Mr. Baker, very recently the guest of Schryhart, and his henchman, too, was also properly chagrined. "The man is a charlatan," he protested to Blackman. "He doesn"t play fair. It is plain that he doesn"t belong in respectable society."
Nevertheless, and in spite of this, the ordinance was pa.s.sed. It was a bitter lesson for Mr. Norman Schryhart, Mr. Norrie Simms, and all those who had unfortunately become involved. A committee composed of all three of the old companies visited the mayor; but the latter, a tool of McKenty, giving his future into the hands of the enemy, signed it just the same. Cowperwood had his franchise, and, groan as they might, it was now necessary, in the language of a later day, "to step up and see the captain." Only Schryhart felt personally that his score with Cowperwood was not settled. He would meet him on some other ground later. The next time he would try to fight fire with fire. But for the present, shrewd man that he was, he was prepared to compromise.
Thereafter, dissembling his chagrin as best he could, he kept on the lookout for Cowperwood at both of the clubs of which he was a member; but Cowperwood had avoided them during this period of excitement, and Mahomet would have to go to the mountain. So one drowsy June afternoon Mr. Schryhart called at Cowperwood"s office. He had on a bright, new, steel-gray suit and a straw hat. From his pocket, according to the fashion of the time, protruded a neat, blue-bordered silk handkerchief, and his feet were immaculate in new, shining Oxford ties.
"I"m sailing for Europe in a few days, Mr. Cowperwood," he remarked, genially, "and I thought I"d drop round to see if you and I could reach some agreement in regard to this gas situation. The officers of the old companies naturally feel that they do not care to have a rival in the field, and I"m sure that you are not interested in carrying on a useless rate war that won"t leave anybody any profit. I recall that you were willing to compromise on a half-and-half basis with me before, and I was wondering whether you were still of that mind."
"Sit down, sit down, Mr. Schryhart," remarked Cowperwood, cheerfully, waving the new-comer to a chair. "I"m pleased to see you again. No, I"m no more anxious for a rate war than you are. As a matter of fact, I hope to avoid it; but, as you see, things have changed somewhat since I saw you. The gentlemen who have organized and invested their money in this new city gas company are perfectly willing--rather anxious, in fact--to go on and establish a legitimate business. They feel all the confidence in the world that they can do this, and I agree with them.
A compromise might be effected between the old and the new companies, but not on the basis on which I was willing to settle some time ago. A new company has been organized since then, stock issued, and a great deal of money expended." (This was not true.) "That stock will have to figure in any new agreement. I think a general union of all the companies is desirable, but it will have to be on a basis of one, two, three, or four shares--whatever is decided--at par for all stock involved."
Mr. Schryhart pulled a long face. "Don"t you think that"s rather steep?" he said, solemnly.
"Not at all, not at all!" replied Cowperwood. "You know these new expenditures were not undertaken voluntarily." (The irony of this did not escape Mr. Schryhart, but he said nothing.)
"I admit all that, but don"t you think, since your shares are worth practically nothing at present, that you ought to be satisfied if they were accepted at par?"
"I can"t see why," replied Cowperwood. "Our future prospects are splendid. There must be an even adjustment here or nothing. What I want to know is how much treasury stock you would expect to have in the safe for the promotion of this new organization after all the old stockholders have been satisfied?"
"Well, as I thought before, from thirty to forty per cent. of the total issue," replied Schryhart, still hopeful of a profitable adjustment.
"I should think it could be worked on that basis."
"And who gets that?"
"Why, the organizer," said Schryhart, evasively. "Yourself, perhaps, and myself."
"And how would you divide it? Half and half, as before?"
"I should think that would be fair."
"It isn"t enough," returned Cowperwood, incisively. "Since I talked to you last I have been compelled to shoulder obligations and make agreements which I did not antic.i.p.ate then. The best I can do now is to accept three-fourths."
Schryhart straightened up determinedly and offensively. This was outrageous, he thought, impossible! The effrontery of it!
"It can never be done, Mr. Cowperwood," he replied, forcefully. "You are trying to unload too much worthless stock on the company as it is.
The old companies" stock is selling right now, as you know, for from one-fifty to two-ten. Your stock is worth nothing. If you are to be given two or three for one for that, and three-fourths of the remainder in the treasury, I for one want nothing to do with the deal. You would be in control of the company, and it will be water-logged, at that.
Talk about getting something for nothing! The best I would suggest to the stockholders of the old companies would be half and half. And I may say to you frankly, although you may not believe it, that the old companies will not join in with you in any scheme that gives you control. They are too much incensed. Feeling is running too high. It will mean a long, expensive fight, and they will never compromise. Now, if you have anything really reasonable to offer I would be glad to hear it. Otherwise I am afraid these negotiations are not going to come to anything."
