Стоик

УДК 
372.8
ББК 
81.2 Англ
 
Д 72

ISBN 978-5-9925-0291-6

Драйзер Т.
Д 72 Стоик: Книга для чтения на английском 
языке. — СПб.: КАРО, 2009. — 512 с. — (Серия 
«Classical Literature»).

ISBN 978-5-9925-0291-6

«Стоик» — заключительная часть «Трилогии желания» 
знаменитого американского писателя Теодора Драйзера. 
В центре повествования постаревший Фрэнк Каупервуд, 
чело век, у которого есть три страсти в жизни: деньги, женщины и предметы искусства.
Неадаптированный текст приводится с некоторыми 
сокращениями и снабжен постраничными комментариями 
и словарем. Книга предназначена для студентов языковых 
вузов, слушателей курсов иностранных языков и тех, кто 
изучает английский язык самостоятельно.

УДК 372.8
ББК 81.2Англ

© КАРО, 2009

CHAPTER 1

Chapter 1

T
here were two most disturbing problems confronting Frank Cowperwood at the time of his Chicago 
defeat, when, so reducingly and after so long a struggle,  
he lost his fight for a fifty-year franchise renewal.
First, there was his age. He was nearing sixty, and 
while seemingly as vigorous as ever, it would be no 
easy matter, he felt, with younger and equally resourceful financiers on the scene, to pile up the great fortune 
which assuredly would have been his if his franchise 
had been extended. That fortune would have been all 
of $50,000,000.
Secondly, and of even greater importance, in his 
realistic judgment, was the fact that by this time he had 
still not achieved social connections of any value; in 
other words, social prestige. Of course, his youthful incarceration in the penitentiary in Philadelphia had not 
helped matters, and then, too, his natural varietism1 
,plus his unfortunate marriage to Aileen, who had been 
no real social help, and his own determined and almost 
savage individualism, had alienated many who otherwise might have been friendly to him.

1 his natural varietism — свойственное ему непостоянство

THEODORE DREISER. THE STOIC

For Cowperwood was not one to make friends of 
those loss forceful, subtle, or efficient than himself. It 
smacked too much of meaningless self-depreciation 
and was, at host, in his opinion, a waste of time. On 
the other hand, he found, the strong and cunning or 
genuinely significant were not always easy to acquire 
as friends. Particularly here in Chicago, where he had 
fought so many of them for position and power, they 
had chosen to combine against him, not because he 
represented morals or methods different from any they 
were willing to practice or accept in others, but rather 
because he, a total stranger, had ventured on financial 
preserves presumably their own and had risen to greater
wealth and power, and in less time, than they had. 
Moreover, he had attracted the wives and daughters of 
some of the very men who were most jealous of him 
financially, and so they had set out to ostracize him 
socially and had well-nigh succeeded in doing so.
So far as sex was concerned, he had always desired 
individual freedom and proceeded ruthlessly to achieve 
it. At the same time, he had always held the thought 
that somewhere he might well meet a woman so superior that in spite of himself he might be held, not to 
absolute faithfulness — he was never willing to count 
upon that in regard to himself — but rather to a genuine union of understanding and affection. For eight 
years now he had felt that he had really found that ideal 
individual in the girl, Berenice Fleming. Obviously, she 
was not overawed by his personality or his fame, nor 
at all impressed by his usual arts. And because of that, 
as well as the deep aesthetic and sensual spell she cast 

