to the things that he needed, he
said to her, sitting on his single chair while she sat on his bed:
“Lillian, there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk with you about
for some time. I should have done it before, but it’s better late than
never. I know that you know that there is something between Aileen
Butler and me, and we might as well have it open and aboveboard. It’s
true I am very fond of her and she is very devoted to me, and if ever I
get out of here I want to arrange it so that I can marry her. That
means that you will have to give me a divorce, if you will; and I want
to talk to you about that now. This can’t be so very much of a surprise
to you, because you must have seen this long while that our
relationship hasn’t been all that it might have been, and under the
circumstances this can’t prove such a very great hardship to you—I am
sure.” He paused, waiting, for Mrs. Cowperwood at first said nothing.
Her thought, when he first broached this, was that she ought to make
some demonstration of astonishment or wrath: but when she looked into
his steady, examining eyes, so free from the illusion of or interest in
demonstrations of any kind, she realized how useless it would be. He
was so utterly matter-of-fact in what seemed to her quite private and
secret affairs—very shameless. She had never been able to understand
quite how he could take the subtleties of life as he did, anyhow.
Certain things which she always fancied should be hushed up he spoke of
with the greatest nonchalance. Her ears tingled sometimes at his
frankness in disposing of a social situation; but she thought this must
be characteristic of notable men, and so there was nothing to be said
about it. Certain men did as they pleased; society did not seem to be
able to deal with them in any way. Perhaps God would, later—she was not
sure. Anyhow, bad as he was, direct as he was, forceful as he was, he
was far more interesting than most of the more conservative types in
whom the social virtues of polite speech and modest thoughts were
seemingly predominate.
“I know,” she said, rather peacefully, although with a touch of anger
and resentment in her voice. “I’ve known all about it all this time. I
expected you would say something like this to me some day. It’s a nice
reward for all my devotion to you; but it’s just like you, Frank. When
you are set on something, nothing can stop you. It wasn’t enough that
you were getting along so nicely and had two children whom you ought to
love, but you had to take up with this Butler creature until her name
and yours are a by-word throughout the city. I know that she comes to
this prison. I saw her out here one day as I was coming in, and I
suppose every one else knows it by now. She has no sense of decency and
she does not care—the wretched, vain thing—but I would have thought
that you would be ashamed, Frank, to go on the way that you have, when
you still have me and the children and your father and mother and when
you are certain to have such a hard fight to get yourself on your feet,
as it is. If she had any sense of decency she would not have anything
to do with you—the shameless thing.”
Cowperwood looked at his wife with unflinching eyes. He read in her
remarks just what his observation had long since confirmed—that she was
sympathetically out of touch with him. She was no longer so attractive
physically, and intellectually she was not Aileen’s equal. Also that
contact with those women who had deigned to grace his home in his
greatest hour of prosperity had proved to him conclusively she was
lacking in certain social graces. Aileen was by no means so vastly
better, still she was young and amenable and adaptable, and could still
be improved. Opportunity as he now chose to think, might make Aileen,
whereas for Lillian—or at least, as he now saw it—it could do nothing.
“I’ll tell you how it is, Lillian,” he said; “I’m not sure that you are
going to get what I mean exactly, but you and I are not at all well
suited to each other any more.”
“You didn’t seem to think that three or four years ago,” interrupted
his wife, bitterly.
“I married you when I was twenty-one,” went on Cowperwood, quite
brutally, not paying any attention to her interruption, “and I was
really too young to know what I was doing. I was a mere boy. It doesn’t
make so much difference about that. I am not using that as an excuse.
The point that I am trying to make is this—that right or wrong,
important or not important, I have changed my mind since. I don’t love
you any more, and I don’t feel that I want to keep up a relationship,
however it may look to the public, that is not satisfactory to me. You
have one point of view about life, and I have another. You think your
point of view is the right one, and there are thousands of people who
will agree with you; but I don’t think so. We have never quarreled
about these things, because I didn’t think it was important to quarrel
about them. I don’t see under the circumstances that I am doing you any
great injustice when I ask you to let me go. I don’t intend to desert
you or the children—you will get a good living-income from me as long
as I have the money to give it to you—but I want my personal freedom
when I come out of here, if ever I do, and I want you to let me have
it. The money that you had and a great deal more, once I am out of
here, you will get back when I am on my feet again. But not if you
oppose me—only if you help me. I want, and intend to help you
always—but in my way.”