"Share and share alike, and three-fourths of the remainder," repeated Cowperwood, grimly. "I do not want to control. If they want to raise the money and buy me out on that basis I am willing to sell. I want a decent return for investments I have made, and I am going to have it.
I cannot speak for the others behind me, but as long as they deal through me that is what they will expect."
Mr. Schryhart went angrily away. He was exceedingly wroth. This proposition as Cowperwood now outlined it was bucaneering at its best.
He proposed for himself to withdraw from the old companies if necessary, to close out his holdings and let the old companies deal with Cowperwood as best they could. So long as he had anything to do with it, Cowperwood should never gain control of the gas situation.
Better to take him at his suggestion, raise the money and buy him out, even at an exorbitant figure. Then the old gas companies could go along and do business in their old-fashioned way without being disturbed. This bucaneer! This upstart! What a shrewd, quick, forceful move he had made! It irritated Mr. Schryhart greatly.
The end of all this was a compromise in which Cowperwood accepted one-half of the surplus stock of the new general issue, and two for one of every share of stock for which his new companies had been organized, at the same time selling out to the old companies--clearing out completely. It was a most profitable deal, and he was enabled to provide handsomely not only for Mr. McKenty and Addison, but for all the others connected with him. It was a splendid coup, as McKenty and Addison a.s.sured him. Having now done so much, he began to turn his eyes elsewhere for other fields to conquer.
But this victory in one direction brought with it corresponding reverses in another: the social future of Cowperwood and Aileen was now in great jeopardy. Schryhart, who was a force socially, having met with defeat at the hands of Cowperwood, was now bitterly opposed to him. Norrie Simms naturally sided with his old a.s.sociates. But the worst blow came through Mrs. Anson Merrill. Shortly after the housewarming, and when the gas argument and the conspiracy charges were rising to their heights, she had been to New York and had there chanced to encounter an old acquaintance of hers, Mrs. Martyn Walker, of Philadelphia, one of the circle which Cowperwood once upon a time had been vainly ambitious to enter. Mrs. Merrill, aware of the interest the Cowperwoods had aroused in Mrs. Simms and others, welcomed the opportunity to find out something definite.
"By the way, did you ever chance to hear of a Frank Algernon Cowperwood or his wife in Philadelphia?" she inquired of Mrs. Walker.
"Why, my dear Nellie," replied her friend, nonplussed that a woman so smart as Mrs. Merrill should even refer to them, "have those people established themselves in Chicago? His career in Philadelphia was, to say the least, spectacular. He was connected with a city treasurer there who stole five hundred thousand dollars, and they both went to the penitentiary. That wasn"t the worst of it! He became intimate with some young girl--a Miss Butler, the sister of Owen Butler, by the way, who is now such a power down there, and--" She merely lifted her eyes.
"While he was in the penitentiary her father died and the family broke up. I even heard it rumored that the old gentleman killed himself."
(She was referring to Aileen"s father, Edward Malia Butler.) "When he came out of the penitentiary Cowperwood disappeared, and I did hear some one say that he had gone West, and divorced his wife and married again. His first wife is still living in Philadelphia somewhere with his two children."
Mrs. Merrill was properly astonished, but she did not show it. "Quite an interesting story, isn"t it?" she commented, distantly, thinking how easy it would be to adjust the Cowperwood situation, and how pleased she was that she had never shown any interest in them. "Did you ever see her--his new wife?"
"I think so, but I forget where. I believe she used to ride and drive a great deal in Philadelphia."
"Did she have red hair?"
"Oh yes. She was a very striking blonde."
"I fancy it must be the same person. They have been in the papers recently in Chicago. I wanted to be sure."
Mrs. Merrill was meditating some fine comments to be made in the future.
"I suppose now they"re trying to get into Chicago society?" Mrs. Walker smiled condescendingly and contemptuously--as much at Chicago society as at the Cowperwoods.
"It"s possible that they might attempt something like that in the East and succeed--I"m sure I don"t know," replied Mrs. Merrill, caustically, resenting the slur, "but attempting and achieving are quite different things in Chicago."
The answer was sufficient. It ended the discussion. When next Mrs.
Simms was rash enough to mention the Cowperwoods, or, rather, the peculiar publicity in connection with him, her future viewpoint was definitely fixed for her.
"If you take my advice," commented Mrs. Merrill, finally, "the less you have to do with these friends of yours the better. I know all about them. You might have seen that from the first. They can never be accepted."
Mrs. Merrill did not trouble to explain why, but Mrs. Simms through her husband soon learned the whole truth, and she was righteously indignant and even terrified. Who was to blame for this sort of thing, anyhow?
she thought. Who had introduced them? The Addisons, of course. But the Addisons were socially una.s.sailable, if not all-powerful, and so the best had to be made of that. But the Cowperwoods could be dropped from the lists of herself and her friends instantly, and that was now done. A sudden slump in their social significance began to manifest itself, though not so swiftly but what for the time being it was slightly deceptive.
