The Financier by Theodore Dreiser

“‘Tis sharp, Wash,” replied Cowperwood, absentmindedly. He was thinking for the moment of the house and how it had looked, as he came toward it west along Girard Avenue—what the neighbors were thinking of him, too, observing him from time to time out of their windows. It was clear and cold. The lamps in the reception-hall and sitting-room had been lit, for he had permitted no air of funereal gloom to settle down over this place since his troubles had begun. In the far west of the street a last tingling gleam of lavender and violet was showing over the cold white snow of the roadway. The house of gray-green stone, with its lighted windows, and cream-colored lace curtains, had looked especially attractive. He had thought for the moment of the pride he had taken in putting all this here, decorating and ornamenting it, and whether, ever, he could secure it for himself again. “Where is your mistress?” he added to Wash, when he bethought himself.

“In the sitting-room, Mr. Coppahwood, ah think.”

Cowperwood ascended the stairs, thinking curiously that Wash would soon be out of a job now, unless Mrs. Cowperwood, out of all the wreck of other things, chose to retain him, which was not likely.

He entered the sitting-room, and there sat his wife by the oblong center-table, sewing a hook and eye on one of Lillian, second’s, petticoats. She looked up, at his step, with the peculiarly uncertain smile she used these days—indication of her pain, fear, suspicion—and inquired, “Well, what is new with you, Frank?” Her smile was something like a hat or belt or ornament which one puts on or off at will.

“Nothing in particular,” he replied, in his offhand way, “except that I understand I have lost that appeal of mine. Steger is coming here in a little while to let me know. I had a note from him, and I fancy it’s about that.”

He did not care to say squarely that he had lost. He knew that she was sufficiently distressed as it was, and he did not care to be too abrupt just now.

“You don’t say!” replied Lillian, with surprise and fright in her voice, and getting up.

She had been so used to a world where prisons were scarcely thought of, where things went on smoothly from day to day without any noticeable intrusion of such distressing things as courts, jails, and the like, that these last few months had driven her nearly mad.

Cowperwood had so definitely insisted on her keeping in the background—he had told her so very little that she was all at sea anyhow in regard to the whole procedure. Nearly all that she had had in the way of intelligence had been from his father and mother and Anna, and from a close and almost secret scrutiny of the newspapers.

At the time he had gone to the county jail she did not even know anything about it until his father had come back from the courtroom and the jail and had broken the news to her. It had been a terrific blow to her. Now to have this thing suddenly broken to her in this offhand way, even though she had been expecting and dreading it hourly, was too much.

She was still a decidedly charming-looking woman as she stood holding her daughter’s garment in her hand, even if she was forty years old to Cowperwood’s thirty-five. She was robed in one of the creations of their late prosperity, a cream-colored gown of rich silk, with dark brown trimmings—a fetching combination for her. Her eyes were a little hollow, and reddish about the rims, but otherwise she showed no sign of her keen mental distress.

There was considerable evidence of the former tranquil sweetness that had so fascinated him ten years before.

“Isn’t that terrible?” she said, weakly, her hands trembling in a nervous way. “Isn’t it dreadful? Isn’t there anything more you can do, truly?” You won’t really have to go to prison, will you?”

He objected to her distress and her nervous fears. He preferred a stronger, more self-reliant type of woman, but still she was his wife, and in his day he had loved her much.

“It looks that way, Lillian,” he said, with the first note of real sympathy he had used in a long while, for he felt sorry for her now. At the same time he was afraid to go any further along that line, for fear it might give her a false sense as to his present attitude toward her which was one essentially of indifference.

But she was not so dull but what she could see that the consideration in his voice had been brought about by his defeat, which meant hers also. She choked a little—and even so was touched. The bare suggestion of sympathy brought back the old days so definitely gone forever. If only they could be brought back!

“I don’t want you to feel distressed about me, though,” he went on, before she could say anything to him. “I’m not through with my fighting. I’ll get out of this. I have to go to prison, it seems, in order to get things straightened out properly. What I would like you to do is to keep up a cheerful appearance in front of the rest of the family—father and mother particularly. They need to be cheered up.” He thought once of taking her hand, then decided not. She noted mentally his hesitation, the great difference between his attitude now and that of ten or twelve years before.

It did not hurt her now as much as she once would have thought. She looked at him, scarcely knowing what to say. There was really not so much to say.

“Will you have to go soon, if you do have to go?” she ventured, wearily.

“I can’t tell yet. Possibly to-night. Possibly Friday. Possibly not until Monday. I’m waiting to hear from Steger. I expect him here any minute.”

To prison! To prison! Her Frank Cowperwood, her husband—the substance of their home here—and all their soul destruction going to prison. And even now she scarcely grasped why! She stood there wondering what she could do

“Is there anything I can get for you?” she asked, starting forward as if out of a dream. “Do you want me to do anything? Don’t you think perhaps you had better leave Philadelphia, Frank? You needn’t go to prison unless you want to.”

She was a little beside herself, for the first time in her life shocked out of a deadly calm.

He paused and looked at her for a moment in his direct, examining way, his hard commercial business judgment restored on the instant.

“That would be a confession of guilt, Lillian, and I’m not guilty,”

he replied, almost coldly. “I haven’t done anything that warrants my running away or going to prison, either. I’m merely going there to save time at present. I can’t be litigating this thing forever. I’ll get out—be pardoned out or sued out in a reasonable length of time. Just now it’s better to go, I think. I wouldn’t think of running away from Philadelphia. Two of five judges found for me in the decision. That’s pretty fair evidence that the State has no case against me.”

His wife saw she had made a mistake. It clarified her judgment on the instant. “I didn’t mean in that way, Frank,” she replied, apologetically. “You know I didn’t. Of course I know you’re not guilty. Why should I think you were, of all people?”

She paused, expecting some retort, some further argument—a kind word maybe. A trace of the older, baffling love, but he had quietly turned to his desk and was thinking of other things.

At this point the anomaly of her own state came over her again.

It was all so sad and so hopeless. And what was she to do in the future? And what was he likely to do? She paused half trembling and yet decided, because of her peculiarly nonresisting nature—

why trespass on his time? Why bother? No good would really come of it. He really did not care for her any more—that was it.

Nothing could make him, nothing could bring them together again, not even this tragedy. He was interested in another woman—Aileen—

and so her foolish thoughts and explanations, her fear, sorrow, distress, were not important to him. He could take her agonized wish for his freedom as a comment on his probable guilt, a doubt of his innocence, a criticism of him! She turned away for a minute, and he started to leave the room.

“I’ll be back again in a few moments,” he volunteered. “Are the children here?”

“Yes, they’re up in the play-room,” she answered, sadly, utterly nonplussed and distraught.

“Oh, Frank!” she had it on her lips to cry, but before she could utter it he had bustled down the steps and was gone. She turned back to the table, her left hand to her mouth, her eyes in a queer, hazy, melancholy mist. Could it be, she thought, that life could really come to this—that love could so utterly, so thoroughly die?