________________________________________________
_ During this period of what might have been called financial and
commercial progress, the affairs of Aileen and Cowperwood had been
to a certain extent smoothed over. Each summer now, partly to
take Aileen's mind off herself and partly to satisfy his own desire
to see the world and collect objects of art, in which he was
becoming more and more interested, it was Cowperwood's custom to
make with his wife a short trip abroad or to foreign American
lands, visiting in these two years Russia, Scandinavia, Argentine,
Chili, and Mexico. Their plan was to leave in May or June with
the outward rush of traffic, and return in September or early
October. His idea was to soothe Aileen as much as possible, to
fill her mind with pleasing anticipations as to her eventual social
triumph somewhere--in New York or London, if not Chicago--to make
her feel that in spite of his physical desertion he was still
spiritually loyal.
By now also Cowperwood was so shrewd that he had the ability to
simulate an affection and practise a gallantry which he did not
feel, or, rather, that was not backed by real passion. He was the
soul of attention; he would buy her flowers, jewels, knickknacks,
and ornaments; he would see that her comfort was looked after to
the last detail; and yet, at the very same moment, perhaps, he
would be looking cautiously about to see what life might offer in
the way of illicit entertainment. Aileen knew this, although she
could not prove it to be true. At the same time she had an affection
and an admiration for the man which gripped her in spite of
herself.
You have, perhaps, pictured to yourself the mood of some general
who has perhaps suffered a great defeat; the employee who after
years of faithful service finds himself discharged. What shall
life say to the loving when their love is no longer of any value,
when all that has been placed upon the altar of affection has been
found to be a vain sacrifice? Philosophy? Give that to dolls to
play with. Religion? Seek first the metaphysical-minded. Aileen
was no longer the lithe, forceful, dynamic girl of 1865, when
Cowperwood first met her. She was still beautiful, itis true, a
fair, full-blown, matronly creature not more than thirty-five,
looking perhaps thirty, feeling, alas, that she was a girl and
still as attractive as ever. It is a grim thing to a woman, however
fortunately placed, to realize that age is creeping on, and that
love, that singing will-o'-the-wisp, is fading into the ultimate
dark. Aileen, within the hour of her greatest triumph, had seen
love die. It was useless to tell herself, as she did sometimes,
that it might come back, revive. Her ultimately realistic temperament
told her this could never be. Though she had routed Rita Sohlberg,
she was fully aware that Cowperwood's original constancy was gone.
She was no longer happy. Love was dead. That sweet illusion,
with its pearly pink for heart and borders, that laughing cherub
that lures with Cupid's mouth and misty eye, that young tendril
of the vine of life that whispers of eternal spring-time, that
calls and calls where aching, wearied feet by legion follow, was
no longer in existence.
In vain the tears, the storms, the self-tortures; in vain the looks
in the mirror, the studied examination of plump, sweet features
still fresh and inviting. One day, at the sight of tired circles
under her eyes, she ripped from her neck a lovely ruche that she
was adjusting and, throwing herself on her bed, cried as though
her heart would break. Why primp? Why ornament? Her Frank did not
love her. What to her now was a handsome residence in Michigan
Avenue, the refinements of a French boudoir, or clothing that ran
the gamut of the dressmaker's art, hats that were like orchids
blooming in serried rows? In vain, in vain! Like the raven that
perched above the lintel of the door, sad memory was here, grave
in her widow weeds, crying "never more." Aileen knew that the sweet
illusion which had bound Cowperwood to her for a time had gone
and would never come again. He was here. His step was in the
room mornings and evenings; at night for long prosaic, uninterrupted
periods she could hear him breathing by her side, his hand on her
body. There were other nights when he was not there--when he was
"out of the city"--and she resigned herself to accept his excuses
at their face value. Why quarrel? she asked herself. What could
she do? She was waiting, waiting, but for what?
