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Title: The Pit
Author: Frank Norris
Release Date: August, 2003 [Etext# 4382]
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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 into place with a twist of her head. She stepped
out of her skirt, and Mrs. Cressler handed her her dressing-gown,
and brought out a pair of quilted slippers of red satin from the
wardrobe.
In the grate, the fire that had been lighted just before they had
come upstairs was crackling sharply. Laura drew up an armchair and
sat down in front of it, her chin in her hand. Mrs. Cressler
stretched herself upon the bed, an arm behind her head.
"Well, Laura," she began at length, "I have some real news for you.
My dear, I believe you've made a conquest."
"I!" murmured Laura, looking around. She feigned a surprise, though
she guessed at once that Mrs. Cressler had Corthell in mind.
"That Mr. Jadwin--the one you met at the opera."
Genuinely taken aback, Laura sat upright and stared wide-eyed.
"Mr. Jadwin!" she exclaimed. "Why, we didn't have five minutes'
talk. Why, I hardly know the man. I only met him last night."
But Mrs. Cressler shook her head, closing her eyes and putting her
lips together.
"That don't make any difference, Laura. Trust me to tell when a man
is taken with a girl. My dear, you can have him as easy as that."
She snapped her fingers.
"Oh, I'm sure you're mistaken, Mrs. Cressler."
"Not in the least. I've known Curtis Jadwin now for fifteen
years--nobody better. He's as old a family friend as Charlie and I
have. I know him like a book. And I tell you the man is in love with
you."
"Well, I hope he didn't tell you as much," cried Laura, promising
herself to be royally angry if such was the case. But Mrs. Cressler
hastened to reassure her.
"Oh my, no. But all the way home last night--he came home with us,
you know--he kept referring to you, and just so soon as the
conversation got on some other subject he would lose interest. He
wanted to know all about you--oh, you know how a man will talk," she
exclaimed. "And he said you had more sense and more intelligence
than any girl he had ever known."
"Oh, well," answered Laura deprecatingly, as if to say that that did
not count for much with her.
"And that you were simply beautiful. He said that he never
remembered to have seen a more beautiful woman."
Laura turned her head away, a hand shielding her cheek. She did not
answer immediately, then at length:
"Has he--this Mr. Jadwin--has he ever been married before?"
"No, no. He's a bachelor, and rich! He could buy and sell us. And
don't think, Laura dear, that I'm jumping at conclusions. I hope I'm
woman of the world enough to know that a man who's taken with a
pretty face and smart talk isn't going to rush right into matrimony
because of that. It wasn't so much what Curtis Jadwin said--though,
dear me suz, he talked enough about you--as what he didn't say. I
could tell. He was thinking hard. He was hit, Laura. I know he was.
And Charlie said he spoke about you again this morning at breakfast.
Charlie makes me tired sometimes," she added irrelevantly.
"Charlie?" repeated Laura.
"Well, of course I spoke to him about Jadwin, and how taken he
seemed with you, and the man roared at me."
"_He_ didn't believe it, then."
"Yes he did--when I could get him to talk seriously about it, and
when I made him remember how Mr. Jadwin had spoken in the carriage
coming home."
Laura curled her leg under her and sat nursing her foot and looking
into the fire. For a long time neither spoke. A little clock of
brass and black marble began to chime, very prettily, the half hour
of nine. Mrs. Cressler observed:
"That Sheldon Corthell seems to be a very agreeable kind of a young
man, doesn't he?"
"Yes," replied Laura thoughtfully, "he is agreeable."
"And a talented fellow, too," continued Mrs. Cressler. "But somehow
it never impressed me that there was very much to him."
"Oh," murmured Laura indifferently, "I don't know."
"I suppose," Mrs. Cressler went on, in a tone of resignation, "I
suppose he thinks the world and all of _you?_"
Laura raised a shoulder without answering.
"Charlie can't abide him," said Mrs. Cressler. "Funny, isn't it what
prejudices men have? Charlie always speaks of him as though he were
a higher order of glazier. Curtis Jadwin seems to like him.... What
do you think of him, Laura--of Mr. Jadwin?"
"I don't know," she answered, looking vaguely into the fire. "I
thought he was a strong man--mentally I mean, and that he would be
kindly and--and--generous. Somehow," she said, musingly, "I didn't
think he would be the sort of man that women would take to, at
first--but then I don't know. I saw very little of him, as I say. He
didn't impress me as being a woman's man."
"All the better," said the other. "Who would want to marry a woman's
man? I wouldn't. Sheldon Corthell is that. I tell you one thing,
Laura, and when you are as old as I am, you'll know it's true: the
kind of a man that men like--not women--is the kind of a man that
makes the best husband."
Laura nodded her head.
"Yes," she answered, listlessly, "I suppose that's true."
"You said Jadwin struck you as being a kindly man, a generous man.
He's just that, and that charitable! You know he has a Sunday-school
over on the West Side, a Sunday-school for mission children, and I
do believe he's more interested in that than in his business. He
wants to make it the biggest Sunday-school in Chicago. It's an
ambition of his. I don't want you to think that he's good in a
goody-goody way, because he's not. Laura," she exclaimed, "he's a
fine man. I didn't intend to brag him up to you, because I wanted
you to like him. But no one knows--as I say--no one knows Curtis
Jadwin better than Charlie and I, and we just _love_ him. The
kindliest, biggest-hearted fellow--oh, well, you'll know him for
yourself, and then you'll see. He passes the plate in our church."
"Dr. Wendell's church?" asked Laura.
"Yes you know--the Second Presbyterian."
"I'm Episcopalian myself," observed Laura, still thoughtfully gazing
into the fire.
"I know, I know. But Jadwin isn't the blue-nosed sort. And now see
here, Laura, I want to tell you. J.--that's what Charlie and I call
Jadwin--J. was talking to us the other day about supporting a ward
in the Children's Hospital for the children of his Sunday-school
that get hurt or sick. You see he has nearly eight hundred boys and
girls in his school, and there's not a week passes that he don't
hear of some one of them who has been hurt or taken sick. And he
wants to start a ward at the Children's Hospital, that can take care
of them. He says he wants to get other people interested, too, and
so he wants to start a contribution. He says he'll double any amount
that's raised in the next six months--that is, if there's two
thousand raised, he'll make it four thousand; understand? And so
Charlie and I and the Gretrys are going to get up an amateur play--a
charity affair--and raise as much money as we can. J. thinks it's a
good idea, and--here's the point--we were talking about it coming
home in the carriage, and J. said he wondered if that Miss Dearborn
wouldn't take part. And we are all wild to have you. You know you do
that sort of thing so well. Now don't say yes or no to-night. You
sleep over it. J. is crazy to have you in it."
"I'd love to do it," answered Laura. "But I would have to see--it
takes so long to get settled, and there's so much to do about a big
house like ours, I might not have time. But I will let you know."
Mrs. Cressler told her in detail about the proposed play. Landry
Court was to take part, and she enlisted Laura's influence to get
Sheldon Corthell to undertake a role. Page, it appeared, had already
promised to help. Laura remembered now that she had heard her speak
of it. However, the plan was so immature as yet, that it hardly
admitted of very much discussion, and inevitably the conversation
came back to its starting-point.
"You know," Laura had remarked in answer to one of Mrs. Cressler's
observations upon the capabilities and business ability of "J.,"
"you know I never heard of him before you spoke of our theatre
party. I don't know anything about him."
But Mrs. Cressler promptly supplied the information. Curtis Jadwin
was a man about thirty-five, who had begun life without a sou in his
pockets. He was a native of Michigan. His people were farmers,
nothing more nor less than hardy, honest fellows, who ploughed and
sowed for a living. Curtis had only a rudimentary schooling, because
he had given up the idea of finishing his studies in the High School
in Grand Rapids, on the chance of going into business with a livery
stable keeper. Then in time he had bought out the business and had
run it for himself. Some one in Chicago owed him money, and in
default of payment had offered him a couple of lots on Wabash
Avenue. That was how he happened to come to Chicago. Naturally
enough as the city grew the Wabash Avenue property--it was near
Monroe Street--increased in value. He sold the lots and bought other
real estate, sold that and bought somewhere else, and so on, till he
owned some of the best business sites in the city. Just his ground
rent alone brought him, heaven knew how many thousands a year. He
was one of the largest real estate owners in Chicago. But he no
longer bought and sold. His property had grown so large that just
the management of it alone took up most of his time. He had an
office in the Rookery, and perhaps being so close to the Board of
Trade Building, had given him a taste for trying a little deal in
wheat now and then. As a rule, he deplored speculation. He had no
fixed principles about it, like Charlie. Only he was conservative;
occasionally he hazarded small operations. Somehow he had never
married. There had been affairs. Oh, yes, one or two, of course.
Nothing very serious, He just didn't seem to have met the right
girl, that was all. He lived on Michigan Avenue, near the corner of
Twenty-first Street, in one of those discouraging eternal yellow
limestone houses with a basement dining-room. His aunt kept house
for him, and his nieces and nephews overran the place. There was
always a raft of them there, either coming or going; and the way
they exploited him! He supported them all; heaven knew how many
there were; such drabs and gawks, all elbows and knees, who soaked
themselves with cologne and made companions of the servants. They
and the second girls were always squabbling about their things that
they found in each other's rooms.
It was growing late. At length Mrs. Cressler rose.
"My goodness, Laura, look at the time; and I've been keeping you up
when you must be killed for sleep."
She took herself away, pausing at the doorway long enough to say:
"Do try to manage to take part in the play. J. made me promise that
I would get you."
"Well, I think I can," Laura answered. "Only I'll have to see first
how our new regime is going to run--the house I mean."
When Mrs. Cressler had gone Laura lost no time in getting to bed.
But after she turned out the gas she remembered that she had not
"covered" the fire, a custom that she still retained from the daily
round of her life at Barrington. She did not light the gas again,
but guided by the firelight, spread a shovelful of ashes over the
top of the grate. Yet when she had done this, she still knelt there
a moment, looking wide-eyed into the glow, thinking over the events
of the last twenty-four hours. When all was said and done, she had,
after all, found more in Chicago than the clash and trepidation of
empire-making, more than the reverberation of the thunder of battle,
more than the piping and choiring of sweet music.
First it had been Sheldon Corthell, quiet, persuasive, eloquent.
Then Landry Court with his exuberance and extravagance and
boyishness, and now--unexpectedly--behold, a new element had
appeared--this other one, this man of the world, of affairs, mature,
experienced, whom she hardly knew. It was charming she told herself,
exciting. Life never had seemed half so delightful. Romantic, she
felt Romance, unseen, intangible, at work all about her. And love,
which of all things knowable was dearest to her, came to her
unsought.
Her first aversion to the Great Grey City was fast disappearing. She
saw it now in a kindlier aspect.
"I think," she said at last, as she still knelt before the fire,
looking deep into the coals, absorbed, abstracted, "I think that I
am going to be very happy here."
III
On a certain Monday morning, about a month later, Curtis Jadwin
descended from his office in the Rookery Building, and turning
southward, took his way toward the brokerage and commission office
of Gretry, Converse and Co., on the ground floor of the Board of
Trade Building, only a few steps away.
It was about nine o'clock; the weather was mild, the sun shone. La
Salle Street swarmed with the multitudinous life that seethed about
the doors of the innumerable offices of brokers and commission men
of the neighbourhood. To the right, in the peristyle of the Illinois
Trust Building, groups of clerks, of messengers, of brokers, of
clients, and of depositors formed and broke incessantly. To the
left, where the facade of the Board of Trade blocked the street, the
activity was astonishing, and in and out of the swing doors of its
entrance streamed an incessant tide of coming and going. All the
life of the neighbourhood seemed to centre at this point--the
entrance of the Board of Trade. Two currents that trended swiftly
through La Salle and Jackson streets, and that fed, or were fed by,
other tributaries that poured in through Fifth Avenue and through
Clarke and Dearborn streets, met at this point--one setting in, the
other out. The nearer the currents the greater their speed.
Men--mere flotsam in the flood--as they turned into La Salle Street
from Adams or from Monroe, or even from as far as Madison, seemed to
accelerate their pace as they approached. At the Illinois Trust the
walk became a stride, at the Rookery the stride was almost a trot.
But at the corner of Jackson Street, the Board of Trade now merely
the width of the street away, the trot became a run, and young men
and boys, under the pretence of escaping the trucks and wagons of
the cobbles, dashed across at a veritable gallop, flung themselves
panting into the entrance of the Board, were engulfed in the turmoil
of the spot, and disappeared with a sudden fillip into the gloom of
the interior.
Often Jadwin had noted the scene, and, unimaginative though he was,
had long since conceived the notion of some great, some resistless
force within the Board of Trade Building that held the tide of the
streets within its grip, alternately drawing it in and throwing it
forth. Within there, a great whirlpool, a pit of roaring waters spun
and thundered, sucking in the life tides of the city, sucking them
in as into the mouth of some tremendous cloaca, the maw of some
colossal sewer; then vomiting them forth again, spewing them up and
out, only to catch them in the return eddy and suck them in afresh.
Thus it went, day after day. Endlessly, ceaselessly the Pit,
enormous, thundering, sucked in and spewed out, sending the swirl of
its mighty central eddy far out through the city's channels.
Terrible at the centre, it was, at the circumference, gentle,
insidious and persuasive, the send of the flowing so mild, that to
embark upon it, yielding to the influence, was a pleasure that
seemed all devoid of risk. But the circumference was not bounded by
the city. All through the Northwest, all through the central world
of the Wheat the set and whirl of that innermost Pit made itself
felt; and it spread and spread and spread till grain in the
elevators of Western Iowa moved and stirred and answered to its
centripetal force, and men upon the streets of New York felt the
mysterious tugging of its undertow engage their feet, embrace their
bodies, overwhelm them, and carry them bewildered and unresisting
back and downwards to the Pit itself.
Nor was the Pit's centrifugal power any less. Because of some sudden
eddy spinning outward from the middle of its turmoil, a dozen
bourses of continental Europe clamoured with panic, a dozen
Old-World banks, firm as the established hills, trembled and
vibrated. Because of an unexpected caprice in the swirling of the
inner current, some far-distant channel suddenly dried, and the
pinch of famine made itself felt among the vine dressers of Northern
Italy, the coal miners of Western Prussia. Or another channel
filled, and the starved moujik of the steppes, and the
hunger-shrunken coolie of the Ganges' watershed fed suddenly fat and
made thank offerings before ikon and idol.
There in the centre of the Nation, midmost of that continent that
lay between the oceans of the New World and the Old, in the heart's
heart of the affairs of men, roared and rumbled the Pit. It was as
if the Wheat, Nourisher of the Nations, as it rolled gigantic and
majestic in a vast flood from West to East, here, like a Niagara,
finding its flow impeded, burst suddenly into the appalling fury of
the Maelstrom, into the chaotic spasm of a world-force, a primeval
energy, blood-brother of the earthquake and the glacier, raging and
wrathful that its power should be braved by some pinch of human
spawn that dared raise barriers across its courses.
Small wonder that Cressler laughed at the thought of cornering
wheat, and even now as Jadwin crossed Jackson Street, on his way to
his broker's office on the lower floor of the Board of Trade
Building, he noted the ebb and flow that issued from its doors, and
remembered the huge river of wheat that rolled through this place
from the farms of Iowa and ranches of Dakota to the mills and
bakeshops of Europe.
"There's something, perhaps, in what Charlie says," he said to
himself. "Corner this stuff--my God!"
Gretry, Converse & Co. was the name of the brokerage firm that
always handled Jadwin's rare speculative ventures. Converse was dead
long since, but the firm still retained its original name. The house
was as old and as well established as any on the Board of Trade. It
had a reputation for conservatism, and was known more as a Bear than
a Bull concern. It was immensely wealthy and immensely important. It
discouraged the growth of a clientele of country customers, of small
adventurers, knowing well that these were the first to go in a
crash, unable to meet margin calls, and leaving to their brokers the
responsibility of their disastrous trades. The large, powerful Bears
were its friends, the Bears strong of grip, tenacious of jaw,
capable of pulling down the strongest Bull. Thus the firm had no
consideration for the "outsiders," the "public"--the Lambs. The
Lambs! Such a herd, timid, innocent, feeble, as much out of place in
La Salle Street as a puppy in a cage of panthers; the Lambs, whom
Bull and Bear did not so much as condescend to notice, but who, in
their mutual struggle of horn and claw, they crushed to death by the
mere rolling of their bodies.
Jadwin did not go directly into Gretry's main office, but instead
made his way in at the entrance of the Board of Trade Building, and
going on past the stairways that on either hand led up to the
"Floor" on the second story, entered the corridor beyond, and thence
gained the customers' room of Gretry, Converse & Co. All the more
important brokerage firms had offices on the ground floor of the
building, offices that had two entrances, one giving upon the
street, and one upon the corridor of the Board. Generally the
corridor entrance admitted directly to the firm's customers' room.
This was the case with the Gretry-Converse house.
Once in the customers' room, Jadwin paused, looking about him.
He could not tell why Gretry had so earnestly desired him to come to
his office that morning, but he wanted to know how wheat was selling
before talking to the broker. The room was large, and but for the
lighted gas, burning crudely without globes, would have been dark.
All one wall opposite the door was taken up by a great blackboard
covered with chalked figures in columns, and illuminated by a row of
overhead gas jets burning under a tin reflector. Before this board
files of chairs were placed, and these were occupied by groups of
nondescripts, shabbily dressed men, young and old, with tired eyes
and unhealthy complexions, who smoked and expectorated, or engaged
in interminable conversations.
In front of the blackboard, upon a platform, a young man in
shirt-sleeves, his cuffs caught up by metal clamps, walked up and
down. Screwed to the blackboard itself was a telegraph instrument,
and from time to time, as this buzzed and ticked, the young man
chalked up cabalistic, and almost illegible figures under columns
headed by initials of certain stocks and bonds, or by the words
"Pork," "Oats," or, larger than all the others, "May Wheat." The air
of the room was stale, close, and heavy with tobacco fumes. The only
noises were the low hum of conversations, the unsteady click of the
telegraph key, and the tapping of the chalk in the marker's fingers.
But no one in the room seemed to pay the least attention to the
blackboard. One quotation replaced another, and the key and the
chalk clicked and tapped incessantly. The occupants of the room,
sunk in their chairs, seemed to give no heed; some even turned their
backs; one, his handkerchief over his knee, adjusted his spectacles,
and opening a newspaper two days old, began to read with peering
deliberation, his lips forming each word. These nondescripts
gathered there, they knew not why. Every day found them in the same
place, always with the same fetid, unlighted cigars, always with the
same frayed newspapers two days old. There they sat, inert, stupid,
their decaying senses hypnotised and soothed by the sound of the
distant rumble of the Pit, that came through the ceiling from the
floor of the Board overhead.
One of these figures, that of a very old man, blear-eyed, decrepit,
dirty, in a battered top hat and faded frock coat, discoloured and
weather-stained at the shoulders, seemed familiar to Jadwin. It
recalled some ancient association, he could not say what. But he was
unable to see the old man's face distinctly; the light was bad, and
he sat with his face turned from him, eating a sandwich, which he
held in a trembling hand.
Jadwin, having noted that wheat was selling at 94, went away, glad
to be out of the depressing atmosphere of the room.
Gretry was in his office, and Jadwin was admitted at once. He sat
down in a chair by the broker's desk, and for the moment the two
talked of trivialities. Gretry was a large, placid, smooth-faced
man, stolid as an ox; inevitably dressed in blue serge, a quill
tooth-pick behind his ear, a Grand Army button in his lapel. He and
Jadwin were intimates. The two had come to Chicago almost
simultaneously, and had risen together to become the wealthy men
they were at the moment. They belonged to the same club, lunched
together every day at Kinsley's, and took each other driving behind
their respective trotters on alternate Saturday afternoons. In the
middle of summer each stole a fortnight from his business, and went
fishing at Geneva Lake in Wisconsin.
"I say," Jadwin observed, "I saw an old fellow outside in your
customers' room just now that put me in mind of Hargus. You remember
that deal of his, the one he tried to swing before he died. Oh--how
long ago was that? Bless my soul, that must have been fifteen, yes
twenty years ago."
The deal of which Jadwin spoke was the legendary operation of the
Board of Trade--a mammoth corner in September wheat, manipulated by
this same Hargus, a millionaire, who had tripled his fortune by the
corner, and had lost it by some chicanery on the part of his
associate before another year. He had run wheat up to nearly two
dollars, had been in his day a king all-powerful. Since then all
deals had been spoken of in terms of the Hargus affair. Speculators
said, "It was almost as bad as the Hargus deal." "It was like the
Hargus smash." "It was as big a thing as the Hargus corner." Hargus
had become a sort of creature of legends, mythical, heroic,
transfigured in the glory of his millions.
"Easily twenty years ago," continued Jadwin. "If Hargus could come
to life now, he'd be surprised at the difference in the way we do
business these days. Twenty years. Yes, it's all of that. I declare,
Sam, we're getting old, aren't we?"
"I guess that was Hargus you saw out there," answered the broker.
"He's not dead. Old fellow in a stove-pipe and greasy frock coat?
Yes, that's Hargus."
"What!" exclaimed Jadwin. "_That_ Hargus?"
"Of course it was. He comes 'round every day. The clerks give him a
dollar every now and then."
"And he's not dead? And that was Hargus, that wretched,
broken--whew! I don't want to think of it, Sam!" And Jadwin, taken
all aback, sat for a moment speechless.
"Yes, sir," muttered the broker grimly, "that was Hargus."
There was a long silence. Then at last Gretry exclaimed briskly:
"Well, here's what I want to see you about."
He lowered his voice: "You know I've got a correspondent or two at
Paris--all the brokers have--and we make no secret as to who they
are. But I've had an extra man at work over there for the last six
months, very much on the quiet. I don't mind telling you this
much--that he's not the least important member of the United States
Legation. Well, now and then he is supposed to send me what the
reporters call "exclusive news"--that's what I feed him for, and I
could run a private steam yacht on what it costs me. But news I get
from him is a day or so in advance of everybody else. He hasn't sent
me anything very important till this morning. This here just came
in."
He picked up a despatch from his desk and read:
"'Utica--headquarters--modification--organic--concomitant--within
one month,' which means," he added, "this. I've just deciphered it,"
and he handed Jadwin a slip of paper on which was written:
"Bill providing for heavy import duties on foreign grains certain to
be introduced in French Chamber of Deputies within one month."
"Have you got it?" he demanded of Jadwin, as he took the slip back.
"Won't forget it?" He twisted the paper into a roll and burned it
carefully in the office cuspidor.
"Now," he remarked, "do you come in? It's just the two of us, J.,
and I think we can make that Porteous clique look very sick."
"Hum!" murmured Jadwin surprised. "That does give you a twist on the
situation. But to tell the truth, Sam, I had sort of made up my mind
to keep out of speculation since my last little deal. A man gets
into this game, and into it, and into it, and before you know he
can't pull out--and he don't want to. Next he gets his nose
scratched, and he hits back to make up for it, and just hits into
the air and loses his balance--and down he goes. I don't want to
make any more money, Sam. I've got my little pile, and before I get
too old I want to have some fun out of it."
"But lord love you, J.," objected the other, "this ain't
speculation. You can see for yourself how sure it is. I'm not a baby
at this business, am I? You'll let me know something of this game,
won't you? And I tell you, J., it's found money. The man that sells
wheat short on the strength of this has as good as got the money in
his vest pocket already. Oh, nonsense, of course you'll come in.
I've been laying for that Bull gang since long before the Helmick
failure, and now I've got it right where I want it. Look here, J.,
you aren't the man to throw money away. You'd buy a business block
if you knew you could sell it over again at a profit. Now here's the
chance to make really a fine Bear deal. Why, as soon as this news
gets on the floor there, the price will bust right down, and down,
and down. Porteous and his crowd couldn't keep it up to save 'em
from the receiver's hand one single minute."
"I know, Sam," answered Jadwin, "and the trouble is, not that I
don't want to speculate, but that I do--too much. That's why I said
I'd keep out of it. It isn't so much the money as the fun of playing
the game. With half a show, I would get in a little more and a
little more, till by and by I'd try to throw a big thing, and
instead, the big thing would throw me. Why, Sam, when you told me
that that wreck out there mumbling a sandwich was Hargus, it made me
turn cold."
"Yes, in your feet," retorted Gretry. "I'm not asking you to risk
all your money, am I, or a fifth of it, or a twentieth of it? Don't
be an ass, J. Are we a conservative house, or aren't we? Do I talk
like this when I'm not sure? Look here. Let me sell a million
bushels for you. Yes, I know it's a bigger order than I've handled
for you before. But this time I want to go right into it, head down
and heels up, and get a twist on those Porteous buckoes, and raise
'em right out of their boots. We get a crop report this morning, and
if the visible supply is as large as I think it is, the price will
go off and unsettle the whole market. I'll sell short for you at the
best figures we can get, and you can cover on the slump any time
between now and the end of May."
Jadwin hesitated. In spite of himself he felt a Chance had come.
Again that strange sixth sense of his, the inexplicable instinct,
that only the born speculator knows, warned him. Every now and then
during the course of his business career, this intuition came to
him, this flair, this intangible, vague premonition, this
presentiment that he must seize Opportunity or else Fortune, that so
long had stayed at his elbow, would desert him. In the air about him
he seemed to feel an influence, a sudden new element, the presence
of a new force. It was Luck, the great power, the great goddess, and
all at once it had stooped from out the invisible, and just over his
head passed swiftly in a rush of glittering wings.
"The thing would have to be handled like glass," observed the broker
thoughtfully, his eyes narrowing "A tip like this is public property
in twenty-four hours, and it don't give us any too much time. I
don't want to break the price by unloading a million or more bushels
on 'em all of a sudden. I'll scatter the orders pretty evenly. You
see," he added, "here's a big point in our favor. We'll be able to
sell on a strong market. The Pit traders have got some crazy war
rumour going, and they're as flighty over it as a young ladies'
seminary over a great big rat. And even without that, the market is
top-heavy. Porteous makes me weary. He and his gang have been
bucking it up till we've got an abnormal price. Ninety-four for May
wheat! Why, it's ridiculous. Ought to be selling way down in the
eighties. The least little jolt would tip her over. Well," he said
abruptly, squaring himself at Jadwin, "do we come in? If that same
luck of yours is still in working order, here's your chance, J., to
make a killing. There's just that gilt-edged, full-morocco chance
that a report of big 'visible' would give us."
Jadwin laughed. "Sam," he said, "I'll flip a coin for it."
"Oh, get out," protested the broker; then suddenly--the gambling
instinct that a lifetime passed in that place had cultivated in
him--exclaimed:
"All right. Flip a coin. But give me your word you'll stay by it.
Heads you come in; tails you don't. Will you give me your word?"
"Oh, I don't know about that," replied Jadwin, amused at the
foolishness of the whole proceeding. But as he balanced the half-dollar
on his thumb-nail, he was all at once absolutely assured that
it would fall heads. He flipped it in the air, and even as he
watched it spin, said to himself, "It will come heads. It could not
possibly be anything else. I know it will be heads."
And as a matter of course the coin fell heads.
"All right," he said, "I'll come in."
"For a million bushels?"
"Yes--for a million. How much in margins will you want?"
Gretry figured a moment on the back of an envelope.
"Fifty thousand dollars," he announced at length.
Jadwin wrote the check on a corner of the broker's desk, and held it
a moment before him.
"Good-bye," he said, apostrophising the bit of paper. "Good-bye. I
ne'er shall look upon your like again."
Gretry did not laugh.
"Huh!" he grunted. "You'll look upon a hatful of them before the
month is out."
That same morning Landry Court found himself in the corridor on the
ground floor of the Board of Trade about nine o'clock. He had just
come out of the office of Gretry, Converse & Co., where he and the
other Pit traders for the house had been receiving their orders for
the day.
As he was buying a couple of apples at the news stand at the end of
the corridor, Semple and a young Jew named Hirsch, Pit traders for
small firms in La Salle Street, joined him.
"Hello, Court, what do you know?"
"Hello, Barry Semple! Hello, Hirsch!" Landry offered the halves of
his second apple, and the three stood there a moment, near the foot
of the stairs, talking and eating their apples from the points of
their penknives.
"I feel sort of seedy this morning," Semple observed between
mouthfuls. "Was up late last night at a stag. A friend of mine just
got back from Europe, and some of the boys were giving him a little
dinner. He was all over the shop, this friend of mine; spent most of
his time in Constantinople; had some kind of newspaper business
there. It seems that it's a pretty crazy proposition, Turkey and the
Sultan and all that. He said that there was nearly a row over the
'Higgins-Pasha' incident, and that the British agent put it pretty
straight to the Sultan's secretary. My friend said Constantinople
put him in mind of a lot of opera bouffe scenery that had got
spilled out in the mud. Say, Court, he said the streets were dirtier
than the Chicago streets."
"Oh, come now," said Hirsch.
"Fact! And the dogs! He told us he knows now where all the yellow
dogs go to when they die."
"But say," remarked Hirsch, "what is that about the Higgins-Pasha
business? I thought that was over long ago."
"Oh, it is," answered Semple easily. He looked at his watch. "I
guess it's about time to go up, pretty near half-past nine."
The three mounted the stairs, mingling with the groups of floor
traders who, in steadily increasing numbers, had begun to move in
the same direction. But on the way Hirsch was stopped by his
brother.
