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_ Things had changed greatly since last Cowperwood had talked with
Butler. Although most friendly at the time the proposition was
made that he should combine with Mollenhauer and Simpson to sustain
the market, alas, now on this Monday morning at nine o'clock, an
additional complication had been added to the already tangled
situation which had changed Butler's attitude completely. As he
was leaving his home to enter his runabout, at nine o'clock in the
morning of this same day in which Cowperwood was seeking Stener's
aid, the postman, coming up, had handed Butler four letters, all
of which he paused for a moment to glance at. One was from a
sub-contractor by the name of O'Higgins, the second was from Father
Michel, his confessor, of St. Timothy's, thanking him for a
contribution to the parish poor fund; a third was from Drexel & Co.
relating to a deposit, and the fourth was an anonymous communication,
on cheap stationery from some one who was apparently not very
literate--a woman most likely--written in a scrawling hand, which
read:
DEAR SIR--This is to warn you that your daughter
Aileen is running around with a man that she shouldn't,
Frank A. Cowperwood, the banker. If you don't believe
it, watch the house at 931 North Tenth Street. Then you
can see for yourself.
There was neither signature nor mark of any kind to indicate from
whence it might have come. Butler got the impression strongly
that it might have been written by some one living in the vicinity
of the number indicated. His intuitions were keen at times. As
a matter of fact, it was written by a girl, a member of St. Timothy's
Church, who did live in the vicinity of the house indicated, and
who knew Aileen by sight and was jealous of her airs and her position.
She was a thin, anemic, dissatisfied creature who had the type of
brain which can reconcile the gratification of personal spite with
a comforting sense of having fulfilled a moral duty. Her home was
some five doors north of the unregistered Cowperwood domicile on
the opposite side of the street, and by degrees, in the course of
time, she made out, or imagined that she had, the significance of
this institution, piecing fact to fancy and fusing all with that
keen intuition which is so closely related to fact. The result
was eventually this letter which now spread clear and grim before
Butler's eyes.
The Irish are a philosophic as well as a practical race. Their
first and strongest impulse is to make the best of a bad situation--
to put a better face on evil than it normally wears. On first
reading these lines the intelligence they conveyed sent a peculiar
chill over Butler's sturdy frame. His jaw instinctively closed,
and his gray eyes narrowed. Could this be true? If it were not,
would the author of the letter say so practically, "If you don't
believe it, watch the house at 931 North Tenth Street"? Wasn't
that in itself proof positive--the hard, matter-of-fact realism
of it? And this was the man who had come to him the night before
seeking aid--whom he had done so much to assist. There forced
itself into his naturally slow-moving but rather accurate mind a
sense of the distinction and charm of his daughter--a considerably
sharper picture than he had ever had before, and at the same time
a keener understanding of the personality of Frank Algernon
Cowperwood. How was it he had failed to detect the real subtlety
of this man? How was it he had never seen any sign of it, if there
had been anything between Cowperwood and Aileen?
Parents are frequently inclined, because of a time-flattered sense
of security, to take their children for granted. Nothing ever has
happened, so nothing ever will happen. They see their children
every day, and through the eyes of affection; and despite their
natural charm and their own strong parental love, the children
are apt to become not only commonplaces, but ineffably secure
against evil. Mary is naturally a good girl--a little wild, but
what harm can befall her? John is a straight-forward, steady-going
boy--how could he get into trouble? The astonishment of most
parents at the sudden accidental revelation of evil in connection
with any of their children is almost invariably pathetic. "My
John! My Mary! Impossible!" But it is possible. Very possible.
Decidedly likely. Some, through lack of experience or understanding,
or both, grow hard and bitter on the instant. They feel themselves
astonishingly abased in the face of notable tenderness and sacrifice.
Others collapse before the grave manifestation of the insecurity
and uncertainty of life--the mystic chemistry of our being. Still
others, taught roughly by life, or endowed with understanding or
intuition, or both, see in this the latest manifestation of that
incomprehensible chemistry which we call life and personality, and,
knowing that it is quite vain to hope to gainsay it, save by greater
subtlety, put the best face they can upon the matter and call a
truce until they can think. We all know that life is unsolvable--
we who think. The remainder imagine a vain thing, and are full of
sound and fury signifying nothing.
