The Stoic tod-3

by Theodore Dreiser

  After deciding to take residence at the Plaza Hotel, for a few weeks at least, she and her mother declared their baggage and later climbed into a taxi with a happy sense of being home at last. Berenice’s first impulse, after they were settled in their hotel suite, was to call on Dr. James. She longed to talk to him about Cowperwood, herself, India, and everything pertaining to the past, as well as her own future. And when she saw him in his private office in his home on West Eightieth Street, she was overjoyed by his warm and cordial reception and his very great interest in all she had to tell about her travels and experiences.

  At the same time, he felt that she was wanting to hear everything relating to Cowperwood’s estate. And as much as he disliked reviewing the unsatisfactory handling of the entire affair, he felt it his duty to explain to her exactly what had happened during her absence. Hence, first he told her of Aileen’s death a few months before. This greatly shocked and surprised Berenice, for she had always thought of Aileen as the one to carry out Cowperwood’s wishes in connection with his estate. Immediately she thought of the hospital, the founding of which she knew had been one of his sincerest desires.

  “What about the hospital he intended to have built in the Bronx?” she earnestly inquired.

  “Oh, that,” replied Dr. James. “That never materialized. Too many legal vultures descended on the estate right after Frank’s death. They came from everywhere, with their claims and counterclaims, foreclosure papers, and even legal disputes over the choice of executors. Four and a half million dollars’ worth of bonds were declared worthless. Bills for interest on mortgages, legal expenses of all kinds, always mounting against the estate, until finally it dwindled to a tenth of what it had been originally.”

  “And the art gallery?” queried Berenice anxiously.

  “All dissipated—auctioned off. The mansion itself sold for taxes and other claims against it. Aileen was compelled to move to an apartment. Then she got pneumonia and died. Unquestionably, grief over all of this trouble contributed to her death.”

  “Oh, how terrible!” exclaimed Berenice. “How sad it would make him feel if he knew! He worked so hard to build it up.”

  “Yes, he did,” commented James, “but they never gave him credit for good intentions. Why, even after Aileen’s death, there were articles in the newspapers describing Cowperwood as a social and almost criminal failure, because, as they said, his millions ‘had faded like a dream.’ In fact, one article was headed ‘What Availeth It?’ and painted Frank as a complete failure. Yes, there were many unkind articles, and all based on the fact that after he was gone, his fortune, through the legal connivance of many people, had shrunk to almost nothing.”

  “Oh, Dr. James, isn’t it dreadful to think that the fine things he contemplated doing should have come to nothing?”

  “Yes, nothing is left but a tomb, and memories.”

  Berenice went on to tell him of her philosophical findings: the inward change she felt had come over her. The things that she once had felt were so important had lost their glamor, her anxiety over her own social position in connection with Cowperwood, for instance. More important to her, she said, was the tragic situation of the Indian people as a whole, some of which she recited to him: the poverty, starvation, malnutrition, illiteracy, and ignorance, much of which had grown out of religious and social delusions connected with superstitions; in sum, the absolute non-understanding of the world’s social, technical, and scientific advance. James listened intently, remarking, in places, “Dreadful!” “Amazing!” until she had finished, after which he observed:

  “Actually, Berenice, all that you say of India is true. But it is also true, I fear, that America and England are not without their social defects. In fact, right here in this country, there are certainly many social evils and miseries. If you would care to come with me some day on a little tour of New York, I could show you large districts filled with people just about as miserable as your Hindu beggars, and neglected children, whose chance for physical and mental survival is practically non-existent. They are born in poverty, and, in most cases, end in it, and their intermediate years are nothing that could be called living in the sense that we think of it. And then there are the poor sections in our manufacturing and mill towns, where the living conditions are as deplorable as those to be found in any part of the world.”

  At this point Berenice expressed the wish that he take her to see some of the sections of New York which would substantiate his statements, for she had seen or heard little of such conditions throughout her life. Dr. James was not surprised to hear her say that, for he knew that her social path from her youth onward had been a sheltered one.

  After visiting with him a little longer, Berenice left for her hotel. But on her way home she could not drive from her mind the account by James of the dissipation of Cowperwood’s wealth. She was filled with sorrow as she inwardly reviewed the wreckage of all of his plans. How completely they had failed! At the same time, she was thinking of his love for her, his mental and emotional dependency on her, and her affection for him. It was through her influence, as she recalled, that he had decided to go to London and work on his plan for the underground system. And now, here she was, planning on the morrow to visit his tomb again, the last material vestige of all the values that had seemed so vividly real and wonderful to her at the time, but which now, in comparison with all she had experienced in India, were no longer important to her.