"Hey, I got that box of cigars for you."
Hirsch paused. "Oh! All right," he said, then he added: "Say, how
about that Higgins-Pasha affair? You remember that row between
England and Turkey. They tell me the British agent in Constantinople
put it pretty straight to the Sultan the other day."
The other was interested. "He did, hey?" he said. "The market hasn't
felt it, though. Guess there's nothing to it. But there's Kelly
yonder. He'd know. He's pretty thick with Porteous' men. Might ask
him."
"You ask him and let me know. I got to go on the floor. It's nearly
time for the gong."
Hirsch's brother found Kelly in the centre of a group of settlement
clerks.
"Say, boy," he began, "you ought to know. They tell me there may be
trouble between England and Turkey over the Higgins-Pasha incident,
and that the British Foreign Office has threatened the Sultan with
an ultimatum. I can see the market if that's so."
"Nothing in it," retorted Kelly. "But I'll find out--to make sure,
by jingo."
Meanwhile Landry had gained the top of the stairs, and turning to
the right, passed through a great doorway, and came out upon the
floor of the Board of Trade.
It was a vast enclosure, lighted on either side by great windows of
coloured glass, the roof supported by thin iron pillars elaborately
decorated. To the left were the bulletin blackboards, and beyond
these, in the northwest angle of the floor, a great railed-in space
where the Western Union Telegraph was installed. To the right, on
the other side of the room, a row of tables, laden with neatly
arranged paper bags half full of samples of grains, stretched along
the east wall from the doorway of the public room at one end to the
telephone room at the other.
The centre of the floor was occupied by the pits. To the left and to
the front of Landry the provision pit, to the right the corn pit,
while further on at the north extremity of the floor, and nearly
under the visitors' gallery, much larger than the other two, and
flanked by the wicket of the official recorder, was the wheat pit
itself.
Directly opposite the visitors' gallery, high upon the south wall a
great dial was affixed, and on the dial a marking hand that
indicated the current price of wheat, fluctuating with the changes
made in the Pit. Just now it stood at ninety-three and
three-eighths, the closing quotation of the preceding day.
As yet all the pits were empty. It was some fifteen minutes after
nine. Landry checked his hat and coat at the coat room near the
north entrance, and slipped into an old tennis jacket of striped
blue flannel. Then, hatless, his hands in his pockets, he leisurely
crossed the floor, and sat down in one of the chairs that were
ranged in files upon the floor in front of the telegraph enclosure.
He scrutinised again the despatches and orders that he held in his
hands; then, having fixed them in his memory, tore them into very
small bits, looking vaguely about the room, developing his plan of
campaign for the morning.
In a sense Landry Court had a double personality. Away from the
neighbourhood and influence of La Salle Street, he was
"rattle-brained," absent-minded, impractical, and easily excited,
the last fellow in the world to be trusted with any business
responsibility. But the thunder of the streets around the Board of
Trade, and, above all, the movement and atmosphere of the floor
itself awoke within him a very different Landry Court; a whole new
set of nerves came into being with the tap of the nine-thirty gong,
a whole new system of brain machinery began to move with the first
figure called in the Pit. And from that instant until the close of
the session, no floor trader, no broker's clerk nor scalper was more
alert, more shrewd, or kept his head more surely than the same young
fellow who confused his social engagements for the evening of the
same day. The Landry Court the Dearborn girls knew was a far
different young man from him who now leaned his elbows on the arms
of the chair upon the floor of the Board, and, his eyes narrowing,
his lips tightening, began to speculate upon what was to be the
temper of the Pit that morning.
Meanwhile the floor was beginning to fill up. Over in the railed-in
space, where the hundreds of telegraph instruments were in place,
the operators were arriving in twos and threes. They hung their hats
and ulsters upon the pegs in the wall back of them, and in linen
coats, or in their shirt-sleeves, went to their seats, or, sitting
upon their tables, called back and forth to each other, joshing,
cracking jokes. Some few addressed themselves directly to work, and
here and there the intermittent clicking of a key began, like a
diligent cricket busking himself in advance of its mates.
From the corridors on the ground floor up through the south doors
came the pit traders in increasing groups. The noise of footsteps
began to echo from the high vaulting of the roof. A messenger boy
crossed the floor chanting an unintelligible name.
The groups of traders gradually converged upon the corn and wheat
pits, and on the steps of the latter, their arms crossed upon their
knees, two men, one wearing a silk skull cap all awry, conversed
earnestly in low tones.
Winston, a great, broad-shouldered bass-voiced fellow of some
thirty-five years, who was associated with Landry in executing the
orders of the Gretry-Converse house, came up to him, and, omitting
any salutation, remarked, deliberately, slowly:
"What's all this about this trouble between Turkey and England?"
But before Landry could reply a third trader for the Gretry Company
joined the two. This was a young fellow named Rusbridge, lean,
black-haired, a constant excitement glinting in his deep-set eyes.
"Say," he exclaimed, "there's something in that, there's something
in that!"
"Where did you hear it?" demanded Landry.
"Oh--everywhere." Rusbridge made a vague gesture with one arm.
"Hirsch seemed to know all about it. It appears that there's talk of
mobilising the Mediterranean squadron. Darned if I know."
"Might ask that 'Inter-Ocean' reporter. He'd be likely to know. I've
seen him 'round here this morning, or you might telephone the
Associated Press," suggested Landry. "The office never said a word
to me."
"Oh, the 'Associated.' They know a lot always, don't they?" jeered
Winston. "Yes, I rung 'em up. They 'couldn't confirm the rumour.'
That's always the way. You can spend half a million a year in leased
wires and special service and subscriptions to news agencies, and
you get the first smell of news like this right here on the floor.
Remember that time when the Northwestern millers sold a hundred and
fifty thousand barrels at one lick? The floor was talking of it
three hours before the news slips were sent 'round, or a single wire
was in. Suppose we had waited for the Associated people or the
Commercial people then?"
"It's that Higgins-Pasha incident, I'll bet," observed Rusbridge,
his eyes snapping.
"I heard something about that this morning," returned Landry. "But
only that it was--"
"There! What did I tell you?" interrupted Rusbridge. "I said it was
everywhere. There's no smoke without some fire. And I wouldn't be a
bit surprised if we get cables before noon that the British War
Office had sent an ultimatum."
And very naturally a few minutes later Winston, at that time
standing on the steps of the corn pit, heard from a certain broker,
who had it from a friend who had just received a despatch from some
one "in the know," that the British Secretary of State for War had
forwarded an ultimatum to the Porte, and that diplomatic relations
between Turkey and England were about to be suspended.
All in a moment the entire Floor seemed to be talking of nothing
else, and on the outskirts of every group one could overhear the
words: "Seizure of custom house," "ultimatum," "Eastern question,"
"Higgins-Pasha incident." It was the rumour of the day, and before
very long the pit traders began to receive a multitude of despatches
countermanding selling orders, and directing them not to close out
trades under certain very advanced quotations. The brokers began
wiring their principals that the market promised to open strong and
bullish.
But by now it was near to half-past nine. From the Western Union
desks the clicking of the throng of instruments rose into the air in
an incessant staccato stridulation. The messenger boys ran back and
forth at top speed, dodging in and out among the knots of clerks and
traders, colliding with one another, and without interruption
intoning the names of those for whom they had despatches. The throng
of traders concentrated upon the pits, and at every moment the
deep-toned hum of the murmur of many voices swelled like the rising
of a tide.
And at this moment, as Landry stood on the rim of the wheat pit,
looking towards the telephone booth under the visitors' gallery, he
saw the osseous, stoop-shouldered figure of Mr. Cressler--who,
though he never speculated, appeared regularly upon the Board every
morning--making his way towards one of the windows in the front of
the building. His pocket was full of wheat, taken from a bag on one
of the sample tables. Opening the window, he scattered the grain
upon the sill, and stood for a long moment absorbed and interested
in the dazzling flutter of the wings of innumerable pigeons who came
to settle upon the ledge, pecking the grain with little, nervous,
fastidious taps of their yellow beaks.
Landry cast a glance at the clock beneath the dial on the wall
behind him. It was twenty-five minutes after nine. He stood in his
accustomed place on the north side of the Wheat Pit, upon the
topmost stair. The Pit was full. Below him and on either side of him
were the brokers, scalpers, and traders--Hirsch, Semple, Kelly,
Winston, and Rusbridge. The redoubtable Leaycraft, who, bidding for
himself, was supposed to hold the longest line of May wheat of any
one man in the Pit, the insignificant Grossmann, a Jew who wore a
flannel shirt, and to whose outcries no one ever paid the least
attention. Fairchild, Paterson, and Goodlock, the inseparable trio
who represented the Porteous gang, silent men, middle-aged, who had
but to speak in order to buy or sell a million bushels on the spot.
And others, and still others, veterans of sixty-five, recruits just
out of their teens, men who--some of them--in the past had for a
moment dominated the entire Pit, but who now were content to play
the part of "eighth-chasers," buying and selling on the same day,
content with a profit of ten dollars. Others who might at that very
moment be nursing plans which in a week's time would make them
millionaires; still others who, under a mask of nonchalance, strove
to hide the chagrin of yesterday's defeat. And they were there,
ready, inordinately alert, ears turned to the faintest sound, eyes
searching for the vaguest trace of meaning in those of their rivals,
nervous, keyed to the highest tension, ready to thrust deep into the
slightest opening, to spring, mercilessly, upon the smallest
undefended spot. Grossmann, the little Jew of the grimy flannel
shirt, perspired in the stress of the suspense, all but powerless to
maintain silence till the signal should be given, drawing trembling
fingers across his mouth. Winston, brawny, solid, unperturbed, his
hands behind his back, waited immovably planted on his feet with all
the gravity of a statue, his eyes preternaturally watchful, keeping
Kelly--whom he had divined had some "funny business" on
hand--perpetually in sight. The Porteous trio--Fairchild, Paterson,
and Goodlock--as if unalarmed, unassailable, all but turned their
backs to the Pit, laughing among themselves.
The official reporter climbed to his perch in the little cage on the
edge of the Pit, shutting the door after him. By now the chanting of
the messenger boys was an uninterrupted chorus. From all sides of
the building, and in every direction they crossed and recrossed each
other, always running, their hands full of yellow envelopes. From
the telephone alcoves came the prolonged, musical rasp of the call
bells. In the Western Union booths the keys of the multitude of
instruments raged incessantly. Bare-headed young men hurried up to
one another, conferred an instant comparing despatches, then
separated, darting away at top speed. Men called to each other
half-way across the building. Over by the bulletin boards clerks and
agents made careful memoranda of primary receipts, and noted down
the amount of wheat on passage, the exports and the imports.
And all these sounds, the chatter of the telegraph, the intoning of
the messenger boys, the shouts and cries of clerks and traders, the
shuffle and trampling of hundreds of feet, the whirring of telephone
signals rose into the troubled air, and mingled overhead to form a
vast note, prolonged, sustained, that reverberated from vault to
vault of the airy roof, and issued from every doorway, every opened
window in one long roll of uninterrupted thunder. In the Wheat Pit
the bids, no longer obedient of restraint, began one by one to burst
out, like the first isolated shots of a skirmish line. Grossmann had
flung out an arm crying:
"'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and an eighth," while Kelly
and Semple had almost simultaneously shouted, "'Give seven-eighths
for May!"
The official reporter had been leaning far over to catch the first
quotations, one eye upon the clock at the end of the room. The hour
and minute hands were at right angles.
Then suddenly, cutting squarely athwart the vague crescendo of the
floor came the single incisive stroke of a great gong. Instantly a
tumult was unchained. Arms were flung upward in strenuous gestures,
and from above the crowding heads in the Wheat Pit a multitude of
hands, eager, the fingers extended, leaped into the air. All
articulate expression was lost in the single explosion of sound as
the traders surged downwards to the centre of the Pit, grabbing each
other, struggling towards each other, tramping, stamping, charging
through with might and main. Promptly the hand on the great dial
above the clock stirred and trembled, and as though driven by the
tempest breath of the Pit moved upward through the degrees of its
circle. It paused, wavered, stopped at length, and on the instant
the hundreds of telegraph keys scattered throughout the building
began clicking off the news to the whole country, from the Atlantic
to the Pacific and from Mackinac to Mexico, that the Chicago market
had made a slight advance and that May wheat, which had closed the
day before at ninety-three and three-eighths, had opened that
morning at ninety-four and a half.
But the advance brought out no profit-taking sales. The redoubtable
Leaycraft and the Porteous trio, Fairchild, Paterson, and Goodlock,
shook their heads when the Pit offered ninety-four for parts of
their holdings. The price held firm. Goodlock even began to offer
ninety-four. At every suspicion of a flurry Grossmann, always with
the same gesture as though hurling a javelin, always with the same
lamentable wail of distress, cried out:
"'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and a fourth."
He held his five fingers spread to indicate the number of
"contracts," or lots of five thousand bushels, which he wished to
sell, each finger representing one "contract."
And it was at this moment that selling orders began suddenly to pour
in upon the Gretry-Converse traders. Even other houses--Teller and
West, Burbank & Co., Mattieson and Knight--received their share. The
movement was inexplicable, puzzling. With a powerful Bull clique
dominating the trading and every prospect of a strong market, who
was it who ventured to sell short?
Landry among others found himself commissioned to sell. His orders
were to unload three hundred thousand bushels on any advance over
and above ninety-four. He kept his eye on Leaycraft, certain that he
would force up the figure. But, as it happened, it was not Leaycraft
but the Porteous trio who made the advance. Standing in the centre
of the Pit, Patterson suddenly flung up his hand and drew it towards
him, clutching the air--the conventional gesture of the buyer.
"'Give an eighth for May."
Landry was at him in a second. Twenty voices shouted "sold," and as
many traders sprang towards him with outstretched arms. Landry,
however, was before them, and his rush carried Paterson half way
across the middle space of the Pit.
"Sold, sold."
Paterson nodded, and as Landry noted down the transaction the hand
on the dial advanced again, and again held firm.
But after this the activity of the Pit fell away. The trading
languished. By degrees the tension of the opening was relaxed.
Landry, however, had refrained from selling more than ten
"contracts" to Paterson. He had a feeling that another advance would
come later on. Rapidly he made his plans. He would sell another
fifty thousand bushels if the price went to ninety-four and a half,
and would then "feel" the market, letting go small lots here and
there, to test its strength, then, the instant he felt the market
strong enough, throw a full hundred thousand upon it with a rush
before it had time to break. He could feel--almost at his very
finger tips--how this market moved, how it strengthened, how it
weakened. He knew just when to nurse it, to humor it, to let it
settle, and when to crowd it, when to hustle it, when it would stand
rough handling.
Grossmann still uttered his plaint from time to time, but no one so
much as pretended to listen. The Porteous trio and Leaycraft kept
the price steady at ninety-four and an eighth, but showed no
inclination to force it higher. For a full five minutes not a trade
was recorded. The Pit waited for the Report on the Visible Supply.
And it was during this lull in the morning's business that the
idiocy of the English ultimatum to the Porte melted away. As
inexplicably and as suddenly as the rumour had started, it now
disappeared. Everyone, simultaneously, seemed to ridicule it.
England declare war on Turkey! Where was the joke? Who was the damn
fool to have started that old, worn-out war scare? But, for all
that, there was no reaction from the advance. It seemed to be
understood that either Leaycraft or the Porteous crowd stood ready
to support the market; and in place of the ultimatum story a feeling
began to gain ground that the expected report would indicate a
falling off in the "visible," and that it was quite on the cards
that the market might even advance another point.
As the interest in the immediate situation declined, the crowd in
the Pit grew less dense. Portions of it were deserted; even
Grossmann, discouraged, retired to a bench under the visitors'
gallery. And a spirit of horse-play, sheer foolishness, strangely
inconsistent with the hot-eyed excitement of the few moments after
the opening invaded the remaining groups. Leaycraft, the formidable,
as well as Paterson of the Porteous gang, and even the solemn
Winston, found an apparently inexhaustible diversion in folding
their telegrams into pointed javelins and sending them sailing
across the room, watching the course of the missiles with profound
gravity. A visitor in the gallery--no doubt a Western farmer on a
holiday--having put his feet upon the rail, the entire Pit began to
groan "boots, boots, boots."
A little later a certain broker came scurrying across the floor from
the direction of the telephone room. Panting, he flung himself up
the steps of the Pit, forced his way among the traders with vigorous
workings of his elbows, and shouted a bid.
"He's sick," shouted Hirsch. "Look out, he's sick. He's going to
have a fit." He grabbed the broker by both arms and hustled him into
the centre of the Pit. The others caught up the cry, a score of
hands pushed the newcomer from man to man. The Pit traders clutched
him, pulled his necktie loose, knocked off his hat, vociferating all
the while at top voice, "He's sick! He's sick!"
Other brokers and traders came up, and Grossmann, mistaking the
commotion for a flurry, ran into the Pit, his eyes wide, waving his
arm and wailing:
"'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and a quarter."
But the victim, good-natured, readjusted his battered hat, and again
repeated his bid.
"Ah, go to bed," protested Hirsch.
"He's the man who struck Billy Paterson."
"Say, a horse bit him. Look out for him, he's going to have a
duck-fit."
The incident appeared to be the inspiration for a new "josh" that
had a great success, and a group of traders organized themselves
into an "anti-cravat committee," and made the rounds of the Pit,
twitching the carefully tied scarfs of the unwary out of place.
Grossman, indignant at "t'ose monkey-doodle pizeness," withdrew from
the centre of the Pit. But while he stood in front of Leaycraft, his
back turned, muttering his disgust, the latter, while carrying on a
grave conversation with his neighbour, carefully stuck a file of
paper javelins all around the Jew's hat band, and then--still
without mirth and still continuing to talk--set them on fire.
Landry imagined by now that ninety-four and an eighth was as high a
figure as he could reasonably expect that morning, and so began to
"work off" his selling orders. Little by little he sold the wheat
"short," till all but one large lot was gone.
Then all at once, and for no discoverable immediate reason, wheat,
amid an explosion of shouts and vociferations, jumped to ninety-four
and a quarter, and before the Pit could take breath, had advanced
another eighth, broken to one-quarter, then jumped to the
five-eighths mark.
It was the Report on the Visible Supply beyond question, and though
it had not yet been posted, this sudden flurry was a sign that it
was not only near at hand, but would be bullish.
A few moments later it was bulletined in the gallery beneath the
dial, and proved a tremendous surprise to nearly every man upon the
floor. No one had imagined the supply was so ample, so
all-sufficient to meet the demand. Promptly the Pit responded. Wheat
began to pour in heavily. Hirsch, Kelly, Grossmann, Leaycraft, the
stolid Winston, and the excitable Rusbridge were hard at it. The
price began to give. Suddenly it broke sharply. The hand on the
great dial dropped to ninety-three and seven-eighths.
Landry was beside himself. He had not foreseen this break. There was
no reckoning on that cursed "visible," and he still had 50,000
bushels to dispose of. There was no telling now how low the price
might sink. He must act quickly, radically. He fought his way
towards the Porteous crowd, reached over the shoulder of the little
Jew Grossmann, who stood in his way, and thrust his hand almost into
Paterson's face, shouting:
"'Sell fifty May at seven-eighths."
It was the last one of his unaccountable selling orders of the early
morning.
The other shook his head.
"'Sell fifty May at three-quarters."
Suddenly some instinct warned Landry that another break was coming.
It was in the very air around him. He could almost physically feel
the pressure of renewed avalanches of wheat crowding down the price.
Desperate, he grabbed Paterson by the shoulder.
"'Sell fifty May at five-eighths."
"Take it," vociferated the other, as though answering a challenge.
And in the heart of this confusion, in this downward rush of the
price, Luck, the golden goddess, passed with the flirt and flash of
glittering wings, and hardly before the ticker in Gretry's office
had signalled the decline, the memorandum of the trade was down upon
Landry's card and Curtis Jadwin stood pledged to deliver, before
noon on the last day of May, one million bushels of wheat into the
hands of the representatives of the great Bulls of the Board of
Trade.
But by now the real business of the morning was over. The Pit knew
it. Grossmann, obstinate, hypnotized as it were by one idea, still
stood in his accustomed place on the upper edge of the Pit, and from
time to time, with the same despairing gesture, emitted his doleful
outcry of "'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and three-quarters."
Nobody listened. The traders stood around in expectant attitudes,
looking into one another's faces, waiting for what they could not
exactly say; loath to leave the Pit lest something should "turn up"
the moment their backs were turned.
By degrees the clamour died away, ceased, began again irregularly,
then abruptly stilled. Here and there a bid was called, an offer
made, like the intermittent crack of small arms after the stopping
of the cannonade.
"'Sell five May at one-eighth."
"'Sell twenty at one-quarter."
"'Give one-eighth for May."
For an instant the shoutings were renewed. Then suddenly the gong
struck. The traders began slowly to leave the Pit. One of the floor
officers, an old fellow in uniform and vizored cap, appeared, gently
shouldering towards the door the groups wherein the bidding and
offering were still languidly going on. His voice full of
remonstration, he repeated continually:
"Time's up, gentlemen. Go on now and get your lunch. Lunch time now.
Go on now, or I'll have to report you. Time's up."
The tide set toward the doorways. In the gallery the few visitors
rose, putting on coats and wraps. Over by the check counter, to the
right of the south entrance to the floor, a throng of brokers and
traders jostled each other, reaching over one another's shoulders
for hats and ulsters. In steadily increasing numbers they poured out
of the north and south entrances, on their way to turn in their
trading cards to the offices.
Little by little the floor emptied. The provision and grain pits
were deserted, and as the clamour of the place lapsed away the
telegraph instruments began to make themselves heard once more,
together with the chanting of the messenger boys.
Swept clean in the morning, the floor itself, seen now through the
thinning groups, was littered from end to end with scattered
grain--oats, wheat, corn, and barley, with wisps of hay, peanut
shells, apple parings, and orange peel, with torn newspapers, odds
and ends of memoranda, crushed paper darts, and above all with a
countless multitude of yellow telegraph forms, thousands upon
thousands, crumpled and muddied under the trampling of innumerable
feet. It was the debris of the battle-field, the abandoned
impedimenta and broken weapons of contending armies, the detritus of
conflict, torn, broken, and rent, that at the end of each day's
combat encumbered the field.
At last even the click of the last of telegraph keys died down.
Shouldering themselves into their overcoats, the operators departed,
calling back and forth to one another, making "dates," and cracking
jokes. Washerwomen appeared with steaming pails, porters pushing
great brooms before them began gathering the refuse of the floor
into heaps.
Between the wheat and corn pits a band of young fellows, some of
them absolute boys, appeared. These were the settlement clerks. They
carried long account books. It was their duty to get the trades of
the day into a "ring"--to trace the course of a lot of wheat which
had changed hands perhaps a score of times during the trading--and
their calls of "Wheat sold to Teller and West," "May wheat sold to
Burbank & Co.," "May oats sold to Matthewson and Knight," "Wheat
sold to Gretry, Converse & Co.," began to echo from wall to wall of
the almost deserted room.
A cat, grey and striped, and wearing a dog collar of nickel and red
leather, issued from the coat-room and picked her way across the
floor. Evidently she was in a mood of the most ingratiating
friendliness, and as one after another of the departing traders
spoke to her, raised her tail in the air and arched her back against
the legs of the empty chairs. The janitor put in an appearance,
lowering the tall colored windows with a long rod. A noise of
hammering and the scrape of saws began to issue from a corner where
a couple of carpenters tinkered about one of the sample tables.
Then at last even the settlement clerks took themselves off. At once
there was a great silence, broken only by the harsh rasp of the
carpenters' saws and the voice of the janitor exchanging jokes with
the washerwomen. The sound of footsteps in distant quarters
re-echoed as if in a church.
The washerwomen invaded the floor, spreading soapy and steaming
water before them. Over by the sample tables a negro porter in
shirt-sleeves swept entire bushels of spilled wheat, crushed,
broken, and sodden, into his dust pans.
The day's campaign was over. It was past two o'clock. On the great
dial against the eastern wall the indicator stood--sentinel
fashion--at ninety-three. Not till the following morning would the
whirlpool, the great central force that spun the Niagara of wheat in
its grip, thunder and bellow again.
Later on even the washerwomen, even the porter and janitor,
departed. An unbroken silence, the peacefulness of an untroubled
calm, settled over the place. The rays of the afternoon sun flooded
through the west windows in long parallel shafts full of floating
golden motes. There was no sound; nothing stirred. The floor of the
Board of Trade was deserted. Alone, on the edge of the abandoned
Wheat Pit, in a spot where the sunlight fell warmest--an atom of
life, lost in the immensity of the empty floor--the grey cat made
her toilet, diligently licking the fur on the inside of her thigh,
one leg, as if dislocated, thrust into the air above her head.
IV
In the front parlor of the Cresslers' house a little company was
gathered--Laura Dearborn and Page, Mrs. Wessels, Mrs. Cressler, and
young Miss Gretry, an awkward, plain-faced girl of about nineteen,
dressed extravagantly in a decollete gown of blue silk. Curtis
Jadwin and Cressler himself stood by the open fireplace smoking.
Landry Court fidgeted on the sofa, pretending to listen to the
Gretry girl, who told an interminable story of a visit to some
wealthy relative who had a country seat in Wisconsin and who raised
fancy poultry. She possessed, it appeared, three thousand hens,
Brahma, Faverolles, Houdans, Dorkings, even peacocks and tame
quails.
Sheldon Corthell, in a dinner coat, an unlighted cigarette between
his fingers, discussed the spring exhibit of water-colors with Laura
and Mrs. Cressler, Page listening with languid interest. Aunt Wess'
turned the leaves of a family album, counting the number of
photographs of Mrs. Cressler which it contained.
Black coffee had just been served. It was the occasion of the third
rehearsal for the play which was to be given for the benefit of the
hospital ward for Jadwin's mission children, and Mrs. Cressler had
invited the members of the company for dinner. Just now everyone
awaited the arrival of the "coach," Monsieur Gerardy, who was always
late.
"To my notion," observed Corthell, "the water-color that pretends to
be anything more than a sketch over-steps its intended limits. The
elaborated water-color, I contend, must be judged by the same
standards as an oil painting. And if that is so, why not have the
oil painting at once?"
"And with all that, if you please, not an egg on the place for
breakfast," declared the Gretry girl in her thin voice. She was
constrained, embarrassed. Of all those present she was the only one
to mistake the character of the gathering and appear in formal
costume. But one forgave Isabel Gretry such lapses as these.
Invariably she did the wrong thing; invariably she was out of place
in the matter of inadvertent speech, an awkward accident, the wrong
toilet. For all her nineteen years, she yet remained the hoyden,
young, undeveloped, and clumsy.
"Never an egg, and three thousand hens in the runs," she continued.
"Think of that! The Plymouth Rocks had the pip. And the others, my
lands! I don't know. They just didn't lay."
"Ought to tickle the soles of their feet," declared Landry with
profound gravity.
"Tickle their feet!"
"Best thing in the world for hens that don't lay. It sort of stirs
them up. Oh, every one knows that."
"Fancy now! I'll write to Aunt Alice to-morrow."
Cressler clipped the tip of a fresh cigar, and, turning to Curtis
Jadwin, remarked:
"I understand that Leaycraft alone lost nearly fifteen thousand."
He referred to Jadwin's deal in May wheat, the consummation of which
had been effected the previous week. Squarely in the midst of the
morning session, on the day following the "short" sale of Jadwin's
million of bushels, had exploded the news of the intended action of
the French chamber. Amid a tremendous clamour the price fell. The
Bulls were panic-stricken. Leaycraft the redoubtable was overwhelmed
at the very start. The Porteous trio heroically attempted to
shoulder the wheat, but the load was too much. They as well gave
ground, and, bereft of their support, May wheat, which had opened at
ninety-three and five-eighths to ninety-two and a half, broke with
the very first attack to ninety-two, hung there a moment, then
dropped again to ninety-one and a half, then to ninety-one. Then, in
a prolonged shudder of weakness, sank steadily down by quarters to
ninety, to eighty-nine, and at last--a final collapse--touched
eighty-eight cents. At that figure Jadwin began to cover. There was
danger that the buying of so large a lot might bring about a rally
in the price. But Gretry, a consummate master of Pit tactics, kept
his orders scattered and bought gradually, taking some two or three
days to accumulate the grain. Jadwin's luck--the never-failing
guardian of the golden wings--seemed to have the affair under
immediate supervision, and reports of timely rains in the wheat belt
kept the price inert while the trade was being closed. In the end
the "deal" was brilliantly successful, and Gretry was still
chuckling over the set-back to the Porteous gang. Exactly the amount
of his friend's profits Jadwin did not know. As for himself, he had
received from Gretry a check for fifty thousand dollars, every cent
of which was net profit.
"I'm not going to congratulate you," continued Cressler. "As far as
that's concerned, I would rather you had lost than won--if it would
have kept you out of the Pit for good. You're cocky now. I
know--good Lord, don't I know. I had my share of it. I know how a
man gets drawn into this speculating game."
"Charlie, this wasn't speculating," interrupted Jadwin. "It was a
certainty. It was found money. If I had known a certain piece of
real estate was going to appreciate in value I would have bought it,
wouldn't I?"