He smoothed the leg of his prison trousers in a thoughtful way, and
plucked at the sleeve of his coat. Just now he looked very much like a
highly intelligent workman as he sat here, rather than like the
important personage that he was. Mrs. Cowperwood was very resentful.
“That’s a nice way to talk to me, and a nice way to treat me!” she
exclaimed dramatically, rising and walking the short space—some two
steps—that lay between the wall and the bed. “I might have known that
you were too young to know your own mind when you married me. Money, of
course, that’s all you think of and your own gratification. I don’t
believe you have any sense of justice in you. I don’t believe you ever
had. You only think of yourself, Frank. I never saw such a man as you.
You have treated me like a dog all through this affair; and all the
while you have been running with that little snip of an Irish thing,
and telling her all about your affairs, I suppose. You let me go on
believing that you cared for me up to the last moment, and then you
suddenly step up and tell me that you want a divorce. I’ll not do it.
I’ll not give you a divorce, and you needn’t think it.”
Cowperwood listened in silence. His position, in so far as this marital
tangle was concerned, as he saw, was very advantageous. He was a
convict, constrained by the exigencies of his position to be out of
personal contact with his wife for a long period of time to come, which
should naturally tend to school her to do without him. When he came
out, it would be very easy for her to get a divorce from a convict,
particularly if she could allege misconduct with another woman, which
he would not deny. At the same time, he hoped to keep Aileen’s name out
of it. Mrs. Cowperwood, if she would, could give any false name if he
made no contest. Besides, she was not a very strong person,
intellectually speaking. He could bend her to his will. There was no
need of saying much more now; the ice had been broken, the situation
had been put before her, and time should do the rest.
“Don’t be dramatic, Lillian,” he commented, indifferently. “I’m not
such a loss to you if you have enough to live on. I don’t think I want
to live in Philadelphia if ever I come out of here. My idea now is to
go west, and I think I want to go alone. I sha’n’t get married right
away again even if you do give me a divorce. I don’t care to take
anybody along. It would be better for the children if you would stay
here and divorce me. The public would think better of them and you.”
“I’ll not do it,” declared Mrs. Cowperwood, emphatically. “I’ll never
do it, never; so there! You can say what you choose. You owe it to me
to stick by me and the children after all I’ve done for you, and I’ll
not do it. You needn’t ask me any more; I’ll not do it.”
“Very well,” replied Cowperwood, quietly, getting up. “We needn’t talk
about it any more now. Your time is nearly up, anyhow.” (Twenty minutes
was supposed to be the regular allotment for visitors.) “Perhaps you’ll
change your mind sometime.”
She gathered up her muff and the shawl-strap in which she had carried
her gifts, and turned to go. It had been her custom to kiss Cowperwood
in a make-believe way up to this time, but now she was too angry to
make this pretense. And yet she was sorry, too—sorry for herself and,
she thought, for him.
“Frank,” she declared, dramatically, at the last moment, “I never saw
such a man as you. I don’t believe you have any heart. You’re not
worthy of a good wife. You’re worthy of just such a woman as you’re
getting. The idea!” Suddenly tears came to her eyes, and she flounced
scornfully and yet sorrowfully out.
Cowperwood stood there. At least there would be no more useless kissing
between them, he congratulated himself. It was hard in a way, but
purely from an emotional point of view. He was not doing her any
essential injustice, he reasoned—not an economic one—which was the
important thing. She was angry to-day, but she would get over it, and
in time might come to see his point of view. Who could tell? At any
rate he had made it plain to her what he intended to do and that was
something as he saw it. He reminded one of nothing so much, as he stood
there, as of a young chicken picking its way out of the shell of an old
estate. Although he was in a cell of a penitentiary, with nearly four
years more to serve, yet obviously he felt, within himself, that the
whole world was still before him. He could go west if he could not
reestablish himself in Philadelphia; but he must stay here long enough
to win the approval of those who had known him formerly—to obtain, as
it were, a letter of credit which he could carry to other parts.
“Hard words break no bones,” he said to himself, as his wife went out.
“A man’s never done till he’s done. I’ll show some of these people
yet.” Of Bonhag, who came to close the cell door, he asked whether it
was going to rain, it looked so dark in the hall.
“It’s sure to before night,” replied Bonhag, who was always wondering
over Cowperwood’s tangled affairs as he heard them retailed here and
there.