  The following day was almost a duplicate of the day on which Cowperwood had been buried. For the sky was again gray and overcast, and, as she approached the tomb, it was as though a lone finger of stone pointed upward to the leaden noonday sky. As she walked down the pebbled path, her arms rilled with flowers, she noted the name: AILEEN BUTLER COWPERWOOD, under the name, FRANK ALGERNON COWPERWOOD, and she was grateful that Aileen was now at last alongside of the man for whom she had suffered so intensely and lost. She, Berenice, had seemingly won, but only for a time, for she also had suffered and lost in the end.

  As she stood gazing thoughtfully at Cowperwood’s last resting place, she felt she could hear again the sonorous tones of the minister as he had spoken at the burial service:

  “As soon as Thou scatterest them, they are even as asleep and fade suddenly like the grass. In the morning, it is green, and groweth up; but in the evening it is cut down, dried up and withered.”

  But now she could not think of death as she had thought of it before going to India. There death was considered but a phase of life, and the destruction of one material form but a prelude to the building up of another. “We are never born and we never die,” they said.

  And as she walked about arranging the flowers in a bronze urn on the steps of the tomb, she thought that Cowperwood must know, if he had not when he was here in the flesh, that his worship and constant search for beauty in every form, and especially in the form of a woman, was nothing more than a search for the Divine design behind all forms—the face of Brahman shining through. She wished that he might have shared these thoughts with her when they were together, and recalled the words:

  Absorbed in Brahman

  He overcomes the world,

  Even here, alive in the world,

  Brahman is one,

  Changeless, untouched by evil;

  What home have we but Him?

  And what was it that the Guru had said of charity? “Be thankful for the opportunity to give to others. Be grateful that by helping a poor man, you are able to help yourself. For, is not the universe yourself? If a man come to your door, go and meet yourself.”

  But, as she now searched her conscience, what place had charity ever had in her life? What had she ever done to help others? What had she ever done to justify her right to live? True, Cowperwood had not only conceived the idea of founding a hospital for the poor, but he had done everything humanly possible to bring it into existence, even though his plans had failed. But she—had she ever had a desire to help the poor? Not that she could recall her entire
life, as she realized—with the exception of the past few years—had been spent in the pursuit of pleasure and self-advancement. But now she knew that one must live for something outside of one’s self, something that would tend to answer the needs of the many as opposed to the vanities and comforts of the few, of which she herself was one. What could she do to help?

  And suddenly at that point in her meditations, the thought of Cowperwood’s hospital crossed her mind. Why couldn’t she, herself, found a hospital? After all, he had left her a large fortune, a fine home filled with valuable art objects on which she could easily realize a considerable sum of money, which, added to what she already had, might enable her at least to start the project. And perhaps she could induce others to help. Dr. James would surely be one of these.

  What a wonderful thought this was!

  APPENDIX

  The preceding chapter consists of the last lines ever written by Theodore Dreiser on the day before his death, December 28, 1945. He left notes, however, for an additional chapter and a summary of the three books of the trilogy: The Financier, The Titan and The Stoic. The summary would have been written in the form of a soliloquy which, Mrs. Dreiser points out, would have left no doubt in the mind of the reader as to his conception of life, strength and weakness, wealth and poverty, good and evil.

  The following was prepared by Mrs. Theodore Dreiser from the notes of her husband.

  As Berenice rode home from Green Wood in her carriage, she contemplated the possibilities of promoting a hospital, realistically facing the complicated practical, as well as technical and medical aspects, which would necessitate the enlistment of people of wealth and a charitable turn of mind and those of the proper technical skill and knowledge that it would take to correctly organize and promote such a large undertaking. She planned to sell her house on Park Avenue with all of its contents, which would bring at least four hundred thousand dollars. She would add to this half of her present fortune, which, altogether, would be a small beginning. Of course, as she thought, Dr. James would be the right man as head physician and director, but could she interest him? Her mind was filled with thoughts and anticipations of the possibilities in connection with the hospital until she again saw Dr. James, who had invited her to accompany him on a tour of one of the worst of New York’s East Side tenements.

  To Berenice, who, never in her youth, had visited any of the poverty-stricken, beggarly, or neglected sections of New York, this first visit to the East Side streets was a painful revelation. Sheltered as she had always been, by her mother, until the fateful night she was so bitterly embarrassed in a dining room of one of New York’s principal hotels, when she publicly learned the truth about her mother, Hattie Starr of Louisville, and when for the first time the import and horror of social ostracism had flashed upon her!

  But Berenice had survived all this. Her values, as she was to learn later, had changed immeasurably. Her social ambitions of the past seemed a thin crust to her now. In India a desire had been born in her to dip deeper into life—to observe and study at closer hand life forces, which, as she now realized, she had never touched on before. Instead of looking for a socially secure position for herself personally, she was now becoming aware of wanting to find a socially worthwhile vocation.