"All the worse, if it made it seem easy and sure to you. Do you
know," he added suddenly. "Do you know that Leaycraft has gone to
keep books for a manufacturing concern out in Dubuque?"
Jadwin pulled his mustache. He was looking at Laura Dearborn over
the heads of Landry and the Gretry girl.
"I didn't suppose he'd be getting measured for a private yacht," he
murmured. Then he continued, pulling his mustache vigorously:
"Charlie, upon my word, what a beautiful--what beautiful hair that
girl has!"
Laura was wearing it very high that evening, the shining black coils
transfixed by a strange hand-cut ivory comb that had been her
grandmother's. She was dressed in black taffeta, with a single great
cabbage-rose pinned to her shoulder. She sat very straight in her
chair, one hand upon her slender hip, her head a little to one side,
listening attentively to Corthell.
By this time the household of the former rectory was running
smoothly; everything was in place, the Dearborns were "settled," and
a routine had begun. Her first month in her new surroundings had
been to Laura an unbroken series of little delights. For formal
social distractions she had but little taste. She left those to
Page, who, as soon as Lent was over, promptly became involved in a
bewildering round of teas, "dancing clubs," dinners, and theatre
parties. Mrs. Wessels was her chaperone, and the little middle-aged
lady found the satisfaction of a belated youth in conveying her
pretty niece to the various functions that occupied her time. Each
Friday night saw her in the gallery of a certain smart dancing
school of the south side, where she watched Page dance her way from
the "first waltz" to the last figure of the german. She counted the
couples carefully, and on the way home was always able to say how
the attendance of that particular evening compared with that of the
former occasion, and also to inform Laura how many times Page had
danced with the same young man.
Laura herself was more serious. She had begun a course of reading;
no novels, but solemn works full of allusions to "Man" and
"Destiny," which she underlined and annotated. Twice a week--on
Mondays and Thursdays--she took a French lesson. Corthell managed to
enlist the good services of Mrs. Wessels and escorted her to
numerous piano and 'cello recitals, to lectures, to concerts. He
even succeeded in achieving the consecration of a specified
afternoon once a week, spent in his studio in the Fine Arts'
Building on the Lake Front, where he read to them "Saint Agnes Eve,"
"Sordello," "The Light of Asia"--poems which, with their
inversions, obscurities, and astonishing arabesques of rhetoric,
left Aunt Wess' bewildered, breathless, all but stupefied.
Laura found these readings charming. The studio was beautiful,
lofty, the light dim; the sound of Corthell's voice returned from
the thick hangings of velvet and tapestry in a subdued murmur. The
air was full of the odor of pastilles.
Laura could not fail to be impressed with the artist's tact, his
delicacy. In words he never referred to their conversation in the
foyer of the Auditorium; only by some unexplained subtlety of
attitude he managed to convey to her the distinct impression that he
loved her always. That he was patient, waiting for some indefinite,
unexpressed development.
Landry Court called upon her as often as she would allow. Once he
had prevailed upon her and Page to accompany him to the matinee to
see a comic opera. He had pronounced it "bully," unable to see that
Laura evinced only a mild interest in the performance. On each
propitious occasion he had made love to her extravagantly. He
continually protested his profound respect with a volubility and
earnestness that was quite uncalled for.
But, meanwhile, the situation had speedily become more complicated
by the entrance upon the scene of an unexpected personage. This was
Curtis Jadwin. It was impossible to deny the fact that "J." was in
love with Mrs. Cressler's protegee. The business man had none of
Corthell's talent for significant reticence, none of his tact, and
older than she, a man-of-the-world, accustomed to deal with
situations with unswerving directness, he, unlike Landry Court, was
not in the least afraid of her. From the very first she found
herself upon the defensive. Jadwin was aggressive, assertive, and
his addresses had all the persistence and vehemence of veritable
attack. Landry she could manage with the lifting of a finger,
Corthell disturbed her only upon those rare occasions when he made
love to her. But Jadwin gave her no time to so much as think of
finesse. She was not even allowed to choose her own time and place
for fencing, and to parry his invasion upon those intimate personal
grounds which she pleased herself to keep secluded called upon her
every feminine art of procrastination and strategy.
He contrived to meet her everywhere. He impressed Mrs. Cressler as
auxiliary into his campaign, and a series of rencontres followed one
another with astonishing rapidity. Now it was another opera party,
now a box at McVicker's, now a dinner, or more often a drive through
Lincoln Park behind Jadwin's trotters. He even had the Cresslers and
Laura over to his mission Sunday-school for the Easter festival, an
occasion of which Laura carried away a confused recollection of
enormous canvas mottoes, that looked more like campaign banners than
texts from the Scriptures, sheaves of calla lilies, imitation bells
of tin-foil, revival hymns vociferated with deafening vehemence from
seven hundred distended mouths, and through it all the disagreeable
smell of poverty, the odor of uncleanliness that mingled strangely
with the perfume of the lilies and the aromatic whiffs from the
festoons of evergreen.
Thus the first month of her new life had passed Laura did not
trouble herself to look very far into the future. She was too much
amused with her emancipation from the narrow horizon of her New
England environment. She did not concern herself about consequences.
Things would go on for themselves, and consequences develop without
effort on her part. She never asked herself whether or not she was
in love with any of the three men who strove for her favor. She was
quite sure she was not ready--yet--to be married. There was even
something distasteful in the idea of marriage. She liked Landry
Court immensely; she found the afternoons in Corthell's studio
delightful; she loved the rides in the park behind Jadwin's horses.
She had no desire that any one of these affairs should exclude the
other two. She wished nothing to be consummated. As for love, she
never let slip an occasion to shock Aunt Wess' by declaring:
"I love--nobody. I shall never marry."
Page, prim, with great parades of her ideas of "good form," declared
between her pursed lips that her sister was a flirt. But this was
not so. Laura never manoeuvered with her lovers, nor intrigued to
keep from any one of them knowledge of her companionship with the
other two. So upon such occasions as this, when all three found
themselves face to face, she remained unperturbed.
At last, towards half-past eight, Monsieur Gerardy arrived. All
through the winter amateur plays had been in great favor, and
Gerardy had become, in a sense, a fad. He was in great demand.
Consequently, he gave himself airs. His method was that of severity;
he posed as a task-master, relentless, never pleased, hustling the
amateur actors about without ceremony, scolding and brow-beating. He
was a small, excitable man who wore a frock-coat much too small for
him, a flowing purple cravatte drawn through a finger ring, and
enormous cuffs set off with huge buttons of Mexican onyx. In his
lapel was an inevitable carnation, dried, shrunken, and lamentable.
He was redolent of perfume and spoke of himself as an artist. He
caused it to be understood that in the intervals of "coaching
society plays" he gave his attention to the painting of landscapes.
Corthell feigned to ignore his very existence.
The play-book in his hand, Monsieur Gerardy clicked his heels in the
middle of the floor and punctiliously saluted everyone present,
bowing only from his shoulders, his head dropping forward as if
propelled by successive dislocations of the vertebrae of his neck.
He explained the cause of his delay. His English was without accent,
but at times suddenly entangled itself in curious Gallic
constructions.
"Then I propose we begin at once," he announced. "The second act
to-night, then, if we have time, the third act--from the book. And I
expect the second act to be letter-perfect--let-ter-per-fect. There
is nothing there but that." He held up his hand, as if to refuse to
consider the least dissention. "There is nothing but that--no other
thing."
All but Corthell listened attentively. The artist, however, turning
his back, had continued to talk to Laura without lowering his tone,
and all through Monsieur Gerardy's exhortation his voice had made
itself heard. "Management of light and shade" ... "color scheme" ...
"effects of composition."
Monsieur Gerardy's eye glinted in his direction. He struck his
play-book sharply into the palm of his hand.
"Come, come!" he cried. "No more nonsense. Now we leave the girls
alone and get to work. Here is the scene. Mademoiselle Gretry, if I
derange you!" He cleared a space at the end of the parlor, pulling
the chairs about. "Be attentive now. Here"--he placed a chair at his
right with a flourish, as though planting a banner--"is the porch of
Lord Glendale's country house."
"Ah," murmured Landry, winking solemnly at Page, "the chair is the
porch of the house."
"And here," shouted Monsieur Gerardy, glaring at him and slamming
down another chair, "is a rustic bench and practicable table set for
breakfast."
Page began to giggle behind her play-book. Gerardy, his nostrils
expanded, gave her his back. The older people, who were not to take
part--Jadwin, the Cresslers, and Aunt Wess'--retired to a far
corner, Mrs. Cressler declaring that they would constitute the
audience.
"On stage," vociferated Monsieur Gerardy, perspiring from his
exertions with the furniture. "'Marion enters, timid and hesitating,
L. C.' Come, who's Marion? Mademoiselle Gretry, if you please, and
for the love of God remember your crossings. Sh! sh!" he cried,
waving his arms at the others. "A little silence if you please. Now,
Marion."
Isabel Gretry, holding her play-book at her side, one finger marking
the place, essayed an entrance with the words:
"'Ah, the old home once more. See the clambering roses have--'"
But Monsieur Gerardy, suddenly compressing his lips as if in a
heroic effort to repress his emotion, flung himself into a chair,
turning his back and crossing his legs violently. Miss Gretry
stopped, very much disturbed, gazing perplexedly at the coach's
heaving shoulders.
There was a strained silence, then:
"Isn't--isn't that right?"
As if with the words she had touched a spring, Monsieur Gerardy
bounded to his feet.
"Grand God! Is that left-centre where you have made the entrance? In
fine, I ask you a little--_is_ that left-centre? You have come in by
the rustic bench and practicable table set for breakfast. A fine
sight on the night of the performance that. Marion climbs over the
rustic breakfast and practicable--over the rustic bench and
practicable table, ha, ha, to make the entrance." Still holding the
play-book, he clapped hands with elaborate sarcasm. "Ah, yes, good
business that. That will bring down the house."
Meanwhile the Gretry girl turned again from left-centre.
"'Ah, the old home again. See--'"
"Stop!" thundered Monsieur Gerardy. "Is that what you call timid and
hesitating? Once more, those lines.... No, no. It is not it at all.
More of slowness, more of--Here, watch me."
He made the entrance with laborious exaggeration of effect, dragging
one foot after another, clutching at the palings of an imaginary
fence, while pitching his voice at a feeble falsetto, he quavered:
"'Ah! The old home--ah ... once more. See--' like that," he cried,
straightening up. "Now then. We try that entrance again. Don't come
on too quick after the curtain. Attention. I clap my hands for the
curtain, and count three." He backed away and, tucking the play-book
under his arm, struck his palms together. "Now, one--two--_three._"
But this time Isabel Gretry, in remembering her "business," confused
her stage directions once more.
"'Ah, the old home--'"
"Left-centre," interrupted the coach, in a tone of long-suffering
patience.
She paused bewildered, and believing that she had spoken her lines
too abruptly, began again:
"'See, the clambering--'"
"_Left_-centre."
"'Ah, the old home--'"
Monsieur Gerardy settled himself deliberately in his chair and
resting his head upon one hand closed his eyes. His manner was that
of Galileo under torture declaring "still it moves."
"_Left_-centre."
"Oh--oh, yes. I forgot."
Monsieur Gerardy apostrophized the chandelier with mirthless humour.
"Oh, ha, ha! She forgot."
Still another time Marion tried the entrance, and, as she came on,
Monsieur Gerardy made vigorous signals to Page, exclaiming in a
hoarse whisper:
"Lady Mary, ready. In a minute you come on. Remember the cue."
Meanwhile Marion had continued:
"'See the clambering vines--'"
"Roses."
"'The clambering rose vines--'"
"Roses, pure and simple."
"'See! The clambering roses, pure and--'"
"Mademoiselle Gretry, will you do me the extreme obligation to bound
yourself by the lines of the book?"
"I thought you said--"
"Go on, go on, go on! Is it God-possible to be thus stupid? Lady
Mary, ready."
"'See, the clambering roses have wrapped the old stones in a loving
embrace. The birds build in the same old nests--'"
"Well, well, Lady Mary, where are you? You enter from the porch."
"I'm waiting for my cue," protested Page. "My cue is: 'Are there
none that will remember me.'"
"Say," whispered Landry, coming up behind Page, "it would look bully
if you could come out leading a greyhound."
"Ah, so, Mademoiselle Gretry," cried Monsieur Gerardy, "you left out
the cue." He became painfully polite. "Give the speech once more, if
you please."
"A dog would look bully on the stage," whispered Landry. "And I know
where I could get one."
"Where?"
"A friend of mine. He's got a beauty, blue grey--"
They become suddenly aware of a portentous silence The coach, his
arms folded, was gazing at Page with tightened lips.
"'None who will remember me,'" he burst out at last. "Three times
she gave it."
Page hurried upon the scene with the words:
"'Ah, another glorious morning. The vines are drenched in dew.'"
Then, raising her voice and turning toward the "house," "'Arthur.'"
"'Arthur,'" warned the coach. "That's you. Mr. Corthell. Ready. Well
then, Mademoiselle Gretry, you have something to say there."
"I can't say it," murmured the Gretry girl, her handkerchief to her
face.
"What now? Continue. Your lines are 'I must not be seen here. It
would betray all,' then conceal yourself in the arbor. Continue.
Speak the line. It is the cue of Arthur."
"I can't," mumbled the girl behind her handkerchief.
"Can't? Why, then?"
"I--I have the nose-bleed."
Upon the instant Monsieur Gerardy quite lost his temper. He turned
away, one hand to his head, rolling his eyes as if in mute appeal to
heaven, then, whirling about, shook his play-book at the unfortunate
Marion, crying out furiously:
"Ah, it lacked but that. You ought to understand at last, that when
one rehearses for a play one does not have the nose-bleed. It is not
decent."
Miss Gretry retired precipitately, and Laura came forward to say
that she would read Marion's lines.
"No, no!" cried Monsieur Gerardy. "You--ah, if they were all like
you! You are obliging, but it does not suffice. I am insulted."
The others, astonished, gathered about the "coach." They laboured to
explain. Miss Gretry had intended no slight. In fact she was often
taken that way; she was excited, nervous. But Monsieur Gerardy was
not to be placated. Ah, no! He knew what was due a gentleman. He
closed his eyes and raised his eyebrows to his very hair, murmuring
superbly that he was offended. He had but one phrase in answer to
all their explanations:
"One does not permit one's self to bleed at the nose during
rehearsal."
Laura began to feel a certain resentment. The unfortunate Gretry
girl had gone away in tears. What with the embarrassment of the
wrong gown, the brow-beating, and the nose-bleed, she was not far
from hysterics. She had retired to the dining-room with Mrs.
Cressler and from time to time the sounds of her distress made
themselves heard. Laura believed it quite time to interfere. After
all, who was this Gerardy person, to give himself such airs? Poor
Miss Gretry was to blame for nothing. She fixed the little Frenchman
with a direct glance, and Page, who caught a glimpse of her face,
recognised "the grand manner," and whispered to Landry:
"He'd better look out; he's gone just about as far as Laura will
allow."
"It is not convenient," vociferated the "coach." "It is not
permissible. I am offended."
"Monsieur Gerardy," said Laura, "we will say nothing more about it,
if you please."
There was a silence. Monsieur Gerardy had pretended not to hear. He
breathed loud through his nose, and Page hastened to observe that
anyhow Marion was not on in the next scenes. Then abruptly, and
resuming his normal expression, Monsieur Gerardy said:
"Let us proceed. It advances nothing to lose time. Come. Lady Mary
and Arthur, ready."
The rehearsal continued. Laura, who did not come on during the act,
went back to her chair in the corner of the room.
But the original group had been broken up. Mrs. Cressler was in the
dining-room with the Gretry girl, while Jadwin, Aunt Wess', and
Cressler himself were deep in a discussion of mind-reading and
spiritualism.
As Laura came up, Jadwin detached himself from the others and met
her.
"Poor Miss Gretry!" he observed. "Always the square peg in the round
hole. I've sent out for some smelling salts."
It seemed to Laura that the capitalist was especially well-looking
on this particular evening. He never dressed with the "smartness" of
Sheldon Corthell or Landry Court, but in some way she did not expect
that he should. His clothes were not what she was aware were called
"stylish," but she had had enough experience with her own
tailor-made gowns to know that the material was the very best that
money could buy. The apparent absence of any padding in the broad
shoulders of the frock coat he wore, to her mind, more than
compensated for the "ready-made" scarf, and if the white waistcoat
was not fashionably cut, she knew that _she_ had never been able to
afford a pique skirt of just that particular grade.
"Suppose we go into the reception-room," he observed abruptly.
"Charlie bought a new clock last week that's a marvel. You ought to
see it."
"No," she answered. "I am quite comfortable here, and I want to see
how Page does in this act."
"I am afraid, Miss Dearborn," he continued, as they found their
places, "that you did not have a very good time Sunday afternoon."
He referred to the Easter festival at his mission school. Laura had
left rather early, alleging neuralgia and a dinner engagement.
"Why, yes I did," she replied. "Only, to tell the truth, my head
ached a little." She was ashamed that she did not altogether delight
in her remembrance of Jadwin on that afternoon. He had "addressed"
the school, with earnestness it was true, but in a strain decidedly
conventional. And the picture he made leading the singing, beating
time with the hymn-book, and between the verses declaring that "he
wanted to hear everyone's voice in the next verse," did not appeal
very forcibly to her imagination. She fancied Sheldon Corthell doing
these things, and could not forbear to smile. She had to admit,
despite the protests of conscience, that she did prefer the studio
to the Sunday-school.
"Oh," remarked Jadwin, "I'm sorry to hear you had a headache. I
suppose my little micks" (he invariably spoke of his mission
children thus) "do make more noise than music."
"I found them very interesting."
"No, excuse me, but I'm afraid you didn't. My little micks are not
interesting--to look at nor to listen to. But I, kind of--well, I
don't know," he began pulling his mustache. "It seems to suit me to
get down there and get hold of these people. You know Moody put me
up to it. He was here about five years ago, and I went to one of his
big meetings, and then to all of them. And I met the fellow, too,
and I tell you, Miss Dearborn, he stirred me all up. I didn't "get
religion." No, nothing like that. But I got a notion it was time to
be up and doing, and I figured it out that business principles were
as good in religion as they are--well, in La Salle Street, and that
if the church people--the men I mean--put as much energy, and
shrewdness, and competitive spirit into the saving of souls as they
did into the saving of dollars that we might get somewhere. And so I
took hold of a half dozen broken-down, bankrupt Sunday-school
concerns over here on Archer Avenue that were fighting each other
all the time, and amalgamated them all--a regular trust, just as if
they were iron foundries--and turned the incompetents out and put my
subordinates in, and put the thing on a business basis, and by now,
I'll venture to say, there's not a better organised Sunday-school in
all Chicago, and I'll bet if D. L. Moody were here to-day he'd say,
'Jadwin, well done, thou good and faithful servant.'"
"I haven't a doubt of it, Mr. Jadwin," Laura hastened to exclaim.
"And you must not think that I don't believe you are doing a
splendid work."
"Well, it suits me," he repeated. "I like my little micks, and now
and then I have a chance to get hold of the kind that it pays to
push along. About four months ago I came across a boy in the Bible
class; I guess he's about sixteen; name is Bradley--Billy Bradley,
father a confirmed drunk, mother takes in washing, sister--we won't
speak about; and he seemed to be bright and willing to work, and I
gave him a job in my agent's office, just directing envelopes. Well,
Miss Dearborn, that boy has a desk of his own now, and the agent
tells me he's one of the very best men he's got. He does his work so
well that I've been able to discharge two other fellows who sat
around and watched the clock for lunch hour, and Bradley does their
work now better and quicker than they did, and saves me twenty
dollars a week; that's a thousand a year. So much for a business
like Sunday-school; so much for taking a good aim when you cast your
bread upon the waters. The last time I saw Moody I said, 'Moody, my
motto is "not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, praising the
Lord."' I remember we were out driving at the time, I took him out
behind Lizella--she's almost straight Wilkes' blood and can trot in
two-ten, but you can believe he didn't know that--and, as I say, I
told him what my motto was, and he said, 'J., good for you; you keep
to that. There's no better motto in the world for the American man
of business.' He shook my hand when he said it, and I haven't ever
forgotten it."
Not a little embarrassed, Laura was at a loss just what to say, and
in the end remarked lamely enough:
"I am sure it is the right spirit--the best motto."
"Miss Dearborn," Jadwin began again suddenly, "why don't you take a
class down there. The little micks aren't so dreadful when you get
to know them."
"I!" exclaimed Laura, rather blankly. She shook her head. "Oh, no,
Mr. Jadwin. I should be only an encumbrance. Don't misunderstand me.
I approve of the work with all my heart, but I am not fitted--I feel
no call. I should be so inapt that I know I should do no good. My
training has been so different, you know," she said, smiling. "I am
an Episcopalian--'of the straightest sect of the Pharisees.' I
should be teaching your little micks all about the meaning of
candles, and 'Eastings,' and the absolution and remission of sins."
"I wouldn't care if you did," he answered. "It's the indirect
influence I'm thinking of--the indirect influence that a beautiful,
pure-hearted, noble-minded woman spreads around her wherever she
goes. I know what it has done for me. And I know that not only my
little micks, but every teacher and every superintendent in that
school would be inspired, and stimulated, and born again so soon as
ever you set foot in the building. Men need good women, Miss
Dearborn. Men who are doing the work of the world. I believe in
women as I believe in Christ. But I don't believe they were
made--any more than Christ was--to cultivate--beyond a certain
point--their own souls, and refine their own minds, and live in a
sort of warmed-over, dilettante, stained-glass world of seclusion
and exclusion. No, sir, that won't do for the United States and the
men who are making them the greatest nation of the world. The men
have got all the get-up-and-get they want, but they need the women
to point them straight, and to show them how to lead that other kind
of life that isn't all grind. Since I've known you, Miss Dearborn,
I've just begun to wake up to the fact that there is that other
kind, but I can't lead that life without you. There's no kind of
life that's worth anything to me now that don't include you. I don't
need to tell you that I want you to marry me. You know that by now,
I guess, without any words from me. I love you, and I love you as a
man, not as a boy, seriously and earnestly. I can give you no idea
how seriously, how earnestly. I want you to be my wife. Laura, my
dear girl, I know I could make you happy."
"It isn't," answered Laura slowly, perceiving as he paused that he
expected her to say something, "much a question of that."
"What is it, then? I won't make a scene. Don't you love me? Don't
you think, my girl, you could ever love me?"
Laura hesitated a long moment. She had taken the rose from her
shoulder, and plucking the petals one by one, put them delicately
between her teeth. From the other end of the room came the clamorous
exhortations of Monsieur Gerardy. Mrs. Cressler and the Gretry girl
watched the progress of the rehearsal attentively from the doorway
of the dining-room. Aunt Wess' and Mr. Cressler were discussing
psychic research and seances, on the sofa on the other side of the
room. After a while Laura spoke.
"It isn't that either," she said, choosing her words carefully.
"What is it, then?"
"I don't know--exactly. For one thing, I don't think I _want_ to be
married, Mr. Jadwin--to anybody."
"I would wait for you."
"Or to be engaged."
"But the day must come, sooner or later, when you must be both
engaged and married. You must ask yourself _some time_ if you love
the man who wishes to be your husband. Why not ask yourself now?"
"I do," she answered. "I do ask myself. I have asked myself."
"Well, what do you decide?"
"That I don't know."
"Don't you think you would love me in time? Laura, I am sure you
would. I would make you."
"I don't know. I suppose that is a stupid answer. But it is, if I am
to be honest, and I am trying very hard to be honest--with you and
with myself--the only one I have. I am happy just as I am. I like
you and Mr. Cressler and Mr. Corthell--everybody. But, Mr.
Jadwin"--she looked him full in the face, her dark eyes full of
gravity--"with a woman it is so serious--to be married. More so than
any man ever understood. And, oh, one must be so sure, so sure. And
I am not sure now. I am not sure now. Even if I were sure of you, I
could not say I was sure of myself. Now and then I tell myself, and
even poor, dear Aunt Wess', that I shall never love anybody, that I
shall never marry. But I should be bitterly sorry if I thought that
was true. It is one of the greatest happinesses to which I look
forward, that some day I shall love some one with all my heart and
soul, and shall be a true wife, and find my husband's love for me
the sweetest thing in my life. But I am sure that that day has not
come yet."
"And when it does come," he urged, "may I be the first to know?"
She smiled a little gravely.
"Ah," she answered, "I would not know myself that that day had come
until I woke to the fact that I loved the man who had asked me to be
his wife, and then it might be too late--for you."
"But now, at least," he persisted, "you love no one."
"Now," she repeated, "I love--no one."
"And I may take such encouragement in that as I can?"
And then, suddenly, capriciously even, Laura, an inexplicable spirit
of inconsistency besetting her, was a very different woman from the
one who an instant before had spoken so gravely of the seriousness
of marriage. She hesitated a moment before answering Jadwin, her
head on one side, looking at the rose leaf between her fingers. In a
low voice she said at last:
"If you like."
But before Jadwin could reply, Cressler and Aunt Wess' who had been
telling each other of their "experiences," of their "premonitions,"
of the unaccountable things that had happened to them, at length
included the others in their conversation.
"J.," remarked Cressler, "did anything funny ever happen to
you--warnings, presentiments, that sort of thing? Mrs. Wessels and I
have been talking spiritualism. Laura, have you ever had any
'experiences'?"
She shook her head.
"No, no. I am too material, I am afraid."
"How about you, 'J.'?"
"Nothing much, except that I believe in 'luck'--a little. The other
day I flipped a coin in Gretry's office. If it fell heads I was to
sell wheat short, and somehow I knew all the time that the coin
would fall heads--and so it did."
"And you made a great deal of money," said Laura. "I know. Mr. Court
was telling me. That was splendid."
"That was deplorable, Laura," said Cressler, gravely. "I hope some
day," he continued, "we can all of us get hold of this man and make
him solemnly promise never to gamble in wheat again."
Laura stared. To her mind the word "gambling" had always been
suspect. It had a bad sound; it seemed to be associated with
depravity of the baser sort.
"Gambling!" she murmured.
"They call it buying and selling," he went on, "down there in La
Salle Street. But it is simply betting. Betting on the condition of
the market weeks, even months, in advance. You bet wheat goes up. I
bet it goes down. Those fellows in the Pit don't own the wheat;
never even see it. Wou'dn't know what to do with it if they had it.
They don't care in the least about the grain. But there are
thousands upon thousands of farmers out here in Iowa and Kansas or
Dakota who do, and hundreds of thousand of poor devils in Europe who
care even more than the farmer. I mean the fellows who raise the
grain, and the other fellows who eat it. It's life or death for
either of them. And right between these two comes the Chicago
speculator, who raises or lowers the price out of all reason, for
the benefit of his pocket. You see Laura, here is what I mean."
Cressler had suddenly become very earnest. Absorbed, interested,
Laura listened intently. "Here is what I mean," pursued Cressler.
"It's like this: If we send the price of wheat down too far, the
farmer suffers, the fellow who raises it if we send it up too far,
the poor man in Europe suffers, the fellow who eats it. And food to
the peasant on the continent is bread--not meat or potatoes, as it
is with us. The only way to do so that neither the American farmer
nor the European peasant suffers, is to keep wheat at an average,
legitimate value. The moment you inflate or depress that, somebody
suffers right away. And that is just what these gamblers are doing
all the time, booming it up or booming it down. Think of it, the
food of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people just at the
mercy of a few men down there on the Board of Trade. They make the
price. They say just how much the peasant shall pay for his loaf of
bread. If he can't pay the price he simply starves. And as for the
farmer, why it's ludicrous. If I build a house and offer it for
sale, I put my own price on it, and if the price offered don't suit
me I don't sell. But if I go out here in Iowa and raise a crop of
wheat, I've got to sell it, whether I want to or not at the figure
named by some fellows in Chicago. And to make themselves rich, they
may make me sell it at a price that bankrupts me."
Laura nodded. She was intensely interested. A whole new order of
things was being disclosed, and for the first time in her life she
looked into the workings of political economy.
"Oh, that's only one side of it," Cressler went on, heedless of
Jadwin's good-humoured protests. "Yes, I know I am a crank on
speculating. I'm going to preach a little if you'll let me. I've
been a speculator myself, and a ruined one at that, and I know what
I am talking about. Here is what I was going to say. These fellows
themselves, the gamblers--well, call them speculators, if you like.
Oh, the fine, promising manly young men I've seen
wrecked--absolutely and hopelessly wrecked and ruined by
speculation! It's as easy to get into as going across the street.
They make three hundred, five hundred, yes, even a thousand dollars
sometimes in a couple of hours, without so much as raising a finger.
Think what that means to a boy of twenty-five who's doing clerk work
at seventy-five a month. Why, it would take him maybe ten years to
save a thousand, and here he's made it in a single morning. Think
you can keep him out of speculation then? First thing you know he's
thrown up his honest, humdrum position--oh, I've seen it hundreds of
times--and takes to hanging round the customers' rooms down there on
La Salle Street, and he makes a little, and makes a little more, and
finally he is so far in that he can't pull out, and then some
billionaire fellow, who has the market in the palm of his hand,
tightens one finger, and our young man is ruined, body and mind.
