And on the following morning he was at Cowperwood’s office, more repressed and pliable than he had been for a long time. For this, somehow, seemed to bode a new start in life. At least, so he hoped as he entered and saw the great man sitting behind a large rosewood desk which occupied the center of the room. But at once he felt reduced and a little uncertain of himself, for the man before him, although far from lacking in courtesy and a certain atmosphere of cordial understanding, was still so aloof and remote. Certainly, he decided, he might be described as handsome, forceful, and dominant. Those large, magnetic, and wholly unrevealing blue eyes, and those strong, graceful hands resting so lightly on the desk before him, the little finger of the right hand wearing a plain gold ring.
This ring, years before, Aileen had given him in his prison cell in Philadelphia, when he was at the lowest dip of his ever since ascending arc, as a token of her undying love, and he had never removed it. And here he was now, about to arrange with a somewhat d'eclass'e social dandy to undertake a form of diversion which would preoccupy her in order that he might enjoy himself blissfully and peacefully with another woman. Really nothing short of a form of moral degradation! He fully realized that. But what else was he to do? What he was now planning must be as it was because it sprang out of conditions which life itself, operating through him and others, had created and shaped, and in any event not to be changed now. It was too late. He must work out matters bravely, defiantly, ruthlessly, so as to overawe people into accepting his methods and needs as inevitable. And so now, looking at Tollifer calmly and rather coldly, and motioning him to a chair, he began:
“Mr. Tollifer, do sit down. I telephoned you yesterday because there is something I want to have done which requires a man of considerable tact and social experience. I will explain it more fully a little later. I may say that I did not call you before having made some investigation of your personal history and affairs, but without intending you any harm, I assure you. In fact, quite the contrary. I may be of some service to you, if you can be so to me.” And here he smiled a bright smile, to which Tollifer responded in a somewhat dubious but still genial fashion.
“I hope you didn’t find so much against me as to make this conversation useless,” he said, ruefully. “I haven’t been living a strictly conventional life, I will admit. I wasn’t born for that type of thing, I’m afraid.”
“Very likely not,” said Cowperwood, quite pleasantly and consolingly. “But before we discuss that, I want you to be quite frank and tell me all about yourself. The matter I have in mind requires that I know all about you.”
He gazed encouragingly at Tollifer, and he, in turn, noting this, told in abbreviated form, and yet quite honestly, the entire story of his life, from his boyhood up. Whereupon Cowperwood, not a little entertained by this, decided that the fellow was a better sort than he had hoped for, less calculating—frank and random and pleasure-loving rather than sly and self-seeking. And, in consequence, he decided that he might speak to him more clearly and fully than at first he had intended.
“Financially, you are on the rocks, then?”
“Well, more or less so,” returned Tollifer, with a wry smile. “I think I’ve never been off the rocks, really.”
“Well, they’re usually crowded, I believe. But tell me, aren’t you, just at this time, trying to pull yourself together, and, if possible, reconnect yourself with the set to which you used to belong?”
He noticed an unmistakable shadow of distaste flicker cloudlike across Tollifer’s face as he answered: “Well, yes, I am,” and again that ironic, almost hopeless, yet intriguing, smile.
“And how do you find the fight going?”
“Situated as I am just now, not so good. My experience has been in a world that requires considerably more money than I have. I’ve been hoping to connect myself with some bank or brokerage house that has a pull with the sort of people I know here in New York, because then I might make some money for myself, as well as the bank, and also get in touch again with people who could really be of use to me . . .”
“I see,” said Cowperwood. “But the fact that you have allowed your social connections to lapse makes it, I take it, a little difficult. Do you really think that with such a job as you speak of you can win back to what you want?”
“I can’t say because I don’t know,” Tollifer replied. “I hope so.”
A slightly disconcerting note of disbelief, or at least doubt, in Cowperwood’s tone just then had caused Tollifer to feel much less hopeful than only a moment before he had felt. At any rate, he went on bravely enough:
“I’m not so old, and certainly not any more dissipated than a lot of fellows who have been out and gotten back. The only trouble with me is that I don’t have enough money. If I’d ever had that, I’d never have drifted out. It was lack of money, and nothing else. But I don’t feel that I’m wholly through by any means, even now. I haven’t stopped trying, and there’s always another day.”
“I like that spirit,” commented Cowperwood, “and I hope you’re right. At any rate, it should not prove difficult to get you a place in a brokerage house.”
Tollifer stirred eagerly and hopefully. “I wish I thought so,” he said, earnestly, and almost sadly. “It certainly would be a start toward something for me.”
Cowperwood smiled.
“Well, then,” he went on, “I think it might be arranged for you without any trouble. But only on one condition, and that is that you keep yourself free from any entanglements of any kind for the present. I say that because there is a social matter in which I am interested and which I may want you to undertake for me. It involves no compromise of your present bachelor’s freedom, but it may mean that for a time at least you will have to show particular attention to just one person, doing about the same sort of thing you were telling me of a while ago: paying attention to a rather charming woman a little older than yourself.”
As Cowperwood said this, Tollifer felt that there must be, perhaps, a wealthy, elderly woman of Cowperwood’s acquaintance on whom he had financial designs and that he was to be the cat’s-paw.
“Certainly,” he said, “if it is anything I feel I can do for you, Mr. Cowperwood.”
At this point Cowperwood leaned back easily in his chair, and, putting the fingers of his hands together, regarded Tollifer with a cold and calculating gaze.
“The woman I refer to is my wife, Mr. Tollifer,” he announced sharply and brazenly. “For years now, Mrs. Cowperwood and I have been—I will not say on bad terms, for that is not true—but more or less estranged.”
At this point Tollifer nodded as though he understood fully, but Cowperwood continued hastily:
“I do not mean that we are permanently so. Or that I wish to obtain any legal evidence of any kind against her. I do not. Her life is her own to live as freely as she chooses, yet within limits, of course. I would not tolerate any public scandal, and I would not allow anyone to intrigue her into scandal of any kind.”
“I can understand that,” commented Tollifer, who by now was beginning to sense demarcations which would need to be fully grasped and carefully observed if he were to have the opportunity of profiting by the proposal.
“Not quite yet, I believe,” retorted Cowperwood, a little coldly, “but I shall make myself perfectly clear. Mrs. Cowperwood was a very beautiful girl, one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. She is still very attractive, although she is middle-aged. And she could make herself much more attractive if she were not so despondent and inclined to be morbid. It is because of our break—and for that I accept all the responsibility