The Titan tod-2

by Theodore Dreiser

  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.

  Chapter LVIII.

  A Marauder Upon the Commonwealth

  The spring and summer months of 1897 and the late fall of 1898 witnessed the final closing battle between Frank Algernon Cowperwood and the forces inimical to him in so far as the city of Chicago, the state of Illinois, and indeed the United States of America, were concerned. When in 1896 a new governor and a new group of state representatives were installed Cowperwood decided that it would be advisable to continue the struggle at once. By the time this new legislature should convene for its labors a year would have passed since Governor Swanson had vetoed the original public-service-commission bill. By that time public sentiment as aroused by the newspapers would have had time to cool. Already through various favorable financial interests—particularly Haeckelheimer, Gotloeb & Co. and all the subsurface forces they represented—he had attempted to influence the incoming governor, and had in part succeeded.

  The new governor in this instance—one Corporal A. E. Archer—or ex-Congressman Archer, as he was sometimes called—was, unlike Swanson, a curious mixture of the commonplace and the ideal—one of
those shiftily loyal and loyally shifty who make their upward way by devious, if not too reprehensible methods. He was a little man, stocky, brown-haired, brown-eyed, vigorous, witty, with the ordinary politician’s estimate of public morality—namely, that there is no such thing. A drummer-boy at fourteen in the War of the Rebellion, a private at sixteen and eighteen, he had subsequently been breveted for conspicuous military service. At this later time he was head of the Grand Army of the Republic, and conspicuous in various stirring eleemosynary efforts on behalf of the old soldiers, their widows and orphans. A fine American, flag-waving, tobacco-chewing, foul-swearing little man was this—and one with noteworthy political ambitions. Other Grand Army men had been conspicuous in the lists for Presidential nominations. Why not he? An excellent orator in a high falsetto way, and popular because of good-fellowship, presence, force, he was by nature materially and commercially minded—therefore without basic appeal to the higher ranks of intelligence. In seeking the nomination for governorship he had made the usual overtures and had in turn been sounded by Haeckelheimer, Gotloeb, and various other corporate interests who were in league with Cowperwood as to his attitude in regard to a proposed public-service commission. At first he had refused to commit himself. Later, finding that the C. W. & I. and the Chicago & Pacific (very powerful railroads both) were interested, and that other candidates were running him a tight chase in the gubernatorial contest, he succumbed in a measure, declaring privately that in case the legislature proved to be strongly in favor of the idea and the newspapers not too crushingly opposed he might be willing to stand as its advocate. Other candidates expressed similar views, but Corporal Archer proved to have the greater following, and was eventually nominated and comfortably elected.

  Shortly after the new legislature had convened, it so chanced that a certain A. S. Rotherhite, publisher of the South Chicago Journal, was one day accidentally sitting as a visitor in the seat of a state representative by the name of Clarence Mulligan. While so occupied Rotherhite was familiarly slapped on the back by a certain Senator Ladrigo, of Menard, and was invited to come out into the rotunda, where, posing as Representative Mulligan, he was introduced by Senator Ladrigo to a stranger by the name of Gerard. The latter, with but few preliminary remarks, began as follows:

  “Mr. Mulligan, I want to fix it with you in regard to this Southack bill which is soon to come up in the house. We have seventy votes, but we want ninety. The fact that the bill has gone to a second reading in the senate shows our strength. I am authorized to come to terms with you this morning if you would like. Your vote is worth two thousand dollars to you the moment the bill is signed.”

  Mr. Rotherhite, who happened to be a newly recruited member of the Opposition press, proved very canny in this situation.

  “Excuse me,” he stammered, “I did not understand your name?”

  “Gerard. G-er-ard. Henry A. Gerard,” replied this other.

  “Thank you. I will think it over,” was the response of the presumed Representative Mulligan.

  Strange to state, at this very instant the authentic Mulligan actually appeared—heralded aloud by several of his colleagues who happened to be lingering near by in the lobby. Whereupon the anomalous Mr. Gerard and the crafty Senator Ladrigo discreetly withdrew. Needless to say that Mr. Rotherhite hurried at once to the forces of righteousness. The press should spread this little story broadcast. It was a very meaty incident; and it brought the whole matter once more into the fatal, poisonous field of press discussion.

  At once the Chicago papers flew to arms. The cry was raised that the same old sinister Cowperwoodian forces were at work. The members of the senate and the house were solemnly warned. The sterling attitude of ex-Governor Swanson was held up as an example to the present Governor Archer. “The whole idea,” observed an editorial in Truman Leslie MacDonald’s Inquirer, “smacks of chicane, political subtlety, and political jugglery. Well do the citizens of Chicago and the people of Illinois know who and what particular organization would prove the true beneficiaries. We do not want a public-service commission at the behest of a private street-railway corporation. Are the tentacles of Frank A. Cowperwood to envelop this legislature as they did the last?”

  This broadside, coming in conjunction with various hostile rumblings in other papers, aroused Cowperwood to emphatic language.

