Chapter 75

Five years of wandering through the endless wilderness of law, lawyers, corporations, courts, and judges had left Aileen with the painful realization that at the end of whatever steps she took in any direction, there was nothing. In fact, the sum and substance of all those years and efforts was that she lived alone, was visited by no true friend, legally defeated in one honest claim after another, until at last she fully realized that the dream of grandeur which this house represented had vanished into thin air. There remained only, as her part of the estate, the $800, 000 and the widow’s one-third of all personal property after debts were paid, in return for her transfer and surrender to Receiver Cunningham of the mansion, art gallery, pictures, and everything else. The law and the corporations and the executors, like wolves, were constantly on her trail, and finally they had caught up with her to the place where she now had to move out of her own home in order that it could be auctioned off to strangers.

But even before she could move into the apartment she had chosen on Madison Avenue, the house was overrun with agents of the auctioneers, tagging articles of every description with their appropriate catalogue numbers. Wagons drove up to take away paintings—300 of them—to the Liberty Art Galleries on Twenty-third Street. Collectors came and sauntered about, speculating. She was ill and depressed, having to listen to Receiver Cunningham explain that it was his duty to make a complete inventory of the house and gallery and submit it to the court.

There followed announcements in the newspapers to the effect that beginning Wednesday of the following week and continuing for three days and evenings, the furniture, bronzes, statuary, ceiling and overdoor panels, and art objects of all descriptions, including the large library, were to be disposed of. The place: 864 Fifth Avenue; the auctioneer: J. L. Donahue.

Amid the irritating confusion, Aileen wandered about collecting her personal belongings and having her few faithful servants remove them to her apartment.

The interest and curiosity of the public in the Cowperwood possessions grew steadily from day to day, and the demand for admission tickets to the house was so great that the auctioneers were unable to meet it. The charge of one dollar admission fee, both to the exhibitions and the sales sessions, was apparently no deterrent to those interested.

On the day the sale opened at the Liberty Art Galleries, the auditorium was crowded from pit to gallery. There was tremendous applause when certain masterpieces of art were offered. On the other hand, at the Cowperwood mansion, the difficulties increased. The catalogue of objects to be sold there contained more than thirteen hundred numbers. And when the day of the auction finally arrived, motors, taxicabs, and carriages hugged the curb at

Fifth Avenue and Sixty-eighth Street while the sale was going on. There were millionaire collectors, famous artists, and celebrated society women—whose motors had never stopped there in earlier days—all clamoring to get inside to bid on the beautiful personal belongings of Aileen and Frank Cowperwood.

His gold bedstead, once owned by the king of Belgium and bought for $80, 000; the pink marble bathtub in Aileen’s bathroom, which had cost $50, 000; the fabulous silk carpets from the Mosque of Ardebil; the bronzes, red African vases, Louis XIV gilt sofas; candelabras, also Louis XIV, of cut crystal, with amethyst and topaz drops; exquisite porcelain, glass, silver, and smaller objects such as cameos, rings, pins, necklaces, precious stones, and figurines.

From one room to another they followed the booming voice of the auctioneer which reverberated through the great rooms. They saw “Cupid and Psyche” by Rodin sold to a dealer for $51, 000. One bidder, who had gone as high as $1600 on a Botticelli, lost it to a $1700 voice. A large, impressive woman in purple, who stood near the auctioneer most of the time, for some reason always bid $390 on an article, never lower, never higher. When the crowd rushed into the palm room on the heels of the auctioneer to view a Rodin statue, he called out to them “Don’t lean against the palms! ”

Throughout the sale, a brougham drove slowly up and down Fifth Avenue two or three times, its occupant a lone woman. She looked at the motors and carriages rolling up to the entrance to the Cowperwood mansion, and watched the men and women crowding up the steps into the house. It meant much to her, for she was viewing her own last struggle: a final separation from her earlier ambitions. Twenty-three years ago she was one of the most ravishingly beautiful women in America. To a certain degree she retained something of her former spirit and bearing. She had been subdued but not altogether crushed, as yet. But Mrs. Frank Algernon Cowperwood did not go in to attend the sale. Yet she saw her most treasured possessions being carried out by buyers, and occasionally heard the voice of the auctioneer crying: “What am I bid? What am I bid? What am I bid? ” Eventually she decided she could endure no more, and told the driver to take her back to her Madison Avenue apartment.

A half-hour later she stood alone in her bedroom, silent and feeling the need of silence. No trace of all that had almost magically on this day disappeared. She would be alone now. Cowperwood would not return, even if he had desired to do so.

And then, one year later, she was suddenly seized with another attack of pneumonia, and passed from this world. Before she died she sent a note to Dr. James:

If you will be so good, I beg of you to see that I am buried in the tomb alongside of my husband, as he wished. Will you please forgive me for my discourtesies to you in the past? They were due to miseries beyond my power to convey.

And James, folding the letter and meditating on the anachronisms of life, said to himself: Yes, Aileen, I will.