Here she was quickened to a child-like enthusiasm. “You know,” she said to Cowperwood, quite solemnly, the second morning, “the English don’t know how to dress. I thought they did, but the smartest of them copy the French. Take those men we saw last night in the Cafe d’Anglais. There wasn’t an Englishman I saw that compared with them.”
“My dear, your tastes are exotic,” replied Cowperwood, who was watching her with pleased interest while he adjusted his tie. “The French smart crowd are almost too smart, dandified. I think some of those young fellows had on corsets.”
“What of it?” replied Aileen. “I like it. If you’re going to be smart, why not be very smart?”
“I know that’s your theory, my dear,” he said, “but it can be overdone. There is such a thing as going too far. You have to compromise even if you don’t look as well as you might. You can’t be too very conspicuously different from your neighbors, even in the right direction.”
“You know,” she said, stopping and looking at him, “I believe you’re going to get very conservative some day — like my brothers.”
She came over and touched his tie and smoothed his hair.
“Well, one of us ought to be, for the good of the family,” he commented, half smiling.
“I’m not so sure, though, that it will be you, either.”
“It’s a charming day. See how nice those white-marble statues look. Shall we go to the Cluny or Versailles or Fontainbleau? To-night we ought to see Bernhardt at the Francaise.”
Aileen was so gay. It was so splendid to be traveling with her true husband at last.
It was on this trip that Cowperwood’s taste for art and life and his determination to possess them revived to the fullest. He made the acquaintance in London, Paris, and Brussels of the important art dealers. His conception of great masters and the older schools of art shaped themselves. By one of the dealers in London, who at once recognized in him a possible future patron, he was invited with Aileen to view certain private collections, and here and there was an artist, such as Lord Leighton, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, or Whistler, to whom he was introduced casually, an interested stranger. These men only saw a strong, polite, remote, conservative man. He realized the emotional, egotistic, and artistic soul. He felt on the instant that there could be little in common between such men and himself in so far as personal contact was concerned, yet there was mutual ground on which they could meet. He could not be a slavish admirer of anything, only a princely patron. So he walked and saw, wondering how soon his dreams of grandeur were to be realized.
In London he bought a portrait by Raeburn; in Paris a plowing scene by Millet, a small Jan Steen, a battle piece by Meissonier, and a romantic courtyard scene by Isabey. Thus began the revival of his former interest in art; the nucleus of that future collection which was to mean so much to him in later years.
On their return, the building of the new Chicago mansion created the next interesting diversion in the lives of Aileen and Cowperwood. Because of some chateaux they saw in France that form, or rather a modification of it as suggested by Taylor Lord, was adopted. Mr. Lord figured that it would take all of a year, perhaps a year and a half, to deliver it in perfect order, but time was of no great importance in this connection. In the mean while they could strengthen their social connections and prepare for that interesting day when they should be of the Chicago elite.
There were, at this time, several elements in Chicago — those who, having grown suddenly rich from dull poverty, could not so easily forget the village church and the village social standards; those who, having inherited wealth, or migrated from the East where wealth was old, understood more of the savoir faire of the game; and those who, being newly born into wealth and seeing the drift toward a smarter American life, were beginning to wish they might shine in it — these last the very young people. The latter were just beginning to dream of dances at Kinsley’s, a stated Kirmess, and summer diversions of the European kind, but they had not arrived as yet. The first class, although by far the dullest and most bovine, was still the most powerful because they were the richest, money as yet providing the highest standard. The functions which these people provided were stupid to the verge of distraction; really they were only the week-day receptions and Sunday-afternoon calls of Squeedunk and Hohokus raised to the Nth power. The purpose of the whole matter was to see and be seen. Novelty in either thought or action was decidedly eschewed. It was, as a matter of fact, customariness of thought and action and the quintessence of convention that was desired. The idea of introducing a “play actress,” for instance, as was done occasionally in the East or in London — never; even a singer or an artist was eyed askance. One could easily go too far! But if a European prince should have strayed to Chicago (which he never did) or if an Eastern social magnate chanced to stay over a train or two, then the topmost circle of local wealth was prepared to strain itself to the breaking-point. Cowperwood had sensed all this on his arrival, but he fancied that if he became rich and powerful enough he and Aileen, with their fine house to help them, might well be the leaven which would lighten the whole lump. Unfortunately, Aileen was too obviously on the qui vive for those opportunities which might lead to social recognition and equality, if not supremacy. Like the savage, unorganized for protection and at the mercy of the horrific caprice of nature, she was almost tremulous at times with thoughts of possible failure. Almost at once she had recognized herself as unsuited temperamentally for association with certain types of society women. The wife of Anson Merrill, the great dry-goods prince, whom she saw in one of the down-town stores one day, impressed her as much too cold and remote. Mrs. Merrill was a woman of superior mood and education who found herself, in her own estimation, hard put to it for suitable companionship in Chicago. She was Eastern-bred-Boston — and familiar in an offhand way with the superior world of London, which she had visited several times. Chicago at its best was to her a sordid commercial mess. She preferred New York or Washington, but she had to live here. Thus she patronized nearly all of those with whom she condescended to associate, using an upward tilt of the head, a tired droop of the eyelids, and a fine upward arching of the brows to indicate how trite it all was.
It was a Mrs. Henry Huddlestone who had pointed out Mrs. Merrill to Aileen. Mrs. Huddlestone was the wife of a soap manufacturer living very close to the Cowperwoods’ temporary home, and she and her husband were on the outer fringe of society. She had heard that the Cowperwoods were people of wealth, that they were friendly with the Addisons, and that they were going to build a two-hundred-thousand-dollar mansion. (The value of houses always grows in the telling.) That was enough. She had called, being three doors away, to leave her card; and Aileen, willing to curry favor here and there, had responded. Mrs. Huddlestone was a little woman, not very attractive in appearance, clever in a social way, and eminently practical.
“Speaking of Mrs. Merrill,” commented Mrs. Huddlestone, on this particular day, “there she is — near the dress-goods counter. She always carries that lorgnette in just that way.”
Aileen turned and examined critically a tall, dark, slender woman of the high world of the West, very remote, disdainful, superior.
“You don’t know her?” questioned Aileen, curiously, surveying her at leisure.
“No,” replied Mrs. Huddlestone, defensively. “They live on the North Side, and the different sets don’t mingle so much.”
As a matter of fact, it was just the glory of the principal families that they were above this arbitrary division of “sides,” and could pick their associates from all three divisions.
“Oh!” observed Aileen, nonchalantly. She was secretly irritated to think that Mrs. Huddlestone should find it necessary to point out Mrs. Merrill to her as a superior