And Cowperwood, noting the strange, unalterable changes which time
works in us all, the inward lap of the marks of age, the fluted
recession of that splendor and radiance which is youth, sighed at
times perhaps, but turned his face to that dawn which is forever
breaking where youth is. Not for him that poetic loyalty which
substitutes for the perfection of young love its memories, or takes
for the glitter of passion and desire that once was the happy
thoughts of companionship--the crystal memories that like early
dews congealed remain beaded recollections to comfort or torture
for the end of former joys. On the contrary, after the vanishing
of Rita Sohlberg, with all that she meant in the way of a delicate
insouciance which Aileen had never known, his temperament ached,
for he must have something like that. Truth to say, he must always
have youth, the illusion of beauty, vanity in womanhood, the novelty
of a new, untested temperament, quite as he must have pictures,
old porcelain, music, a mansion, illuminated missals, power, the
applause of the great, unthinking world.
As has been said, this promiscuous attitude on Cowperwood's part
was the natural flowering out of a temperament that was chronically
promiscuous, intellectually uncertain, and philosophically
anarchistic. From one point of view it might have been said of
him that he was seeking the realization of an ideal, yet to one's
amazement our very ideals change at times and leave us floundering
in the dark. What is an ideal, anyhow? A wraith, a mist, a perfume
in the wind, a dream of fair water. The soul-yearning of a girl
like Antoinette Nowak was a little too strained for him. It was
too ardent, too clinging, and he had gradually extricated himself,
not without difficulty, from that particular entanglement. Since
then he had been intimate with other women for brief periods, but
to no great satisfaction--Dorothy Ormsby, Jessie Belle Hinsdale,
Toma Lewis, Hilda Jewell; but they shall be names merely. One was
an actress, one a stenographer, one the daughter of one of his
stock patrons, one a church-worker, a solicitor for charity coming
to him to seek help for an orphan's home. It was a pathetic mess
at times, but so are all defiant variations from the accustomed
drift of things. In the hardy language of Napoleon, one cannot
make an omelette without cracking a number of eggs.
The coming of Stephanie Platow, Russian Jewess on one side of her
family, Southwestern American on the other, was an event in
Cowperwood's life. She was tall, graceful, brilliant, young, with
much of the optimism of Rita Sohlberg, and yet endowed with a
strange fatalism which, once he knew her better, touched and moved
him. He met her on shipboard on the way to Goteborg. Her father,
Isadore Platow, was a wealthy furrier of Chicago. He was a large,
meaty, oily type of man--a kind of ambling, gelatinous formula of
the male, with the usual sound commercial instincts of the Jew,
but with an errant philosophy which led him to believe first one
thing and then another so long as neither interfered definitely
with his business. He was an admirer of Henry George and of so
altruistic a programme as that of Robert Owen, and, also, in his
way, a social snob. And yet he had married Susetta Osborn, a Texas
girl who was once his bookkeeper. Mrs. Platow was lithe, amiable,
subtle, with an eye always to the main social chance--in other
words, a climber. She was shrewd enough to realize that a knowledge
of books and art and current events was essential, and so she "went
in" for these things.
It is curious how the temperaments of parents blend and revivify
in their children. As Stephanie grew up she had repeated in her
very differing body some of her father's and mother's characteristics
--an interesting variability of soul. She was tall, dark, sallow,
lithe, with a strange moodiness of heart and a recessive, fulgurous
gleam in her chestnut-brown, almost brownish-black eyes. She had
a full, sensuous, Cupid's mouth, a dreamy and even languishing
expression, a graceful neck, and a heavy, dark, and yet pleasingly
modeled face. From both her father and mother she had inherited
a penchant for art, literature, philosophy, and music. Already
at eighteen she was dreaming of painting, singing, writing poetry,
writing books, acting--anything and everything. Serene in her own
judgment of what was worth while, she was like to lay stress on
any silly mood or fad, thinking it exquisite--the last word.
Finally, she was a rank voluptuary, dreaming dreams of passionate
union with first one and then another type of artist, poet,
musician--the whole gamut of the artistic and emotional world.
Cowperwood first saw her on board the Centurion one June morning,
as the ship lay at dock in New York. He and Aileen were en route
for Norway, she and her father and mother for Denmark and Switzerland.
