Текст книги "Финансист / The Financier"

Chapter XIX

The growth of a passion is a very peculiar thing. Cowperwood was innately and primarily an egoist and intellectual. Cowperwood was a financier. When it came to women and morals, he was beginning to suspect that apart from maintaining organized society in its present form there was no basis for the one-love idea[56]56
  the one-love idea – идея однолюбия


[Закрыть]. Why had so many people agreed, that it was good and necessary to marry one woman and cleave to her until death? He did not know. Usually people did not cleave to each other until death; and in thousands of cases where they did, they did not want to.

“I would die, too,” he thought to himself, one day, reading of a man who, confined by disease and poverty, had lived for twelve years alone in a bedroom attended by an old and probably decrepit housekeeper. A needle forced into his heart had ended his earthly woes. “To the devil with such a life! Why twelve years? Why not at the end of the second or third?”

Again, it was so very evident, in so many ways, that force was the answer—great mental and physical force. These giants of commerce and money could do as they pleased in this life, and did. The thing for him to do was to get rich. Force would do that. Quickness of wit. And he had these. “I satisfy myself,” was his motto.

But this matter of Aileen… It was a problem, like some of those knotty financial complications which presented themselves daily; but it was not insoluble. What did he want to do? He couldn't leave his wife and fly with Aileen, that was certain. He had too many connections. Children and parents, emotional and financial ties. Besides, he was not at all sure that he wanted to. He did not intend to leave his growing interests, and at the same time he did not intend to give up Aileen immediately. The manifestation of interest on her part was too attractive.

His wife was a natural conservator of public morals. But why do one thing and think another? She was devoted to him in her quiet way, not passionately, but intellectually. Duty, as she understood it, played a great part in this. She was dutiful.

Aileen, on the contrary, was probably not dutiful. In the next three months this relationship took on a more flagrant form. When he touched her hand at parting, it was as though she had received an electric shock, and she recalled that it was very difficult for her to look directly into his eyes.

And during the next few months she found herself coming closer and closer to Cowperwood. At his home one evening, seated at the piano, no one else being present at the moment, he leaned over and kissed her. He came beside her, and she looked up smiling. Suddenly he bent over and pressed his lips firmly to hers. She stopped playing and tried to catch her breath. Her heart was beating like a triphammer. She did not say, “Oh,” or, “You mustn't,” but rose and walked over to a window, where she lifted a curtain, pretending to look out.

Cowperwood followed her quickly. Slipping his arms about her waist, he looked at her flushed cheeks, her clear, moist eyes and red mouth.

“Do you love me?” he whispered.

“Yes! Yes! You know I do.”

He crushed her face to his, and she put up her hands and stroked his hair.

“I love you,” he said. “I didn't think I did, but I do. You're beautiful. I'm wild about you.”

“And I love you” she answered. “I can't help it. I know I shouldn't, but—oh.”

Her hands closed tight over his ears and temples. She put her lips to his. Then she stepped away quickly, looking out into the street, and he walked back into the living-room.

Chapter XX

So this liaison proceeded to a closer and closer relationship. Despite her religious upbringing, Aileen was decidedly a victim of her temperament. Current religious feeling and belief could not control her. For the past nine or ten years there had been slowly forming in her mind a notion of what her lover should be like. He should be strong, handsome, direct, successful, with clear eyes, a ruddy glow of health, and a certain understanding and sympathy. Many young men had approached her. Frank Cowperwood had been slowly built up in her mind as the ideal person. She was drawn as planets are drawn to their sun.

Usually fear is a great deterrent—but wealth and position so often tend to destroy this dread. It is so easy to scheme with means. Aileen had no spiritual dread whatever. Cowperwood was without spiritual or religious feeling. He looked at this girl, and his one thought was how could he so deceive the world that he could enjoy her love and leave his present state undisturbed.

He visited the Butlers quite frequently, and on each occasion he saw Aileen. One day, as he was going out, she suddenly appeared from behind the curtains hanging at the parlor door.

“Honey!”

The voice was soft and coaxing. She stood there, holding out one hand, and he stepped forward for a second. Instantly her arms were about his neck.

“I want to bee with you.”

“I, too. I'll fix some way. I'm thinking.”

He released her arms, and went out, and she ran to the window and looked out after him. He was walking west on the street, for his house was only a few blocks away, and she looked at the breadth of his shoulders. He stepped so briskly, so incisively. Ah, this was a man! He was her Frank. She thought of him in that light already. Then she sat down at the piano and played pensively until dinner.

