Theodore Dreiser - The Titan

“You’re really not happy in this state, any more, are you?” he inquired. “Would you feel any more comfortable if I stayed away entirely?”

His mind had turned of a sudden to the one problem that was fretting him and to the opportunities of this hour.

“You would,” she replied, for her boredom merely concealed her unhappiness in no longer being able to command in the least his interest or his sentiment.

“Why do you say that in just that way?” he asked.

“Because I know you would. I know why you ask. You know well enough that it isn’t anything I want to do that is concerned. It’s what you want to do. You’d like to turn me off like an old horse now that you are tired of me, and so you ask whether I would feel any more comfortable. What a liar you are, Frank! How really shifty you are! I don’t wonder you’re a multimillionaire. If you could live long enough you would eat up the whole world. Don’t you think for one moment that I don’t know of Berenice Fleming here in New York, and how you’re dancing attendance on her—because I do. I know how you have been hanging about her for months and months—ever since we have been here, and for long before. You think she’s wonderful now because she’s young and in society. I’ve seen you in the Waldorf and in the Park hanging on her every word, looking at her with adoring eyes. What a fool you are, to be so big a man! Every little snip, if she has pink cheeks and a doll’s face, can wind you right around her finger. Rita Sohlberg did it; Stephanie Platow did it; Florence Cochrane did it; Cecily Haguenin—and Heaven knows how many more that I never heard of. I suppose Mrs. Hand still lives with you in Chicago—the cheap strumpet! Now it’s Berenice Fleming and her frump of a mother. From all I can learn you haven’t been able to get her yet—because her mother’s too shrewd, perhaps—but you probably will in the end. It isn’t you so much as your money that they’re after. Pah! Well, I’m unhappy enough, but it isn’t anything you can remedy any more. Whatever you could do to make me unhappy you have done, and now you talk of my being happier away from you. Clever boy, you! I know you the way I know my ten fingers. You don’t deceive me at any time in any way any more. I can’t do anything about it. I can’t stop you from making a fool of yourself with every woman you meet, and having people talk from one end of the country to the other. Why, for a woman to be seen with you is enough to fix her reputation forever. Right now all Broadway knows you’re running after Berenice Fleming. Her name will soon be as sweet as those of the others you’ve had. She might as well give herself to you. If she ever had a decent reputation it’s gone by now, you can depend upon that.”

These remarks irritated Cowperwood greatly—enraged him—particularly her references to Berenice. What were you to do with such a woman? he thought. Her tongue was becoming unbearable; her speech in its persistence and force was that of a termagant. Surely, surely, he had made a great mistake in marrying her. At the same time the control of her was largely in his own hands even yet.

“Aileen,” he said, coolly, at the end of her speech, “you talk too much. You rave. You’re growing vulgar, I believe. Now let me tell you something.” And he fixed her with a hard, quieting eye. “I have no apologies to make. Think what you please. I know why you say what you do. But here is the point. I want you to get it straight and clear. It may make some difference eventually if you’re any kind of a woman at all. I don’t care for you any more. If you want to put it another way—I’m tired of you. I have been for a long while. That’s why I’ve run with other women. If I hadn’t been tired of you I wouldn’t have done it. What’s more, I’m in love with somebody else—Berenice Fleming, and I expect to stay in love. I wish I were free so I could rearrange my life on a different basis and find a little comfort before I die. You don’t really care for me any more. You can’t. I’ll admit I have treated you badly; but if I had really loved you I wouldn’t have done it, would I? It isn’t my fault that love died in me, is it? It isn’t your fault. I’m not blaming you. Love isn’t a bunch of coals that can be blown by an artificial bellows into a flame at any time. It’s out, and that’s an end of it. Since I don’t love you and can’t, why should you want me to stay near you? Why shouldn’t you let me go and give me a divorce? You’ll be just as happy or unhappy away from me as with me. Why not? I want to be free again. I’m miserable here, and have been for a long time. I’ll make any arrangement that seems fair and right to you. I’ll give you this house—these pictures, though I really don’t see what you’d want with them.” (Cowperwood had no intention of giving up the gallery if he could help it.) “I’ll settle on you for life any income you desire, or I’ll give you a fixed sum outright. I want to be free, and I want you to let me be. Now why won’t you be sensible and let me do this?”

During this harangue Cowperwood had first sat and then stood. At the statement that his love was really dead—the first time he had ever baldly and squarely announced it—Aileen had paled a little and put her hand to her forehead over her eyes. It was then he had arisen. He was cold, determined, a little revengeful for the moment. She realized now that he meant this—that in his heart was no least feeling for all that had gone before—no sweet memories, no binding thoughts of happy hours, days, weeks, years, that were so glittering and wonderful to her in retrospect. Great Heavens, it was really true! His love was dead; he had said it! But for the nonce she could not believe it; she would not. It really couldn’t be true.

“Frank,” she began, coming toward him, the while he moved away to evade her. Her eyes were wide, her hands trembling, her lips moving in an emotional, wavy, rhythmic way. “You really don’t mean that, do you? Love isn’t wholly dead, is it? All the love you used to feel for me? Oh, Frank, I have raged, I have hated, I have said terrible, ugly things, but it has been because I have been in love with you! All the time I have. You know that. I have felt so bad—O God, how bad I have felt! Frank, you don’t know it—but my pillow has been wet many and many a night. I have cried and cried. I have got up and walked the floor. I have drunk whisky—plain, raw whisky—because something hurt me and I wanted to kill the pain. I have gone with other men, one after another—you know that—but, oh! Frank, Frank, you know that I didn’t want to, that I didn’t mean to! I have always despised the thought of them afterward. It was only because I was lonely and because you wouldn’t pay any attention to me or be nice to me. Oh, how I have longed and longed for just one loving hour with you—one night, one day! There are women who could suffer in silence, but I can’t. My mind won’t let me alone, Frank—my thoughts won’t. I can’t help thinking how I used to run to you in Philadelphia, when you would meet me on your way home, or when I used to come to you in Ninth Street or on Eleventh. Oh, Frank, I probably did wrong to your first wife. I see it now—how she must have suffered! But I was just a silly girl then, and I didn’t know. Don’t you remember how I used to come to you in Ninth Street and how I saw you day after day in the penitentiary in Philadelphia? You said then you would love me always and that you would never forget. Can’t you love me any more—just a little? Is it really true that your love is dead? Am I so old, so changed? Oh, Frank, please don’t say that—please don’t—please, please please! I beg of you!”

She tried to reach him and put a hand on his arm, but he stepped aside. To him, as he looked at her now, she was the antithesis of anything he could brook, let alone desire artistically or physically. The charm was gone, the spell broken. It was another type, another point of view he required, but, above all and principally, youth, youth—the spirit, for instance, that was in Berenice Fleming. He was sorry—in his way. He felt sympathy, but it was like the tinkling of a far-off sheep-bell—the moaning of a whistling buoy heard over the thrash of night-black waves on a stormy sea.