A New York Mansion
The failure of American Match the next morning was one of those events
that stirred the city and the nation and lingered in the minds of men
for years. At the last moment it was decided that in lieu of calling
Cowperwood's loans Hull & Stackpole had best be sacrificed, the
stock-exchange closed, and all trading ended. This protected stocks
from at least a quotable decline and left the banks free for several
days (ten all told) in which to repair their disrupted finances and
buttress themselves against the eventual facts. Naturally, the minor
speculators throughout the city--those who had expected to make a
fortune out of this crash--raged and complained, but, being faced by an
adamantine exchange directorate, a subservient press, and the alliance
between the big bankers and the heavy quadrumvirate, there was nothing
to be done. The respective bank presidents talked solemnly of "a mere
temporary flurry," Hand, Schryhart, Merrill, and Arneel went still
further into their pockets to protect their interests, and Cowperwood,
triumphant, was roundly denounced by the smaller fry as a "bucaneer," a
"pirate," a "wolf"--indeed, any opprobrious term that came into their
minds. The larger men faced squarely the fact that here was an enemy
worthy of their steel. Would he master them? Was he already the
dominant money power in Chicago? Could he thus flaunt their
helplessness and his superiority in their eyes and before their
underlings and go unwhipped?
"I must give in!" Hosmer Hand had declared to Arneel and Schryhart, at
the close of the Arneel house conference and as they stood in
consultation after the others had departed. "We seem to be beaten
to-night, but I, for one, am not through yet. He has won to-night, but
he won't win always. This is a fight to a finish between me and him.
The rest of you can stay in or drop out, just as you wish."
"Hear, hear!" exclaimed Schryhart, laying a fervently sympathetic hand
on his shoulder. "Every dollar that I have is at your service, Hosmer.
This fellow can't win eventually. I'm with you to the end."
Arneel, walking with Merrill and the others to the door, was silent and
dour. He had been cavalierly affronted by a man who, but a few short
years before, he would have considered a mere underling. Here was
Cowperwood bearding the lion in his den, dictating terms to the
principal financial figures of the city, standing up trig and resolute,
smiling in their faces and telling them in so many words to go to the
devil. Mr. Arneel glowered under lowering brows, but what could he do?
"We must see," he said to the others, "what time will bring. Just now
there is nothing much to do. This crisis has been too sudden. You say
you are not through with him, Hosmer, and neither am I. But we must
wait. We shall have to break him politically in this city, and I am
confident that in the end we can do it." The others were grateful for
his courage even though to-morrow he and they must part with millions
to protect themselves and the banks. For the first time Merrill
concluded that he would have to fight Cowperwood openly from now on,
though even yet he admired his courage. "But he is too defiant, too
cavalier! A very lion of a man," he said to himself. "A man with the
heart of a Numidian lion."
It was true.
From this day on for a little while, and because there was no immediate
political contest in sight, there was comparative peace in Chicago,
although it more resembled an armed camp operating under the terms of
some agreed neutrality than it did anything else. Schryhart, Hand,
Arneel, and Merrill were quietly watchful. Cowperwood's chief concern
was lest his enemies might succeed in their project of worsting him
politically in one or all three of the succeeding elections which were
due to occur every two years between now and 1903, at which time his
franchises would have to be renewed. As in the past they had made it
necessary for him to work against them through bribery and perjury, so
in ensuing struggles they might render it more and more difficult for
him or his agents to suborn the men elected to office. The subservient
and venal councilmen whom he now controlled might be replaced by men
who, if no more honest, would be more loyal to the enemy, thus blocking
the extension of his franchises. Yet upon a renewal period of at least
twenty and preferably fifty years depended the fulfilment of all the
colossal things he had begun--his art-collection, his new mansion, his
growing prestige as a financier, his rehabilitation socially, and the
celebration of his triumph by a union, morganatic or otherwise, with
some one who would be worthy to share his throne.
