Untoward Disclosures
Coincident with these public disturbances and of subsequent hearing
upon them was the discovery by Editor Haguenin of Cowperwood's
relationship with Cecily. It came about not through Aileen, who was no
longer willing to fight Cowperwood in this matter, but through
Haguenin's lady society editor, who, hearing rumors in the social
world, springing from heaven knows where, and being beholden to
Haguenin for many favors, had carried the matter to him in a very
direct way. Haguenin, a man of insufficient worldliness in spite of
his journalistic profession, scarcely believed it. Cowperwood was so
suave, so commercial. He had heard many things concerning him--his
past--but Cowperwood's present state in Chicago was such, it seemed to
him, as to preclude petty affairs of this kind. Still, the name of his
daughter being involved, he took the matter up with Cecily, who under
pressure confessed. She made the usual plea that she was of age, and
that she wished to live her own life--logic which she had gathered
largely from Cowperwood's attitude. Haguenin did nothing about it at
first, thinking to send Cecily off to an aunt in Nebraska; but, finding
her intractable, and fearing some counter-advice or reprisal on the
part of Cowperwood, who, by the way, had indorsed paper to the extent
of one hundred thousand dollars for him, he decided to discuss matters
first. It meant a cessation of relations and some inconvenient
financial readjustments; but it had to be. He was just on the point of
calling on Cowperwood when the latter, unaware as yet of the latest
development in regard to Cecily, and having some variation of his
council programme to discuss with Haguenin, asked him over the 'phone
to lunch. Haguenin was much surprised, but in a way relieved. "I am
busy," he said, very heavily, "but cannot you come to the office some
time to-day? There is something I would like to see you about."
Cowperwood, imagining that there was some editorial or local political
development on foot which might be of interest to him, made an
appointment for shortly after four. He drove to the publisher's office
in the Press Building, and was greeted by a grave and almost despondent
man.
"Mr. Cowperwood," began Haguenin, when the financier entered, smart and
trig, his usual air of genial sufficiency written all over him, "I have
known you now for something like fourteen years, and during this time I
have shown you nothing but courtesy and good will. It is true that
quite recently you have done me various financial favors, but that was
more due, I thought, to the sincere friendship you bore me than to
anything else. Quite accidentally I have learned of the relationship
that exists between you and my daughter. I have recently spoken to
her, and she admitted all that I need to know. Common decency, it
seems to me, might have suggested to you that you leave my child out of
the list of women you have degraded. Since it has not, I merely wish
to say to you"--and Mr. Haguenin's face was very tense and white--"that
the relationship between you and me is ended. The one hundred thousand
dollars you have indorsed for me will be arranged for otherwise as soon
as possible, and I hope you will return to me the stock of this paper
that you hold as collateral. Another type of man, Mr. Cowperwood,
might attempt to make you suffer in another way. I presume that you
have no children of your own, or that if you have you lack the parental
instinct; otherwise you could not have injured me in this fashion. I
believe that you will live to see that this policy does not pay in
Chicago or anywhere else."
Haguenin turned slowly on his heel toward his desk. Cowperwood, who
had listened very patiently and very fixedly, without a tremor of an
eyelash, merely said: "There seems to be no common intellectual ground,
Mr. Haguenin, upon which you and I can meet in this matter. You cannot
understand my point of view. I could not possibly adopt yours.
However, as you wish it, the stock will be returned to you upon receipt
of my indorsements. I cannot say more than that."
He turned and walked unconcernedly out, thinking that it was too bad to
lose the support of so respectable a man, but also that he could do
without it. It was silly the way parents insisted on their daughters
being something that they did not wish to be.
Haguenin stood by his desk after Cowperwood had gone, wondering where
he should get one hundred thousand dollars quickly, and also what he
should do to make his daughter see the error of her ways. It was an
astonishing blow he had received, he thought, in the house of a friend.
It occurred to him that Walter Melville Hyssop, who was succeeding
mightily with his two papers, might come to his rescue, and that later
he could repay him when the Press was more prosperous. He went out to
his house in a quandary concerning life and chance; while Cowperwood
went to the Chicago Trust Company to confer with Videra, and later out
to his own home to consider how he should equalize this loss. The
state and fate of Cecily Haguenin was not of so much importance as many
other things on his mind at this time.