He's lost the taste, the very capacity for legitimate business, and
he stays on hanging round the Board till he gets to be--all of a
sudden--an old man. And then some day some one says, 'Why, where's
So-and-so?' and you wake up to the fact that the young fellow has
simply disappeared--lost. I tell you the fascination of this Pit
gambling is something no one who hasn't experienced it can have the
faintest conception of. I believe it's worse than liquor, worse than
morphine. Once you get into it, it grips you and draws you and draws
you, and the nearer you get to the end the easier it seems to win,
till all of a sudden, ah! there's the whirlpool.... 'J.,' keep away
from it, my boy."
Jadwin laughed, and leaning over, put his fingers upon Cressler's
breast, as though turning off a switch.
"Now, Miss Dearborn," he announced, "we've shut him off. Charlie
means all right, but now and then some one brushes against him and
opens that switch."
Cressler, good-humouredly laughed with the others, but Laura's smile
was perfunctory and her eyes were grave. But there was a diversion.
While the others had been talking the rehearsal had proceeded, and
now Page beckoned to Laura from the far end of the parlor, calling
out:
"Laura--'Beatrice,' it's the third act. You are wanted."
"Oh, I must run," exclaimed Laura, catching up her play-book. "Poor
Monsieur Gerardy--we must be a trial to him."
She hurried across the room, where the coach was disposing the
furniture for the scene, consulting the stage directions in his
book:
"Here the kitchen table, here the old-fashioned writing-desk, here
the armoire with practicable doors, here the window. Soh! Who is on?
Ah, the young lady of the sick nose, 'Marion.' She is
discovered--knitting. And then the duchess--later. That's you
Mademoiselle Dearborn. You interrupt--you remember. But then you,
ah, you always are right. If they were all like you. Very well, we
begin."
Creditably enough the Gretry girl read her part, Monsieur Gerardy
interrupting to indicate the crossings and business. Then at her
cue, Laura, who was to play the role of the duchess, entered with
the words:
"I beg your pardon, but the door stood open. May I come in?"
Monsieur Gerardy murmured:
"_Elle est vraiment superbe._"
Laura to the very life, to every little trick of carriage and manner
was the high-born gentlewoman visiting the home of a dependent.
Nothing could have been more dignified, more gracious, more
gracefully condescending than her poise. She dramatised not only her
role, but the whole of her surroundings. The interior of the little
cottage seemed to define itself with almost visible distinctness the
moment she set foot upon the scene.
Gerardy tiptoed from group to group, whispering:
"Eh? Very fine, our duchess. She would do well professionally."
But Mrs. Wessels was not altogether convinced. Her eyes following
her niece, she said to Corthell:
"It's Laura's 'grand manner.' My word, I know her in _that_ part.
That's the way she is when she comes down to the parlor of an
evening, and Page introduces her to one of her young men."
"I nearly die," protested Page, beginning to laugh. "Of course it's
very natural I should want my friends to like my sister. And Laura
comes in as though she were walking on eggs, and gets their names
wrong, as though it didn't much matter, and calls them Pinky when
their name is Pinckney, and don't listen to what they say, till I
want to sink right through the floor with mortification."
In haphazard fashion the rehearsal wore to a close. Monsieur Gerardy
stormed and fretted and insisted upon repeating certain scenes over
and over again. By ten o'clock the actors were quite worn out. A
little supper was served, and very soon afterward Laura made a move
toward departing. She was wondering who would see her home, Landry,
Jadwin, or Sheldon Corthell.
The day had been sunshiny, warm even, but since nine o'clock the
weather had changed for the worse, and by now a heavy rain was
falling. Mrs. Cressler begged the two sisters and Mrs. Wessels to
stay at her house over night, but Laura refused. Jadwin was
suggesting to Cressler the appropriateness of having the coupe
brought around to take the sisters home, when Corthell came up to
Laura.
"I sent for a couple of hansoms long since," he said. "They are
waiting outside now." And that seemed to settle the question.
For all Jadwin's perseverance, the artist seemed--for this time at
least--to have the better of the situation.
As the good-bys were being said at the front door Page remarked to
Landry:
"You had better go with us as far as the house, so that you can take
one of our umbrellas. You can get in with Aunt Wess' and me. There's
plenty of room. You can't go home in this storm without an
umbrella."
Landry at first refused, haughtily. He might be too poor to parade a
lot of hansom cabs around, but he was too proud, to say the least,
to ride in 'em when some one else paid.
Page scolded him roundly. What next? The idea. He was not to be so
completely silly. She didn't propose to have the responsibility of
his catching pneumonia just for the sake of a quibble.
"Some people," she declared, "never seemed to be able to find out
that they are grown up."
"Very well," he announced, "I'll go if I can tip the driver a
dollar."
Page compressed her lips.
"The man that can afford dollar tips," she said, "can afford to hire
the cab in the first place."
"Seventy-five cents, then," he declared resolutely. "Not a cent
less. I should feel humiliated with any less."
"Will you please take me down to the cab, Landry Court?" she cried.
And without further comment Landry obeyed.
"Now, Miss Dearborn, if you are ready," exclaimed Corthell, as he
came up. He held the umbrella over her head, allowing his shoulders
to get the drippings.
They cried good-by again all around, and the artist guided her down
the slippery steps. He handed her carefully into the hansom, and
following, drew down the glasses.
Laura settled herself comfortably far back in her corner, adjusting
her skirts and murmuring:
"Such a wet night. Who would have thought it was going to rain? I
was afraid you were not coming at first," she added. "At dinner Mrs.
Cressler said you had an important committee meeting--something to
do with the Art Institute, the award of prizes; was that it?"
"Oh, yes," he answered, indifferently, "something of the sort was
on. I suppose it was important--for the Institute. But for me there
is only one thing of importance nowadays," he spoke with a studied
carelessness, as though announcing a fact that Laura must know
already, "and that is, to be near you. It is astonishing. You have
no idea of it, how I have ordered my whole life according to that
idea."
"As though you expected me to believe that," she answered.
In her other lovers she knew her words would have provoked vehement
protestation. But for her it was part of the charm of Corthell's
attitude that he never did or said the expected, the ordinary. Just
now he seemed more interested in the effect of his love for Laura
upon himself than in the manner of her reception of it.
"It is curious," he continued. "I am no longer a boy. I have no
enthusiasms. I have known many women, and I have seen enough of what
the crowd calls love to know how futile it is, how empty, a vanity
of vanities. I had imagined that the poets were wrong, were
idealists, seeing the things that should be rather than the things
that were. And then," suddenly he drew a deep breath: "_this_
happiness; and to me. And the miracle, the wonderful is there--all
at once--in my heart, in my very hand, like a mysterious, beautiful
exotic. The poets are wrong," he added. "They have not been
idealists enough. I wish--ah, well, never mind."
"What is it that you wish?" she asked, as he broke off suddenly.
Laura knew even before she spoke that it would have been better not
to have prompted him to continue. Intuitively she had something more
than a suspicion that he had led her on to say these very words. And
in admitting that she cared to have the conversation proceed upon
this footing, she realised that she was sheering towards unequivocal
coquetry. She saw the false move now, knew that she had lowered her
guard. On all accounts it would have been more dignified to have
shown only a mild interest in what Corthell wished. She realised
that once more she had acted upon impulse, and she even found time
to wonder again how it was that when with this man her impulses, and
not her reason prevailed so often. With Landry or with Curtis Jadwin
she was always calm, tranquilly self-possessed. But Corthell seemed
able to reach all that was impetuous, all that was unreasoned in her
nature. To Landry she was more than anything else, an older sister,
indulgent, kind-hearted. With Jadwin she found that all the serious,
all the sincere, earnest side of her character was apt to come to
the front. But Corthell stirred troublous, unknown deeps in her,
certain undefined trends of recklessness; and for so long as he held
her within his influence, she could not forget her sex a single
instant.
It dismayed her to have this strange personality of hers, this other
headstrong, impetuous self, discovered to her. She hardly recognised
it. It made her a little afraid; and yet, wonder of wonders, she
could not altogether dislike it. There was a certain fascination in
resigning herself for little instants to the dominion of this daring
stranger that was yet herself.
Meanwhile Corthell had answered her:
"I wish," he said, "I wish you could say something--I hardly know
what--something to me. So little would be so much."
"But what can I say?" she protested. "I don't know--I--what can I
say?"
"It must be yes or no for me," he broke out. "I can't go on this
way."
"But why not? Why not?" exclaimed Laura. "Why must we--terminate
anything? Why not let things go on just as they are? We are quite
happy as we are. There's never been a time of my life when I've been
happier than this last three or four months. I don't want to change
anything. Ah, here we are."
The hansom drew up in front of the house. Aunt Wess' and Page were
already inside. The maid stood in the vestibule in the light that
streamed from the half-open front door, an umbrella in her hand. And
as Laura alighted, she heard Page's voice calling from the front
hall that the others had umbrellas, that the maid was not to wait.
The hansom splashed away, and Corthell and Laura mounted the steps
of the house.
"Won't you come in?" she said. "There is a fire in the library."
But he said no, and for a few seconds they stood under the vestibule
light, talking. Then Corthell, drawing off his right-hand glove,
said:
"I suppose that I have my answer. You do not wish for a change. I
understand. You wish to say by that, that you do not love me. If you
did love me as I love you, you would wish for just that--a change.
You would be as eager as I for that wonderful, wonderful change that
makes a new heaven and a new earth."
This time Laura did not answer. There was a moment's silence. Then
Corthell said:
"Do you know, I think I shall go away."
"Go away?"
"Yes, to New York. Possibly to Paris. There is a new method of
fusing glass that I've promised myself long ago I would look into. I
don't know that it interests me much--now. But I think I had better
go. At once, within the week. I've not much heart in it; but it
seems--under the circumstances--to be appropriate." He held out his
bared hand. Laura saw that he was smiling.
"Well, Miss Dearborn--good-by."
"But why should you go?" she cried, distressfully. "How
perfectly--ah, don't go," she exclaimed, then in desperate haste
added: "It would be absolutely foolish."
"_Shall_ I stay?" he urged. "Do you tell me to stay?"
"Of course I do," she answered. "It would break up the play--your
going. It would spoil my part. You play opposite me, you know.
Please stay."
"Shall I stay," he asked, "for the sake of your part? There is no
one else you would rather have?" He was smiling straight into her
eyes, and she guessed what he meant.
She smiled back at him, and the spirit of daring never more awake in
her, replied, as she caught his eye:
"There is no one else I would rather have."
Corthell caught her hand of a sudden.
"Laura," he cried, "let us end this fencing and quibbling once and
for all. Dear, dear girl, I love you with all the strength of all
the good in me. Let me be the best a man can be to the woman he
loves."
Laura flashed a smile at him.
"If you can make me love you enough," she answered.
"And you think I can?" he exclaimed.
"You have my permission to try," she said.
She hoped fervently that now, without further words, he would leave
her. It seemed to her that it would be the most delicate chivalry on
his part--having won this much--to push his advantage no further.
She waited anxiously for his next words. She began to fear that she
had trusted too much upon her assurance of his tact.
Corthell held out his hand again.
"It is good-night, then, not good-by."
"It is good-night," said Laura.
With the words he was gone, and Laura, entering the house, shut the
door behind her with a long breath of satisfaction.
Page and Landry were still in the library. Laura joined them, and
for a few moments the three stood before the fireplace talking about
the play. Page at length, at the first opportunity, excused herself
and went to bed. She made a great show of leaving Landry and Laura
alone, and managed to convey the impression that she understood they
were anxious to be rid of her.
"Only remember," she remarked to Laura severely, "to lock up and
turn out the hall gas. Annie has gone to bed long ago."
"I must dash along, too," declared Landry when Page was gone.
He buttoned his coat about his neck, and Laura followed him out into
the hall and found an umbrella for him.
"You were beautiful to-night," he said, as he stood with his hand on
the door knob. "Beautiful. I could not keep my eyes off of you, and
I could not listen to anybody but you. And now," he declared,
solemnly, "I will see your eyes and hear your voice all the rest of
the night. I want to explain," he added, "about those hansoms--about
coming home with Miss Page and Mrs. Wessels. Mr. Corthell--those
were his hansoms, of course. But I wanted an umbrella, and I gave
the driver seventy-five cents."
"Why of course, of course," said Laura, not quite divining what he
was driving at.
"I don't want you to think that I would be willing to put myself
under obligations to anybody."
"Of course, Landry; I understand."
He thrilled at once.
"Ah," he cried, "you don't know what it means to me to look into the
eyes of a woman who really understands."
Laura stared, wondering just what she had said.
"Will you turn this hall light out for me, Landry?" she asked. "I
never can reach."
He left the front door open and extinguished the jet in its dull red
globe. Promptly they were involved in darkness.
"Good-night," she said. "Isn't it dark?"
He stretched out his hand to take hers, but instead his groping
fingers touched her waist. Suddenly Laura felt his arm clasp her.
Then all at once, before she had time to so much as think of
resistance, he had put both arms about her and kissed her squarely
on her cheek.
Then the front door closed, and she was left abruptly alone,
breathless, stunned, staring wide-eyed into the darkness.
Her first sensation was one merely of amazement. She put her hand
quickly to her cheek, first the palm and then the back, murmuring
confusedly:
"What? Why?--why?"
Then she whirled about and ran up the stairs, her silks clashing and
fluttering about her as she fled, gained her own room, and swung the
door violently shut behind her. She turned up the lowered gas and,
without knowing why, faced her mirror at once, studying her
reflection and watching her hand as it all but scoured the offended
cheek.
Then, suddenly, with an upward, uplifting rush, her anger surged
within her. She, Laura, Miss Dearborn, who loved no man, who never
conceded, never capitulated, whose "grand manner" was a thing
proverbial, in all her pitch of pride, in her own home, her own
fortress, had been kissed, like a school-girl, like a chambermaid,
in the dark, in a corner.
And by--great heavens!--_Landry Court._ The boy whom she fancied she
held in such subjection, such profound respect. Landry Court had
dared, had dared to kiss her, to offer her this wretchedly
commonplace and petty affront, degrading her to the level of a
pretty waitress, making her ridiculous.
She stood rigid, drawn to her full height, in the centre of her
bedroom, her fists tense at her sides, her breath short, her eyes
flashing, her face aflame. From time to time her words, half
smothered, burst from her.
"What does he think I am? How dared he? How dared he?"
All that she could say, any condemnation she could formulate only
made her position the more absurd, the more humiliating. It had all
been said before by generations of shop-girls, school-girls, and
servants, in whose company the affront had ranged her. Landry was to
be told in effect that he was never to presume to seek her
acquaintance again. Just as the enraged hussy of the street corners
and Sunday picnics shouted that the offender should "never dare
speak to her again as long as he lived." Never before had she been
subjected to this kind of indignity. And simultaneously with the
assurance she could hear the shrill voice of the drab of the public
balls proclaiming that she had "never been kissed in all her life
before."
Of all slights, of all insults, it was the one that robbed her of
the very dignity she should assume to rebuke it. The more vehemently
she resented it, the more laughable became the whole affair.
But she would resent it, she would resent it, and Landry Court
should be driven to acknowledge that the sorriest day of his life
was the one on which he had forgotten the respect in which he had
pretended to hold her. He had deceived her, then, all along. Because
she had--foolishly--relaxed a little towards him, permitted a
certain intimacy, this was how he abused it. Ah, well, it would
teach her a lesson. Men were like that. She might have known it
would come to this. Wilfully they chose to misunderstand, to take
advantage of her frankness, her good nature, her good comradeship.
She had been foolish all along, flirting--yes, that was the word for
it flirting with Landry and Corthell and Jadwin. No doubt they all
compared notes about her. Perhaps they had bet who first should kiss
her. Or, at least, there was not one of them who would not kiss her
if she gave him a chance.
But if she, in any way, had been to blame for what Landry had done,
she would atone for it. She had made herself too cheap, she had
found amusement in encouraging these men, in equivocating, in
coquetting with them. Now it was time to end the whole business, to
send each one of them to the right-about with an unequivocal
definite word. She was a good girl, she told herself. She was, in
her heart, sincere; she was above the inexpensive diversion of
flirting. She had started wrong in her new life, and it was time,
high time, to begin over again--with a clean page--to show these men
that they dared not presume to take liberties with so much as the
tip of her little finger.
So great was her agitation, so eager her desire to act upon her
resolve, that she could not wait till morning. It was a physical
impossibility for her to remain under what she chose to believe
suspicion another hour. If there was any remotest chance that her
three lovers had permitted themselves to misunderstand her, they
were to be corrected at once, were to be shown their place, and that
without mercy.
She called for the maid, Annie, whose husband was the janitor of the
house, and who slept in the top story.
"If Henry hasn't gone to bed," said Laura, "tell him to wait up till
I call him, or to sleep with his clothes on. There is something I
want him to do for me--something important."
It was close upon midnight. Laura turned back into her room, removed
her hat and veil, and tossed them, with her coat, upon the bed. She
lit another burner of the chandelier, and drew a chair to her
writing-desk between the windows.
Her first note was to Landry Court. She wrote it almost with a
single spurt of the pen, and dated it carefully, so that he might
know it had been written immediately after he had left. Thus it ran:
"Please do not try to see me again at any time or under any
circumstances. I want you to understand, very clearly, that I do not
wish to continue our acquaintance."
Her letter to Corthell was more difficult, and it was not until she
had rewritten it two or three times that it read to her
satisfaction.
"My dear Mr. Corthell," so it was worded, "you asked me to-night
that our fencing and quibbling be brought to an end. I quite agree
with you that it is desirable. I spoke as I did before you left upon
an impulse that I shall never cease to regret. I do not wish you to
misunderstand me, nor to misinterpret my attitude in any way. You
asked me to be your wife, and, very foolishly and wrongly, I gave
you--intentionally--an answer which might easily be construed into
an encouragement. Understand now that I do not wish you to try to
make me love you. I would find it extremely distasteful. And,
believe me, it would be quite hopeless. I do not now, and never
shall care for you as I should care if I were to be your wife. I
beseech you that you will not, in any manner, refer again to this
subject. It would only distress and pain me.
"Cordially yours,
"LAURA DEARBORN."
The letter to Curtis Jadwin was almost to the same effect. But she
found the writing of it easier than the others. In addressing him
she felt herself grow a little more serious, a little more dignified
and calm. It ran as follows:
MY DEAR MR. JADWIN:
"When you asked me to become your wife this evening, you deserved a
straightforward answer, and instead I replied in a spirit of
capriciousness and disingenuousness, which I now earnestly regret,
and which ask you to pardon and to ignore.
"I allowed myself to tell you that you might find encouragement in
my foolishly spoken words. I am deeply sorry that I should have so
forgotten what was due to my own self-respect and to your sincerity.
"If I have permitted myself to convey to you the impression that I
would ever be willing to be your wife, let me hasten to correct it.
Whatever I said to you this evening, I must answer now--as I should
have answered then--truthfully and unhesitatingly, no.
"This, I insist, must be the last word between us upon this
unfortunate subject, if we are to continue, as I hope, very good
friends.
"Cordially yours,
"LAURA DEARBORN."
She sealed, stamped, and directed the three envelopes, and glanced
at the little leather-cased travelling clock that stood on the top
of her desk. It was nearly two.
"I could not sleep, I could not sleep," she murmured, "if I did not
know they were on the way."
In answer to the bell Henry appeared, and Laura gave him the
letters, with orders to mail them at once in the nearest box.
When it was all over she sat down again at her desk, and leaning an
elbow upon it, covered her eyes with her hand for a long moment. She
felt suddenly very tired, and when at last she lowered her hand, her
fingers were wet. But in the end she grew calmer. She felt that, at
all events, she had vindicated herself, that her life would begin
again to-morrow with a clean page; and when at length she fell
asleep, it was to the dreamless unconsciousness of an almost
tranquil mind.
She slept late the next morning and breakfasted in bed between ten
and eleven. Then, as the last vibrations of last night's commotion
died away, a very natural curiosity began to assert itself. She
wondered how each of the three men "would take it." In spite of
herself she could not keep from wishing that she could be by when
they read their dismissals.
Towards the early part of the afternoon, while Laura was in the
library reading "Queen's Gardens," the special delivery brought
Landry Court's reply. It was one roulade of incoherence, even in
places blistered with tears. Landry protested, implored, debased
himself to the very dust. His letter bristled with exclamation
points, and ended with a prolonged wail of distress and despair.
Quietly, and with a certain merciless sense of pacification, Laura
deliberately reduced the letter to strips, burned it upon the
hearth, and went back to her Ruskin.
A little later, the afternoon being fine, she determined to ride out
to Lincoln Park, not fifteen minutes from her home, to take a little
walk there, and to see how many new buds were out.
As she was leaving, Annie gave into her hands a pasteboard box, just
brought to the house by a messenger boy.
The box was full of Jacqueminot roses, to the stems of which a note
from Corthell was tied. He wrote but a single line:
"So it should have been 'good-by' after all."
Laura had Annie put the roses in Page's room.
"Tell Page she can have them; I don't want them. She can wear them
to her dance to-night," she said.
While to herself she added:
"The little buds in the park will be prettier."
She was gone from the house over two hours, for she had elected to
walk all the way home. She came back flushed and buoyant from her
exercise, her cheeks cool with the Lake breeze, a young maple leaf
in one of the revers of her coat. Annie let her in, murmuring:
"A gentleman called just after you went out. I told him you were not
at home, but he said he would wait. He is in the library now."
"Who is he? Did he give his name?" demanded Laura.
The maid handed her Curtis Jadwin's card.
V
That year the spring burst over Chicago in a prolonged scintillation
of pallid green. For weeks continually the sun shone. The Lake,
after persistently cherishing the greys and bitter greens of the
winter months, and the rugged white-caps of the northeast gales,
mellowed at length, turned to a softened azure blue, and lapsed by
degrees to an unrumed calmness, incrusted with innumerable
coruscations.
In the parks, first of all, the buds and earliest shoots asserted
themselves. The horse-chestnut bourgeons burst their sheaths to
spread into trefoils and flame-shaped leaves. The elms, maples, and
cottonwoods followed. The sooty, blackened snow upon the grass
plats, in the residence quarters, had long since subsided, softening
the turf, filling the gutters with rivulets. On all sides one saw
men at work laying down the new sod in rectangular patches.
There was a delicious smell of ripening in the air, a smell of sap
once more on the move, of humid earths disintegrating from the
winter rigidity, of twigs and slender branches stretching themselves
under the returning warmth, elastic once more, straining in their
bark.
On the North Side, in Washington Square, along the Lake-shore Drive,
all up and down the Lincoln Park Boulevard, and all through Erie,
Huron, and Superior streets, through North State Street, North
Clarke Street, and La Salle Avenue, the minute sparkling of green
flashed from tree top to tree top, like the first kindling of dry
twigs. One could almost fancy that the click of igniting branch tips
was audible as whole beds of yellow-green sparks defined themselves
within certain elms and cottonwoods.
Every morning the sun invaded earlier the east windows of Laura
Dearborn's bedroom. Every day at noon it stood more nearly overhead
above her home. Every afternoon the checkered shadows of the leaves
thickened upon the drawn curtains of the library. Within doors the
bottle-green flies came out of their lethargy and droned and bumped
on the panes. The double windows were removed, screens and awnings
took their places; the summer pieces were put into the fireplaces.
All of a sudden vans invaded the streets, piled high with
mattresses, rocking-chairs, and bird cages; the inevitable "spring
moving" took place. And these furniture vans alternated with great
trucks laden with huge elm trees on their way from nursery to lawn.
Families and trees alike submitted to the impulse of transplanting,
abandoning the winter quarters, migrating with the spring to newer
environments, taking root in other soils. Sparrows wrangled on the
sidewalks and built ragged nests in the interstices of cornice and
coping. In the parks one heard the liquid modulations of robins. The
florists' wagons appeared, and from house to house, from lawn to
lawn, iron urns and window boxes filled up with pansies, geraniums,
fuchsias, and trailing vines. The flower beds, stripped of straw and
manure, bloomed again, and at length the great cottonwoods shed
their berries, like clusters of tiny grapes, over street and
sidewalk.
At length came three days of steady rain, followed by cloudless
sunshine and full-bodied, vigorous winds straight from out the
south.
Instantly the living embers in tree top and grass plat were fanned
to flame. Like veritable fire, the leaves blazed up. Branch after
branch caught and crackled; even the dryest, the deadest, were
enfolded in the resistless swirl of green. Tree top ignited tree
top; the parks and boulevards were one smother of radiance. From end
to end and from side to side of the city, fed by the rains, urged by
the south winds, spread billowing and surging the superb
conflagration of the coming summer.
Then, abruptly, everything hung poised; the leaves, the flowers, the
grass, all at fullest stretch, stood motionless, arrested, while the
heat, distilled, as it were, from all this seething green, rose like
a vast pillar over the city, and stood balanced there in the
iridescence of the sky, moveless and immeasurable.
From time to time it appeared as if this pillar broke in the guise
of summer storms, and came toppling down upon the city in tremendous
detonations of thunder and weltering avalanches of rain. But it
broke only to reform, and no sooner had the thunder ceased, the rain
intermitted, and the sun again come forth, than one received the
vague impression of the swift rebuilding of the vast, invisible
column that smothered the city under its bases, towering higher and
higher into the rain-washed, crystal-clear atmosphere.
Then the aroma of wet dust, of drenched pavements, musty, acute--the
unforgettable exhalation of the city's streets after a
shower--pervaded all the air, and the little out-door activities
resumed again under the dripping elms and upon the steaming
sidewalks.
The evenings were delicious. It was yet too early for the exodus
northward to the Wisconsin lakes, but to stay indoors after
nightfall was not to be thought of. After six o'clock, all through
the streets in the neighbourhood of the Dearborns' home, one could
see the family groups "sitting out" upon the front "stoop." Chairs
were brought forth, carpets and rugs unrolled upon the steps. From
within, through the opened windows of drawing-room and parlour, came
the brisk gaiety of pianos. The sidewalks were filled with children
clamouring at "tag," "I-spy," or "run-sheep-run." Girls in
shirt-waists and young men in flannel suits promenaded to and fro.
Visits were exchanged from "stoop" to "stoop," lemonade was served,
and claret punch. In their armchairs on the top step, elderly men,
householders, capitalists, well-to-do, their large stomachs covered
with white waistcoats, their straw hats upon their knees, smoked
very fragrant cigars in silent enjoyment, digesting their dinners,
taking the air after the grime and hurry of the business districts.
It was on such an evening as this, well on towards the last days of
the spring, that Laura Dearborn and Page joined the Cresslers and
their party, sitting out like other residents of the neighbourhood
on the front steps of their house. Almost every evening nowadays the
Dearborn girls came thus to visit with the Cresslers. Sometimes Page
brought her mandolin.
Every day of the warm weather seemed only to increase the beauty of
the two sisters. Page's brown hair was never more luxuriant, the
exquisite colouring of her cheeks never more charming, the boyish
outlines of her small, straight figure--immature and a little
angular as yet--never more delightful. The seriousness of her
straight-browed, grave, grey-blue eyes was still present, but the
eyes themselves were, in some indefinable way, deepening, and all
the maturity that as yet was withheld from her undeveloped little
form looked out from beneath her long lashes.
But Laura was veritably regal. Very slender as yet, no trace of
fulness to be seen over hip or breast, the curves all low and flat,
she yet carried her extreme height with tranquil confidence, the
unperturbed assurance of a chatelaine of the days of feudalism.
Her coal-black hair, high-piled, she wore as if it were a coronet.
The warmth of the exuberant spring days had just perceptibly
mellowed the even paleness of her face, but to compensate for this
all the splendour of coming midsummer nights flashed from her
deep-brown eyes.
On this occasion she had put on her coat over her shirt-waist, and a
great bunch of violets was tucked into her belt. But no sooner had
she exchanged greetings with the others and settled herself in her
place than she slipped her coat from her shoulders.
It was while she was doing this that she noted, for the first time,
Landry Court standing half in and half out of the shadow of the
vestibule behind Mr. Cressler's chair.
"This is the first time he has been here since--since that night,"
Mrs. Cressler hastened to whisper in Laura's ear. "He told me
about--well, he told me what occurred, you know. He came to dinner
to-night, and afterwards the poor boy nearly wept in my arms. You
never saw such penitence."
Laura put her chin in the air with a little movement of incredulity.
But her anger had long since been a thing of the past. Good-tempered,
she could not cherish resentment very long. But as yet she
had greeted Landry only by the briefest of nods.
"Such a warm night!" she murmured, fanning herself with part of Mr.
Cressler's evening paper. "And I never was so thirsty."
"Why, of course," exclaimed Mrs. Cressler. "Isabel," she called,
addressing Miss Gretry, who sat on the opposite side of the steps,
"isn't the lemonade near you? Fill a couple of glasses for Laura and
Page."
Page murmured her thanks, but Laura declined.
"No; just plain water for me," she said. "Isn't there some inside?
Mr. Court can get it for me, can't he?" Landry brought the pitcher
back, running at top speed and spilling half of it in his eagerness.
Laura thanked him with a smile, addressing him, however, by his last
name. She somehow managed to convey to him in her manner the
information that though his offence was forgotten, their old-time
relations were not, for one instant, to be resumed.
