The Stoic tod-3 Read online

  Chapter 3

  The following morning, a little after ten o’clock, Berenice telephoned Cowperwood and they agreed to meet at his club for a talk.

  As she entered by a private stairway to his apartment, she found him waiting to greet her. There were flowers in the living room and bedroom. But still so dubious was he as to the reality of this conquest that, as she came leisurely up the steps, looking at him and smiling, he scanned her face anxiously for any suggestion of change. But as she crossed the threshold and allowed him to seize her and hold her close, he felt reassured.

  “So you came!” he said, gaily and warmly, at the same time pausing to survey her.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t?” she asked, laughing at the expression on his face.

  “Well, how was I to be sure?” he queried. “You never did anything I wanted you to do before.”

  “True, but you know why. This is different.” She yielded her lips to his.

  “If you only knew the effect your coming has had on me,” he went on, excitedly. “I haven’t slept a wink all night. And I feel as though I’d never need to sleep again . . . Pearly teeth . . . Slate blue eyes . . . rosy mouth . . .” he went on admiringly. And he kissed her eyes. “And this sunray hair.” He fingered it admiringly.

  “The baby has a new toy!”

  He was thrilled by her comprehending, yet sympathetic, smile, and bent and picked her up.

  “Frank! Please! My hair . . . you’ll get me all mussed up!”

  She protested laughingly as he carried her to the adjoining bedroom, which seemed to flicker with flame from the fireplace, and, and, because he insisted, she allowed him to undress her, amused at his impatience.

  It was late in the afternoon before he was satisfied to “be sane and talk,” as she put it. They sat by a tea table before the fire. She insisted that she was anxious to remain in Chicago, so as to be with him as much and as long as possible, but they must arrange things so as not to attract attention. As to this, he agreed. His notoriety was then at its terrific peak, and, in consequence, particularly because Aileen was known to be living in New York, his appearance with anyone as attractive as herself would be the signal for a flood of comment. They would have to avoid being seen together.

  For now, he added, this matter of franchise extension, or, rather, as it stood now, no franchise, did not mean a cessation of work any more than it meant that he was to lose his street railway properties. These had been built up over a period of years, and shares in them sold to thousands of investors, and they could not be taken from him or his investors without due process of law.

  “What really has to be done, Bevy,” he said to her intimately, “is to find a financier, or a group of them, or a corporation, to take over these properties at a value that is fair to all. And that, of course, can’t be brought about in a minute. It may take years. As a matter of fact, I know that unless I step forward and personally request it as a favor to me, nobody is likely to come in here and offer to do anything. They know how difficult it is to manage street railways profitably. And then there are the courts, which will have to pass on all this, even if these enemies of mine, or any outside concerns, are willing to try and run these roads.”

  He was sitting beside her, talking to her as though she were one of his fellow-investors or financial equals. And while she was not greatly interested in the practical details of his world of finance, she could sense how intense was his intellectual and practical interest in these things.

  “Well, I know one thing,” she interpolated at this point, “and that is, you will never really be beaten. You are too wise and too clever.”

  “Maybe,” he said, pleased by her tribute. “Anyhow, all that takes time. It may be years before these roads are taken off my hands. At the same time, a long delay of that kind might cripple me, in a way. Supposing I should want to do anything else; I should feel handicapped because of the responsibility here.” And for a moment, his large gray eyes stared into space.

  “What I would prefer to do,” he mused, “now that I have you, would be to loaf and travel with you, for a time, anyhow. I’ve worked hard enough. You mean more than money to me, infinitely more. It’s odd, but I feel all at once as though I’ve worked too hard all my life.” He smiled and fondled her.

  And Berenice, hearing him say these things, was suffused with pride and power, as well as real tenderness.

  “That’s perfectly true, dear. You’ve been like some big engine or machine that’s tearing full speed somewhere, but doesn’t know exactly where.” She toyed with his hair and smoothed his cheek as she talked. “I’ve been thinking of your life, and all you’ve accomplished up to now. I think you should go abroad for a while, and look at things in Europe. I don’t see what else you could do here, unless you want to make more money, and Chicago certainly isn’t a very interesting place. I think it’s terrible.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” returned Cowperwood, defensive for Chicago. “It has its points. I came here originally to make money, and certainly I have no complaint to make on that score.”

  “Oh, I know that,” said Berenice, amused at his loyalty despite the bitterness and worry that his career here had involved. “But, Frank . . .” and here she paused, weighing her words most carefully, “you know, I think you’re so much bigger than that. I have always thought so. Don’t you think you ought to take a rest, look about and see the world, apart from business? You might find something you could do, some big public project that would bring you praise and fame, rather than money. There might be something you could undertake in England or France. I’d love to live in France with you. Why not go over there and give them something new? What about the traffic situation in London? Something like that! Anyway, leave America.”

  He smiled at her approvingly.