Far more serious were his cogitations with regard to a liaison he had
recently ventured to establish with Mrs. Hosmer Hand, wife of an
eminent investor and financier. Hand was a solid, phlegmatic,
heavy-thinking person who had some years before lost his first wife, to
whom he had been eminently faithful. After that, for a period of years
he had been a lonely speculator, attending to his vast affairs; but
finally because of his enormous wealth, his rather presentable
appearance and social rank, he had been entrapped by much social
attention on the part of a Mrs. Jessie Drew Barrett into marrying her
daughter Caroline, a dashing skip of a girl who was clever, incisive,
calculating, and intensely gay. Since she was socially ambitious, and
without much heart, the thought of Hand's millions, and how
advantageous would be her situation in case he should die, had enabled
her to overlook quite easily his heavy, unyouthful appearance and to
see him in the light of a lover. There was criticism, of course. Hand
was considered a victim, and Caroline and her mother designing minxes
and cats; but since the wealthy financier was truly ensnared it
behooved friends and future satellites to be courteous, and so they
were. The wedding was very well attended. Mrs. Hand began to give
house-parties, teas, musicales, and receptions on a lavish scale.
Cowperwood never met either her or her husband until he was well
launched on his street-car programme. Needing two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars in a hurry, and finding the Chicago Trust Company, the
Lake City Bank, and other institutions heavily loaded with his
securities, he turned in a moment of inspirational thought to Hand.
Cowperwood was always a great borrower. His paper was out in large
quantities. He introduced himself frequently to powerful men in this
way, taking long or short loans at high or low rates of interest, as
the case might be, and sometimes finding some one whom he could work
with or use. In the case of Hand, though the latter was ostensibly of
the enemies' camp--the Schryhart-Union-Gas-Douglas-Trust-Company
crowd--nevertheless Cowperwood had no hesitation in going to him. He
wished to overcome or forestall any unfavorable impression. Though
Hand, a solemn man of shrewd but honest nature, had heard a number of
unfavorable rumors, he was inclined to be fair and think the best.
Perhaps Cowperwood was merely the victim of envious rivals.
When the latter first called on him at his office in the Rookery
Building, he was most cordial. "Come in, Mr. Cowperwood," he said. "I
have heard a great deal about you from one person and another--mostly
from the newspapers. What can I do for you?"
Cowperwood exhibited five hundred thousand dollars' worth of West
Chicago Street Railway stock. "I want to know if I can get two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars on those by to-morrow morning."
Hand, a placid man, looked at the securities peacefully. "What's the
matter with your own bank?" He was referring to the Chicago Trust
Company. "Can't it take care of them for you?"
"Loaded up with other things just now," smiled Cowperwood,
ingratiatingly.
"Well, if I can believe all the papers say, you're going to wreck these
roads or Chicago or yourself; but I don't live by the papers. How long
would you want it for?"
"Six months, perhaps. A year, if you choose."
Hand turned over the securities, eying their gold seals. "Five hundred
thousand dollars' worth of six per cent. West Chicago preferred," he
commented. "Are you earning six per cent.?"
"We're earning eight right now. You'll live to see the day when these
shares will sell at two hundred dollars and pay twelve per cent. at
that."
"And you've quadrupled the issue of the old company? Well, Chicago's
growing. Leave them here until to-morrow or bring them back. Send over
or call me, and I'll tell you."
They talked for a little while on street-railway and corporation
matters. Hand wanted to know something concerning West Chicago land--a
region adjoining Ravenswood. Cowperwood gave him his best advice.
The next day he 'phoned, and the stocks, so Hand informed him, were
available. He would send a check over. So thus a tentative friendship
began, and it lasted until the relationship between Cowperwood and Mrs.
Hand was consummated and discovered.
In Caroline Barrett, as she occasionally preferred to sign herself,
Cowperwood encountered a woman who was as restless and fickle as
himself, but not so shrewd. Socially ambitious, she was anything but
socially conventional, and she did not care for Hand. Once married,
she had planned to repay herself in part by a very gay existence. The
affair between her and Cowperwood had begun at a dinner at the
magnificent residence of Hand on the North Shore Drive overlooking the
lake. Cowperwood had gone to talk over with her husband various
Chicago matters. Mrs. Hand was excited by his risque reputation. A
little woman in stature, with intensely white teeth, red lips which she
did not hesitate to rouge on occasion, brown hair, and small brown eyes
which had a gay, searching, defiant twinkle in them, she did her best
to be interesting, clever, witty, and she was.
