The Financier a novel by Theodore Dreiser

 
 

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Chapter XXXIX 
In the meanwhile the day of Cowperwood's trial was drawing near. He was 
under the impression that an attempt was going to be made to convict him 
whether the facts warranted it or not. He did not see any way out of his 
dilemma, however, unless it was to abandon everything and leave 
Philadelphia for good, which was impossible. The only way to guard his 
future and retain his financial friends was to stand trial as quickly as 
possible, and trust them to assist him to his feet in the future in case he 
failed. He discussed the possibilities of an unfair trial with Steger, who did 
not seem to think that there was so much to that. In the first place, a jury 
could not easily be suborned by any one. In the next place, most judges 
were honest, in spite of their political cleavage, and would go no further 
than party bias would lead them in their rulings and opinions, which was, 
in the main, not so far. The particular judge who was to sit in this case, one 
Wilbur Payderson, of the Court of Quarter Sessions, was a strict party 
nominee, and as such beholden to Mollenhauer, Simpson, and Butler; but, 
in so far as Steger had ever heard, he was an honest man. 
"What I can't understand," said Steger, "is why these fellows should be so 
anxious to punish you, unless it is for the effect on the State at large. The 
election's over. I understand there's a movement on now to get Stener out in 
case he is convicted, which he will be. They have to try him. He won't go up 
for more than a year, or two or three, and if he does he'll be pardoned out in 
half the time or less. It would be the same in your case, if you were 
convicted. They couldn't keep you in and let him out. But it will never get 
that far—take my word for it. We'll win before a jury, or we'll reverse the 
judgment of conviction before the State Supreme Court, certain. Those five 
judges up there are not going to sustain any such poppycock idea as this." 
Steger actually believed what he said, and Cowperwood was pleased. Thus 
far the young lawyer had done excellently well in all of his cases. Still, he did 
not like the idea of being hunted down by Butler. It was a serious matter, 
and one of which Steger was totally unaware. Cowperwood could never quite 
forget that in listening to his lawyer's optimistic assurances. 
The actual beginning of the trial found almost all of the inhabitants of this 
city of six hundred thousand "keyed up." None of the women of 
Cowperwood's family were coming into court. He had insisted that there 
should be no family demonstration for the newspapers to comment upon. 
His father was coming, for he might be needed as a witness. Aileen had 
written him the afternoon before saying she had returned from West Chester 
and wishing him luck. She was so anxious to know what was to become of 
him that she could not stay away any longer and had returned—not to go to 
the courtroom, for he did not want her to do that, but to be as near as 

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possible when his fate was decided, adversely or otherwise. She wanted to 
run and congratulate him if he won, or to console with him if he lost. She 
felt that her return would be likely to precipitate a collision with her father, 
but she could not help that. 
The position of Mrs. Cowperwood was most anomalous. She had to go 
through the formality of seeming affectionate and tender, even when she 
knew that Frank did not want her to be. He felt instinctively now that she 
knew of Aileen. He was merely awaiting the proper hour in which to spread 
the whole matter before her. She put her arms around him at the door on 
the fateful morning, in the somewhat formal manner into which they had 
dropped these later years, and for a moment, even though she was keenly 
aware of his difficulties, she could not kiss him. He did not want to kiss her, 
but he did not show it. She did kiss him, though, and added: "Oh, I do hope 
things come out all right." 
"You needn't worry about that, I think, Lillian," he replied, buoyantly. "I'll be 
all right." 
He ran down the steps and walked out on Girard Avenue to his former car 
line, where he bearded a car. He was thinking of Aileen and how keenly she 
was feeling for him, and what a mockery his married life now was, and 
whether he would face a sensible jury, and so on and so forth. If he didn't—
if he didn't—this day was crucial! 
He stepped off the car at Third and Market and hurried to his office. Steger 
was already there. "Well, Harper," observed Cowperwood, courageously, 
"today's the day." 
The Court of Quarter Sessions, Part I, where this trial was to take place, was 
held in famous Independence Hall, at Sixth and Chestnut Streets, which 
was at this time, as it had been for all of a century before, the center of local 
executive and judicial life. It was a low two-story building of red brick, with a 
white wooden central tower of old Dutch and English derivation, 
compounded of the square, the circle, and the octagon. The total structure 
consisted of a central portion and two T-shaped wings lying to the right and 
left, whose small, oval-topped old-fashioned windows and doors were set 
with those many-paned sashes so much admired by those who love what is 
known as Colonial architecture. Here, and in an addition known as State 
House Row (since torn down), which extended from the rear of the building 
toward Walnut Street, were located the offices of the mayor, the chief of 
police, the city treasurer, the chambers of council, and all the other 
important and executive offices of the city, together with the four branches 
of Quarter Sessions, which sat to hear the growing docket of criminal cases. 
The mammoth city hall which was subsequently completed at Broad and 
Market Streets was then building. 

