Aileen's Last Card
It was not until some little time after they were established in the
new house that Aileen first came upon any evidence of the existence of
Berenice Fleming. In a general way she assumed that there were
women--possibly some of whom she had known--Stephanie, Mrs. Hand,
Florence Cochrane, or later arrivals--yet so long as they were not
obtruded on her she permitted herself the semi-comforting thought that
things were not as bad as they might be. So long, indeed, as
Cowperwood was genuinely promiscuous, so long as he trotted here and
there, not snared by any particular siren, she could not despair, for,
after all, she had ensnared him and held him deliciously--without
variation, she believed, for all of ten years--a feat which no other
woman had achieved before or after. Rita Sohlberg might have
succeeded--the beast! How she hated the thought of Rita! By this time,
however, Cowperwood was getting on in years. The day must come when he
would be less keen for variability, or, at least, would think it no
longer worth while to change. If only he did not find some one woman,
some Circe, who would bind and enslave him in these Later years as she
had herself done in his earlier ones all might yet be well. At the
same time she lived in daily terror of a discovery which was soon to
follow.
She had gone out one day to pay a call on some one to whom Rhees Grier,
the Chicago sculptor, had given her an introduction. Crossing Central
Park in one of the new French machines which Cowperwood had purchased
for her indulgence, her glance wandered down a branch road to where
another automobile similar to her own was stalled. It was early in the
afternoon, at which time Cowperwood was presumably engaged in Wall
Street. Yet there he was, and with him two women, neither of whom, in
the speed of passing, could Aileen quite make out. She had her car
halted and driven to within seeing-distance behind a clump of bushes.
A chauffeur whom she did not know was tinkering at a handsome machine,
while on the grass near by stood Cowperwood and a tall, slender girl
with red hair somewhat like Aileen's own. Her expression was aloof,
poetic, rhapsodical. Aileen could not analyze it, but it fixed her
attention completely. In the tonneau sat an elderly lady, whom Aileen
at once assumed to be the girl's mother. Who were they? What was
Cowperwood doing here in the Park at this hour? Where were they going?
With a horrible retch of envy she noted upon Cowperwood's face a smile
the like and import of which she well knew. How often she had seen it
years and years before! Having escaped detection, she ordered her
chauffeur to follow the car, which soon started, at a safe distance.
She saw Cowperwood and the two ladies put down at one of the great
hotels, and followed them into the dining-room, where, from behind a
screen, after the most careful manoeuvering, she had an opportunity of
studying them at her leisure. She drank in every detail of Berenice's
face--the delicately pointed chin, the clear, fixed blue eyes, the
straight, sensitive nose and tawny hair. Calling the head waiter, she
inquired the names of the two women, and in return for a liberal tip
was informed at once. "Mrs. Ira Carter, I believe, and her daughter,
Miss Fleming, Miss Berenice Fleming. Mrs. Carter was Mrs. Fleming
once." Aileen followed them out eventually, and in her own car pursued
them to their door, into which Cowperwood also disappeared. The next
day, by telephoning the apartment to make inquiry, she learned that
they actually lived there. After a few days of brooding she employed a
detective, and learned that Cowperwood was a constant visitor at the
Carters', that the machine in which they rode was his maintained at a
separate garage, and that they were of society truly. Aileen would
never have followed the clue so vigorously had it not been for the look
she had seen Cowperwood fix on the girl in the Park and in the
restaurant--an air of soul-hunger which could not be gainsaid.
Let no one ridicule the terrors of unrequited love. Its tentacles are
cancerous, its grip is of icy death. Sitting in her boudoir
immediately after these events, driving, walking, shopping, calling on
the few with whom she had managed to scrape an acquaintance, Aileen
thought morning, noon, and night of this new woman. The pale, delicate
face haunted her. What were those eyes, so remote in their gaze,
surveying? Love? Cowperwood? Yes! Yes! Gone in a flash, and
permanently, as it seemed to Aileen, was the value of this house, her
dream of a new social entrance. And she had already suffered so much;
endured so much. Cowperwood being absent for a fortnight, she moped in
her room, sighed, raged, and then began to drink. Finally she sent for
an actor who had once paid attention to her in Chicago, and whom she
had later met here in the circle of the theaters. She was not so much
burning with lust as determined in her drunken gloom that she would
have revenge. For days there followed an orgy, in which wine,
bestiality, mutual recrimination, hatred, and despair were involved.