So Edward Butler, being a man of much wit and hard, grim experience,
stood there on his doorstep holding in his big, rough hand his thin
slip of cheap paper which contained such a terrific indictment of
his daughter. There came to him now a picture of her as she was
when she was a very little girl--she was his first baby girl--and
how keenly he had felt about her all these years. She had been a
beautiful child--her red-gold hair had been pillowed on his breast
many a time, and his hard, rough fingers had stroked her soft
cheeks, lo, these thousands of times. Aileen, his lovely, dashing
daughter of twenty-three! He was lost in dark, strange, unhappy
speculations, without any present ability to think or say or do the
right thing. He did not know what the right thing was, he finally
confessed to himself. Aileen! Aileen! His Aileen! If her mother
knew this it would break her heart. She mustn't! She mustn't! And
yet mustn't she?
The heart of a father! The world wanders into many strange by-paths
of affection. The love of a mother for her children is dominant,
leonine, selfish, and unselfish. It is concentric. The love of
a husband for his wife, or of a lover for his sweetheart, is a
sweet bond of agreement and exchange trade in a lovely contest.
The love of a father for his son or daughter, where it is love at
all, is a broad, generous, sad, contemplative giving without thought
of return, a hail and farewell to a troubled traveler whom he would
do much to guard, a balanced judgment of weakness and strength,
with pity for failure and pride in achievement. It is a lovely,
generous, philosophic blossom which rarely asks too much, and
seeks only to give wisely and plentifully. "That my boy may
succeed! That my daughter may be happy!" Who has not heard and
dwelt upon these twin fervors of fatherly wisdom and tenderness?
As Butler drove downtown his huge, slow-moving, in some respects
chaotic mind turned over as rapidly as he could all of the
possibilities in connection with this unexpected, sad, and disturbing
revelation. Why had Cowperwood not been satisfied with his wife?
Why should he enter into his (Butler's) home, of all places, to
establish a clandestine relationship of this character? Was Aileen
in any way to blame? She was not without mental resources of her
own. She must have known what she was doing. She was a good
Catholic, or, at least, had been raised so. All these years she
had been going regularly to confession and communion. True, of
late Butler had noticed that she did not care so much about going
to church, would sometimes make excuses and stay at home on Sundays;
but she had gone, as a rule. And now, now--his thoughts would
come to the end of a blind alley, and then he would start back,
as it were, mentally, to the center of things, and begin all over
again.
He went up the stairs to his own office slowly. He went in and
sat down, and thought and thought. Ten o'clock came, and eleven.
His son bothered him with an occasional matter of interest, but,
finding him moody, finally abandoned him to his own speculations.
It was twelve, and then one, and he was still sitting there thinking,
when the presence of Cowperwood was announced.
Cowperwood, on finding Butler not at home, and not encountering
Aileen, had hurried up to the office of the Edward Butler Contracting
Company, which was also the center of some of Butler's street-railway
interests. The floor space controlled by the company was divided
into the usual official compartments, with sections for the
bookkeepers, the road-managers, the treasurer, and so on. Owen
Butler, and his father had small but attractively furnished offices
in the rear, where they transacted all the important business of the
company.
During this drive, curiously, by reason of one of those strange
psychologic intuitions which so often precede a human difficulty
of one sort or another, he had been thinking of Aileen. He was
thinking of the peculiarity of his relationship with her, and of
the fact that now he was running to her father for assistance. As
he mounted the stairs he had a peculiar sense of the untoward; but
he could not, in his view of life, give it countenance. One glance
at Butler showed him that something had gone amiss. He was not
so friendly; his glance was dark, and there was a certain sternness
to his countenance which had never previously been manifested
there in Cowperwood's memory. He perceived at once that here was
something different from a mere intention to refuse him aid and
call his loan. What was it? Aileen? It must be that. Somebody
had suggested something. They had been seen together. Well, even
so, nothing could be proved. Butler would obtain no sign from him.
But his loan--that was to be called, surely. And as for an
additional loan, he could see now, before a word had been said,
that that thought was useless.
