The Pit / Norris, Frank, 1870-1902

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Title: The Pit

Author: Frank Norris

Release Date: August, 2003 [Etext# 4382]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on January 20, 2002]
[Date last updated: August 9, 2006]

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Edited by Charles Aldarondo Aldarondo@yahoo.com


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Edited by Charles Aldarondo Aldarondo@yahoo.com




THE PIT

A STORY OF CHICAGO

By FRANK NORRIS

NEW YORK

1903







Dedicated to My Brother

Charles Tolman Norris

In memory of certain lamentable tales of the round (dining-room)
table heroes; of the epic of the pewter platoons, and the
romance-cycle of "Gaston Le Fox," which we invented, maintained, and
found marvellous at a time when we both were boys.






Principal Characters in the Novel





CURTIS JADWIN, capitalist and speculator.
SHELDON CORTHELL, an artist.
LANDRY COURT, broker's clerk.
SAMUEL GRETRY, a broker.
CHARLES CRESSLER, a dealer in grain.
MRS. CRESSLER, his wife.
LAURA DEARBORN, protege of Mrs. Cressler.
PAGE DEARBORN, her sister.
MRS. EMILY WESSELS, aunt of Laura and Page.






The Trilogy of The Epic of the Wheat includes the following novels:

THE OCTOPUS, a Story of California.
THE PIT, a Story of Chicago.
THE WOLF, a Story of Europe.

These novels, while forming a series, will be in no way connected
with each other save only in their relation to (1) the production,
(2) the distribution, (3) the consumption of American wheat. When
complete, they will form the story of a crop of wheat from the time
of its sowing as seed in California to the time of its consumption
as bread in a village of Western Europe.

The first novel, "The Octopus," deals with the war between the wheat
grower and the Railroad Trust; the second, "The Pit," is the
fictitious narrative of a "deal" in the Chicago wheat pit; while the
third, "The Wolf," will probably have for its pivotal episode the
relieving of a famine in an Old World community.

The author's most sincere thanks for assistance rendered in the
preparation of the following novel are due to Mr. G. D. Moulson of
New York, whose unwearied patience and untiring kindness helped him
to the better understanding of the technical difficulties of a
Very complicated subject. And more especially he herewith
acknowledges his unmeasured obligation and gratitude to Her Who
Helped the Most of All.

F. N.

NEW YORK
June 4, 1901.






I





At eight o'clock in the inner vestibule of the Auditorium Theatre by
the window of the box office, Laura Dearborn, her younger sister
Page, and their aunt--Aunt Wess'--were still waiting for the rest of
the theatre-party to appear. A great, slow-moving press of men and
women in evening dress filled the vestibule from one wall to
another. A confused murmur of talk and the shuffling of many feet
arose on all sides, while from time to time, when the outside and
inside doors of the entrance chanced to be open simultaneously, a
sudden draught of air gushed in, damp, glacial, and edged with the
penetrating keenness of a Chicago evening at the end of February.

The Italian Grand Opera Company gave one of the most popular pieces
of its repertoire on that particular night, and the Cresslers had
invited the two sisters and their aunt to share their box with them.
It had been arranged that the party should assemble in the
Auditorium vestibule at a quarter of eight; but by now the quarter
was gone and the Cresslers still failed to arrive.

"I don't see," murmured Laura anxiously for the last time, "what can
be keeping them. Are you sure Page that Mrs. Cressler meant
here--inside?"

She was a tall young girl of about twenty-two or three, holding
herself erect and with fine dignity. Even beneath the opera cloak it
was easy to infer that her neck and shoulders were beautiful. Her
almost extreme slenderness was, however, her characteristic; the
curves of her figure, the contour of her shoulders, the swell of hip
and breast were all low; from head to foot one could discover no
pronounced salience. Yet there was no trace, no suggestion of
angularity. She was slender as a willow shoot is slender--and
equally graceful, equally erect.

Next to this charming tenuity, perhaps her paleness was her most
noticeable trait. But it was not a paleness of lack of colour. Laura
Dearborn's pallour was in itself a colour. It was a tint rather than
a shade, like ivory; a warm white, blending into an exquisite,
delicate brownness towards the throat. Set in the middle of this
paleness of brow and cheek, her deep brown eyes glowed lambent and
intense. They were not large, but in some indefinable way they were
important. It was very natural to speak of her eyes, and in speaking
to her, her friends always found that they must look squarely into
their pupils. And all this beauty of pallid face and brown eyes was
crowned by, and sharply contrasted with, the intense blackness of
her hair, abundant, thick, extremely heavy, continually coruscating
with sombre, murky reflections, tragic, in a sense vaguely
portentous,--the coiffure of a heroine of romance, doomed to dark
crises.

On this occasion at the side of the topmost coil, a white aigrette
scintillated and trembled with her every movement. She was
unquestionably beautiful. Her mouth was a little large, the lips
firm set, and one would not have expected that she would smile
easily; in fact, the general expression of her face was rather
serious.

"Perhaps," continued Laura, "they would look for us outside." But
Page shook her head. She was five years younger than Laura, just
turned seventeen. Her hair, dressed high for the first time this
night, was brown. But Page's beauty was no less marked than her
sister's. The seriousness of her expression, however, was more
noticeable. At times it amounted to undeniable gravity. She was
straight, and her figure, all immature as yet, exhibited hardly any
softer outlines than that of a boy.

"No, no," she said, in answer to Laura's question. "They would come
in here; they wouldn't wait outside--not on such a cold night as
this. Don't you think so, Aunt Wess'?"

But Mrs. Wessels, a lean, middle-aged little lady, with a flat,
pointed nose, had no suggestions to offer. She disengaged herself
from any responsibility in the situation and, while waiting, found a
vague amusement in counting the number of people who filtered in
single file through the wicket where the tickets were presented. A
great, stout gentleman in evening dress, perspiring, his cravatte
limp, stood here, tearing the checks from the tickets, and without
ceasing, maintaining a continuous outcry that dominated the murmur
of the throng:

"Have your tickets ready, please! Have your tickets ready."

"Such a crowd," murmured Page. "Did you ever see--and every one you
ever knew or heard of. And such toilettes!"

With every instant the number of people increased; progress became
impossible, except an inch at a time. The women were, almost without
exception, in light-coloured gowns, white, pale blue, Nile green,
and pink, while over these costumes were thrown opera cloaks and
capes of astonishing complexity and elaborateness. Nearly all were
bare-headed, and nearly all wore aigrettes; a score of these, a
hundred of them, nodded and vibrated with an incessant agitation
over the heads of the crowd and flashed like mica flakes as the
wearers moved. Everywhere the eye was arrested by the luxury of
stuffs, the brilliance and delicacy of fabrics, laces as white and
soft as froth, crisp, shining silks, suave satins, heavy gleaming
velvets, and brocades and plushes, nearly all of them
white--violently so--dazzling and splendid under the blaze of the
electrics. The gentlemen, in long, black overcoats, and satin
mufflers, and opera hats; their hands under the elbows of their
women-folk, urged or guided them forward, distressed, preoccupied,
adjuring their parties to keep together; in their white-gloved
fingers they held their tickets ready. For all the icy blasts that
burst occasionally through the storm doors, the vestibule was
uncomfortably warm, and into this steam-heated atmosphere a
multitude of heavy odours exhaled--the scent of crushed flowers, of
perfume, of sachet, and even--occasionally--the strong smell of damp
seal-skin.

Outside it was bitterly cold. All day a freezing wind had blown from
off the Lake, and since five in the afternoon a fine powder of snow
had been falling. The coachmen on the boxes of the carriages that
succeeded one another in an interminable line before the entrance of
the theatre, were swathed to the eyes in furs. The spume and froth
froze on the bits of the horses, and the carriage wheels crunching
through the dry, frozen snow gave off a shrill staccato whine. Yet
for all this, a crowd had collected about the awning on the
sidewalk, and even upon the opposite side of the street, peeping and
peering from behind the broad shoulders of policemen--a crowd of
miserables, shivering in rags and tattered comforters, who found,
nevertheless, an unexplainable satisfaction in watching this
prolonged defile of millionaires.

So great was the concourse of teams, that two blocks distant from
the theatre they were obliged to fall into line, advancing only at
intervals, and from door to door of the carriages thus immobilised
ran a score of young men, their arms encumbered with pamphlets,
shouting: "Score books, score books and librettos; score books with
photographs of all the artists."

However, in the vestibule the press was thinning out. It was
understood that the overture had begun. Other people who were
waiting like Laura and her sister had been joined by their friends
and had gone inside. Laura, for whom this opera night had been an
event, a thing desired and anticipated with all the eagerness of a
girl who had lived for twenty-two years in a second-class town of
central Massachusetts, was in great distress. She had never seen
Grand Opera, she would not have missed a note, and now she was in a
fair way to lose the whole overture.

"Oh, dear," she cried. "Isn't it too bad. I can't imagine why they
don't come."

Page, more metropolitan, her keenness of appreciation a little lost
by two years of city life and fashionable schooling, tried to
reassure her.

"You won't lose much," she said. "The air of the overture is
repeated in the first act--I've heard it once before."

"If we even see the first act," mourned Laura. She scanned the faces
of the late comers anxiously. Nobody seemed to mind being late. Even
some of the other people who were waiting, chatted calmly among
themselves. Directly behind them two men, their faces close
together, elaborated an interminable conversation, of which from
time to time they could overhear a phrase or two.

"--and I guess he'll do well if he settles for thirty cents on the
dollar. I tell you, dear boy, it was a _smash!"_

"Never should have tried to swing a corner. The short interest was
too small and the visible supply was too great."

Page nudged her sister and whispered: "That's the Helmick failure
they're talking about, those men. Landry Court told me all about it.
Mr. Helmick had a corner in corn, and he failed to-day, or will fail
soon, or something."

But Laura, preoccupied with looking for the Cresslers, hardly
listened. Aunt Wess', whose count was confused by all these figures
murmured just behind her, began over again, her lips silently
forming the words, "sixty-one, sixty-two, and two is sixty-four."
Behind them the voice continued:

"They say Porteous will peg the market at twenty-six."

"Well he ought to. Corn is worth that."

"Never saw such a call for margins in my life. Some of the houses
called eight cents."

Page turned to Mrs. Wessels: "By the way, Aunt Wess'; look at that
man there by the box office window, the one with his back towards
us, the one with his hands in his overcoat pockets. Isn't that Mr.
Jadwin? The gentleman we are going to meet to-night. See who I
mean?"

"Who? Mr. Jadwin? I don't know. I don't know, child. I never saw
him, you know."

"Well I think it is he," continued Page. "He was to be with our
party to-night. I heard Mrs. Cressler say she would ask him. That's
Mr. Jadwin, I'm sure. He's waiting for them, too."

"Oh, then ask him about it, Page," exclaimed Laura. "We're missing
everything."

But Page shook her head:

"I only met him once, ages ago; he wouldn't know me. It was at the
Cresslers, and we just said 'How do you do.' And then maybe it isn't
Mr. Jadwin."

"Oh, I wouldn't bother, girls," said Mrs. Wessels. "It's all right.
They'll be here in a minute. I don't believe the curtain has gone up
yet."

But the man of whom they spoke turned around at the moment and cast
a glance about the vestibule. They saw a gentleman of an
indeterminate age--judged by his face he might as well have been
forty as thirty-five. A heavy mustache touched with grey covered his
lips. The eyes were twinkling and good-tempered. Between his teeth
he held an unlighted cigar.

"It is Mr. Jadwin," murmured Page, looking quickly away. "But he
don't recognise me."

Laura also averted her eyes.

"Well, why not go right up to him and introduce ourself, or recall
yourself to him?" she hazarded.

"Oh, Laura, I couldn't," gasped Page. "I wouldn't for worlds."

"Couldn't she, Aunt Wess'?" appealed Laura. "Wouldn't it be all
right?"

But Mrs. Wessels, ignoring forms and customs, was helpless. Again
she withdrew from any responsibility in the matter.

"I don't know anything about it," she answered. "But Page oughtn't
to be bold."

