Theodore Dreiser - The Financier

The old man, when he learned that Cowperwood was in and would see him, determined to make his contact with the financier as short and effective as possible. He moved the least bit when he heard Cowperwood’s step, as light and springy as ever.

“Good evening, Mr. Butler,” said Cowperwood, cheerfully, when he saw him, extending his hand. “What can I do for you?”

“Ye can take that away from in front of me, for one thing,” said Butler, grimly referring to his hand. “I have no need of it. It’s my daughter I’ve come to talk to ye about, and I want plain answers. Where is she?”

“You mean Aileen?” said Cowperwood, looking at him with steady, curious, unrevealing eyes, and merely interpolating this to obtain a moment for reflection. “What can I tell you about her?”

“Ye can tell me where she is, that I know. And ye can make her come back to her home, where she belongs. It was bad fortune that ever brought ye across my doorstep; but I’ll not bandy words with ye here. Ye’ll tell me where my daughter is, and ye’ll leave her alone from now, or I’ll—” The old man’s fists closed like a vise, and his chest heaved with suppressed rage. “Ye’ll not be drivin’ me too far, man, if ye’re wise,” he added, after a time, recovering his equanimity in part. “I want no truck with ye. I want my daughter.”

“Listen, Mr. Butler,” said Cowperwood, quite calmly, relishing the situation for the sheer sense of superiority it gave him. “I want to be perfectly frank with you, if you will let me. I may know where your daughter is, and I may not. I may wish to tell you, and I may not. She may not wish me to. But unless you wish to talk with me in a civil way there is no need of our going on any further. You are privileged to do what you like. Won’t you come up-stairs to my room? We can talk more comfortably there.”

Butler looked at his former protege in utter astonishment. He had never before in all his experience come up against a more ruthless type—suave, bland, forceful, unterrified. This man had certainly come to him as a sheep, and had turned out to be a ravening wolf. His incarceration had not put him in the least awe.

“I’ll not come up to your room,” Butler said, “and ye’ll not get out of Philadelphy with her if that’s what ye’re plannin’. I can see to that. Ye think ye have the upper hand of me, I see, and ye’re anxious to make something of it. Well, ye’re not. It wasn’t enough that ye come to me as a beggar, cravin’ the help of me, and that I took ye in and helped ye all I could—ye had to steal my daughter from me in the bargain. If it wasn’t for the girl’s mother and her sister and her brothers—dacenter men than ever ye’ll know how to be—I’d brain ye where ye stand. Takin’ a young, innocent girl and makin’ an evil woman out of her, and ye a married man! It’s a God’s blessin’ for ye that it’s me, and not one of me sons, that’s here talkin’ to ye, or ye wouldn’t be alive to say what ye’d do.”

The old man was grim but impotent in his rage.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Butler,” replied Cowperwood, quietly. “I’m willing to explain, but you won’t let me. I’m not planning to run away with your daughter, nor to leave Philadelphia. You ought to know me well enough to know that I’m not contemplating anything of that kind; my interests are too large. You and I are practical men. We ought to be able to talk this matter over together and reach an understanding. I thought once of coming to you and explaining this; but I was quite sure you wouldn’t listen to me. Now that you are here I would like to talk to you. If you will come up to my room I will be glad to—otherwise not. Won’t you come up?”

Butler saw that Cowperwood had the advantage. He might as well go up. Otherwise it was plain he would get no information.

“Very well,” he said.

Cowperwood led the way quite amicably, and, having entered his private office, closed the door behind him.

“We ought to be able to talk this matter over and reach an understanding,” he said again, when they were in the room and he had closed the door. “I am not as bad as you think, though I know I appear very bad.” Butler stared at him in contempt. “I love your daughter, and she loves me. I know you are asking yourself how I can do this while I am still married; but I assure you I can, and that I do. I am not happily married. I had expected, if this panic hadn’t come along, to arrange with my wife for a divorce and marry Aileen. My intentions are perfectly good. The situation which you can complain of, of course, is the one you encountered a few weeks ago. It was indiscreet, but it was entirely human. Your daughter does not complain—she understands.” At the mention of his daughter in this connection Butler flushed with rage and shame, but he controlled himself.

“And ye think because she doesn’t complain that it’s all right, do ye?” he asked, sarcastically.

“From my point of view, yes; from yours no. You have one view of life, Mr. Butler, and I have another.”

“Ye’re right there,” put in Butler, “for once, anyhow.”

“That doesn’t prove that either of us is right or wrong. In my judgment the present end justifies the means. The end I have in view is to marry Aileen. If I can possibly pull myself out of this financial scrape that I am in I will do so. Of course, I would like to have your consent for that—so would Aileen; but if we can’t, we can’t.” (Cowperwood was thinking that while this might not have a very soothing effect on the old contractor’s point of view, nevertheless it must make some appeal to his sense of the possible or necessary. Aileen’s present situation was quite unsatisfactory without marriage in view. And even if he, Cowperwood, was a convicted embezzler in the eyes of the public, that did not make him so. He might get free and restore himself—would certainly—and Aileen ought to be glad to marry him if she could under the circumstances. He did not quite grasp the depth of Butler’s religious and moral prejudices.) “Lately,” he went on, “you have been doing all you can, as I understand it, to pull me down, on account of Aileen, I suppose; but that is simply delaying what I want to do.”

“Ye’d like me to help ye do that, I suppose?” suggested Butler, with infinite disgust and patience.

“I want to marry Aileen,” Cowperwood repeated, for emphasis’ sake. “She wants to marry me. Under the circumstances, however you may feel, you can have no real objection to my doing that, I am sure; yet you go on fighting me—making it hard for me to do what you really know ought to be done.”

“Ye’re a scoundrel,” said Butler, seeing through his motives quite clearly. “Ye’re a sharper, to my way of thinkin’, and it’s no child of mine I want connected with ye. I’m not sayin’, seein’ that things are as they are, that if ye were a free man it wouldn’t be better that she should marry ye. It’s the one dacent thing ye could do—if ye would, which I doubt. But that’s nayther here nor there now. What can ye want with her hid away somewhere? Ye can’t marry her. Ye can’t get a divorce. Ye’ve got your hands full fightin’ your lawsuits and kapin’ yourself out of jail. She’ll only be an added expense to ye, and ye’ll be wantin’ all the money ye have for other things, I’m thinkin’. Why should ye want to be takin’ her away from a dacent home and makin’ something out of her that ye’d be ashamed to marry if you could? The laist ye could do, if ye were any kind of a man at all, and had any of that thing that ye’re plased to call love, would be to lave her at home and keep her as respectable as possible. Mind ye, I’m not thinkin’ she isn’t ten thousand times too good for ye, whatever ye’ve made of her. But if ye had any sinse of dacency left, ye wouldn’t let her shame her family and break her old mother’s heart, and that for no purpose except to make her worse than she is already. What good can ye get out of it, now? What good can ye expect to come of it? Be hivins, if ye had any sinse at all I should think ye could see that for yerself. Ye’re only addin’ to your troubles, not takin’ away from them—and she’ll not thank ye for that later on.”