Men are but slaves and thralls to draw for him the chariot of his greatness.
Never in all his history has he seen fit to go to the people direct for anything.
In Philadelphia, when he wanted public-franchise control, he sought privily and by chicane to arrange his affairs with a venal city treasurer.
In Chicago he has uniformly sought to buy and convert to his own use the splendid privileges of the city, which should really redound to the benefit of all.
Frank Algernon Cowperwood does not believe in the people; he does not trust them.
To him they constitute no more than a field upon which corn is to be sown, and from which it is to be reaped.
They present but a mass of bent backs, their knees and faces in the mire, over which as over a floor he strides to superiority.
His private and inmost faith is in himself alone.
Upon the majority he shuts the gates of his glory in order that the sight of their misery and their needs may not disturb nor alloy his selfish bliss.
Frank Algernon Cowperwood does not believe in the people.”
This editorial battle-cry, flung aloft during the latter days of the contest at Springfield and taken up by the Chicago papers generally and by those elsewhere, interested Berenice greatly.
As she thought of him—waging his terrific contests, hurrying to and fro between New York and Chicago, building his splendid mansion, collecting his pictures, quarreling with Aileen—he came by degrees to take on the outlines of a superman, a half-god or demi-gorgon.
How could the ordinary rules of life or the accustomed paths of men be expected to control him?
They could not and did not.
And here he was pursuing her, seeking her out with his eyes, grateful for a smile, waiting as much as he dared on her every wish and whim.
Say what one will, the wish buried deep in every woman’s heart is that her lover should be a hero.
Some, out of the veriest stick or stone, fashion the idol before which they kneel, others demand the hard reality of greatness; but in either case the illusion of paragon-worship is maintained.
Berenice, by no means ready to look upon Cowperwood as an accepted lover, was nevertheless gratified that his erring devotion was the tribute of one able apparently to command thought from the whole world.
Moreover, because the New York papers had taken fire from his great struggle in the Middle West and were charging him with bribery, perjury, and intent to thwart the will of the people, Cowperwood now came forward with an attempt to explain his exact position to Berenice and to justify himself in her eyes.
During visits to the Carter house or in entr’actes at the opera or the theater, he recounted to her bit by bit his entire history.
He described the characters of Hand, Schryhart, Arneel, and the motives of jealousy and revenge which had led to their attack upon him in Chicago.
“No human being could get anything through the Chicago City Council without paying for it,” he declared.
“It’s simply a question of who’s putting up the money.”
He told how Truman Leslie MacDonald had once tried to “shake him down” for fifty thousand dollars, and how the newspapers had since found it possible to make money, to increase their circulation, by attacking him.
He frankly admitted the fact of his social ostracism, attributing it partially to Aileen’s deficiencies and partially to his own attitude of Promethean defiance, which had never yet brooked defeat.
“And I will defeat them now,” he said, solemnly, to Berenice one day over a luncheon-table at the Plaza when the room was nearly empty.
His gray eyes were a study in colossal enigmatic spirit.
“The governor hasn’t signed my fifty-year franchise bill” (this was before the closing events at Springfield), “but he will sign it.
Then I have one more fight ahead of me.
I’m going to combine all the traffic lines out there under one general system.
I am the logical person to provide it.
Later on, if public ownership ever arrives, the city can buy it.”
“And then—” asked Berenice sweetly, flattered by his confidences.
“Oh, I don’t know.
I suppose I’ll live abroad.
You don’t seem to be very much interested in me.
I’ll finish my picture collection—”
“But supposing you should lose?”
“I don’t contemplate losing,” he remarked, coolly.
“Whatever happens, I’ll have enough to live on.
I’m a little tired of contest.”
He smiled, but Berenice saw that the thought of defeat was a gray one.
With victory was his heart, and only there.
Owing to the national publicity being given to Cowperwood’s affairs at this time the effect upon Berenice of these conversations with him was considerable.
At the same time another and somewhat sinister influence was working in his favor.
By slow degrees she and her mother were coming to learn that the ultra-conservatives of society were no longer willing to accept them.
Berenice had become at last too individual a figure to be overlooked.
At an important luncheon given by the Harris Haggertys, some five months after the Beales Chadsey affair, she had been pointed out to Mrs. Haggerty by a visiting guest from Cincinnati as some one with whom rumor was concerning itself.
Mrs. Haggerty wrote to friends in Louisville for information, and received it.
Shortly after, at the coming-out party of a certain Geraldine Borga, Berenice, who had been her sister’s schoolmate, was curiously omitted.