dark gray-blue twill suit of pure wool, a light, well-made gray overcoat, a black derby hat of the latest shape, his shoes new and of good leather, his tie of the best silk, heavy and conservatively colored, his hair and mustache showing the attention of an intelligent barber, and his hands well manicured–the receiving overseer saw at once that he was in the presence of some one of superior intelligence and force, such a man as the fortune of his trade rarely brought into his net.
Cowperwood stood in the middle of the room without apparently looking at any one or anything, though he saw all. “Convict number 3633,” Kendall called to a clerk, handing him at the same time a yellow slip of paper on which was written Cowperwood’s full name and his record number, counting from the beginning of the penitentiary itself.
The underling, a convict, took it and entered it in a book, reserving the slip at the same time for the penitentiary “runner” or “trusty,” who would eventually take Cowperwood to the “manners” gallery.
“You will have to take off your clothes and take a bath,” said Kendall to Cowperwood, eyeing him curiously. “I don’t suppose you need one, but it’s the rule.”
“Thank you,” replied Cowperwood, pleased that his personality was counting for something even here. “Whatever the rules are, I want to obey.”
When he started to take off his coat, however, Kendall put up his hand delayingly and tapped a bell. There now issued from an adjoining room an assistant, a prison servitor, a weird-looking specimen of the genus “trusty.” He was a small, dark, lopsided individual, one leg being slightly shorter, and therefore one shoulder lower, than the other. He was hollow-chested, squint-eyed, and rather shambling, but spry enough withal. He was dressed in a thin, poorly made, baggy suit of striped jeans, the prison stripes of the place, showing a soft roll-collar shirt underneath, and wearing a large, wide-striped cap, peculiarly offensive in its size and shape to Cowperwood. He could not help thinking how uncanny the man’s squint eyes looked under its straight outstanding visor. The trusty had a silly, sycophantic manner of raising one hand in salute. He was a professional “second-story man,” “up” for ten years, but by dint of good behavior he had attained to the honor of working about this office without the degrading hood customary for prisoners to wear over the cap. For this he was properly grateful. He now considered his superior with nervous dog-like eyes, and looked at Cowperwood with a certain cunning appreciation of his lot and a show of initial mistrust.
One prisoner is as good as another to the average convict; as a matter of fact, it is their only consolation in their degradation that all who come here are no better than they. The world may have misused them; but they misuse their confreres in their thoughts. The “holier than thou” attitude, intentional or otherwise, is quite the last and most deadly offense within prison walls. This particular “trusty” could no more understand Cowperwood than could a fly the motions of a fly-wheel; but with the cocky superiority of the underling of the world he did not hesitate to think that he could. A crook was a crook to him–Cowperwood no less than the shabbiest pickpocket. His one feeling was that he would like to demean him, to pull him down to his own level.
“You will have to take everything you have out of your pockets,” Kendall now informed Cowperwood. Ordinarily he would have said, “Search the prisoner.”
Cowperwood stepped forward and laid out a purse with twenty-five dollars in it, a pen-knife, a lead-pencil, a small note-book, and a little ivory elephant which Aileen had given him once, “for luck,” and which he treasured solely because she gave it to him. Kendall looked at the latter curiously. “Now you can go on,” he said to the “trusty,” referring to the undressing and bathing process which was to follow.
“This way,” said the latter, addressing Cowperwood, and preceding him into an adjoining room, where three closets held three old-fashioned, iron-bodied, wooden-top bath-tubs, with their attendant shelves for rough crash towels, yellow soap, and the like, and hooks for clothes.
“Get in there,” said the trusty, whose name was Thomas Kuby, pointing to one of the tubs.
Cowperwood realized that this was the beginning of petty official supervision; but he deemed it wise to appear friendly even here.
“I see,” he said. “I will.”
“That’s right,” replied the attendant, somewhat placated. “What did you bring?”
Cowperwood looked at him quizzically. He did not understand. The prison attendant realized that this man did not know the lingo of the place. “What did you bring?” he repeated. “How many years did you get?”
“Oh!” exclaimed Cowperwood, comprehendingly. “I understand. Four and three months.”
He decided to humor the man. It would probably be better so.
“What for?” inquired Kuby, familiarly.
Cowperwood’s blood chilled slightly. “Larceny,” he said.
“Yuh got off easy,” commented Kuby. “I’m up for ten. A rube judge did that to me.”
Kuby had never heard of Cowperwood’s crime. He would not have understood its subtleties if he had. Cowperwood did not want to talk to this man; he did not know how. He wished he would go away; but that was not likely. He wanted to be put in his cell and let alone.
“That’s too bad,” he answered; and the convict realized clearly that this man was really not one of them, or he would not have said anything like that. Kuby went to the two hydrants opening into the bath-tub and turned them on. Cowperwood had been undressing the while, and now stood naked, but not ashamed, in front of this eighth-rate intelligence.
“Don’t forget to wash your head, too,” said Kuby, and went away.
Cowperwood stood there while the water ran, meditating on his fate. It was strange how life had dealt with him of late–so severely. Unlike most men in his position, he was not suffering from a consciousness of evil. He did not think he was evil. As he saw it, he was merely unfortunate. To think that he should be actually in this great, silent penitentiary, a convict, waiting here beside this cheap iron bathtub, not very sweet or hygienic to contemplate, with this crackbrained criminal to watch over him!
He stepped into the tub and washed himself briskly with the biting yellow soap, drying himself on one of the rough, only partially bleached towels. He looked for his underwear, but there was none. At this point the attendant looked in again. “Out here,” he said, inconsiderately.
Cowperwood followed, naked. He was led through the receiving overseer’s office into a room, where were scales, implements of measurement, a record-book, etc. The attendant who stood guard at the door now came over, and the clerk who sat in a corner automatically took down a record-blank. Kendall surveyed Cowperwood’s decidedly graceful figure, already inclining to a slight thickening around the waist, and approved of it as superior to that of most who came here. His skin, as he particularly noted, was especially white.
“Step on the scale,” said the attendant, brusquely.
Cowperwood did so, The former adjusted the weights and scanned the record carefully.
“Weight, one hundred and seventy-five,” he called. “Now step over here.”
He indicated a spot in the side wall where was fastened in a thin slat–which ran from the floor to about seven and one half feet above, perpendicularly–a small movable wooden indicator, which, when a man was standing under it, could be pressed down on his head. At the side of the slat were the total inches of height, laid off in halves, quarters, eighths, and so on, and to the right a length measurement for the arm. Cowperwood understood what was wanted and stepped under the indicator, standing quite straight.
“Feet level, back to the wall,” urged the attendant. “So. Height, five feet nine and ten-sixteenths,” he called. The clerk in the corner noted it. He now produced a tape-measure and began measuring Cowperwood’s arms, legs, chest, waist, hips, etc. He called out the color of his eyes, his hair, his mustache, and, looking into his mouth, exclaimed, “Teeth, all sound.”
After Cowperwood had once more given his address, age, profession, whether he knew any trade, etc.–which he did not–he was allowed to return to the bathroom, and put on the clothing which the prison provided for him–first the rough, prickly underwear, then the cheap soft roll-collar, white-cotton shirt, then the thick bluish-gray cotton socks of a quality such as he had never worn in his life, and over these a pair of indescribable rough-leather clogs, which felt to his feet as though they were made of wood or iron–oily and heavy. He then drew on the shapeless, baggy trousers with their telltale stripes, and over his arms and chest the loose-cut shapeless coat and waistcoat. He felt and knew of course that he looked very strange, wretched. And as he stepped out into the overseer’s room again he experienced a peculiar sense of depression, a gone feeling which before this had not assailed him and which now he did his best to conceal. This, then, was what society did to the criminal, he thought to himself. It took him and tore away from his body and his life the habiliments of his proper state and left him these. He felt sad and grim, and, try as he would–he could not help showing it for a moment. It was always his business and his intention to conceal his real feelings, but now it was not quite possible. He felt degraded, impossible, in these clothes, and he knew that he looked it. Nevertheless, he did his best to pull himself together and look unconcerned, willing, obedient, considerate of those above him. After all, he said to himself, it was all a play of sorts, a dream even, if one chose to view it so, a miasma even, from which, in the course of time and with a little luck one might emerge safely enough. He hoped so. It could not last. He was only acting a strange, unfamiliar part on the stage, this stage of life that he knew so well.
Kendall did not waste any time looking at him, however. He merely said to his assistant, “See if you can find a cap for him,” and the latter, going to a closet containing numbered shelves, took down a cap–a high-crowned, straight-visored, shabby, striped affair which Cowperwood was asked to try on. It fitted well enough, slipping down close over his ears, and he thought that now his indignities must be about complete. What could be added? There could be no more of these disconcerting accoutrements. But he was mistaken. “Now, Kuby, you take him to Mr. Chapin,” said Kendall.
Kuby understood. He went back into the wash-room and produced what Cowperwood had heard of but never before seen–a blue-and-white-striped cotton bag about half the length of an ordinary pillow-case and half again as wide, which Kuby now unfolded and shook out as he came toward him. It was a custom. The use of this hood, dating from the earliest days of the prison, was intended to prevent a sense of location and direction and thereby obviate any attempt to escape. Thereafter during all his stay he was not supposed to walk with or talk to or see another prisoner– not even to converse with his superiors, unless addressed. It was a grim theory, and yet one definitely enforced here, although as he was to learn later even this could be modified here.
“You’ll have to put this on,” Kuby said, and opened it in such a way that it could be put over Cowperwood’s head.
Cowperwood understood. He had heard of it in some way, in times past. He was a little shocked–looked at it first with a touch of real surprise, but a moment after lifted his hands and helped pull it down.
“Never mind,” cautioned the guard, “put your hands down. I’ll get it over.”
Cowperwood dropped his arms. When it was fully on, it came to about his chest, giving him little means of seeing anything. He felt very strange, very humiliated, very downcast. This simple thing of a blue-and-white striped bag over his head almost cost him his sense of self-possession. Why could not they have spared him this last indignity, he thought?
“This way,” said his attendant, and he was led out to where he could not say.