  And so when she and Dr. James visited a tenement with which he was familiar, Berenice was so affected by the appalling conditions, the stench and squalor of the place, that she became ill. For, as she saw, there were no beds. Instead, pallets were put down on the floor at night and piled up in a corner in the daytime. In a room twelve by fifteen, adjoining a smaller room nine by twelve, six adults and seven children existed. No windows. But large openings in the walls that revealed from odors and unmistakable markings the presence of rats.

  When they finally reached the street and fresh air again, Berenice told Dr. James that her one ambition was to found the Cowperwood Hospital herself in an endeavour to help some of these wretched and neglected children whom they had just seen. She would gladly give, so she said, half of her possessions to the project.

  Dr. James, intensely moved by this turn of mind in Berenice, realized that a change had taken place in her since leaving America a few years before. And Berenice, sensing his approving reaction to her wish, asked him if he would help her raise the money for it, and whether he would personally take over the medical and technical direction of the hospital. And Dr. James, realizing for a long time the pressing need of a hospital in the Bronx vicinity, as well as it being one of his deepest desires, heartily agreed to the idea, and said he would be honored to become the director and head physician.

  Six years later the hospital became a reality; Dr. James, director in charge. Berenice had taken a nurse’s course, and, to her own astonishment, had discovered that she possessed a deep maternal instinct, hitherto unexplored. She loved the children and was placed in charge of the children’s ward. As Dr. James noticed, from time to time she had a strange and powerful attraction for these neglected waifs. They responded to her in a marked way.

  Two small blind children had, in some way, gotten into the ward. They had been blind from birth. One, a small frail blond child named Patricia—five years old—a daughter of a hard-working girl who had had no time for her child, had been allowed to sit for hours and hours in a little rocking chair in a corner, with no least stimuli or interest—a procedure of neglect which had retarded her natural development. The mother also had a guilt complex in relation to her handicapped child. When Berenice found this little isolated mite of humanity, she became fascinated by her and desired to help her, teaching her many little things, among them being how to slide with confidence down a chute in the Children’s Court. So much joy had Patricia experienced from this simple stunt that she slid over and over and over again for hours, each time radiating with happiness at her newly found independence.

  Then there was David—also about five, blind from birth. He was more fortunate in his parentage, having had an intelligent mother, with love and understanding. As a result, he was more advanced than Patricia in his development. He had been taught by Berenice to climb a tree and sit among the upper branches, where he sang repeatedly “In the Gloaming,” waving his head from side to side and lifting his thin, sensitive face to the sun, as blind children are wont to do. One day, as Dr. James passed a large window overlooking the Children’s Court, he paused to watch Berenice moving back and forth among the children. He noticed how radiantly happy she was when at work with them. He remarked about it to Miss Slater, the head nurse, as she passed. They both agreed that Berenice had far surpassed anything expected of her and was worthy of unstinted praise. The same evening, as Berenice was leaving the hospital for her home, Miss Slater and Dr. James told her what a success she had made of her work with the children, and how much everyone loved and appreciated her. Berenice graciously thanked them, expressing gratitude at being able to contribute something of worth to these unfortunate children.

  However, as she walked home to her modest apartment, she could not help but think what a minute part she was playing in the world panorama of life. A speck of human kindness in the sea of need and despair! She recalled the poor starving children of India—their tortured faces! The cruelty, neglect and torturesome indifference of the rest of the world to their pathetic plight.

  “What is the world anyway?” she asked herself. “Why should millions of little things come into it only to be tortured and so denied—to be allowed to die from want, cold, starvation?” Yes, to be sure, she thought, she was now at last trying to do what she could to relieve the sufferings of a few children, who were fortunate enough to be taken into her hospital. But what about all of those thousands who could not be taken in? What of them? A drop in the ocean was her contribution. One drop!

  Berenice relived in her mind her entire life. She thought of Cowperwood and the part she had played in his life. How long he had struggled and fought—for what? Wealth, power, luxury, influence, social position? Where were they now, the aspirat
ions and dreams of achievement that so haunted and drove Frank Cowperwood? And how far away from all this she had moved in so short a time! How suddenly she was awakened to the grim realities of life from her own protected, abundant and indulged way of living—a way of living she might never have been able to evaluate to herself if she had not in the first place acted upon the impulse to go to a strange country like India, where she had at every turn contrasts thrust upon her sensibilities—contrasts from which there was no escape.

  There, for the first time, she had experienced the dawn of a spiritual awakening, which was even now enabling her to see more clearly. She must go on, she must grow, she thought, and acquire, if possible, a real and deep understanding of the meaning of life and its spiritual import.

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