The first evidence of change which Aileen observed was when the customary cards and invitations for receptions and the like, which had come to them quite freely of late, began to decline sharply in number, and when the guests to her own Wednesday afternoons, which rather prematurely she had ventured to establish, became a mere negligible handful. At first she could not understand this, not being willing to believe that, following so soon upon her apparent triumph as a hostess in her own home, there could be so marked a decline in her local importance. Of a possible seventy-five or fifty who might have called or left cards, within three weeks after the housewarming only twenty responded. A week later it had declined to ten, and within five weeks, all told, there was scarcely a caller. It is true that a very few of the unimportant--those who had looked to her for influence and the self-protecting Taylor Lord and Kent McKibben, who were commercially obligated to Cowperwood--were still faithful, but they were really worse than nothing. Aileen was beside herself with disappointment, opposition, chagrin, shame. There are many natures, rhinoceros-bided and iron-souled, who can endure almost any rebuff in the hope of eventual victory, who are almost too thick-skinned to suffer, but hers was not one of these. Already, in spite of her original daring in regard to the opinion of society and the rights of the former Mrs.
Cowperwood, she was sensitive on the score of her future and what her past might mean to her. Really her original actions could be attributed to her youthful pa.s.sion and the powerful s.e.x magnetism of Cowperwood. Under more fortunate circ.u.mstances she would have married safely enough and without the scandal which followed. As it was now, her social future here needed to end satisfactorily in order to justify herself to herself, and, she thought, to him.
"You may put the sandwiches in the ice-box," she said to Louis, the butler, after one of the earliest of the "at home" failures, referring to the undue supply of pink-and-blue-ribboned t.i.tbits which, uneaten, honored some fine Sevres with their presence. "Send the flowers to the hospital. The servants may drink the claret cup and lemonade. Keep some of the cakes fresh for dinner."
The butler nodded his head. "Yes, Madame," he said. Then, by way of pouring oil on what appeared to him to be a troubled situation, he added: "Eet"s a rough day. I suppose zat has somepsing to do weeth it."
Aileen was aflame in a moment. She was about to exclaim: "Mind your business!" but changed her mind. "Yes, I presume so," was her answer, as she ascended to her room. If a single poor "at home" was to be commented on by servants, things were coming to a pretty pa.s.s. She waited until the next week to see whether this was the weather or a real change in public sentiment. It was worse than the one before.
The singers she had engaged had to be dismissed without performing the service for which they had come. Kent McKibben and Taylor Lord, very well aware of the rumors now flying about, called, but in a remote and troubled spirit. Aileen saw that, too. An affair of this kind, with only these two and Mrs. Webster Israels and Mrs. Henry Huddlestone calling, was a sad indication of something wrong. She had to plead illness and excuse herself. The third week, fearing a worse defeat than before, Aileen pretended to be ill. She would see how many cards were left. There were just three. That was the end. She realized that her "at homes" were a notable failure.
At the same time Cowperwood was not to be spared his share in the distrust and social opposition which was now rampant.
His first inkling of the true state of affairs came in connection with a dinner which, on the strength of an old invitation, they unfortunately attended at a time when Aileen was still uncertain. It had been originally arranged by the Sunderland Sledds, who were not so much socially, and who at the time it occurred were as yet unaware of the ugly gossip going about, or at least of society"s new att.i.tude toward the Cowperwoods. At this time it was understood by nearly all--the Simms, Candas, Cottons, and Kingslands--that a great mistake had been made, and that the Cowperwoods were by no means admissible.
To this particular dinner a number of people, whom the latter knew, had been invited. Uniformly all, when they learned or recalled that the Cowperwoods were expected, sent eleventh-hour regrets--"so sorry."
Outside the Sledds there was only one other couple--the Stanislau Hoecksemas, for whom the Cowperwoods did not particularly care. It was a dull evening. Aileen complained of a headache, and they went home.
Very shortly afterward, at a reception given by their neighbors, the Haatstaedts, to which they had long since been invited, there was an evident shyness in regard to them, quite new in its aspect, although the hosts themselves were still friendly enough. Previous to this, when strangers of prominence had been present at an affair of this kind they were glad to be brought over to the Cowperwoods, who were always conspicuous because of Aileen"s beauty. On this day, for no reason obvious to Aileen or Cowperwood (although both suspected), introductions were almost uniformly refused. There were a number who knew them, and who talked casually, but the general tendency on the part of all was to steer clear of them. Cowperwood sensed the difficulty at once. "I think we"d better leave early," he remarked to Aileen, after a little while. "This isn"t very interesting."
They returned to their own home, and Cowperwood to avoid discussion went down-town. He did not care to say what he thought of this as yet.