The Financier by Theodore Dreiser

He smoothed the leg of his prison trousers in a thoughtful way, and plucked at the sleeve of his coat. Just now he looked very much like a highly intelligent workman as he sat here, rather than like the important personage that he was. Mrs. Cowperwood was very resentful.

“That’s a nice way to talk to me, and a nice way to treat me!”

she exclaimed dramatically, rising and walking the short space—

some two steps—that lay between the wall and the bed. “I might have known that you were too young to know your own mind when you married me. Money, of course, that’s all you think of and your own gratification. I don’t believe you have any sense of justice in you. I don’t believe you ever had. You only think of yourself, Frank. I never saw such a man as you. You have treated me like a dog all through this affair; and all the while you have been running with that little snip of an Irish thing, and telling her all about your affairs, I suppose. You let me go on believing that you cared for me up to the last moment, and then you suddenly step up and tell me that you want a divorce. I’ll not do it.

I’ll not give you a divorce, and you needn’t think it.”

Cowperwood listened in silence. His position, in so far as this marital tangle was concerned, as he saw, was very advantageous.

He was a convict, constrained by the exigencies of his position to be out of personal contact with his wife for a long period of time to come, which should naturally tend to school her to do without him. When he came out, it would be very easy for her to get a divorce from a convict, particularly if she could allege misconduct with another woman, which he would not deny. At the same time, he hoped to keep Aileen’s name out of it. Mrs.

Cowperwood, if she would, could give any false name if he made no contest. Besides, she was not a very strong person, intellectually speaking. He could bend her to his will. There was no need of saying much more now; the ice had been broken, the situation had been put before her, and time should do the rest.

“Don’t be dramatic, Lillian,” he commented, indifferently. “I’m not such a loss to you if you have enough to live on. I don’t think I want to live in Philadelphia if ever I come out of here.

My idea now is to go west, and I think I want to go alone. I sha’n’t get married right away again even if you do give me a divorce. I don’t care to take anybody along. It would be better for the children if you would stay here and divorce me. The public would think better of them and you.”

“I’ll not do it,” declared Mrs. Cowperwood, emphatically. “I’ll never do it, never; so there! You can say what you choose. You owe it to me to stick by me and the children after all I’ve done for you, and I’ll not do it. You needn’t ask me any more; I’ll not do it.”

“Very well,” replied Cowperwood, quietly, getting up. “We needn’t talk about it any more now. Your time is nearly up, anyhow.”

(Twenty minutes was supposed to be the regular allotment for visitors.) “Perhaps you’ll change your mind sometime.”

She gathered up her muff and the shawl-strap in which she had carried her gifts, and turned to go. It had been her custom to kiss Cowperwood in a make-believe way up to this time, but now she was too angry to make this pretense. And yet she was sorry, too—

sorry for herself and, she thought, for him.

“Frank,” she declared, dramatically, at the last moment, “I never saw such a man as you. I don’t believe you have any heart. You’re not worthy of a good wife. You’re worthy of just such a woman as you’re getting. The idea!” Suddenly tears came to her eyes, and she flounced scornfully and yet sorrowfully out.

Cowperwood stood there. At least there would be no more useless kissing between them, he congratulated himself. It was hard in a way, but purely from an emotional point of view. He was not doing her any essential injustice, he reasoned—not an economic one—which was the important thing. She was angry to-day, but she would get over it, and in time might come to see his point of view. Who could tell? At any rate he had made it plain to her what he intended to do and that was something as he saw it. He reminded one of nothing so much, as he stood there, as of a young chicken picking its way out of the shell of an old estate. Although he was in a cell of a penitentiary, with nearly four years more to serve, yet obviously he felt, within himself, that the whole world was still before him. He could go west if he could not reestablish himself in Philadelphia; but he must stay here long enough to win the approval of those who had known him formerly—

to obtain, as it were, a letter of credit which he could carry to other parts.

“Hard words break no bones,” he said to himself, as his wife went out. “A man’s never done till he’s done. I’ll show some of these people yet.” Of Bonhag, who came to close the cell door, he asked whether it was going to rain, it looked so dark in the hall.

“It’s sure to before night,” replied Bonhag, who was always wondering over Cowperwood’s tangled affairs as he heard them retailed here and there.

Chapter LVII

The time that Cowperwood spent in the Eastern Penitentiary of Pennsylvania was exactly thirteen months from the day of his entry to his discharge. The influences which brought about this result were partly of his willing, and partly not. For one thing, some six months after his incarceration, Edward Malia Butler died, expired sitting in his chair in his private office at his home.

The conduct of Aileen had been a great strain on him. From the time Cowperwood had been sentenced, and more particularly after the time he had cried on Aileen’s shoulder in prison, she had turned on her father in an almost brutal way. Her attitude, unnatural for a child, was quite explicable as that of a tortured sweetheart. Cowperwood had told her that he thought Butler was using his influence to withhold a pardon for him, even though one were granted to Stener, whose life in prison he had been following with considerable interest; and this had enraged her beyond measure.

She lost no chance of being practically insulting to her father, ignoring him on every occasion, refusing as often as possible to eat at the same table, and when she did, sitting next her mother in the place of Norah, with whom she managed to exchange. She refused to sing or play any more when he was present, and persistently ignored the large number of young political aspirants who came to the house, and whose presence in a way had been encouraged for her benefit. Old Butler realized, of course, what it was all about.

He said nothing. He could not placate her.

Her mother and brothers did not understand it at all at first.

(Mrs. Butler never understood.) But not long after Cowperwood’s incarceration Callum and Owen became aware of what the trouble was.

Once, when Owen was coming away from a reception at one of the houses where his growing financial importance made him welcome, he heard one of two men whom he knew casually, say to the other, as they stood at the door adjusting their coats, “You saw where this fellow Cowperwood got four years, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” replied the other. “A clever devil that—wasn’t he? I knew that girl he was in with, too—you know who I mean. Miss Butler—wasn’t that her name?”

Owen was not sure that he had heard right. He did not get the connection until the other guest, opening the door and stepping out, remarked: “Well, old Butler got even, apparently. They say he sent him up.”

Owen’s brow clouded. A hard, contentious look came into his eyes.

He had much of his father’s force. What in the devil were they talking about? What Miss Butler did they have in mind? Could this be Aileen or Norah, and how could Cowperwood come to be in with either of them? It could not possibly be Norah, he reflected; she was very much infatuated with a young man whom he knew, and was going to marry him. Aileen had been most friendly with the Cowperwoods, and had often spoken well of the financier. Could it be she? He could not believe it. He thought once of overtaking the two acquaintances and demanding to know what they meant, but when he came out on the step they were already some distance down the street and in the opposite direction from that in which he wished to go. He decided to ask his father about this.