Sobering eventually, she wondered what Cowperwood would think of her
now if he knew this? Could he ever love her any more? Could he even
tolerate her? But what did he care? It served him right, the dog! She
would show him, she would wreck his dream, she would make her own life
a scandal, and his too! She would shame him before all the world. He
should never have a divorce! He should never be able to marry a girl
like that and leave her alone--never, never, never! When Cowperwood
returned she snarled at him without vouchsafing an explanation.
He suspected at once that she had been spying upon his manoeuvers.
Moreover, he did not fail to notice her heavy eyes, superheated cheeks,
and sickly breath. Obviously she had abandoned her dream of a social
victory of some kind, and was entering on a career of what--debauchery?
Since coming to New York she had failed utterly, he thought, to make
any single intelligent move toward her social rehabilitation. The
banal realms of art and the stage, with which in his absence or neglect
she had trifled with here, as she had done in Chicago, were worse than
useless; they were destructive. He must have a long talk with her one
of these days, must confess frankly to his passion for Berenice, and
appeal to her sympathy and good sense. What scenes would follow! Yet
she might succumb, at that. Despair, pride, disgust might move her.
Besides, he could now bestow upon her a very large fortune. She could
go to Europe or remain here and live in luxury. He would always remain
friendly with her--helpful, advisory--if she would permit it.
The conversation which eventually followed on this topic was of such
stuff as dreams are made of. It sounded hollow and unnatural within
the walls where it took place. Consider the great house in upper Fifth
Avenue, its magnificent chambers aglow, of a stormy Sunday night.
Cowperwood was lingering in the city at this time, busy with a group of
Eastern financiers who were influencing his contest in the state
legislature of Illinois. Aileen was momentarily consoled by the
thought that for him perhaps love might, after all, be a thing apart--a
thing no longer vital and soul-controlling. To-night he was sitting in
the court of orchids, reading a book--the diary of Cellini, which some
one had recommended to him--stopping to think now and then of things in
Chicago or Springfield, or to make a note. Outside the rain was
splashing in torrents on the electric-lighted asphalt of Fifth
Avenue--the Park opposite a Corot-like shadow. Aileen was in the
music-room strumming indifferently. She was thinking of times
past--Lynde, from whom she had not heard in half a year; Watson Skeet,
the sculptor, who was also out of her ken at present. When Cowperwood
was in the city and in the house she was accustomed from habit to
remain indoors or near. So great is the influence of past customs of
devotion that they linger long past the hour when the act ceases to
become valid.
"What an awful night!" she observed once, strolling to a window to peer
out from behind a brocaded valance.
"It is bad, isn't it?" replied Cowperwood, as she returned. "Hadn't
you thought of going anywhere this evening?"
"No--oh no," replied Aileen, indifferently. She rose restlessly from
the piano, and strolled on into the great picture-gallery. Stopping
before one of Raphael Sanzio's Holy Families, only recently hung, she
paused to contemplate the serene face--medieval, Madonnaesque, Italian.
The lady seemed fragile, colorless, spineless--without life. Were
there such women? Why did artists paint them? Yet the little Christ was
sweet. Art bored Aileen unless others were enthusiastic. She craved
only the fanfare of the living--not painted resemblances. She returned
to the music-room, to the court of orchids, and was just about to go
up-stairs to prepare herself a drink and read a novel when Cowperwood
observed:
"You're bored, aren't you?"
"Oh no; I'm used to lonely evenings," she replied, quietly and without
any attempt at sarcasm.
Relentless as he was in hewing life to his theory--hammering substance
to the form of his thought--yet he was tender, too, in the manner of a
rainbow dancing over an abyss. For the moment he wanted to say, "Poor
girlie, you do have a hard time, don't you, with me?" but he reflected
instantly how such a remark would be received. He meditated, holding
his book in his hand above his knee, looking at the purling water that
flowed and flowed in sprinkling showers over the sportive marble
figures of mermaids, a Triton, and nymphs astride of fishes.
"You're really not happy in this state, any more, are you?" he
inquired. "Would you feel any more comfortable if I stayed away
entirely?"
His mind had turned of a sudden to the one problem that was fretting
him and to the opportunities of this hour.
"You would," she replied, for her boredom merely concealed her
unhappiness in no longer being able to command in the least his
interest or his sentiment.
"Why do you say that in just that way?" he asked.
