If any one fancies for a moment that this commercial move on the part of Cowperwood was either hasty or ill-considered they but little appreciate the incisive, apprehensive psychology of the man. His thoughts as to life and control (tempered and hardened by thirteen months of reflection in the Eastern District Penitentiary) had given him a fixed policy. He could, should, and would rule alone. No man must ever again have the least claim on him save that of a suppliant.

He wanted no more dangerous combinations such as he had had with Stener, the man through whom he had lost so much in Philadelphia, and others. By right of financial intellect and courage he was first, and would so prove it. Men must swing around him as planets around the sun.

Moreover, since his fall from grace in Philadelphia he had come to think that never again, perhaps, could he hope to become socially acceptable in the sense in which the so-called best society of a city interprets the phrase; and pondering over this at odd moments, he realized that his future allies in all probability would not be among the rich and socially important--the clannish, sn.o.bbish elements of society--but among the beginners and financially strong men who had come or were coming up from the bottom, and who had no social hopes whatsoever. There were many such. If through luck and effort he became sufficiently powerful financially he might then hope to dictate to society. Individualistic and even anarchistic in character, and without a shred of true democracy, yet temperamentally he was in sympathy with the ma.s.s more than he was with the cla.s.s, and he understood the ma.s.s better. Perhaps this, in a way, will explain his desire to connect himself with a personality so naive and strange as Peter Laughlin. He had annexed him as a surgeon selects a special knife or instrument for an operation, and, shrewd as old Laughlin was, he was destined to be no more than a tool in Cowperwood"s strong hands, a mere hustling messenger, content to take orders from this swiftest of moving brains. For the present Cowperwood was satisfied to do business under the firm name of Peter Laughlin & Co.--as a matter of fact, he preferred it; for he could thus keep himself sufficiently inconspicuous to avoid undue attention, and gradually work out one or two coups by which he hoped to firmly fix himself in the financial future of Chicago.

As the most essential preliminary to the social as well as the financial establishment of himself and Aileen in Chicago, Harper Steger, Cowperwood"s lawyer, was doing his best all this while to ingratiate himself in the confidence of Mrs. Cowperwood, who had no faith in lawyers any more than she had in her recalcitrant husband.

She was now a tall, severe, and rather plain woman, but still bearing the marks of the former pa.s.sive charm that had once interested Cowperwood. Notable crows"-feet had come about the corners of her nose, mouth, and eyes. She had a remote, censorious, subdued, self-righteous, and even injured air.

The cat-like Steger, who had all the graceful contemplative air of a prowling Tom, was just the person to deal with her. A more suavely cunning and opportunistic soul never was. His motto might well have been, speak softly and step lightly.

"My dear Mrs. Cowperwood," he argued, seated in her modest West Philadelphia parlor one spring afternoon, "I need not tell you what a remarkable man your husband is, nor how useless it is to combat him.

Admitting all his faults--and we can agree, if you please, that they are many"--Mrs. Cowperwood stirred with irritation--"still it is not worth while to attempt to hold him to a strict account. You know"--and Mr. Steger opened his thin, artistic hands in a deprecatory way--"what sort of a man Mr. Cowperwood is, and whether he can be coerced or not.

He is not an ordinary man, Mrs. Cowperwood. No man could have gone through what he has and be where he is to-day, and be an average man.

If you take my advice you will let him go his way. Grant him a divorce. He is willing, even anxious to make a definite provision for you and your children. He will, I am sure, look liberally after their future. But he is becoming very irritable over your unwillingness to give him a legal separation, and unless you do I am very much afraid that the whole matter will be thrown into the courts. If, before it comes to that, I could effect an arrangement agreeable to you, I would be much pleased. As you know, I have been greatly grieved by the whole course of your recent affairs. I am intensely sorry that things are as they are."

Mr. Steger lifted his eyes in a very pained, deprecatory way. He regretted deeply the shifty currents of this troubled world.

Mrs. Cowperwood for perhaps the fifteenth or twentieth time heard him to the end in patience. Cowperwood would not return. Steger was as much her friend as any other lawyer would be. Besides, he was socially agreeable to her. Despite his Machiavellian profession, she half believed him. He went over, tactfully, a score of additional points.

Finally, on the twenty-first visit, and with seemingly great distress, he told her that her husband had decided to break with her financially, to pay no more bills, and do nothing until his responsibility had been fixed by the courts, and that he, Steger, was about to retire from the case. Mrs. Cowperwood felt that she must yield; she named her ultimatum. If he would fix two hundred thousand dollars on her and the children (this was Cowperwood"s own suggestion) and later on do something commercially for their only son, Frank, junior, she would let him go. She disliked to do it. She knew that it meant the triumph of Aileen Butler, such as it was. But, after all, that wretched creature had been properly disgraced in Philadelphia. It was not likely she could ever raise her head socially anywhere any more. She agreed to file a plea which Steger would draw up for her, and by that oily gentleman"s machinations it was finally wormed through the local court in the most secret manner imaginable. The merest item in three of the Philadelphia papers some six weeks later reported that a divorce had been granted. When Mrs. Cowperwood read it she wondered greatly that so little attention had been attracted by it. She had feared a much more extended comment. She little knew the cat-like prowlings, legal and journalistic, of her husband"s interesting counsel. When Cowperwood read it on one of his visits to Chicago he heaved a sigh of relief. At last it was really true. Now he could make Aileen his wife. He telegraphed her an enigmatic message of congratulation. When Aileen read it she thrilled from head to foot. Now, shortly, she would become the legal bride of Frank Algernon Cowperwood, the newly enfranchised Chicago financier, and then--