"I came to see you about that loan of yours, Mr. Butler," he
observed, briskly, with an old-time, jaunty air. You could not
have told from his manner or his face that he had observed anything
out of the ordinary.
Butler, who was alone in the room--Owen having gone into an
adjoining room--merely stared at him from under his shaggy brows.
"I'll have to have that money," he said, brusquely, darkly.
An old-time Irish rage suddenly welled up in his bosom as he
contemplated this jaunty, sophisticated undoer of his daughter's
virtue. He fairly glared at him as he thought of him and her.
"I judged from the way things were going this morning that you
might want it," Cowperwood replied, quietly, without sign of tremor.
"The bottom's out, I see."
"The bottom's out, and it'll not be put back soon, I'm thinkin'.
I'll have to have what's belongin' to me to-day. I haven't any
time to spare."
"Very well," replied Cowperwood, who saw clearly how treacherous
the situation was. The old man was in a dour mood. His presence
was an irritation to him, for some reason--a deadly provocation.
Cowperwood felt clearly that it must be Aileen, that he must know
or suspect something.
He must pretend business hurry and end this. "I'm sorry. I thought
I might get an extension; but that's all right. I can get the
money, though. I'll send it right over."
He turned and walked quickly to the door.
Butler got up. He had thought to manage this differently.
He had thought to denounce or even assault this man. He was about
to make some insinuating remark which would compel an answer, some
direct charge; but Cowperwood was out and away as jaunty as ever.
The old man was flustered, enraged, disappointed. He opened the
small office door which led into the adjoining room, and called,
"Owen!"
"Yes, father."
"Send over to Cowperwood's office and get that money."
"You decided to call it, eh?"
"I have."
Owen was puzzled by the old man's angry mood. He wondered what
it all meant, but thought he and Cowperwood might have had a few
words. He went out to his desk to write a note and call a clerk.
Butler went to the window and stared out. He was angry, bitter,
brutal in his vein.
"The dirty dog!" he suddenly exclaimed to himself, in a low voice.
"I'll take every dollar he's got before I'm through with him.
I'll send him to jail, I will. I'll break him, I will. Wait!"
He clinched his big fists and his teeth.
"I'll fix him. I'll show him. The dog! The damned scoundrel!"
Never in his life before had he been so bitter, so cruel, so
relentless in his mood.
He walked his office floor thinking what he could do. Question
Aileen--that was what he would do. If her face, or her lips, told
him that his suspicion was true, he would deal with Cowperwood
later. This city treasurer business, now. It was not a crime in
so far as Cowperwood was concerned; but it might be made to be.
So now, telling the clerk to say to Owen that he had gone down
the street for a few moments, he boarded a street-car and rode
out to his home, where he found his elder daughter just getting
ready to go out. She wore a purple-velvet street dress edged with
narrow, flat gilt braid, and a striking gold-and-purple turban.
She had on dainty new boots of bronze kid and long gloves of
lavender suede. In her ears was one of her latest affectations,
a pair of long jet earrings. The old Irishman realized on this
occasion, when he saw her, perhaps more clearly than he ever had
in his life, that he had grown a bird of rare plumage.
"Where are you going, daughter?" he asked, with a rather unsuccessful
attempt to conceal his fear, distress, and smoldering anger.
"To the library," she said easily, and yet with a sudden realization
that all was not right with her father. His face was too heavy
and gray. He looked tired and gloomy.
"Come up to my office a minute," he said. "I want to see you
before you go."
Aileen heard this with a strange feeling of curiosity and wonder.
It was not customary for her father to want to see her in his
office just when she was going out; and his manner indicated, in
this instance, that the exceptional procedure portended a strange
revelation of some kind. Aileen, like every other person who
offends against a rigid convention of the time, was conscious of
and sensitive to the possible disastrous results which would follow
exposure. She had often thought about what her family would think
if they knew what she was doing; she had never been able to satisfy
herself in her mind as to what they would do. Her father was a
very vigorous man. But she had never known him to be cruel or
cold in his attitude toward her or any other member of the family,
and especially not toward her. Always he seemed too fond of her
to be completely alienated by anything that might happen; yet she
could not be sure.