CHAPTER 1

over him, there had arisen in him a conviction that she, 
with her youth, beauty, mental awareness, and certainty as to her own personal value, could contrive and 
maintain the natural social background for his force 
and wealth, assuming, of course, that he were ever free 
to marry her.
Unfortunately, for all his determination in connection with Aileen, he had not been able to divest himself 
of her. For one thing, she was determined not to give 
him up. And to have added a contest for freedom to 
his difficult railway fight in Chicago would have been 
too much of a burden. Moreover, in Berenice’s attitude, 
he saw no trace of the necessary acceptance. Her eyes 
appeared to be set toward men not only younger than 
himself but with conventional social advantages which 
his personal record made it impossible for him to offer 
her. This had given him his first real taste of romantic 
defeat, and he had sat alone in his rooms for hours at 
a time convinced that he was hopelessly beaten in his 
battle for greater fortune and for the love of Berenice.
And then suddenly she had come to him and announced a most amazing and unexpected surrender, 
so that he experienced a sense of rejuvenation which 
almost at once definitely restored his old constructive 
mood. At last, he felt, he had the love of a woman who 
could truly support him in his quest for power, fame, 
prestige.
On the other hand, as frank and direct as had been 
her explanation of why she had come — “I thought you 
really might need me now… I have made up my mind” — 
still, Micro was on her part a certain hurt attitude in 

THEODORE DREISER. THE STOIC

regard to life and society which moved her to seek reparation in some form for the cruelties she felt had 
been imposed on her in her early youth. What she 
was really thinking, and what Cowperwood, because 
of his delight at her sudden surrender did not compre-
hend, was: You are a social outcast, and so am I. The 
world has sought to frustrate you. In my own case, it has 
attempted to exclude me from the sphere to which, temperamentally and in every other way, I feel I belong. You 
are resentful, and so am I. Therefore, a partnership: one 
of beauty and strength and intelligence and courage on 
both sides, but without domination by either of us. For 
without fair play between us, there is no possibility of 
this unsanctioned union enduring. This was the essence 
of her motive in coming to him at this time.
And yet Cowperwood, aware as he was of her force 
and subtlety, was not so fully aware of her chain of 
thought in this direction. He would not have said, for 
instance, looking upon her on that wintry night of her 
arrival (perfect and flowery out of an icy wind), that 
she was as carefully and determinedly aligned men tally. 
It was a little too much to expect of one so youthful, 
smiling, gay and altogether exquisite in every feminine 
sense. And yet she was. She stood daringly, and yet secretly somewhat nervously, before him. There was no 
trace of malice in regard to him; rather love, if a desire 
to be with him and of him for the remainder of his days 
on these conditions might be called love. Through him 
and with him she would walk to such victory as might 
be possible, the two of them whole-heartedly and sympathetically co-operating.

CHAPTER 1

And so, on that first night, Cowperwood turned to 
her and said: “But Bevy, I’m really curious as to this 
sudden decision of yours. To think you should come 
to me now just when I have met my second really 
important setback.” Her still blue eyes enveloped him 
as might a warming cloak or a dissolving ether.
“Well, I’ve been thinking and reading about you for 
years, you know. Only last Sunday, in New York, I read 
two whole pages about you in the Sun. They made me 
understand you a little better, I think.” 
“The newspapers! Did they, really?” 
“Yes, and no. Not what they said about you critically, but the facts, if they are facts, that they pieced together. You never cared for your first wife, did you?”
“Well, I thought I did, at first. But, of course, I was 
very young when I married her.”
“And the present Mrs. Cowperwood?” 
“Oh, Aileen, yes. I cared for her very much at one 
time,” he confessed. “She did a great deal for me once, 
and I am not ungrateful, Bevy. Besides, she was very attractive, very, to me at that time. But I was still young, 
and not as exacting mentally as I am now. The fault is 
not Aileen’s. It was a mistake due to inexperience.”
“You make me feel better when you talk that way,” 
she said. “You’re not as ruthless as you’re said to be. 
Just the same, I am many years younger than Aileen, 
and I have the feeling that without my looks my mind 
might not be very important to you.”
Cowperwood smiled. “Quite true. I have no excuses to offer for the way I am,” he said. “Intelligently or 
unintelligently, I try to follow the line of self-interest, 

