A Trip to Louisville
The most serious difficulty confronting Cowperwood from now on was
really not so much political as financial. In building up and
financing his Chicago street-railway enterprises he had, in those days
when Addison was president of the Lake City National, used that bank as
his chief source of supply. Afterward, when Addison had been forced to
retire from the Lake City to assume charge of the Chicago Trust
Company, Cowperwood had succeeded in having the latter designated as a
central reserve and in inducing a number of rural banks to keep their
special deposits in its vaults. However, since the war on him and his
interests had begun to strengthen through the efforts of Hand and
Arneel--men most influential in the control of the other
central-reserve banks of Chicago, and in close touch with the money
barons of New York--there were signs not wanting that some of the
country banks depositing with the Chicago Trust Company had been
induced to withdraw because of pressure from outside inimical forces,
and that more were to follow. It was some time before Cowperwood fully
realized to what an extent this financial opposition might be directed
against himself. In its very beginning it necessitated speedy
hurryings to New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Baltimore,
Boston--even London at times--on the chance that there would be loose
and ready cash in someone's possession. It was on one of these
peregrinations that he encountered a curious personality which led to
various complications in his life, sentimental and otherwise, which he
had not hitherto contemplated.
In various sections of the country Cowperwood had met many men of
wealth, some grave, some gay, with whom he did business, and among
these in Louisville, Kentucky, he encountered a certain Col. Nathaniel
Gillis, very wealthy, a horseman, inventor, roue, from whom he
occasionally extracted loans. The Colonel was an interesting figure in
Kentucky society; and, taking a great liking to Cowperwood, he found
pleasure, during the brief periods in which they were together, in
piloting him about. On one occasion in Louisville he observed:
"To-night, Frank, with your permission, I am going to introduce you to
one of the most interesting women I know. She isn't good, but she's
entertaining. She has had a troubled history. She is the ex-wife of
two of my best friends, both dead, and the ex-mistress of another. I
like her because I knew her father and mother, and because she was a
clever little girl and still is a nice woman, even if she is getting
along. She keeps a sort of house of convenience here in Louisville for
a few of her old friends. You haven't anything particular to do
to-night, have you? Suppose we go around there?"
Cowperwood, who was always genially sportive when among strong men--a
sort of bounding collie--and who liked to humor those who could be of
use to him, agreed.
"It sounds interesting to me. Certainly I'll go. Tell me more about
her. Is she good-looking?"
"Rather. But better yet, she is connected with a number of women who
are." The Colonel, who had a small, gray goatee and sportive dark eyes,
winked the latter solemnly.
Cowperwood arose.
"Take me there," he said.
It was a rainy night. The business on which he was seeing the Colonel
required another day to complete. There was little or nothing to do.
On the way the Colonel retailed more of the life history of Nannie
Hedden, as he familiarly called her, and explained that, although this
was her maiden name, she had subsequently become first Mrs. John
Alexander Fleming, then, after a divorce, Mrs. Ira George Carter, and
now, alas! was known among the exclusive set of fast livers, to which
he belonged, as plain Hattie Starr, the keeper of a more or less secret
house of ill repute. Cowperwood did not take so much interest in all
this until he saw her, and then only because of two children the
Colonel told him about, one a girl by her first marriage, Berenice
Fleming, who was away in a New York boarding-school, the other a boy,
Rolfe Carter, who was in a military school for boys somewhere in the
West.
"That daughter of hers," observed the Colonel, "is a chip of the old
block, unless I miss my guess. I only saw her two or three times a few
years ago when I was down East at her mother's summer home; but she
struck me as having great charm even for a girl of ten. She's a lady
born, if ever there was one. How her mother is to keep her straight,
living as she does, is more than I know. How she keeps her in that
school is a mystery. There's apt to be a scandal here at any time.
I'm very sure the girl doesn't know anything about her mother's
business. She never lets her come out here."
"Berenice Fleming," Cowperwood thought to himself. "What a pleasing
name, and what a peculiar handicap in life."
"How old is the daughter now?" he inquired.