“If you hold it out in front you can see to walk,” said his guide; and Cowperwood pulled it out, thus being able to discern his feet and a portion of the floor below. He was thus conducted–seeing nothing in his transit–down a short walk, then through a long corridor, then through a room of uniformed guards, and finally up a narrow flight of iron steps, leading to the overseer’s office on the second floor of one of the two-tier blocks. There, he heard the voice of Kuby saying: “Mr. Chapin, here’s another prisoner for you from Mr. Kendall.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” came a peculiarly pleasant voice from the distance. Presently a big, heavy hand closed about his arm, and he was conducted still further.
“You hain’t got far to go now,” the voice said, “and then I’ll take that bag off,” and Cowperwood felt for some reason a sense of sympathy, perhaps–as though he would choke. The further steps were not many.
A cell door was reached and unlocked by the inserting of a great iron key. It was swung open, and the same big hand guided him through. A moment later the bag was pulled easily from his head, and he saw that he was in a narrow, whitewashed cell, rather dim, windowless, but lighted from the top by a small skylight of frosted glass three and one half feet long by four inches wide. For a night light there was a tin-bodied lamp swinging from a hook near the middle of one of the side walls. A rough iron cot, furnished with a straw mattress and two pairs of dark blue, probably unwashed blankets, stood in one corner. There was a hydrant and small sink in another. A small shelf occupied the wall opposite the bed. A plain wooden chair with a homely round back stood at the foot of the bed, and a fairly serviceable broom was standing in one corner. There was an iron stool or pot for excreta, giving, as he could see, into a large drain-pipe which ran along the inside wall, and which was obviously flushed by buckets of water being poured into it. Rats and other vermin infested this, and it gave off an unpleasant odor which filled the cell. The floor was of stone. Cowperwood’s clear-seeing eyes took it all in at a glance. He noted the hard cell door, which was barred and cross-barred with great round rods of steel, and fastened with a thick, highly polished lock. He saw also that beyond this was a heavy wooden door, which could shut him in even more completely than the iron one. There was no chance for any clear, purifying sunlight here. Cleanliness depended entirely on whitewash, soap and water and sweeping, which in turn depended on the prisoners themselves.
He also took in Chapin, the homely, good-natured, cell overseer whom he now saw for the first time–a large, heavy, lumbering man, rather dusty and misshapen-looking, whose uniform did not fit him well, and whose manner of standing made him look as though he would much prefer to sit down. He was obviously bulky, but not strong, and his kindly face was covered with a short growth of grayish-brown whiskers. His hair was cut badly and stuck out in odd strings or wisps from underneath his big cap. Nevertheless, Cowperwood was not at all unfavorably impressed–quite the contrary–and he felt at once that this man might be more considerate of him than the others had been. He hoped so, anyhow. He did not know that he was in the presence of the overseer of the “manners squad,” who would have him in charge for two weeks only, instructing him in the rules of the prison, and that he was only one of twenty-six, all told, who were in Chapin’s care.
That worthy, by way of easy introduction, now went over to the bed and seated himself on it. He pointed to the hard wooden chair, which Cowperwood drew out and sat on.
“Well, now you’re here, hain’t yuh?” he asked, and answered himself quite genially, for he was an unlettered man, generously disposed, of long experience with criminals, and inclined to deal kindly with kindly temperament and a form of religious belief–Quakerism–had inclined him to be merciful, and yet his official duties, as Cowperwood later found out, seemed to have led him to the conclusion that most criminals were innately bad. Like Kendall, he regarded them as weaklings and ne’er-do-wells with evil streaks in them, and in the main he was not mistaken. Yet he could not help being what he was, a fatherly, kindly old man, having faith in those shibboleths of the weak and inexperienced mentally–human justice and human decency.
“Yes, I’m here, Mr. Chapin,” Cowperwood replied, simply, remembering his name from the attendant, and flattering the keeper by the use of it.
To old Chapin the situation was more or less puzzling. This was the famous Frank A. Cowperwood whom he had read about, the noted banker and treasury-looter. He and his co-partner in crime, Stener, were destined to serve, as he had read, comparatively long terms here. Five hundred thousand dollars was a large sum of money in those days, much more than five million would have been forty years later. He was awed by the thought of what had become of it–how Cowperwood managed to do all the things the papers had said he had done. He had a little formula of questions which he usually went through with each new prisoner–asking him if he was sorry now for the crime he had committed, if he meant to do better with a new chance, if his father and mother were alive, etc.; and by the manner in which they answered these questions–simply, regretfully, defiantly, or otherwise–he judged whether they were being adequately punished or not. Yet he could not talk to Cowperwood as he now saw or as he would to the average second-story burglar, store-looter, pickpocket, and plain cheap thief and swindler. And yet he scarcely knew how else to talk.
“Well, now,” he went on, “I don’t suppose you ever thought you’d get to a place like this, did you, Mr. Cowperwood?”
“I never did,” replied Frank, simply. “I wouldn’t have believed it a few months ago, Mr. Chapin. I don’t think I deserve to be here now, though of course there is no use of my telling you that.”
He saw that old Chapin wanted to moralize a little, and he was only too glad to fall in with his mood. He would soon be alone with no one to talk to perhaps, and if a sympathetic understanding could be reached with this man now, so much the better. Any port in a storm; any straw to a drowning man.
“Well, no doubt all of us makes mistakes,” continued Mr. Chapin, superiorly, with an amusing faith in his own value as a moral guide and reformer. “We can’t just always tell how the plans we think so fine are coming out, can we? You’re here now, an’ I suppose you’re sorry certain things didn’t come out just as you thought; but if you had a chance I don’t suppose you’d try to do just as you did before, now would yuh?”
“No, Mr. Chapin, I wouldn’t, exactly,” said Cowperwood, truly enough, “though I believed I was right in everything I did. I don’t think legal justice has really been done me.”
“Well, that’s the way,” continued Chapin, meditatively, scratching his grizzled head and looking genially about. “Sometimes, as I allers says to some of these here young fellers that comes in here, we don’t know as much as we thinks we does. We forget that others are just as smart as we are, and that there are allers people that are watchin’ us all the time. These here courts and jails and detectives–they’re here all the time, and they get us. I gad”– Chapin’s moral version of “by God”–“they do, if we don’t behave.”
“Yes,” Cowperwood replied, “that’s true enough, Mr. Chapin.”
“Well,” continued the old man after a time, after he had made a few more solemn, owl-like, and yet well-intentioned remarks, “now here’s your bed, and there’s your chair, and there’s your wash-stand, and there’s your water-closet. Now keep ’em all clean and use ’em right.” (You would have thought he was making Cowperwood a present of a fortune.) “You’re the one’s got to make up your bed every mornin’ and keep your floor swept and your toilet flushed and your cell clean. There hain’t anybody here’ll do that for yuh. You want to do all them things the first thing in the mornin’ when you get up, and afterward you’ll get sumpin’ to eat, about six-thirty. You’re supposed to get up at five-thirty.”
“Yes, Mr. Chapin,” Cowperwood said, politely. “You can depend on me to do all those things promptly.”
“There hain’t so much more,” added Chapin. “You’re supposed to wash yourself all over once a week an’ I’ll give you a clean towel for that. Next you gotta wash this floor up every Friday mornin’.” Cowperwood winced at that. “You kin have hot water for that if you want it. I’ll have one of the runners bring it to you. An’ as for your friends and relations”–he got up and shook himself like a big Newfoundland dog. “You gotta wife, hain’t you?”
“Yes,” replied Cowperwood.
“Well, the rules here are that your wife or your friends kin come to see you once in three months, and your lawyer–you gotta lawyer hain’t yuh?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Cowperwood, amused.
“Well, he kin come every week or so if he likes–every day, I guess–there hain’t no rules about lawyers. But you kin only write one letter once in three months yourself, an’ if you want anything like tobaccer or the like o’ that, from the store-room, you gotta sign an order for it, if you got any money with the warden, an’ then I can git it for you.”
The old man was really above taking small tips in the shape of money. He was a hold-over from a much more severe and honest regime, but subsequent presents or constant flattery were not amiss in making him kindly and generous. Cowperwood read him accurately.
“Very well, Mr. Chapin; I understand,” he said, getting up as the old man did.
“Then when you have been here two weeks,” added Chapin, rather ruminatively (he had forgot to state this to Cowperwood before), “the warden ‘ll come and git yuh and give yuh yer regular cell summers down-stairs. Yuh kin make up yer mind by that time what y’u’d like tuh do, what y’u’d like to work at. If you behave yourself proper, more’n like they’ll give yuh a cell with a yard. Yuh never can tell.”
He went out, locking the door with a solemn click; and Cowperwood stood there, a little more depressed than he had been, because of this latest intelligence. Only two weeks, and then he would be transferred from this kindly old man’s care to another’s, whom he did not know and with whom he might not fare so well.
“If ever you want me for anything–if ye’re sick or sumpin’ like that,” Chapin now returned to say, after he had walked a few paces away, “we have a signal here of our own. Just hang your towel out through these here bars. I’ll see it, and I’ll stop and find out what yuh want, when I’m passin’.”
Cowperwood, whose spirits had sunk, revived for the moment.
“Yes, sir,” he replied; “thank you, Mr. Chapin.”
The old man walked away, and Cowperwood heard his steps dying down the cement-paved hall. He stood and listened, his ears being greeted occasionally by a distant cough, a faint scraping of some one’s feet, the hum or whir of a machine, or the iron scratch of a key in a lock. None of the noises was loud. Rather they were all faint and far away. He went over and looked at the bed, which was not very clean and without linen, and anything but wide or soft, and felt it curiously. So here was where he was to sleep from now on–he who so craved and appreciated luxury and refinement. If Aileen or some of his rich friends should see him here. Worse, he was sickened by the thought of possible vermin. How could he tell? How would he do? The one chair was abominable. The skylight was weak. He tried to think of himself as becoming accustomed to the situation, but he re-discovered the offal pot in one corner, and that discouraged him. It was possible that rats might come up here–it looked that way. No pictures, no books, no scene, no person, no space to walk–just the four bare walls and silence, which he would be shut into at night by the thick door. What a horrible fate!
