— capable, very, she presumed — with brilliant, incisive eyes. How different from Harold, she thought, who would never be anything much — not even famous.
“I’m so glad you brought your violin,” Aileen was saying to Harold, who was in another corner. “I’ve been looking forward to your coming to play for us.”
“Very nize ov you, I’m sure,” Sohlberg replied, with his sweety drawl. “Such a nize plaze you have here — all these loafly books, and jade, and glass.”
He had an unctuous, yielding way which was charming, Aileen thought. He should have a strong, rich woman to take care of him. He was like a stormy, erratic boy.
After refreshments were served Sohlberg played. Cowperwood was interested by his standing figure — his eyes, his hair — but he was much more interested in Mrs. Sohlberg, to whom his look constantly strayed. He watched her hands on the keys, her fingers, the dimples at her elbows. What an adorable mouth, he thought, and what light, fluffy hair! But, more than that, there was a mood that invested it all — a bit of tinted color of the mind that reached him and made him sympathetic and even passionate toward her. She was the kind of woman he would like. She was somewhat like Aileen when she was six years younger (Aileen was now thirty-three, and Mrs. Sohlberg twenty-seven), only Aileen had always been more robust, more vigorous, less nebulous. Mrs. Sohlberg (he finally thought it out for himself) was like the rich tinted interior of a South Sea oyster-shell — warm, colorful, delicate. But there was something firm there, too. Nowhere in society had he seen any one like her. She was rapt, sensuous, beautiful. He kept his eyes on her until finally she became aware that he was gazing at her, and then she looked back at him in an arch, smiling way, fixing her mouth in a potent line. Cowperwood was captivated. Was she vulnerable? was his one thought. Did that faint smile mean anything more than mere social complaisance? Probably not, but could not a temperament so rich and full be awakened to feeling by his own? When she was through playing he took occasion to say: “Wouldn’t you like to stroll into the gallery? Are you fond of pictures?” He gave her his arm.
“Now, you know,” said Mrs. Sohlberg, quaintly — very captivatingly, he thought, because she was so pretty —“at one time I thought I was going to be a great artist. Isn’t that funny! I sent my father one of my drawings inscribed ‘to whom I owe it all.’ You would have to see the drawing to see how funny that is.”
She laughed softly.
Cowperwood responded with a refreshed interest in life. Her laugh was as grateful to him as a summer wind. “See,” he said, gently, as they entered the room aglow with the soft light produced by guttered jets, “here is a Luini bought last winter.” It was “The Mystic Marriage of St. Catharine.” He paused while she surveyed the rapt expression of the attenuated saint. “And here,” he went on, “is my greatest find so far.” They were before the crafty countenance of Caesar Borgia painted by Pinturrichio.
“What a strange face!” commented Mrs. Sohlberg, naively. “I didn’t know any one had ever painted him. He looks somewhat like an artist himself, doesn’t he?” She had never read the involved and quite Satanic history of this man, and only knew the rumor of his crimes and machinations.
“He was, in his way,” smiled Cowperwood, who had had an outline of his life, and that of his father, Pope Alexander VI., furnished him at the time of the purchase. Only so recently had his interest in Caesar Borgia begun. Mrs. Sohlberg scarcely gathered the sly humor of it.
“Oh yes, and here is Mrs. Cowperwood,” she commented, turning to the painting by Van Beers. “It’s high in key, isn’t it?” she said, loftily, but with an innocent loftiness that appealed to him. He liked spirit and some presumption in a woman. “What brilliant colors! I like the idea of the garden and the clouds.”
She stepped back, and Cowperwood, interested only in her, surveyed the line of her back and the profile of her face. Such co-ordinated perfection of line and color!
“Where every motion weaves and sings,” he might have commented. Instead he said: “That was in Brussels. The clouds were an afterthought, and that vase on the wall, too.”
“It’s very good, I think,” commented Mrs. Sohlberg, and moved away.
“How do you like this Israels?” he asked. It was the painting called “The Frugal Meal.”
“I like it,” she said, “and also your Bastien Le–Page,” referring to “The Forge.” “But I think your old masters are much more interesting. If you get many more you ought to put them together in a room. Don’t you think so? I don’t care for your Gerome very much.” She had a cute drawl which he considered infinitely alluring.
“Why not?” asked Cowperwood.
“Oh, it’s rather artificial; don’t you think so? I like the color, but the women’s bodies are too perfect, I should say. It’s very pretty, though.”
He had little faith in the ability of women aside from their value as objects of art; and yet now and then, as in this instance, they revealed a sweet insight which sharpened his own. Aileen, he reflected, would not be capable of making a remark such as this. She was not as beautiful now as this woman — not as alluringly simple, naive, delicious, nor yet as wise. Mrs. Sohlberg, he reflected shrewdly, had a kind of fool for a husband. Would she take an interest in him, Frank Cowperwood? Would a woman like this surrender on any basis outside of divorce and marriage? He wondered. On her part, Mrs. Sohlberg was thinking what a forceful man Cowperwood was, and how close he had stayed by her. She felt his interest, for she had often seen these symptoms in other men and knew what they meant. She knew the pull of her own beauty, and, while she heightened it as artfully as she dared, yet she kept aloof, too, feeling that she had never met any one as yet for whom it was worth while to be different. But Cowperwood — he needed someone more soulful than Aileen, she thought.
Chapter XV
A New Affection
The growth of a relationship between Cowperwood and Rita Sohlberg was fostered quite accidentally by Aileen, who took a foolishly sentimental interest in Harold which yet was not based on anything of real meaning. She liked him because he was a superlatively gracious, flattering, emotional man where women — pretty women — were concerned. She had some idea she could send him pupils, and, anyhow, it was nice to call at the Sohlberg studio. Her social life was dull enough as it was. So she went, and Cowperwood, mindful of Mrs. Sohlberg, came also. Shrewd to the point of destruction, he encouraged Aileen in her interest in them. He suggested that she invite them to dinner, that they give a musical at which Sohlberg could play and be paid. There were boxes at the theaters, tickets for concerts sent, invitations to drive Sundays or other days.
The very chemistry of life seems to play into the hands of a situation of this kind. Once Cowperwood was thinking vividly, forcefully, of her, Rita began to think in like manner of him. Hourly he grew more attractive, a strange, gripping man. Beset by his mood, she was having the devil’s own time with her conscience. Not that anything had been said as yet, but he was investing her, gradually beleaguering her, sealing up, apparently, one avenue after another of escape. One Thursday afternoon, when neither Aileen nor he could attend the Sohlberg tea, Mrs. Sohlberg received a magnificent bunch of Jacqueminot roses. “For your nooks and corners,” said a card. She knew well enough from whom it came and what it was worth. There were all of fifty dollars worth of roses. It gave her breath of a world of money that she had never known. Daily she saw the name of his banking and brokerage firm advertised in the papers. Once