She was hanging over the starboard rail looking at a flock of
wide-winged gulls which were besieging the port of the cook's
galley. She was musing soulfully--conscious (fully) that she was
musing soulfully. He paid very little attention to her, except
to note that she was tall, rhythmic, and that a dark-gray plaid
dress, and an immense veil of gray silk wound about her shoulders
and waist and over one arm, after the manner of a Hindu shawl,
appeared to become her much. Her face seemed very sallow, and her
eyes ringed as if indicating dyspepsia. Her black hair under a
chic hat did not escape his critical eye. Later she and her father
appeared at the captain's table, to which the Cowperwoods had also
been invited.
Cowperwood and Aileen did not know how to take this girl, though
she interested them both. They little suspected the chameleon
character of her soul. She was an artist, and as formless and
unstable as water. It was a mere passing gloom that possessed
her. Cowperwood liked the semi-Jewish cast of her face, a certain
fullness of the neck, her dark, sleepy eyes. But she was much too
young and nebulous, he thought, and he let her pass. On this trip,
which endured for ten days, he saw much of her, in different moods,
walking with a young Jew in whom she seemed greatly interested,
playing at shuffleboard, reading solemnly in a corner out of the
reach of the wind or spray, and usually looking naive, preternaturally
innocent, remote, dreamy. At other times she seemed possessed of
a wild animation, her eyes alight, her expression vigorous, an
intense glow in her soul. Once he saw her bent over a small wood
block, cutting a book-plate with a thin steel graving tool.
Because of Stephanie's youth and seeming unimportance, her lack
of what might be called compelling rosy charm, Aileen had become
reasonably friendly with the girl. Far subtler, even at her years,
than Aileen, Stephanie gathered a very good impression of the
former, of her mental girth, and how to take her. She made friends
with her, made a book-plate for her, made a sketch of her. She
confided to Aileen that in her own mind she was destined for the
stage, if her parents would permit; and Aileen invited her to see
her husband's pictures on their return. She little knew how much
of a part Stephanie would play in Cowperwood's life.
The Cowperwoods, having been put down at Goteborg, saw no more of
the Platows until late October. Then Aileen, being lonely, called
to see Stephanie, and occasionally thereafter Stephanie came over
to the South Side to see the Cowperwoods. She liked to roam about
their house, to dream meditatively in some nook of the rich interior,
with a book for company. She liked Cowperwood's pictures, his
jades, his missals, his ancient radiant glass. From talking with
Aileen she realized that the latter had no real love for these
things, that her expressions of interest and pleasure were pure
make-believe, based on their value as possessions. For Stephanie
herself certain of the illuminated books and bits of glass had a
heavy, sensuous appeal, which only the truly artistic can understand.
They unlocked dark dream moods and pageants for her. She responded
to them, lingered over them, experienced strange moods from them
as from the orchestrated richness of music.
And in doing so she thought of Cowperwood often. Did he really
like these things, or was he just buying them to be buying them?
She had heard much of the pseudo artistic--the people who made a
show of art. She recalled Cowperwood as he walked the deck of the
Centurion. She remembered his large, comprehensive, embracing
blue-gray eyes that seemed to blaze with intelligence. He seemed
to her quite obviously a more forceful and significant man than
her father, and yet she could not have said why. He always seemed
so trigly dressed, so well put together. There was a friendly
warmth about all that he said or did, though he said or did little.
She felt that his eyes were mocking, that back in his soul there
was some kind of humor over something which she did not understand
quite.
After Stephanie had been back in Chicago six months, during which
time she saw very little of Cowperwood, who was busy with his
street-railway programme, she was swept into the net of another
interest which carried her away from him and Aileen for the time
being. On the West Side, among a circle of her mother's friends,
had been organized an Amateur Dramatic League, with no less object
than to elevate the stage. That world-old problem never fails to
interest the new and the inexperienced. It all began in the home
of one of the new rich of the West Side--the Timberlakes. They,
in their large house on Ashland Avenue, had a stage, and Georgia
Timberlake, a romantic-minded girl of twenty with flaxen hair,
imagined she could act. Mrs. Timberlake, a fat, indulgent mother,
rather agreed with her. The whole idea, after a few discursive
performances of Milton's "The Masque of Comus," "Pyramus and
Thisbe," and an improved Harlequin and Columbine, written by one
of the members, was transferred to the realm of the studios, then
quartered in the New Arts Building. An artist by the name of Lane
Cross, a portrait-painter, who was much less of an artist than he
was a stage director, and not much of either, but who made his
living by hornswaggling society into the belief that he could
paint, was induced to take charge of these stage performances.