He sat down and contemplated his situation. So here he was at last in the Eastern Penitentiary, and doomed, according to the judgment of the politicians (Butler among others), to remain here four long years and longer. Stener, it suddenly occurred to him, was probably being put through the same process he had just gone through. Poor old Stener! What a fool he had made of himself. But because of his foolishness he deserved all he was now getting. But the difference between himself and Stener was that they would let Stener out. It was possible that already they were easing his punishment in some way that he, Cowperwood, did not know. He put his hand to his chin, thinking–his business, his house, his friends, his family, Aileen. He felt for his watch, but remembered that they had taken that. There was no way of telling the time. Neither had he any notebook, pen, or pencil with which to amuse or interest himself. Besides he had had nothing to eat since morning. Still, that mattered little. What did matter was that he was shut up here away from the world, quite alone, quite lonely, without knowing what time it was, and that he could not attend to any of the things he ought to be attending to–his business affairs, his future. True, Steger would probably come to see him after a while. That would help a little. But even so–think of his position, his prospects up to the day of the fire and his state now. He sat looking at his shoes; his suit. God! He got up and walked to and fro, to and fro, but his own steps and movements sounded so loud. He walked to the cell door and looked out through the thick bars, but there was nothing to see–nothing save a portion of two cell doors opposite, something like his own. He came back and sat in his single chair, meditating, but, getting weary of that finally, stretched himself on the dirty prison bed to try it. It was not uncomfortable entirely. He got up after a while, however, and sat, then walked, then sat. What a narrow place to walk, he thought. This was horrible–something like a living tomb. And to think he should be here now, day after day and day after day, until–until what?
Until the Governor pardoned him or his time was up, or his fortune eaten away–or–
So he cogitated while the hours slipped by. It was nearly five o’clock before Steger was able to return, and then only for a little while. He had been arranging for Cowperwood’s appearance on the following Thursday, Friday, and Monday in his several court proceedings. When he was gone, however, and the night fell and Cowperwood had to trim his little, shabby oil-lamp and to drink the strong tea and eat the rough, poor bread made of bran and white flour, which was shoved to him through the small aperture in the door by the trencher trusty, who was accompanied by the overseer to see that it was done properly, he really felt very badly. And after that the center wooden door of his cell was presently closed and locked by a trusty who slammed it rudely and said no word. Nine o’clock would be sounded somewhere by a great bell, he understood, when his smoky oil-lamp would have to be put out promptly and he would have to undress and go to bed. There were punishments, no doubt, for infractions of these rules–reduced rations, the strait-jacket, perhaps stripes–he scarcely knew what. He felt disconsolate, grim, weary. He had put up such a long, unsatisfactory fight. After washing his heavy stone cup and tin plate at the hydrant, he took off the sickening uniform and shoes and even the drawers of the scratching underwear, and stretched himself wearily on the bed. The place was not any too warm, and he tried to make himself comfortable between the blankets–but it was of little use. His soul was cold.
“This will never do,” he said to himself. “This will never do. I’m not sure whether I can stand much of this or not.” Still he turned his face to the wall, and after several hours sleep eventually came.
Chapter LIV
Those who by any pleasing courtesy of fortune, accident of birth, inheritance, or the wisdom of parents or friends, have succeeded in avoiding making that anathema of the prosperous and comfortable, “a mess of their lives,” will scarcely understand the mood of Cowperwood, sitting rather gloomily in his cell these first days, wondering what, in spite of his great ingenuity, was to become of him. The strongest have their hours of depression. There are times when life to those endowed with the greatest intelligence– perhaps mostly to those–takes on a somber hue. They see so many phases of its dreary subtleties. It is only when the soul of man has been built up into some strange self-confidence, some curious faith in its own powers, based, no doubt, on the actual presence of these same powers subtly involved in the body, that it fronts life unflinchingly. It would be too much to say that Cowperwood’s mind was of the first order. It was subtle enough in all conscience– and involved, as is common with the executively great, with a strong sense of personal advancement. It was a powerful mind, turning, like a vast searchlight, a glittering ray into many a dark corner; but it was not sufficiently disinterested to search the ultimate dark. He realized, in a way, what the great astronomers, sociologists, philosophers, chemists, physicists, and physiologists were meditating; but he could not be sure in his own mind that, whatever it was, it was important for him. No doubt life held many strange secrets. Perhaps it was essential that somebody should investigate them. However that might be, the call of his own soul was in another direction. His business was to make money– to organize something which would make him much money, or, better yet, save the organization he had begun.
But this, as he now looked upon it, was almost impossible. It had been too disarranged and complicated by unfortunate circumstances. He might, as Steger pointed out to him, string out these bankruptcy proceedings for years, tiring out one creditor and another, but in the meantime the properties involved were being seriously damaged. Interest charges on his unsatisfied loans were making heavy inroads; court costs were mounting up; and, to cap it all, he had discovered with Steger that there were a number of creditors–those who had sold out to Butler, and incidentally to Mollenhauer–who would never accept anything except the full value of their claims. His one hope now was to save what he could by compromise a little later, and to build up some sort of profitable business through Stephen Wingate. The latter was coming in a day or two, as soon as Steger had made some working arrangement for him with Warden Michael Desmas who came the second day to have a look at the new prisoner.
Desmas was a large man physically–Irish by birth, a politician by training–who had been one thing and another in Philadelphia from a policeman in his early days and a corporal in the Civil War to a ward captain under Mollenhauer. He was a canny man, tall, raw-boned, singularly muscular-looking, who for all his fifty-seven years looked as though he could give a splendid account of himself in a physical contest. His hands were large and bony, his face more square than either round or long, and his forehead high. He had a vigorous growth of short-clipped, iron-gray hair, and a bristly iron-gray mustache, very short, keen, intelligent blue-gray eyes; a florid complexion; and even-edged, savage-looking teeth, which showed the least bit in a slightly wolfish way when he smiled. However, he was not as cruel a person as he looked to be; temperamental, to a certain extent hard, and on occasions savage, but with kindly hours also. His greatest weakness was that he was not quite mentally able to recognize that there were mental and social differences between prisoners, and that now and then one was apt to appear here who, with or without political influences, was eminently worthy of special consideration. What he could recognize was the differences pointed out to him by the politicians in special cases, such as that of Stener–not Cowperwood. However, seeing that the prison was a public institution apt to be visited at any time by lawyers, detectives, doctors, preachers, propagandists, and the public generally, and that certain rules and regulations had to be enforced (if for no other reason than to keep a moral and administrative control over his own help), it was necessary to maintain–and that even in the face of the politician–a certain amount of discipline, system, and order, and it was not possible to be too liberal with any one. There were, however, exceptional cases–men of wealth and refinement, victims of those occasional uprisings which so shocked the political leaders generally–who had to be looked after in a friendly way.
Desmas was quite aware, of course, of the history of Cowperwood and Stener. The politicians had already given him warning that Stener, because of his past services to the community, was to be treated with special consideration. Not so much was said about Cowperwood, although they did admit that his lot was rather hard. Perhaps he might do a little something for him but at his own risk.
“Butler is down on him,” Strobik said to Desmas, on one occasion. “It’s that girl of his that’s at the bottom of it all. If you listened to Butler you’d feed him on bread and water, but he isn’t a bad fellow. As a matter of fact, if George had had any sense Cowperwood wouldn’t be where he is to-day. But the big fellows wouldn’t let Stener alone. They wouldn’t let him give Cowperwood any money.”
Although Strobik had been one of those who, under pressure from Mollenhauer, had advised Stener not to let Cowperwood have any more money, yet here he was pointing out the folly of the victim’s course. The thought of the inconsistency involved did not trouble him in the least.
Desmas decided, therefore, that if Cowperwood were persona non grata to the “Big Three,” it might be necessary to be indifferent to him, or at least slow in extending him any special favors. For Stener a good chair, clean linen, special cutlery and dishes, the daily papers, privileges in the matter of mail, the visits of friends, and the like. For Cowperwood–well, he would have to look at Cowperwood and see what he thought. At the same time, Steger’s intercessions were not without their effect on Desmas. So the morning after Cowperwood’s entrance the warden received a letter from Terrence Relihan, the Harrisburg potentate, indicating that any kindness shown to Mr. Cowperwood would be duly appreciated by him. Upon the receipt of this letter Desmas went up and looked through Cowperwood’s iron door. On the way he had a brief talk with Chapin, who told him what a nice man he thought Cowperwood was.
Desmas had never seen Cowperwood before, but in spite of the shabby uniform, the clog shoes, the cheap shirt, and the wretched cell, he was impressed. Instead of the weak, anaemic body and the shifty eyes of the average prisoner, he saw a man whose face and form blazed energy and power, and whose vigorous erectness no wretched clothes or conditions could demean. He lifted his head when Desmas appeared, glad that any form should have appeared at his door, and looked at him with large, clear, examining eyes–those eyes that in the past had inspired so much confidence and surety in all those who had known him. Desmas was stirred. Compared with Stener, whom he knew in the past and whom he had met on his entry, this man was a force. Say what you will, one vigorous man inherently respects another. And Desmas was vigorous physically. He eyed Cowperwood and Cowperwood eyed him. Instinctly Desmas liked him. He was like one tiger looking at another.
Instinctively Cowperwood knew that he was the warden. This is Mr. Desmas, isn’t it?” he asked, courteously and pleasantly.
“Yes, sir, I’m the man,” replied Desmas interestedly. “These rooms are not as comfortable as they might be, are they?” The warden’s even teeth showed in a friendly, yet wolfish, way.
“They certainly are not, Mr. Desmas,” replied Cowperwood, standing very erect and soldier-like. “I didn’t imagine I was coming to a hotel, however.” He smiled.
“There isn’t anything special I can do for you, is there, Mr. Cowperwood?” began Desmas curiously, for he was moved by a thought that at some time or other a man such as this might be of service to him. “I’ve been talking to your lawyer.” Cowperwood was intensely gratified by the Mr. So that was the way the wind was blowing. Well, then, within reason, things might not prove so bad here. He would see. He would sound this man out.