"Oh, she must be about fifteen--not more than that."
When they reached the house, which was located in a rather somber,
treeless street, Cowperwood was surprised to find the interior spacious
and tastefully furnished. Presently Mrs. Carter, as she was generally
known in society, or Hattie Starr, as she was known to a less
satisfying world, appeared. Cowperwood realized at once that he was in
the presence of a woman who, whatever her present occupation, was not
without marked evidences of refinement. She was exceedingly
intelligent, if not highly intellectual, trig, vivacious, anything but
commonplace. A certain spirited undulation in her walk, a seeming gay,
frank indifference to her position in life, an obvious accustomedness
to polite surroundings took his fancy. Her hair was built up in a
loose Frenchy way, after the fashion of the empire, and her cheeks were
slightly mottled with red veins. Her color was too high, and yet it
was not utterly unbecoming. She had friendly gray-blue eyes, which
went well with her light-brown hair; along with a pink flowered
house-gown, which became her fulling figure, she wore pearls.
"The widow of two husbands," thought Cowperwood; "the mother of two
children!" With the Colonel's easy introduction began a light
conversation. Mrs. Carter gracefully persisted that she had known of
Cowperwood for some time. His strenuous street-railway operations were
more or less familiar to her.
"It would be nice," she suggested, "since Mr. Cowperwood is here, if we
invited Grace Deming to call."
The latter was a favorite of the Colonel's.
"I would be very glad if I could talk to Mrs. Carter," gallantly
volunteered Cowperwood--he scarcely knew why. He was curious to learn
more of her history. On subsequent occasions, and in more extended
conversation with the Colonel, it was retailed to him in full.
Nannie Hedden, or Mrs. John Alexander Fleming, or Mrs. Ira George
Carter, or Hattie Starr, was by birth a descendant of a long line of
Virginia and Kentucky Heddens and Colters, related in a definite or
vague way to half the aristocracy of four or five of the surrounding
states. Now, although still a woman of brilliant parts, she was the
keeper of a select house of assignation in this meager city of perhaps
two hundred thousand population. How had it happened? How could it
possibly have come about? She had been in her day a reigning beauty.
She had been born to money and had married money. Her first husband,
John Alexander Fleming, who had inherited wealth, tastes, privileges,
and vices from a long line of slave-holding, tobacco-growing Flemings,
was a charming man of the Kentucky-Virginia society type. He had been
trained in the law with a view to entering the diplomatic service, but,
being an idler by nature, had never done so. Instead, horse-raising,
horse-racing, philandering, dancing, hunting, and the like, had taken
up his time. When their wedding took place the Kentucky-Virginia
society world considered it a great match. There was wealth on both
sides. Then came much more of that idle social whirl which had
produced the marriage. Even philanderings of a very vital character
were not barred, though deception, in some degree at least, would be
necessary. As a natural result there followed the appearance in the
mountains of North Carolina during a charming autumn outing of a gay
young spark by the name of Tucker Tanner, and the bestowal on him by
the beautiful Nannie Fleming--as she was then called--of her temporary
affections. Kind friends were quick to report what Fleming himself did
not see, and Fleming, roue that he was, encountering young Mr. Tanner
on a high mountain road one evening, said to him, "You get out of this
party by night, or I will let daylight through you in the morning."
Tucker Tanner, realizing that however senseless and unfair the
exaggerated chivalry of the South might be, the end would be bullets
just the same, departed. Mrs. Fleming, disturbed but unrepentant,
considered herself greatly abused. There was much scandal. Then came
quarrels, drinking on both sides, finally a divorce. Mr. Tucker Tanner
did not appear to claim his damaged love, but the aforementioned Ira
George Carter, a penniless never-do-well of the same generation and
social standing, offered himself and was accepted. By the first
marriage there had been one child, a girl. By the second there was
another child, a boy. Ira George Carter, before the children were old
enough to impress Mrs. Carter with the importance of their needs or her
own affection for them, had squandered, in one ridiculous venture after
another, the bulk of the property willed to her by her father, Major
Wickham Hedden. Ultimately, after drunkenness and dissipation on the
husband's side, and finally his death, came the approach of poverty.