"Because I know you would. I know why you ask. You know well enough
that it isn't anything I want to do that is concerned. It's what you
want to do. You'd like to turn me off like an old horse now that you
are tired of me, and so you ask whether I would feel any more
comfortable. What a liar you are, Frank! How really shifty you are! I
don't wonder you're a multimillionaire. If you could live long enough
you would eat up the whole world. Don't you think for one moment that
I don't know of Berenice Fleming here in New York, and how you're
dancing attendance on her--because I do. I know how you have been
hanging about her for months and months--ever since we have been here,
and for long before. You think she's wonderful now because she's young
and in society. I've seen you in the Waldorf and in the Park hanging on
her every word, looking at her with adoring eyes. What a fool you are,
to be so big a man! Every little snip, if she has pink cheeks and a
doll's face, can wind you right around her finger. Rita Sohlberg did
it; Stephanie Platow did it; Florence Cochrane did it; Cecily
Haguenin--and Heaven knows how many more that I never heard of. I
suppose Mrs. Hand still lives with you in Chicago--the cheap strumpet!
Now it's Berenice Fleming and her frump of a mother. From all I can
learn you haven't been able to get her yet--because her mother's too
shrewd, perhaps--but you probably will in the end. It isn't you so
much as your money that they're after. Pah! Well, I'm unhappy enough,
but it isn't anything you can remedy any more. Whatever you could do
to make me unhappy you have done, and now you talk of my being happier
away from you. Clever boy, you! I know you the way I know my ten
fingers. You don't deceive me at any time in any way any more. I
can't do anything about it. I can't stop you from making a fool of
yourself with every woman you meet, and having people talk from one end
of the country to the other. Why, for a woman to be seen with you is
enough to fix her reputation forever. Right now all Broadway knows
you're running after Berenice Fleming. Her name will soon be as sweet
as those of the others you've had. She might as well give herself to
you. If she ever had a decent reputation it's gone by now, you can
depend upon that."
These remarks irritated Cowperwood greatly--enraged him--particularly
her references to Berenice. What were you to do with such a woman? he
thought. Her tongue was becoming unbearable; her speech in its
persistence and force was that of a termagant. Surely, surely, he had
made a great mistake in marrying her. At the same time the control of
her was largely in his own hands even yet.
"Aileen," he said, coolly, at the end of her speech, "you talk too
much. You rave. You're growing vulgar, I believe. Now let me tell
you something." And he fixed her with a hard, quieting eye. "I have no
apologies to make. Think what you please. I know why you say what you
do. But here is the point. I want you to get it straight and clear.
It may make some difference eventually if you're any kind of a woman at
all. I don't care for you any more. If you want to put it another
way--I'm tired of you. I have been for a long while. That's why I've
run with other women. If I hadn't been tired of you I wouldn't have
done it. What's more, I'm in love with somebody else--Berenice
Fleming, and I expect to stay in love. I wish I were free so I could
rearrange my life on a different basis and find a little comfort before
I die. You don't really care for me any more. You can't. I'll admit
I have treated you badly; but if I had really loved you I wouldn't have
done it, would I? It isn't my fault that love died in me, is it? It
isn't your fault. I'm not blaming you. Love isn't a bunch of coals
that can be blown by an artificial bellows into a flame at any time.
It's out, and that's an end of it. Since I don't love you and can't,
why should you want me to stay near you? Why shouldn't you let me go
and give me a divorce? You'll be just as happy or unhappy away from me
as with me. Why not? I want to be free again. I'm miserable here, and
have been for a long time. I'll make any arrangement that seems fair
and right to you. I'll give you this house--these pictures, though I
really don't see what you'd want with them." (Cowperwood had no
intention of giving up the gallery if he could help it.) "I'll settle
on you for life any income you desire, or I'll give you a fixed sum
outright. I want to be free, and I want you to let me be. Now why
won't you be sensible and let me do this?"
During this harangue Cowperwood had first sat and then stood. At the
statement that his love was really dead--the first time he had ever
baldly and squarely announced it--Aileen had paled a little and put her
hand to her forehead over her eyes. It was then he had arisen. He was
cold, determined, a little revengeful for the moment. She realized now
that he meant this--that in his heart was no least feeling for all that
had gone before--no sweet memories, no binding thoughts of happy hours,
days, weeks, years, that were so glittering and wonderful to her in
retrospect. Great Heavens, it was really true! His love was dead; he
had said it! But for the nonce she could not believe it; she would not.
It really couldn't be true.
"Frank," she began, coming toward him, the while he moved away to evade
her. Her eyes were wide, her hands trembling, her lips moving in an
emotional, wavy, rhythmic way. "You really don't mean that, do you?
Love isn't wholly dead, is it? All the love you used to feel for me?