“I don’t want to be asking anything, Warden, which you cannot reasonably give,” he now returned politely. “But there are a few things, of course, that I would change if I could. I wish I might have sheets for my bed, and I could afford better underwear if you would let me wear it. This that I have on annoys me a great deal.”
“They’re not the best wool, that’s true enough,” replied Desmas, solemnly. “They’re made for the State out here in Pennsylvania somewhere. I suppose there’s no objection to your wearing your own underwear if you want to. I’ll see about that. And the sheets, too. We might let you use them if you have them. We’ll have to go a little slow about this. There are a lot of people that take a special interest in showing the warden how to tend to his business.”
“I can readily understand that, Warden,” went on Cowperwood briskly, “and I’m certainly very much obliged to you. You may be sure that anything you do for me here will be appreciated, and not misused, and that I have friends on the outside who can reciprocate for me in the course of time.” He talked slowly and emphatically, looking Desmas directly in the eye all of the time. Desmas was very much impressed.
“That’s all right,” he said, now that he had gone so far as to be friendly. “I can’t promise much. Prison rules are prison rules. But there are some things that can be done, because it’s the rule to do them for other men when they behave themselves. You can have a better chair than that, if you want it, and something to read too. If you’re in business yet, I wouldn’t want to do anything to stop that. We can’t have people running in and out of here every fifteen minutes, and you can’t turn a cell into a business office– that’s not possible. It would break up the order of the place. Still, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t see some of your friends now and then. As for your mail–well, that will have to be opened in the ordinary way for the time being, anyhow. I’ll have to see about that. I can’t promise too much. You’ll have to wait until you come out of this block and down-stairs. Some of the cells have a yard there; if there are any empty–” The warden cocked his eye wisely, and Cowperwood saw that his tot was not to be as bad as he had anticipated–though bad enough. The warden spoke to him about the different trades he might follow, and asked him to think about the one he would prefer. “You want to have something to keep your hands busy, whatever else you want. You’ll find you’ll need that. Everybody here wants to work after a time. I notice that.”
Cowperwood understood and thanked Desmas profusely. The horror of idleness in silence and in a cell scarcely large enough to turn around in comfortably had already begun to creep over him, and the thought of being able to see Wingate and Steger frequently, and to have his mail reach him, after a time, untampered with, was a great relief. He was to have his own underwear, silk and wool– thank God!–and perhaps they would let him take off these shoes after a while. With these modifications and a trade, and perhaps the little yard which Desmas had referred to, his life would be, if not ideal, at least tolerable. The prison was still a prison, but it looked as though it might not be so much of a terror to him as obviously it must be to many.
During the two weeks in which Cowperwood was in the “manners squad,” in care of Chapin, he learned nearly as much as he ever learned of the general nature of prison life; for this was not an ordinary penitentiary in the sense that the prison yard, the prison squad, the prison lock-step, the prison dining-room, and prison associated labor make the ordinary penitentiary. There was, for him and for most of those confined there, no general prison life whatsoever. The large majority were supposed to work silently in their cells at the particular tasks assigned them, and not to know anything of the remainder of the life which went on around them, the rule of this prison being solitary confinement, and few being permitted to work at the limited number of outside menial tasks provided. Indeed, as he sensed and as old Chapin soon informed him, not more than seventy-five of the four hundred prisoners confined here were so employed, and not all of these regularly–cooking, gardening in season, milling, and general cleaning being the only avenues of escape from solitude. Even those who so worked were strictly forbidden to talk, and although they did not have to wear the objectionable hood when actually employed, they were supposed to wear it in going to and from their work. Cowperwood saw them occasionally tramping by his cell door, and it struck him as strange, uncanny, grim. He wished sincerely at times since old Chapin was so genial and talkative that he were to be under him permanently; but it was not to be.
His two weeks soon passed–drearily enough in all conscience but they passed, interlaced with his few commonplace tasks of bed-making, floor-sweeping, dressing, eating, undressing, rising at five-thirty, and retiring at nine, washing his several dishes after each meal, etc. He thought he would never get used to the food. Breakfast, as has been said, was at six-thirty, and consisted of coarse black bread made of bran and some white flour, and served with black coffee. Dinner was at eleven-thirty, and consisted of bean or vegetable soup, with some coarse meat in it, and the same bread. Supper was at six, of tea and bread, very strong tea and the same bread–no butter, no milk, no sugar. Cowperwood did not smoke, so the small allowance of tobacco which was permitted was without value to him. Steger called in every day for two or three weeks, and after the second day, Stephen Wingate, as his new business associate, was permitted to see him also–once every day, if he wished, Desmas stated, though the latter felt he was stretching a point in permitting this so soon. Both of these visits rarely occupied more than an hour, or an hour and a half, and after that the day was long. He was taken out on several days on a court order, between nine and five, to testify in the bankruptcy proceedings against him, which caused the time in the beginning to pass quickly.
It was curious, once he was in prison, safely shut from the world for a period of years apparently, how quickly all thought of assisting him departed from the minds of those who had been most friendly. He was done, so most of them thought. The only thing they could do now would be to use their influence to get him out some time; how soon, they could not guess. Beyond that there was nothing. He would really never be of any great importance to any one any more, or so they thought. It was very sad, very tragic, but he was gone–his place knew him not.
“A bright young man, that,” observed President Davison of the Girard National, on reading of Cowperwood’s sentence and incarceration. “Too bad! Too bad! He made a great mistake.”
Only his parents, Aileen, and his wife–the latter with mingled feelings of resentment and sorrow–really missed him. Aileen, because of her great passion for him, was suffering most of all. Four years and three months; she thought. If he did not get out before then she would be nearing twenty-nine and he would be nearing forty. Would he want her then? Would she be so attractive? And would nearly five years change his point of view? He would have to wear a convict suit all that time, and be known as a convict forever after. It was hard to think about, but only made her more than ever determined to cling to him, whatever happened, and to help him all she could.
Indeed the day after his incarceration she drove out and looked at the grim, gray walls of the penitentiary. Knowing nothing absolutely of the vast and complicated processes of law and penal servitude, it seemed especially terrible to her. What might not they be doing to her Frank? Was he suffering much? Was he thinking of her as she was of him? Oh, the pity of it all! The pity! The pity of herself–her great love for him! She drove home, determined to see him; but as he had originally told her that visiting days were only once in three months, and that he would have to write her when the next one was, or when she could come, or when he could see her on the outside, she scarcely knew what to do. Secrecy was the thing.
The next day, however, she wrote him just the same, describing the drive she had taken on the stormy afternoon before–the terror of the thought that he was behind those grim gray walls–and declaring her determination to see him soon. And this letter, under the new arrangement, he received at once. He wrote her in reply, giving the letter to Wingate to mail. It ran:
My sweet girl:–I fancy you are a little downhearted to think I cannot be with you any more soon, but you mustn’t be. I suppose you read all about the sentence in the paper. I came out here the same morning–nearly noon. If I had time, dearest, I’d write you a long letter describing the situation so as to ease your mind; but I haven’t. It’s against the rules, and I am really doing this secretly. I’m here, though, safe enough, and wish I were out, of course. Sweetest, you must be careful how you try to see me at first. You can’t do me much service outside of cheering me up, and you may do yourself great harm. Besides, I think I have done you far more harm than I can ever make up to you and that you had best give me up, although I know you do not think so, and I would be sad, if you did. I am to be in the Court of Special Pleas, Sixth and Chestnut, on Friday at two o’clock; but you cannot see me there. I’ll be out in charge of my counsel. You must be careful. Perhaps you’ll think better, and not come here.
This last touch was one of pure gloom, the first Cowperwood had ever introduced into their relationship but conditions had changed him. Hitherto he had been in the position of the superior being, the one who was being sought–although Aileen was and had been well worth seeking–and he had thought that he might escape unscathed, and so grow in dignity and power until she might not possibly be worthy of him any longer. He had had that thought. But here, in stripes, it was a different matter. Aileen’s position, reduced in value as it was by her long, ardent relationship with him, was now, nevertheless, superior to his–apparently so. For after all, was she not Edward Butler’s daughter, and might she, after she had been away from him a while, wish to become a convict’s bride. She ought not to want to, and she might not want to, for all he knew; she might change her mind. She ought not to wait for him. Her life was not yet ruined. The public did not know, so he thought– not generally anyhow–that she had been his mistress. She might marry. Why not, and so pass out of his life forever. And would not that be sad for him? And yet did he not owe it to her, to a sense of fair play in himself to ask her to give him up, or at least think over the wisdom of doing so?
He did her the justice to believe that she would not want to give him up; and in his position, however harmful it might be to her, it was an advantage, a connecting link with the finest period of his past life, to have her continue to love him. He could not, however, scribbling this note in his cell in Wingate’s presence, and giving it to him to mail (Overseer Chapin was kindly keeping a respectful distance, though he was supposed to be present), refrain from adding, at the last moment, this little touch of doubt which, when she read it, struck Aileen to the heart. She read it as gloom on his part–as great depression. Perhaps, after all, the penitentiary and so soon, was really breaking his spirit, and he had held up so courageously so long. Because of this, now she was madly eager to get to him, to console him, even though it was difficult, perilous. She must, she said.