Later on, while Page was thrumming her mandolin, Landry whistling a
"second," Mrs. Cressler took occasion to remark to Laura:
"I was reading the Paris letter in the 'Inter-Ocean' to-day, and I
saw Mr. Corthell's name on the list of American arrivals at the
Continental. I guess," she added, "he's going to be gone a long
time. I wonder sometimes if he will ever come back. A fellow with
his talent, I should imagine would find Chicago--well, less
congenial, anyhow, than Paris. But, just the same, I do think it was
mean of him to break up our play by going. I'll bet a cookie that he
wouldn't take part any more just because you wouldn't. He was just
crazy to do that love scene in the fourth act with you. And when you
wouldn't play, of course he wouldn't; and then everybody seemed to
lose interest with you two out. 'J.' took it all very decently
though, don't you think?"
Laura made a murmur of mild assent.
"He was disappointed, too," continued Mrs. Cressler. "I could see
that. He thought the play was going to interest a lot of our church
people in his Sunday-school. But he never said a word when it
fizzled out. Is he coming to-night?"
"Well I declare," said Laura. "How should I know, if you don't?"
Jadwin was an almost regular visitor at the Cresslers' during the
first warm evenings. He lived on the South Side, and the distance
between his home and that of the Cresslers was very considerable. It
was seldom, however, that Jadwin did not drive over. He came in his
double-seated buggy, his negro coachman beside him the two coach
dogs, "Rex" and "Rox," trotting under the rear axle. His horses were
not showy, nor were they made conspicuous by elaborate boots,
bandages, and all the other solemn paraphernalia of the stable, yet
men upon the sidewalks, amateurs, breeders, and the like--men who
understood good stock--never failed to stop to watch the team go by,
heads up, the check rein swinging loose, ears all alert, eyes all
alight, the breath deep, strong, and slow, and the stride,
machine-like, even as the swing of a metronome, thrown out from the
shoulder to knee, snapped on from knee to fetlock, from fetlock to
pastern, finishing squarely, beautifully, with the thrust of the
hoof, planted an instant, then, as it were, flinging the roadway
behind it, snatched up again, and again cast forward.
On these occasions Jadwin himself inevitably wore a black "slouch"
hat, suggestive of the general of the Civil War, a grey "dust
overcoat" with a black velvet collar, and tan gloves, discoloured
with the moisture of his palms and all twisted and crumpled with the
strain of holding the thoroughbreds to their work.
He always called the time of the trip from the buggy at the
Cresslers' horse block, his stop watch in his hand, and, as he
joined the groups upon the steps, he was almost sure to remark:
"Tugs were loose all the way from the river. They pulled the whole
rig by the reins. My hands are about dislocated."
"Page plays very well," murmured Mrs. Cressler as the young girl
laid down her mandolin. "I hope J. does come to-night," she added.
"I love to have him 'round. He's so hearty and whole-souled."
Laura did not reply. She seemed a little preoccupied this evening,
and conversation in the group died away. The night was very
beautiful, serene, quiet; and, at this particular hour of the end of
the twilight, no one cared to talk much. Cressler lit another cigar,
and the filaments of delicate blue smoke hung suspended about his
head in the moveless air. Far off, from the direction of the mouth
of the river, a lake steamer whistled a prolonged tenor note.
Somewhere from an open window in one of the neighbouring houses a
violin, accompanied by a piano, began to elaborate the sustained
phrases of "Schubert's Serenade." Theatrical as was the theme, the
twilight and the muffled hum of the city, lapsing to quiet after the
febrile activities of the day, combined to lend it a dignity, a
persuasiveness. The children were still playing along the sidewalks,
and their staccato gaiety was part of the quiet note to which all
sounds of the moment seemed chorded.
After a while Mrs. Cressler began to talk to Laura in a low voice.
She and Charlie were going to spend a part of June at Oconomowoc, in
Wisconsin. Why could not Laura make up her mind to come with them?
She had asked Laura a dozen times already, but couldn't get a yes or
no answer from her. What was the reason she could not decide? Didn't
she think she would have a good time?
"Page can go," said Laura. "I would like to have you take her. But
as for me, I don't know. My plans are so unsettled this summer." She
broke off suddenly. "Oh, now, that I think of it, I want to borrow
your 'Idylls of the King.' May I take it for a day or two? I'll run
in and get it now," she added as she rose. "I know just where to
find it. No, please sit still, Mr. Cressler. I'll go."
And with the words she disappeared in doors, leaving Mrs. Cressler
to murmur to her husband:
"Strange girl. Sometimes I think I don't know Laura at all. She's so
inconsistent. How funny she acts about going to Oconomowoc with us!"
Mr. Cressler permitted himself an amiable grunt of protest.
"Pshaw! Laura's all right. The handsomest girl in Cook County."
"Well, that's not much to do with it, Charlie," sighed Mrs.
Cressler. "Oh, dear," she added vaguely. "I don't know."
"Don't know what?"
"I hope Laura's life will be happy."
"Oh, for God's sake, Carrie!"
"There's something about that girl," continued Mrs. Cressler, "that
makes my heart bleed for her."
Cressler frowned, puzzled and astonished.
"Hey--what!" he exclaimed. "You're crazy, Carrie!"
"Just the same," persisted Mrs. Cressler, "I just yearn towards her
sometimes like a mother. Some people are born to trouble, Charlie;
born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward. And you mark my words,
Charlie Cressler, Laura is that sort. There's all the pathos in the
world in just the way she looks at you from under all that black,
black hair, and out of her eyes the saddest eyes sometimes, great,
sad, mournful eyes."
"Fiddlesticks!" said Mr. Cressler, resuming his paper.
"I'm positive that Sheldon Corthell asked her to marry him," mused
Mrs. Cressler after a moment's silence. "I'm sure that's why he left
so suddenly."
Her husband grunted grimly as he turned his paper so as to catch the
reflection of the vestibule light.
"Don't you think so, Charlie?"
"Uh! I don't know. I never had much use for that fellow, anyhow."
"He's wonderfully talented," she commented, "and so refined. He
always had the most beautiful manners. Did you ever notice his
hands?"
"I thought they were like a barber's. Put him in 'J.'s' rig there,
behind those horses of his, and how long do you suppose he'd hold
those trotters with that pair of hands? Why," he blustered,
suddenly, "they'd pull him right over the dashboard."
"Poor little Landry Court!" murmured his wife, lowering her voice.
"He's just about heart-broken. He wanted to marry her too. My
goodness, she must have brought him up with a round turn. I can see
Laura when she is really angry. Poor fellow!"
"If you women would let that boy alone, he might amount to
something."
"He told me his life was ruined."
Cressler threw his cigar from him with vast impatience.
"Oh, rot!" he muttered.
"He took it terribly, seriously, Charlie, just the same."
"I'd like to take that young boy in hand and shake some of the
nonsense out of him that you women have filled him with. He's got a
level head. On the floor every day, and never yet bought a hatful of
wheat on his own account. Don't know the meaning of speculation and
don't want to. There's a boy with some sense."
"It's just as well," persisted Mrs. Cressler reflectively, "that
Laura wouldn't have him. Of course they're not made for each other.
But I thought that Corthell would have made her happy. But she won't
ever marry 'J.' He asked her to; she didn't tell me, but I know he
did. And she's refused him flatly. She won't marry anybody, she
says. Said she didn't love anybody, and never would. I'd have loved
to have seen her married to 'J.,' but I can see now that they
wouldn't have been congenial; and if Laura wouldn't have Sheldon
Corthell, who was just made for her, I guess it was no use to expect
she'd have 'J.' Laura's got a temperament, and she's artistic, and
loves paintings, and poetry, and Shakespeare, and all that, and
Curtis don't care for those things at all. They wouldn't have had
anything in common. But Corthell--that was different. And Laura
did care for him, in a way. He interested her immensely. When he'd
get started on art subjects Laura would just hang on every word. My
lands, I wouldn't have gone away if I'd been in his boots. You mark
my words, Charlie, there was the man for Laura Dearborn, and she'll
marry him yet, or I'll miss my guess."
"That's just like you, Carrie--you and the rest of the women,"
exclaimed Cressler, "always scheming to marry each other off. Why
don't you let the girl alone? Laura's all right. She minds her own
business, and she's perfectly happy. But you'd go to work and get up
a sensation about her, and say that your 'heart bleeds for her,' and
that she's born to trouble, and has sad eyes. If she gets into
trouble it'll be because some one else makes it for her. You take my
advice, and let her paddle her own canoe. She's got the head to do
it; don't you worry about that. By the way--" Cressler interrupted
himself, seizing the opportunity to change the subject. "By the way,
Carrie, Curtis has been speculating again. I'm sure of it."
"Too bad," she murmured.
"So it is," Cressler went on. "He and Gretry are thick as thieves
these days. Gretry, I understand, has been selling September wheat
for him all last week, and only this morning they closed out another
scheme--some corn game. It was all over the Floor just about closing
time. They tell me that Curtis landed between eight and ten
thousand. Always seems to win. I'd give a lot to keep him out of it;
but since his deal in May wheat he's been getting into it more and
more."
"Did he sell that property on Washington Street?" she inquired.
"Oh," exclaimed her husband, "I'd forgot. I meant to tell you. No,
he didn't sell it. But he did better. He wouldn't sell, and those
department store people took a lease. Guess what they pay him. Three
hundred thousand a year. 'J.' is getting richer all the time, and
why he can't be satisfied with his own business instead of monkeying
'round La Salle Street is a mystery to me."
But, as Mrs. Cressler was about to reply, Laura came to the open
window of the parlour.
"Oh, Mrs. Cressler," she called, "I don't seem to find your 'Idylls'
after all. I thought they were in the little book-case."
"Wait. I'll find them for you," exclaimed Mrs. Cressler.
"Would you mind?" answered Laura, as Mrs. Cressler rose.
Inside, the gas had not been lighted. The library was dark and cool,
and when Mrs. Cressler had found the book for Laura the girl pleaded
a headache as an excuse for remaining within. The two sat down by
the raised sash of a window at the side of the house, that
overlooked the "side yard," where the morning-glories and
nasturtiums were in full bloom.
"The house is cooler, isn't it?" observed Mrs. Cressler.
Laura settled herself in her wicker chair, and with a gesture that
of late had become habitual with her pushed her heavy coils of hair
to one side and patted them softly to place.
"It is getting warmer, I do believe," she said, rather listlessly.
"I understand it is to be a very hot summer." Then she added, "I'm
to be married in July, Mrs. Cressler."
Mrs. Cressler gasped, and sitting bolt upright stared for one
breathless instant at Laura's face, dimly visible in the darkness.
Then, stupefied, she managed to vociferate:
"What! Laura! Married? My darling girl!"
"Yes," answered Laura calmly. "In July--or maybe sooner."
"Why, I thought you had rejected Mr. Corthell. I thought that's why
he went away."
"Went away? He never went away. I mean it's not Mr. Corthell. It's
Mr. Jadwin."
"Thank God!" declared Mrs. Cressler fervently, and with the words
kissed Laura on both cheeks. "My dear, dear child, you can't tell
how glad I am. From the very first I've said you were made for one
another. And I thought all the time that you'd told him you wouldn't
have him."
"I did," said Laura. Her manner was quiet. She seemed a little
grave. "I told him I did not love him. Only last week I told him
so."
"Well, then, why did you promise?"
"My goodness!" exclaimed Laura, with a show of animation. "You don't
realize what it's been. Do you suppose you can say 'no' to that
man?"
"Of course not, of course not," declared Mrs. Cressler joyfully.
"That's 'J.' all over. I might have known he'd have you if he set
out to do it."
"Morning, noon, and night," Laura continued. "He seemed willing to
wait as long as I wasn't definite; but one day I wrote to him and
gave him a square 'No,' so as he couldn't mistake, and just as soon
as I'd said that he--he--began. I didn't have any peace until I'd
promised him, and the moment I had promised he had a ring on my
finger. He'd had it ready in his pocket for weeks it seems. No," she
explained, as Mrs. Cressler laid her fingers upon her left hand,
"That I would not have--yet."
"Oh, it was like 'J.' to be persistent," repeated Mrs. Cressler.
"Persistent!" murmured Laura. "He simply wouldn't talk of anything
else. It was making him sick, he said. And he did have a
fever--often. But he would come out to see me just the same. One
night, when it was pouring rain--Well, I'll tell you. He had been to
dinner with us, and afterwards, in the drawing-room, I told him 'no'
for the hundredth time just as plainly as I could, and he went away
early--it wasn't eight. I thought that now at last he had given up.
But he was back again before ten the same evening. He said he had
come back to return a copy of a book I had loaned him--'Jane Eyre'
it was. Raining! I never saw it rain as it did that night. He was
drenched, and even at dinner he had had a low fever. And then I was
sorry for him. I told him he could come to see me again. I didn't
propose to have him come down with pneumonia, or typhoid, or
something. And so it all began over again."
"But you loved him, Laura?" demanded Mrs. Cressler. "You love him
now?"
Laura was silent. Then at length:
"I don't know," she answered.
"Why, of course you love him, Laura," insisted Mrs. Cressler. "You
wouldn't have promised him if you hadn't. Of course you love him,
don't you?"
"Yes, I--I suppose I must love him, or--as you say--I wouldn't have
promised to marry him. He does everything, every little thing I say.
He just seems to think of nothing else but to please me from morning
until night. And when I finally said I would marry him, why, Mrs.
Cressler, he choked all up, and the tears ran down his face, and all
he could say was, 'May God bless you! May God bless you!' over and
over again, and his hand shook so that--Oh, well," she broke off
abruptly. Then added, "Somehow it makes tears come to my eyes to
think of it."
"But, Laura," urged Mrs. Cressler, "you love Curtis, don't you?
You--you're such a strange girl sometimes. Dear child, talk to me as
though I were your mother. There's no one in the world loves you
more than I do. You love Curtis, don't you?"
Laura hesitated a long moment.
"Yes," she said, slowly at length. "I think I love him very
much--sometimes. And then sometimes I think I don't. I can't tell.
There are days when I'm sure of it, and there are others when I
wonder if I want to be married, after all. I thought when love came
it was to be--oh, uplifting, something glorious like Juliet's love
or Marguerite's. Something that would--" Suddenly she struck her
hand to her breast, her fingers shut tight, closing to a fist. "Oh,
something that would shake me all to pieces. I thought that was the
only kind of love there was."
"Oh, that's what you read about in trashy novels," Mrs. Cressler
assured her, "or the kind you see at the matinees. I wouldn't let
that bother me, Laura. There's no doubt that '_J._' loves you."
Laura brightened a little. "Oh, no," she answered, "there's no doubt
about that. It's splendid, that part of it. He seems to think
there's nothing in the world too good for me. Just imagine, only
yesterday I was saying something about my gloves, I really forget
what--something about how hard it was for me to get the kind of
gloves I liked. Would you believe it, he got me to give him my
measure, and when I saw him in the evening he told me he had cabled
to Brussels to some famous glovemaker and had ordered I don't know
how many pairs."
"Just like him, just like him!" cried Mrs. Cressler. "I know you
will be happy, Laura, dear. You can't help but be with a man who
loves you as 'J.' does."
"I think I shall be happy," answered Laura, suddenly grave. "Oh,
Mrs. Cressler, I want to be. I hope that I won't come to myself some
day, after it is too late, and find that it was all a mistake." Her
voice shook a little. "You don't know how nervous I am these days.
One minute I am one kind of girl, and the next another kind. I'm so
nervous and--oh, I don't know. Oh, I guess it will be all right."
She wiped her eyes, and laughed a note. "I don't see why I should
cry about it," she murmured.
"Well, Laura," answered Mrs. Cressler, "if you don't love Curtis,
don't marry him. That's very simple."
"It's like this, Mrs. Cressler," Laura explained. "I suppose I am
very uncharitable and unchristian, but I like the people that like
me, and I hate those that don't like me. I can't help it. I know
it's wrong, but that's the way I am. And I love to be loved. The man
that would love me the most would make me love him. And when Mr.
Jadwin seems to care so much, and do so much, and--you know how I
mean; it does make a difference of course. I suppose I care as much
for Mr. Jadwin as I ever will care for any man. I suppose I must be
cold and unemotional."
Mrs. Cressler could not restrain a movement of surprise.
"You unemotional? Why, I thought you just said, Laura, that you had
imagined love would be like Juliet and like that girl in
'Faust'--that it was going to shake you all to pieces."
"Did I say that? Well, I told you I was one girl one minute and
another another. I don't know myself these days. Oh, hark," she
said, abruptly, as the cadence of hoofs began to make itself audible
from the end of the side street. "That's the team now. I could
recognise those horses' trot as far as I could hear it. Let's go
out. I know he would like to have me there when he drives up. And
you know"--she put her hand on Mrs. Cressler's arm as the two moved
towards the front door--"this is all absolutely a secret as yet."
"Why, of course, Laura dear. But tell me just one thing more," Mrs.
Cressler asked, in a whisper, "are you going to have a church
wedding?"
"Hey, Carrie," called Mr. Cressler from the stoop, "here's J."
Laura shook her head.
"No, I want it to be very quiet--at our house. We'll go to Geneva
Lake for the summer. That's why, you see, I couldn't promise to go
to Oconomowoc with you."
They came out upon the front steps, Mrs. Cressler's arm around
Laura's waist. It was dark by now, and the air was perceptibly
warmer.
The team was swinging down the street close at hand, the hoof beats
exactly timed, as if there were but one instead of two horses.
"Well, what's the record to-night J.?" cried Cressler, as Jadwin
brought the bays to a stand at the horse block. Jadwin did not
respond until he had passed the reins to the coachman, and taking
the stop watch from the latter's hand, he drew on his cigar, and
held the glowing tip to the dial.
"Eleven minutes and a quarter," he announced, "and we had to wait
for the bridge at that."
He came up the steps, fanning himself with his slouch hat, and
dropped into the chair that Landry had brought for him.
"Upon my word," he exclaimed, gingerly drawing off his driving
gloves, "I've no feeling in my fingers at all. Those fellows will
pull my hands clean off some day."
But he was hardly settled in his place before he proposed to send
the coachman home, and to take Laura for a drive towards Lincoln
Park, and even a little way into the park itself. He promised to
have her back within an hour.
"I haven't any hat," objected Laura. "I should love to go, but I ran
over here to-night without any hat."
"Well, I wouldn't let that stand in my way, Laura," protested Mrs.
Cressler. "It will be simply heavenly in the Park on such a night as
this."
In the end Laura borrowed Page's hat, and Jadwin took her away. In
the light of the street lamps Mrs. Cressler and the others watched
them drive off, sitting side by side behind the fine horses. Jadwin,
broad-shouldered, a fresh cigar in his teeth, each rein in a double
turn about his large, hard hands; Laura, slim, erect, pale, her
black, thick hair throwing a tragic shadow low upon her forehead.
"A fine-looking couple," commented Mr. Cressler as they disappeared.
The hoof beats died away, the team vanished. Landry Court, who stood
behind the others, watching, turned to Mrs. Cressler. She thought
she detected a little unsteadiness in his voice, but he repeated
bravely:
"Yes, yes, that's right. They are a fine, a--a fine-looking couple
together, aren't they? A fine-looking couple, to say the least."
A week went by, then two, soon May had passed. On the fifteenth of
that month Laura's engagement to Curtis Jadwin was formally
announced. The day of the wedding was set for the first week in
June.
During this time Laura was never more changeable, more puzzling. Her
vivacity seemed suddenly to have been trebled, but it was invaded
frequently by strange reactions and perversities that drove her
friends and family to distraction.
About a week after her talk with Mrs. Cressler, Laura broke the news
to Page. It was a Monday morning. She had spent the time since
breakfast in putting her bureau drawers to rights, scattering sachet
powders in them, then leaving them open so as to perfume the room.
At last she came into the front "upstairs sitting-room," a heap of
gloves, stockings, collarettes--the odds and ends of a wildly
disordered wardrobe--in her lap. She tumbled all these upon the
hearth rug, and sat down upon the floor to sort them carefully. At
her little desk near by, Page, in a blue and white shirt waist and
golf skirt, her slim little ankles demurely crossed, a cone of
foolscap over her forearm to guard against ink spots, was writing in
her journal. This was an interminable affair, voluminous, complex,
that the young girl had kept ever since she was fifteen. She wrote
in it--she hardly knew what--the small doings of the previous day,
her comings and goings, accounts of dances, estimates of new
acquaintances. But besides this she filled page after page with
"impressions," "outpourings," queer little speculations about her
soul, quotations from poets, solemn criticisms of new novels, or as
often as not mere purposeless meanderings of words, exclamatory,
rhapsodic--involved lucubrations quite meaningless and futile, but
which at times she re-read with vague thrills of emotion and
mystery.
On this occasion Page wrote rapidly and steadily for a few moments
after Laura's entrance into the room. Then she paused, her eyes
growing wide and thoughtful. She wrote another line and paused
again. Seated on the floor, her hands full of gloves, Laura was
murmuring to herself.
"Those are good ... and those, and the black suedes make eight....
And if I could only find the mate to this white one.... Ah, here it
is. That makes nine, nine pair."
She put the gloves aside, and turning to the stockings drew one of
the silk ones over her arm, and spread out her fingers in the foot.
"Oh, dear," she whispered, "there's a thread started, and now it
will simply run the whole length...."
Page's scratching paused again.
"Laura," she asked dreamily, "Laura, how do you spell 'abysmal'?"
"With a y, honey," answered Laura, careful not to smile.
"Oh, Laura," asked Page, "do you ever get very, very sad without
knowing why?"
"No, indeed," answered her sister, as she peeled the stocking from
her arm. "When I'm sad I know just the reason, you may be sure."
Page sighed again.
"Oh, I don't know," she murmured indefinitely. "I lie awake at night
sometimes and wish I were dead."
"You mustn't get morbid, honey," answered her older sister calmly.
"It isn't natural for a young healthy little body like you to have
such gloomy notions."
"Last night," continued Page, "I got up out of bed and sat by the
window a long time. And everything was so still and beautiful, and
the moonlight and all--and I said right out loud to myself,
"My breath to Heaven in vapour goes--
You know those lines from Tennyson:
"My breath to Heaven in vapour goes,
May my soul follow soon."
I said it right out loud just like that, and it was just as though
something in me had spoken. I got my journal and wrote down, 'Yet in
a few days, and thee, the all-beholding sun shall see no more.' It's
from Thanatopsis, you know, and I thought how beautiful it would be
to leave all this world, and soar and soar, right up to higher
planes and be at peace. Laura, dearest, do you think I ever ought to
marry?"
"Why not, girlie? Why shouldn't you marry. Of course you'll marry
some day, if you find--"
"I should like to be a nun," Page interrupted, shaking her head,
mournfully.
"--if you find the man who loves you," continued Laura, "and whom
you--you admire and respect--whom you love. What would you say,
honey, if--if your sister, if I should be married some of these
days?"
Page wheeled about in her chair.
"Oh, Laura, tell me," she cried, "are you joking? Are you going to
be married? Who to? I hadn't an idea, but I thought--I suspected."
"Well," observed Laura, slowly, "I might as well tell you--some one
will if I don't--Mr. Jadwin wants me to marry him."
"And what did you say? What did you say? Oh, I'll never tell. Oh,
Laura, tell me all about it."
"Well, why shouldn't I marry him? Yes--I promised. I said yes. Why
shouldn't I? He loves me, and he is rich. Isn't that enough?"
"Oh, no. It isn't. You must love--you do love him?"
"I? Love? Pooh!" cried Laura. "Indeed not. I love nobody."
"Oh, Laura," protested Page earnestly. "Don't, don't talk that way.
You mustn't. It's wicked."
Laura put her head in the air.
"I wouldn't give any man that much satisfaction. I think that is the
way it ought to be. A man ought to love a woman more than she loves
him. It ought to be enough for him if she lets him give her
everything she wants in the world. He ought to serve her like the
old knights--give up his whole life to satisfy some whim of hers;
and it's her part, if she likes, to be cold and distant. That's my
idea of love."
"Yes, but they weren't cold and proud to their knights after they'd
promised to marry them," urged Page. "They loved them in the end,
and married them for love."
"Oh, 'love'!" mocked Laura. "I don't believe in love. You only get
your ideas of it from trashy novels and matinees. Girlie," cried
Laura, "I am going to have the most beautiful gowns. They're the
last things that Miss Dearborn shall buy for herself, and"--she
fetched a long breath--"I tell you they are going to be creations."
When at length the lunch bell rang Laura jumped to her feet,
adjusting her coiffure with thrusts of her long, white hands, the
fingers extended, and ran from the room exclaiming that the whole
morning had gone and that half her bureau drawers were still in
disarray.
Page, left alone, sat for a long time lost in thought, sighing
deeply at intervals, then at last she wrote in her journal:
"A world without Love--oh, what an awful thing that would be. Oh,
love is so beautiful--so beautiful, that it makes me sad. When I
think of love in all its beauty I am sad, sad like Romola in George
Eliot's well-known novel of the same name."
She locked up her journal in the desk drawer, and wiped her pen
point until it shone, upon a little square of chamois skin. Her
writing-desk was a miracle of neatness, everything in its precise
place, the writing-paper in geometrical parallelograms, the pen tray
neatly polished.
On the hearth rug, where Laura had sat, Page's searching eye
discovered traces of her occupancy--a glove button, a white thread,
a hairpin. Page was at great pains to gather them up carefully and
drop them into the waste basket.
"Laura is so fly-away," she observed, soberly.
When Laura told the news to Aunt Wess' the little old lady showed no
surprise.
"I've been expecting it of late," she remarked. "Well, Laura, Mr.
Jadwin is a man of parts. Though, to tell the truth, I thought at
first it was to be that Mr. Corthell. He always seemed so
distinguished-looking and elegant. I suppose now that that young Mr.
Court will have a regular conniption fit."
"Oh, Landry," murmured Laura.
"Where are you going to live, Laura? Here? My word, child, don't be
afraid to tell me I must pack. Why, bless you."
"No, no," exclaimed Laura, energetically, "you are to stay right
here. We'll talk it all over just as soon as I know more decidedly
what our plans are to be. No, we won't live here. Mr. Jadwin is
going to buy a new house--on the corner of North Avenue and State
Street. It faces Lincoln Park--you know it, the Farnsworth place."
"Why, my word, Laura," cried Aunt Wess' amazed, "why, it's a palace!
Of course I know it. Why, it takes in the whole block, child, and
there's a conservatory pretty near as big as this house. Well!"
"Yes, I know," answered Laura, shaking her head. "It takes my breath
away sometimes. Mr. Jadwin tells me there's an art gallery, too,
with an organ in it--a full-sized church organ. Think of it. Isn't
it beautiful, beautiful? Isn't it a happiness? And I'll have my own
carriage and coupe, and oh, Aunt Wess', a saddle horse if I want to,
and a box at the opera, and a country place--that is to be bought
day after to-morrow. It's at Geneva Lake. We're to go there after we
are married, and Mr. Jadwin has bought the dearest, loveliest,
daintiest little steam yacht. He showed the photograph of her
yesterday. Oh, honey, honey! It all comes over me sometimes. Think,
only a year ago, less than that, I was vegetating there at
Barrington, among those wretched old blue-noses, helping Martha
with the preserves and all and all; and now"--she threw her arms
wide--"I'm just going to live. Think of it, that beautiful house,
and servants, and carriages, and paintings, and, oh, honey, how I
will dress the part!"
"But I wouldn't think of those things so much, Laura," answered Aunt
Wess', rather seriously. "Child, you are not marrying him for
carriages and organs and saddle horses and such. You're marrying
this Mr. Jadwin because you love him. Aren't you?"
"Oh," cried Laura, "I would marry a ragamuffin if he gave me all
these things--gave them to me because he loved me."
Aunt Wess' stared. "I wouldn't talk that way, Laura," she remarked.
"Even in fun. At least not before Page."
That same evening Jadwin came to dinner with the two sisters and
their aunt. The usual evening drive with Laura was foregone for this
occasion. Jadwin had stayed very late at his office, and from there
was to come direct to the Dearborns. Besides that, Nip--the
trotters were named Nip and Tuck--was lame.
As early as four o'clock in the afternoon Laura, suddenly moved by
an unreasoning caprice, began to prepare an elaborate toilet. Not
since the opera night had she given so much attention to her
appearance. She sent out for an extraordinary quantity of flowers;
flowers for the table, flowers for Page and Aunt Wess', great
"American beauties" for her corsage, and a huge bunch of violets for
the bowl in the library. She insisted that Page should wear her
smartest frock, and Mrs. Wessels her grenadine of great occasions.
As for herself, she decided upon a dinner gown of black, decollete,
with sleeves of lace. Her hair she dressed higher than ever. She
resolved upon wearing all her jewelry, and to that end put on all
her rings, secured the roses in place with an amethyst brooch,
caught up the little locks at the back of her head with a
heart-shaped pin of tiny diamonds, and even fastened the ribbon of
satin that girdled her waist, with a clasp of flawed turquoises.
Until five in the afternoon she was in the gayest spirits, and went
down to the dining-room to supervise the setting of the table,
singing to herself.
Then, almost at the very last, when Jadwin might be expected at any
moment, her humour changed again, and again, for no discoverable
reason.
Page, who came into her sister's room after dressing, to ask how she
looked, found her harassed and out of sorts. She was moody, spoke in
monosyllables, and suddenly declared that the wearing anxiety of
house-keeping was driving her to distraction. Of all days in the
week, why had Jadwin chosen this particular one to come to dinner.
Men had no sense, could not appreciate a woman's difficulties. Oh,
she would be glad when the evening was over.
