Who’s to bear with me when my heart is breaking?
Oh, God!” she suddenly added, with passionate vigor,
“I’m miserable!
I’m miserable!
My heart aches!
It aches!”
She clutched her breast and swung from the room, moving with that vigorous stride that had once appealed to him so, and still did.
Alas, alas! it touched him now, but only as a part of a very shifty and cruel world.
He hurried out of the room after her, and (as at the time of the Rita Sohlberg incident) slipped his arm about her waist; but she pulled away irritably.
“No, no!” she exclaimed.
“Let me alone.
I’m tired of that.”
“You’re really not fair to me, Aileen,” with a great show of feeling and sincerity.
“You’re letting one affair that came between us blind your whole point of view.
I give you my word I haven’t been unfaithful to you with Stephanie Platow or any other woman.
I may have flirted with them a little, but that is really nothing.
Why not be sensible?
I’m not as black as you paint me.
I’m moving in big matters that are as much for your concern and future as for mine.
Be sensible, be liberal.”
There was much argument—the usual charges and countercharges—but, finally, because of her weariness of heart, his petting, the unsolvability of it all, she permitted him for the time being to persuade her that there were still some crumbs of affection left.
She was soul-sick, heartsick.
Even he, as he attempted to soothe her, realized clearly that to establish the reality of his love in her belief he would have to make some much greater effort to entertain and comfort her, and that this, in his present mood, and with his leaning toward promiscuity, was practically impossible.
For the time being a peace might be patched up, but in view of what she expected of him—her passion and selfish individuality—it could not be.
He would have to go on, and she would have to leave him, if needs be; but he could not cease or go back.
He was too passionate, too radiant, too individual and complex to belong to any one single individual alone.
Chapter XXX. Obstacles
The impediments that can arise to baffle a great and swelling career are strange and various.
In some instances all the cross-waves of life must be cut by the strong swimmer.
With other personalities there is a chance, or force, that happily allies itself with them; or they quite unconsciously ally themselves with it, and find that there is a tide that bears them on.
Divine will?
Not necessarily.
There is no understanding of it.
Guardian spirits?
There are many who so believe, to their utter undoing. (Witness Macbeth).
An unconscious drift in the direction of right, virtue, duty?
These are banners of mortal manufacture.
Nothing is proved; all is permitted.
Not long after Cowperwood’s accession to control on the West Side, for instance, a contest took place between his corporation and a citizen by the name of Redmond Purdy—real-estate investor, property-trader, and money-lender—which set Chicago by the ears.
The La Salle and Washington Street tunnels were now in active service, but because of the great north and south area of the West Side, necessitating the cabling of Van Buren Street and Blue Island Avenue, there was need of a third tunnel somewhere south of Washington Street, preferably at Van Buren Street, because the business heart was thus more directly reached.
Cowperwood was willing and anxious to build this tunnel, though he was puzzled how to secure from the city a right of way under Van Buren Street, where a bridge loaded with heavy traffic now swung.
There were all sorts of complications.
In the first place, the consent of the War Department at Washington had to be secured in order to tunnel under the river at all.
Secondly, the excavation, if directly under the bridge, might prove an intolerable nuisance, necessitating the closing or removal of the bridge.
Owing to the critical, not to say hostile, attitude of the newspapers which, since the La Salle and Washington tunnel grants, were following his every move with a searchlight, Cowperwood decided not to petition the city for privileges in this case, but instead to buy the property rights of sufficient land just north of the bridge, where the digging of the tunnel could proceed without interference.
The piece of land most suitable for this purpose, a lot 150 x 150, lying a little way from the river-bank, and occupied by a seven-story loft-building, was owned by the previously mentioned Redmond Purdy, a long, thin, angular, dirty person, who wore celluloid collars and cuffs and spoke with a nasal intonation.
Cowperwood had the customary overtures made by seemingly disinterested parties endeavoring to secure the land at a fair price.
But Purdy, who was as stingy as a miser and as incisive as a rat-trap, had caught wind of the proposed tunnel scheme.
He was all alive for a fine profit.
“No, no, no,” he declared, over and over, when approached by the representatives of Mr. Sylvester Toomey, Cowperwood’s ubiquitous land-agent.