  “They can all go to the devil,” he said to Addison, one day at lunch. “I have a right to an extension of my franchises for fifty years, and I am going to get it. Look at New York and Philadelphia. Why, the Eastern houses laugh. They don’t understand such a situation. It’s all the inside work of this Hand-Schryhart crowd. I know what they’re doing and who’s pulling the strings. The newspapers yap-yap every time they give an order. Hyssop waltzes every time Arneel moves. Little MacDonald is a stool-pigeon for Hand. It’s got down so low now that it’s anything to beat Cowperwood. Well, they won’t beat me. I’ll find a way out. The legislature will pass a bill allowing for a fifty-year franchise, and the governor will sign it. I’ll see to that personally. I have at least eighteen thousand stockholders who want a decent run for their money, and I propose to give it to them. Aren’t other men getting rich? Aren’t other corporations earning ten and twelve per cent? Why shouldn’t I? Is Chicago any the worse? Don’t I employ twenty thousand men and pay them well? All this palaver about the rights of the people and the duty to the public—rats! Does Mr. Hand acknowledge any duty to the public where his special interests are concerned? Or Mr. Schryhart? Or Mr. Arneel? The newspapers be damned! I know my rights. An honest legislature will give me a decent franchise to save me from the local political sharks.”

  By this time, however, the newspapers had become as subtle and powerful as the politicians themselves. Under the great dome of the capitol at Springfield, in the halls and conference chambers of the senate and house, in the hotels, and in the rural districts wherever any least information was to be gathered, were their representatives—to see, to listen, to pry. Out of this contest they were gaining prestige and cash. By them were the reform aldermen persuaded to call mass-meetings in their respective districts. Property-owners were urged to organize; a committee of one hundred prominent citizens led by Hand and Schryhart was formed. It was not long before the halls, chambers, and committee-rooms of the capitol at Springfield and the corridors of the one principal hotel were being tramped over almost daily by rampant delegations of ministers, reform aldermen, and civil committeemen, who arrived speechifying, threatening, and haranguing, and departed, only to make room for another relay.

  “Say, what do you think of these delegations, Senator?” inquired a certain Representative Greenough of Senator George Christian, of Grundy, one morning, the while a group of Chicago clergymen accompanied by the mayor and several distinguished private citizens passed through the rotunda on their way to the committee on railroads, where the house bill was privily being discussed. “Don’t you think they speak well for our civic pride and moral upbringing?” He raised his eyes and crossed his fingers over his waistcoat in the most sanctimonious and reverential attitude.

  “Yes, dear Pastor,” replied the irreverent Christian, without the shadow of a smile. He was a little sallow, wiry man with eyes like a ferret, a small mustache and goatee ornamenting his face. “But do not forget that the Lord has called us also to this work.”

  “Even so,” acquiesced Greenough. “We must not weary in well doing. The harvest is truly plenteous and the laborers are few.”

  “Tut, tut, Pastor. Don’t overdo it. You might make me larf,” replied Christian; and the twain parted with knowing and yet weary smiles.

  Yet how little did the accommodating attitude of these gentlemen avail in silencing the newspapers. The damnable newspapers! They were here, there, and everywhere reporting each least fragment of rumor, conversation, or imaginary programme. Never did the citizens of Chicago receive so keen a drilling in statecraft—its subtleties and ramifications. The president of the senate and the speaker of the house were sing
led out and warned separately as to their duty. A page a day devoted to legislative proceeding in this quarter was practically the custom of the situation. Cowperwood was here personally on the scene, brazen, defiant, logical, the courage of his convictions in his eyes, the power of his magnetism fairly enslaving men. Throwing off the mask of disinterestedness—if any might be said to have covered him—he now frankly came out in the open and, journeying to Springfield, took quarters at the principal hotel. Like a general in time of battle, he marshaled his forces about him. In the warm, moonlit atmosphere of June nights when the streets of Springfield were quiet, the great plain of Illinois bathed for hundreds of miles from north to south in a sweet effulgence and the rurals slumbering in their simple homes, he sat conferring with his lawyers and legislative agents.

  Pity in such a crisis the poor country-jake legislator torn between his desire for a justifiable and expedient gain and his fear lest he should be assailed as a betrayer of the people’s interests. To some of these small-town legislators, who had never seen as much as two thousand dollars in cash in all their days, the problem was soul-racking. Men gathered in private rooms and hotel parlors to discuss it. They stood in their rooms at night and thought about it alone. The sight of big business compelling its desires the while the people went begging was destructive. Many a romantic, illusioned, idealistic young country editor, lawyer, or statesman was here made over into a minor cynic or bribe-taker. Men were robbed of every vestige of faith or even of charity; they came to feel, perforce, that there was nothing outside the capacity for taking and keeping. The surface might appear commonplace—ordinary men of the state of Illinois going here and there—simple farmers and small-town senators and representatives conferring and meditating and wondering what they could do—yet a jungle-like complexity was present, a dark, rank growth of horrific but avid life—life at the full, life knife in hand, life blazing with courage and dripping at the jaws with hunger.