It is curious how that first and most potent tendency of the human
mind, ambition, becomes finally dominating. Here was Cowperwood at
fifty-seven, rich beyond the wildest dream of the average man,
celebrated in a local and in some respects in a national way, who was
nevertheless feeling that by no means had his true aims been achieved.
He was not yet all-powerful as were divers Eastern magnates, or even
these four or five magnificently moneyed men here in Chicago who, by
plodding thought and labor in many dreary fields such as Cowperwood
himself frequently scorned, had reaped tremendous and uncontended
profits. How was it, he asked himself, that his path had almost
constantly been strewn with stormy opposition and threatened calamity?
Was it due to his private immorality? Other men were immoral; the mass,
despite religious dogma and fol-de-rol theory imposed from the top, was
generally so. Was it not rather due to his inability to control
without dominating personally--without standing out fully and clearly
in the sight of all men? Sometimes he thought so. The humdrum
conventional world could not brook his daring, his insouciance, his
constant desire to call a spade a spade. His genial sufficiency was a
taunt and a mockery to many. The hard implication of his eye was
dreaded by the weaker as fire is feared by a burnt child. Dissembling
enough, he was not sufficiently oily and make-believe.
Well, come what might, he did not need to be or mean to be so, and
there the game must lie; but he had not by any means attained the
height of his ambition. He was not yet looked upon as a money prince.
He could not rank as yet with the magnates of the East--the serried
Sequoias of Wall Street. Until he could stand with these men, until he
could have a magnificent mansion, acknowledged as such by all, until he
could have a world-famous gallery, Berenice, millions--what did it
avail?
The character of Cowperwood's New York house, which proved one of the
central achievements of his later years, was one of those
flowerings--out of disposition which eventuate in the case of men quite
as in that of plants. After the passing of the years neither a
modified Gothic (such as his Philadelphia house had been), nor a
conventionalized Norman-French, after the style of his Michigan Avenue
home, seemed suitable to him. Only the Italian palaces of medieval or
Renaissance origin which he had seen abroad now appealed to him as
examples of what a stately residence should be. He was really seeking
something which should not only reflect his private tastes as to a
home, but should have the more enduring qualities of a palace or even a
museum, which might stand as a monument to his memory. After much
searching Cowperwood had found an architect in New York who suited him
entirely--one Raymond Pyne, rake, raconteur, man-about-town--who was
still first and foremost an artist, with an eye for the exceptional and
the perfect. These two spent days and days together meditating on the
details of this home museum. An immense gallery was to occupy the west
wing of the house and be devoted to pictures; a second gallery should
occupy the south wing and be given over to sculpture and large whorls
of art; and these two wings were to swing as an L around the house
proper, the latter standing in the angle between them. The whole
structure was to be of a rich brownstone, heavily carved. For its
interior decoration the richest woods, silks, tapestries, glass, and
marbles were canvassed. The main rooms were to surround a great
central court with a colonnade of pink-veined alabaster, and in the
center there would be an electrically lighted fountain of alabaster and
silver. Occupying the east wall a series of hanging baskets of
orchids, or of other fresh flowers, were to give a splendid glow of
color, a morning-sun effect, to this richly artificial realm. One
chamber--a lounge on the second floor--was to be entirely lined with
thin-cut transparent marble of a peach-blow hue, the lighting coming
only through these walls and from without. Here in a perpetual
atmosphere of sunrise were to be racks for exotic birds, a trellis of
vines, stone benches, a central pool of glistening water, and an echo
of music. Pyne assured him that after his death this room would make
an excellent chamber in which to exhibit porcelains, jades, ivories,
and other small objects of value.
Cowperwood was now actually transferring his possessions to New York,
and had persuaded Aileen to accompany him. Fine compound of tact and
chicane that he was, he had the effrontery to assure her that they
could here create a happier social life. His present plan was to
pretend a marital contentment which had no basis solely in order to
make this transition period as undisturbed as possible. Subsequently he
might get a divorce, or he might make an arrangement whereby his life
would be rendered happy outside the social pale.
