Titan

Theodore Dreiser

Description

In this sequel to Dreiser's novel The Financier, the author continues his exploration of the social and economic forces at play in the rise of the new class of super-rich capitalists in early twentieth-century America. Protagonist Frank Cowperwood attempts to leave his shameful past behind and settles in Chicago with his new wife. Will this quintessentially American act of self-reinvention succeed?

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781775455066
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE TITAN
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THEODORE DREISER
 
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The Titan First published in 1914 ISBN 978-1-77545-506-6 © 2012 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Chapter I - The New City Chapter II - A Reconnoiter Chapter III - A Chicago Evening Chapter IV - Peter Laughlin & Co Chapter V - Concerning a Wife and Family Chapter VI - The New Queen of the Home Chapter VII - Chicago Gas Chapter VIII - Now this is Fighting Chapter IX - In Search of Victory Chapter X - A Test Chapter XI - The Fruits of Daring Chapter XII - A New Retainer Chapter XIII - The Die is Cast Chapter XIV - Undercurrents Chapter XV - A New Affection Chapter XVI - A Fateful Interlude Chapter XVII - An Overture to Conflict Chapter XVIII - The Clash Chapter XIX - "Hell Hath No Fury—" Chapter XX - "Man and Superman" Chapter XXI - A Matter of Tunnels Chapter XXII - Street-Railways at Last Chapter XXIII - The Power of the Press Chapter XXIV - The Coming of Stephanie Platow Chapter XXV - Airs from the Orient Chapter XXVI - Love and War Chapter XXVII - A Financier Bewitched Chapter XXVIII - The Exposure of Stephanie Chapter XXIX - A Family Quarrel Chapter XXX - Obstacles Chapter XXXI - Untoward Disclosures Chapter XXXII - A Supper Party Chapter XXXIII - Mr. Lynde to the Rescue Chapter XXXIV - Enter Hosmer Hand Chapter XXXV - A Political Agreement Chapter XXXVI - An Election Draws Near Chapter XXXVII - Aileen's Revenge Chapter XXXVIII - An Hour of Defeat Chapter XXXIX - The New Administration Chapter XL - A Trip to Louisville Chapter XLI - The Daughter of Mrs. Fleming Chapter XLII - F. A. Cowperwood, Guardian Chapter XLIII - The Planet Mars Chapter XLIV - A Franchise Obtained Chapter XLV - Changing Horizons Chapter XLVI - Depths and Heights Chapter XLVII - American Match Chapter XLVIII - Panic Chapter XLIX - Mount Olympus Chapter L - A New York Mansion Chapter LI - The Revival of Hattie Starr Chapter LII - Behind the Arras Chapter LIII - A Declaration of Love Chapter LIV - Wanted—Fifty-Year Franchises Chapter LV - Cowperwood and the Governor Chapter LVI - The Ordeal of Berenice Chapter LVII - Aileen's Last Card Chapter LVIII - A Marauder Upon the Commonwealth Chapter LIX - Capital and Public Rights Chapter LX - The Net Chapter LXI - The Cataclysm Chapter LXII - The Recompense In Retrospect
Chapter I - The New City
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When Frank Algernon Cowperwood emerged from the Eastern DistrictPenitentiary in Philadelphia he realized that the old life he had livedin that city since boyhood was ended. His youth was gone, and with ithad been lost the great business prospects of his earlier manhood. Hemust begin again.
It would be useless to repeat how a second panic following upon atremendous failure—that of Jay Cooke & Co.—had placed a secondfortune in his hands. This restored wealth softened him in somedegree. Fate seemed to have his personal welfare in charge. He wassick of the stock-exchange, anyhow, as a means of livelihood, and nowdecided that he would leave it once and for all. He would get insomething else—street-railways, land deals, some of the boundlessopportunities of the far West. Philadelphia was no longer pleasing tohim. Though now free and rich, he was still a scandal to thepretenders, and the financial and social world was not prepared toaccept him. He must go his way alone, unaided, or only secretly so,while his quondam friends watched his career from afar. So, thinkingof this, he took the train one day, his charming mistress, now onlytwenty-six, coming to the station to see him off. He looked at herquite tenderly, for she was the quintessence of a certain type offeminine beauty.
"By-by, dearie," he smiled, as the train-bell signaled the approachingdeparture. "You and I will get out of this shortly. Don't grieve.I'll be back in two or three weeks, or I'll send for you. I'd take younow, only I don't know how that country is out there. We'll fix on someplace, and then you watch me settle this fortune question. We'll notlive under a cloud always. I'll get a divorce, and we'll marry, andthings will come right with a bang. Money will do that."
He looked at her with his large, cool, penetrating eyes, and sheclasped his cheeks between her hands.
"Oh, Frank," she exclaimed, "I'll miss you so! You're all I have."
"In two weeks," he smiled, as the train began to move, "I'll wire or beback. Be good, sweet."