Butler led the way, planting his big feet solemnly on the steps
as he went up. Aileen followed with a single glance at herself
in the tall pier-mirror which stood in the hall, realizing at
once how charming she looked and how uncertain she was feeling
about what was to follow. What could her father want? It made
the color leave her cheeks for the moment, as she thought what he
might want.
Butler strolled into his stuffy room and sat down in the big leather
chair, disproportioned to everything else in the chamber, but which,
nevertheless, accompanied his desk. Before him, against the light,
was the visitor's chair, in which he liked to have those sit whose
faces he was anxious to study. When Aileen entered he motioned her
to it, which was also ominous to her, and said, "Sit down there."
She took the seat, not knowing what to make of his procedure. On
the instant her promise to Cowperwood to deny everything, whatever
happened, came back to her. If her father was about to attack her
on that score, he would get no satisfaction, she thought. She owed
it to Frank. Her pretty face strengthened and hardened on the
instant. Her small, white teeth set themselves in two even rows;
and her father saw quite plainly that she was consciously bracing
herself for an attack of some kind. He feared by this that she was
guilty, and he was all the more distressed, ashamed, outraged, made
wholly unhappy. He fumbled in the left-hand pocket of his coat and
drew forth from among the various papers the fatal communication
so cheap in its physical texture. His big fingers fumbled almost
tremulously as he fished the letter-sheet out of the small envelope
and unfolded it without saying a word. Aileen watched his face
and his hands, wondering what it could be that he had here. He
handed the paper over, small in his big fist, and said, "Read that."
Aileen took it, and for a second was relieved to be able to lower
her eyes to the paper. Her relief vanished in a second, when she
realized how in a moment she would have to raise them again and
look him in the face.
DEAR SIR--This is to warn you that your daughter
Aileen is running around with a man that she shouldn't,
Frank A. Cowperwood, the banker. If you don't believe
it, watch the house at 931 North Tenth Street. Then you
can see for yourself.
In spite of herself the color fled from her cheeks instantly,
only to come back in a hot, defiant wave.
"Why, what a lie!" she said, lifting her eyes to her father's.
"To think that any one should write such a thing of me! How dare
they! I think it's a shame!"
Old Butler looked at her narrowly, solemnly. He was not deceived
to any extent by her bravado. If she were really innocent, he
knew she would have jumped to her feet in her defiant way. Protest
would have been written all over her. As it was, she only stared
haughtily. He read through her eager defiance to the guilty truth.
"How do ye know, daughter, that I haven't had the house watched?"
he said, quizzically. "How do ye know that ye haven't been seen
goin' in there?"
Only Aileen's solemn promise to her lover could have saved her
from this subtle thrust. As it was, she paled nervously; but she
saw Frank Cowperwood, solemn and distinguished, asking her what
she would say if she were caught.
"It's a lie!" she said, catching her breath. "I wasn't at any
house at that number, and no one saw me going in there. How can
you ask me that, father?"
In spite of his mixed feelings of uncertainty and yet unshakable
belief that his daughter was guilty, he could not help admiring
her courage--she was so defiant, as she sat there, so set in her
determination to lie and thus defend herself. Her beauty helped
her in his mood, raised her in his esteem. After all, what could
you do with a woman of this kind? She was not a ten-year-old girl
any more, as in a way he sometimes continued to fancy her.
"Ye oughtn't to say that if it isn't true, Aileen," he said. "Ye
oughtn't to lie. It's against your faith. Why would anybody write
a letter like that if it wasn't so?"
"But it's not so," insisted Aileen, pretending anger and outraged
feeling, "and I don't think you have any right to sit there and
say that to me. I haven't been there, and I'm not running around
with Mr. Cowperwood. Why, I hardly know the man except in a social
way."
Butler shook his head solemnly.
"It's a great blow to me, daughter. It's a great blow to me," he
said. "I'm willing to take your word if ye say so; but I can't
help thinkin' what a sad thing it would be if ye were lyin' to me.
I haven't had the house watched. I only got this this mornin'.