Oh, Frank, I have raged, I have hated, I have said terrible, ugly
things, but it has been because I have been in love with you! All the
time I have. You know that. I have felt so bad--O God, how bad I have
felt! Frank, you don't know it--but my pillow has been wet many and
many a night. I have cried and cried. I have got up and walked the
floor. I have drunk whisky--plain, raw whisky--because something hurt
me and I wanted to kill the pain. I have gone with other men, one
after another--you know that--but, oh! Frank, Frank, you know that I
didn't want to, that I didn't mean to! I have always despised the
thought of them afterward. It was only because I was lonely and
because you wouldn't pay any attention to me or be nice to me. Oh, how
I have longed and longed for just one loving hour with you--one night,
one day! There are women who could suffer in silence, but I can't. My
mind won't let me alone, Frank--my thoughts won't. I can't help
thinking how I used to run to you in Philadelphia, when you would meet
me on your way home, or when I used to come to you in Ninth Street or
on Eleventh. Oh, Frank, I probably did wrong to your first wife. I
see it now--how she must have suffered! But I was just a silly girl
then, and I didn't know. Don't you remember how I used to come to you
in Ninth Street and how I saw you day after day in the penitentiary in
Philadelphia? You said then you would love me always and that you would
never forget. Can't you love me any more--just a little? Is it really
true that your love is dead? Am I so old, so changed? Oh, Frank, please
don't say that--please don't--please, please please! I beg of you!"
She tried to reach him and put a hand on his arm, but he stepped aside.
To him, as he looked at her now, she was the antithesis of anything he
could brook, let alone desire artistically or physically. The charm
was gone, the spell broken. It was another type, another point of view
he required, but, above all and principally, youth, youth--the spirit,
for instance, that was in Berenice Fleming. He was sorry--in his way.
He felt sympathy, but it was like the tinkling of a far-off
sheep-bell--the moaning of a whistling buoy heard over the thrash of
night-black waves on a stormy sea.
"You don't understand how it is, Aileen," he said. "I can't help
myself. My love is dead. It is gone. I can't recall it. I can't
feel it. I wish I could, but I can't; you must understand that. Some
things are possible and some are not."
He looked at her, but with no relenting. Aileen, for her part, saw in
his eyes nothing, as she believed, save cold philosophic logic--the man
of business, the thinker, the bargainer, the plotter. At the thought of
the adamantine character of his soul, which could thus definitely close
its gates on her for ever and ever, she became wild, angry,
feverish--not quite sane.
"Oh, don't say that!" she pleaded, foolishly. "Please don't. Please
don't say that. It might come back a little if--if--you would only
believe in it. Don't you see how I feel? Don't you see how it is?"
She dropped to her knees and clasped him about the waist. "Oh, Frank!
Oh, Frank! Oh, Frank!" she began to call, crying. "I can't stand it! I
can't! I can't! I can't! I shall die."
"Don't give way like that, Aileen," he pleaded. "It doesn't do any
good. I can't lie to myself. I don't want to lie to you. Life is too
short. Facts are facts. If I could say and believe that I loved you I
would say so now, but I can't. I don't love you. Why should I say
that I do?"
In the content of Aileen's nature was a portion that was purely
histrionic, a portion that was childish--petted and spoiled--a portion
that was sheer unreason, and a portion that was splendid emotion--deep,
dark, involved. At this statement of Cowperwood's which seemed to
throw her back on herself for ever and ever to be alone, she first
pleaded willingness to compromise--to share. She had not fought
Stephanie Platow, she had not fought Florence Cochrane, nor Cecily
Haguenin, nor Mrs. Hand, nor, indeed, anybody after Rita, and she would
fight no more. She had not spied on him in connection with
Berenice--she had accidentally met them. True, she had gone with other
men, but? Berenice was beautiful, she admitted it, but so was she in
her way still--a little, still. Couldn't he find a place for her yet in
his life? Wasn't there room for both?
At this expression of humiliation and defeat Cowperwood was sad, sick,
almost nauseated. How could one argue? How make her understand?
"I wish it were possible, Aileen," he concluded, finally and heavily,
"but it isn't."
All at once she arose, her eyes red but dry.
"You don't love me, then, at all, do you? Not a bit?"
"No, Aileen, I don't. I don't mean by that that I dislike you. I don't
mean to say that you aren't interesting in your way as a woman and that
I don't sympathize with you. I do. But I don't love you any more. I
can't. The thing I used to feel I can't feel any more."