She followed him with adoring eyes—a fool of love, a spoiled child, afamily pet, amorous, eager, affectionate, the type so strong a manwould naturally like—she tossed her pretty red gold head and waved hima kiss. Then she walked away with rich, sinuous, healthy strides—thetype that men turn to look after.
"That's her—that's that Butler girl," observed one railroad clerk toanother. "Gee! a man wouldn't want anything better than that, wouldhe?"
It was the spontaneous tribute that passion and envy invariably pay tohealth and beauty. On that pivot swings the world.
Never in all his life until this trip had Cowperwood been farther westthan Pittsburg. His amazing commercial adventures, brilliant as theywere, had been almost exclusively confined to the dull, staid world ofPhiladelphia, with its sweet refinement in sections, its pretensions toAmerican social supremacy, its cool arrogation of traditionalleadership in commercial life, its history, conservative wealth,unctuous respectability, and all the tastes and avocations which theseimply. He had, as he recalled, almost mastered that pretty world andmade its sacred precincts his own when the crash came. Practically hehad been admitted. Now he was an Ishmael, an ex-convict, albeit amillionaire. But wait! The race is to the swift, he said to himselfover and over. Yes, and the battle is to the strong. He would testwhether the world would trample him under foot or no.
Chicago, when it finally dawned on him, came with a rush on the secondmorning. He had spent two nights in the gaudy Pullman then provided—acar intended to make up for some of the inconveniences of itsarrangements by an over-elaboration of plush and tortured glass—whenthe first lone outposts of the prairie metropolis began to appear. Theside-tracks along the road-bed over which he was speeding became moreand more numerous, the telegraph-poles more and more hung with arms andstrung smoky-thick with wires. In the far distance, cityward, was,here and there, a lone working-man's cottage, the home of someadventurous soul who had planted his bare hut thus far out in order toreap the small but certain advantage which the growth of the city wouldbring.
The land was flat—as flat as a table—with a waning growth of browngrass left over from the previous year, and stirring faintly in themorning breeze. Underneath were signs of the new green—the New Year'sflag of its disposition. For some reason a crystalline atmosphereenfolded the distant hazy outlines of the city, holding the latter likea fly in amber and giving it an artistic subtlety which touched him.Already a devotee of art, ambitious for connoisseurship, who had hadhis joy, training, and sorrow out of the collection he had made andlost in Philadelphia, he appreciated almost every suggestion of adelightful picture in nature.
The tracks, side by side, were becoming more and more numerous.Freight-cars were assembled here by thousands from all parts of thecountry—yellow, red, blue, green, white. (Chicago, he recalled,already had thirty railroads terminating here, as though it were theend of the world.) The little low one and two story houses, quite newas to wood, were frequently unpainted and already smoky—in placesgrimy. At grade-crossings, where ambling street-cars and wagons andmuddy-wheeled buggies waited, he noted how flat the streets were, howunpaved, how sidewalks went up and down rhythmically—here a flight ofsteps, a veritable platform before a house, there a long stretch ofboards laid flat on the mud of the prairie itself. What a city!Presently a branch of the filthy, arrogant, self-sufficient littleChicago River came into view, with its mass of sputtering tugs, itsblack, oily water, its tall, red, brown, and green grain-elevators, itsimmense black coal-pockets and yellowish-brown lumber-yards.
Here was life; he saw it at a flash. Here was a seething city in themaking. There was something dynamic in the very air which appealed tohis fancy. How different, for some reason, from Philadelphia! That wasa stirring city, too. He had thought it wonderful at one time, quite aworld; but this thing, while obviously infinitely worse, was better.It was more youthful, more hopeful. In a flare of morning sunlightpouring between two coal-pockets, and because the train had stopped tolet a bridge swing and half a dozen great grain and lumber boats goby—a half-dozen in either direction—he saw a group of Irishstevedores idling on the bank of a lumber-yard whose wall skirted thewater. Healthy men they were, in blue or red shirt-sleeves, stoutstraps about their waists, short pipes in their mouths, fine, hardy,nutty-brown specimens of humanity. Why were they so appealing, heasked himself. This raw, dirty town seemed naturally to compose itselfinto stirring artistic pictures. Why, it fairly sang! The world wasyoung here. Life was doing something new. Perhaps he had better not goon to the Northwest at all; he would decide that question later.
In the mean time he had letters of introduction to distinguishedChicagoans, and these he would present. He wanted to talk to somebankers