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accident of birth or lack of force or resourcefulness to stew in their own juice of wretchedness,
or to shuffle off this mortal coil--which under other circumstances had such glittering
possibilities--via the rope, the knife, the bullet, or the cup of poison.
"I would die, too," he thought to himself, one day, reading of a man who, confined by disease
and poverty, had lived for twelve years alone in a back bedroom attended by an old and
probably decrepit housekeeper. A darning-needle forced into his heart had ended his earthly
woes. "To the devil with such a life! Why twelve years? Why not at the end of the second or
third?"
Again, it was so very evident, in so many ways, that force was the answer--great mental and
physical force. Why, these giants of commerce and money could do as they pleased in this life,
and did. He had already had ample local evidence of it in more than one direction. Worse--the
little guardians of so-called law and morality, the newspapers, the preachers, the police, and the
public moralists generally, so loud in their denunciation of evil in humble places, were cowards
all when it came to corruption in high ones. They did not dare to utter a feeble squeak until
some giant had accidentally fallen and they could do so without danger to themselves. Then, O
Heavens, the palaver! What beatings of tom-toms! What mouthings of pharisaical
moralities--platitudes! Run now, good people, for you may see clearly how evil is dealt with in
high places! It made him smile. Such hypocrisy! Such cant! Still, so the world was organized,
and it was not for him to set it right. Let it wag as it would. The thing for him to do was to get rich
and hold his own--to build up a seeming of virtue and dignity which would pass muster for the
genuine thing. Force would do that. Quickness of wit. And he had these. "I satisfy myself," was
his motto; and it might well have been emblazoned upon any coat of arms which he could have
contrived to set forth his claim to intellectual and social nobility.
But this matter of Aileen was up for consideration and solution at this present moment, and
because of his forceful, determined character he was presently not at all disturbed by the
problem it presented. It was a problem, like some of those knotty financial complications which
presented themselves daily; but it was not insoluble. What did he want to do? He couldn't leave
his wife and fly with Aileen, that was certain. He had too many connections. He had too many
social, and thinking of his children and parents, emotional as well as financial ties to bind him.
Besides, he was not at all sure that he wanted to. He did not intend to leave his growing
interests, and at the same time he did not intend to give up Aileen immediately. The unheralded
manifestation of interest on her part was too attractive. Mrs. Cowperwood was no longer what
she should be physically and mentally, and that in itself to him was sufficient to justify his
present interest in this girl. Why fear anything, if only he could figure out a way to achieve it
without harm to himself? At the same time he thought it might never be possible for him to figure
out any practical or protective program for either himself or Aileen, and that made him silent and
reflective. For by now he was intensely drawn to her, as he could feel--something chemic and
hence dynamic was uppermost in him now and clamoring for expression.
At the same time, in contemplating his wife in connection with all this, he had many qualms,
some emotional, some financial. While she had yielded to his youthful enthusiasm for her after
her husband's death, he had only since learned that she was a natural conservator of public
morals--the cold purity of the snowdrift in so far as the world might see, combined at times with
the murky mood of the wanton. And yet, as he had also learned, she was ashamed of the
passion that at times swept and dominated her. This irritated Cowperwood, as it would always
irritate any strong, acquisitive, direct-seeing temperament. While he had no desire to acquaint
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