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An attempt had been made to improve the reasonably large courtrooms by 
putting in them raised platforms of dark walnut surmounted by large, dark 
walnut desks, behind which the judges sat; but the attempt was not very 
successful. The desks, jury-boxes, and railings generally were made too 
large, and so the general effect was one of disproportion. A cream-colored 
wall had been thought the appropriate thing to go with black walnut 
furniture, but time and dust had made the combination dreary. There were 
no pictures or ornaments of any kind, save the stalky, over-elaborated gas-
brackets which stood on his honor's desk, and the single swinging 
chandelier suspended from the center of the ceiling. Fat bailiffs and court 
officers, concerned only in holding their workless jobs, did not add anything 
to the spirit of the scene. Two of them in the particular court in which this 
trial was held contended hourly as to which should hand the judge a glass 
of water. One preceded his honor like a fat, stuffy, dusty majordomo to and 
from his dressing-room. His business was to call loudly, when the latter 
entered, "His honor the Court, hats off. Everybody please rise," while a 
second bailiff, standing at the left of his honor when he was seated, and 
between the jury-box and the witness-chair, recited in an absolutely 
unintelligible way that beautiful and dignified statement of collective 
society's obligation to the constituent units, which begins, "Hear ye! hear ye! 
hear ye!" and ends, "All those of you having just cause for complaint draw 
near and ye shall be heard." However, you would have thought it was of no 
import here. Custom and indifference had allowed it to sink to a mumble. A 
third bailiff guarded the door of the jury-room; and in addition to these there 
were present a court clerk—small, pale, candle-waxy, with colorless milk-
and-water eyes, and thin, pork-fat-colored hair and beard, who looked for all 
the world like an Americanized and decidedly decrepit Chinese mandarin—
and a court stenographer. 
Judge Wilbur Payderson, a lean herring of a man, who had sat in this case 
originally as the examining judge when Cowperwood had been indicted by 
the grand jury, and who had bound him over for trial at this term, was a 
peculiarly interesting type of judge, as judges go. He was so meager and 
thin-blooded that he was arresting for those qualities alone. Technically, he 
was learned in the law; actually, so far as life was concerned, absolutely 
unconscious of that subtle chemistry of things that transcends all written 
law and makes for the spirit and, beyond that, the inutility of all law, as all 
wise judges know. You could have looked at his lean, pedantic body, his 
frizzled gray hair, his fishy, blue-gray eyes, without any depth of speculation 
in them, and his nicely modeled but unimportant face, and told him that he 
was without imagination; but he would not have believed you—would have 
fined you for contempt of court. By the careful garnering of all his little 
opportunities, the furbishing up of every meager advantage; by listening 

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slavishly to the voice of party, and following as nearly as he could the 
behests of intrenched property, he had reached his present state. It was not 
very far along, at that. His salary was only six thousand dollars a year. His 
little fame did not extend beyond the meager realm of local lawyers and 
judges. But the sight of his name quoted daily as being about his duties, or 
rendering such and such a decision, was a great satisfaction to him. He 
thought it made him a significant figure in the world. "Behold I am not as 
other men," he often thought, and this comforted him. He was very much 
flattered when a prominent case came to his calendar; and as he sat 
enthroned before the various litigants and lawyers he felt, as a rule, very 
significant indeed. Now and then some subtlety of life would confuse his 
really limited intellect; but in all such cases there was the letter of the law. 
He could hunt in the reports to find out what really thinking men had 
decided. Besides, lawyers everywhere are so subtle. They put the rules of 
law, favorable or unfavorable, under the judge's thumb and nose. "Your 
honor, in the thirty-second volume of the Revised Reports of Massachusetts, 
page so and so, line so and so, in Arundel versus Bannerman, you will find, 
etc." How often have you heard that in a court of law? The reasoning that is 
left to do in most cases is not much. And the sanctity of the law is raised 
like a great banner by which the pride of the incumbent is strengthened. 
Payderson, as Steger had indicated, could scarcely be pointed to as an 
unjust judge. He was a party judge—Republican in principle, or rather 
belief, beholden to the dominant party councils for his personal continuance 
in office, and as such willing and anxious to do whatever he considered that 
he reasonably could do to further the party welfare and the private interests 
of his masters. Most people never trouble to look into the mechanics of the 
thing they call their conscience too closely. Where they do, too often they 
lack the skill to disentangle the tangled threads of ethics and morals. 
Whatever the opinion of the time is, whatever the weight of great interests 
dictates, that they conscientiously believe. Some one has since invented the 
phrase "a corporation-minded judge." There are many such. 
Payderson was one. He fairly revered property and power. To him Butler and 
Mollenhauer and Simpson were great men—reasonably sure to be right 
always because they were so powerful. This matter of Cowperwood's and 
Stener's defalcation he had long heard of. He knew by associating with one 
political light and another just what the situation was. The party, as the 
leaders saw it, had been put in a very bad position by Cowperwood's 
subtlety. He had led Stener astray—more than an ordinary city treasurer 
should have been led astray—and, although Stener was primarily guilty as 
the original mover in the scheme, Cowperwood was more so for having led 
him imaginatively to such disastrous lengths. Besides, the party needed a 
scapegoat—that was enough for Payderson, in the first place. Of course, 

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after the election had been won, and it appeared that the party had not 
suffered so much, he did not understand quite why it was that Cowperwood 
was still so carefully included in the Proceedings; but he had faith to believe 
that the leaders had some just grounds for not letting him off. From one 
source and another he learned that Butler had some private grudge against 
Cowperwood. What it was no one seemed to know exactly. The general 
impression was that Cowperwood had led Butler into some unwholesome 
financial transactions. Anyhow, it was generally understood that for the 
good of the party, and in order to teach a wholesome lesson to dangerous 
subordinates—it had been decided to allow these several indictments to take 
their course. Cowperwood was to be punished quite as severely as Stener for 
the moral effect on the community. Stener was to be sentenced the 
maximum sentence for his crime in order that the party and the courts 
should appear properly righteous. Beyond that he was to be left to the mercy 
of the governor, who could ease things up for him if he chose, and if the 
leaders wished. In the silly mind of the general public the various judges of 
Quarter Sessions, like girls incarcerated in boarding-schools, were supposed 
in their serene aloofness from life not to know what was going on in the 
subterranean realm of politics; but they knew well enough, and, knowing