And it was so easy for the resourceful mind of Frank Cowperwood to suggest ways and means. He had learned much of the resources of immorality. Being a city of five hundred thousand and more at this time, Philadelphia had its hotels, where one might go, cautiously and fairly protected from observation; and there were houses of a conservative, residential character, where appointments might be made. He knew all about them.

Aileen's craving was for love—to be fondled and caressed—and she really did not think so much further. Further thoughts along this line were like rats that showed their heads out of dark holes in shadowy corners and scuttled back at the least sound. And, anyhow, all that was connected with Cowperwood would be beautiful.

So there were meetings, lovely hours which they soon began to spend together. Cowperwood was not one who was temperamentally inclined to lose his head and neglect his business. As a matter of fact, the more he thought of this rather unexpected affectional development, the more certain he was that he must not let it interfere with his business time.

Cowperwood awakened to a sense of joy in life he had never experienced before. Lillian had been lovely in those early days in which he had first called on her in North Front Street, and he had fancied himself unspeakably happy at that time; but that was nearly ten years since, and he had forgotten. Since then he had had no great passion, no notable liaison.

Aileen's young body and soul, her passionate illusions. He could see always, that she knew so little of the brutal world with which he was connected. Her father had given her all the toys she wanted; her mother and brothers had coddled her, particularly her mother. Her young sister thought she was adorable. No one imagined for one moment that Aileen would ever do anything wrong.

“When you marry, Aileen,” her mother used to say to her, “we'll do the house over then, if we don't do it before. Eddie will have to fix it up, or I'll do it myself.”

“Yes—well, I'd rather you'd fix it now,” was her reply.

Butler himself used to ask her jovially, “Well, have you found him yet?” or “Is he hanging around?”

If she said, “No,” he would reply: “Well, you can stay here as long as you want to. Remember: you can always come back.”

Aileen paid very little attention to this bantering. She loved her father.

One afternoon Frank had asked her whether she knew what she was doing.

“My baby,” he said, “do you understand all about this? Do you know exactly what you're doing when you love me?”

“I think I do.”

“Look at me, honey.”

“I don't want to.”

“But look at me. I want to ask you something.”

He petted her shoulder, and she leaned her head against him.

“You're so beautiful,” he said, “I know what I ought to do. You know, too, I suppose; you must be mine. But if they know, it will be quite bad for you and me. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“I don't know your brothers very well; but from looking at them I judge they're pretty determined people.”

“Indeed, they are.”

“They would probably want to kill me, and very promptly. What do you think they would want to do if?”

He waited, watching her pretty face.

“But nothing will happen. We needn't go any further.”

“Aileen! You know it can't stop this way, don't you? You know it. This isn't the end. Mrs. Cowperwood would never give me a divorce. I don't expect to work all my days. I have always planned to stop at thirty-five. I'll have enough by that time. Then I want to travel. It will only be a few more years now.”

He paused.

“I don't see the way out of this, exactly. But I love you!”

“Oh, yes,” she replied intensely, “I love you too. I'm not afraid.”

“I've taken a house in North Tenth Street,” he said finally, as they walked. “It isn't furnished yet; but it will be soon.”

“Let me know when it is ready,” was all she said.

Chapter XXI

The vagaries of passion! Subtleties! Risks! Sacrifices! In a little while the residence to which Cowperwood had referred was prepared. The house was governed by a widow. It was not difficult to persuade Aileen to give herself wholly to her lover. She wanted this man. She had no thought or feeling toward any other. All her mind ran toward visions of the future, when, somehow, she and he might be together for all time. Mrs. Cowperwood might die, or he might run away with her at thirty-five when he had a million. She relied on him implicitly. When he told her that he would take care of her, she believed him fully.

One life, one love, is the Christian idea. Pagan thought held no such belief. Life cannot be put into any mold. Cowperwood fancied that he had found the one person with whom he could live happily the rest of his life. She was so young, so confident, so hopeful, so undismayed. All these months he had been contrasting her with his wife. And his dissatisfaction was now surely tending to become real enough. All these years he had found Lillian satisfactory enough; but now his dissatisfaction with her began to increase. She was not like Aileen—not young, not vivid. He began by asking questions concerning his wife's appearance—irritating little whys which are so trivial and yet so exasperating and discouraging to a woman. Why didn't she go out more? Exercise would do her good. Why didn't she do this, and why didn't she do that?

“Oh, why—why?” she retorted, one day, curtly. “Why do you ask so many questions? You don't love me any more; that's why. I can tell.”

He leaned back. He was sorry that he had irritated her, and he said so.