Then, as an ultimate disaster, she declared that she herself looked
"Dutchy." There was no style, no smartness to her dress; her hair
was arranged unbecomingly; she was growing thin, peaked. In a word,
she looked "Dutchy."
All at once she flung off her roses and dropped into a chair.
"I will not go down to-night," she cried. "You and Aunt Wess' must
make out to receive Mr. Jadwin. I simply will not see any one
to-night, Mr. Jadwin least of all. Tell him I'm gone to bed
sick--which is the truth, I am going to bed, my head is splitting."
All persuasion, entreaty, or cajolery availed nothing. Neither Page
nor Aunt Wess' could shake her decision. At last Page hazarded a
remonstrance to the effect that if she had known that Laura was not
going to be at dinner she would not have taken such pains with her
own toilet.
Promptly thereat Laura lost her temper.
"I do declare, Page," she exclaimed, "it seems to me that I get very
little thanks for ever taking any interest in your personal
appearance. There is not a girl in Chicago--no millionaire's
daughter--has any prettier gowns than you. I plan and plan, and go
to the most expensive dressmakers so that you will be well dressed,
and just as soon as I dare to express the desire to see you appear
like a gentlewoman, I get it thrown in my face. And why do I do it?
I'm sure I don't know. It's because I'm a poor weak, foolish,
indulgent sister. I've given up the idea of ever being loved by you;
but I do insist on being respected." Laura rose, stately, severe. It
was the "grand manner" now, unequivocally, unmistakably. "I do
insist upon being respected," she repeated. "It would be wrong and
wicked of me to allow you to ignore and neglect my every wish. I'll
not have it, I'll not tolerate it."
Page, aroused, indignant, disdained an answer, but drew in her
breath and held it hard, her lips tight pressed.
"It's all very well for you to pose, miss," Laura went on; "to pose
as injured innocence. But you understand very well what I mean. If
you don't love me, at least I shall not allow you to flout
me--deliberately, defiantly. And it does seem strange," she added,
her voice beginning to break, "that when we two are all alone in the
world, when there's no father or mother--and you are all I have, and
when I love you as I do, that there might be on your part--a little
consideration--when I only want to be loved for my own sake, and
not--and not--when I want to be, oh, loved--loved--loved--"
The two sisters were in each other's arms by now, and Page was
crying no less than Laura.
"Oh, little sister," exclaimed Laura, "I know you love me. I know
you do. I didn't mean to say that. You must forgive me and be very
kind to me these days. I know I'm cross, but sometimes these days
I'm so excited and nervous I can't help it, and you must try to bear
with me. Hark, there's the bell."
Listening, they heard the servant open the door, and then the sound
of Jadwin's voice and the clank of his cane in the porcelain cane
rack. But still Laura could not be persuaded to go down. No, she was
going to bed; she had neuralgia; she was too nervous to so much as
think. Her gown was "Dutchy." And in the end, so unshakable was her
resolve, that Page and her aunt had to sit through the dinner with
Jadwin and entertain him as best they could.
But as the coffee was being served the three received a genuine
surprise. Laura appeared. All her finery was laid off. She wore the
simplest, the most veritably monastic, of her dresses, plain to the
point of severity. Her hands were bare of rings. Not a single jewel,
not even the most modest ornament relieved her sober appearance. She
was very quiet, spoke in a low voice and declared she had come down
only to drink a glass of mineral water and then to return at once to
her room.
As a matter of fact, she did nothing of the kind. The others
prevailed upon her to take a cup of coffee. Then the dessert was
recalled, and, forgetting herself in an animated discussion with
Jadwin as to the name of their steam yacht, she ate two plates of
wine jelly before she was aware. She expressed a doubt as to whether
a little salad would do her good, and after a vehement exhortation
from Jadwin, allowed herself to be persuaded into accepting a
sufficiently generous amount.
"I think a classical name would be best for the boat," she declared.
"Something like 'Arethusa' or 'The Nereid.'"
They rose from the table and passed into the library. The evening
was sultry, threatening a rain-storm, and they preferred not to sit
on the "stoop." Jadwin lit a cigar; he still wore his business
clothes--the inevitable "cutaway," white waistcoat, and grey
trousers of the middle-aged man of affairs.
"Oh, call her the 'Artemis,'" suggested Page.
"Well now, to tell the truth," observed Jadwin, "those names look
pretty in print; but somehow I don't fancy them. They're hard to
read, and they sound somehow frilled up and fancy. But if you're
satisfied, Laura--"
"I knew a young man once," began Aunt Wess', "who had a boat--that
was when we lived at Kenwood and Mr. Wessels belonged to the
'Farragut'--and this young man had a boat he called 'Fanchon.' He
got tipped over in her one day, he and the three daughters of a lady
I knew well, and two days afterward they found them at the bottom of
the lake, all holding on to each other; and they fetched them up
just like that in one piece. The mother of those girls never smiled
once since that day, and her hair turned snow white. That was in
'seventy-nine. I remember it perfectly. The boat's name was
'Fanchon.'"
"But that was a sail boat, Aunt Wess'," objected Laura. "Ours is a
steam yacht. There's all the difference in the world."
"I guess they're all pretty risky, those pleasure boats," answered
Aunt Wess'. "My word, you couldn't get me to set foot on one."
Jadwin nodded his head at Laura, his eyes twinkling.
"Well, we'll leave 'em all at home, Laura, when we go," he said.
A little later one of Page's "young men" called to see her, and Page
took him off into the drawing-room across the hall. Mrs. Wessels
seized upon the occasion to slip away unobserved, and Laura and
Jadwin were left alone.
"Well, my girl," began Jadwin, "how's the day gone with you?"
She had been seated at the centre table, by the drop light--the only
light in the room--turning over the leaves of "The Age of Fable,"
looking for graceful and appropriate names for the yacht. Jadwin
leaned over her and put his hand upon her shoulder.
"Oh, about the same as usual," she answered. "I told Page and Aunt
Wess' this morning."
"What did they have to say?" Jadwin laid a soft but clumsy hand upon
Laura's head, adding, "Laura, you have the most wonderful hair I
ever saw."
"Oh, they were not surprised. Curtis, don't, you are mussing me."
She moved her head impatiently; but then smiling, as if to mitigate
her abruptness, said, "It always makes me nervous to have my hair
touched. No, they were not surprised; unless it was that we were to
be married so soon. They were surprised at that. You know I always
said it was too soon. Why not put it off, Curtis--until the winter?"
But he scouted this, and then, as she returned to the subject again,
interrupted her, drawing some papers from his pocket.
"Oh, by the way," he said, "here are the sketch plans for the
alterations of the house at Geneva. The contractor brought them to
the office to-day. He's made that change about the dining-room."
"Oh," exclaimed Laura, interested at once, "you mean about building
on the conservatory?"
"Hum--no," answered Jadwin a little slowly. "You see, Laura, the
difficulty is in getting the thing done this summer. When we go up
there we want everything finished, don't we? We don't want a lot of
workmen clattering around. I thought maybe we could wait about that
conservatory till next year, if you didn't mind."
Laura acquiesced readily enough, but Jadwin could see that she was a
little disappointed. Thoughtful, he tugged his mustache in silence
for a moment. Perhaps, after all, it could be arranged. Then an idea
presented itself to him. Smiling a little awkwardly, he said:
"Laura, I tell you what. I'll make a bargain with you."
She looked up as he hesitated. Jadwin sat down at the table opposite
her and leaned forward upon his folded arms.
"Do you know," he began, "I happened to think--Well, here's what I
mean," he suddenly declared decisively. "Do you know, Laura, that
ever since we've been engaged you've never--Well, you've
never--never kissed me of your own accord. It's foolish to talk that
way now, isn't it? But, by George! That would be--would be such a
wonderful thing for me. I know," he hastened to add, "I know, Laura,
you aren't demonstrative. I ought not to expect, maybe, that you--
Well, maybe it isn't much. But I was thinking a while ago that there
wouldn't be a sweeter thing imaginable for me than if my own girl
would come up to me some time--when I wasn't thinking--and of her
own accord put her two arms around me and kiss me. And--well, I was
thinking about it, and--" He hesitated again, then finished abruptly
with, "And it occurred to me that you never had."
Laura made no answer, but smiled rather indefinitely, as she
continued to search the pages of the book, her head to one side.
Jadwin continued:
"We'll call it a bargain. Some day--before very long, mind you--you
are going to kiss me--that way, understand, of your own accord, when
I'm not thinking of it; and I'll get that conservatory in for you.
I'll manage it somehow. I'll start those fellows at it
to-morrow--twenty of 'em if it's necessary. How about it? Is it a
bargain? Some day before long. What do you say?"
Laura hesitated, singularly embarrassed, unable to find the right
words.
"Is it a bargain?" persisted Jadwin.
"Oh, if you put it that way," she murmured, "I suppose so--yes."
"You won't forget, because I shan't speak about it again. Promise
you won't forget."
"No, I won't forget. Why not call her the 'Thetis'?"
"I was going to suggest the 'Dart,' or the 'Swallow,' or the
'Arrow.' Something like that--to give a notion of speed."
"No. I like the 'Thetis' best."
"That settles it then. She's your steam yacht, Laura."
Later on, when Jadwin was preparing to depart, they stood for a
moment in the hallway, while he drew on his gloves and took a fresh
cigar from his case.
"I'll call for you here at about ten," he said. "Will that do?"
He spoke of the following morning. He had planned to take Page, Mrs.
Wessels, and Laura on a day's excursion to Geneva Lake to see how
work was progressing on the country house. Jadwin had set his mind
upon passing the summer months after the marriage at the lake, and
as the early date of the ceremony made it impossible to erect a new
building, he had bought, and was now causing to be remodelled, an
old but very well constructed house just outside of the town and
once occupied by a local magistrate. The grounds were ample, filled
with shade and fruit trees, and fronted upon the lake. Laura had
never seen her future country home. But for the past month Jadwin
had had a small army of workmen and mechanics busy about the place,
and had managed to galvanise the contractors with some of his own
energy and persistence. There was every probability that the house
and grounds would be finished in time.
"Very well," said Laura, in answer to his question, "at ten we'll
be ready. Good-night." She held out her hand. But Jadwin put it
quickly aside, and took her swiftly and strongly into his arms, and
turning her face to his, kissed her cheek again and again.
Laura submitted, protesting:
"Curtis! Such foolishness. Oh, dear; can't you love me without
crumpling me so? Curtis! Please. You are so rough with me, dear."
She pulled away from him, and looked up into his face, surprised to
find it suddenly flushed; his eyes were flashing.
"My God," he murmured, with a quick intake of breath, "my God, how I
love you, my girl! Just the touch of your hand, the smell of your
hair. Oh, sweetheart. It is wonderful! Wonderful!" Then abruptly he
was master of himself again.
"Good-night," he said. "Good-night. God bless you," and with the
words was gone.
They were married on the last day of June of that summer at eleven
o'clock in the morning in the church opposite Laura's house--the
Episcopalian church of which she was a member. The wedding was very
quiet. Only the Cresslers, Miss Gretry, Page, and Aunt Wess' were
present. Immediately afterward the couple were to take the train for
Geneva Lake--Jadwin having chartered a car for the occasion.
But the weather on the wedding day was abominable. A warm drizzle,
which had set in early in the morning, developed by eleven o'clock
into a steady downpour, accompanied by sullen grumblings of very
distant thunder.
About an hour before the appointed time Laura insisted that her aunt
and sister should leave her. She would allow only Mrs. Cressler to
help her. The time passed. The rain continued to fall. At last it
wanted but fifteen minutes to eleven.
Page and Aunt Wess', who presented themselves at the church in
advance of the others, found the interior cool, dark, and damp. They
sat down in a front pew, talking in whispers, looking about them.
Druggeting shrouded the reader's stand, the baptismal font, and
bishop's chair. Every footfall and every minute sound echoed noisily
from the dark vaulting of the nave and chancel. The janitor or
sexton, a severe old fellow, who wore a skull cap and loose
slippers, was making a great to-do with a pile of pew cushions in a
remote corner. The rain drummed with incessant monotony upon the
slates overhead, and upon the stained windows on either hand. Page,
who attended the church regularly every Sunday morning, now found it
all strangely unfamiliar. The saints in the windows looked odd and
unecclesiastical; the whole suggestion of the place was uncanonical.
In the organ loft a tuner was at work upon the organ, and from time
to time the distant mumbling of the thunder was mingled with a
sonorous, prolonged note from the pipes.
"My word, how it is raining," whispered Aunt Wess', as the pour upon
the roof suddenly swelled in volume.
But Page had taken a prayer book from the rack, and kneeling upon a
hassock was repeating the Litany to herself.
It annoyed Aunt Wess'. Excited, aroused, the little old lady was
never more in need of a listener. Would Page never be through?
"And Laura's new frock," she whispered, vaguely. "It's going to be
ruined."
Page, her lips forming the words, "Good Lord deliver us," fixed her
aunt with a reproving glance. To pass the time Aunt Wess' began
counting the pews, missing a number here and there, confusing
herself, always obliged to begin over again. From the direction of
the vestry room came the sound of a closing door. Then all fell
silent again. Even the shuffling of the janitor ceased for an
instant.
"Isn't it still?" murmured Aunt Wess', her head in the air. "I
wonder if that was them. I heard a door slam. They tell me that the
rector has been married three times." Page, unheeding and demure,
turned a leaf, and began with "All those who travel by land or
water." Mr. Cressler and young Miss Gretry appeared. They took their
seats behind Page and Aunt Wess', and the party exchanged greetings
in low voices. Page reluctantly laid down her prayer book.
"Laura will be over soon," whispered Mr. Cressler. "Carrie is with
her. I'm going into the vestry room. J. has just come." He took
himself off, walking upon his tiptoes.
Aunt Wess' turned to Page, repeating:
"Do you know they say this rector has been married three times?"
But Page was once more deep in her prayer book, so the little old
lady addressed her remark to the Gretry girl.
This other, however, her lips tightly compressed, made a despairing
gesture with her hand, and at length managed to say:
"Can't talk."
"Why, heavens, child, whatever is the matter?"
"Makes them worse--when I open my mouth--I've got the hiccoughs."
Aunt Wess' flounced back in her seat, exasperated, out of sorts.
"Well, my word," she murmured to herself, "I never saw such girls."
"Preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth," continued
Page.
Isabel Gretry's hiccoughs drove Aunt Wess' into "the fidgets." They
"got on her nerves." What with them and Page's uninterrupted murmur,
she was at length obliged to sit in the far end of the pew, and just
as she had settled herself a second time the door of the vestry room
opened and the wedding party came out; first Mrs. Cressler, then
Laura, then Jadwin and Cressler, and then, robed in billowing white,
venerable, his prayer book in his hand, the bishop of the diocese
himself. Last of all came the clerk, osseous, perfumed, a gardenia
in the lapel of his frock coat, terribly excited, and hurrying about
on tiptoe, saying "Sh! Sh!" as a matter of principle.
Jadwin wore a new frock coat and a resplendent Ascot scarf, which
Mr. Cressler had bought for him and Page knew at a glance that he
was agitated beyond all measure, and was keeping himself in hand
only by a tremendous effort. She could guess that his teeth were
clenched. He stood by Cressler's side, his head bent forward, his
hands--the fingers incessantly twisting and untwisting--clasped
behind his back. Never for once did his eyes leave Laura's face.
She herself was absolutely calm, only a little paler perhaps than
usual; but never more beautiful, never more charming. Abandoning for
this once her accustomed black, she wore a tan travelling dress,
tailor made, very smart, a picture hat with heavy plumes set off
with a clasp of rhinestones, while into her belt was thrust a great
bunch of violets. She drew off her gloves and handed them to Mrs.
Cressler. At the same moment Page began to cry softly to herself.
"There's the last of Laura," she whimpered. "There's the last of my
dear sister for me."
Aunt Wess' fixed her with a distressful gaze. She sniffed once or
twice, and then began fumbling in her reticule for her handkerchief.
"If only her dear father were here," she whispered huskily. "And to
think that's the same little girl I used to rap on the head with my
thimble for annoying the cat! Oh, if Jonas could be here this day."
"She'll never be the same to me after now," sobbed Page, and as she
spoke the Gretry girl, hypnotised with emotion and taken all
unawares, gave vent to a shrill hiccough, a veritable yelp, that
woke an explosive echo in every corner of the building.
Page could not restrain a giggle, and the giggle strangled with the
sobs in her throat, so that the little girl was not far from
hysterics.
And just then a sonorous voice, magnificent, orotund, began suddenly
from the chancel with the words:
"Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God,
and in the face of this company to join together this Man and this
Woman in holy matrimony."
Promptly a spirit of reverence, not to say solemnity, pervaded the
entire surroundings. The building no longer appeared secular,
unecclesiastical. Not in the midst of all the pomp and ceremonial of
the Easter service had the chancel and high altar disengaged a more
compelling influence. All other intrusive noises died away; the
organ was hushed; the fussy janitor was nowhere in sight; the
outside clamour of the city seemed dwindling to the faintest, most
distant vibration; the whole world was suddenly removed, while the
great moment in the lives of the Man and the Woman began.
Page held her breath; the intensity of the situation seemed to her,
almost physically, straining tighter and tighter with every passing
instant. She was awed, stricken; and Laura appeared to her to be all
at once a woman transfigured, semi-angelic, unknowable, exalted. The
solemnity of those prolonged, canorous syllables: "I require and
charge you both, as ye shall answer at the dreadful day of judgment,
when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed," weighed down
upon her spirits with an almost intolerable majesty. Oh, it was all
very well to speak lightly of marriage, to consider it in a vein of
mirth. It was a pretty solemn affair, after all; and she herself,
Page Dearborn, was a wicked, wicked girl, full of sins, full of
deceits and frivolities, meriting of punishment--on "that dreadful
day of judgment." Only last week she had deceived Aunt Wess' in the
matter of one of her "young men." It was time she stopped. To-day
would mark a change. Henceforward, she resolved, she would lead a
new life.
"God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost ..."
To Page's mind the venerable bishop's voice was filling all the
church, as on the day of Pentecost, when the apostles received the
Holy Ghost, the building was filled with a "mighty rushing wind."
She knelt down again, but could not bring herself to close her eyes
completely. From under her lids she still watched her sister and
Jadwin. How Laura must be feeling now! She was, in fact, very pale.
There was emotion in Jadwin's eyes. Page could see them plainly. It
seemed beautiful that even he, the strong, modern man-of-affairs,
should be so moved. How he must love Laura. He was fine, he was
noble; and all at once this fineness and nobility of his so affected
her that she began to cry again. Then suddenly came the words:
"... That in the world to come ye may have life everlasting. Amen."
There was a moment's silence, then the group about the altar rail
broke up.
"Come," said Aunt Wess', getting to her feet, "it's all over, Page.
Come, and kiss your sister--Mrs. Jadwin."
In the vestry room Laura stood for a moment, while one after another
of the wedding party--even Mr. Cressler--kissed her. When Page's
turn came, the two sisters held each other in a close embrace a long
moment, but Laura's eyes were always dry. Of all present she was the
least excited.
"Here's something," vociferated the ubiquitous clerk, pushing his
way forward. "It was on the table when we came out just now. The
sexton says a messenger boy brought it. It's for Mrs. Jadwin."
He handed her a large box. Laura opened it. Inside was a great sheaf
of Jacqueminot roses and a card, on which was written:
"May that same happiness which you have always inspired in the lives
and memories of all who know you be with you always.
"Yrs. S. C."
The party, emerging from the church, hurried across the street to
the Dearborns' home, where Laura and Jadwin were to get their
valises and hand bags. Jadwin's carriage was already at the door.
They all assembled in the parlor, every one talking at once, while
the servants, bare-headed, carried the baggage down to the carriage.
"Oh, wait--wait a minute, I'd forgotten something," cried Laura.
"What is it? Here, I'll get it for you," cried Jadwin and Cressler
as she started toward the door. But she waved them off, crying:
"No, no. It's nothing. You wouldn't know where to look."
Alone she ran up the stairs, and gained the second story; then
paused a moment on the landing to get her breath and to listen. The
rooms near by were quiet, deserted. From below she could hear the
voices of the others--their laughter and gaiety. She turned about,
and went from room to room, looking long into each; first Aunt
Wess's bedroom, then Page's, then the "front sitting-room," then,
lastly, her own room. It was still in the disorder caused by that
eventful morning; many of the ornaments--her own cherished
knick-knacks--were gone, packed and shipped to her new home the day
before. Her writing-desk and bureau were bare. On the backs of
chairs, and across the footboard of the bed, were the odds and ends
of dress she was never to wear again.
For a long time Laura stood looking silently at the empty room. Here
she had lived the happiest period of her life; not an object there,
however small, that was not hallowed by association. Now she was
leaving it forever. Now the new life, the Untried, was to begin.
Forever the old days, the old life were gone. Girlhood was gone; the
Laura Dearborn that only last night had pressed the pillows of that
bed, where was she now? Where was the little black-haired girl of
Barrington?
And what was this new life to which she was going forth, under these
leaden skies, under this warm mist of rain? The tears--at
last--were in her eyes, and the sob in her throat, and she found
herself, as she leaned an arm upon the lintel of the door,
whispering:
"Good-by. Good-by. Good-by."
Then suddenly Laura, reckless of her wedding finery, forgetful of
trivialities, crossed the room and knelt down at the side of the
bed. Her head in her folded arms, she prayed--prayed in the little
unstudied words of her childhood, prayed that God would take care of
her and make her a good girl; prayed that she might be happy; prayed
to God to help her in the new life, and that she should be a good
and loyal wife.
And then as she knelt there, all at once she felt an arm, strong,
heavy even, laid upon her. She raised her head and looked--for the
first time--direct into her husband's eyes.
"I knew--" began Jadwin. "I thought--Dear, I understand, I
understand."
He said no more than that. But suddenly Laura knew that he, Jadwin,
her husband, did "understand," and she discovered, too, in that
moment just what it meant to be completely, thoroughly
understood--understood without chance of misapprehension, without
shadow of doubt; understood to her heart's heart. And with the
knowledge a new feeling was born within her. No woman, not her
dearest friend; not even Page had ever seemed so close to her as did
her husband now. How could she be unhappy henceforward? The future
was already brightening.
Suddenly she threw both arms around his neck, and drawing his face
down to her, kissed him again and again, and pressed her wet cheek
to his--tear-stained like her own.
"It's going to be all right, dear," he said, as she stood from him,
though still holding his hand. "It's going to be all right."
"Yes, yes, all right, all right," she assented. "I never seemed to
realise it till this minute. From the first I must have loved you
without knowing it. And I've been cold and hard to you, and now I'm
sorry, sorry. You were wrong, remember that time in the library,
when you said I was undemonstrative. I'm not. I love you dearly,
dearly, and never for once, for one little moment, am I ever going
to allow you to forget it."
Suddenly, as Jadwin recalled the incident of which she spoke, an
idea occurred to him.
"Oh, our bargain--remember? You didn't forget after all."
"I did. I did," she cried. "I did forget it. That's the very
sweetest thing about it."
VI
The months passed. Soon three years had gone by, and the third
winter since the ceremony in St. James' Church drew to its close.
Since that day when--acting upon the foreknowledge of the French
import duty--Jadwin had sold his million of bushels short, the price
of wheat had been steadily going down. From ninety-three and
ninety-four it had dropped to the eighties. Heavy crops the world
over had helped the decline. No one was willing to buy wheat. The
Bear leaders were strong, unassailable. Lower and lower sagged the
price; now it was seventy-five, now seventy-two. From all parts of
the country in solid, waveless tides wheat--the mass of it
incessantly crushing down the price--came rolling in upon Chicago
and the Board of Trade Pit. All over the world the farmers saw
season after season of good crops. They were good in the Argentine
Republic, and on the Russian steppes. In India, on the little farms
of Burmah, of Mysore, and of Sind the grain, year after year, headed
out fat, heavy, and well-favoured. In the great San Joaquin valley
of California the ranches were one welter of fertility. All over the
United States, from the Dakotas, from Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and
Illinois, from all the wheat belt came steadily the reports of good
crops.
But at the same time the low price of grain kept the farmers poor.
New mortgages were added to farms already heavily "papered"; even
the crops were mortgaged in advance. No new farm implements were
bought. Throughout the farming communities of the "Middle West" there
were no longer purchases of buggies and parlour organs. Somewhere in
other remoter corners of the world the cheap wheat, that meant cheap
bread, made living easy and induced prosperity, but in the United
States the poverty of the farmer worked upward through the cogs and
wheels of the whole great machine of business. It was as though a
lubricant had dried up. The cogs and wheels worked slowly and with
dislocations. Things were a little out of joint. Wall Street stocks
were down. In a word, "times were bad." Thus for three years. It
became a proverb on the Chicago Board of Trade that the quickest way
to make money was to sell wheat short. One could with almost
absolute certainty be sure of buying cheaper than one had sold. And
that peculiar, indefinite thing known--among the most unsentimental
men in the world--as "sentiment," prevailed more and more strongly
in favour of low prices. "The 'sentiment,'" said the market reports,
"was bearish"; and the traders, speculators, eighth-chasers,
scalpers, brokers, bucket-shop men, and the like--all the world of
La Salle Street--had become so accustomed to these "Bear
conditions," that it was hard to believe that they would not
continue indefinitely.
Jadwin, inevitably, had been again drawn into the troubled waters of
the Pit. Always, as from the very first, a Bear, he had once more
raided the market, and had once more been successful. Two months
after this raid he and Gretry planned still another coup, a deal of
greater magnitude than any they had previously hazarded. Laura, who
knew very little of her husband's affairs--to which he seldom
alluded--saw by the daily papers that at one stage of the affair the
"deal" trembled to its base.
But Jadwin was by now "blooded to the game." He no longer needed
Gretry's urging to spur him. He had developed into a strategist,
bold, of inconceivable effrontery, delighting in the shock of
battle, never more jovial, more daring than when under stress of the
most merciless attack. On this occasion, when the "other side"
resorted to the usual tactics to drive him from the Pit, he led on
his enemies to make one single false step. Instantly--disregarding
Gretry's entreaties as to caution--Jadwin had brought the vast bulk
of his entire fortune to bear, in the manner of a general
concentrating his heavy artillery, and crushed the opposition with
appalling swiftness.
He issued from the grapple triumphantly, and it was not till long
afterward that Laura knew how near, for a few hours, he had been to
defeat.
And again the price of wheat declined. In the first week in April,
at the end of the third winter of Jadwin's married life, May wheat
was selling on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade at
sixty-four, the July option at sixty-five, the September at sixty-six
and an eighth. During February of the same year Jadwin had sold
short five hundred thousand bushels of May. He believed with Gretry
and with the majority of the professional traders that the price
would go to sixty.
March passed without any further decline. All through this month and
through the first days of April Jadwin was unusually thoughtful. His
short wheat gave him no concern. He was now so rich that a mere
half-million bushels was not a matter for anxiety. It was the
"situation" that arrested his attention.
In some indefinable way, warned by that blessed sixth sense that had
made him the successful speculator he was, he felt that somewhere,
at some time during the course of the winter, a change had quietly,
gradually come about, that it was even then operating. The
conditions that had prevailed so consistently for three years, were
they now to be shifted a little? He did not know, he could not say.
But in the plexus of financial affairs in which he moved and lived
he felt--a difference.
For one thing "times" were better, business was better. He could not
fail to see that trade was picking up. In dry goods, in hardware, in
manufactures there seemed to be a different spirit, and he could
imagine that it was a spirit of optimism. There, in that great city
where the Heart of the Nation beat, where the diseases of the times,
or the times' healthful activities were instantly reflected, Jadwin
sensed a more rapid, an easier, more untroubled run of life blood.
All through the Body of Things, money, the vital fluid, seemed to be
flowing more easily. People seemed richer, the banks were lending
more, securities seemed stable, solid. In New York, stocks were
booming. Men were making money--were making it, spending it, lending
it, exchanging it. Instead of being congested in vaults, safes, and
cash boxes, tight, hard, congealed, it was loosening, and, as it
were, liquefying, so that it spread and spread and permeated the
entire community. The People had money. They were willing to take
chances.
So much for the financial conditions.
The spring had been backward, cold, bitter, inhospitable, and Jadwin
began to suspect that the wheat crop of his native country, that for
so long had been generous, and of excellent quality, was now to
prove--it seemed quite possible--scant and of poor condition. He
began to watch the weather, and to keep an eye upon the reports from
the little county seats and "centres" in the winter wheat States.
These, in part, seemed to confirm his suspicions.
From Keokuk, in Iowa, came the news that winter wheat was suffering
from want of moisture. Benedict, Yates' Centre, and Douglass, in
southeastern Kansas, sent in reports of dry, windy weather that was
killing the young grain in every direction, and the same conditions
seemed to prevail in the central counties. In Illinois, from Quincy
and Waterloo in the west, and from Ridgway in the south, reports
came steadily to hand of freezing weather and bitter winds. All
through the lower portions of the State the snowfall during the
winter had not been heavy enough to protect the seeded grain. But
the Ohio crop, it would appear, was promising enough, as was also
that of Missouri. In Indiana, however, Jadwin could guess that the
hopes of even a moderate yield were fated to be disappointed;
persistent cold weather, winter continuing almost up to the first of
April, seemed to have definitely settled the question.