In regard to visits from the various members of his family–his mother and father, his brother, his wife, and his sister–Cowperwood made it plain to them on one of the days on which he was out attending a bankruptcy hearing, that even providing it could be arranged he did not think they should come oftener than once in three months, unless he wrote them or sent word by Steger. The truth was that he really did not care to see much of any of them at present. He was sick of the whole social scheme of things. In fact he wanted to be rid of the turmoil he had been in, seeing it had proved so useless. He had used nearly fifteen thousand dollars thus far in defending himself–court costs, family maintenance, Steger, etc.; but he did not mind that. He expected to make some little money working through Wingate. His family were not utterly without funds, sufficient to live on in a small way. He had advised them to remove into houses more in keeping with their reduced circumstances, which they had done–his mother and father and brothers and sister to a three-story brick house of about the caliber of the old Buttonwood Street house, and his wife to a smaller, less expensive two-story one on North Twenty-first Street, near the penitentiary, a portion of the money saved out of the thirty-five thousand dollars extracted from Stener under false pretenses aiding to sustain it. Of course all this was a terrible descent from the Girard Avenue mansion for the elder Cowperwood; for here was none of the furniture which characterized the other somewhat gorgeous domicile–merely store-bought, ready-made furniture, and neat but cheap hangings and fixtures generally. The assignees, to whom all Cowperwood’s personal property belonged, and to whom Cowperwood, the elder, had surrendered all his holdings, would not permit anything of importance to be removed. It had all to be sold for the benefit of creditors. A few very small things, but only a few, had been kept, as everything had been inventoried some time before. One of the things which old Cowperwood wanted was his own desk which Frank had had designed for him; but as it was valued at five hundred dollars and could not be relinquished by the sheriff except on payment of that sum, or by auction, and as Henry Cowperwood had no such sum to spare, he had to let the desk go. There were many things they all wanted, and Anna Adelaide had literally purloined a few though she did not admit the fact to her parents until long afterward.
There came a day when the two houses in Girard Avenue were the scene of a sheriffs sale, during which the general public, without let or hindrance, was permitted to tramp through the rooms and examine the pictures, statuary, and objects of art generally, which were auctioned off to the highest bidder. Considerable fame had attached to Cowperwood’s activities in this field, owing in the first place to the real merit of what he had brought together, and in the next place to the enthusiastic comment of such men as Wilton Ellsworth, Fletcher Norton, Gordon Strake–architects and art dealers whose judgment and taste were considered important in Philadelphia. All of the lovely things by which he had set great store–small bronzes, representative of the best period of the Italian Renaissance; bits of Venetian glass which he had collected with great care–a full curio case; statues by Powers, Hosmer, and Thorwaldsen–things which would be smiled at thirty years later, but which were of high value then; all of his pictures by representative American painters from Gilbert to Eastman Johnson, together with a few specimens of the current French and English schools, went for a song. Art judgment in Philadelphia at this time was not exceedingly high; and some of the pictures, for lack of appreciative understanding, were disposed of at much too low a figure. Strake, Norton, and Ellsworth were all present and bought liberally. Senator Simpson, Mollenhauer, and Strobik came to see what they could see. The small-fry politicians were there, en masse. But Simpson, calm judge of good art, secured practically the best of all that was offered. To him went the curio case of Venetian glass; one pair of tall blue-and-white Mohammedan cylindrical vases; fourteen examples of Chinese jade, including several artists’ water-dishes and a pierced window-screen of the faintest tinge of green. To Mollenhauer went the furniture and decorations of the entry-hall and reception-room of Henry Cowperwood’s house, and to Edward Strobik two of Cowperwood’s bird’s-eye maple bedroom suites for the most modest of prices. Adam Davis was present and secured the secretaire of buhl which the elder Cowperwood prized so highly. To Fletcher Norton went the four Greek vases–a kylix, a water-jar, and two amphorae–which he had sold to Cowperwood and which he valued highly. Various objects of art, including a Sevres dinner set, a Gobelin tapestry, Barye bronzes and pictures by Detaille, Fortuny, and George Inness, went to Walter Leigh, Arthur Rivers, Joseph Zimmerman, Judge Kitchen, Harper Steger, Terrence Relihan, Trenor Drake, Mr. and Mrs. Simeon Jones, W. C. Davison, Frewen Kasson, Fletcher Norton, and Judge Rafalsky.
Within four days after the sale began the two houses were bare of their contents. Even the objects in the house at 931 North Tenth Street had been withdrawn from storage where they had been placed at the time it was deemed advisable to close this institution, and placed on sale with the other objects in the two homes. It was at this time that the senior Cowperwoods first learned of something which seemed to indicate a mystery which had existed in connection with their son and his wife. No one of all the Cowperwoods was present during all this gloomy distribution; and Aileen, reading of the disposition of all the wares, and knowing their value to Cowperwood, to say nothing of their charm for her, was greatly depressed; yet she was not long despondent, for she was convinced that Cowperwood would some day regain his liberty and attain a position of even greater significance in the financial world. She could not have said why but she was sure of it.
Chapter LV
In the meanwhile Cowperwood had been transferred to a new overseer and a new cell in Block 3 on the ground door, which was like all the others in size, ten by sixteen, but to which was attached the small yard previously mentioned. Warden Desmas came up two days before he was transferred, and had another short conversation with him through his cell door.
“You’ll be transferred on Monday,” he said, in his reserved, slow way. “They’ll give you a yard, though it won’t be much good to you–we only allow a half-hour a day in it. I’ve told the overseer about your business arrangements. He’ll treat you right in that matter. Just be careful not to take up too much time that way, and things will work out. I’ve decided to let you learn caning chairs. That’ll be the best for you. It’s easy, and it’ll occupy your mind.”
The warden and some allied politicians made a good thing out of this prison industry. It was really not hard labor–the tasks set were simple and not oppressive, but all of the products were promptly sold, and the profits pocketed. It was good, therefore, to see all the prisoners working, and it did them good. Cowperwood was glad of the chance to do something, for he really did not care so much for books, and his connection with Wingate and his old affairs were not sufficient to employ his mind in a satisfactory way. At the same time, he could not help thinking, if he seemed strange to himself, now, how much stranger he would seem then, behind these narrow bars working at so commonplace a task as caning chairs. Nevertheless, he now thanked Desmas for this, as well as for the sheets and the toilet articles which had just been brought in.
“That’s all right,” replied the latter, pleasantly and softly, by now much intrigued by Cowperwood. “I know that there are men and men here, the same as anywhere. If a man knows how to use these things and wants to be clean, I wouldn’t be one to put anything in his way.”
The new overseer with whom Cowperwood had to deal was a very different person from Elias Chapin. His name was Walter Bonhag, and he was not more than thirty-seven years of age–a big, flabby sort of person with a crafty mind, whose principal object in life was to see that this prison situation as he found it should furnish him a better income than his normal salary provided. A close study of Bonhag would have seemed to indicate that he was a stool-pigeon of Desmas, but this was really not true except in a limited way. Because Bonhag was shrewd and sycophantic, quick to see a point in his or anybody else’s favor, Desmas instinctively realized that he was the kind of man who could be trusted to be lenient on order or suggestion. That is, if Desmas had the least interest in a prisoner he need scarcely say so much to Bonhag; he might merely suggest that this man was used to a different kind of life, or that, because of some past experience, it might go hard with him if be were handled roughly; and Bonhag would strain himself to be pleasant. The trouble was that to a shrewd man of any refinement his attentions were objectionable, being obviously offered for a purpose, and to a poor or ignorant man they were brutal and contemptuous. He had built up an extra income for himself inside the prison by selling the prisoners extra allowances of things which he secretly brought into the prison. It was strictly against the rules, in theory at least, to bring in anything which was not sold in the store-room–tobacco, writing paper, pens, ink, whisky, cigars, or delicacies of any kind. On the other hand, and excellently well for him, it was true that tobacco of an inferior grade was provided, as well as wretched pens, ink and paper, so that no self-respecting man, if he could help it, would endure them. Whisky was not allowed at all, and delicacies were abhorred as indicating rank favoritism; nevertheless, they were brought in. If a prisoner had the money and was willing to see that Bonhag secured something for his trouble, almost anything would be forthcoming. Also the privilege of being sent into the general yard as a “trusty,” or being allowed to stay in the little private yard which some cells possessed, longer than the half-hour ordinarily permitted, was sold.
One of the things curiously enough at this time, which worked in Cowperwood’s favor, was the fact that Bonhag was friendly with the overseer who had Stener in charge, and Stener, because of his political friends, was being liberally treated, and Bonhag knew of this. He was not a careful reader of newspapers, nor had he any intellectual grasp of important events; but he knew by now that both Stener and Cowperwood were, or had been, individuals of great importance in the community; also that Cowperwood had been the more important of the two. Better yet, as Bonhag now heard, Cowperwood still had money. Some prisoner, who was permitted to read the paper, told him so. And so, entirely aside from Warden Desmas’s recommendation, which was given in a very quiet, noncommittal way, Bonhag was interested to see what he could do for Cowperwood for a price.
The day Cowperwood was installed in his new cell, Bonhag lolled up to the door, which was open, and said, in a semipatronizing way, “Got all your things over yet?” It was his business to lock the door once Cowperwood was inside it.
“Yes, sir,” replied Cowperwood, who had been shrewd enough to get the new overseer’s name from Chapin; “this is Mr. Bonhag, I presume?”
“That’s me,” replied Bonhag, not a little flattered by the recognition, but still purely interested by the practical side of this encounter. He was anxious to study Cowperwood, to see what type of man he was.
“You’ll find it a little different down here from up there,” observed Bonhag. “It ain’t so stuffy. These doors out in the yards make a difference.”
“Oh, yes,” said Cowperwood, observantly and shrewdly, “that is the yard Mr. Desmas spoke of.”
At the mention of the magic name, if Bonhag had been a horse, his ears would have been seen to lift. For, of course, if Cowperwood was so friendly with Desmas that the latter had described to him the type of cell he was to have beforehand, it behooved Bonhag to be especially careful.
“Yes, that’s it, but it ain’t much,” he observed. “They only allow a half-hour a day in it. Still it would be all right if a person could stay out there longer.”
This was his first hint at graft, favoritism; and Cowperwood distinctly caught the sound of it in his voice.
“That’s too bad,” he said. “I don’t suppose good conduct helps a person to get more.” He waited to hear a reply, but instead Bonhag continued with: “I’d better teach you your new trade now. You’ve got to learn to cane chairs, so the warden says. If you want, we can begin right away.” But without waiting for Cowperwood to acquiesce, he went off, returning after a time with three unvarnished frames of chairs and a bundle of cane strips or withes, which he deposited on the floor. Having so done–and with a flourish–he now continued: “Now I’ll show you if you’ll watch me,” and he began showing Cowperwood how the strips were to be laced through the apertures on either side, cut, and fastened with little hickory pegs. This done, he brought a forcing awl, a small hammer, a box of pegs, and a pair of clippers. After several brief demonstrations with different strips, as to how the geometric forms were designed, he allowed Cowperwood to take the matter in hand, watching over his shoulder. The financier, quick at anything, manual or mental, went at it in his customary energetic fashion, and in five minutes demonstrated to Bonhag that, barring skill and speed, which could only come with practice, he could do it as well as another. “You’ll make out all right,” said Bonhag. “You’re supposed to do ten of those a day. We won’t count the next few days, though, until you get your hand in. After that I’ll come around and see how you’re getting along. You understand about the towel on the door, don’t you?” he inquired.