“Oh, it's all right,” she replied. “I don't care. But I notice that you don't pay as much attention to me as you used to. It's your business now, first, last, and all the time. You can't get your mind off of that.”

He breathed a sigh of relief. She didn't suspect, then.

But after a little time, as he grew more and more in sympathy with Aileen, he was not so disturbed as to whether his wife might suspect or not. She might even divorce him.

But the Butler family… His relations with Edward Malia Butler had become very intimate. He was now advising with him constantly in regard to the handling of his securities, which were numerous. Butler held stocks in such things as the Pennsylvania Coal Company, the Delaware and Hudson Canal, the Morris and Essex Canal, the Reading Railroad.

The scheme which George W. Stener had brought forward was an opening wedge for Cowperwood. Stener's plan was to loan him money out of the city treasury at two per cent, or, if he would waive all commissions, for nothing, and with it take over the North Pennsylvania Company's line on Front Street. Cowperwood in return for his manipulative skill was to have a fair proportion of the stock—twenty per cent. Strobik and Wycroft's plan was then, with this borrowed treasury money, to extend its franchise and then the line itself, and then later again, by issuing a great block of stock and hypothecating it with a favored bank, be able to return the principal to the city treasury and pocket their profits from the line as earned.

By this time Cowperwood's financial morality had become special. Morality varied, in his mind at least, with conditions, if not climates. Here, in Philadelphia, the tradition was that the city treasurer might use the money of the city without interest so long as he returned the principal intact. The city treasury and the city treasurer were like a honey-laden hive and a queen bee around which the drones—the politicians—swarmed in the hope of profit.

“Frank,” said Stener, strolling into his office one afternoon after four o'clock, “Strobik thinks he has that North Pennsylvania deal arranged so that we can take it up[57]57
  we can take it up – мы можем за него приняться


[Закрыть] if we want to.”

Stener had moved his family from a shabby two-story frame house in South Ninth Street to a very comfortable brick one three stories in height, and three times as large, on Spring Garden Street. His wife had a few acquaintances—the wives of other politicians. His children were attending the high school, a thing he had hardly hoped for in earlier days. He was now the owner of fourteen or fifteen pieces of cheap real estate in different portions of the city, which might eventually become very valuable, and he was a silent partner[58]58
  a silent partner – негласный акционер


[Закрыть] in the South Philadelphia Foundry Company[59]59
  South Philadelphia Foundry Company – Юно-Филадельфийское металлургическое общество


[Закрыть] and the American Beef and Pork Company[60]60
  American Beef and Pork Company – компания «Американская говядина и свинина»


[Закрыть].

“Say, George, why do you work all your schemes through Strobik and Harmon and Wycroft? Couldn't you and I manage some of these things for ourselves alone instead of for three or four? It seems to me that plan would be much more profitable to you.”

“It would, it would!” exclaimed Stener, his round eyes fixed on Cowperwood in a rather helpless, appealing way. He liked Cowperwood and had always been hoping that he could get close to him. “I've thought of that. But these fellows have had more experience in these matters than I have had, Frank. They've been longer at the game. I don't know as much about these things as they do.”

Cowperwood smiled in his soul, though his face remained passive.

“Don't worry about them, George,” he continued genially and confidentially. “You and I together can know and do as much as they ever could and more. I'm telling you. George, you and I could manipulate that just as well and better than it can be done with Wycroft, Strobik, and Harmon in on it. They're not adding anything to the situation. They're not putting up any money. You're doing that. Here in town there are other people who can reach the council just as well as Strobik. I'm not asking you to change your plans on this North Pennsylvania deal. You couldn't do that very well. But there are other things. In the future why not let's see if you and I can't work some one thing together? We've done pretty well on the city-loan proposition so far, haven't we?”

Cowperwood paused and looked out the window of his handsome little office, speculating upon the future.

“Well,” asked Stener, ambitiously, taking the bait, “How much would it take?”

Cowperwood smiled inwardly again.

“I don't know exactly,” he said, after a time. “I want to look into it more carefully. The one trouble is that I'm carrying a good deal of the city's money as it is. You see, I have two hundred thousand dollars. And this new scheme will take two or three hundred thousand more.”

He rubbed his chin and pulled at his handsome silky mustache.

“I'll make any sized deposit with you that you wish, the moment you think you're ready to act, Frank,” exclaimed Stener. Why should not this wonderful Cowperwood be allowed to make the two of them rich?

“All right, George,” replied Cowperwood, confidently. “Leave it to me.”