But more especially Jadwin watched Nebraska, that State which is one
single vast wheat field. How would Nebraska do, Nebraska which alone
might feed an entire nation? County seat after county seat began to
send in its reports. All over the State the grip of winter held firm
even yet. The wheat had been battered by incessant gales, had been
nipped and harried by frost; everywhere the young half-grown grain
seemed to be perishing. It was a massacre, a veritable slaughter.
But, for all this, nothing could be decided as yet. Other winter
wheat States, from which returns were as yet only partial, might
easily compensate for the failures elsewhere, and besides all that,
the Bears of the Board of Trade might keep the price inert even in
face of the news of short yields. As a matter of fact, the more
important and stronger Bear traders were already piping their usual
strain. Prices were bound to decline, the three years, sagging was
not over yet. They, the Bears, were too strong; no Bull news could
frighten them. Somehow there was bound to be plenty of wheat. In
face of the rumours of a short crop they kept the price inert, weak.
On the tenth of April came the Government report on the condition of
winter wheat. It announced an average far below any known for ten
years past. On March tenth the same bulletin had shown a moderate
supply in farmers' hands, less than one hundred million bushels in
fact, and a visible supply of less than forty millions.
The Bear leaders promptly set to work to discount this news. They
showed how certain foreign conditions would more than offset the
effect of a poor American harvest. They pointed out the fact that
the Government report on condition was brought up only to the first
of April, and that since that time the weather in the wheat belt had
been favorable beyond the wildest hopes.
The April report was made public on the afternoon of the tenth of
the month. That same evening Jadwin invited Gretry and his wife to
dine at the new house on North Avenue; and after dinner, leaving
Mrs. Gretry and Laura in the drawing-room, he brought the broker up
to the billiard-room for a game of pool.
But when Gretry had put the balls in the triangle, the two men did
not begin to play at once. Jadwin had asked the question that had
been uppermost in the minds of each during dinner.
"Well, Sam," he had said, by way of a beginning, "what do you think
of this Government report?"
The broker chalked his cue placidly.
"I expect there'll be a bit of reaction on the strength of it, but
the market will go off again. I said wheat would go to sixty, and I
still say it. It's a long time between now and May."
"I wasn't thinking of crop conditions only," observed Jadwin. "Sam,
we're going to have better times and higher prices this summer."
Gretry shook his head and entered into a long argument to show that
Jadwin was wrong.
But Jadwin refused to be convinced. All at once he laid the flat of
his hand upon the table.
"Sam, we've touched bottom," he declared, "touched bottom all along
the line. It's a paper dime to the Sub-Treasury."
"I don't care about the rest of the line," said the broker doggedly,
sitting on the edge of the table, "wheat will go to sixty." He
indicated the nest of balls with a movement of his chin. "Will you
break?"
Jadwin broke and scored, leaving one ball three inches in front of a
corner pocket. He called the shot, and as he drew back his cue he
said, deliberately:
"Just as sure as I make this pocket wheat will--not
go--off--another--_cent._"
With the last word he drove the ball home and straightened up.
Gretry laid down his cue and looked at him quickly. But he did not
speak. Jadwin sat down on one of the straight-backed chairs upon the
raised platform against the wall and rested his elbows upon his
knees.
"Sam," he said, "the time is come for a great big change." He
emphasised the word with a tap of his cue upon the floor. "We can't
play our game the way we've been playing it the last three years.
We've been hammering wheat down and down and down, till we've got it
below the cost of production; and now she won't go any further with
all the hammering in the world. The other fellows, the rest of this
Bear crowd, don't seem to see it, but I see it. Before fall we're
going to have higher prices. Wheat is going up, and when it does I
mean to be right there."
"We're going to have a dull market right up to the beginning of
winter," persisted the other.
"Come and say that to me at the beginning of winter, then," Jadwin
retorted. "Look here, Sam, I'm short of May five hundred thousand
bushels, and to-morrow morning you are going to send your boys on
the floor for me and close that trade."
"You're crazy, J.," protested the broker. "Hold on another month,
and I promise you, you'll thank me."
"Not another day, not another hour. This Bear campaign of ours has
come to an end. That's said and signed."
"Why, it's just in its prime," protested the broker. "Great heavens,
you mustn't get out of the game now, after hanging on for three
years."
"I'm not going to get out of it."
"Why, good Lord!" said Gretry, "you don't mean to say that--"
"That I'm going over. That's exactly what I do mean. I'm going to
change over so quick to the other side that I'll be there before you
can take off your hat. I'm done with a Bear game. It was good while
it lasted, but we've worked it for all there was in it. I'm not only
going to cover my May shorts and get out of that trade, but"--Jadwin
leaned forward and struck his hand upon his knee--"but I'm going
to buy. I'm going to buy September wheat, and I'm going to buy it
to-morrow, five hundred thousand bushels of it, and if the market
goes as I think it will later on, I'm going to buy more. I'm no Bear
any longer. I'm going to boost this market right through till the
last bell rings; and from now on Curtis Jadwin spells B-u-double
l--Bull."
"They'll slaughter you," said Gretry, "slaughter you in cold blood.
You're just one man against a gang--a gang of cutthroats. Those
Bears have got millions and millions back of them. You don't
suppose, do you, that old man Crookes, or Kenniston, or little
Sweeny, or all that lot would give you one little bit of a chance
for your life if they got a grip on you. Cover your shorts if you
want to, but, for God's sake, don't begin to buy in the same breath.
You wait a while. If this market has touched bottom, we'll be able
to tell in a few days. I'll admit, for the sake of argument, that
just now there's a pause. But nobody can tell whether it will turn
up or down yet. Now's the time to be conservative, to play it
cautious."
"If I was conservative and cautious," answered Jadwin, "I wouldn't
be in this game at all. I'd be buying U.S. four percents. That's the
big mistake so many of these fellows down here make. They go into a
game where the only ones who can possibly win are the ones who take
big chances, and then they try to play the thing cautiously. If I
wait a while till the market turns up and everybody is buying, how
am I any the better off? No, sir, you buy the September option for
me to-morrow--five hundred thousand bushels. I deposited the margin
to your credit in the Illinois Trust this afternoon."
There was a long silence. Gretry spun a ball between his fingers,
top-fashion.
"Well," he said at last, hesitatingly, "well--I don't know, J.--you
are either Napoleonic--or--or a colossal idiot."
"Neither one nor the other, Samuel. I'm just using a little common
sense.... Is it your shot?"
"I'm blessed if I know."
"Well, we'll start a new game. Sam, I'll give you six balls and beat
you in"--he looked at his watch--"beat you before half-past nine."
"For a dollar?"
"I never bet, Sam, and you know it."
Half an hour later Jadwin said:
"Shall we go down and join the ladies? Don't put out your cigar.
That's one bargain I made with Laura before we moved in here--that
smoking was allowable everywhere."
"Room enough, I guess," observed the broker, as the two stepped into
the elevator. "How many rooms have you got here, by the way?"
"Upon my word, I don't know," answered Jadwin. "I discovered a new
one yesterday. Fact. I was having a look around, and I came out into
a little kind of smoking-room or other that, I swear, I'd never seen
before. I had to get Laura to tell me about it."
The elevator sank to the lower floor, and Jadwin and the broker
stepped out into the main hallway. From the drawing-room near by
came the sound of women s voices.
"Before we go in," said Jadwin, "I want you to see our art gallery
and the organ. Last time you were up, remember, the men were still
at work in here."
They passed down a broad corridor, and at the end, just before
parting the heavy, sombre curtains, Jadwin pressed a couple of
electric buttons, and in the open space above the curtain sprang up
a lambent, steady glow.
The broker, as he entered, gave a long whistle. The art gallery took
in the height of two of the stories of the house. It was shaped like
a rotunda, and topped with a vast airy dome of coloured glass. Here
and there about the room were glass cabinets full of bibelots, ivory
statuettes, old snuff boxes, fans of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. The walls themselves were covered with a multitude of
pictures, oils, water-colours, with one or two pastels.
But to the left of the entrance, let into the frame of the building,
stood a great organ, large enough for a cathedral, and giving to
view, in the dulled incandescence of the electrics, its sheaves of
mighty pipes.
"Well, this is something like," exclaimed the broker.
"I don't know much about 'em myself," hazarded Jadwin, looking at
the pictures, "but Laura can tell you. We bought most of 'em while
we were abroad, year before last. Laura says this is the best." He
indicated a large "Bougereau" that represented a group of nymphs
bathing in a woodland pool.
"H'm!" said the broker, "you wouldn't want some of your
Sunday-school superintendents to see this now. This is what the boys
down on the Board would call a bar-room picture."
But Jadwin did not laugh.
"It never struck me in just that way," he said, gravely.
"It's a fine piece of work, though," Gretry hastened to add. "Fine,
great colouring."
"I like this one pretty well," continued Jadwin, moving to a canvas
by Detaille. It was one of the inevitable studies of a cuirassier;
in this case a trumpeter, one arm high in the air, the hand
clutching the trumpet, the horse, foam-flecked, at a furious gallop.
In the rear, through clouds of dust, the rest of the squadron was
indicated by a few points of colour.
"Yes, that's pretty neat," concurred Gretry. "He's sure got a gait
on. Lord, what a lot of accoutrements those French fellows stick on.
Now our boys would chuck about three-fourths of that truck before
going into action.... Queer way these artists work," he went on,
peering close to the canvas. "Look at it close up and it's just a
lot of little daubs, but you get off a distance"--he drew back,
cocking his head to one side--"and you see now. Hey--see how the
thing bunches up. Pretty neat, isn't it?" He turned from the picture
and rolled his eyes about the room.
"Well, well," he murmured. "This certainly is the real thing, J. I
suppose, now, it all represents a pretty big pot of money."
"I'm not quite used to it yet myself," said Jadwin. "I was in here
last Sunday, thinking it all over, the new house, and the money and
all. And it struck me as kind of queer the way things have turned
out for me.... Sam, do you know, I can remember the time, up there
in Ottawa County, Michigan, on my old dad's farm, when I used to
have to get up before day-break to tend the stock, and my sister and
I used to run out quick into the stable and stand in the warm cow
fodder in the stalls to warm our bare feet.... She up and died when
she was about eighteen--galloping consumption. Yes, sir. By George,
how I loved that little sister of mine! You remember her, Sam.
Remember how you used to come out from Grand Rapids every now and
then to go squirrel shooting with me?"
"Sure, sure. Oh, I haven't forgot."
"Well, I was wishing the other day that I could bring Sadie down
here, and--oh, I don't know--give her a good time. She never had a
good time when she was alive. Work, work, work; morning, noon, and
night. I'd like to have made it up to her. I believe in making
people happy, Sam. That's the way I take my fun. But it's too late
to do it now for my little sister."
"Well," hazarded Gretry, "you got a good wife in yonder to--"
Jadwin interrupted him. He half turned away, thrusting his hands
suddenly into his pockets. Partly to himself, partly to his friend
he murmured:
"You bet I have, you bet I have. Sam," he exclaimed, then turned
away again. "... Oh, well, never mind," he murmured.
Gretry, embarrassed, constrained, put his chin in the air, shutting
his eyes in a knowing fashion.
"I understand," he answered. "I understand, J."
"Say, look at this organ here," said Jadwin briskly. "Here's the
thing I like to play with."
They crossed to the other side of the room.
"Oh, you've got one of those attachment things," observed the
broker.
"Listen now," said Jadwin. He took a perforated roll from the case
near at hand and adjusted it, Gretry looking on with the solemn
interest that all American business men have in mechanical
inventions. Jadwin sat down before it, pulled out a stop or two, and
placed his feet on the pedals. A vast preliminary roaring breath
soughed through the pipes, with a vibratory rush of power. Then
there came a canorous snarl of bass, and then, abruptly, with
resistless charm, and with full-bodied, satisfying amplitude of
volume the opening movement of the overture of "Carmen."
"Great, great!" shouted Gretry, his voice raised to make himself
heard. "That's immense."
The great-lunged harmony was filling the entire gallery, clear cut,
each note clearly, sharply treated with a precision that, if
mechanical, was yet effective. Jadwin, his eyes now on the stops,
now on the sliding strip of paper, played on. Through the sonorous
clamour of the pipes Gretry could hear him speaking, but he caught
only a word or two.
"Toreador ... horse power ... Madame Calve ... electric motor ...
fine song ... storage battery."
The movement thinned out, and dwindled to a strain of delicate
lightness, sustained by the smallest pipes and developing a new
motive; this was twice repeated, and then ran down to a series of
chords and bars that prepared for and prefigured some great effect
close at hand. There was a short pause, then with the sudden
releasing of a tremendous rush of sound, back surged the melody,
with redoubled volume and power, to the original movement.
"That's bully, bully!" shouted Gretry, clapping his hands, and his
eye, caught by a movement on the other side of the room, he turned
about to see Laura Jadwin standing between the opened curtains at
the entrance.
Seen thus unexpectedly, the broker was again overwhelmed with a
sense of the beauty of Jadwin's wife. Laura was in evening dress of
black lace; her arms and neck were bare. Her black hair was piled
high upon her head, a single American Beauty rose nodded against her
bare shoulder. She was even yet slim and very tall, her face pale
with that unusual paleness of hers that was yet a colour. Around her
slender neck was a marvellous collar of pearls many strands deep,
set off and held in place by diamond clasps.
With Laura came Mrs. Gretry and Page. The broker's wife was a
vivacious, small, rather pretty blonde woman, a little angular, a
little faded. She was garrulous, witty, slangy. She wore turquoises
in her ears morning, noon, and night.
But three years had made a vast difference in Page Dearborn. All at
once she was a young woman. Her straight, hard, little figure had
developed, her arms were rounded, her eyes were calmer. She had
grown taller, broader. Her former exquisite beauty was perhaps not
quite so delicate, so fine, so virginal, so charmingly angular and
boyish. There was infinitely more of the woman in it; and perhaps
because of this she looked more like Laura than at any time of her
life before. But even yet her expression was one of gravity, of
seriousness. There was always a certain aloofness about Page. She
looked out at the world solemnly, and as if separated from its
lighter side. Things humorous interested her only as inexplicable
vagaries of the human animal.
"We heard the organ," said Laura, "so we came in. I wanted Mrs.
Gretry to listen to it."
The three years that had just passed had been the most important
years of Laura Jadwin's life. Since her marriage she had grown
intellectually and morally with amazing rapidity. Indeed, so swift
had been the change, that it was not so much a growth as a
transformation. She was no longer the same half-formed, impulsive
girl who had found a delight in the addresses of her three lovers,
and who had sat on the floor in the old home on State Street and
allowed Landry Court to hold her hand. She looked back upon the Miss
Dearborn of those days as though she were another person. How she
had grown since then! How she had changed! How different, how
infinitely more serious and sweet her life since then had become!
A great fact had entered her world, a great new element, that
dwarfed all other thoughts, all other considerations. This was her
love for her husband. It was as though until the time of her
marriage she had walked in darkness, a darkness that she fancied was
day; walked perversely, carelessly, and with a frivolity that was
almost wicked. Then, suddenly, she had seen a great light. Love had
entered her world. In her new heaven a new light was fixed, and all
other things were seen only because of this light; all other things
were touched by it, tempered by it, warmed and vivified by it.
It had seemed to date from a certain evening at their country house
at Geneva Lake in Wisconsin, where she had spent her honeymoon with
her husband. They had been married about ten days. It was a July
evening, and they were quite alone on board the little steam yacht
the "Thetis." She remembered it all very plainly. It had been so
warm that she had not changed her dress after dinner--she recalled
that it was of Honiton lace over old-rose silk, and that Curtis had
said it was the prettiest he had ever seen. It was an hour before
midnight, and the lake was so still as to appear veritably solid.
The moon was reflected upon the surface with never a ripple to blur
its image. The sky was grey with starlight, and only a vague bar of
black between the star shimmer and the pale shield of the water
marked the shore line. Never since that night could she hear the
call of whip-poor-wills or the piping of night frogs that the scene
did not come back to her. The little "Thetis" had throbbed and
panted steadily. At the door of the engine room, the engineer--the
grey MacKenny, his back discreetly turned--sat smoking a pipe and
taking the air. From time to time he would swing himself into the
engine room, and the clink and scrape of his shovel made itself
heard as he stoked the fire vigorously.
Stretched out in a long wicker deck chair, hatless, a drab coat
thrown around her shoulders, Laura had sat near her husband, who had
placed himself upon a camp stool, where he could reach the wheel
with one hand.
"Well," he had said at last, "are you glad you married me, Miss
Dearborn?" And she had caught him about the neck and drawn his face
down to hers, and her head thrown back, their lips all but touching,
had whispered over and over again:
"I love you--love you--love you!"
That night was final. The marriage ceremony, even that moment in her
room, when her husband had taken her in his arms and she had felt
the first stirring of love in her heart, all the first week of their
married life had been for Laura a whirl, a blur. She had not been
able to find herself. Her affection for her husband came and went
capriciously. There were moments when she believed herself to be
really unhappy. Then, all at once, she seemed to awake. Not the
ceremony at St. James' Church, but that awakening had been her
marriage. Now it was irrevocable; she was her husband's; she
belonged to him indissolubly, forever and forever, and the surrender
was a glory. Laura in that moment knew that love, the supreme
triumph of a woman's life, was less a victory than a capitulation.
Since then her happiness had been perfect. Literally and truly there
was not a cloud, not a mote in her sunshine. She had everything--the
love of her husband, great wealth, extraordinary beauty, perfect
health, an untroubled mind, friends, position--everything. God had
been good to her, beyond all dreams and all deserving. For her had
been reserved all the prizes, all the guerdons; for her who had done
nothing to merit them.
Her husband she knew was no less happy. In those first three years
after their marriage, life was one unending pageant; and their
happiness became for them some marvellous, bewildering thing,
dazzling, resplendent, a strange, glittering, jewelled Wonder-worker
that suddenly had been put into their hands.
As one of the first results of this awakening, Laura reproached
herself with having done but little for Page. She told herself that
she had not been a good sister, that often she had been unjust,
quick tempered, and had made the little girl to suffer because of
her caprices. She had not sympathised sufficiently with her small
troubles--so she made herself believe--and had found too many
occasions to ridicule Page's intenseness and queer little
solemnities. True she had given her a good home, good clothes, and a
good education, but she should have given more--more than mere
duty-gifts. She should have been more of a companion to the little
girl, more of a help; in fine, more of a mother. Laura felt all at
once the responsibilities of the elder sister in a family bereft of
parents. Page was growing fast, and growing astonishingly beautiful;
in a little while she would be a young woman, and over the near
horizon, very soon now, must inevitably loom the grave question of
her marriage.
But it was only this realisation of certain responsibilities that
during the first years of her married life at any time drew away
Laura's consideration of her husband. She began to get acquainted
with the real man-within-the-man that she knew now revealed himself
only after marriage. Jadwin her husband was so different from, so
infinitely better than, Jadwin her lover, that Laura sometimes found
herself looking back with a kind of retrospective apprehension on
the old days and the time when she was simply Miss Dearborn. How
little she had known him after all! And how, in the face of this
ignorance, this innocence, this absence of any insight into his real
character, had she dared to take the irretrievable step that bound
her to him for life? The Curtis Jadwin of those early days was so
much another man. He might have been a rascal; she could not have
known it. As it was, her husband had promptly come to be, for her,
the best, the finest man she had ever known. But it might easily
have been different.
His attitude towards her was thoughtfulness itself. Hardly ever was
he absent from her, even for a day, that he did not bring her some
little present, some little keep-sake--or even a bunch of
flowers--when he returned in the evening. The
anniversaries--Christmas, their wedding day, her birthday--he always
observed with great eclat. He took a holiday from his business,
surprised her with presents under her pillow, or her dinner-plate,
and never failed to take her to the theatre in the evening.
However, it was not only Jadwin's virtues that endeared him to his
wife. He was no impeccable hero in her eyes. He was tremendously
human. He had his faults, his certain lovable weaknesses, and it was
precisely these traits that Laura found so adorable.
For one thing, Jadwin could be magnificently inconsistent. Let him
set his mind and heart upon a given pursuit, pleasure, or line of
conduct not altogether advisable at the moment, and the ingenuity of
the excuses by which he justified himself were monuments of
elaborate sophistry. Yet, if later he lost interest, he reversed his
arguments with supreme disregard for his former words.
Then, too, he developed a boyish pleasure in certain unessential
though cherished objects and occupations, that he indulged
extravagantly and to the neglect of things, not to say duties,
incontestably of more importance.
One of these objects was the "Thetis." In every conceivable
particular the little steam yacht was complete down to the last
bolt, the last coat of varnish; but at times during their summer
vacations, when Jadwin, in all reason, should have been supervising
the laying out of certain unfinished portions of the
"grounds"--supervision which could be trusted to no subordinate--he
would be found aboard the "Thetis," hatless, in his shirt-sleeves,
in solemn debate with the grey MacKenny and--a cleaning rag, or
monkey-wrench, or paint brush in his hand--tinkering and pottering
about the boat, over and over again. Wealthy as he was, he could
have maintained an entire crew on board whose whole duty should have
been to screw, and scrub, and scour. But Jadwin would have none of
it. "Costs too much," he would declare, with profound gravity. He
had the self-made American's handiness with implements and paint
brushes, and he would, at high noon and under a murderous sun, make
the trip from the house to the dock where the "Thetis" was moored,
for the trivial pleasure of tightening a bolt--which did not need
tightening; or wake up in the night to tell Laura of some wonderful
new idea he had conceived as to the equipment or decoration of the
yacht. He had blustered about the extravagance of a "crew," but the
sums of money that went to the brightening, refitting, overhauling,
repainting, and reballasting of the boat--all absolutely
uncalled-for--made even Laura gasp, and would have maintained a
dozen sailors an entire year.
This same inconsistency prevailed also in other directions. In the
matter of business Jadwin's economy was unimpeachable. He would
cavil on a half-dollar's overcharge; he would put himself to
downright inconvenience to save the useless expenditure of a
dime--and boast of it. But no extravagance was ever too great, no
time ever too valuable, when bass were to be caught.
For Jadwin was a fisherman unregenerate. Laura, though an early
riser when in the city, was apt to sleep late in the country, and
never omitted a two-hours' nap in the heat of the afternoon. Her
husband improved these occasions when he was deprived of her
society, to indulge in his pastime. Never a morning so forbidding
that his lines were not in the water by five o'clock; never a sun so
scorching that he was not coaxing a "strike" in the stumps and reeds
in the shade under the shores.
It was the one pleasure he could not share with his wife. Laura was
unable to bear the monotony of the slow-moving boat, the hours spent
without results, the enforced idleness, the cramped positions. Only
occasionally could Jadwin prevail upon her to accompany him. And
then what preparations! Queen Elizabeth approaching her barge was
attended with no less solicitude. MacKenny (who sometimes acted as
guide and oarsman) and her husband exhausted their ingenuity to make
her comfortable. They held anxious debates: "Do you think she'll
like that?" "Wouldn't this make it easier for her?" "Is that the way
she liked it last time?" Jadwin himself arranged the cushions,
spread the carpet over the bottom of the boat, handed her in, found
her old gloves for her, baited her hook, disentangled her line, saw
to it that the mineral water in the ice-box was sufficiently cold,
and performed an endless series of little attentions looking to her
comfort and enjoyment. It was all to no purpose, and at length Laura
declared:
"Curtis, dear, it is no use. You just sacrifice every bit of your
pleasure to make me comfortable--to make me enjoy it; and I just
don't. I'm sorry, I want to share every pleasure with you, but I
don't like to fish, and never will. You go alone. I'm just a
hindrance to you." And though he blustered at first, Laura had her
way.
Once in the period of these three years Laura and her husband had
gone abroad. But her experience in England--they did not get to the
Continent--had been a disappointment to her. The museums, art
galleries, and cathedrals were not of the least interest to Jadwin,
and though he followed her from one to another with uncomplaining
stoicism, she felt his distress, and had contrived to return home
three months ahead of time.
It was during this trip that they had bought so many of the pictures
and appointments for the North Avenue house, and Laura's
disappointment over her curtailed European travels was mitigated by
the anticipation of her pleasure in settling in the new home. This
had not been possible immediately after their marriage. For nearly
two years the great place had been given over to contractors,
architects, decorators, and gardeners, and Laura and her husband had
lived, while in Chicago, at a hotel, giving up the one-time rectory
on Cass Street to Page and to Aunt Wess'.
But when at last Laura entered upon possession of the North Avenue
house, she was not--after the first enthusiasm and excitement over
its magnificence had died down--altogether pleased with it, though
she told herself the contrary. Outwardly it was all that she could
desire. It fronted Lincoln Park, and from all the windows upon that
side the most delightful outlooks were obtainable--green woods, open
lawns, the parade ground, the Lincoln monument, dells, bushes,
smooth drives, flower beds, and fountains. From the great bay window
of Laura's own sitting-room she could see far out over Lake
Michigan, and watch the procession of great lake steamers, from
Milwaukee, far-distant Duluth, and the Sault Sainte Marie--the
famous "Soo"--defiling majestically past, making for the mouth of
the river, laden to the water's edge with whole harvests of wheat.
At night, when the windows were open in the warm weather, she could
hear the mournful wash and lapping of the water on the embankments.
The grounds about her home were beautiful. The stable itself was
half again as large as her old home opposite St. James's, and the
conservatory, in which she took the keenest delight, was a wonderful
affair--a vast bubble-like structure of green panes, whence, winter
and summer, came a multitude of flowers for the house--violets,
lilies of the valley, jonquils, hyacinths, tulips, and her own loved
roses.
But the interior of the house was, in parts, less satisfactory.
Jadwin, so soon as his marriage was a certainty, had bought the
house, and had given over its internal furnishings to a firm of
decorators. Innocently enough he had intended to surprise his wife,
had told himself that she should not be burdened with the
responsibility of selection and planning. Fortunately, however, the
decorators were men of taste. There was nothing to offend, and much
to delight in the results they obtained in the dining-room,
breakfast-room, parlors, drawing-rooms, and suites of bedrooms. But
Laura, though the beauty of it all enchanted her, could never rid
herself of a feeling that it was not hers. It impressed her with its
splendour of natural woods and dull "colour effects," its cunning
electrical devices, its mechanical contrivances for comfort, like
the ready-made luxury and "convenience" of a Pullman.
However, she had intervened in time to reserve certain of the rooms
to herself, and these--the library, her bedroom, and more especially
that apartment from whose bay windows she looked out upon the Lake,
and which, as if she were still in her old home, she called the
"upstairs sitting-room"--she furnished to suit herself.
For very long she found it difficult, even with all her resolution,
with all her pleasure in her new-gained wealth, to adapt herself to
a manner of living upon so vast a scale. She found herself
continually planning the marketing for the next day, forgetting that
this now was part of the housekeeper's duties. For months she
persisted in "doing her room" after breakfast, just as she had been
taught to do in the old days when she was a little girl at
Barrington. She was afraid of the elevator, and never really learned
how to use the neat little system of telephones that connected the
various parts of the house with the servants' quarters. For months
her chiefest concern in her wonderful surroundings took the form of
a dread of burglars.
Her keenest delights were her stable and the great organ in the art
gallery; and these alone more than compensated for her uneasiness in
other particulars.
Horses Laura adored--black ones with flowing tails and manes, like
certain pictures she had seen. Nowadays, except on the rarest
occasions, she never set foot out of doors, except to take her
carriage, her coupe, her phaeton, or her dog-cart. Best of all she
loved her saddle horses. She had learned to ride, and the morning
was inclement indeed that she did not take a long and solitary
excursion through the Park, followed by the groom and Jadwin's two
spotted coach dogs.
The great organ terrified her at first. But on closer acquaintance
she came to regard it as a vast-hearted, sympathetic friend. She
already played the piano very well, and she scorned Jadwin's
self-playing "attachment." A teacher was engaged to instruct her in
the intricacies of stops and of pedals, and in the difficulties of
the "echo" organ, "great" organ, "choir," and "swell." So soon as
she had mastered these, Laura entered upon a new world of delight.
Her taste in music was as yet a little immature--Gounod and even
Verdi were its limitations. But to hear, responsive to the lightest
pressures of her finger-tips, the mighty instrument go thundering
through the cadences of the "Anvil Chorus" gave her a thrilling
sense of power that was superb.
The untrained, unguided instinct of the actress in Laura had
fostered in her a curious penchant toward melodrama. She had a taste
for the magnificent. She revelled in these great musical "effects"
upon her organ, the grandiose easily appealed to her, while as for
herself, the role of the "_grande dame,_" with this wonderful house
for background and environment, came to be for her, quite
unconsciously, a sort of game in which she delighted.
It was by this means that, in the end, she succeeded in fitting
herself to her new surroundings. Innocently enough, and with a
harmless, almost childlike, affectation, she posed a little, and by
so doing found the solution of the incongruity between herself--the
Laura of moderate means and quiet life--and the massive luxury with
which she was now surrounded. Without knowing it, she began to act
the part of a great lady--and she acted it well. She assumed the
existence of her numerous servants as she assumed the fact of the
trees in the park; she gave herself into the hands of her maid, not
as Laura Jadwin of herself would have done it, clumsily and with the
constraint of inexperience, but as she would have done it if she had
been acting the part on the stage, with an air, with all the
nonchalance of a marquise, with--in fine--all the superb
condescension of her "grand manner."