  “Well, Bevy,” he said, “it does seem a little unnatural to be indulging in a practical conversation like this with a pair of beautiful blue eyes and a sunburst of hair opposite me. But all that you say has the ring of wisdom. By the middle of next month, perhaps sooner, we are going abroad, you and I. And then I think I can find something to please you, for it hasn’t been more than a year since I was approached concerning a proposed tube system for London. At that time I was so busy here I didn’t have time for anything else. But now . . .” and he patted her hand.

  Berenice smiled a satisfied smile.

  It was dusk before she departed, discreet and reserved and smiling as she entered the carriage that Cowperwood had called.

  A few moments later, it was a gay and much more vital Cowperwood who stepped forth, thinking how, the next day, he would arrange first with his lawyer for a conference with the mayor and certain city officials to determine on ways and means of divesting himself of his various and immense holdings. And after that . . . after that . . . well, there was Berenice, the one great dream of his life really come true. What of defeat? There was no defeat! It was love that made life, certainly not wealth alone.

  Chapter 4

  The proposition to which Cowperwood referred as having come from an English source some twelve months before had been brought to him by two adventuring Englishmen, Messrs. Philip Henshaw and Montague Greaves, who carried letters from several well-known bankers and brokers of London and New York, establishing them as contractors who had already built railroads, street railways, and manufacturing plants in England and elsewhere.

  Some time before, in connection with the Traffic Electrical Company (an English company organized for the purpose of promoting railway enterprises), they personally had invested ten thousand pounds in a scheme to promote and construct an underground railway, to run from Charing Cross Station, the center of London, to Hampstead, four or five miles away and a growing residential district. It was a sine qua non of the scheme that the line in prospect was to afford direct means of communication between Charing Cross Station (the terminal of the Southeastern Railway which fed the south and southeast coasts of England and was one of the main
arteries of travel to and from the Continent) and Euston Station, the terminal of the London and Northwestern Railway, serving the northwest and connecting with Scotland.

  As they explained it to Cowperwood, the Traffic Electrical Company had a paid-up capital of £30,000. It had succeeded in getting through both houses of Parliament an “act” permitting them to build, operate, and own this particular tube or line; but in bringing this about, contrary to the general idea held by the English public in regard to its Parliament, a considerable sum of money had to be expended—not directly to any one group, but, as Messrs. Greaves and Henshaw hinted, and as Cowperwood, of all people, was fully capable of understanding, one must resort to many ways and means of currying favor with those who were in a better position to influence the minds of a committee than outsiders coming directly with a request for a valuable public privilege, especially when, as in England, it was granted in perpetuity. To that end, recourse had been had to a firm of solicitors: Rider, Bullock, Jonson & Chance, as clever, socially reputable, and technic ally well-informed a combination of legal talent as the great Empire’s capital could boast. This distinguished firm had innumerable connections with individual shareholders and chairmen of various enterprises. In fact, this firm had found persons whose influence had not only persuaded the committee of Parliament to grant the act for the Charing Cross and Hampstead, but also, once the act was in hand and the original thirty thousand pounds nearly gone, suggested Greaves and Henshaw, who, for a two-year option for the construction of the tubes, had, about a year before, paid down £10,000.

  The provisions of the act were nominally stiff enough. It had required the Traffic Electrical Company to deposit exactly sixty thousand pounds in consols as security that the proposed work would be performed in accordance with provisions requiring partial or final completion of construction on or before certain dates. But, as these two promoters had explained to Cowperwood, a bank or financing group, for the usual brokerage rates, would be willing to maintain the required amount of consols in any designated depository, and the Parliamentary committee, again rightly approached, would doubtless extend the time limit for completion.

  Nevertheless, after a year and a half of work on their part, although £40,000 had been paid in, and the £60,000 in consols deposited, still the money to build the tube (estimated at £1,600,000) had not been found. This sprang from the fact that although there was one quite modern tube already in fairly successful operation—the City and South London—there was nothing to show English capital that a new, and particularly a longer and so more expensive, tube would pay. The only other lines in operation were two semi-undergrounds or steam railways running through open cuts and tunnels—the District Railway, about five and one-half miles, and the Metropolitan Railway, not more than two miles, both by agreement having running power over each other’s rails. But the motive power being steam, the tunnels and cuts were dirty and often smoke-filled, and neither paid very well. And without any precedent to show how a line costing millions of pounds to build could be made to pay, English capital was not interested. Hence a search for money in other parts of the world, which had ended with the journey of Messrs. Henshaw and Greaves—via Berlin, Paris, Vienna, and New York—to Cowperwood.

