Theodore Dreiser - The Stoic

“A relative?” he said, smiling and allowing her to enter.

“Yes,” she replied with the utmost calm. “I am a relative of yours, although you may not believe it right away. I am the granddaughter of a brother of your father’s. Only my name is Maris. My mother’s name was Cowperwood.”

He asked her to be seated and placed himself opposite her. Her eyes, which were large and round and of a silvery blue, contemplated him unwaveringly.

“What part of the country do you come from?” he inquired.

“Cincinnati,” she returned, “although my mother was born in North Carolina. It was her father who came from Pennsylvania, and not so far from where you were born, Mr. Cowperwood, Doylestown.”

“That’s true,” he said. “My father did have a brother who once lived in Doylestown. Besides, I may add, you have the Cowperwood eye.”

“Thanks,” she returned, and continued looking at him as fixedly as he looked at her. Then she added, unembarrassed by his gaze: “You may think it strange, my coming here at this hour, but I am stopping at this hotel, too, you see. I am a dancer, and the company I am with is playing here this week.”

“Is it possible? We Quakers seem to wander into strange fields!”

“Yes,” she replied, and smiled warmly, a smile reserved and yet rich, suggesting imagination, romance, mental strength, and sensuality. He felt its force as fully as he observed its character. “I’ve just come from the theater,” she went on. “But I’ve been reading about you, and seeing your picture in the papers here, and since I’ve always wanted to know you, I decided I’d better come now.”

“Are you a good dancer?” he inquired.

“I wish you’d come and see and judge for yourself.”

“I was returning to New York in the morning, but if you will have breakfast with me, I think I might stay over.”

“Oh, yes, of course I will,” she said. “But do you know, I’ve been imagining myself talking to you like this for years. Once, two years ago, when I was unable to get a job of any kind, I wrote you a letter, but then I tore it up. You see, we are the poor Cowperwoods.”

“Too bad you didn’t send it,” he commented. “What was it you wanted to tell me?”

“Oh, how talented I was, and that I was your grand-niece. And if I were given a chance, how sure I was that I would be a great dancer. And now I’m glad I didn’t write you, because I’m here with you now and you can see me dance. By the way,” she went on, still fixing him with her magnetic blue eyes, “our company opens in New York for the summer, and I hope you’ll see me there, too.”

“Well, if you are as lovely a dancer as you are to look at, you should be a sensation.”

“I’ll let you tell me tomorrow night about that.” She stirred as if to move, but then hesitated.

“What is your first name, did you say?” he finally asked.

“Lorna.”

“Lorna Maris,” he repeated. “Is that your stage name, too?”

“Yes, I did think once of changing it to Cowperwood, so you might hear of me. But I decided that name wasn’t as good for a dancer as it was for a financier.”

They continued to gaze at each other.

“How old are you, Lorna?”

“Twenty,” she said simply, “or I will be in November.”

The silence that followed became full of meaning. Eyes said all that eyes could say. A few seconds more, and he merely signaled with his finger. She rose and went to him quickly, almost dancing as she did so, and threw herself into his arms.

“Beautiful!” he said. “And to have you come just this way . . . charming . . .”

It was with puzzled thoughts that Cowperwood parted with Lorna the next day at noon. Throughout this fever which had seized upon him, and, for the time being, commanded his every fiber and impulse, he was actually not unmindful of Berenice. One might as well say that a fire, unrestrained by outward forces, would not burn down a house. And there were no outward forces restraining, or even capable of restraining, either Cowperwood or Lorna under the circumstances. But when she left him to go to the theater his mind resumed its normal trend and occupied itself with the anomaly which Lorna and Berenice presented. Throughout all of eight years he had been swayed by the desirability as well as the unobtainability of Berenice, and more recently by her physical and aesthetic perfection. And yet he had allowed this coarser though still beautiful force to becloud and even temporarily efface all that.

Alone in his room, he asked himself whether he was to blame. He had not sought out this latest temptation; it had come upon him, and suddenly. Besides, in his nature there was room, and even necessity, for many phases of experience, many sources and streams of nourishment. True, he had told Berenice in the fever of his zest for her, and almost continuously since, that she was the supreme aspect of his existence. And in the major sense this was still true. Nevertheless, here and now was this consuming and overwhelming force, as represented by Lorna, which might be differentiated as the mysterious, compelling charm of the new and unexplored, especially where youth and beauty and sex are involved.

Its betraying power, he said to himself, could best be explained by the fact that it was more powerful than the individual or his intentions. It came, created its own fever, and worked its results. It had done so with Berenice and himself, and now again with Lorna Maris. But one thing he clearly recognized even now, and that was that it would never supersede his affection for Berenice. There was a difference; he could see it and feel it clearly. And this difference lay in the temperamental as well as mental objectives of the two girls. Although of the same age, Lorna, with a considerably more rugged and extended life experience, was still content with what could be achieved through the glorification of her own physical and purely sensual charm, the fame, rewards, and applause due an enticing and exciting dancer.

Berenice’s temperamental response and her resulting program were entirely different: broader, richer, a product of social and aesthetic sense involving peoples and countries. She, like himself, had an abiding faith in the dominance of mind and taste. Hence the ease and grace with which she had blended herself into the atmosphere and social forms and precedents of England. Obviously and for all the vivid and exciting sensual power of Lorna, the deeper and more enduring power and charm lay within Berenice. In other words, her ambitions and reactions were in every way more significant. And when Lorna had gone, although he did not at the moment care to contemplate that thought, Berenice would still be present.

Yet, how in the ultimate accounting, would he adjust all this? Would he be able to conceal this adventure, which he had no intention of immediately terminating? And if Berenice discovered it, how would he satisfy her? He could not solve that before a shaving mirror, or in any bath or dressing room.

That night, after the performance, Cowperwood decided that Lorna Maris was not so much a great as a sensational dancer, one who would shine brilliantly for a few years and eventually perhaps marry a wealthy man. But now, as he saw her dance, he found her enticing, in her silken clown costume, with loose pantaloons and long-fingered gloves. To the accompaniment of lights which cast exaggerated shadows, and ghostly music, she sang and danced the bogey man who might catch you if you didn’t watch out! Another dance was corybantic. In a short sleeveless slip of white chiffon, her exquisite arms and legs bare, her hair a whirling mass of powdered gold, she suggested to the utmost the abandon of a bacchante. Still another dance presented her as a pursued and terrified innocent seeking to escape from the lurking figures of would-be ravishers. She was so often recalled that the management had to limit her encores, and later in New York, she colored, for that season, the entire summer love mood of the city.