Mrs. Carter was not practical, and still passionate and inclined to
dissipation. However, the aimless, fatuous going to pieces of Ira
George Carter, the looming pathos of the future of the children, and a
growing sense of affection and responsibility had finally sobered her.
The lure of love and life had not entirely disappeared, but her chance
of sipping at those crystal founts had grown sadly slender. A woman of
thirty-eight and still possessing some beauty, she was not content to
eat the husks provided for the unworthy. Her gorge rose at the thought
of that neglected state into which the pariahs of society fall and on
which the inexperienced so cheerfully comment. Neglected by her own
set, shunned by the respectable, her fortune quite gone, she was
nevertheless determined that she would not be a back-street seamstress
or a pensioner upon the bounty of quondam friends. By insensible
degrees came first unhallowed relationships through friendship and
passing passion, then a curious intermediate state between the high
world of fashion and the half world of harlotry, until, finally, in
Louisville, she had become, not openly, but actually, the mistress of a
house of ill repute. Men who knew how these things were done, and who
were consulting their own convenience far more than her welfare,
suggested the advisability of it. Three or four friends like Colonel
Gillis wished rooms--convenient place in which to loaf, gamble, and
bring their women. Hattie Starr was her name now, and as such she had
even become known in a vague way to the police--but only vaguely--as a
woman whose home was suspiciously gay on occasions.
Cowperwood, with his appetite for the wonders of life, his appreciation
of the dramas which produce either failure or success, could not help
being interested in this spoiled woman who was sailing so vaguely the
seas of chance. Colonel Gillis once said that with some strong man to
back her, Nannie Fleming could be put back into society. She had a
pleasant appeal--she and her two children, of whom she never spoke.
After a few visits to her home Cowperwood spent hours talking with Mrs.
Carter whenever he was in Louisville. On one occasion, as they were
entering her boudoir, she picked up a photograph of her daughter from
the dresser and dropped it into a drawer. Cowperwood had never seen
this picture before. It was that of a girl of fifteen or sixteen, of
whom he obtained but the most fleeting glance. Yet, with that instinct
for the essential and vital which invariably possessed him, he gained a
keen impression of it. It was of a delicately haggard child with a
marvelously agreeable smile, a fine, high-poised head upon a thin neck,
and an air of bored superiority. Combined with this was a touch of
weariness about the eyelids which drooped in a lofty way. Cowperwood
was fascinated. Because of the daughter he professed an interest in
the mother, which he really did not feel.
A little later Cowperwood was moved to definite action by the discovery
in a photographer's window in Louisville of a second picture of
Berenice--a rather large affair which Mrs. Carter had had enlarged from
a print sent her by her daughter some time before. Berenice was
standing rather indifferently posed at the corner of a colonial mantel,
a soft straw outing-hat held negligently in one hand, one hip sunk
lower than the other, a faint, elusive smile playing dimly around her
mouth. The smile was really not a smile, but only the wraith of one,
and the eyes were wide, disingenuous, mock-simple. The picture because
of its simplicity, appealed to him. He did not know that Mrs. Carter
had never sanctioned its display. "A personage," was Cowperwood's
comment to himself, and he walked into the photographer's office to see
what could be done about its removal and the destruction of the plates.
A half-hundred dollars, he found, would arrange it all--plates, prints,
everything. Since by this ruse he secured a picture for himself, he
promptly had it framed and hung in his Chicago rooms, where sometimes
of an afternoon when he was hurrying to change his clothes he stopped
to look at it. With each succeeding examination his admiration and
curiosity grew. Here was perhaps, he thought, the true society woman,
the high-born lady, the realization of that ideal which Mrs. Merrill
and many another grande dame had suggested.
