Chapter 41

It was with puzzled thoughts that Cowperwood parted with Lorna the next day at noon. Throughout this fever which had seized upon him, and, for the time being, commanded his every fiber and impulse, he was actually not unmindful of Berenice. One might as well say that a fire, unrestrained by outward forces, would not burn down a house. And there were no outward forces restraining, or even capable of restraining, either Cowperwood or Lorna under the circumstances. But when she left him to go to the theater his mind resumed its normal trend and occupied itself with the anomaly which Lorna and Berenice presented. Throughout all of eight years he had been swayed by the desirability as well as the unobtainability of Berenice, and more recently by her physical and aesthetic perfection. And yet he had allowed this coarser though still beautiful force to becloud and even temporarily efface all that.

Alone in his room, he asked himself whether he was to blame. He had not sought out this latest temptation; it had come upon him, and suddenly. Besides, in his nature there was room, and even necessity, for many phases of experience, many sources and streams of nourishment. True, he had told Berenice in the fever of his zest for her, and almost continuously since, that she was the supreme aspect of his existence. And in the major sense this was still true. Nevertheless, here and now was this consuming and overwhelming force, as represented by Lorna, which might be differentiated as the mysterious, compelling charm of the new and unexplored, especially where youth and beauty and sex are involved.

Its betraying power, he said to himself, could best be explained by the fact that it was more powerful than the individual or his intentions. It came, created its own fever, and worked its results. It had done so with Berenice and himself, and now again with Lorna Maris. But one thing he clearly recognized even now, and that was that it would never supersede his affection for Berenice. There was a difference; he could see it and feel it clearly. And this difference lay in the temperamental as well as mental objectives of the two girls. Although of the same age, Lorna, with a considerably more rugged and extended life experience, was still content with what could be achieved through the glorification of her own physical and purely sensual charm, the fame, rewards, and applause due an enticing and exciting dancer.

Berenice’s temperamental response and her resulting program were entirely different: broader, richer, a product of social and aesthetic sense involving peoples and countries. She, like himself, had an abiding faith in the dominance of mind and taste. Hence the ease and grace with which she had blended herself into the atmosphere and social forms and precedents of England. Obviously and for all the vivid and exciting sensual power of Lorna, the deeper and more enduring power and charm lay within Berenice. In other words, her ambitions and reactions were in every way more significant. And when Lorna had gone, although he did not at the moment care to contemplate that thought, Berenice would still be present.

Yet, how in the ultimate accounting, would he adjust all this? Would he be able to conceal this adventure, which he had no intention of immediately terminating? And if Berenice discovered it, how would he satisfy her? He could not solve that before a shaving mirror, or in any bath or dressing room.

That night, after the performance, Cowperwood decided that Lorna Maris was not so much a great as a sensational dancer, one who would shine brilliantly for a few years and eventually perhaps marry a wealthy man. But now, as he saw her dance, he found her enticing, in her silken clown costume, with loose pantaloons and long-fingered gloves. To the accompaniment of lights which cast exaggerated shadows, and ghostly music, she sang and danced the bogey man who might catch you if you didn’t watch out! Another dance was corybantic. In a short sleeveless slip of white chiffon, her exquisite arms and legs bare, her hair a whirling mass of powdered gold, she suggested to the utmost the abandon of a bacchante. Still another dance presented her as a pursued and terrified innocent seeking to escape from the lurking figures of would-be ravishers. She was so often recalled that the management had to limit her encores, and later in New York, she colored, for that season, the entire summer love mood of the city.

In fact, to Cowperwood’s surprise and gratification, Lorna was quite as much talked of as himself. Orchestras everywhere were playing her songs; in the popular vaudeville houses there were imitations of her. Merely to be seen with her was to inspire comment, and therein lay his greatest problem, for the very papers which regularly presented Lorna’s fame also presented his own. And this evoked in him the greatest caution, as well as a very real mental distress regarding Berenice. She might read or hear or be whispered to by someone if they were seen publicly together. At the same time, he and Lorna were infatuated and wished to be together as much as possible. In the case of Aileen, at least, he decided on a frank confession to her that in Baltimore he had met the granddaughter of his brother, a very gifted girl, who was in a theatrical production playing in New York. Would Aileen care to invite her to the house?

Having already read notices of Lorna and seen pictures of her in the papers, Aileen was, of course, curious, and for that reason willing to extend the invitation. At the same time, the beauty, poise, and self-assurance of the girl, as well as the mere fact that she had met and introduced herself to Cowperwood, were sufficient to embitter Aileen against her and to renew her old suspicion as to Cowperwood’s real motives. Youth—the irrecoverable. Beauty—that wraith of perfection that came and went as a shadow. Yet were both fire and storm. It gave Aileen no real satisfaction to escort Lorna through the galleries and gardens of the Cowperwood palace. For, as she could see, with what Lorna had she did not need those things, and because of what Aileen lacked, they were of no avail to her. Life went with beauty and desire; where they were not was nothing... And Cowperwood desired beauty and achieved it for himself—life, color, fame, romance. Whereas, she...

Now enmeshed in the necessity of pretending engagements and business which did not exist, in order to make secure his newest paradise, Cowperwood decided that it would be better if Tollifer were present, and arranged to have him recalled by the Central Trust Company. He might keep Aileen from thinking about Lorna.

So Tollifer, gayly afloat off the North Cape with Marigold and a party of her friends, and greatly disappointed by his recall, was obliged to state that financial affairs required his immediate return to New York. And soon after his return, and doing his best to amuse himself as well as Aileen, he heard rumours of Lorna and Cowperwood, and was, of course, interested. Yet, although envying Cowperwood his luck, he was careful at every point to belittle and deny all gossip that he heard, and in particular to shield him from any suspicion on the part of Aileen.

Unfortunately, he arrived too late to forestall an inevitable article in Town Topics, which presently fell into Aileen’s hands. It produced on her the usual effect, the old bitter contemplation of her husband’s besetting vice. No matter how great his standing before the world, how marvelous his power of achievement, he must allow these petty vagrants, infinitely beneath him, to tarnish and becloud what would otherwise have been a tremendous and untarnished public position.

There was one consolation. If she were once again to be humiliated in this way, there was Berenice Fleming to be humiliated also. For Aileen had long been consciously irritated by the unseen presence of Berenice ever in the background. And observing Berenice’s New York house to be closed, she assumed that Cowperwood must be neglecting her also. For most certainly he was showing no desire to leave the city.

One of the excuses which he gave for remaining in New York related to the nomination and possible election of William Jennings Bryan, a political firebrand, who, with economic and social theories somewhat at variance with the current capitalistic views of how money should be managed and divided, was seeking to bridge the then unbridgeable gulf between the rich and the poor. And, in consequence, in the United States there was at that time a genuine commercial fear, bordering almost on panic, lest this man actually win the presidency. This permitted Cowperwood to say to Aileen that it would be dangerous for him to leave the country at this time, since on Bryan’s stabilizing defeat depended his own financial success. And he wrote Berenice to the same effect. That ultimately she was not permitted to believe him was due to the fact that Aileen had mailed a copy of Town Topics to her New York address, and in due time, it arrived at Pryor’s Cove.