“Yes, Mr. Chapin explained that to me,” replied Cowperwood. “I think I know what most of the rules are now. I’ll try not to break any of them.”
The days which followed brought a number of modifications of his prison lot, but not sufficient by any means to make it acceptable to him. Bonhag, during the first few days in which he trained Cowperwood in the art of caning chairs, managed to make it perfectly clear that there were a number of things he would be willing to do for him. One of the things that moved him to this, was that already he had been impressed by the fact that Stener’s friends were coming to see him in larger numbers than Cowperwood’s, sending him an occasional basket of fruit, which he gave to the overseers, and that his wife and children had been already permitted to visit him outside the regular visiting-day. This was a cause for jealousy on Bonhag’s part. His fellow-overseer was lording it over him–telling him, as it were, of the high jinks in Block 4. Bonhag really wanted Cowperwood to spruce up and show what he could do, socially or otherwise.
And so now he began with: “I see you have your lawyer and your partner here every day. There ain’t anybody else you’d like to have visit you, is there? Of course, it’s against the rules to have your wife or sister or anybody like that, except on visiting days–” And here he paused and rolled a large and informing eye on Cowperwood–such an eye as was supposed to convey dark and mysterious things. “But all the rules ain’t kept around here by a long shot.”
Cowperwood was not the man to lose a chance of this kind. He smiled a little–enough to relieve himself, and to convey to Bonhag that he was gratified by the information, but vocally he observed: “I’ll tell you how it is, Mr. Bonhag. I believe you understand my position better than most men would, and that I can talk to you. There are people who would like to come here, but I have been afraid to let them come. I did not know that it could be arranged. If it could be, I would be very grateful. You and I are practical men–I know that if any favors are extended some of those who help to bring them about must be looked after. If you can do anything to make it a little more comfortable for me here I will show you that I appreciate it. I haven’t any money on my person, but I can always get it, and I will see that you are properly looked after.”
Bonhag’s short, thick ears tingled. This was the kind of talk he liked to hear. “I can fix anything like that, Mr. Cowperwood,” he replied, servilely. “You leave it to me. If there’s any one you want to see at any time, just let me know. Of course I have to be very careful, and so do you, but that’s all right, too. If you want to stay out in that yard a little longer in the mornings or get out there afternoons or evenings, from now on, why, go ahead. It’s all right. I’ll just leave the door open. If the warden or anybody else should be around, I’ll just scratch on your door with my key, and you come in and shut it. If there’s anything you want from the outside I can get it for you–jelly or eggs or butter or any little thing like that. You might like to fix up your meals a little that way.”
“I’m certainly most grateful, Mr. Bonhag,” returned Cowperwood in his grandest manner, and with a desire to smile, but he kept a straight face.
“In regard to that other matter,” went on Bonhag, referring to the matter of extra visitors, “I can fix that any time you want to. I know the men out at the gate. If you want anybody to come here, just write ’em a note and give it to me, and tell ’em to ask for me when they come. That’ll get ’em in all right. When they get here you can talk to ’em in your cell. See! Only when I tap they have to come out. You want to remember that. So just you let me know.”
Cowperwood was exceedingly grateful. He said so in direct, choice language. It occurred to him at once that this was Aileen’s opportunity, and that he could now notify her to come. If she veiled herself sufficiently she would probably be safe enough. He decided to write her, and when Wingate came he gave him a letter to mail.
Two days later, at three o’clock in the afternoon–the time appointed by him–Aileen came to see him. She was dressed in gray broadcloth with white-velvet trimmings and cut-steel buttons which glistened like silver, and wore, as additional ornaments, as well as a protection against the cold, a cap, stole, and muff of snow-white ermine. Over this rather striking costume she had slipped a long dark circular cloak, which she meant to lay off immediately upon her arrival. She had made a very careful toilet as to her shoes, gloves, hair, and the gold ornaments which she wore. Her face was concealed by a thick green veil, as Cowperwood had suggested; and she arrived at an hour when, as near as he had been able to prearrange, he would be alone. Wingate usually came at four, after business, and Steger in the morning, when he came at all. She was very nervous over this strange adventure, leaving the street-car in which she had chosen to travel some distance away and walking up a side street. The cold weather and the gray walls under a gray sky gave her a sense of defeat, but she had worked very hard to look nice in order to cheer her lover up. She knew how readily he responded to the influence of her beauty when properly displayed.
Cowperwood, in view of her coming, had made his cell as acceptable as possible. It was clean, because he had swept it himself and made his own bed; and besides he had shaved and combed his hair, and otherwise put himself to rights. The caned chairs on which he was working had been put in the corner at the end of the bed. His few dishes were washed and hung up, and his clogs brushed with a brush which he now kept for the purpose. Never before, he thought to himself, with a peculiar feeling of artistic degradation, had Aileen seen him like this. She had always admired his good taste in clothes, and the way he carried himself in them; and now she was to see him in garments which no dignity of body could make presentable. Only a stoic sense of his own soul-dignity aided him here. After all, as he now thought, he was Frank A. Cowperwood, and that was something, whatever he wore. And Aileen knew it. Again, he might be free and rich some day, and he knew that she believed that. Best of all, his looks under these or any other circumstances, as he knew, would make no difference to Aileen. She would only love him the more. It was her ardent sympathy that he was afraid of. He was so glad that Bonhag had suggested that she might enter the cell, for it would be a grim procedure talking to her through a barred door.
When Aileen arrived she asked for Mr. Bonhag, and was permitted to go to the central rotunda, where he was sent for. When he came she murmured: “I wish to see Mr. Cowperwood, if you please”; and he exclaimed, “Oh, yes, just come with me.” As he came across the rotunda floor from his corridor he was struck by the evident youth of Aileen, even though he could not see her face. This now was something in accordance with what he had expected of Cowperwood. A man who could steal five hundred thousand dollars and set a whole city by the ears must have wonderful adventures of all kinds, and Aileen looked like a true adventure. He led her to the little room where he kept his desk and detained visitors, and then bustled down to Cowperwood’s cell, where the financier was working on one of his chairs and scratching on the door with his key, called: “There’s a young lady here to see you. Do you want to let her come inside?”
“Thank you, yes,” replied Cowperwood; and Bonhag hurried away, unintentionally forgetting, in his boorish incivility, to unlock the cell door, so that he had to open it in Aileen’s presence. The long corridor, with its thick doors, mathematically spaced gratings and gray-stone pavement, caused Aileen to feel faint at heart. A prison, iron cells! And he was in one of them. It chilled her usually courageous spirit. What a terrible place for her Frank to be! What a horrible thing to have put him here! Judges, juries, courts, laws, jails seemed like so many foaming ogres ranged about the world, glaring down upon her and her love-affair. The clank of the key in the lock, and the heavy outward swinging of the door, completed her sense of the untoward. And then she saw Cowperwood.
Because of the price he was to receive, Bonhag, after admitting her, strolled discreetly away. Aileen looked at Cowperwood from behind her veil, afraid to speak until she was sure Bonhag had gone. And Cowperwood, who was retaining his self-possession by an effort, signaled her but with difficulty after a moment or two. “It’s all right,” he said. “He’s gone away.” She lifted her veil, removed her cloak, and took in, without seeming to, the stuffy, narrow thickness of the room, his wretched shoes, the cheap, misshapen suit, the iron door behind him leading out into the little yard attached to his cell. Against such a background, with his partially caned chairs visible at the end of the bed, he seemed unnatural, weird even. Her Frank! And in this condition. She trembled and it was useless for her to try to speak. She could only put her arms around him and stroke his head, murmuring: “My poor boy–my darling. Is this what they have done to you? Oh, my poor darling.” She held his head while Cowperwood, anxious to retain his composure, winced and trembled, too. Her love was so full–so genuine. It was so soothing at the same time that it was unmanning, as now he could see, making of him a child again. And for the first time in his life, some inexplicable trick of chemistry– that chemistry of the body, of blind forces which so readily supersedes reason at times–he lost his self-control. The depth of Aileen’s feelings, the cooing sound of her voice, the velvety tenderness of her hands, that beauty that had drawn him all the time–more radiant here perhaps within these hard walls, and in the face of his physical misery, than it had ever been before– completely unmanned him. He did not understand how it could; he tried to defy the moods, but he could not. When she held his head close and caressed it, of a sudden, in spite of himself, his breast felt thick and stuffy, and his throat hurt him. He felt, for him, an astonishingly strange feeling, a desire to cry, which he did his best to overcome; it shocked him so. There then combined and conspired to defeat him a strange, rich picture of the great world he had so recently lost, of the lovely, magnificent world which he hoped some day to regain. He felt more poignantly at this moment than ever he had before the degradation of the clog shoes, the cotton shirt, the striped suit, the reputation of a convict, permanent and not to be laid aside. He drew himself quickly away from her, turned his back, clinched his hands, drew his muscles taut; but it was too late. He was crying, and he could not stop.
“Oh, damn it!” he exclaimed, half angrily, half self-commiseratingly, in combined rage and shame. “Why should I cry? What the devil’s the matter with me, anyhow?”
Aileen saw it. She fairly flung herself in front of him, seized his head with one hand, his shabby waist with the other, and held him tight in a grip that he could not have readily released.
“Oh, honey, honey, honey!” she exclaimed, pityingly feverishly. “I love you, I adore you. They could cut my body into bits if it would do you any good. To think that they should make you cry! Oh, my sweet, my sweet, my darling boy!”
She pulled his still shaking body tighter, and with her free hand caressed his head. She kissed his eyes, his hair, his cheeks. He pulled himself loose again after a moment, exclaiming, “What the devil’s got into me?” but she drew him back.