"Oh, bother; it isn't that," protested Page. "But it's just
because--I don't know, I don't want to--Laura, I should just die,"
she exclaimed with abrupt irrelevance, "and besides, how would that
help any?" she added.

"Well, we're just going to miss it all," declared Laura decisively.
There were actual tears in her eyes. "And I had looked forward to it
so."

"Well," hazarded Aunt Wess', "you girls can do just as you please.
Only I wouldn't be bold."

"Well, would it be bold if Page, or if--if I were to speak to him?
We're going to meet him anyways in just a few minutes."

"Better wait, hadn't you, Laura," said Aunt Wess', "and see. Maybe
he'll come up and speak to us."

"Oh, as if!" contradicted Laura. "He don't know us,--just as Page
says. And if he did, he wouldn't. He wouldn't think it polite."

"Then I guess, girlie, it wouldn't be polite for you."

"I think it would," she answered. "I think it would be a woman's
place. If he's a gentleman, he would feel that he just couldn't
speak first. I'm going to do it," she announced suddenly.

"Just as you think best, Laura," said her aunt.

But nevertheless Laura did not move, and another five minutes went
by.

Page took advantage of the interval to tell Laura about Jadwin. He
was very rich, but a bachelor, and had made his money in Chicago
real estate. Some of his holdings in the business quarter of the
city were enormous; Landry Court had told her about him. Jadwin,
unlike Mr. Cressler, was not opposed to speculation. Though not a
member of the Board of Trade, he nevertheless at very long intervals
took part in a "deal" in wheat, or corn, or provisions. He believed
that all corners were doomed to failure, however, and had predicted
Helmick's collapse six months ago. He had influence, was well known
to all Chicago people, what he said carried weight, financiers
consulted him, promoters sought his friendship, his name on the
board of directors of a company was an all-sufficing endorsement; in
a word, a "strong" man.

"I can't understand," exclaimed Laura distrait, referring to the
delay on the part of the Cresslers. "This was the night, and this
was the place, and it is long past the time. We could telephone to
the house, you know," she said, struck with an idea, "and see if
they've started, or what has happened."

"I don't know--I don't know," murmured Mrs. Wessels vaguely. No one
seemed ready to act upon Laura's suggestion, and again the minutes
passed.

"I'm going," declared Laura again, looking at the other two, as if
to demand what they had to say against the idea.

"I just couldn't," declared Page flatly.

"Well," continued Laura, "I'll wait just three minutes more, and
then if the Cresslers are not here I will speak to him. It seems to
me to be perfectly natural, and not at all bold."

She waited three minutes, and the Cresslers still failing to appear,
temporised yet further, for the twentieth time repeating:

"I don't see--I can't understand."

Then, abruptly drawing her cape about her, she crossed the vestibule
and came up to Jadwin.

As she approached she saw him catch her eye. Then, as he appeared to
understand that this young woman was about to speak to him, she
noticed an expression of suspicion, almost of distrust, come into
his face. No doubt he knew nothing of this other party who were to
join the Cresslers in the vestibule. Why should this girl speak to
him? Something had gone wrong, and the instinct of the man, no
longer very young, to keep out of strange young women's troubles
betrayed itself in the uneasy glance that he shot at her from under
his heavy eyebrows. But the look faded as quickly as it had come.
Laura guessed that he had decided that in such a place as this he
need have no suspicions. He took the cigar from his mouth, and she,
immensely relieved, realised that she had to do with a man who was a
gentleman. Full of trepidation as she had been in crossing the
vestibule, she was quite mistress of herself when the instant came
for her to speak, and it was in a steady voice and without
embarrassment that she said:

"I beg your pardon, but I believe this is Mr. Jadwin."

He took off his hat, evidently a little nonplussed that she should
know his name, and by now she was ready even to browbeat him a
little should it be necessary.

"Yes, yes," he answered, now much more confused than she, "my name
is Jadwin."

"I believe," continued Laura steadily, "we were all to be in the
same party to-night with the Cresslers. But they don't seem to come,
and we--my sister and my aunt and I--don't know what to do."

She saw that he was embarrassed, convinced, and the knowledge that
she controlled the little situation, that she could command him,
restored her all her equanimity.

"My name is Miss Dearborn," she continued. "I believe you know my
sister Page."

By some trick of manner she managed to convey to him the impression
that if he did not know her sister Page, that if for one instant he
should deem her to be bold, he would offer a mortal affront. She had
not yet forgiven him that stare of suspicion when first their eyes
had met; he should pay her for that yet.

"Miss Page,--your sister,--Miss Page Dearborn? Certainly I know
her," he answered. "And you have been waiting, too? What a pity!"
And he permitted himself the awkwardness of adding: "I did not know
that you were to be of our party."

"No," returned Laura upon the instant, "I did not know you were to
be one of us to-night--until Page told me." She accented the
pronouns a little, but it was enough for him to know that he had
been rebuked. How, he could not just say; and for what it was
impossible for him at the moment to determine; and she could see
that he began to experience a certain distress, was beating a
retreat, was ceding place to her. Who was she, then, this tall and
pretty young woman, with the serious, unsmiling face, who was so
perfectly at ease, and who hustled him about and made him feel as
though he were to blame for the Cresslers' non-appearance; as though
it was his fault that she must wait in the draughty vestibule. She
had a great air with her; how had he offended her? If he had
introduced himself to her, had forced himself upon her, she could
not be more lofty, more reserved.

"I thought perhaps you might telephone," she observed.

"They haven't a telephone, unfortunately," he answered.

"Oh!"

This was quite the last slight, the Cresslers had not a telephone!
He was to blame for that, too, it seemed. At his wits' end, he
entertained for an instant the notion of dashing out into the street
in a search for a messenger boy, who would take a note to Cressler
and set him right again; and his agitation was not allayed when
Laura, in frigid tones, declared:

"It seems to me that something might be done."

"I don't know," he replied helplessly. "I guess there's nothing to
be done but just wait. They are sure to be along."

In the background, Page and Mrs. Wessels had watched the interview,
and had guessed that Laura was none too gracious. Always anxious
that her sister should make a good impression, the little girl was
now in great distress.

"Laura is putting on her 'grand manner,'" she lamented. "I just know
how she's talking. The man will hate the very sound of her name all
the rest of his life." Then all at once she uttered a joyful
exclamation: "At last, at last," she cried, "and about time, too!"

The Cresslers and the rest of the party--two young men--had
appeared, and Page and her aunt came up just in time to hear Mrs.
Cressler--a fine old lady, in a wonderful ermine-trimmed cape, whose
hair was powdered--exclaim at the top of her voice, as if the mere
declaration of fact was final, absolutely the last word upon the
subject, "The bridge was turned!"

The Cresslers lived on the North Side. The incident seemed to be
closed with the abruptness of a slammed door.

Page and Aunt Wess' were introduced to Jadwin, who was particular to
announce that he remembered the young girl perfectly. The two young
men were already acquainted with the Dearborn sisters and Mrs.
Wessels. Page and Laura knew one of them well enough to address him
familiarly by his Christian name.

This was Landry Court, a young fellow just turned twenty-three, who
was "connected with" the staff of the great brokerage firm of
Gretry, Converse and Co. He was astonishingly good-looking,
small-made, wiry, alert, nervous, debonair, with blond hair and dark
eyes that snapped like a terrier's. He made friends almost at first
sight, and was one of those fortunate few who were favoured equally
of men and women. The healthiness of his eye and skin persuaded to a
belief in the healthiness of his mind; and, in fact, Landry was as
clean without as within. He was frank, open-hearted, full of fine
sentiments and exaltations and enthusiasms. Until he was eighteen he
had cherished an ambition to become the President of the United
States.

"Yes, yes," he said to Laura, "the bridge was turned. It was an
imposition. We had to wait while they let three tows through. I
think two at a time is as much as is legal. And we had to wait for
three. Yes, sir; three, think of that! I shall look into that to-morrow.
Yes, sir; don't you be afraid of that. I'll look into it."
He nodded his head with profound seriousness.

"Well," announced Mr. Cressler, marshalling the party, "shall we go
in? I'm afraid, Laura, we've missed the overture."

Smiling, she shrugged her shoulders, while they moved to the wicket,
as if to say that it could not be helped now.

Cressler, tall, lean, bearded, and stoop-shouldered, belonging to
the same physical type that includes Lincoln--the type of the Middle
West--was almost a second father to the parentless Dearborn girls.
In Massachusetts, thirty years before this time, he had been a
farmer, and the miller Dearborn used to grind his grain regularly.
The two had been boys together, and had always remained fast
friends, almost brothers. Then, in the years just before the War,
had come the great movement westward, and Cressler had been one of
those to leave an "abandoned" New England farm behind him, and with
his family emigrate toward the Mississippi. He had come to Sangamon
County in Illinois. For a time he tried wheat-raising, until the
War, which skied the prices of all food-stuffs, had made him--for
those days--a rich man. Giving up farming, he came to live in
Chicago, bought a seat on the Board of Trade, and in a few years was
a millionaire. At the time of the Turco-Russian War he and two
Milwaukee men had succeeded in cornering all the visible supply of
spring wheat. At the end of the thirtieth day of the corner the
clique figured out its profits at close upon a million; a week later
it looked like a million and a half. Then the three lost their
heads; they held the corner just a fraction of a month too long, and
when the time came that the three were forced to take profits, they
found that they were unable to close out their immense holdings
without breaking the price. In two days wheat that they had held at
a dollar and ten cents collapsed to sixty. The two Milwaukee men
were ruined, and two-thirds of Cressler's immense fortune vanished
like a whiff of smoke.

But he had learned his lesson. Never since then had he speculated.
Though keeping his seat on the Board, he had confined himself to
commission trading, uninfluenced by fluctuations in the market. And
he was never wearied of protesting against the evil and the danger
of trading in margins. Speculation he abhorred as the small-pox,
believing it to be impossible to corner grain by any means or under
any circumstances. He was accustomed to say: "It can't be done;
first, for the reason that there is a great harvest of wheat
somewhere in the world for every month in the year; and, second,
because the smart man who runs the corner has every other smart man
in the world against him. And, besides, it's wrong; the world's food
should not be at the mercy of the Chicago wheat pit."

As the party filed in through the wicket, the other young man who
had come with Landry Court managed to place himself next to Laura.
Meeting her eyes, he murmured:

"Ah, you did not wear them after all. My poor little flowers."

But she showed him a single American Beauty, pinned to the shoulder
of her gown beneath her cape.

"Yes, Mr. Corthell," she answered, "one. I tried to select the
prettiest, and I think I succeeded--don't you? It was hard to
choose."

"Since you have worn it, it is the prettiest," he answered.

He was a slightly built man of about twenty-eight or thirty; dark,
wearing a small, pointed beard, and a mustache that he brushed away
from his lips like a Frenchman. By profession he was an artist,
devoting himself more especially to the designing of stained
windows. In this, his talent was indisputable. But he was by no
means dependent upon his profession for a living, his parents--long
since dead--having left him to the enjoyment of a very considerable
fortune. He had a beautiful studio in the Fine Arts Building, where
he held receptions once every two months, or whenever he had a fine
piece of glass to expose. He had travelled, read, studied,
occasionally written, and in matters pertaining to the colouring and
fusing of glass was cited as an authority. He was one of the
directors of the new Art Gallery that had taken the place of the old
Exposition Building on the Lake Front.

Laura had known him for some little time. On the occasion of her two
previous visits to Page he had found means to see her two or three
times each week. Once, even, he had asked her to marry him, but she,
deep in her studies at the time, consumed with vague ambitions to be
a great actress of Shakespearian roles, had told him she could care
for nothing but her art. He had smiled and said that he could wait,
and, strangely enough, their relations had resumed again upon the
former footing. Even after she had gone away they had corresponded
regularly, and he had made and sent her a tiny window--a veritable
jewel--illustrative of a scene from "Twelfth Night."

In the foyer, as the gentlemen were checking their coats, Laura
overheard Jadwin say to Mr. Cressler:

"Well, how about Helmick?"