Stener strolled out in the street thinking of this new scheme. Certainly, if he could get in with Cowperwood right he would be a rich man, for Cowperwood was so successful and so cautious. His new house, this beautiful banking office, his growing fame, and his subtle connections with Butler and others put Stener in considerable awe of him. Why, if this went on, he might become a magnate—he really might—he, George W. Stener, once a real-estate and insurance agent.

Chapter XXII

The services which Cowperwood performed during the ensuing year for Stener, Strobik, Butler, State Treasurer Van Nostrand[61]61
  Van Nostrand – Вэн Нострэнд


[Закрыть], State Senator Relihan[62]62
  Relihan – Релихэн


[Закрыть], and various banks which were friendly to these gentlemen, were numerous and confidential. For Stener, Strobik, Wycroft, Harmon and himself he executed the North Pennsylvania deal, by which he became a holder of a fifth of the controlling stock. Together he and Stener joined to purchase the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Street line.

By the summer of 1871, when Cowperwood was nearly thirty-four years of age, he had a banking business estimated at nearly two million dollars. His own loans at the banks were as high as seven and eight hundred thousand dollars. Like a spider, he had surrounded and entangled himself in a splendid, glittering network of connections, and he was watching all the details.

Because of his great success he had grown more liberal—easier—in his financial ventures. By degrees, and largely because of his own confidence in himself, he had induced his father to enter upon his street-car speculations and to use the resources of the Third National. In the beginning the old gentleman had been a little nervous and skeptical, but soon he grew bolder and more confident.

“Frank,” he would say, looking up over his spectacles, “aren't you afraid you're going a little too fast in these matters? You're carrying a lot of loans these days.”

“No more than I ever did, father, considering my resources. You can't turn large deals without large loans. You know that as well as I do.”

Cowperwood stared at his boy. Never was there such a defiant, daring manipulator.

“You needn't worry about me, father.”

So Cowperwood, Sr., was convinced. His bank was loaning Frank heavily, but not more so than any other. With his growing financial opportunities, however, Cowperwood had also grown very liberal in his standard of living.

His mind, in spite of his outward placidity, was tinged with a great seeking. Wealth, in the beginning, had seemed the only goal, to which had been added the beauty of women. And now art had begun to shine upon him, and to the beauty of womanhood he was beginning to see how necessary it was to add the beauty of life—the beauty of material background. Aileen Butler, her raw youth and radiance, was creating in him a sense of the distinguished and a need for it which had never existed in him before.

Aileen Butler saw material vulgarity or artistic anarchy in her own home. Such a house compared to Cowperwood's! Her dear, but ignorant, father! And this great man, her lover, had now condescended to love her—see in her his future wife.

Instinctively in Cowperwood Aileen recognized a way out. There was in him, in some nebulous, unrecognizable form, a great artistic reality. She wanted luxury, magnificence, social station.

“I don't think papa knows how to live,” she said to Frank, one day. “It isn't his fault. He can't help it. He knows that he can't. And he knows that I know it. For years I wanted him to move out of that old house there. He knows that he ought to. But even that wouldn't do much good.”

She paused, looking at him with a straight, clear, vigorous glance.

“Never mind,” he replied. “We will arrange all these things later. I don't see my way out of this just now; but I think the best thing to do is to confess to Lillian some day, and see if some other plan can't be arranged. I want to fix it so the children won't suffer. I have money, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Lillian would be willing to let me go. She certainly wouldn't want any publicity.”

He was counting practically.

Aileen looked at him with clear, questioning, uncertain eyes. Mrs. Cowperwood was not friendly in her mood toward her. Mrs. Cowperwood could never understand how a girl could carry her head so high, and Aileen could not understand how anyone could be so lymphatic and lackadaisical as Lillian Cowperwood. Life was made for riding, driving, dancing. It was made for banter and persiflage and coquetry. Of course Lillian was unsuited to Frank; of course he needed a young woman like herself, and fate would surely give him to her. Then what a delicious life they would lead!

“Oh, Frank,” she exclaimed to him, over and over, “if we could only manage it. Do you think we can?”

“Do I think we can? Certainly I do. It's only a matter of time. I think if I told her clearly, she wouldn't expect me to stay. But look out how you conduct your affairs. If your father or your brother should ever suspect me, there'd be an explosion in this town, if nothing worse. They will ruin me, or they will kill me. Are you thinking carefully of what you are doing?”

“All the time. If anything happens I'll deny everything. They can't prove it, if I deny it.”

They were in the Tenth Street house at the time. She stroked his cheeks with the loving fingers of the wildly enamored woman.

“I'll do anything for you, sweetheart,” she declared. “I'd die for you if I had to. I love you so.”

“Well, you won't have to do anything like that. But be careful.”