“Never mind, honey darling, don’t you be ashamed to cry. Cry here on my shoulder. Cry here with me. My baby–my honey pet!”
He quieted down after a few moments, cautioning her against Bonhag, and regaining his former composure, which he was so ashamed to have lost.
“You’re a great girl, pet,” he said, with a tender and yet apologetic smile. “You’re all right–all that I need–a great help to me; but don’t worry any longer about me, dear. I’m all right. It isn’t as bad as you think. How are you?”
Aileen on her part was not to be soothed so easily. His many woes, including his wretched position here, outraged her sense of justice and decency. To think her fine, wonderful Frank should be compelled to come to this–to cry. She stroked his head, tenderly, while wild, deadly, unreasoning opposition to life and chance and untoward opposition surged in her brain. Her father–damn him! Her family– pooh! What did she care? Her Frank–her Frank. How little all else mattered where he was concerned. Never, never, never would she desert him–never–come what might. And now she clung to him in silence while she fought in her brain an awful battle with life and law and fate and circumstance. Law–nonsense! People– they were brutes, devils, enemies, hounds! She was delighted, eager, crazy to make a sacrifice of herself. She would go anywhere for or with her Frank now. She would do anything for him. Her family was nothing–life nothing, nothing, nothing. She would do anything he wished, nothing more, nothing less; anything she could do to save him, to make his life happier, but nothing for any one else.
Chapter LVI
The days passed. Once the understanding with Bonhag was reached, Cowperwood’s wife, mother and sister were allowed to appear on occasions. His wife and the children were now settled in the little home for which he was paying, and his financial obligations to her were satisfied by Wingate, who paid her one hundred and twenty five dollars a month for him. He realized that he owed her more, but he was sailing rather close to the wind financially, these days. The final collapse of his old interests had come in March, when he had been legally declared a bankrupt, and all his properties forfeited to satisfy the claims against him. The city’s claim of five hundred thousand dollars would have eaten up more than could have been realized at the time, had not a pro rata payment of thirty cents on the dollar been declared. Even then the city never received its due, for by some hocus-pocus it was declared to have forfeited its rights. Its claims had not been made at the proper time in the proper way. This left larger portions of real money for the others.
Fortunately by now Cowperwood had begun to see that by a little experimenting his business relations with Wingate were likely to prove profitable. The broker had made it clear that he intended to be perfectly straight with him. He had employed Cowperwood’s two brothers, at very moderate salaries–one to take care of the books and look after the office, and the other to act on ‘change with him, for their seats in that organization had never been sold. And also, by considerable effort, he had succeeded in securing Cowperwood, Sr., a place as a clerk in a bank. For the latter, since the day of his resignation from the Third National had been in a deep, sad quandary as to what further to do with his life. His son’s disgrace! The horror of his trial and incarceration. Since the day of Frank’s indictment and more so, since his sentence and commitment to the Eastern Penitentiary, he was as one who walked in a dream. That trial! That charge against Frank! His own son, a convict in stripes–and after he and Frank had walked so proudly in the front rank of the successful and respected here. Like so many others in his hour of distress, he had taken to reading the Bible, looking into its pages for something of that mind consolation that always, from youth up, although rather casually in these latter years, he had imagined was to be found there. The Psalms, Isaiah, the Book of Job, Ecclesiastes. And for the most part, because of the fraying nature of his present ills, not finding it.
But day after day secreting himself in his room–a little hall-bedroom office in his newest home, where to his wife, he pretended that he had some commercial matters wherewith he was still concerned– and once inside, the door locked, sitting and brooding on all that had befallen him–his losses; his good name. Or, after months of this, and because of the new position secured for him by Wingate– a bookkeeping job in one of the outlying banks–slipping away early in the morning, and returning late at night, his mind a gloomy epitome of all that had been or yet might be.
To see him bustling off from his new but very much reduced home at half after seven in the morning in order to reach the small bank, which was some distance away and not accessible by street-car line, was one of those pathetic sights which the fortunes of trade so frequently offer. He carried his lunch in a small box because it was inconvenient to return home in the time allotted for this purpose, and because his new salary did not permit the extravagance of a purchased one. It was his one ambition now to eke out a respectable but unseen existence until he should die, which he hoped would not be long. He was a pathetic figure with his thin legs and body, his gray hair, and his snow-white side-whiskers. He was very lean and angular, and, when confronted by a difficult problem, a little uncertain or vague in his mind. An old habit which had grown on him in the years of his prosperity of putting his hand to his mouth and of opening his eyes in an assumption of surprise, which had no basis in fact, now grew upon him. He really degenerated, although he did not know it, into a mere automaton. Life strews its shores with such interesting and pathetic wrecks.
One of the things that caused Cowperwood no little thought at this time, and especially in view of his present extreme indifference to her, was how he would bring up this matter of his indifference to his wife and his desire to end their relationship. Yet apart from the brutality of the plain truth, he saw no way. As he could plainly see, she was now persisting in her pretense of devotion, uncolored, apparently, by any suspicion of what had happened. Yet since his trial and conviction, she had been hearing from one source and another that he was still intimate with Aileen, and it was only her thought of his concurrent woes, and the fact that he might possibly be spared to a successful financial life, that now deterred her from speaking. He was shut up in a cell, she said to herself, and she was really very sorry for him, but she did not love him as she once had. He was really too deserving of reproach for his general unseemly conduct, and no doubt this was what was intended, as well as being enforced, by the Governing Power of the world.
One can imagine how much such an attitude as this would appeal to Cowperwood, once he had detected it. By a dozen little signs, in spite of the fact that she brought him delicacies, and commiserated on his fate, he could see that she felt not only sad, but reproachful, and if there was one thing that Cowperwood objected to at all times it was the moral as well as the funereal air. Contrasted with the cheerful combative hopefulness and enthusiasm of Aileen, the wearied uncertainty of Mrs. Cowperwood was, to say the least, a little tame. Aileen, after her first burst of rage over his fate, which really did not develop any tears on her part, was apparently convinced that he would get out and be very successful again. She talked success and his future all the time because she believed in it. Instinctively she seemed to realize that prison walls could not make a prison for him. Indeed, on the first day she left she handed Bonhag ten dollars, and after thanking him in her attractive voice–without showing her face, however–for his obvious kindness to her, bespoke his further favor for Cowperwood–“a very great man,” as she described him, which sealed that ambitious materialist’s fate completely. There was nothing the overseer would not do for the young lady in the dark cloak. She might have stayed in Cowperwood’s cell for a week if the visiting-hours of the penitentiary had not made it impossible.
The day that Cowperwood decided to discuss with his wife the weariness of his present married state and his desire to be free of it was some four months after he had entered the prison. By that time he had become inured to his convict life. The silence of his cell and the menial tasks he was compelled to perform, which had at first been so distressing, banal, maddening, in their pointless iteration, had now become merely commonplace–dull, but not painful. Furthermore he had learned many of the little resources of the solitary convict, such as that of using his lamp to warm up some delicacy which he had saved from a previous meal or from some basket which had been sent him by his wife or Aileen. He had partially gotten rid of the sickening odor of his cell by persuading Bonhag to bring him small packages of lime; which he used with great freedom. Also he succeeded in defeating some of the more venturesome rats with traps; and with Bonhag’s permission, after his cell door had been properly locked at night, and sealed with the outer wooden door, he would take his chair, if it were not too cold, out into the little back yard of his cell and look at the sky, where, when the nights were clear, the stars were to be seen. He had never taken any interest in astronomy as a scientific study, but now the Pleiades, the belt of Orion, the Big Dipper and the North Star, to which one of its lines pointed, caught his attention, almost his fancy. He wondered why the stars of the belt of Orion came to assume the peculiar mathematical relation to each other which they held, as far as distance and arrangement were concerned, and whether that could possibly have any intellectual significance. The nebulous conglomeration of the suns in Pleiades suggested a soundless depth of space, and he thought of the earth floating like a little ball in immeasurable reaches of ether. His own life appeared very trivial in view of these things, and he found himself asking whether it was all really of any significance or importance. He shook these moods off with ease, however, for the man was possessed of a sense of grandeur, largely in relation to himself and his affairs; and his temperament was essentially material and vital. Something kept telling him that whatever his present state he must yet grow to be a significant personage, one whose fame would be heralded the world over–who must try, try, try. It was not given ail men to see far or to do brilliantly; but to him it was given, and he must be what he was cut out to be. There was no more escaping the greatness that was inherent in him than there was for so many others the littleness that was in them.
Mrs. Cowperwood came in that afternoon quite solemnly, bearing several changes of linen, a pair of sheets, some potted meat and a pie. She was not exactly doleful, but Cowperwood thought that she was tending toward it, largely because of her brooding over his relationship to Aileen, which he knew that she knew. Something in her manner decided him to speak before she left; and after asking her how the children were, and listening to her inquiries in regard to the things that he needed, he said to her, sitting on his single chair while she sat on his bed:
“Lillian, there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk with you about for some time. I should have done it before, but it’s better late than never. I know that you know that there is something between Aileen Butler and me, and we might as well have it open and aboveboard. It’s true I am very fond of her and she is very devoted to me, and if ever I get out of here I want to arrange it so that I can marry her. That means that you will have to give me a divorce, if you will; and I want to talk to you about that now. This can’t be so very much of a surprise to you, because you must have seen this long while that our relationship hasn’t been all that it might have been, and under the circumstances this can’t prove such a very great hardship to you–I am sure.” He paused, waiting, for Mrs. Cowperwood at first said nothing.
Her thought, when he first broached this, was that she ought to make some demonstration of astonishment or wrath: but when she looked into his steady, examining eyes, so free from the illusion of or interest in demonstrations of any kind, she realized how useless it would be. He was so utterly matter-of-fact in what seemed to her quite private and secret affairs–very shameless. She had never been able to understand quite how he could take the subtleties of life as he did, anyhow. Certain things which she always fancied should be hushed up he spoke of with the greatest nonchalance. Her ears tingled sometimes at his frankness in disposing of a social situation; but she thought this must be characteristic of notable men, and so there was nothing to be said about it. Certain men did as they pleased; society did not seem to be able to deal with them in any way. Perhaps God would, later–she was not sure. Anyhow, bad as he was, direct as he was, forceful as he was, he was far more interesting than most of the more conservative types in whom the social virtues of polite speech and modest thoughts were seemingly predominate.