The other made an impatient movement of his shoulders.

"Ask me, what was the fool thinking of--a corner! Pshaw!"

There were one or two other men about, making their overcoats and
opera hats into neat bundles preparatory to checking them; and
instantly there was a flash of a half-dozen eyes in the direction of
the two men. Evidently the collapse of the Helmick deal was in the
air. All the city seemed interested.

But from behind the heavy curtains that draped the entrance to the
theatre proper, came a muffled burst of music, followed by a long
salvo of applause. Laura's cheeks flamed with impatience, she
hurried after Mrs. Cressler; Corthell drew the curtains for her to
pass, and she entered.

Inside it was dark, and a prolonged puff of hot air, thick with the
mingled odours of flowers, perfume, upholstery, and gas, enveloped
her upon the instant. It was the unmistakable, unforgettable,
entrancing aroma of the theatre, that she had known only too seldom,
but that in a second set her heart galloping.

Every available space seemed to be occupied. Men, even women, were
standing up, compacted into a suffocating pressure, and for the
moment everybody was applauding vigorously. On all sides Laura
heard:

"Bravo!"

"Good, good!"

"Very well done!"

"Encore! Encore!"

Between the peoples' heads and below the low dip of the overhanging
balcony--a brilliant glare in the surrounding darkness--she caught
a glimpse of the stage. It was set for a garden; at the back and in
the distance a chateau; on the left a bower, and on the right a
pavilion. Before the footlights, a famous contralto, dressed as a
boy, was bowing to the audience, her arms full of flowers.

"Too bad," whispered Corthell to Laura, as they followed the others
down the side-aisle to the box. "Too bad, this is the second act
already; you've missed the whole first act--and this song. She'll
sing it over again, though, just for you, if I have to lead the
applause myself. I particularly wanted you to hear that."

Once in the box, the party found itself a little crowded, and Jadwin
and Cressler were obliged to stand, in order to see the stage.
Although they all spoke in whispers, their arrival was the signal
for certain murmurs of "Sh! Sh!" Mrs. Cressler made Laura occupy the
front seat. Jadwin took her cloak from her, and she settled herself
in her chair and looked about her. She could see but little of the
house or audience. All the lights were lowered; only through the
gloom the swaying of a multitude of fans, pale coloured, like
night-moths balancing in the twilight, defined itself.

But soon she turned towards the stage. The applause died away, and
the contralto once more sang the aria. The melody was simple, the
tempo easily followed; it was not a very high order of music. But to
Laura it was nothing short of a revelation.

She sat spell-bound, her hands clasped tight, her every faculty of
attention at its highest pitch. It was wonderful, such music as
that; wonderful, such a voice; wonderful, such orchestration;
wonderful, such exaltation inspired by mere beauty of sound. Never,
never was this night to be forgotten, this her first night of Grand
Opera. All this excitement, this world of perfume, of flowers, of
exquisite costumes, of beautiful women, of fine, brave men. She
looked back with immense pity to the narrow little life of her
native town she had just left forever, the restricted horizon, the
petty round of petty duties, the rare and barren pleasures--the
library, the festival, the few concerts, the trivial plays. How easy
it was to be good and noble when music such as this had become a
part of one's life; how desirable was wealth when it could make
possible such exquisite happiness as hers of the moment. Nobility,
purity, courage, sacrifice seemed much more worth while now than a
few moments ago. All things not positively unworthy became heroic,
all things and all men. Landry Court was a young chevalier, pure as
Galahad. Corthell was a beautiful artist-priest of the early
Renaissance. Even Jadwin was a merchant prince, a great financial
captain. And she herself--ah, she did not know; she dreamed of
another Laura, a better, gentler, more beautiful Laura, whom
everybody, everybody loved dearly and tenderly, and who loved
everybody, and who should die beautifully, gently, in some garden
far away--die because of a great love--beautifully, gently in the
midst of flowers, die of a broken heart, and all the world should be
sorry for her, and would weep over her when they found her dead and
beautiful in her garden, amid the flowers and the birds, in some
far-off place, where it was always early morning and where there was
soft music. And she was so sorry for herself, and so hurt with the
sheer strength of her longing to be good and true, and noble and
womanly, that as she sat in the front of the Cresslers' box on that
marvellous evening, the tears ran down her cheeks again and again,
and dropped upon her tight-shut, white-gloved fingers.

But the contralto had disappeared, and in her place the tenor held
the stage--a stout, short young man in red plush doublet and grey
silk tights. His chin advanced, an arm extended, one hand pressed to
his breast, he apostrophised the pavilion, that now and then swayed
a little in the draught from the wings.

The aria was received with furor; thrice he was obliged to repeat
it. Even Corthell, who was critical to extremes, approved, nodding
his head. Laura and Page clapped their hands till the very last. But
Landry Court, to create an impression, assumed a certain
disaffection.

"He's not in voice to-night. Too bad. You should have heard him
Friday in 'Aida.'"

The opera continued. The great soprano, the prima donna, appeared
and delivered herself of a song for which she was famous with
astonishing eclat. Then in a little while the stage grew dark, the
orchestration lapsed to a murmur, and the tenor and the soprano
reentered. He clasped her in his arms and sang a half-dozen bars,
then holding her hand, one arm still about her waist, withdrew from
her gradually, till she occupied the front-centre of the stage. He
assumed an attitude of adoration and wonderment, his eyes uplifted
as if entranced, and she, very softly, to the accompaniment of the
sustained, dreamy chords of the orchestra, began her solo.

Laura shut her eyes. Never had she felt so soothed, so cradled and
lulled and languid. Ah, to love like that! To love and be loved.
There was no such love as that to-day. She wished that she could
loose her clasp upon the sordid, material modern life that,
perforce, she must hold to, she knew not why, and drift, drift off
into the past, far away, through rose-coloured mists and diaphanous
veils, or resign herself, reclining in a silver skiff drawn by
swans, to the gentle current of some smooth-flowing river that ran
on forever and forever.

But a discordant element developed. Close by--the lights were so low
she could not tell where--a conversation, kept up in low whispers,
began by degrees to intrude itself upon her attention. Try as she
would, she could not shut it out, and now, as the music died away
fainter and fainter, till voice and orchestra blended together in a
single, barely audible murmur, vibrating with emotion, with romance,
and with sentiment, she heard, in a hoarse, masculine whisper, the
words:

"The shortage is a million bushels at the very least. Two hundred
carloads were to arrive from Milwaukee last night."

She made a little gesture of despair, turning her head for an
instant, searching the gloom about her. But she could see no one not
interested in the stage. Why could not men leave their business
outside, why must the jar of commerce spoil all the harmony of this
moment.

However, all sounds were drowned suddenly in a long burst of
applause. The tenor and soprano bowed and smiled across the
footlights. The soprano vanished, only to reappear on the balcony of
the pavilion, and while she declared that the stars and the
night-bird together sang "He loves thee," the voices close at hand
continued:

"--one hundred and six carloads--"

"--paralysed the bulls--"

"--fifty thousand dollars--"

Then all at once the lights went up. The act was over.

Laura seemed only to come to herself some five minutes later. She
and Corthell were out in the foyer behind the boxes. Everybody was
promenading. The air was filled with the staccato chatter of a
multitude of women. But she herself seemed far away--she and Sheldon
Corthell. His face, dark, romantic, with the silky beard and
eloquent eyes, appeared to be all she cared to see, while his low
voice, that spoke close to her ear, was in a way a mere continuation
of the melody of the duet just finished.

Instinctively she knew what he was about to say, for what he was
trying to prepare her. She felt, too, that he had not expected to
talk thus to her to-night. She knew that he loved her, that
inevitably, sooner or later, they must return to a subject that for
long had been excluded from their conversations, but it was to have
been when they were alone, remote, secluded, not in the midst of a
crowd, brilliant electrics dazzling their eyes, the humming of the
talk of hundreds assaulting their ears. But it seemed as if these
important things came of themselves, independent of time and place,
like birth and death. There was nothing to do but to accept the
situation, and it was without surprise that at last, from out the
murmur of Corthell's talk, she was suddenly conscious of the words:

"So that it is hardly necessary, is it, to tell you once more that I
love you?"

She drew a long breath.

"I know. I know you love me."

They had sat down on a divan, at one end of the promenade; and
Corthell, skilful enough in the little arts of the drawing-room,
made it appear as though they talked of commonplaces; as for Laura,
exalted, all but hypnotised with this marvellous evening, she hardly
cared; she would not even stoop to maintain appearances.

"Yes, yes," she said; "I know you love me."

"And is that all you can say?" he urged. "Does it mean nothing to
you that you are everything to me?"

She was coming a little to herself again. Love was, after all,
sweeter in the actual--even in this crowded foyer, in this
atmosphere of silk and jewels, in this show-place of a great city's
society--than in a mystic garden of some romantic dreamland. She
felt herself a woman again, modern, vital, and no longer a maiden of
a legend of chivalry.

"Nothing to me?" she answered. "I don't know. I should rather have
you love me than--not."

"Let me love you then for always," he went on. "You know what I
mean. We have understood each other from the very first. Plainly,
and very simply, I love you with all my heart. You know now that I
speak the truth, you know that you can trust me. I shall not ask you
to share your life with mine. I ask you for the great happiness"--he
raised his head sharply, suddenly proud--"the great honour of the
opportunity of giving you all that I have of good. God give me
humility, but that is much since I have known you. If I were a
better man because of myself, I would not presume to speak of it,
but if I am in anything less selfish, if I am more loyal, if I am
stronger, or braver, it is only something of you that has become a
part of me, and made me to be born again. So when I offer myself to
you, I am only bringing back to you the gift you gave me for a
little while. I have tried to keep it for you, to keep it bright and
sacred and un-spotted. It is yours again now if you will have it."

There was a long pause; a group of men in opera hats and white
gloves came up the stairway close at hand. The tide of promenaders
set towards the entrances of the theatre. A little electric bell
shrilled a note of warning.

Laura looked up at length, and as their glances met, he saw that
there were tears in her eyes. This declaration of his love for her
was the last touch to the greatest exhilaration of happiness she had
ever known. Ah yes, she was loved, just as that young girl of the
opera had been loved. For this one evening, at least, the beauty of
life was unmarred, and no cruel word of hers should spoil it. The
world was beautiful. All people were good and noble and true.
To-morrow, with the material round of duties and petty
responsibilities and cold, calm reason, was far, far away.

Suddenly she turned to him, surrendering to the impulse, forgetful
of consequences.

"Oh, I am glad, glad," she cried, "glad that you love me!"

But before Corthell could say anything more Landry Court and Page
came up.

"We've been looking for you," said the young girl quietly. Page was
displeased. She took herself and her sister--in fact, the whole
scheme of existence--with extraordinary seriousness. She had no
sense of humour. She was not tolerant; her ideas of propriety and
the amenities were as immutable as the fixed stars. A fine way for
Laura to act, getting off into corners with Sheldon Corthell. It
would take less than that to make talk. If she had no sense of her
obligations to Mrs. Cressler, at least she ought to think of the
looks of things.

"They're beginning again," she said solemnly. "I should think you'd
feel as though you had missed about enough of this opera."

They returned to the box. The rest of the party were reassembling.

"Well, Laura," said Mrs. Cressler, when they had sat down, "do you
like it?"

"I don't want to leave it--ever," she answered. "I could stay here
always."

"I like the young man best," observed Aunt Wess'. "The one who seems
to be the friend of the tall fellow with a cloak. But why does he
seem so sorry? Why don't he marry the young lady? Let's see, I don't
remember his name."

"Beastly voice," declared Landry Court. "He almost broke there once.
Too bad. He's not what he used to be. It seems he's terribly
dissipated--drinks. Yes, sir, like a fish. He had delirium tremens
once behind the scenes in Philadelphia, and stabbed a scene shifter
with his stage dagger. A bad lot, to say the least."

"Now, Landry," protested Mrs. Cressler, "you're making it up as you
go along." And in the laugh that followed Landry himself joined.