By degrees the "Garrick Players," as they chose to call themselves,
developed no little skill and craftsmanship in presenting one form
and another of classic and semi-classic play. "Romeo and Juliet,"
with few properties of any kind, "The Learned Ladies" of Moliere,
Sheridan's "The Rivals," and the "Elektra" of Sophocles were all
given. Considerable ability of one kind and another was developed,
the group including two actresses of subsequent repute on the
American stage, one of whom was Stephanie Platow. There were some
ten girls and women among the active members, and almost as many
men--a variety of characters much too extended to discuss here.
There was a dramatic critic by the name of Gardner Knowles, a young
man, very smug and handsome, who was connected with the Chicago
Press. Whipping his neatly trousered legs with his bright little
cane, he used to appear at the rooms of the players at the Tuesday,
Thursday, and Saturday teas which they inaugurated, and discuss
the merits of the venture. Thus the Garrick Players were gradually
introduced into the newspapers. Lane Cross, the smooth-faced,
pasty-souled artist who had charge, was a rake at heart, a subtle
seducer of women, who, however, escaped detection by a smooth,
conventional bearing. He was interested in such girls as Georgia
Timberlake, Irma Ottley, a rosy, aggressive maiden who essayed
comic roles, and Stephanie Platow. These, with another girl, Ethel
Tuckerman, very emotional and romantic, who could dance charmingly
and sing, made up a group of friends which became very close.
Presently intimacies sprang up, only in this realm, instead of
ending in marriage, they merely resulted in sex liberty. Thus
Ethel Tuckerman became the mistress of Lane Cross; an illicit
attachment grew up between Irma Ottley and a young society idler
by the name of Bliss Bridge; and Gardner Knowles, ardently admiring
Stephanie Platow literally seized upon her one afternoon in her
own home, when he went ostensibly to interview her, and overpersuaded
her. She was only reasonably fond of him, not in love; but, being
generous, nebulous, passionate, emotional, inexperienced, voiceless,
and vainly curious, without any sense of the meums and teums that
govern society in such matters, she allowed this rather brutal
thing to happen. She was not a coward--was too nebulous and yet
forceful to be such. Her parents never knew. And once so launched,
another world--that of sex satisfaction--began to dawn on her.
Were these young people evil? Let the social philosopher answer.
One thing is certain: They did not establish homes and raise
children. On the contrary, they led a gay, butterfly existence
for nearly two years; then came a gift in the lute. Quarrels
developed over parts, respective degrees of ability, and leadership.
Ethel Tuckerman fell out with Lane Cross, because she discovered
him making love to Irma Ottley. Irma and Bliss Bridge released
each other, the latter transferring his affections to Georgia
Timberlake. Stephanie Platow, by far the most individual of them
all, developed a strange inconsequence as to her deeds. It was
when she was drawing near the age of twenty that the affair with
Gardner Knowles began. After a time Lane Cross, with his somewhat
earnest attempt at artistic interpretation and his superiority in
the matter of years--he was forty, and young Knowles only twenty-four
--seemed more interesting to Stephanie, and he was quick to respond.
There followed an idle, passionate union with this man, which seemed
important, but was not so at all. And then it was that Stephanie
began dimly to perceive that it was on and on that the blessings
lie, that somewhere there might be some man much more remarkable
than either of these; but this was only a dream. She thought of
Cowperwood at times; but he seemed to her to be too wrapped up in
grim tremendous things, far apart from this romantic world of
amateur dramatics in which she was involved. _
Read next: chapter XXV - Airs from the Orient
Read previous: chapter XXIII - The Power of the Press
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