THEODORE DREISER. THE STOIC

because, as I see it, there is no other guide. Maybe I 
am wrong, but I think most of us do that. It may be 
that there are other interests that come before those of 
the individual, but in favoring himself, he appears, as a 
rule, to favor others.”
“I agree, somehow, with your point of view,” commented Berenice.
“The one thing I am trying to make clear to you,” 
went on Cowperwood, smiling affectionately at her, “is 
that I am not seeking to belittle or underestimate any 
hurt I may have inflicted. Pain seems to go with life and 
change. I just want to state my case as I see it, so that 
you may understand me.”
“Thanks,” and Berenice laughed lightly, “but you 
needn’t feel you are on the witness stand.”
“Well, almost. But please let me explain a little 
about Aileen. Her nature is one of love and emotion, 
but her intellect is not, and never was, sufficient for my 
needs. I understand her thoroughly, and I am grateful for all she did for me in Philadelphia. She stood by 
me, to her own social detriment. Because of that I have 
stood by her, even though I cannot possibly love her as 
I once did. She has my name, my residence. She feels 
she should have both.” He paused, a little dubious as to 
what Berenice would say. “You understand, of course?” 
he asked.
“Yes, yes,” exclaimed Berenice, “of course, I understand. And, please, I do not want to disturb her in any 
way. I did not come to you with that in view.”
“You’re very generous, Bevy, but unfair to yourself,” 
said Cowperwood. “But I want you to know how much 

CHAPTER 1

you mean to my entire future. You may not understand, 
but I acknowledge it here and now. I have not followed 
you for eight years for nothing. It means that I care, 
and care deeply.”
“I know,” she said, softly, not a little impressed by 
this declaration.
“For all of eight years,” he continued, “I have had an 
ideal. That ideal is you.”
He paused, wishing to embrace her, but feeling for 
the moment that he should not. Then, reaching into a 
waistcoat pocket, he took from it a thin gold locket, the 
size of a silver dollar, which he opened and handed to 
her. One interior face of it was lined with a photograph 
of Berenice as a girl of twelve, thin, delicate, supercilious, self-contained, distant, as she was to this hour.
She looked at it and recognized it as a photograph 
that had been taken when she and her mother were still 
in Louisville, her mother a woman of social position 
and means. How different the situation now, and how 
much she had suffered because of that change! She 
gazed at it, recalling pleasant memories.
“Where did you get this?” she asked at last.
“I took it from your mother’s bureau in Louisville, 
the first time I saw it. It was not in this case, though; I 
have added that.”
He closed it affectionately and returned it to his 
pocket. “It has been close to me ever since,” he said.
Berenice smiled. “I hope, unseen. But I am such a 
child there.”
“Just the same, an ideal to me. And more so now 
than ever. I have known many women, of course. I have 

THEODORE DREISER. THE STOIC

dealt with them according to my light and urge1 at the 
time. But apart from all that, I have always had a certain conception of what I really desired. I have always 
dreamed of a strong, sensitive, poetic girl like yourself. 
Think what you will about me, but judge me now by 
what I do, not by what I say. You said you came because 
you thought I needed you. I do.”
She laid her hand on his arm. “I have decided,” she 
said, calmly. “The best I can do with my life is to help 
you. But we… I… neither of us can do just as we please. 
You know that.”
“Perfectly. I want you to be happy with me, and I 
want to be happy with you. And, of course, I can’t be if 
you are going to worry over anything. Here in Chicago, 
particularly at this time, I have to be most careful, and so 
do you. And that’s why you’re going back to your hotel 
very shortly. But tomorrow is another day, and at about 
eleven, I hope you will telephone me. Then perhaps we 
can talk this over. But wait a moment.” He took her arm 
and directed her into his bedroom. Closing the door, 
he walked briskly to a handsome wrought-iron chest of 
considerable size, which stood in a corner of the room. 
Unlocking it, he lifted from it three trays containing a 
collection of ancient Greek and Phnician rings. After 
setting them in order before her, he said:
“With which of these would you like me to pledge 
you?”
Indulgently, and a little indifferently, as was her 
way — always the one to be pleaded with, not the one 

1 according to my light and urge — в зависимости от 
силы моих чувств