"After all," said Corthell, "this music seems to be just the right
medium between the naive melody of the Italian school and the
elaborate complexity of Wagner. I can't help but be carried away
with it at times--in spite of my better judgment."

Jadwin, who had been smoking a cigar in the vestibule during the
entr'acte, rubbed his chin reflectively.

"Well," he said, "it's all very fine. I've no doubt of that, but I
give you my word I would rather hear my old governor take his guitar
and sing 'Father, oh father, come home with me now,' than all the
fiddle-faddle, tweedle-deedle opera business in the whole world."

But the orchestra was returning, the musicians crawling out one by
one from a little door beneath the stage hardly bigger than the
entrance of a rabbit hutch. They settled themselves in front of
their racks, adjusting their coat-tails, fingering their sheet
music. Soon they began to tune up, and a vague bourdon of many
sounds--the subdued snarl of the cornets, the dull mutter of the
bass viols, the liquid gurgling of the flageolets and wood-wind
instruments, now and then pierced by the strident chirps and cries
of the violins, rose into the air dominating the incessant clamour
of conversation that came from all parts of the theatre.

Then suddenly the house lights sank and the footlights rose. From
all over the theatre came energetic whispers of "Sh! Sh!" Three
strokes, as of a great mallet, sepulchral, grave, came from behind
the wings; the leader of the orchestra raised his baton, then
brought it slowly down, and while from all the instruments at once
issued a prolonged minor chord, emphasised by a muffled roll of the
kettle-drum, the curtain rose upon a mediaeval public square. The
soprano was seated languidly upon a bench. Her grande scene occurred
in this act. Her hair was un-bound; she wore a loose robe of cream
white, with flowing sleeves, which left the arms bare to the
shoulder. At the waist it was caught in by a girdle of silk rope.

"This is the great act," whispered Mrs. Cressler, leaning over
Laura's shoulder. "She is superb later on. Superb."

"I wish those men would stop talking," murmured Laura, searching the
darkness distressfully, for between the strains of the music she had
heard the words:

"--Clearing House balance of three thousand dollars."

Meanwhile the prima donna, rising to her feet, delivered herself of
a lengthy recitative, her chin upon her breast, her eyes looking out
from under her brows, an arm stretched out over the footlights. The
baritone entered, striding to the left of the footlights,
apostrophising the prima donna in a rage. She clasped her hands
imploringly, supplicating him to leave her, exclaiming from time to
time:

    "Va via, va via--
     Vel chieco per pieta."

Then all at once, while the orchestra blared, they fell into each
other's arms.

"Why do they do that?" murmured Aunt Wess' perplexed. "I thought the
gentleman with the beard didn't like her at all."

"Why, that's the duke, don't you see, Aunt Wess'?" said Laura trying
to explain. "And he forgives her. I don't know exactly. Look at your
libretto."

"--a conspiracy of the Bears ... seventy cents ... and naturally he
busted."

The mezzo-soprano, the confidante of the prima donna, entered, and a
trio developed that had but a mediocre success. At the end the
baritone abruptly drew his sword, and the prima donna fell to her
knees, chanting:

"Io tremo, ahime!"

"And now he's mad again," whispered Aunt Wess', consulting her
libretto, all at sea once more. "I can't understand. She says--the
opera book says she says, 'I tremble.' I don't see why."

"Look now," said Page, "here comes the tenor. Now they're going to
have it out."

The tenor, hatless, debouched suddenly upon the scene, and furious,
addressed himself to the baritone, leaning forward, his hands upon
his chest. Though the others sang in Italian, the tenor, a Parisian,
used the French book continually, and now villified the baritone,
crying out:

   "O traitre infame
    O lache et coupable"

"I don't see why he don't marry the young lady and be done with it,"
commented Aunt Wess'.

The act drew to its close. The prima donna went through her "great
scene," wherein her voice climbed to C in alt, holding the note so
long that Aunt Wess' became uneasy. As she finished, the house
rocked with applause, and the soprano, who had gone out supported by
her confidante, was recalled three times. A duel followed between
the baritone and tenor, and the latter, mortally wounded, fell into
the arms of his friends uttering broken, vehement notes. The
chorus--made up of the city watch and town's people--crowded in upon
the back of the stage. The soprano and her confidante returned. The
basso, a black-bearded, bull necked man, sombre, mysterious, parted
the chorus to right and left, and advanced to the footlights. The
contralto, dressed as a boy, appeared. The soprano took stage, and
abruptly the closing scene of the act developed.

The violins raged and wailed in unison, all the bows moving together
like parts of a well-regulated machine. The kettle-drums, marking
the cadences, rolled at exact intervals. The director beat time
furiously, as though dragging up the notes and chords with the end
of his baton, while the horns and cornets blared, the bass viols
growled, and the flageolets and piccolos lost themselves in an
amazing complication of liquid gurgles and modulated roulades.

On the stage every one was singing. The soprano in the centre,
vocalised in her highest register, bringing out the notes with
vigorous twists of her entire body, and tossing them off into the
air with sharp flirts of her head. On the right, the basso,
scowling, could be heard in the intervals of the music repeating

    "Il perfido, l'ingrato"

while to the left of the soprano, the baritone intoned
indistinguishable, sonorous phrases, striking his breast and
pointing to the fallen tenor with his sword. At the extreme left of
the stage the contralto, in tights and plush doublet, turned to the
audience, extending her hands, or flinging back her arms. She raised
her eyebrows with each high note, and sunk her chin into her ruff
when her voice descended. At certain intervals her notes blended
with those of the soprano's while she sang:

    "Addio, felicita del ciel!"

The tenor, raised upon one hand, his shoulders supported by his
friends, sustained the theme which the soprano led with the words:

    "Je me meurs
     Ah malheur
     Ah je souffre
     Mon ame s'envole."

The chorus formed a semi-circle just behind him. The women on one
side, the men on the other. They left much to be desired; apparently
scraped hastily together from heaven knew what sources, after the
manner of a management suddenly become economical. The women were
fat, elderly, and painfully homely; the men lean, osseous, and
distressed, in misfitting hose. But they had been conscientiously
drilled. They made all their gestures together, moved in masses
simultaneously, and, without ceasing, chanted over and over again:

    "O terror, O blasfema."

The finale commenced. Everybody on the stage took a step forward,
beginning all over again upon a higher key. The soprano's voice
thrilled to the very chandelier. The orchestra redoubled its
efforts, the director beating time with hands, head, and body.

    "Il perfido, l'ingrato"

thundered the basso.

    "Ineffabil mistero,"

answered the baritone, striking his breast and pointing with his
sword; while all at once the soprano's voice, thrilling out again,
ran up an astonishing crescendo that evoked veritable gasps from all
parts of the audience, then jumped once more to her famous C in alt,
and held it long enough for the chorus to repeat

    "O terror, O blasfema"

four times.

Then the director's baton descended with the violence of a blow.
There was a prolonged crash of harmony, a final enormous chord, to
which every voice and every instrument contributed. The singers
struck tableau attitudes, the tenor fell back with a last wail:

    "Je me meurs,"

and the soprano fainted into the arms of her confidante. The curtain
fell.

The house roared with applause. The scene was recalled again and
again. The tenor, scrambling to his feet, joined hands with the
baritone, soprano, and other artists, and all bowed repeatedly. Then
the curtain fell for the last time, the lights of the great
chandelier clicked and blazed up, and from every quarter of the
house came the cries of the programme sellers:

"Opera books. Books of the opera. Words and music of the opera."

During this, the last entr'acte, Laura remained in the box with Mrs.
Cressler, Corthell, and Jadwin. The others went out to look down
upon the foyer from a certain balcony.

In the box the conversation turned upon stage management, and
Corthell told how, in "L'Africaine," at the Opera, in Paris, the
entire superstructure of the stage--wings, drops, and backs--turned
when Vasco da Gama put the ship about. Jadwin having criticised the
effect because none of the actors turned with it, was voted a
Philistine by Mrs. Cressler and Corthell. But as he was about to
answer, Mrs. Cressler turned to the artist, passing him her opera
glasses, and asking:

"Who are those people down there in the third row of the
parquet--see, on the middle aisle--the woman is in red. Aren't those
the Gretrys?"

This left Jadwin and Laura out of the conversation, and the
capitalist was quick to seize the chance of talking to her. Soon she
was surprised to notice that he was trying hard to be agreeable, and
before they had exchanged a dozen sentences, he had turned an
awkward compliment. She guessed by his manner that paying attention
to young girls was for him a thing altogether unusual. Intuitively
she divined that she, on this, the very first night of their
acquaintance, had suddenly interested him.

She had had neither opportunity nor inclination to observe him
closely during their interview in the vestibule, but now, as she sat
and listened to him talk, she could not help being a little
attracted. He was a heavy-built man, would have made two of
Corthell, and his hands were large and broad, the hands of a man of
affairs, who knew how to grip, and, above all, how to hang on. Those
broad, strong hands, and keen, calm eyes would enfold and envelop a
Purpose with tremendous strength, and they would persist and persist
and persist, unswerving, unwavering, untiring, till the Purpose was
driven home. And the two long, lean, fibrous arms of him; what a
reach they could attain, and how wide and huge and even formidable
would be their embrace of affairs. One of those great manoeuvres of
a fellow money-captain had that very day been concluded, the Helmick
failure, and between the chords and bars of a famous opera men
talked in excited whispers, and one great leader lay at that very
moment, broken and spent, fighting with his last breath for bare
existence. Jadwin had seen it all. Uninvolved in the crash, he had
none the less been close to it, watching it, in touch with it,
foreseeing each successive collapse by which it reeled fatally to
the final catastrophe. The voices of the two men that had so annoyed
her in the early part of the evening were suddenly raised again:

"--It was terrific, there on the floor of the Board this morning.
By the Lord! they fought each other when the Bears began throwing
the grain at 'em--in carload lots."

And abruptly, midway between two phases of that music-drama, of
passion and romance, there came to Laura the swift and vivid
impression of that other drama that simultaneously--even at that
very moment--was working itself out close at hand, equally
picturesque, equally romantic, equally passionate; but more than
that, real, actual, modern, a thing in the very heart of the very
life in which she moved. And here he sat, this Jadwin, quiet, in
evening dress, listening good-naturedly to this beautiful music, for
which he did not care, to this rant and fustian, watching quietly
all this posing and attitudinising. How small and petty it must all
seem to him!

Laura found time to be astonished. What! She had first met this man
haughtily, in all the panoply of her "grand manner," and had
promised herself that she would humble him, and pay him for that
first mistrustful stare at her. And now, behold, she was studying
him, and finding the study interesting. Out of harmony though she
knew him to be with those fine emotions of hers of the early part of
the evening, she nevertheless found much in him to admire. It was
always just like that. She told herself that she was forever doing
the unexpected thing, the inconsistent thing. Women were queer
creatures, mysterious even to themselves.

"I am so pleased that you are enjoying it all," said Corthell's
voice at her shoulder. "I knew you would. There is nothing like
music such as this to appeal to the emotions, the heart--and with
your temperament."

Straightway he made her feel her sex. Now she was just a woman
again, with all a woman's limitations, and her relations with
Corthell could never be--so she realised--any other than
sex-relations. With Jadwin somehow it had been different. She had
felt his manhood more than her womanhood, her sex side. And between
them it was more a give-and-take affair, more equality, more
companionship. Corthell spoke only of her heart and to her heart.
But Jadwin made her feel--or rather she made herself feel when he
talked to her--that she had a head as well as a heart.

And the last act of the opera did not wholly absorb her attention.
The artists came and went, the orchestra wailed and boomed, the
audience applauded, and in the end the tenor, fired by a sudden
sense of duty and of stern obligation, tore himself from the arms of
the soprano, and calling out upon remorseless fate and upon heaven,
and declaiming about the vanity of glory, and his heart that broke
yet disdained tears, allowed himself to be dragged off the scene by
his friend the basso. For the fifth time during the piece the
soprano fainted into the arms of her long-suffering confidante. The
audience, suddenly remembering hats and wraps, bestirred itself, and
many parties were already upon their feet and filing out at the time
the curtain fell.

