Theodore Dreiser - The Stoic

From Trondheim the yacht steamed northward toward Hammerfest, the land of the midnight sun. Several stops were made on the way, one of these being a little extension of rock from one of the great cliffs, called Grotto. It was a very small place of perhaps a dozen houses, used principally as a whaling station. The houses were the usual stone huts, roofed over with grass and earth.

It was customary for the whalers at Grotto to buy coal or wood from any boat that was going north or south. And now a small group of fishermen approached the yacht. And though its supply of coal was not more than was actually needed, Cowperwood instructed the skipper to give them several tons, because he felt that these people had so little in their lives.

After breakfast Captain Hansen went ashore, and on his return told Cowperwood that a tribe of Lapps from much farther north had arrived and pitched their camp on the mainland, about a half-mile from Grotto. There were about fifteen hundred reindeer, he said, and over a hundred Lapps, with their children and dogs. On hearing this, Berenice expressed a desire to see them. Whereupon Captain Hansen and the mate rowed them over to visit the camp.

After disembarking on the shore of the mainland, they walked over toward the reindeer, which were scattered about the tents which spread in all directions. The captain, who knew a few words of their language, talked with the Lapps, and some of them came toward the visitors, making them welcome by shaking hands and inviting them to their tents. In one tent, there was a large pot hanging over a fire, which the mate proceeded to investigate and pronounced to be “dog stew,” but which turned out to be a nice, fat, juicy bear, of which all had a serving.

Another tent was packed with fisherfolk and farmers from the surrounding country, for this gathering was in the nature of an annual fair, at which the Lapps disposed of their reindeer products and bought supplies for the winter. At this point a Lapp woman elbowed her way through the crowd. She greeted Captain Larsen as an old acquaintance, and he informed Cowperwood that she was one of the wealthiest members of the tribe. There followed group singing and dancing, in which all attempted to join. And after liquor and food, and much laughter all around, Cowperwood and his party said good-by and returned to the Pelican .

By the light of the never-setting sun, the yacht was turned about, heading its way back to the south. By this time a dozen large bowhead whales came along within sight of the yacht, and the skipper ordered all sails set in such a fashion as to cause the boat to maneuver among them with the utmost grace. There was intense excitement among passengers and crew as they stood watching the whales. But Cowperwood was more interested in the skill of the captain than he was in the spectacle before his eyes.

“There you have it!” he said to Berenice. “Every profession, every trade, every form of labor, requires alertness and skill. The skipper, as you see, has complete control of his yacht, and that, in itself, is an achievement.”

She smiled at his remark, but made no comment, while he gave himself up to thinking and philosophizing about this arresting world of which, for the time being, he was a part. The thing that impressed him most about this entire northern scene was the fact that it represented such a sharp and socially insignificant phase of a world that really had no need for any such temperament as his. The immense oceans, in a large sense, supported its inhabitants by the process of supplying them with fish, and there was enough of employment to enable them to build and make habitable sufficient spaces of soil when they returned, and thus round out their lives in comparative comfort. And yet he felt that these people had more from life in sheer beauty, simple comfort, and charming social customs than he and thousands of others like him who were so strenuously engaged in accumulating money. As for himself, he was getting old, and the best part of his life was already gone. What, really, lay ahead for him? More subways? More art galleries? More irritations due to public opinion?

True enough, this trip had been restful. But now hourly he was moving into many things that were far from peaceful, and if continued by him could only result in more arguments, more lawyers, more newspaper criticism, more domestic ills. He smiled to himself ironically. He must not think too much. Take things as they come and make the best of them. After all, the world had done more for him than for most, and the least he could do was to be grateful, and he was.

Several days later as they neared Oslo on the return trip, he suggested that in order to avoid danger of publicity, Berenice would better leave the yacht there and return by steamer to Liverpool, which would bring her within a short distance of Pryor’s Cove. He was happy to see how practically she accepted this decision, and yet he could sense from her expression how much she resented the forces which invariably controlled and interrupted their relationship.

Cowperwood’s vacation in Norway having put him in such excellent physical condition, he was anxious to proceed with his business affairs, in a concentrated effort to reach the goal he had set for himself of $185,000,000 capital and one hundred and forty miles of track and electrification of the entire underground mileage by January of 1905. He was so driven by his renewed ambition and desire to complete this work and prove its import that he could scarcely permit himself to rest, at Pryor’s Cove or anywhere else.

And so, for the next few months, there were directors’ meetings, discussions with interested and important investors, engineering problems, and private sessions, sometimes in the evenings, with Lord Stane and Elverson Johnson. Finally, there arose the necessity of making a trip to Vienna, in order to examine an electric motor device invented by a man named Ganz, which promised to reduce the cost of underground operation by a very considerable sum. After seeing the motor and observing its operation, he was convinced of its value, and at once wired several of his engineers to come to Vienna to confirm his opinion.

On his way back to London, he stopped off at the Ritz Hotel, in Paris. On his first evening there he met an old colleague in the lobby of the hotel, one Michael Shanley, a one-time employee of his in Chicago, who suggested that they go to hear a concert at the Paris Opera House. There was much talk of the compositions of a Pole by the name of Chopin that were to be played there. The name was only vaguely familiar to Cowperwood, and even less so to Shanley, but they went; and Cowperwood was so entranced by the music that on reading in the program notes that Chopin was buried at Pere-Lachaise, he suggested they visit that world-famous burial ground next day.

Accordingly, the following morning he and Shanley went to Père-Lachaise, where they engaged a guide, who, in English, furnished them with much information as they walked along the cypress-bordered avenues of the cemetery. Thus they learned that here, under this shaft, lay Sarah Bernhardt, who, in past days in Chicago, had so moved him with her golden voice. A little farther on was the tomb of Balzac, of whose works he knew only that they were considered great. As he paused and gazed, he once again became sensible of the fact that his own particular labors had barred him from knowledge of the intellectual and artistic significance of genius in many other fields. They passed the tombs of Bizet, de Musset, Molière, and at last they came to Chopin’s resting place, which they found to be strewn with ribbon-tied bouquets of roses and lilies.

“Think of that now!” exclaimed Shanley. “To be sure, he’s a great musician, but he’s been dead for more than half a century, and here are all these flowers! Be gorra, no one will ever do that for me, I know!”