"Oh," she said, in her Philadelphia home, when she read it, "isn"t that splendid! Now I"ll be Mrs. Cowperwood. Oh, dear!"

Mrs. Frank Algernon Cowperwood number one, thinking over her husband"s liaison, failure, imprisonment, pyrotechnic operations at the time of the Jay Cooke failure, and his present financial ascendancy, wondered at the mystery of life. There must be a G.o.d. The Bible said so. Her husband, evil though he was, could not be utterly bad, for he had made ample provision for her, and the children liked him. Certainly, at the time of the criminal prosecution he was no worse than some others who had gone free. Yet he had been convicted, and she was sorry for that and had always been. He was an able and ruthless man. She hardly knew what to think. The one person she really did blame was the wretched, vain, empty-headed, unG.o.dly Aileen Butler, who had been his seductress and was probably now to be his wife. G.o.d would punish her, no doubt.

He must. So she went to church on Sundays and tried to believe, come what might, that all was for the best.

Chapter VI

The New Queen of the Home

The day Cowperwood and Aileen were married--it was in an obscure village called Dalston, near Pittsburg, in western Pennsylvania, where they had stopped off to manage this matter--he had said to her: "I want to tell you, dear, that you and I are really beginning life all over.

Now it depends on how well we play this game as to how well we succeed.

If you will listen to me we won"t try to do anything much socially in Chicago for the present. Of course we"ll have to meet a few people.

That can"t be avoided. Mr. and Mrs. Addison are anxious to meet you, and I"ve delayed too long in that matter as it is. But what I mean is that I don"t believe it"s advisable to push this social exchange too far. People are sure to begin to make inquiries if we do. My plan is to wait a little while and then build a really fine house so that we won"t need to rebuild. We"re going to go to Europe next spring, if things go right, and we may get some ideas over there. I"m going to put in a good big gallery," he concluded. "While we"re traveling we might as well see what we can find in the way of pictures and so on."

Aileen was thrilling with antic.i.p.ation. "Oh, Frank," she said to him, quite ecstatically, "you"re so wonderful! You do everything you want, don"t you?"

"Not quite," he said, deprecatingly; "but it isn"t for not wanting to.

Chance has a little to say about some of these chings, Aileen."

She stood in front of him, as she often did, her plump, ringed hands on his shoulders, and looked into those steady, lucid pools--his eyes.

Another man, less leonine, and with all his shifting thoughts, might have had to contend with the handicap of a shifty gaze; he fronted the queries and suspicions of the world with a seeming candor that was as disarming as that of a child. The truth was he believed in himself, and himself only, and thence sprang his courage to think as he pleased.

Aileen wondered, but could get no answer.

"Oh, you big tiger!" she said. "You great, big lion! Boo!"

He pinched her cheek and smiled. "Poor Aileen!" he thought. She little knew the unsolvable mystery that he was even to himself--to himself most of all.

Immediately after their marriage Cowperwood and Aileen journeyed to Chicago direct, and took the best rooms that the Tremont provided, for the time being. A little later they heard of a comparatively small furnished house at Twenty-third and Michigan Avenue, which, with horses and carriages thrown in, was to be had for a season or two on lease.

They contracted for it at once, installing a butler, servants, and the general service of a well-appointed home. Here, because he thought it was only courteous, and not because he thought it was essential or wise at this time to attempt a social onslaught, he invited the Addisons and one or two others whom he felt sure would come--Alexander Rambaud, president of the Chicago & Northwestern, and his wife, and Taylor Lord, an architect whom he had recently called into consultation and whom he found socially acceptable. Lord, like the Addisons, was in society, but only as a minor figure.

Trust Cowperwood to do the thing as it should be done. The place they had leased was a charming little gray-stone house, with a neat flight of granite, bal.u.s.traded steps leading up to its wide-arched door, and a judicious use of stained gla.s.s to give its interior an artistically subdued atmosphere. Fortunately, it was furnished in good taste.

Cowperwood turned over the matter of the dinner to a caterer and decorator. Aileen had nothing to do but dress, and wait, and look her best.

"I needn"t tell you," he said, in the morning, on leaving, "that I want you to look nice to-night, pet. I want the Addisons and Mr. Rambaud to like you."

