Full Text Archive

Full Text Archive
https://www.fulltextarchive.com
doubt this was what was intended, as well as being enforced, by the Governing Power of the
world.
One can imagine how much such an attitude as this would appeal to Cowperwood, once he had
detected it. By a dozen little signs, in spite of the fact that she brought him delicacies, and
commiserated on his fate, he could see that she felt not only sad, but reproachful, and if there
was one thing that Cowperwood objected to at all times it was the moral as well as the funereal
air. Contrasted with the cheerful combative hopefulness and enthusiasm of Aileen, the wearied
uncertainty of Mrs. Cowperwood was, to say the least, a little tame. Aileen, after her first burst of
rage over his fate, which really did not develop any tears on her part, was apparently convinced
that he would get out and be very successful again. She talked success and his future all the
time because she believed in it. Instinctively she seemed to realize that prison walls could not
make a prison for him. Indeed, on the first day she left she handed Bonhag ten dollars, and after
thanking him in her attractive voice--without showing her face, however--for his obvious
kindness to her, bespoke his further favor for Cowperwood--"a very great man," as she
described him, which sealed that ambitious materialist's fate completely. There was nothing the
overseer would not do for the young lady in the dark cloak. She might have stayed in
Cowperwood's cell for a week if the visiting-hours of the penitentiary had not made it impossible.
The day that Cowperwood decided to discuss with his wife the weariness of his present married
state and his desire to be free of it was some four months after he had entered the prison. By
that time he had become inured to his convict life. The silence of his cell and the menial tasks
he was compelled to perform, which had at first been so distressing, banal, maddening, in their
pointless iteration, had now become merely commonplace--dull, but not painful. Furthermore he
had learned many of the little resources of the solitary convict, such as that of using his lamp to
warm up some delicacy which he had saved from a previous meal or from some basket which
had been sent him by his wife or Aileen. He had partially gotten rid of the sickening odor of his
cell by persuading Bonhag to bring him small packages of lime; which he used with great
freedom. Also he succeeded in defeating some of the more venturesome rats with traps; and
with Bonhag's permission, after his cell door had been properly locked at night, and sealed with
the outer wooden door, he would take his chair, if it were not too cold, out into the little back
yard of his cell and look at the sky, where, when the nights were clear, the stars were to be
seen. He had never taken any interest in astronomy as a scientific study, but now the Pleiades,
the belt of Orion, the Big Dipper and the North Star, to which one of its lines pointed, caught his
attention, almost his fancy. He wondered why the stars of the belt of Orion came to assume the
peculiar mathematical relation to each other which they held, as far as distance and
arrangement were concerned, and whether that could possibly have any intellectual
significance. The nebulous conglomeration of the suns in Pleiades suggested a soundless
depth of space, and he thought of the earth floating like a little ball in immeasurable reaches of
ether. His own life appeared very trivial in view of these things, and he found himself asking
whether it was all really of any significance or importance. He shook these moods off with ease,
however, for the man was possessed of a sense of grandeur, largely in relation to himself and
his affairs; and his temperament was essentially material and vital. Something kept telling him
that whatever his present state he must yet grow to be a significant personage, one whose fame
would be heralded the world over--who must try, try, try. It was not given ail men to see far or to
do brilliantly; but to him it was given, and he must be what he was cut out to be. There was no
more escaping the greatness that was inherent in him than there was for so many others the
littleness that was in them.
291 / 312

---