  Cowperwood, as he had explained to Berenice, had been so completely occupied with his Chicago troubles at the time that he had listened only casually to all that Messrs. Henshaw and Greaves had said. Now, however, since he had lost his franchise fight, and more particularly since Berenice had suggested his leaving America, he recalled their scheme. To be sure, it had appeared to be sinking under a load of expenditures such as no businessman of his experience would consider taking over; yet it might be well to look into this London tube situation with a view to doing something on a grand scale, and perhaps, in this instance, free from such trickery as he had been compelled to practice here in Chicago, and also without any undue profit-taking. He was already a multimillionaire, so why should he continue this money-grubbing to the day of his death?

  Besides, his past being what it was, and his present activities so grossly and savagely distorted by the press and his enemies, how wonderful it would be to win an honest acclaim, particularly in London, where supposedly quite impeccable commercial standards prevailed. It would achieve for him a social standing such as he never could hope to reach in America.

  The vision thrilled him. And it had come to him through Berenice, this chit of a girl. For it was her natural gift of knowing and understanding that had enabled her to sense this opportunity. It was amazing to think that all of this, this London idea, everything that could possibly derive from his association with her in the future, had sprung from that purely sporting venture of some nine years before, when, in company with Colonel Nathaniel Gilles, of Kentucky, he had gone to the home of the then déclassée Hattie Starr, mother of Berenice. Who was it said that good could not come out of evil?

  Chapter 5

  In the meantime, Berenice, now that the first excitement of her union with Cowperwood had worn off, took time to consider and weigh the stumbling blocks and dangers that beset her. Fully aware of these when she had finally decided to go to Cowperwood, nevertheless she now felt that she must face them squarely and unflinchingly, and without loss of any more time.

  First, there was Aileen, a jealous, emotional wife, who would certainly use any means at her disposal to destroy her if ever she felt that Cowperwood loved her. Next, the newspapers. They would certainly publicize her connection with him, if they were seen together in any conspicuous way. And then there was her mother, to whom she would have to explain this latest move of hers; and her brother Rolfe, for whom she now hoped to secure some means of livelihood through Cowperwood.

  All these things meant that she would have to be consistently and firmly cautious, wily, diplomatic, courageous, and willing to make certain sacrifices and compromises.

  At the same time, Cowperwood was thinking much along the same lines. Since Berenice was to be the principal force in his life from now on, he was extremely conscious of her welfare and her prospective movements in connection with himself. Also, the London idea was growing in his mind. Accordingly, on the following day when they met, he began at once discussing seriously all phases of their problems.

  “You know, Bevy,” he said. “I have been thinking of your London idea, and it appeals to me very much; it has interesting possibilities.” And from there on he recounted just what he had in mind, and gave her a history of the two men who had called on him.

  “The thing for me to do now,” he continued, after his explanation, “is to send someone to London to see whether that offer they made us still holds good. If it does, it may open the door to what you are thinking of.” He smiled affectionately on Berenice as the author of all this. “On the other hand, the thing that stands in our way, as I see it now, is the matter of publicity and what Aileen is likely to do. She is very romantic and emotional; she functions through her emotions rather than through her mind. I have tried for years to make her understand how it is with me, how a man may change without really wanting to. But she cannot see that. She thinks people change deliberately.” He paused and smiled. “She’s the kind of woman who is naturally and entirely faithful in her heart, a one-man woman.”

  “And you resent that?” inquired Berenice.

  “On the contrary, I think it beautiful. The only trouble is that up to now I haven’t been that way.”

  “And will not be, I’m thinking,” Berenice twitted him.

  “Silence!” he pleaded. “No arguments! Let me finish, dear. She cannot see why, because I loved her so much at one time, I should not continue to do so. In fact, her sorrow has now turned into something like hatred, I’m afraid, or she tries to make herself think that it has. The worst part of it is that it’s all tied up with her pride in being my wife. She wanted to shine socially, and I wished her to at first because I had the notion that it would be best for both of us. But I soon learned that Aileen was not clever enough.
I gave up the idea of trying in Chicago. New York, I thought, was much more important, the real city for a man of wealth. And so I decided to try there. I was beginning to think I might not always want to live with Aileen, but, if you will believe it, that was after I saw your picture in Louisville—the one I have in my pocket. It was only after that that I decided to build the house in New York, and make it into an art gallery as well as a residence. And then, eventually, if you ever became interested in me . . .”

  “And so the great house that I am never to occupy was built for me,” mused Berenice. “How strange!”

  “Life is like that,” said Cowperwood. “But we can be happy.”

  “I know that,” she said. “I was merely thinking of the strangeness of it. And I wouldn’t disturb Aileen for anything.”

  “You are both liberal and wise, I know. You will perhaps manage things better than I could.”

  “I believe I can manage,” returned Berenice calmly.

  “But besides Aileen, there are the newspapers. They follow me everywhere. And once they hear of this London idea, assuming that I undertake it, there’ll be fireworks! And if ever your name becomes connected with mine, you’ll be pursued as a chicken is by hawks. One solution might be for me to adopt you, or maybe carry this idea of my being your guardian on into England. That would give me the right to be with you and to pretend to be looking after your property. What do you think?”