The Cresslers and their friends were among the last to regain the
vestibule. But as they came out from the foyer, where the first
draughts of outside air began to make themselves felt, there were
exclamations:

"It's raining."

"Why, it's raining right down."

It was true. Abruptly the weather had moderated, and the fine, dry
snow that had been falling since early evening had changed to a
lugubrious drizzle. A wave of consternation invaded the vestibule
for those who had not come in carriages, or whose carriages had not
arrived. Tempers were lost; women, cloaked to the ears, their heads
protected only by fichus or mantillas, quarrelled with husbands or
cousins or brothers over the question of umbrellas. The vestibules
were crowded to suffocation, and the aigrettes nodded and swayed
again in alternate gusts, now of moist, chill atmosphere from
without, and now of stale, hot air that exhaled in long puffs from
the inside doors of the theatre itself. Here and there in the press,
footmen, their top hats in rubber cases, their hands full of
umbrellas, searched anxiously for their masters.

Outside upon the sidewalks and by the curbs, an apparently
inextricable confusion prevailed; policemen with drawn clubs
laboured and objurgated: anxious, preoccupied young men, their opera
hats and gloves beaded with rain, hurried to and fro, searching for
their carriages. At the edge of the awning, the caller, a gigantic
fellow in gold-faced uniform, shouted the numbers in a roaring,
sing-song that dominated every other sound. Coachmen, their wet
rubber coats reflecting the lamplight, called back and forth,
furious quarrels broke out between hansom drivers and the police
officers, steaming horses with jingling bits, their backs covered
with dark green cloths, plunged and pranced, carriage doors banged,
and the roll of wheels upon the pavement was as the reverberation of
artillery caissons.

"Get your carriage, sir?" cried a ragged, half-grown arab at
Cressler's elbow.

"Hurry up, then," said Cressler. Then, raising his voice, for the
clamour was increasing with every second: "What's your number,
Laura? You girls first. Ninety-three? Get that, boy? Ninety-three.
Quick now."

The carriage appeared. Hastily they said good-by; hastily Laura
expressed to Mrs. Cressler her appreciation and enjoyment. Corthell
saw them to the carriage, and getting in after them shut the door
behind him. They departed.

Laura sank back in the cool gloom of the carriage's interior
redolent of damp leather and upholstery.

"What an evening! What an evening!" she murmured.

On the way home both she and Page appealed to the artist, who knew
the opera well, to hum or whistle for them the arias that had
pleased them most. Each time they were enthusiastic. Yes, yes, that
was the air. Wasn't it pretty, wasn't it beautiful?

But Aunt Wess' was still unsatisfied.

"I don't see yet," she complained, "why the young man, the one with
the pointed beard, didn't marry that lady and be done with it. Just
as soon as they'd seem to have it all settled, he'd begin to take on
again, and strike his breast and go away. I declare, I think it was
all kind of foolish."

"Why, the duke--don't you see. The one who sang bass--" Page
laboured to explain.

"Oh, I didn't like him at all," said Aunt Wess'. "He stamped around
so." But the audience itself had interested her, and the decollete
gowns had been particularly impressing.

"I never saw such dressing in all my life," she declared. "And that
woman in the box next ours. Well! did you notice that!" She raised
her eyebrows and set her lips together. "Well, I don't want to say
anything."

The carriage rolled on through the darkened downtown streets,
towards the North Side, where the Dearborns lived. They could hear
the horses plashing through the layer of slush--mud, half-melted
snow and rain--that encumbered the pavement. In the gloom the girls'
wraps glowed pallid and diaphanous. The rain left long, slanting
parallels on the carriage windows. They passed on down Wabash
Avenue, and crossed over to State Street and Clarke Street, dark,
deserted.

Laura, after a while, lost in thought, spoke but little. It had been
a great evening--because of other things than mere music. Corthell
had again asked her to marry him, and she, carried away by the
excitement of the moment, had answered him encouragingly. On the
heels of this she had had that little talk with the capitalist
Jadwin, and somehow since then she had been steadied, calmed. The
cold air and the rain in her face had cooled her flaming cheeks and
hot temples. She asked herself now if she did really, honestly love
the artist. No, she did not; really and honestly she did not; and
now as the carriage rolled on through the deserted streets of the
business districts, she knew very well that she did not want to
marry him. She had done him an injustice; but in the matter of
righting herself with him, correcting his false impression, she was
willing to procrastinate. She wanted him to love her, to pay her all
those innumerable little attentions which he managed with such
faultless delicacy. To say: "No, Mr. Corthell, I do not love you, I
will never be your wife," would--this time--be final. He would go
away, and she had no intention of allowing him to do that.

But abruptly her reflections were interrupted. While she thought it
all over she had been looking out of the carriage window through a
little space where she had rubbed the steam from the pane. Now, all
at once, the strange appearance of the neighbourhood as the carriage
turned north from out Jackson Street into La Salle, forced itself
upon her attention. She uttered an exclamation.

The office buildings on both sides of the street were lighted from
basement to roof. Through the windows she could get glimpses of
clerks and book-keepers in shirt-sleeves bending over desks. Every
office was open, and every one of them full of a feverish activity.
The sidewalks were almost as crowded as though at noontime.
Messenger boys ran to and fro, and groups of men stood on the
corners in earnest conversation. The whole neighbourhood was alive,
and this, though it was close upon one o'clock in the morning!

"Why, what is it all?" she murmured.

Corthell could not explain, but all at once Page cried:

"Oh, oh, I know. See this is Jackson and La Salle streets. Landry
was telling me. The 'commission district,' he called it. And these
are the brokers' offices working overtime--that Helmick deal, you
know."

Laura looked, suddenly stupefied. Here it was, then, that other
drama, that other tragedy, working on there furiously, fiercely
through the night, while she and all those others had sat there in
that atmosphere of flowers and perfume, listening to music. Suddenly
it loomed portentous in the eye of her mind, terrible, tremendous.
Ah, this drama of the "Provision Pits," where the rush of millions
of bushels of grain, and the clatter of millions of dollars, and the
tramping and the wild shouting of thousands of men filled all the
air with the noise of battle! Yes, here was drama in deadly
earnest--drama and tragedy and death, and the jar of mortal
fighting. And the echoes of it invaded the very sanctuary of art,
and cut athwart the music of Italy and the cadence of polite
conversation, and the shock of it endured when all the world should
have slept, and galvanised into vivid life all these sombre piles of
office buildings. It was dreadful, this labour through the night. It
had all the significance of field hospitals after the
battle--hospitals and the tents of commanding generals. The wounds
of the day were being bound up, the dead were being counted, while,
shut in their headquarters, the captains and the commanders drew the
plans for the grapple of armies that was to recommence with
daylight.

"Yes, yes, that's just what it is," continued Page. "See, there's
the Rookery, and there's the Constable Building, where Mr. Helmick
has his offices. Landry showed me it all one day. And, look back."
She raised the flap that covered the little window at the back of
the carriage. "See, down there, at the end of the street. There's
the Board of Trade Building, where the grain speculating is
done,--where the wheat pits and corn pits are."

Laura turned and looked back. On either side of the vista in
converging lines stretched the blazing office buildings. But over
the end of the street the lead-coloured sky was rifted a little. A
long, faint bar of light stretched across the prospect, and
silhouetted against this rose a sombre mass, unbroken by any lights,
rearing a black and formidable facade against the blur of light
behind it.

And this was her last impression of the evening. The lighted office
buildings, the murk of rain, the haze of light in the heavens, and
raised against it the pile of the Board of Trade Building, black,
grave, monolithic, crouching on its foundations, like a monstrous
sphinx with blind eyes, silent, grave,--crouching there without a
sound, without sign of life under the night and the drifting veil of
rain.






II





Laura Dearborn's native town was Barrington, in Worcester County,
Massachusetts. Both she and Page had been born there, and there had
lived until the death of their father, at a time when Page was ready
for the High School. The mother, a North Carolina girl, had died
long before.

Laura's education had been unusual. After leaving the High School
her father had for four years allowed her a private tutor (an
impecunious graduate from the Harvard Theological School). She was
ambitious, a devoted student, and her instructor's task was rather
to guide than to enforce her application. She soon acquired a
reading knowledge of French, and knew her Racine in the original
almost as well as her Shakespeare. Literature became for her an
actual passion. She delved into Tennyson and the Victorian poets,
and soon was on terms of intimacy with the poets and essayists of
New England. The novelists of the day she ignored almost completely,
and voluntarily. Only occasionally, and then as a concession, she
permitted herself a reading of Mr. Howells.

Moderately prosperous while he himself was conducting his little
mill, Dearborn had not been able to put by any money to speak of,
and when Laura and the local lawyer had come to close up the
business, to dispose of the mill, and to settle the claims against
what the lawyer grandiloquently termed "the estate," there was just
enough money left to pay for Page's tickets to Chicago and a course
of tuition for her at a seminary.

The Cresslers on the event of Dearborn's death had advised both
sisters to come West, and had pledged themselves to look after Page
during the period of her schooling. Laura had sent the little girl
on at once, but delayed taking the step herself.

Fortunately, the two sisters were not obliged to live upon their
inheritance. Dearborn himself had a sister--a twin of Aunt
Wess'--who had married a wealthy woollen merchant of Boston, and
this one, long since, had provided for the two girls. A large sum
had been set aside, which was to be made over to them when the
father died. For years now this sum had been accumulating interest.
So that when Laura and Page faced the world, alone, upon the steps
of the Barrington cemetery, they had the assurance that, at least,
they were independent.

For two years, in the solidly built colonial dwelling, with its low
ceilings and ample fireplaces, where once the minute-men had swung
their kettles, Laura, alone, thought it all over. Mother and father
were dead; even the Boston aunt was dead. Of all her relations, Aunt
Wess' alone remained. Page was at her finishing school at Geneva
Lake, within two hours of Chicago. The Cresslers were the dearest
friends of the orphan girls. Aunt Wess', herself a widow, living
also in Chicago, added her entreaties to Mrs. Cressler's. All things
seemed to point her westward, all things seemed to indicate that one
phase of her life was ended.

Then, too, she had her ambitions. These hardly took definite shape
in her mind; but vaguely she chose to see herself, at some
far-distant day, an actress, a tragedienne, playing the roles of
Shakespeare's heroines. This idea of hers was more a desire than an
ambition, but it could not be realised in Barrington, Massachusetts.
For a year she temporised, procrastinated, loth to leave the old
home, loth to leave the grave in the cemetery back of the
Methodist-Episcopal chapel. Twice during this time she visited Page,
and each time the great grey city threw the spell of its fascination
about her. Each time she returned to Barrington the town dwindled in
her estimation. It was picturesque, but lamentably narrow. The life
was barren, the "New England spirit" prevailed in all its severity;
and this spirit seemed to her a veritable cult, a sort of religion,
wherein the Old Maid was the priestess, the Spinster the officiating
devotee, the thing worshipped the Great Unbeautiful, and the ritual
unremitting, unrelenting Housework. She detested it.

That she was an Episcopalian, and preferred to read her prayers
rather than to listen to those written and memorised by the
Presbyterian minister, seemed to be regarded as a relic of
heathenish rites--a thing almost cannibalistic. When she elected to
engage a woman and a "hired man" to manage her house, she felt the
disapprobation of the entire village, as if she had sunk into some
decadent and enervating Lower-Empire degeneracy.

The crisis came when Laura travelled alone to Boston to hear
Modjeska in "Marie Stuart" and "Macbeth," and upon returning full of
enthusiasm, allowed it to be understood that she had a half-formed
desire of emulating such an example. A group of lady-deaconesses,
headed by the Presbyterian minister, called upon her, with some
intention of reasoning and labouring with her.

They got no farther than the statement of the cause of this visit.
The spirit and temper of the South, that she had from her mother,
flamed up in Laura at last, and the members of the "committee,"
before they were well aware, came to themselves in the street
outside the front gate, dazed and bewildered, staring at each other,
all confounded and stunned by the violence of an outbreak of
long-repressed emotion and long-restrained anger, that like an actual
physical force had swept them out of the house.

