The heart of a father! The world wanders into many strange by-paths of affection. The love of a mother for her children is dominant, leonine, selfish, and unselfish. It is concentric. The love of a husband for his wife, or of a lover for his sweetheart, is a sweet bond of agreement and exchange trade in a lovely contest.
The love of a father for his son or daughter, where it is love at all, is a broad, generous, sad, contemplative giving without thought of return, a hail and farewell to a troubled traveler whom he would do much to guard, a balanced judgment of weakness and strength, with pity for failure and pride in achievement. It is a lovely, generous, philosophic blossom which rarely asks too much, and seeks only to give wisely and plentifully. “That my boy may succeed! That my daughter may be happy!” Who has not heard and dwelt upon these twin fervors of fatherly wisdom and tenderness?
As Butler drove downtown his huge, slow-moving, in some respects chaotic mind turned over as rapidly as he could all of the possibilities in connection with this unexpected, sad, and disturbing revelation. Why had Cowperwood not been satisfied with his wife?
Why should he enter into his (Butler’s) home, of all places, to establish a clandestine relationship of this character? Was Aileen in any way to blame? She was not without mental resources of her own. She must have known what she was doing. She was a good Catholic, or, at least, had been raised so. All these years she had been going regularly to confession and communion. True, of late Butler had noticed that she did not care so much about going to church, would sometimes make excuses and stay at home on Sundays; but she had gone, as a rule. And now, now—his thoughts would come to the end of a blind alley, and then he would start back, as it were, mentally, to the center of things, and begin all over again.
He went up the stairs to his own office slowly. He went in and sat down, and thought and thought. Ten o’clock came, and eleven.
His son bothered him with an occasional matter of interest, but, finding him moody, finally abandoned him to his own speculations.
It was twelve, and then one, and he was still sitting there thinking, when the presence of Cowperwood was announced.
Cowperwood, on finding Butler not at home, and not encountering Aileen, had hurried up to the office of the Edward Butler Contracting Company, which was also the center of some of Butler’s street-railway interests. The floor space controlled by the company was divided into the usual official compartments, with sections for the bookkeepers, the road-managers, the treasurer, and so on. Owen Butler, and his father had small but attractively furnished offices in the rear, where they transacted all the important business of the company.
During this drive, curiously, by reason of one of those strange psychologic intuitions which so often precede a human difficulty of one sort or another, he had been thinking of Aileen. He was thinking of the peculiarity of his relationship with her, and of the fact that now he was running to her father for assistance. As he mounted the stairs he had a peculiar sense of the untoward; but he could not, in his view of life, give it countenance. One glance at Butler showed him that something had gone amiss. He was not so friendly; his glance was dark, and there was a certain sternness to his countenance which had never previously been manifested there in Cowperwood’s memory. He perceived at once that here was something different from a mere intention to refuse him aid and call his loan. What was it? Aileen? It must be that. Somebody had suggested something. They had been seen together. Well, even so, nothing could be proved. Butler would obtain no sign from him.
But his loan—that was to be called, surely. And as for an additional loan, he could see now, before a word had been said, that that thought was useless.
“I came to see you about that loan of yours, Mr. Butler,” he observed, briskly, with an old-time, jaunty air. You could not have told from his manner or his face that he had observed anything out of the ordinary.
Butler, who was alone in the room—Owen having gone into an adjoining room—merely stared at him from under his shaggy brows.
“I’ll have to have that money,” he said, brusquely, darkly.
An old-time Irish rage suddenly welled up in his bosom as he contemplated this jaunty, sophisticated undoer of his daughter’s virtue. He fairly glared at him as he thought of him and her.
“I judged from the way things were going this morning that you might want it,” Cowperwood replied, quietly, without sign of tremor.
“The bottom’s out, I see.”
“The bottom’s out, and it’ll not be put back soon, I’m thinkin’.
I’ll have to have what’s belongin’ to me to-day. I haven’t any time to spare.”
“Very well,” replied Cowperwood, who saw clearly how treacherous the situation was. The old man was in a dour mood. His presence was an irritation to him, for some reason—a deadly provocation.
Cowperwood felt clearly that it must be Aileen, that he must know or suspect something.
He must pretend business hurry and end this. “I’m sorry. I thought I might get an extension; but that’s all right. I can get the money, though. I’ll send it right over.”
He turned and walked quickly to the door.
Butler got up. He had thought to manage this differently.
He had thought to denounce or even assault this man. He was about to make some insinuating remark which would compel an answer, some direct charge; but Cowperwood was out and away as jaunty as ever.
The old man was flustered, enraged, disappointed. He opened the small office door which led into the adjoining room, and called, “Owen!”
“Yes, father.”
“Send over to Cowperwood’s office and get that money.”
“You decided to call it, eh?”
“I have.”
Owen was puzzled by the old man’s angry mood. He wondered what it all meant, but thought he and Cowperwood might have had a few words. He went out to his desk to write a note and call a clerk.
Butler went to the window and stared out. He was angry, bitter, brutal in his vein.
“The dirty dog!” he suddenly exclaimed to himself, in a low voice.
“I’ll take every dollar he’s got before I’m through with him.
I’ll send him to jail, I will. I’ll break him, I will. Wait!”
He clinched his big fists and his teeth.
“I’ll fix him. I’ll show him. The dog! The damned scoundrel!”
Never in his life before had he been so bitter, so cruel, so relentless in his mood.
He walked his office floor thinking what he could do. Question Aileen—that was what he would do. If her face, or her lips, told him that his suspicion was true, he would deal with Cowperwood later. This city treasurer business, now. It was not a crime in so far as Cowperwood was concerned; but it might be made to be.
So now, telling the clerk to say to Owen that he had gone down the street for a few moments, he boarded a streetcar and rode out to his home, where he found his elder daughter just getting ready to go out. She wore a purple-velvet street dress edged with narrow, flat gilt braid, and a striking gold-and-purple turban.
She had on dainty new boots of bronze kid and long gloves of lavender suede. In her ears was one of her latest affectations, a pair of long jet earrings. The old Irishman realized on this occasion, when he saw her, perhaps more clearly than he ever had in his life, that he had grown a bird of rare plumage.
“Where are you going, daughter?” he asked, with a rather unsuccessful attempt to conceal his fear, distress, and smoldering anger.
“To the library,” she said easily, and yet with a sudden realization that all was not right with her father. His face was too heavy and gray. He looked tired and gloomy.
“Come up to my office a minute,” he said. “I want to see you before you go.”
Aileen heard this with a strange feeling of curiosity and wonder.
It was not customary for her father to want to see her in his office just when she was going out; and his manner indicated, in this instance, that the exceptional procedure portended a strange revelation of some kind. Aileen, like every other person who offends against a rigid convention of the time, was conscious of and sensitive to the possible disastrous results which would follow exposure. She had often thought about what her family would think if they knew what she was doing; she had never been able to satisfy herself in her mind as to what they would do. Her father was a very vigorous man. But she had never known him to be cruel or cold in his attitude toward her or any other member of the family, and especially not toward her. Always he seemed too fond of her to be completely alienated by anything that might happen; yet she could not be sure.