Theodore Dreiser - The Stoic

There were two most disturbing problems confronting Frank Cowperwood at the time of his Chicago defeat, when, so reducingly and after so long a struggle, he lost his fight for a fifty-year franchise renewal.

First, there was his age. He was nearing sixty, and while seemingly as vigorous as ever, it would be no easy matter, he felt, with younger and equally resourceful financiers on the scene, to pile up the great fortune which assuredly would have been his if his franchise had been extended. That fortune would have been all of $50,000,000.

Secondly, and of even greater importance, in his realistic judgment, was the fact that by this time he had still not achieved social connections of any value; in other words, social prestige. Of course, his youthful incarceration in the penitentiary in Philadelphia had not helped matters, and then, too, his natural varietism, plus his unfortunate marriage to Aileen, who had been no real social help, and his own determined and almost savage individualism, had alienated many who otherwise might have been friendly to him.

For Cowperwood was not one to make friends of those less forceful, subtle, or efficient than himself. It smacked too much of meaningless self-depreciation and was, at best, in his opinion, a waste of time. On the other hand, he found, the strong and cunning or genuinely significant were not always easy to acquire as friends. Particularly here in Chicago, where he had fought so many of them for position and power, they had chosen to combine against him, not because he represented morals or methods different from any they were willing to practice or accept in others, but rather because he, a total stranger, had ventured on financial preserves presumably their own and had risen to greater wealth and power, and in less time, than they had. Moreover, he had attracted the wives and daughters of some of the very men who were most jealous of him financially, and so they had set out to ostracize him socially and had well-nigh succeeded in doing so.

So far as sex was concerned, he had always desired individual freedom and proceeded ruthlessly to achieve it. At the same time, he had always held the thought that somewhere he might well meet a woman so superior that in spite of himself he might be held, not to absolute faithfulness—he was never willing to count upon that in regard to himself—but rather to a genuine union of understanding and affection. For eight years now he had felt that he had really found that ideal individual in the girl, Berenice Fleming. Obviously, she was not overawed by his personality or his fame, nor at all impressed by his usual arts. And because of that, as well as the deep aesthetic and sensual spell she cast over him, there had arisen in him a conviction that she, with her youth, beauty, mental awareness, and certainty as to her own personal value, could contrive and maintain the natural social background for his force and wealth, assuming, of course, that he were ever free to marry her.

Unfortunately, for all his determination in connection with Aileen, he had not been able to divest himself of her. For one thing, she was determined not to give him up. And to have added a contest for freedom to his difficult railway fight in Chicago would have been too much of a burden. Moreover, in Berenice’s attitude, he saw no trace of the necessary acceptance. Her eyes appeared to be set toward men not only younger than himself but with conventional social advantages which his personal record made it impossible for him to offer her. This had given him his first real taste of romantic defeat, and he had sat alone in his rooms for hours at a time convinced that he was hopelessly beaten in his battle for greater fortune and for the love of Berenice.

And then suddenly she had come to him and announced a most amazing and unexpected surrender, so that he experienced a sense of rejuvenation which almost at once definitely restored his old constructive mood. At last, he felt, he had the love of a woman who could truly support him in his quest for power, fame, prestige.

On the other hand, as frank and direct as had been her explanation of why she had come—“I thought you really might need me now . . . I have made up my mind”—still, there was on her part a certain hurt attitude in regard to life and society which moved her to seek reparation in some form for the cruelties she felt had been imposed on her in her early youth. What she was really thinking, and what Cowperwood, because of his delight at her sudden surrender did not comprehend, was: You are a social outcast, and so am I. The world has sought to frustrate you. In my own case, it has attempted to exclude me from the sphere to which, temperamentally and in every other way, I feel I belong. You are resentful, and so am I. Therefore, a partnership: one of beauty and strength and intelligence and courage on both sides, but without domination by either of us. For without fair play between us, there is no possibility of this unsanctioned union enduring. This was the essence of her motive in coming to him at this time.

And yet Cowperwood, aware as he was of her force and subtlety, was not so fully aware of her chain of thought in this direction. He would not have said, for instance, looking upon her on that wintry night of her arrival (perfect and flowery out of an icy wind), that she was as carefully and determinedly aligned mentally. It was a little too much to expect of one so youthful, smiling, gay and altogether exquisite in every feminine sense. And yet she was. She stood daringly, and yet secretly somewhat nervously, before him. There was no trace of malice in regard to him; rather love, if a desire to be with him and of him for the remainder of his days on these conditions might be called love. Through him and with him she would walk to such victory as might be possible, the two of them whole-heartedly and sympathetically co-operating.

And so, on that first night, Cowperwood turned to her and said: “But Bevy, I’m really curious as to this sudden decision of yours. To think you should come to me now just when I have met my second really important setback.”

Her still blue eyes enveloped him as might a warming cloak or a dissolving ether.

“Well, I’ve been thinking and reading about you for years, you know. Only last Sunday, in New York, I read two whole pages about you in the Sun . They made me understand you a little better, I think.”

“The newspapers! Did they, really?”

“Yes, and no. Not what they said about you critically, but the facts, if they are facts, that they pieced together. You never cared for your first wife, did you?”

“Well, I thought I did, at first. But, of course, I was very young when I married her.”

“And the present Mrs. Cowperwood?”

“Oh, Aileen, yes. I cared for her very much at one time,” he confessed. “She did a great deal for me once, and I am not ungrateful, Bevy. Besides, she was very attractive, very, to me at that time. But I was still young, and not as exacting mentally as I am now. The fault is not Aileen’s. It was a mistake due to inexperience.”

“You make me feel better when you talk that way,” she said. “You’re not as ruthless as you’re said to be. Just the same, I am many years younger than Aileen, and I have the feeling that without my looks my mind might not be very important to you.”

Cowperwood smiled. “Quite true. I have no excuses to offer for the way I am,” he said. “Intelligently or unintelligently, I try to follow the line of self-interest, because, as I see it, there is no other guide. Maybe I am wrong, but I think most of us do that. It may be that there are other interests that come before those of the individual, but in favoring himself, he appears, as a rule, to favor others.”