At the same moment Laura, thrown across her bed, wept with a
vehemence that shook her from head to foot. But she had not the
least compunction for what she had said, and before the month was
out had said good-by to Barrington forever, and was on her way to
Chicago, henceforth to be her home.

A house was bought on the North Side, and it was arranged that Aunt
Wess' should live with her two nieces. Pending the installation
Laura and Page lived at a little family hotel in the same
neighbourhood. The Cresslers' invitation to join the theatre party
at the Auditorium had fallen inopportunely enough, squarely in the
midst of the ordeal of moving in. Indeed the two girls had already
passed one night in the new home, and they must dress for the affair
by lamplight in their unfurnished quarters and under inconceivable
difficulties. Only the lure of Italian opera, heard from a box,
could have tempted them to have accepted the invitation at such a
time and under such circumstances.

The morning after the opera, Laura woke in her bed--almost the only
article of furniture that was in place in the whole house--with
the depressing consciousness of a hard day's work at hand. Outside
it was still raining, the room was cold, heated only by an
inadequate oil stove, and through the slats of the inside shutters,
which, pending the hanging of the curtains they had been obliged to
close, was filtering a gloomy light of a wet Chicago morning.

It was all very mournful, and she regretted now that she had not
abided by her original decision to remain at the hotel until the new
house was ready for occupancy. But it had happened that their month
at the hotel was just up, and rather than engage the rooms for
another four weeks she had thought it easier as well as cheaper to
come to the house. It was all a new experience for her, and she had
imagined that everything could be moved in, put in place, and the
household running smoothly in a week's time.

She sat up in bed, hugging her shoulders against the chill of the
room and looking at her theatre gown, that--in default of a clean
closet--she had hung from the gas fixture the night before. From the
direction of the kitchen came the sounds of the newly engaged "girl"
making the fire for breakfast, while through the register a thin
wisp of blue smoke curled upward to prove that the "hired man" was
tinkering with the unused furnace. The room itself was in lamentable
confusion. Crates and packing boxes encumbered the uncarpeted floor;
chairs wrapped in excelsior and jute were piled one upon another; a
roll of carpet leaned in one corner and a pile of mattresses
occupied another.

As Laura considered the prospect she realised her blunder.

"Why, and oh, why," she murmured, "didn't we stay at the hotel till
all this was straightened out?"

But in an adjoining room she heard Aunt Wess' stirring. She turned
to Page, who upon the pillows beside her still slept, her stocking
around her neck as a guarantee against draughts.

"Page, Page! Wake up, girlie. It's late, and there's worlds to do."

Page woke blinking.

"Oh, it's freezing cold, Laura. Let's light the oil stove and stay
in bed till the room gets warm. Oh, dear, aren't you sleepy, and,
oh, wasn't last night lovely? Which one of us will get up to light
the stove? We'll count for it. Lie down, sissie, dear," she begged,
"you're letting all the cold air in."

Laura complied, and the two sisters, their noses all but touching,
the bedclothes up to their ears, put their arms about each other to
keep the warmer.

Amused at the foolishness, they "counted" to decide as to who should
get up to light the oil stove, Page beginning:

"Eeny--meeny--myny--mo--"

But before the "count" was decided Aunt Wess' came in, already
dressed, and in a breath the two girls implored her to light the
stove. While she did so, Aunt Wess' remarked, with the alacrity of a
woman who observes the difficulties of a proceeding in which she has
no faith:

"I don't believe that hired girl knows her business. She says now
she can't light a fire in that stove. My word, Laura, I do believe
you'll have enough of all this before you're done. You know I
advised you from the very first to take a flat."

"Nonsense, Aunt Wess'," answered Laura, good-naturedly. "We'll work
it out all right. I know what's the matter with that range. I'll be
right down and see to it so soon as I'm dressed."

It was nearly ten o'clock before breakfast, such as it was, was
over. They ate it on the kitchen table, with the kitchen knives and
forks, and over the meal, Page having remarked: "Well, what will we
do first?" discussed the plan of campaign.

"Landry Court does not have to work to-day--he told me why, but I've
forgotten--and he said he was coming up to help," observed Laura,
and at once Aunt Wess' smiled. Landry Court was openly and
strenuously in love with Laura, and no one of the new household
ignored the fact. Aunt Wess' chose to consider the affair as
ridiculous, and whenever the subject was mentioned spoke of Landry
as "that boy."

Page, however, bridled with seriousness as often as the matter came
up. Yes, that was all very well, but Landry was a decent,
hard-working young fellow, with all his way to make and no time to
waste, and if Laura didn't mean that it should come to anything it
wasn't very fair to him to keep him dangling along like that.

"I guess," Laura was accustomed to reply, looking significantly at
Aunt Wess', "that our little girlie has a little bit of an eye on a
certain hard-working young fellow herself." And the answer
invariably roused Page.

"Now, Laura," she would cry, her eyes snapping, her breath coming
fast. "Now, Laura, that isn't right at all, and you know I don't
like it, and you just say it because you know it makes me cross. I
won't have you insinuate that I would run after any man or care in
the least whether he's in love or not. I just guess I've got some
self-respect; and as for Landry Court, we're no more nor less than
just good friends, and I appreciate his business talents and the way
he rustles 'round, and he merely respects me as a friend, and it
don't go any farther than that. 'An eye on him,' I do declare! As
if I hadn't yet to see the man I'd so much as look at a second
time."

And Laura, remembering her "Shakespeare," was ever ready with the
words:

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

Just after breakfast, in fact, Landry did appear.

"Now," he began, with a long breath, addressing Laura, who was
unwrapping the pieces of cut glass and bureau ornaments as Page
passed them to her from the depths of a crate. "Now, I've done a lot
already. That's what made me late. I've ordered your newspaper sent
here, and I've telephoned the hotel to forward any mail that comes
for you to this address, and I sent word to the gas company to have
your gas turned on--"

"Oh, that's good," said Laura.

"Yes, I thought of that; the man will be up right away to fix it,
and I've ordered a cake of ice left here every day, and told the
telephone company that you wanted a telephone put in. Oh, yes, and
the bottled-milk man--I stopped in at a dairy on the way up. Now,
what do we do first?"

He took off his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and plunged into
the confusion of crates and boxes that congested the rooms and
hallways on the first floor of the house. The two sisters could hear
him attacking his task with tremendous blows of the kitchen hammer.
From time to time he called up the stairway:

"Hey, what do you want done with this jardiniere thing? ... Where
does this hanging lamp go, Laura?"

Laura, having unpacked all the cut-glass ornaments, came
down-stairs, and she and Landry set about hanging the parlour
curtains.

Landry fixed the tops of the window mouldings with a piercing eye,
his arms folded.

"I see, I see," he answered to Laura's explanations. "I see. Now
where's a screw-driver, and a step-ladder? Yes, and I'll have to
have some brass nails, and your hired man must let me have that
hammer again."

He sent the cook after the screw-driver, called the hired man from
the furnace, shouted upstairs to Page to ask for the whereabouts of
the brass nails, and delegated Laura to steady the step-ladder.

"Now, Landry," directed Laura, "those rods want to be about three
inches from the top."

"Well," he said, climbing up, "I'll mark the place with the screw
and you tell me if it is right."

She stepped back, her head to one side.

"No; higher, Landry. There, that's about it--or a _little_
lower--so. That's just right. Come down now and help me put the
hooks in."

They pulled a number of sofa cushions together and sat down on the
floor side by side, Landry snapping the hooks in place where Laura
had gathered the pleats. Inevitably his hands touched hers, and
their heads drew close together. Page and Mrs. Wessels were
unpacking linen in the upstairs hall. The cook and hired man raised
a great noise of clanking stove lids and grates as they wrestled
with the range in the kitchen.

"Well," said Landry, "you are going to have a pretty home." He was
meditating a phrase of which he purposed delivering himself when
opportunity afforded. It had to do with Laura's eyes, and her
ability of understanding him. She understood him; she was to know
that he thought so, that it was of immense importance to him. It was
thus he conceived of the manner of love making. The evening before
that palavering artist seemed to have managed to monopolise her
about all of the time. Now it was his turn, and this day of
household affairs, of little domestic commotions, appeared to him to
be infinitely more desirous than the pomp and formality of evening
dress and opera boxes. This morning the relations between himself
and Laura seemed charming, intimate, unconventional, and full of
opportunities. Never had she appeared prettier to him. She wore a
little pink flannel dressing-sack with full sleeves, and her hair,
carelessly twisted into great piles, was in a beautiful disarray,
curling about her cheeks and ears. "I didn't see anything of you at
all last night," he grumbled.

"Well, you didn't try."

"Oh, it was the Other Fellow's turn," he went on. "Say," he added,
"how often are you going to let me come to see you when you get
settled here? Twice a week--three times?"

"As if you wanted to see me as often as that. Why, Landry, I'm
growing up to be an old maid. You can't want to lose your time
calling on old maids."

He was voluble in protestations. He was tired of young girls. They
were all very well to dance with, but when a man got too old for
that sort of thing, he wanted some one with sense to talk to. Yes,
he did. Some one with sense. Why, he would rather talk five minutes
with her--

"Honestly, Landry?" she asked, as though he were telling a thing
incredible.

He swore to her it was true. His eyes snapped. He struck his palm
with his fist.

"An old maid like me?" repeated Laura.

"Old maid nothing!" he vociferated. "Ah," he cried, "you seem to
understand me. When I look at you, straight into your eyes--"

From the doorway the cook announced that the man with the last load
of furnace coal had come, and handed Laura the voucher to sign. Then
needs must that Laura go with the cook to see if the range was
finally and properly adjusted, and while she was gone the man from
the gas company called to turn on the meter, and Landry was obliged
to look after him. It was half an hour before he and Laura could
once more settle themselves on the cushions in the parlour.

"Such a lot of things to do," she said; "and you are such a help,
Landry. It was so dear of you to want to come."

"I would do anything in the world for you, Laura," he exclaimed,
encouraged by her words; "anything. You know I would. It isn't so
much that I want you to care for me--and I guess I want that bad
enough--but it's because I love to be with you, and be helping you,
and all that sort of thing. Now, all this," he waved a hand at the
confusion of furniture, "all this to-day--I just feel," he declared
with tremendous earnestness, "I just feel as though I were entering
into your life. And just sitting here beside you and putting in
these curtain hooks, I want you to know that it's inspiring to me.
Yes, it is, inspiring; it's elevating. You don't know how it makes a
man feel to have the companionship of a good and lovely woman."

"Landry, as though I were all that. Here, put another hook in here."

She held the fold towards him. But he took her hand as their fingers
touched and raised it to his lips and kissed it. She did not
withdraw it, nor rebuke him, crying out instead, as though occupied
with quite another matter:

"Landry, careful, my dear boy; you'll make me prick my fingers.
Ah--there, you did."

He was all commiseration and self-reproach at once, and turned her
hand palm upwards, looking for the scratch.

"Um!" she breathed. "It hurts."

"Where now," he cried, "where was it? Ah, I was a beast; I'm so
ashamed." She indicated a spot on her wrist instead of her fingers,
and very naturally Landry kissed it again.

"How foolish!" she remonstrated. "The idea! As if I wasn't old
enough to be--"

"You're not so old but what you're going to marry me some day," he
declared.

"How perfectly silly, Landry!" she retorted. "Aren't you done with
my hand yet?"

"No, indeed," he cried, his clasp tightening over her fingers. "It's
mine. You can't have it till I say--or till you say that--some
day--you'll give it to me for good--for better or for worse."

"As if you really meant that," she said, willing to prolong the
little situation. It was very sweet to have this clean, fine-fibred
young boy so earnestly in love with her, very sweet that the lifting
of her finger, the mere tremble of her eyelid should so perturb him.

"Mean it! Mean it!" he vociferated. "You don't know how much I do
mean it. Why, Laura, why--why, I can't think of anything else."

"You!" she mocked. "As if I believed that. How many other girls have
you said it to this year?"