Of all this Berenice Fleming knew nothing at all. At the same time the
building of this splendid mansion eventually awakened her to an
understanding of the spirit of art that occupied the center of
Cowperwood's iron personality and caused her to take a real interest in
him. Before this she had looked on him as a kind of Western interloper
coming East and taking advantage of her mother's good nature to scrape
a little social courtesy. Now, however, all that Mrs. Carter had been
telling her of his personality and achievements was becoming
crystallized into a glittering chain of facts. This house, the papers
were fond of repeating, would be a jewel of rare workmanship.
Obviously the Cowperwoods were going to try to enter society. "What a
pity it is," Mrs. Carter once said to Berenice, "that he couldn't have
gotten a divorce from his wife before he began all this. I am so
afraid they will never be received. He would be if he only had the
right woman; but she--" Mrs. Carter, who had once seen Aileen in
Chicago, shook her head doubtfully. "She is not the type," was her
comment. "She has neither the air nor the understanding."
"If he is so unhappy with her," observed Berenice, thoughtfully, "why
doesn't he leave her? She can be happy without him. It is so
silly--this cat-and-dog existence. Still I suppose she values the
position he gives her," she added, "since she isn't so interesting
herself."
"I suppose," said Mrs. Carter, "that he married her twenty years ago,
when he was a very different man from what he is to-day. She is not
exactly coarse, but not clever enough. She cannot do what he would
like to see done. I hate to see mismatings of this kind, and yet they
are so common. I do hope, Bevy, that when you marry it will be some
one with whom you can get along, though I do believe I would rather see
you unhappy than poor."
This was delivered as an early breakfast peroration in Central Park
South, with the morning sun glittering on one of the nearest park
lakes. Bevy, in spring-green and old-gold, was studying the social
notes in one of the morning papers.
"I think I should prefer to be unhappy with wealth than to be without
it," she said, idly, without looking up.
Her mother surveyed her admiringly, conscious of her imperious mood.
What was to become of her? Would she marry well? Would she marry in
time? Thus far no breath of the wretched days in Louisville had
affected Berenice. Most of those with whom Mrs. Carter had found
herself compelled to deal would be kind enough to keep her secret. But
there were others. How near she had been to drifting on the rocks when
Cowperwood had appeared!
"After all," observed Berenice, thoughtfully, "Mr. Cowperwood isn't a
mere money-grabber, is he? So many of these Western moneyed men are so
dull."
"My dear," exclaimed Mrs. Carter, who by now had become a confirmed
satellite of her secret protector, "you don't understand him at all.
He is a very astonishing man, I tell you. The world is certain to hear
a lot more of Frank Cowperwood before he dies. You can say what you
please, but some one has to make the money in the first place. It's
little enough that good breeding does for you in poverty. I know,
because I've seen plenty of our friends come down."
In the new house, on a scaffold one day, a famous sculptor and his
assistants were at work on a Greek frieze which represented dancing
nymphs linked together by looped wreaths. Berenice and her mother
happened to be passing. They stopped to look, and Cowperwood joined
them. He waved his hand at the figures of the frieze, and said to
Berenice, with his old, gay air, "If they had copied you they would
have done better."
"How charming of you!" she replied, with her cool, strange, blue eyes
fixed on him. "They are beautiful." In spite of her earlier prejudices
she knew now that he and she had one god in common--Art; and that his
mind was fixed on things beautiful as on a shrine.
He merely looked at her.
"This house can be little more than a museum to me," he remarked,
simply, when her mother was out of hearing; "but I shall build it as
perfectly as I can. Perhaps others may enjoy it if I do not."
She looked at him musingly, understandingly, and he smiled. She
realized, of course, that he was trying to convey to her that he was
lonely.