When he arrived there the famous contractor was at dinner. He had not heard the calling of the extras, and of course, did not understand as yet the significance of the fire. The servant's announcement of Cowperwood brought him smiling to the door.
"Won't you come in and join us? We're just havin' a light supper.
Have a cup of coffee or tea, now--do."
"I can't," replied Cowperwood. "Not to-night, I'm in too much of a hurry. I want to see you for just a few moments, and then I'll be off again. I won't keep you very long."
"Why, if that's the case, I'll come right out." And Butler returned to the dining-room to put down his napkin. Aileen, who was also dining, had heard Cowperwood's voice, and was on the qui vive to see him. She wondered what it was that brought him at this time of night to see her father. She could not leave the table at once, but hoped to before he went. Cowperwood was thinking of her, even in the face of this impending storm, as he was of his wife, and many other things. If his affairs came down in a heap it would go hard with those attached to him. In this first clouding of disaster, he could not tell how things would eventuate.
He meditated on this desperately, but he was not panic-stricken.
His naturally even-molded face was set in fine, classic lines; his eyes were as hard as chilled steel.
"Well, now," exclaimed Butler, returning, his countenance manifesting a decidedly comfortable relationship with the world as at present constituted. "What's up with you to-night? Nawthin' wrong, I hope.
It's been too fine a day."
"Nothing very serious, I hope myself," replied Cowperwood, "But I want to talk with you a few minutes, anyhow. Don't you think we had better go up to your room?"
"I was just going to say that," replied Butler--"the cigars are up there."
They started from the reception-room to the stairs, Butler preceding and as the contractor mounted, Aileen came out from the dining-room in a frou-frou of silk. Her splendid hair was drawn up from the base of the neck and the line of the forehead into some quaint convolutions which constituted a reddish-gold crown. Her complexion was glowing, and her bare arms and shoulders shone white against the dark red of her evening gown. She realized there was something wrong.
"Oh, Mr. Cowperwood, how do you do?" she exclaimed, coming forward and holding out her hand as her father went on upstairs. She was delaying him deliberately in order to have a word with him and this bold acting was for the benefit of the others.
"What's the trouble, honey?" she whispered, as soon as her father was out of hearing. "You look worried."
"Nothing much, I hope, sweet," he said. "Chicago is burning up and there's going to be trouble to-morrow. I have to talk to your father."
She had time only for a sympathetic, distressed "Oh," before he withdrew his hand and followed Butler upstairs. She squeezed his arm, and went through the reception-room to the parlor. She sat down, thinking, for never before had she seen Cowperwood's face wearing such an expression of stern, disturbed calculation. It was placid, like fine, white wax, and quite as cold; and those deep, vague, inscrutable eyes! So Chicago was burning. What would happen to him? Was he very much involved? He had never told her in detail of his affairs. She would not have understood fully any more than would have Mrs. Cowperwood. But she was worried, nevertheless, because it was her Frank, and because she was bound to him by what to her seemed indissoluble ties.
Literature, outside of the masters, has given us but one idea of the mistress, the subtle, calculating siren who delights to prey on the souls of men. The journalism and the moral pamphleteering of the time seem to foster it with almost partisan zeal. It would seem that a censorship of life had been established by divinity, and the care of its execution given into the hands of the utterly conservative. Yet there is that other form of liaison which has nothing to do with conscious calculation. In the vast majority of cases it is without design or guile. The average woman, controlled by her affections and deeply in love, is no more capable than a child of anything save sacrificial thought--the desire to give; and so long as this state endures, she can only do this. She may change--Hell hath no fury, etc.--but the sacrificial, yielding, solicitous attitude is more often the outstanding characteristic of the mistress; and it is this very attitude in contradistinction to the grasping legality of established matrimony that has caused so many wounds in the defenses of the latter. The temperament of man, either male or female, cannot help falling down before and worshiping this nonseeking, sacrificial note. It approaches vast distinction in life. It appears to be related to that last word in art, that largeness of spirit which is the first characteristic of the great picture, the great building, the great sculpture, the great decoration--namely, a giving, freely and without stint, of itself, of beauty. Hence the significance of this particular mood in Aileen.
All the subtleties of the present combination were troubling Cowperwood as he followed Butler into the room upstairs.
"Sit down, sit down. You won't take a little somethin'? You never do. I remember now. Well, have a cigar, anyhow. Now, what's this that's troublin' you to-night?"
Voices could be heard faintly in the distance, far off toward the thicker residential sections.
"Extra! Extra! All about the big Chicago fire! Chicago burning down!"
"Just that," replied Cowperwood, hearkening to them. "Have you heard the news?"
"No. What's that they're calling?"
"It's a big fire out in Chicago."
"Oh," replied Butler, still not gathering the significance of it.
"It's burning down the business section there, Mr. Butler," went on Cowperwood ominously, "and I fancy it's going to disturb financial conditions here to-morrow. That is what I have come to see you about. How are your investments? Pretty well drawn in?"