Landry compressed his lips.

"Miss Dearborn, you insult me."

"Oh, my!" exclaimed Laura, at last withdrawing her hand.

"And now you're mocking me. It isn't kind. No, it isn't; it isn't
kind."

"I never answered your question yet," she observed.

"What question?"

"About your coming to see me when we were settled. I thought you
wanted to know."

"How about lunch?" said Page, from the doorway. "Do you know it's
after twelve?"

"The girl has got something for us," said Laura. "I told her about
it. Oh, just a pick-up lunch--coffee, chops. I thought we wouldn't
bother to-day. We'll have to eat in the kitchen."

"Well, let's be about it," declared Landry, "and finish with these
curtains afterward. Inwardly I'm a ravening wolf."

It was past one o'clock by the time that luncheon, "picked up"
though it was, was over. By then everybody was very tired. Aunt
Wess' exclaimed that she could not stand another minute, and retired
to her room. Page, indefatigable, declaring they never would get
settled if they let things dawdle along, set to work unpacking her
trunk and putting her clothes away. Her fox terrier, whom the
family, for obscure reasons, called the Pig, arrived in the middle
of the afternoon in a crate, and shivering with the chill of the
house, was tied up behind the kitchen range, where, for all the
heat, he still trembled and shuddered at long intervals, his head
down, his eyes rolled up, bewildered and discountenanced by so much
confusion and so many new faces.

Outside the weather continued lamentable. The rain beat down
steadily upon the heaps of snow on the grass-plats by the
curbstones, melting it, dirtying it, and reducing it to viscid
slush. The sky was lead grey; the trees, bare and black as though
built of iron and wire, dripped incessantly. The sparrows, huddling
under the house-eaves or in interstices of the mouldings, chirped
feebly from time to time, sitting disconsolate, their feathers
puffed out till their bodies assumed globular shapes. Delivery
wagons trundled up and down the street at intervals, the horses and
drivers housed in oil-skins.

The neighborhood was quiet. There was no sound of voices in the
streets. But occasionally, from far away in the direction of the
river or the Lake Front, came the faint sounds of steamer and tug
whistles. The sidewalks in either direction were deserted. Only a
solitary policeman, his star pinned to be outside of his dripping
rubber coat, his helmet shedding rivulets, stood on the corner
absorbed in the contemplation of the brown torrent of the gutter
plunging into a sewer vent.

Landry and Laura were in the library at the rear of the house, a
small room, two sides of which were occupied with book-cases. They
were busy putting the books in place. Laura stood half-way up the
step-ladder taking volume after volume from Landry as he passed them
to her.

"Do you wipe them carefully, Landry?" she asked.

He held a strip of cloth torn from an old sheet in his hand, and
rubbed the dust from each book before he handed it to her.

"Yes, yes; very carefully," he assured her. "Say," he added, "where
are all your modern novels? You've got Scott and Dickens and
Thackeray, of course, and Eliot--yes, and here's Hawthorne and Poe.
But I haven't struck anything later than Oliver Wendell Holmes."

Laura put up her chin. "Modern novels--no indeed. When I've yet to
read 'Jane Eyre,' and have only read 'Ivanhoe' and 'The Newcomes'
once."

She made a point of the fact that her taste was the extreme of
conservatism, refusing to acknowledge hardly any fiction that was
not almost classic. Even Stevenson aroused her suspicions.

"Well, here's 'The Wrecker,'" observed Landry, handing it up to her.
"I read it last summer-vacation at Waukesha. Just about took the top
of my head off."

"I tried to read it," she answered. "Such an outlandish story, no
love story in it, and so coarse, so brutal, and then so improbable.
I couldn't get interested."

But abruptly Landry uttered an exclamation:

"Well, what do you call this? 'Wanda,' by Ouida. How is this for
modern?"

She blushed to her hair, snatching the book from him.

"Page brought it home. It's hers."

But her confusion betrayed her, and Landry shouted derisively.

"Well, I did read it then," she suddenly declared defiantly. "No,
I'm not ashamed. Yes, I read it from cover to cover. It made me cry
like I haven't cried over a book since I was a little tot. You can
say what you like, but it's beautiful--a beautiful love story--and
it does tell about noble, unselfish people. I suppose it has its
faults, but it makes you feel better for reading it, and that's what
all your 'Wreckers' in the world would never do."

"Well," answered Landry, "I don't know much about that sort of
thing. Corthell does. He can talk you blind about literature. I've
heard him run on by the hour. He says the novel of the future is
going to be the novel without a love story."

But Laura nodded her head incredulously.

"It will be long after I am dead--that's one consolation," she said.

"Corthell is full of crazy ideas anyhow," Landry went on, still
continuing to pass the books up to her. "He's a good sort, and I
like him well enough, but he's the kind of man that gets up a
reputation for being clever and artistic by running down the very
one particular thing that every one likes, and cracking up some book
or picture or play that no one has ever heard of. Just let anything
get popular once and Sheldon Corthell can't speak of it without
shuddering. But he'll go over here to some Archer Avenue pawn shop,
dig up an old brass stewpan, or coffee-pot that some greasy old
Russian Jew has chucked away, and he'll stick it up in his studio
and regularly kow-tow to it, and talk about the 'decadence of
American industrial arts.' I've heard him. I say it's pure
affectation, that's what it is, pure affectation."

But the book-case meanwhile had been filling up, and now Laura
remarked:

"No more, Landry. That's all that will go here."

She prepared to descend from the ladder. In filling the higher
shelves she had mounted almost to the topmost step.

"Careful now," said Landry, as he came forward. "Give me your hand."

She gave it to him, and then, as she descended, Landry had the
assurance to put his arm around her waist as if to steady her. He
was surprised at his own audacity, for he had premeditated nothing,
and his arm was about her before he was well aware. He yet found
time to experience a qualm of apprehension. Just how would Laura
take it? Had he gone too far?

But Laura did not even seem to notice, all her attention apparently
fixed upon coming safely down to the floor. She descended and shook
out her skirts.

"There," she said, "that's over with. Look, I'm all dusty."

There was a knock at the half-open door. It was the cook.

"What are you going to have for supper, Miss Dearborn?" she
inquired. "There's nothing in the house."

"Oh, dear," said Laura with sudden blankness, "I never thought of
supper. Isn't there anything?"

"Nothing but some eggs and coffee." The cook assumed an air of
aloofness, as if the entire affair were totally foreign to any
interest or concern of hers. Laura dismissed her, saying that she
would see to it.

"We'll have to go out and get some things," she said. "We'll all go.
I'm tired of staying in the house."

"No, I've a better scheme," announced Landry. "I'll invite you all
out to dine with me. I know a place where you can get the best steak
in America. It has stopped raining. See," he showed her the window.

"But, Landry, we are all so dirty and miserable."

"We'll go right now and get there early. There will be nobody there,
and we can have a room to ourselves. Oh, it's all right," he
declared. "You just trust me."

"We'll see what Page and Aunt Wess' say. Of course Aunt Wess' would
have to come."

"Of course," he said. "I wouldn't think of asking you unless she
could come."

A little later the two sisters, Mrs. Wessels, and Landry came out of
the house, but before taking their car they crossed to the opposite
side of the street, Laura having said that she wanted to note the
effect of her parlour curtains from the outside.

"I think they are looped up just far enough," she declared. But
Landry was observing the house itself.

"It is the best-looking place on the block," he answered.

In fact, the house was not without a certain attractiveness. It
occupied a corner lot at the intersection of Huron and North State
streets. Directly opposite was St. James' Church, and at one time
the house had served as the rectory. For the matter of that, it had
been built for just that purpose. Its style of architecture was
distantly ecclesiastic, with a suggestion of Gothic to some of the
doors and windows. The material used was solid, massive, the walls
thick, the foundation heavy. It did not occupy the entire lot, the
original builder seeming to have preferred garden space to mere
amplitude of construction, and in addition to the inevitable "back
yard," a lawn bordered it on three sides. It gave the place a
certain air of distinction and exclusiveness. Vines grew thick upon
the southern walls; in the summer time fuchsias, geraniums, and
pansies would flourish in the flower beds by the front stoop. The
grass plat by the curb boasted a couple of trees. The whole place
was distinctive, individual, and very homelike, and came as a
grateful relief to the endless lines of houses built of yellow
Michigan limestone that pervaded the rest of the neighbourhood in
every direction.

"I love the place," exclaimed Laura. "I think it's as pretty a house
as I have seen in Chicago."

"Well, it isn't so spick and span," commented Page. "It gives you
the idea that we're not new-rich and showy and all."

But Aunt Wess' was not yet satisfied.

"_You_ may see, Laura," she remarked, "how you are going to heat all
that house with that one furnace, but I declare I don't."

Their car, or rather their train of cars, coupled together in
threes, in Chicago style, came, and Landry escorted them down town.
All the way Laura could not refrain from looking out of the windows,
absorbed in the contemplation of the life and aspects of the
streets.

"You will give yourself away," said Page. "Everybody will know
you're from the country."

"I am," she retorted. "But there's a difference between just mere
'country' and Massachusetts, and I'm not ashamed of it."

Chicago, the great grey city, interested her at every instant and
under every condition. As yet she was not sure that she liked it;
she could not forgive its dirty streets, the unspeakable squalor of
some of its poorer neighbourhoods that sometimes developed, like
cancerous growths, in the very heart of fine residence districts.
The black murk that closed every vista of the business streets
oppressed her, and the soot that stained linen and gloves each time
she stirred abroad was a never-ending distress.

But the life was tremendous. All around, on every side, in every
direction the vast machinery of Commonwealth clashed and thundered
from dawn to dark and from dark till dawn. Even now, as the car
carried her farther into the business quarter, she could hear it,
see it, and feel in her every fibre the trepidation of its motion.
The blackened waters of the river, seen an instant between
stanchions as the car trundled across the State Street bridge,
disappeared under fleets of tugs, of lake steamers, of lumber barges
from Sheboygan and Mackinac, of grain boats from Duluth, of coal
scows that filled the air with impalpable dust, of cumbersome
schooners laden with produce, of grimy rowboats dodging the prows
and paddles of the larger craft, while on all sides, blocking the
horizon, red in color and designated by Brobdignag letters, towered
the hump-shouldered grain elevators.

Just before crossing the bridge on the north side of the river she
had caught a glimpse of a great railway terminus. Down below there,
rectilinear, scientifically paralleled and squared, the Yard
disclosed itself. A system of grey rails beyond words complicated
opened out and spread immeasurably. Switches, semaphores, and signal
towers stood here and there. A dozen trains, freight and passenger,
puffed and steamed, waiting the word to depart. Detached engines
hurried in and out of sheds and roundhouses, seeking their trains,
or bunted the ponderous freight cars into switches; trundling up and
down, clanking, shrieking, their bells filling the air with the
clangour of tocsins. Men in visored caps shouted hoarsely, waving
their arms or red flags; drays, their big dappled horses, feeding in
their nose bags, stood backed up to the open doors of freight cars
and received their loads. A train departed roaring. Before midnight
it would be leagues away boring through the Great Northwest,
carrying Trade--the life blood of nations--into communities of which
Laura had never heard. Another train, reeking with fatigue, the air
brakes screaming, arrived and halted, debouching a flood of
passengers, business men, bringing Trade--a galvanising elixir--from
the very ends and corners of the continent.

Or, again, it was South Water Street--a jam of delivery wagons and
market carts backed to the curbs, leaving only a tortuous path
between the endless files of horses, suggestive of an actual barrack
of cavalry. Provisions, market produce, "garden truck" and fruits,
in an infinite welter of crates and baskets, boxes, and sacks,
crowded the sidewalks. The gutter was choked with an overflow of
refuse cabbage leaves, soft oranges, decaying beet tops. The air was
thick with the heavy smell of vegetation. Food was trodden under
foot, food crammed the stores and warehouses to bursting. Food
mingled with the mud of the highway. The very dray horses were
gorged with an unending nourishment of snatched mouthfuls picked
from backboard, from barrel top, and from the edge of the sidewalk.
The entire locality reeked with the fatness of a hundred thousand
furrows. A land of plenty, the inordinate abundance of the earth
itself emptied itself upon the asphalt and cobbles of the quarter.
It was the Mouth of the City, and drawn from all directions, over a
territory of immense area, this glut of crude subsistence was sucked
in, as if into a rapacious gullet, to feed the sinews and to nourish
the fibres of an immeasurable colossus.