It was not so long after this again that, chancing to be in Louisville,
he discovered Mrs. Carter in a very troubled social condition. Her
affairs had received a severe setback. A certain Major Hagenback, a
citizen of considerable prominence, had died in her home under peculiar
circumstances. He was a man of wealth, married, and nominally living
with his wife in Lexington. As a matter of fact, he spent very little
time there, and at the time of his death of heart failure was leading a
pleasurable existence with a Miss Trent, an actress, whom he had
introduced to Mrs. Carter as his friend. The police, through a
talkative deputy coroner, were made aware of all the facts. Pictures
of Miss Trent, Mrs. Carter, Major Hagenback, his wife, and many curious
details concerning Mrs. Carter's home were about to appear in the
papers when Colonel Gillis and others who were powerful socially and
politically interfered; the affair was hushed up, but Mrs. Carter was
in distress. This was more than she had bargained for.
Her quondam friends were frightened away for the nonce. She herself
had lost courage. When Cowperwood saw her she had been in the very
human act of crying, and her eyes were red.
"Well, well," he commented, on seeing her--she was in moody gray in the
bargain--"you don't mean to tell me you're worrying about anything, are
you?"
"Oh, Mr. Cowperwood," she explained, pathetically, "I have had so much
trouble since I saw you. You heard of Major Hagenback's death, didn't
you?" Cowperwood, who had heard something of the story from Colonel
Gillis, nodded. "Well, I have just been notified by the police that I
will have to move, and the landlord has given me notice, too. If it
just weren't for my two children--"
She dabbed at her eyes pathetically.
Cowperwood meditated interestedly.
"Haven't you any place you can go?" he asked.
"I have a summer place in Pennsylvania," she confessed; "but I can't go
there very well in February. Besides, it's my living I'm worrying
about. I have only this to depend on."
She waved her hand inclusively toward the various rooms. "Don't you
own that place in Pennsylvania?" he inquired.
"Yes, but it isn't worth much, and I couldn't sell it. I've been
trying to do that anyhow for some time, because Berenice is getting
tired of it."
"And haven't you any money laid away?"
"It's taken all I have to run this place and keep the children in
school. I've been trying to give Berenice and Rolfe a chance to do
something for themselves."
At the repetition of Berenice's name Cowperwood consulted his own
interest or mood in the matter. A little assistance for her would not
bother him much. Besides, it would probably eventually bring about a
meeting with the daughter.
"Why don't you clear out of this?" he observed, finally. "It's no
business to be in, anyhow, if you have any regard for your children.
They can't survive anything like this. You want to put your daughter
back in society, don't you?"
"Oh yes," almost pleaded Mrs. Carter.
"Precisely," commented Cowperwood, who, when he was thinking, almost
invariably dropped into a short, cold, curt, business manner. Yet he
was humanely inclined in this instance.
"Well, then, why not live in your Pennsylvania place for the present,
or, if not that, go to New York? You can't stay here. Ship or sell
these things." He waved a hand toward the rooms.
"I would only too gladly," replied Mrs. Carter, "if I knew what to do."
"Take my advice and go to New York for the present. You will get rid
of your expenses here, and I will help you with the rest--for the
present, anyhow. You can get a start again. It is too bad about these
children of yours. I will take care of the boy as soon as he is old
enough. As for Berenice"--he used her name softly--"if she can stay in
her school until she is nineteen or twenty the chances are that she
will make social connections which will save her nicely. The thing for
you to do is to avoid meeting any of this old crowd out here in the
future if you can. It might be advisable to take her abroad for a time
after she leaves school."
"Yes, if I just could," sighed Mrs. Carter, rather lamely.
"Well, do what I suggest now, and we will see," observed Cowperwood.
"It would be a pity if your two children were to have their lives
ruined by such an accident as this."
Mrs. Carter, realizing that here, in the shape of Cowperwood, if he
chose to be generous, was the open way out of a lowering dungeon of
misery, was inclined to give vent to a bit of grateful emotion, but,
finding him subtly remote, restrained herself. His manner, while
warmly generous at times, was also easily distant, except when he
wished it to be otherwise. Just now he was thinking of the high soul
of Berenice Fleming and of its possible value to him.