And what's written here may not be so. I hope it isn't. But
we'll not say any more about that now. If there is anythin' in
it, and ye haven't gone too far yet to save yourself, I want ye
to think of your mother and your sister and your brothers, and be
a good girl. Think of the church ye was raised in, and the name
we've got to stand up for in the world. Why, if ye were doin'
anything wrong, and the people of Philadelphy got a hold of it,
the city, big as it is, wouldn't be big enough to hold us. Your
brothers have got a reputation to make, their work to do here.
You and your sister want to get married sometime. How could ye
expect to look the world in the face and do anythin' at all if ye
are doin' what this letter says ye are, and it was told about ye?"
The old man's voice was thick with a strange, sad, alien emotion.
He did not want to believe that his daughter was guilty, even
though he knew she was. He did not want to face what he considered
in his vigorous, religious way to be his duty, that of reproaching
her sternly. There were some fathers who would have turned her out,
he fancied. There were others who might possibly kill Cowperwood
after a subtle investigation. That course was not for him. If
vengeance he was to have, it must be through politics and finance--
he must drive him out. But as for doing anything desperate in
connection with Aileen, he could not think of it.
"Oh, father," returned Aileen, with considerable histrionic ability
in her assumption of pettishness, "how can you talk like this when
you know I'm not guilty? When I tell you so?"
The old Irishman saw through her make-believe with profound
sadness--the feeling that one of his dearest hopes had been
shattered. He had expected so much of her socially and matrimonially.
Why, any one of a dozen remarkable young men might have married her,
and she would have had lovely children to comfort him in his old age.
"Well, we'll not talk any more about it now, daughter," he said,
wearily. "Ye've been so much to me during all these years that
I can scarcely belave anythin' wrong of ye. I don't want to, God
knows. Ye're a grown woman, though, now; and if ye are doin'
anythin' wrong I don't suppose I could do so much to stop ye. I
might turn ye out, of course, as many a father would; but I wouldn't
like to do anythin' like that. But if ye are doin' anythin' wrong"--
and he put up his hand to stop a proposed protest on the part of
Aileen--"remember, I'm certain to find it out in the long run, and
Philadelphy won't be big enough to hold me and the man that's done
this thing to me. I'll get him," he said, getting up dramatically.
"I'll get him, and when I do--" He turned a livid face to the wall,
and Aileen saw clearly that Cowperwood, in addition to any other
troubles which might beset him, had her father to deal with. Was
this why Frank had looked so sternly at her the night before?
"Why, your mother would die of a broken heart if she thought there
was anybody could say the least word against ye," pursued Butler,
in a shaken voice. "This man has a family--a wife and children,
Ye oughtn't to want to do anythin' to hurt them. They'll have
trouble enough, if I'm not mistaken--facin' what's comin' to them
in the future," and Butler's jaw hardened just a little. "Ye're
a beautiful girl. Ye're young. Ye have money. There's dozens
of young men'd be proud to make ye their wife. Whatever ye may
be thinkin' or doin', don't throw away your life. Don't destroy
your immortal soul. Don't break my heart entirely."
Aileen, not ungenerous--fool of mingled affection and passion--
could now have cried. She pitied her father from her heart; but
her allegiance was to Cowperwood, her loyalty unshaken. She wanted
to say something, to protest much more; but she knew that it was
useless. Her father knew that she was lying.
"Well, there's no use of my saying anything more, father," she
said, getting up. The light of day was fading in the windows.
The downstairs door closed with a light slam, indicating that one
of the boys had come in. Her proposed trip to the library was
now without interest to her. "You won't believe me, anyhow. I
tell you, though, that I'm innocent just the same."
Butler lifted his big, brown hand to command silence. She saw
that this shameful relationship, as far as her father was concerned,
had been made quite clear, and that this trying conference was now
at an end. She turned and walked shamefacedly out. He waited
until he heard her steps fading into faint nothings down the hall
toward her room. Then he arose. Once more he clinched his big
fists.
"The scoundrel!" he said. "The scoundrel! I'll drive him out of
Philadelphy, if it takes the last dollar I have in the world." _
Read next: CHAPTER 27
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