The conversation which eventually followed on this topic was of such stuff as dreams are made of. It sounded hollow and unnatural within the walls where it took place. Consider the great house in upper Fifth Avenue, its magnificent chambers aglow, of a stormy Sunday night. Cowperwood was lingering in the city at this time, busy with a group of Eastern financiers who were influencing his contest in the state legislature of Illinois. Aileen was momentarily consoled by the thought that for him perhaps love might, after all, be a thing apart—a thing no longer vital and soul-controlling. To-night he was sitting in the court of orchids, reading a book—the diary of Cellini, which some one had recommended to him—stopping to think now and then of things in Chicago or Springfield, or to make a note. Outside the rain was splashing in torrents on the electric-lighted asphalt of Fifth Avenue—the Park opposite a Corot-like shadow. Aileen was in the music-room strumming indifferently. She was thinking of times past—Lynde, from whom she had not heard in half a year; Watson Skeet, the sculptor, who was also out of her ken at present. When Cowperwood was in the city and in the house she was accustomed from habit to remain indoors or near. So great is the influence of past customs of devotion that they linger long past the hour when the act ceases to become valid.
“What an awful night!” she observed once, strolling to a window to peer out from behind a brocaded valance.
“It is bad, isn’t it?” replied Cowperwood, as she returned. “Hadn’t you thought of going anywhere this evening?”
“No—oh no,” replied Aileen, indifferently. She rose restlessly from the piano, and strolled on into the great picture-gallery. Stopping before one of Raphael Sanzio’s Holy Families, only recently hung, she paused to contemplate the serene face—medieval, Madonnaesque, Italian.
The lady seemed fragile, colorless, spineless—without life. Were there such women? Why did artists paint them? Yet the little Christ was sweet. Art bored Aileen unless others were enthusiastic. She craved only the fanfare of the living—not painted resemblances. She returned to the music-room, to the court of orchids, and was just about to go up-stairs to prepare herself a drink and read a novel when Cowperwood observed:
“You’re bored, aren’t you?”
“Oh no; I’m used to lonely evenings,” she replied, quietly and without any attempt at sarcasm.
Relentless as he was in hewing life to his theory—hammering substance to the form of his thought—yet he was tender, too, in the manner of a rainbow dancing over an abyss. For the moment he wanted to say, “Poor girlie, you do have a hard time, don’t you, with me?” but he reflected instantly how such a remark would be received. He meditated, holding his book in his hand above his knee, looking at the purling water that flowed and flowed in sprinkling showers over the sportive marble figures of mermaids, a Triton, and nymphs astride of fishes.
“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?”