She paused for a moment, uncertain how to take this, the while she
whitened, grew more tense, more spiritual than she had been in many a
day. Now she felt desperate, angry, sick, but like the scorpion that
ringed by fire can turn only on itself. What a hell life was, she told
herself. How it slipped away and left one aging, horribly alone! Love
was nothing, faith nothing--nothing, nothing!
A fine light of conviction, intensity, intention lit her eye for the
moment. "Very well, then," she said, coolly, tensely. "I know what
I'll do. I'll not live this way. I'll not live beyond to-night. I
want to die, anyhow, and I will."
It was by no means a cry, this last, but a calm statement. It should
prove her love. To Cowperwood it seemed unreal, bravado, a momentary
rage intended to frighten him. She turned and walked up the grand
staircase, which was near--a splendid piece of marble and bronze
fifteen feet wide, with marble nereids for newel-posts, and dancing
figures worked into the stone. She went into her room quite calmly and
took up a steel paper-cutter of dagger design--a knife with a handle of
bronze and a point of great sharpness. Coming out and going along the
balcony over the court of orchids, where Cowperwood still was seated,
she entered the sunrise room with its pool of water, its birds, its
benches, its vines. Locking the door, she sat down and then, suddenly
baring an arm, jabbed a vein--ripped it for inches--and sat there to
bleed. Now she would see whether she could die, whether he would let
her.
Uncertain, astonished, not able to believe that she could be so rash,
not believing that her feeling could be so great, Cowperwood still
remained where she had left him wondering. He had not been so greatly
moved--the tantrums of women were common--and yet-- Could she really be
contemplating death? How could she? How ridiculous! Life was so
strange, so mad. But this was Aileen who had just made this threat,
and she had gone up the stairs to carry it out, perhaps. Impossible!
How could it be? Yet back of all his doubts there was a kind of
sickening feeling, a dread. He recalled how she had assaulted Rita
Sohlberg.
He hurried up the steps now and into her room. She was not there. He
went quickly along the balcony, looking here and there, until he came
to the sunrise room. She must be there, for the door was shut. He
tried it--it was locked.
"Aileen," he called. "Aileen! Are you in there?" No answer. He
listened. Still no answer. "Aileen!" he repeated. "Are you in there?
What damned nonsense is this, anyhow?"
"George!" he thought to himself, stepping back; "she might do it,
too--perhaps she has." He could not hear anything save the odd
chattering of a toucan aroused by the light she had switched on.
Perspiration stood out on his brow. He shook the knob, pushed a bell
for a servant, called for keys which had been made for every door,
called for a chisel and hammer.
"Aileen," he said, "if you don't open the door this instant I will see
that it is opened. It can be opened quick enough."
Still no sound.
"Damn it!" he exclaimed, becoming wretched, horrified. A servant
brought the keys. The right one would not enter. A second was on the
other side. "There is a bigger hammer somewhere," Cowperwood said.
"Get it! Get me a chair!" Meantime, with terrific energy, using a large
chisel, he forced the door.
There on one of the stone benches of the lovely room sat Aileen, the
level pool of water before her, the sunrise glow over every thing,
tropic birds in their branches, and she, her hair disheveled, her face
pale, one arm--her left--hanging down, ripped and bleeding, trickling a
thick stream of rich, red blood. On the floor was a pool of blood,
fierce, scarlet, like some rich cloth, already turning darker in places.
Cowperwood paused--amazed. He hurried forward, seized her arm, made a
bandage of a torn handkerchief above the wound, sent for a surgeon,
saying the while: "How could you, Aileen? How impossible! To try to
take your life! This isn't love. It isn't even madness. It's foolish
acting."
"Don't you really care?" she asked.
"How can you ask? How could you really do this?"
He was angry, hurt, glad that she was alive, shamed--many things.
"Don't you really care?" she repeated, wearily.
"Aileen, this is nonsense. I will not talk to you about it now. Have
you cut yourself anywhere else?" he asked, feeling about her bosom and
sides.
"Then why not let me die?" she replied, in the same manner. "I will
some day. I want to."
"Well, you may, some day," he replied, "but not to-night. I scarcely
think you want to now. This is too much, Aileen--really impossible."
He drew himself up and looked at her--cool, unbelieving, the light of
control, even of victory, in his eyes. As he had suspected, it was not
truly real. She would not have killed herself. She had expected him
to come--to make the old effort. Very good. He would see her safely
in bed and in a nurse's hands, and would then avoid her as much as
possible in the future. If her intention was genuine she would carry
it out in his absence, but he did not believe she would.