“I know,” she said, rather peacefully, although with a touch of anger and resentment in her voice. “I’ve known all about it all this time. I expected you would say something like this to me some day. It’s a nice reward for all my devotion to you; but it’s just like you, Frank. When you are set on something, nothing can stop you. It wasn’t enough that you were getting along so nicely and had two children whom you ought to love, but you had to take up with this Butler creature until her name and yours are a by-word throughout the city. I know that she comes to this prison. I saw her out here one day as I was coming in, and I suppose every one else knows it by now. She has no sense of decency and she does not care–the wretched, vain thing–but I would have thought that you would be ashamed, Frank, to go on the way that you have, when you still have me and the children and your father and mother and when you are certain to have such a hard fight to get yourself on your feet, as it is. If she had any sense of decency she would not have anything to do with you–the shameless thing.”
Cowperwood looked at his wife with unflinching eyes. He read in her remarks just what his observation had long since confirmed– that she was sympathetically out of touch with him. She was no longer so attractive physically, and intellectually she was not Aileen’s equal. Also that contact with those women who had deigned to grace his home in his greatest hour of prosperity had proved to him conclusively she was lacking in certain social graces. Aileen was by no means so vastly better, still she was young and amenable and adaptable, and could still be improved. Opportunity as he now chose to think, might make Aileen, whereas for Lillian– or at least, as he now saw it–it could do nothing.
“I’ll tell you how it is, Lillian,” he said; “I’m not sure that you are going to get what I mean exactly, but you and I are not at all well suited to each other any more.”
“You didn’t seem to think that three or four years ago,” interrupted his wife, bitterly.
“I married you when I was twenty-one,” went on Cowperwood, quite brutally, not paying any attention to her interruption, “and I was really too young to know what I was doing. I was a mere boy. It doesn’t make so much difference about that. I am not using that as an excuse. The point that I am trying to make is this– that right or wrong, important or not important, I have changed my mind since. I don’t love you any more, and I don’t feel that I want to keep up a relationship, however it may look to the public, that is not satisfactory to me. You have one point of view about life, and I have another. You think your point of view is the right one, and there are thousands of people who will agree with you; but I don’t think so. We have never quarreled about these things, because I didn’t think it was important to quarrel about them. I don’t see under the circumstances that I am doing you any great injustice when I ask you to let me go. I don’t intend to desert you or the children–you will get a good living-income from me as long as I have the money to give it to you–but I want my personal freedom when I come out of here, if ever I do, and I want you to let me have it. The money that you had and a great deal more, once I am out of here, you will get back when I am on my feet again. But not if you oppose me–only if you help me. I want, and intend to help you always–but in my way.”
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.
On demand, old Butler confessed at once, but insisted that his son keep silent about it.
“I wish I’d have known,” said Owen, grimly. “I’d have shot the dirty dog.”
“Aisy, aisy,” said Butler. “Yer own life’s worth more than his, and ye’d only be draggin’ the rest of yer family in the dirt with him. He’s had somethin’ to pay him for his dirty trick, and he’ll have more. Just ye say nothin’ to no one. Wait. He’ll be wantin’ to get out in a year or two. Say nothin’ to her aither. Talkin’ won’t help there. She’ll come to her sinses when he’s been away long enough, I’m thinkin’.” Owen had tried to be civil to his sister after that, but since he was a stickler for social perfection and advancement, and so eager to get up in the world himself, he could not understand how she could possibly have done any such thing. He resented bitterly the stumbling-block she had put in his path. Now, among other things, his enemies would have this to throw in his face if they wanted to–and they would want to, trust life for that.
Callum reached his knowledge of the matter in quite another manner, but at about the same time. He was a member of an athletic club which had an attractive building in the city, and a fine country club, where he went occasionally to enjoy the swimming-pool and the Turkish bath connected with it. One of his friends approached him there in the billiard-room one evening and said, “Say, Butler, you know I’m a good friend of yours, don’t you?”
“Why, certainly, I know it,” replied Callum. “What’s the matter?”
“Well, you know,” said the young individual, whose name was Richard Pethick, looking at Callum with a look of almost strained affection, “I wouldn’t come to you with any story that I thought would hurt your feelings or that you oughtn’t to know about, but I do think you ought to know about this.” He pulled at a high white collar which was choking his neck.
“I know you wouldn’t, Pethick,” replied Callum; very much interested. “What is it? What’s the point?”
“Well, I don’t like to say anything,” replied Pethick, “but that fellow Hibbs is saying things around here about your sister.”
“What’s that?” exclaimed Callum, straightening up in the most dynamic way and bethinking him of the approved social procedure in all such cases. He should be very angry. He should demand and exact proper satisfaction in some form or other–by blows very likely if his honor had been in any way impugned. “What is it he says about my sister? What right has he to mention her name here, anyhow? He doesn’t know her.”
Pethick affected to be greatly concerned lest he cause trouble between Callum and Hibbs. He protested that he did not want to, when, in reality, he was dying to tell. At last he came out with, “Why, he’s circulated the yarn that your sister had something to do with this man Cowperwood, who was tried here recently, and that that’s why he’s just gone to prison.”
“What’s that?” exclaimed Callum, losing the make-believe of the unimportant, and taking on the serious mien of some one who feels desperately. “He says that, does he? Where is he? I want to see if he’ll say that to me.”
Some of the stern fighting ability of his father showed in his slender, rather refined young face.
“Now, Callum,” insisted Pethick, realizing the genuine storm he had raised, and being a little fearful of the result, “do be careful what you say. You mustn’t have a row in here. You know it’s against the rules. Besides he may be drunk. It’s just some foolish talk he’s heard, I’m sure. Now, for goodness’ sake, don’t get so excited.” Pethick, having evoked the storm, was not a little nervous as to its results in his own case. He, too, as well as Callum, himself as the tale-bearer, might now be involved.
But Callum by now was not so easily restrained. His face was quite pale, and he was moving toward the old English grill-room, where Hibbs happened to be, consuming a brandy-and-soda with a friend of about his own age. Callum entered and called him.
“Oh, Hibbs!” he said.
Hibbs, hearing his voice and seeing him in the door, arose and came over. He was an interesting youth of the collegiate type, educated at Princeton. He had heard the rumor concerning Aileen from various sources–other members of the club, for one–and had ventured to repeat it in Pethick’s presence.
“What’s that you were just saying about my sister?” asked Callum, grimly, looking Hibbs in the eye.
“Why–I–” hesitated Hibbs, who sensed trouble and was eager to avoid it. He was not exceptionally brave and looked it. His hair was straw-colored, his eyes blue, and his cheeks pink. “Why– nothing in particular. Who said I was talking about her?” He looked at Pethick, whom he knew to be the tale-bearer, and the latter exclaimed, excitedly:
“Now don’t you try to deny it, Hibbs. You know I heard you?”
“Well, what did I say?” asked Hibbs, defiantly.
“Well, what did you say?” interrupted Callum, grimly, transferring the conversation to himself. “That’s just what I want to know.”
“Why,” stammered Hibbs, nervously, “I don’t think I’ve said anything that anybody else hasn’t said. I just repeated that some one said that your sister had been very friendly with Mr. Cowperwood. I didn’t say any more than I have heard other people say around here.”
“Oh, you didn’t, did you?” exclaimed Callum, withdrawing his hand from his pocket and slapping Hibbs in the face. He repeated the blow with his left hand, fiercely. “Perhaps that’ll teach you to keep my sister’s name out of your mouth, you pup!”
Hibbs’s arms flew up. He was not without pugilistic training, and he struck back vigorously, striking Callum once in the chest and once in the neck. In an instant the two rooms of this suite were in an uproar. Tables and chairs were overturned by the energy of men attempting to get to the scene of action. The two combatants were quickly separated; sides were taken by the friends of each, excited explanations attempted and defied. Callum was examining the knuckles of his left hand, which were cut from the blow he had delivered. He maintained a gentlemanly calm. Hibbs, very much flustered and excited, insisted that he had been most unreasonably used. The idea of attacking him here. And, anyhow, as he maintained now, Pethick had been both eavesdropping and lying about him. Incidentally, the latter was protesting to others that he had done the only thing which an honorable friend could do. It was a nine days’ wonder in the club, and was only kept out of the newspapers by the most strenuous efforts on the part of the friends of both parties. Callum was so outraged on discovering that there was some foundation for the rumor at the club in a general rumor which prevailed that he tendered his resignation, and never went there again.
“I wish to heaven you hadn’t struck that fellow,” counseled Owen, when the incident was related to him. “It will only make more talk. She ought to leave this place; but she won’t. She’s struck on that fellow yet, and we can’t tell Norah and mother. We will never hear the last of this, you and I–believe me.”
“Damn it, she ought to be made to go,” exclaimed Callum.
“Well, she won’t,” replied Owen. “Father has tried making her, and she won’t go. Just let things stand. He’s in the penitentiary now, and that’s probably the end of him. The public seem to think that father put him there, and that’s something. Maybe we can persuade her to go after a while. I wish to God we had never had sight of that fellow. If ever he comes out, I’ve a good notion to kill him.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do anything like that,” replied Callum. “It’s useless. It would only stir things up afresh. He’s done for, anyhow.”
They planned to urge Norah to marry as soon as possible. And as for their feelings toward Aileen, it was a very chilly atmosphere which Mrs. Butler contemplated from now on, much to her confusion, grief, and astonishment.
In this divided world it was that Butler eventually found himself, all at sea as to what to think or what to do. He had brooded so long now, for months, and as yet had found no solution. And finally, in a form of religious despair, sitting at his desk, in his business chair, he had collapsed–a weary and disconsolate man of seventy. A lesion of the left ventricle was the immediate physical cause, although brooding over Aileen was in part the mental one. His death could not have been laid to his grief over Aileen exactly, for he was a very large man–apoplectic and with