________________________________________________
_ 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, snobbish
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 mass more than he
was with the class, and he understood the mass 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 passive 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 God.
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, ungodly Aileen Butler, who had been his
seductress and was probably now to be his wife. God 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. _
Read next: chapter VI - The New Queen of the Home
Read previous: chapter IV - Peter Laughlin & Co-
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