"I know Frank Cowperwood by reputation, anyhow," she exclaimed, holding
out a small, white, jeweled hand, the nails of which at their juncture
with the flesh were tinged with henna, and the palms of which were
slightly rouged. Her eyes blazed, and her teeth gleamed. "One can
scarcely read of anything else in the Chicago papers."
Cowperwood returned his most winning beam. "I'm delighted to meet you,
Mrs. Hand. I have read of you, too. But I hope you don't believe all
the papers say about me."
"And if I did it wouldn't hurt you in my estimation. To do is to be
talked about in these days."
Cowperwood, because of his desire to employ the services of Hand, was
at his best. He kept the conversation within conventional lines; but
all the while he was exchanging secret, unobserved smiles with Mrs.
Hand, whom he realized at once had married Hand for his money, and was
bent, under a somewhat jealous espionage, to have a good time anyhow.
There is a kind of eagerness that goes with those who are watched and
wish to escape that gives them a gay, electric awareness and sparkle in
the presence of an opportunity for release. Mrs. Hand had this.
Cowperwood, a past master in this matter of femininity, studied her
hands, her hair, her eyes, her smile. After some contemplation he
decided, other things being equal, that Mrs. Hand would do, and that he
could be interested if she were very much interested in him. Her
telling eyes and smiles, the heightened color of her cheeks indicated
after a time that she was.
Meeting him on the street one day not long after they had first met,
she told him that she was going for a visit to friends at Oconomowoc,
in Wisconsin.
"I don't suppose you ever get up that far north in summer, do you?" she
asked, with an air, and smiled.
"I never have," he replied; "but there's no telling what I might do if
I were bantered. I suppose you ride and canoe?"
"Oh yes; and play tennis and golf, too."
"But where would a mere idler like me stay?"
"Oh, there are several good hotels. There's never any trouble about
that. I suppose you ride yourself?"
"After a fashion," replied Cowperwood, who was an expert.
Witness then the casual encounter on horseback, early one Sunday
morning in the painted hills of Wisconsin, of Frank Algernon Cowperwood
and Caroline Hand. A jaunty, racing canter, side by side; idle talk
concerning people, scenery, conveniences; his usual direct suggestions
and love-making, and then, subsequently--
The day of reckoning, if such it might be called, came later.
Caroline Hand was, perhaps, unduly reckless. She admired Cowperwood
greatly without really loving him. He found her interesting,
principally because she was young, debonair, sufficient--a new type.
They met in Chicago after a time instead of in Wisconsin, then in
Detroit (where she had friends), then in Rockford, where a sister had
gone to live. It was easy for him with his time and means. Finally,
Duane Kingsland, wholesale flour merchant, religious, moral,
conventional, who knew Cowperwood and his repute, encountered Mrs. Hand
and Cowperwood first near Oconomowoc one summer's day, and later in
Randolph Street, near Cowperwood's bachelor rooms. Being the man that
he was and knowing old Hand well, he thought it was his duty to ask the
latter if his wife knew Cowperwood intimately. There was an explosion
in the Hand home. Mrs. Hand, when confronted by her husband, denied,
of course, that there was anything wrong between her and Cowperwood.
Her elderly husband, from a certain telltale excitement and resentment
in her manner, did not believe this. He thought once of confronting
Cowperwood; but, being heavy and practical, he finally decided to sever
all business relationships with him and fight him in other ways. Mrs.
Hand was watched very closely, and a suborned maid discovered an old
note she had written to Cowperwood. An attempt to persuade her to
leave for Europe--as old Butler had once attempted to send Aileen years
before--raised a storm of protest, but she went. Hand, from being
neutral if not friendly, became quite the most dangerous and forceful
of all Cowperwood's Chicago enemies. He was a powerful man. His wrath
was boundless. He looked upon Cowperwood now as a dark and dangerous
man--one of whom Chicago would be well rid.