A hint was more than sufficient for Aileen, though really it was not needed. On arriving at Chicago she had sought and discovered a French maid. Although she had brought plenty of dresses from Philadelphia, she had been having additional winter costumes prepared by the best and most expensive mistress of the art in Chicago--Theresa Donovan. Only the day before she had welcomed home a golden-yellow silk under heavy green lace, which, with her reddish-gold hair and her white arms and neck, seemed to const.i.tute an unusual harmony. Her boudoir on the night of the dinner presented a veritable riot of silks, satins, laces, lingerie, hair ornaments, perfumes, jewels--anything and everything which might contribute to the feminine art of being beautiful. Once in the throes of a toilet composition, Aileen invariably became restless and energetic, almost fidgety, and her maid, Fadette, was compelled to move quickly. Fresh from her bath, a smooth, ivory Venus, she worked quickly through silken lingerie, stockings and shoes, to her hair.

Fadette had an idea to suggest for the hair. Would Madame let her try a new swirl she had seen? Madame would--yes. So there were movings of her ma.s.s of rich glinting tresses this way and that. Somehow it would not do. A braided effect was then tried, and instantly discarded; finally a double looping, without braids, low over the forehead, caught back with two dark-green bands, crossing like an X above the center of her forehead and fastened with a diamond sunburst, served admirably.

In her filmy, lacy boudoir costume of pink silk Aileen stood up and surveyed herself in the full-length mirror.

"Yes," she said, turning her head this way and that.

Then came the dress from Donovan"s, rustling and crisping. She slipped into it wonderingly, critically, while Fadette worked at the back, the arms, about her knees, doing one little essential thing after another.

"Oh, Madame!" she exclaimed. "Oh, charmant! Ze hair, it go weeth it perfect. It ees so full, so beyutiful here"--she pointed to the hips, where the lace formed a clinging basque. "Oh, tees varee, varee nize."

Aileen glowed, but with scarcely a smile. She was concerned. It wasn"t so much her toilet, which must be everything that it should be--but this Mr. Addison, who was so rich and in society, and Mr.

Rambaud, who was very powerful, Frank said, must like her. It was the necessity to put her best foot forward now that was really troubling her. She must interest these men mentally, perhaps, as well as physically, and with social graces, and that was not so easy. For all her money and comfort in Philadelphia she had never been in society in its best aspects, had never done social entertaining of any real importance. Frank was the most important man who had ever crossed her path. No doubt Mr. Rambaud had a severe, old-fashioned wife. How would she talk to her? And Mrs. Addison! She would know and see everything. Aileen almost talked out loud to herself in a consoling way as she dressed, so strenuous were her thoughts; but she went on, adding the last touches to her physical graces.

When she finally went down-stairs to see how the dining and reception rooms looked, and Fadette began putting away the welter of discarded garments--she was a radiant vision--a splendid greenish-gold figure, with gorgeous hair, smooth, soft, shapely ivory arms, a splendid neck and bust, and a swelling form. She felt beautiful, and yet she was a little nervous--truly. Frank himself would be critical. She went about looking into the dining-room, which, by the caterer"s art, had been transformed into a kind of jewel-box glowing with flowers, silver, gold, tinted gla.s.s, and the snowy whiteness of linen. It reminded her of an opal flashing all its soft fires. She went into the general reception-room, where was a grand piano finished in pink and gold, upon which, with due thought to her one accomplishment--her playing--she had arranged the songs and instrumental pieces she did best. Aileen was really not a brilliant musician. For the first time in her life she felt matronly--as if now she were not a girl any more, but a woman grown, with some serious responsibilities, and yet she was not really suited to the role. As a matter of fact, her thoughts were always fixed on the artistic, social, and dramatic aspects of life, with unfortunately a kind of nebulosity of conception which permitted no condensation into anything definite or concrete. She could only be wildly and feverishly interested. Just then the door clicked to Frank"s key--it was nearing six--and in he came, smiling, confident, a perfect atmosphere of a.s.surance.

"Well!" he observed, surveying her in the soft glow of the reception-room lighted by wall candles judiciously arranged. "Who"s the vision floating around here? I"m almost afraid to touch you. Much powder on those arms?"

He drew her into his arms, and she put up her mouth with a sense of relief. Obviously, he must think that she looked charming.

"I am chalky, I guess. You"ll just have to stand it, though. You"re going to dress, anyhow."

She put her smooth, plump arms about his neck, and he felt pleased.

This was the kind of a woman to have--a beauty. Her neck was resplendent with a string of turquoise, her fingers too heavily jeweled, but still beautiful. She was faintly redolent of hyacinth or lavender. Her hair appealed to him, and, above all, the rich yellow silk of her dress, flashing fulgurously through the closely netted green.

"Charming, girlie. You"ve outdone yourself. I haven"t seen this dress before. Where did you get it?"

"Here in Chicago."

He lifted her warm fingers, surveying her train, and turned her about.

"You don"t need any advice. You ought to start a school."

"Am I all right?" she queried, smartly, but with a sense of self-distrust for the moment, and all because of him.

"You"re perfect. Couldn"t be nicer. Splendid!"

She took heart.

"I wish your friends would think so. You"d better hurry."