Theodore Dreiser - The Titan

“You’re not taking too much of that, are you, Aileen?” he questioned one evening, watching her drink down a tumbler of whisky and water as she sat contemplating a pattern of needlework with which the table was ornamented.

“Certainly I’m not,” she replied, irritably, a little flushed and thick of tongue. “Why do you ask?” She herself had been wondering whether in the course of time it might not have a depreciating effect on her complexion. This was the only thing that still concerned her—her beauty.

“Well, I see you have that bottle in your room all the time. I was wondering if you might not be forgetting how much you are using it.”

Because she was so sensitive he was trying to be tactful.

“Well,” she answered, crossly, “what if I am? It wouldn’t make any particular difference if I did. I might as well drink as do some other things that are done.”

It was a kind of satisfaction to her to bait him in this way. His inquiry, being a proof of continued interest on his part, was of some value. At least he was not entirely indifferent to her.

“I wish you wouldn’t talk that way, Aileen,” he replied. “I have no objection to your drinking some. I don’t suppose it makes any difference to you now whether I object or not. But you are too good-looking, too well set up physically, to begin that. You don’t need it, and it’s such a short road to hell. Your state isn’t so bad. Good heavens! many another woman has been in your position. I’m not going to leave you unless you want to leave me. I’ve told you that over and over. I’m just sorry people change—we all do. I suppose I’ve changed some, but that’s no reason for your letting yourself go to pieces. I wish you wouldn’t be desperate about this business. It may come out better than you think in the long run.”

He was merely talking to console her.

“Oh! oh! oh!” Aileen suddenly began to rock and cry in a foolish drunken way, as though her heart would break, and Cowperwood got up. He was horrified after a fashion.

“Oh, don’t come near me!” Aileen suddenly exclaimed, sobering in an equally strange way. “I know why you come. I know how much you care about me or my looks. Don’t you worry whether I drink or not. I’ll drink if I please, or do anything else if I choose. If it helps me over my difficulties, that’s my business, not yours,” and in defiance she prepared another glass and drank it.

Cowperwood shook his head, looking at her steadily and sorrowfully. “It’s too bad, Aileen,” he said. “I don’t know what to do about you exactly. You oughtn’t to go on this way. Whisky won’t get you anywhere. It will simply ruin your looks and make you miserable in the bargain.”

“Oh, to hell with my looks!” she snapped. “A lot of good they’ve done me.” And, feeling contentious and sad, she got up and left the table. Cowperwood followed her after a time, only to see her dabbing at her eyes and nose with powder. A half-filled glass of whisky and water was on the dressing-table beside her. It gave him a strange feeling of responsibility and helplessness.

Mingled with his anxiety as to Aileen were thoughts of the alternate rise and fall of his hopes in connection with Berenice. She was such a superior girl, developing so definitely as an individual. To his satisfaction she had, on a few recent occasions when he had seen her, unbent sufficiently to talk to him in a friendly and even intimate way, for she was by no means hoity-toity, but a thinking, reasoning being of the profoundest intellectual, or, rather, the highest artistic tendencies. She was so care-free, living in a high and solitary world, at times apparently enwrapt in thoughts serene, at other times sharing vividly in the current interests of the social world of which she was a part, and which she dignified as much as it dignified her.

One Sunday morning at Pocono, in late June weather, when he had come East to rest for a few days, and all was still and airy on the high ground which the Carter cottage occupied, Berenice came out on the veranda where Cowperwood was sitting, reading a fiscal report of one of his companies and meditating on his affairs. By now they had become somewhat more sympatica than formerly, and Berenice had an easy, genial way in his presence. She liked him, rather. With an indescribable smile which wrinkled her nose and eyes, and played about the corners of her mouth, she said: “Now I am going to catch a bird.”

“A what?” asked Cowperwood, looking up and pretending he had not heard, though he had. He was all eyes for any movement of hers. She was dressed in a flouncy morning gown eminently suitable for the world in which she was moving.

“A bird,” she replied, with an airy toss of her head. “This is June-time, and the sparrows are teaching their young to fly.”

Cowperwood, previously engrossed in financial speculations, was translated, as by the wave of a fairy wand, into another realm where birds and fledglings and grass and the light winds of heaven were more important than brick and stone and stocks and bonds. He got up and followed her flowing steps across the grass to where, near a clump of alder bushes, she had seen a mother sparrow enticing a fledgling to take wing. From her room upstairs, she had been watching this bit of outdoor sociology. It suddenly came to Cowperwood, with great force, how comparatively unimportant in the great drift of life were his own affairs when about him was operative all this splendid will to existence, as sensed by her. He saw her stretch out her hands downward, and run in an airy, graceful way, stooping here and there, while before her fluttered a baby sparrow, until suddenly she dived quickly and then, turning, her face agleam, cried: “See, I have him! He wants to fight, too! Oh, you little dear!”

She was holding “him,” as she chose to characterize it, in the hollow of her hand, the head between her thumb and forefinger, with the forefinger of her free hand petting it the while she laughed and kissed it. It was not so much bird-love as the artistry of life and of herself that was moving her. Hearing the parent bird chirping distractedly from a nearby limb, she turned and called: “Don’t make such a row! I sha’n’t keep him long.”

Cowperwood laughed—trig in the morning sun. “You can scarcely blame her,” he commented.

“Oh, she knows well enough I wouldn’t hurt him,” Berenice replied, spiritedly, as though it were literally true.

“Does she, indeed?” inquired Cowperwood. “Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s true. Don’t you think they know when their children are really in danger?”

“But why should they?” persisted Cowperwood, charmed and interested by the involute character of her logic. She was quite deceptive to him. He could not be sure what she thought.

She merely fixed him a moment with her cool, slate-blue eyes. “Do you think the senses of the world are only five?” she asked, in the most charming and non-reproachful way. “Indeed, they know well enough. She knows.” She turned and waved a graceful hand in the direction of the tree, where peace now reigned. The chirping had ceased. “She knows I am not a cat.”

Again that enticing, mocking smile that wrinkled her nose, her eye-corners, her mouth. The word “cat” had a sharp, sweet sound in her mouth. It seemed to be bitten off closely with force and airy spirit. Cowperwood surveyed her as he would have surveyed the ablest person he knew. Here was a woman, he saw, who could and would command the utmost reaches of his soul in every direction. If he interested her at all, he would need them all. The eyes of her were at once so elusive, so direct, so friendly, so cool and keen. “You will have to be interesting, indeed, to interest me,” they seemed to say; and yet they were by no means averse, apparently, to a hearty camaraderie. That nose-wrinkling smile said as much. Here was by no means a Stephanie Platow, nor yet a Rita Sohlberg. He could not assume her as he had Ella Hubby, or Florence Cochrane, or Cecily Haguenin. Here was an iron individuality with a soul for romance and art and philosophy and life. He could not take her as he had those others. And yet Berenice was really beginning to think more than a little about Cowperwood. He must be an extraordinary man; her mother said so, and the newspapers were always mentioning his name and noting his movements.