Suddenly the meaning and significance of it all dawned upon Laura.
The Great Grey City, brooking no rival, imposed its dominion upon a
reach of country larger than many a kingdom of the Old World. For,
thousands of miles beyond its confines was its influence felt. Out,
far out, far away in the snow and shadow of Northern Wisconsin
forests, axes and saws bit the bark of century-old trees, stimulated
by this city's energy. Just as far to the southward pick and drill
leaped to the assault of veins of anthracite, moved by her central
power. Her force turned the wheels of harvester and seeder a
thousand miles distant in Iowa and Kansas. Her force spun the screws
and propellers of innumerable squadrons of lake steamers crowding
the Sault Sainte Marie. For her and because of her all the Central
States, all the Great Northwest roared with traffic and industry;
sawmills screamed; factories, their smoke blackening the sky,
clashed and flamed; wheels turned, pistons leaped in their
cylinders; cog gripped cog; beltings clasped the drums of mammoth
wheels; and converters of forges belched into the clouded air their
tempest breath of molten steel.

It was Empire, the resistless subjugation of all this central world
of the lakes and the prairies. Here, mid-most in the land, beat the
Heart of the Nation, whence inevitably must come its immeasurable
power, its infinite, infinite, inexhaustible vitality. Here, of all
her cities, throbbed the true life--the true power and spirit of
America; gigantic, crude with the crudity of youth, disdaining
rivalry; sane and healthy and vigorous; brutal in its ambition,
arrogant in the new-found knowledge of its giant strength, prodigal
of its wealth, infinite in its desires. In its capacity boundless,
in its courage indomitable; subduing the wilderness in a single
generation, defying calamity, and through the flame and the debris
of a commonwealth in ashes, rising suddenly renewed, formidable, and
Titanic.

Laura, her eyes dizzied, her ears stunned, watched tirelessly.

"There is something terrible about it," she murmured, half to
herself, "something insensate. In a way, it doesn't seem human. It's
like a great tidal wave. It's all very well for the individual just
so long as he can keep afloat, but once fallen, how horribly quick
it would crush him, annihilate him, how horribly quick, and with
such horrible indifference! I suppose it's civilisation in the
making, the thing that isn't meant to be seen, as though it were too
elemental, too--primordial; like the first verses of Genesis."

The impression remained long with her, and not even the gaiety of
their little supper could altogether disperse it. She was a little
frightened--frightened of the vast, cruel machinery of the city's
life, and of the men who could dare it, who conquered it. For a
moment they seemed, in a sense, more terrible than the city
itself--men for whom all this crash of conflict and commerce had no
terrors. Those who could subdue it to their purposes, must they not
be themselves more terrible, more pitiless, more brutal? She shrank
a little. What could women ever know of the life of men, after all?
Even Landry, extravagant as he was, so young, so exuberant, so
seemingly innocent--she knew that he was spoken of as a good
business man. He, too, then had his other side. For him the Battle
of the Street was an exhilaration. Beneath that boyish exterior was
the tough coarseness, the male hardness, the callousness that met
the brunt and withstood the shock of onset.

Ah, these men of the city, what could women ever know of them, of
their lives, of that other existence through which--freed from the
influence of wife or mother, or daughter or sister--they passed
every day from nine o'clock till evening? It was a life in which
women had no part, and in which, should they enter it, they would no
longer recognise son or husband, or father or brother. The
gentle-mannered fellow, clean-minded, clean-handed, of the breakfast
or supper table was one man. The other, who and what was he? Down
there in the murk and grime of the business district raged the
Battle of the Street, and therein he was a being transformed, case
hardened, supremely selfish, asking no quarter; no, nor giving any.
Fouled with the clutchings and grapplings of the attack, besmirched
with the elbowing of low associates and obscure allies, he set his
feet toward conquest, and mingled with the marchings of an army that
surged forever forward and back; now in merciless assault, beating
the fallen enemy under foot, now in repulse, equally merciless,
trampling down the auxiliaries of the day before, in a panic dash
for safety; always cruel, always selfish, always pitiless.

To contrast these men with such as Corthell was inevitable. She
remembered him, to whom the business district was an unexplored
country, who kept himself far from the fighting, his hands
unstained, his feet unsullied. He passed his life gently, in the
calm, still atmosphere of art, in the cult of the beautiful,
unperturbed, tranquil; painting, reading, or, piece by piece,
developing his beautiful stained glass. Him women could know, with
him they could sympathise. And he could enter fully into their lives
and help and stimulate them. Of the two existences which did she
prefer, that of the business man, or that of the artist?

Then suddenly Laura surprised herself. After all, she was a daughter
of the frontier, and the blood of those who had wrestled with a new
world flowed in her body. Yes, Corthell's was a beautiful life; the
charm of dim painted windows, the attraction of darkened studios
with their harmonies of color, their orientalisms, and their
arabesques was strong. No doubt it all had its place. It fascinated
her at times, in spite of herself. To relax the mind, to indulge the
senses, to live in an environment of pervading beauty was
delightful. But the men to whom the woman in her turned were not
those of the studio. Terrible as the Battle of the Street was, it
was yet battle. Only the strong and the brave might dare it, and the
figure that held her imagination and her sympathy was not the
artist, soft of hand and of speech, elaborating graces of sound and
color and form, refined, sensitive, and temperamental; but the
fighter, unknown and un-knowable to women as he was; hard, rigorous,
panoplied in the harness of the warrior, who strove among the
trumpets, and who, in the brunt of conflict, conspicuous,
formidable, set the battle in a rage around him, and exulted like a
champion in the shoutings of the captains.

They were not long at table, and by the time they were ready to
depart it was about half-past five. But when they emerged into the
street, it was discovered that once more the weather had abruptly
changed. It was snowing thickly. Again a bitter wind from off the
Lake tore through the streets. The slush and melted snow was
freezing, and the north side of every lamp post and telegraph pole
was sheeted with ice.

To add to their discomfort, the North State Street cars were
blocked. When they gained the corner of Washington Street they could
see where the congestion began, a few squares distant.

"There's nothing for it," declared Landry, "but to go over and get
the Clarke Street cars--and at that you may have to stand up all the
way home, at this time of day."

They paused, irresolute, a moment on the corner. It was the centre
of the retail quarter. Close at hand a vast dry goods house, built
in the old "iron-front" style, towered from the pavement, and
through its hundreds of windows presented to view a world of stuffs
and fabrics, upholsteries and textiles, kaleidoscopic, gleaming in
the fierce brilliance of a multitude of lights. From each street
doorway was pouring an army of "shoppers," women for the most part;
and these--since the store catered to a rich clientele--fashionably
dressed. Many of them stood for a moment on the threshold of the
storm-doorways, turning up the collars of their sealskins, settling
their hands in their muffs, and searching the street for their
coupes and carriages.

Among the number of those thus engaged, one, suddenly catching sight
of Laura, waved a muff in her direction, then came quickly forward.
It was Mrs. Cressler.

"Laura, my dearest girl! Of all the people. I am so glad to see
you!" She kissed Laura on the cheek, shook hands all around, and
asked about the sisters' new home. Did they want anything, or was
there anything she could do to help? Then interrupting herself, and
laying a glove on Laura's arm:

"I've got more to tell you."

She compressed her lips and stood off from Laura, fixing her with a
significant glance.

"Me? To tell me?"

"Where are you going now?"

"Home; but our cars are stopped. We must go over to--"

"Fiddlesticks! You and Page and Mrs. Wessels--all of you are coming
home and dine with me."

"But we've had dinner already," they all cried, speaking at once.

Page explained the situation, but Mrs. Cressler would not be denied.

"The carriage is right here," she said. "I don't have to call for
Charlie. He's got a man from Cincinnati in tow, and they are going
to dine at the Calumet Club."

It ended by the two sisters and Mrs. Wessels getting into Mrs.
Cressler's carriage. Landry excused himself. He lived on the South
Side, on Michigan Avenue, and declaring that he knew they had had
enough of him for one day, took himself off.

But whatever Mrs. Cressler had to tell Laura, she evidently was
determined to save for her ears only. Arrived at the Dearborns'
home, she sent her footman in to tell the "girl" that the family
would not be home that night. The Cresslers lived hard by on the
same street, and within ten minutes' walk of the Dearborns. The two
sisters and their aunt would be back immediately after breakfast.

When they had got home with Mrs. Cressler, this latter suggested hot
tea and sandwiches in the library, for the ride had been cold. But
the others, worn out, declared for bed as soon as Mrs. Cressler
herself had dined.

"Oh, bless you, Carrie," said Aunt Wess'; "I couldn't think of tea.
My back is just about broken, and I'm going straight to my bed."

Mrs. Cressler showed them to their rooms. Page and Mrs. Wessels
elected to sleep together, and once the door had closed upon them
the little girl unburdened herself.

"I suppose Laura thinks it's all right, running off like this for
the whole blessed night, and no one to look after the house but
those two servants that nobody knows anything about. As though there
weren't heaven knows what all to tend to there in the morning. I
just don't see," she exclaimed decisively, "how we're going to get
settled at all. That Landry Court! My goodness, he's more hindrance
than help. Did you ever see! He just dashes in as though he were
doing it all, and messes everything up, and loses things, and gets
things into the wrong place, and forgets this and that, and then he
and Laura sit down and spoon. I never saw anything like it. First
it's Corthell and then Landry, and next it will be somebody else.
Laura regularly mortifies me; a great, grown-up girl like that,
flirting, and letting every man she meets think that he's just the
one particular one of the whole earth. It's not good form. And
Landry--as if he didn't know we've got more to do now than just to
dawdle and dawdle. I could slap him. I like to see a man take life
seriously and try to amount to something, and not waste the best
years of his life trailing after women who are old enough to be his
grandmother, and don't mean that it will ever come to anything."

In her room, in the front of the house, Laura was partly undressed
when Mrs. Cressler knocked at her door. The latter had put on a
wrapper of flowered silk, and her hair was bound in "invisible
nets."

"I brought you a dressing-gown," she said. She hung it over the foot
of the bed, and sat down on the bed itself, watching Laura, who
stood before the glass of the bureau, her head bent upon her breast,
her hands busy with the back of her hair. From time to time the
hairpins clicked as she laid them down in the silver trays close at
hand. Then putting her chin in the air, she shook her head, and the
great braids, unlooped, fell to her waist.

"What pretty hair you have, child," murmured Mrs. Cressler. She was
settling herself for a long talk with her protege. She had much to
tell, but now that they had the whole night before them, could
afford to take her time.

Between the two women the conversation began slowly, with detached
phrases and observations that did not call necessarily for
answers--mere beginnings that they did not care to follow up.

"They tell me," said Mrs. Cressler, "that that Gretry girl smokes
ten cigarettes every night before she goes to bed. You know the
Gretrys--they were at the opera the other night."

Laura permitted herself an indefinite murmur of interest. Her head
to one side, she drew the brush in slow, deliberate movements
downward underneath the long, thick strands of her hair. Mrs.
Cressler watched her attentively.

"Why don't you wear your hair that new way, Laura," she remarked,
"farther down on your neck? I see every one doing it now."

The house was very still. Outside the double windows they could hear
the faint murmuring click of the frozen snow. A radiator in the
hallway clanked and strangled for a moment, then fell quiet again.

"What a pretty room this is," said Laura. "I think I'll have to do
our guest room something like this--a sort of white and gold effect.
My hair? Oh, I don't know. Wearing it low that way makes it catch so
on the hooks of your collar, and, besides, I was afraid it would
make my head look so flat."

There was a silence. Laura braided a long strand, with quick,
regular motions of both hands, and letting it fall over her
shoulder, shook it