She knew very well that if she relaxed this hauteur, that her
servants would impose on her, would run over her, and in this matter
she found new cause for wonder in her husband.
The servants, from the frigid butler to the under groom, adored
Jadwin. A half-expressed wish upon his part produced a more
immediate effect than Laura's most explicit orders. He never
descended to familiarity with them, and, as a matter of fact,
ignored them to such an extent that he forgot or confused their
names. But where Laura was obeyed with precise formality and chilly
deference, Jadwin was served with obsequious alacrity, and with a
good humour that even livery and "correct form" could not altogether
conceal.
Laura's eyes were first opened to this genuine affection which
Jadwin inspired in his servants by an incident which occurred in the
first months of their occupancy of the new establishment. One of the
gardeners discovered the fact that Jadwin affected gardenias in the
lapel of his coat, and thereat was at immense pains to supply him
with a fresh bloom from the conservatory each morning. The flower
was to be placed at Jadwin's plate, and it was quite the event of
the day for the old fellow when the master appeared on the front
steps with the flower in his coat. But a feud promptly developed
over this matter between the gardener and the maid who took the
butler's place at breakfast every morning. Sometimes Jadwin did not
get the flower, and the gardener charged the maid with remissness in
forgetting to place it at his plate after he had given it into her
hands. In the end the affair became so clamourous that Jadwin
himself had to intervene. The gardener was summoned and found to
have been in fault only in his eagerness to please.
"Billy," said Jadwin, to the old man at the conclusion of the whole
matter, "you're an old fool."
And the gardener thereupon had bridled and stammered as though
Jadwin had conferred a gift.
"Now if I had called him 'an old fool,'" observed Laura, "he would
have sulked the rest of the week."
The happiest time of the day for Laura was the evening. In the
daytime she was variously occupied, but her thoughts continually ran
forward to the end of the day, when her husband would be with her.
Jadwin breakfasted early, and Laura bore him company no matter how
late she had stayed up the night before. By half-past eight he was
out of the house, driving down to his office in his buggy behind Nip
and Tuck. By nine Laura's own saddle horse was brought to the
carriage porch, and until eleven she rode in the park. At twelve she
lunched with Page, and in the afternoon--in the "upstairs
sitting-room" read her Browning or her Meredith, the latter one of
her newest discoveries, till three or four. Sometimes after that she
went out in her carriage. If it was to "shop" she drove to the
"Rookery," in La Salle Street, after her purchases were made, and
sent the footman up to her husband's office to say that she would
take him home. Or as often as not she called for Mrs. Cressler or
Aunt Wess' or Mrs. Gretry, and carried them off to some exhibit of
painting, or flowers, or more rarely--for she had not the least
interest in social affairs--to teas or receptions.
But in the evenings, after dinner, she had her husband to herself.
Page was almost invariably occupied by one or more of her young men
in the drawing-room, but Laura and Jadwin shut themselves in the
library, a lofty panelled room--a place of deep leather chairs, tall
bookcases, etchings, and sombre brasses--and there, while Jadwin lay
stretched out upon the broad sofa, smoking cigars, one hand behind
his head, Laura read aloud to him.
His tastes in fiction were very positive. Laura at first had tried
to introduce him to her beloved Meredith. But after three chapters,
when he had exclaimed, "What's the fool talking about?" she had
given over and begun again from another starting-point. Left to
himself, his wife sorrowfully admitted that he would have gravitated
to the "Mysterious Island" and "Michael Strogoff," or even to "Mr.
Potter of Texas" and "Mr. Barnes of New York." But she had set
herself to accomplish his literary education, so, Meredith failing,
she took up "Treasure Island" and "The Wrecker." Much of these he
made her skip.
"Oh, let's get on with the 'story,'" he urged. But Pinkerton for
long remained for him an ideal, because he was "smart" and "alive."
"I'm not long very many of art," he announced. "But I believe that
any art that don't make the world better and happier is no art at
all, and is only fit for the dump heap."
But at last Laura found his abiding affinity in Howells.
"Nothing much happens," he said. "But I know all those people." He
never could rid himself of a surreptitious admiration for Bartley
Hubbard. He, too, was "smart" and "alive." He had the "get there" to
him. "Why," he would say, "I know fifty boys just like him down
there in La Salle Street." Lapham he loved as a brother. Never a
point in the development of his character that he missed or failed
to chuckle over. Bromfield Cory was poohed and boshed quite out of
consideration as a "loafer," a "dilletanty," but Lapham had all his
sympathy.
"Yes, sir," he would exclaim, interrupting the narrative, "that's
just it. That's just what I would have done if I had been in his
place. Come, this chap knows what he's writing about--not like that
Middleton ass, with his 'Dianas' and 'Amazing Marriages.'"
Occasionally the Jadwins entertained. Laura's husband was proud of
his house, and never tired of showing his friends about it. Laura
gave Page a "coming-out" dance, and nearly every Sunday the
Cresslers came to dinner. But Aunt Wess' could, at first, rarely be
induced to pay the household a visit. So much grandeur made the
little widow uneasy, even a little suspicious. She would shake her
head at Laura, murmuring:
"My word, it's all very fine, but, dear me, Laura, I hope you do pay
for everything on the nail, and don't run up any bills. I don't know
what your dear father would say to it all, no, I don't." And she
would spend hours in counting the electric bulbs, which she insisted
were only devices for some new-fangled gas.
"Thirty-three in this one room alone," she would say. "I'd like to
see your dear husband's face when he gets his gas bill. And a
dressmaker that lives in the house.... Well,--I don't want to say
anything."
Thus three years had gone by. The new household settled to a regime.
Continually Jadwin grew richer. His real estate appreciated in
value; rents went up. Every time he speculated in wheat, it was upon
a larger scale, and every time he won. He was a Bear always, and on
those rare occasions when he referred to his ventures in Laura's
hearing, it was invariably to say that prices were going down. Till
at last had come that spring when he believed that the bottom had
been touched, had had the talk with Gretry, and had, in secret,
"turned Bull," with the suddenness of a strategist.
The matter was yet in Gretry's mind while the party remained in the
art gallery; and as they were returning to the drawing-room he
detained Jadwin an instant.
"If you are set upon breaking your neck," he said, "you might tell
me at what figure you want me to buy for you to-morrow."
"At the market," returned Jadwin. "I want to get into the thing
quick."
A little later, when they had all reassembled in the drawing-room,
and while Mrs. Gretry was telling an interminable story of how
Isabel had all but asphyxiated herself the night before, a servant
announced Landry Court, and the young man entered, spruce and
debonair, a bouquet in one hand and a box of candy in the other.
Some days before this Page had lectured him solemnly on the fact
that he was over-absorbed in business, and was starving his soul. He
should read more, she told him, and she had said that if he would
call upon her on this particular night, she would indicate a course
of reading for him.
So it came about that, after a few moments, conversation with the
older people in the drawing-room, the two adjourned to the library.
There, by way of a beginning, Page asked him what was his favourite
character in fiction. She spoke of the beauty of Ruskin's thoughts,
of the gracefulness of Charles Lamb's style. The conversation lagged
a little. Landry, not to be behind her, declared for the modern
novel, and spoke of the "newest book." But Page never read new
books; she was not interested, and their talk, unable to establish
itself upon a common ground, halted, and was in a fair way to end,
until at last, and by insensible degrees, they began to speak of
themselves and of each other. Promptly they were all aroused. They
listened to one another's words with studious attention, answered
with ever-ready promptness, discussed, argued, agreed, and disagreed
over and over again.
Landry had said:
"When I was a boy, I always had an ambition to excel all the other
boys. I wanted to be the best baseball player on the block--and I
was, too. I could pitch three curves when I was fifteen, and I find
I am the same now that I am a man grown. When I do a thing, I want
to do it better than any one else. From the very first I have always
been ambitious. It is my strongest trait. Now," he went on, turning
to Page, "your strongest trait is your thoughtfulness. You are what
they call introspective."
"Yes, yes," she answered. "Yes, I think so, too."
"You don't need the stimulation of competition. You are at your best
when you are with just one person. A crowd doesn't interest you."
"I hate it," she exclaimed.
"Now with me, with a man of my temperament, a crowd is a real
inspiration. When every one is talking and shouting around me, or to
me, even, my mind works at its best. But," he added, solemnly, "it
must be a crowd of men. I can't abide a crowd of women."
"They chatter so," she assented. "I can't either."
"But I find that the companionship of one intelligent, sympathetic
woman is as much of a stimulus as a lot of men. It's funny, isn't
it, that I should be like that?"
"Yes," she said, "it is funny--strange. But I believe in
companionship. I believe that between man and woman that is the
great thing--companionship. Love," she added, abruptly, and then
broke off with a deep sigh. "Oh, I don't know," she murmured. "Do
you remember those lines:
"Man's love is of his life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence.
Do you believe that?"
"Well," he asserted, gravely, choosing his words with deliberation,
"it might be so, but all depends upon the man and woman. Love," he
added, with tremendous gravity, "is the greatest power in the
universe."
"I have never been in love," said Page. "Yes, love is a wonderful
power."
"I've never been in love, either."
"Never, never been in love?"
"Oh, I've thought I was in love," he said, with a wave of his hand.
"I've never even thought I was," she answered, musing.
"Do you believe in early marriages?" demanded Landry.
"A man should never marry," she said, deliberately, "till he can
give his wife a good home, and good clothes and--and that sort of
thing. I do not think I shall ever marry."
"You! Why, of course you will. Why not?"
"No, no. It is my disposition. I am morose and taciturn. Laura says
so."
Landry protested with vehemence.
"And," she went on, "I have long, brooding fits of melancholy."
"Well, so have I," he threw out recklessly. "At night,
sometimes--when I wake up. Then I'm all down in the mouth, and I
say, 'What's the use, by jingo?'"
"Do you believe in pessimism? I do. They say Carlyle was a terrible
pessimist."
"Well--talking about love. I understand that you can't believe in
pessimism and love at the same time. Wouldn't you feel unhappy if
you lost your faith in love?"
"Oh, yes, terribly."
There was a moment's silence, and then Landry remarked:
"Now you are the kind of woman that would only love once, but love
for that once mighty deep and strong."
Page's eyes grew wide. She murmured:
"'Tis a woman's whole existence--whole existence.' Yes, I think I am
like that."
"Do you think Enoch Arden did right in going away after he found
them married?"
"Oh, have you read that? Oh, isn't that a beautiful poem? Wasn't he
noble? Wasn't he grand? Oh, yes, yes, he did right."
"By George, I wouldn't have gone away. I'd have gone right into that
house, and I would have made things hum. I'd have thrown the other
fellow out, lock, stock, and barrel."
"That's just like a man, so selfish, only thinking of himself. You
don't know the meaning of love--great, true, unselfish love."
"I know the meaning of what's mine. Think I'd give up the woman I
loved to another man?"
"Even if she loved the other man best?"
"I'd have my girl first, and find out how she felt about the other
man afterwards."
"Oh, but think if you gave her up, how noble it would be. You would
have sacrificed all that you held the dearest to an ideal. Oh, if I
were in Enoch Arden's place, and my husband thought I was dead, and
I knew he was happy with another woman, it would just be a joy to
deny myself, sacrifice myself to spare him unhappiness. That would
be my idea of love. Then I'd go into a convent."
"Not much. I'd let the other fellow go to the convent. If I loved a
woman, I wouldn't let anything in the world stop me from winning
her."
"You have so much determination, haven't you?" she said, looking at
him.
Landry enlarged his shoulders a little and wagged his head.
"Well," he said, "I don't know, but I'd try pretty hard to get what
I wanted, I guess."
"I love to see that characteristic in men," she observed. "Strength,
determination."
"Just as a man loves to see a woman womanly," he answered. "Don't
you hate strong-minded women?"
"Utterly."
"Now, you are what I would call womanly--the womanliest woman I've
ever known."
"Oh, I don't know," she protested, a little confused.
"Yes, you are. You are beautifully womanly--and so high-minded and
well read. It's been inspiring to me. I want you should know that.
Yes, sir, a real inspiration. It's been inspiring, elevating, to say
the least."
"I like to read, if that's what you mean," she hastened to say.
"By Jove, I've got to do some reading, too. It's so hard to find
time. But I'll make time. I'll get that 'Stones of Venice' I've
heard you speak of, and I'll sit up nights--and keep awake with
black coffee--but I'll read that book from cover to cover."
"That's your determination again," Page exclaimed. "Your eyes just
flashed when you said it. I believe if you once made up your mind to
do a thing, you would do it, no matter how hard it was, wouldn't
you?"
"Well, I'd--I'd make things hum, I guess," he admitted.
The next day was Easter Sunday, and Page came down to nine o'clock
breakfast a little late, to find Jadwin already finished and deep in
the pages of the morning paper. Laura, still at table, was pouring
her last cup of coffee.
They were in the breakfast-room, a small, charming apartment, light
and airy, and with many windows, one end opening upon the house
conservatory. Jadwin was in his frock coat, which later he would
wear to church. The famous gardenia was in his lapel. He was freshly
shaven, and his fine cigar made a blue haze over his head. Laura was
radiant in a white morning gown. A newly cut bunch of violets, large
as a cabbage, lay on the table before her.
The whole scene impressed itself sharply upon Page's mind--the fine
sunlit room, with its gay open spaces and the glimpse of green
leaves from the conservatory, the view of the smooth, trim lawn
through the many windows, where an early robin, strayed from the
park, was chirruping and feeding; her beautiful sister Laura, with
her splendid, overshadowing coiffure, her pale, clear skin, her
slender figure; Jadwin, the large, solid man of affairs, with his
fine cigar, his gardenia, his well-groomed air. And then the little
accessories that meant so much--the smell of violets, of good
tobacco, of fragrant coffee; the gleaming damasks, china and silver
of the breakfast table; the trim, fresh-looking maid, with her white
cap, apron, and cuffs, who came and went; the thoroughbred setter
dozing in the sun, and the parrot dozing and chuckling to himself on
his perch upon the terrace outside the window.
At the bottom of the lawn was the stable, and upon the concrete in
front of its wide-open door the groom was currying one of the
carriage horses. While Page addressed herself to her fruit and
coffee, Jadwin put down his paper, and, his elbows on the arms of
his rattan chair, sat for a long time looking out at the horse. By
and by he got up and said:
"That new feed has filled 'em out in good shape. Think I'll go out
and tell Jarvis to try it on the buggy team." He pushed open the
French windows and went out, the setter sedately following.
Page dug her spoon into her grape-fruit, then suddenly laid it down
and turned to Laura, her chin upon her palm.
"Laura," she said, "do you think I ought to marry--a girl of my
temperament?"
"Marry?" echoed Laura.
"Sh-h!" whispered Page. "Laura--don't talk so loud. Yes, do you?"
"Well, why not marry, dearie? Why shouldn't you marry when the time
comes? Girls as young as you are not supposed to have temperaments."
But instead of answering Page put another question:
"Laura, do you think I am womanly?"
"I think sometimes, Page, that you take your books and your reading
too seriously. You've not been out of the house for three days, and
I never see you without your note-books and text-books in your hand.
You are at it, dear, from morning till night. Studies are all very
well--"
"Oh, studies!" exclaimed Page. "I hate them. Laura, what is it to be
womanly?"
"To be womanly?" repeated Laura. "Why, I don't know, honey. It's to
be kind and well-bred and gentle mostly, and never to be bold or
conspicuous--and to love one's home and to take care of it, and to
love and believe in one's husband, or parents, or children--or even
one's sister--above any one else in the world."
"I think that being womanly is better than being well read,"
hazarded Page.
"We can be both, Page," Laura told her. "But, honey, I think you had
better hurry through your breakfast. If we are going to church this
Easter, we want to get an early start. Curtis ordered the carriage
half an hour earlier."
"Breakfast!" echoed Page. "I don't want a thing." She drew a deep
breath and her eyes grew large. "Laura," she began again presently,
"Laura ... Landry Court was here last night, and--oh, I don't know,
he's so silly. But he said--well, he said this--well, I said that I
understood how he felt about certain things, about 'getting on,' and
being clean and fine and all that sort of thing you know; and then
he said, 'Oh, you don't know what it means to me to look into the
eyes of a woman who really understands.'"
"_Did_ he?" said Laura, lifting her eyebrows.
"Yes, and he seemed so fine and earnest. Laura, wh--" Page adjusted
a hairpin at the back of her head, and moved closer to Laura, her
eyes on the floor. "Laura--what do you suppose it did mean to
him--don't you think it was foolish of him to talk like that?"
"Not at all," Laura said, decisively. "If he said that he meant
it--meant that he cared a great deal for you."
"Oh, I didn't mean that!" shrieked Page. "But there's a great deal
more to Landry than I think we've suspected. He wants to be more
than a mere money-getting machine, he says, and he wants to
cultivate his mind and understand art and literature and that. And
he wants me to help him, and I said I would. So if you don't mind,
he's coming up here certain nights every week, and we're going
to--I'm going to read to him. We're going to begin with the 'Ring
and the Book.'"
In the later part of May, the weather being unusually hot, the
Jadwins, taking Page with them, went up to Geneva Lake for the
summer, and the great house fronting Lincoln Park was deserted.
Laura had hoped that now her husband would be able to spend his
entire time with her, but in this she was disappointed. At first
Jadwin went down to the city but two days a week, but soon this was
increased to alternate days. Gretry was a frequent visitor at the
country house, and often he and Jadwin, their rocking-chairs side by
side in a remote corner of the porch, talked "business" in low tones
till far into the night.
"Dear," said Laura, finally, "I'm seeing less and less of you every
day, and I had so looked forward to this summer, when we were to be
together all the time."
"I hate it as much as you do, Laura," said her husband. "But I do
feel as though I ought to be on the spot just for now. I can't get
it out of my head that we're going to have livelier times in a few
months."
"But even Mr. Gretry says that you don't need to be right in your
office every minute of the time. He says you can manage your Board
of Trade business from out here just as well, and that you only go
into town because you can't keep away from La Salle Street and the
sound of the Wheat Pit."
Was this true? Jadwin himself had found it difficult to answer.
There had been a time when Gretry had been obliged to urge and coax
to get his friend to so much as notice the swirl of the great
maelstrom in the Board of Trade Building. But of late Jadwin's eye
and ear were forever turned thitherward, and it was he, and no
longer Gretry, who took initiatives.
Meanwhile he was making money. As he had predicted, the price of
wheat had advanced. May had been a fair-weather month with easy
prices, the monthly Government report showing no loss in the
condition of the crop. Wheat had gone up from sixty to sixty-six
cents, and at a small profit Jadwin had sold some two hundred and
fifty thousand bushels. Then had come the hot weather at the end of
May. On the floor of the Board of Trade the Pit traders had begun to
peel off their coats. It began to look like a hot June, and when
cash wheat touched sixty-eight, Jadwin, now more than ever convinced
of a coming Bull market, bought another five hundred thousand
bushels.
This line he added to in June. Unfavorable weather--excessive heat,
followed by flooding rains--had hurt the spring wheat, and in every
direction there were complaints of weevils and chinch bugs. Later on
other deluges had discoloured and damaged the winter crop. Jadwin
was now, by virtue of his recent purchases, "long" one million
bushels, and the market held firm at seventy-two cents--a
twelve-cent advance in two months.
"She'll react," warned Gretry, "sure. Crookes and Sweeny haven't
taken a hand yet. Look out for a heavy French crop. We'll get
reports on it soon now. You're playing with a gun, J., that kicks
further than it shoots."
"We've not shot her yet," Jadwin said. "We're only just loading
her--for Bears," he added, with a wink.
In July came the harvesting returns from all over the country,
proving conclusively that for the first time in six years, the
United States crop was to be small and poor. The yield was moderate.
Only part of it could be graded as "contract." Good wheat would be
valuable from now on. Jadwin bought again, and again it was a "lot"
of half a million bushels.
Then came the first manifestation of that marvellous golden luck
that was to follow Curtis Jadwin through all the coming months. The
French wheat crop was announced as poor. In Germany the yield was to
be far below the normal. All through Hungary the potato and rye
crops were light.
About the middle of the month Jadwin again called the broker to his
country house, and took him for a long evening's trip around the
lake, aboard the "Thetis." They were alone. MacKenny was at the
wheel, and, seated on camp stools in the stern of the little boat,
Jadwin outlined his plans for the next few months.
"Sam," he said, "I thought back in April there that we were to touch
top prices about the first of this month, but this French and German
news has coloured the cat different. I've been figuring that I would
get out of this market around the seventies, but she's going higher.
I'm going to hold on yet awhile."
"You do it on your own responsibility, then," said the broker. "I
warn you the price is top heavy."
"Not much. Seventy-two cents is too cheap. Now I'm going into this
hard; and I want to have my own lines out--to be independent of the
trade papers that Crookes could buy up any time he wants to. I want
you to get me some good, reliable correspondents in Europe; smart,
bright fellows that we can depend on. I want one in Liverpool, one
in Paris, and one in Odessa, and I want them to cable us about the
situation every day."
Gretry thought a while.
"Well," he said, at length, "... yes. I guess I can arrange it. I
can get you a good man in Liverpool--Traynard is his name--and
there's two or three in Paris we could pick up. Odessa--I don't
know. I couldn't say just this minute. But I'll fix it."
These correspondents began to report at the end of July. All over
Europe the demand for wheat was active. Grain handlers were not only
buying freely, but were contracting for future delivery. In August
came the first demands for American wheat, scattered and sporadic at
first, then later, a little, a very little more insistent.
Thus the summer wore to its end. The fall "situation" began slowly
to define itself, with eastern Europe--densely populated,
overcrowded--commencing to show uneasiness as to its supply of food
for the winter; and with but a moderate crop in America to meet
foreign demands. Russia, the United States, and Argentine would have
to feed the world during the next twelve months.
Over the Chicago Wheat Pit the hand of the great indicator stood at
seventy-five cents. Jadwin sold out his September wheat at this
figure, and then in a single vast clutch bought three million
bushels of the December option.
Never before had he ventured so deeply into the Pit. Never before
had he committed himself so irrevocably to the send of the current.
But something was preparing. Something indefinite and huge. He
guessed it, felt it, knew it. On all sides of him he felt a
quickening movement. Lethargy, inertia were breaking up. There was
buoyancy to the current. In its ever-increasing swiftness there was
exhilaration and exuberance.
And he was upon the crest of the wave. Now the forethought, the
shrewdness, and the prompt action of those early spring days were
beginning to tell. Confident, secure, unassailable, Jadwin plunged
in. Every week the swirl of the Pit increased in speed, every week
the demands of Europe for American wheat grew more frequent; and at
the end of the month the price--which had fluctuated between
seventy-five and seventy-eight--in a sudden flurry rushed to
seventy-nine, to seventy-nine and a half, and closed, strong, at the
even eighty cents.
On the day when the latter figure was reached Jadwin bought a seat
upon the Board of Trade.
He was now no longer an "outsider."
VII
One morning in November of the same year Laura joined her husband at
breakfast, preoccupied and a little grave, her mind full of a
subject about which, she told herself, she could no longer keep from
speaking. So soon as an opportunity presented itself, which was when
Jadwin laid down his paper and drew his coffee-cup towards him,
Laura exclaimed:
"Curtis."
"Well, old girl?"
"Curtis, dear, ... when is it all going to end--your speculating?
You never used to be this way. It seems as though, nowadays, I never
had you to myself. Even when you are not going over papers and
reports and that, or talking by the hour to Mr. Gretry in the
library--even when you are not doing all that, your mind seems to be
away from me--down there in La Salle Street or the Board of Trade
Building. Dearest, you don't know. I don't mean to complain, and I
don't want to be exacting or selfish, but--sometimes I--I am
lonesome. Don't interrupt," she said, hastily. "I want to say it all
at once, and then never speak of it again. Last night, when Mr.
Gretry was here, you said, just after dinner, that you would be all
through your talk in an hour. And I waited.... I waited till eleven,
and then I went to bed. Dear I--I--I was lonesome. The evening was
so long. I had put on my very prettiest gown, the one you said you
liked so much, and you never seemed to notice. You told me Mr.
Gretry was going by nine, and I had it all planned how we would
spend the evening together."
But she got no further. Her husband had taken her in his arms, and
had interrupted her words with blustering exclamations of
self-reproach and self-condemnation. He was a brute, he cried, a
senseless, selfish ass, who had no right to such a wife, who was not
worth a single one of the tears that by now were trembling on
Laura's lashes.
"Now we won't speak of it again," she began. "I suppose I am
selfish--"
"Selfish, nothing!" he exclaimed. "Don't talk that way. I'm the
one--"
"But," Laura persisted, "some time you will--get out of this
speculating for good? Oh, I do look forward to it so! And, Curtis,
what is the use? We're so rich now we can't spend our money. What do
you want to make more for?"
"Oh, it's not the money," he answered. "It's the fun of the thing;
the excitement--"
"That's just it, the 'excitement.' You don't know, Curtis. It is
changing you. You are so nervous sometimes, and sometimes you don't
listen to me when I talk to you. I can just see what's in your mind.
It's wheat--wheat--wheat, wheat--wheat--wheat, all the time. Oh, if
you knew how I hated and feared it!"
"Well, old girl, that settles it. I wouldn't make you unhappy a
single minute for all the wheat in the world."
"And you will stop speculating?"
"Well, I can't pull out all in a moment, but just as soon as a
chance comes I'll get out of the market. At any rate, I won't have
any business of mine come between us. I don't like it any more than
you do. Why, how long is it since we've read any book together, like
we used to when you read aloud to me?"
"Not since we came back from the country."
"By George, that's so, that's so." He shook his head. "I've got to
taper off. You're right, Laura. But you don't know, you haven't a
guess how this trading in wheat gets a hold of you. And, then, what
am I to do? What are we fellows, who have made our money, to do?
I've got to be busy. I can't sit down and twiddle my thumbs. And I
don't believe in lounging around clubs, or playing with race horses,
or murdering game birds, or running some poor, helpless fox to
death. Speculating seems to be about the only game, or the only
business that's left open to me--that appears to be legitimate. I
know I've gone too far into it, and I promise you I'll quit. But
it's fine fun. When you know how to swing a deal, and can look
ahead, a little further than the other fellows, and can take chances
they daren't, and plan and manoeuvre, and then see it all come out
just as you had known it would all along--I tell you it's
absorbing."
"But you never do tell me," she objected. "I never know what you are
doing. I hear through Mr. Court or Mr. Gretry, but never through
you. Don't you think you could trust me? I want to enter into your
life on its every side, Curtis. Tell me," she suddenly demanded,
"what are you doing now?"
"Very well, then," he said, "I'll tell you. Of course you mustn't
speak about it. It's nothing very secret, but it's always as well to
keep quiet about these things."
She gave her word, and leaned her elbows on the table, prepared to
listen intently. Jadwin crushed a lump of sugar against the inside
of his coffee cup.
"Well," he began, "I've not been doing anything very exciting,
except to buy wheat."
"What for?"
"To sell again. You see, I'm one of those who believe that wheat is
going up. I was the very first to see it, I guess, way back last
April. Now in August this year, while we were up at the lake, I
bought three million bushels."
"Three--million--bushels!" she murmured. "Why, what do you do with
it? Where do you put it?"
He tried to explain that he had merely bought the right to call for
the grain on a certain date, but she could not understand this very
clearly.
"Never mind," she told him, "go on."
"Well, then, at the end of August we found out that the wet weather
in England would make a short crop there, and along in September
came the news that Siberia would not raise enough to supply the
southern provinces of Russia. That left only the United States and
the Argentine Republic to feed pretty much the whole world. Of
course that would make wheat valuable. Seems to be a short-crop year
everywhere. I saw that wheat would go higher and higher, so I bought
another million bushels in October, and another early in this month.
That's all. You see, I figure that pretty soon those people over in
England and Italy and Germany--the people that eat wheat--will be
willing to pay us in America big prices for it, because it's so hard
to get. They've got to have the wheat--it's bread 'n' butter to
them."
"Oh, then why not give it to them?" she cried. "Give it to those
poor people--your five million bushels. Why, that would be a godsend
to them."
Jadwin stared a moment.
"Oh, that isn't exactly how it works out," he said.
Before he could say more, however, the maid came in and handed to
Jadwin three despatches.
"Now those," said Laura, when the servant had gone out, "you get
those every morning. Are those part of your business? What do they
say?"
"I'll read them to you," he told her as he slit the first envelopes.
"They are cablegrams from agents of mine in Europe. Gretry arranged
to have them sent to me. Here now, this is from Odessa. It's in
cipher, but"--he drew a narrow memorandum-book from his breast
pocket--"I'll translate it for you."
He turned the pages of the key book a few moments, jotting down the
translation on the back of an envelope with the gold pencil at the
end of his watch chain.
"Here's how it reads," he said at last. "'Cash wheat advanced one
cent bushel on Liverpool buying, stock light. Shipping to interior.
European price not attractive to sellers.'"
"What does that mean?" she asked.
"Well, that Russia will not export wheat, that she has no more than
enough for herself, so that Western Europe will have to look to us
for her wheat."
"And the others? Read those to me."
Again Jadwin translated.
"This is from Paris:
"'Answer on one million bushels wheat in your market--stocks lighter
than expected, and being cleared up.'"
"Which is to say?" she queried.
"They want to know how much I would ask for a million bushels. They
find it hard to get the stuff over there--just as I said they
would."
"Will you sell it to them?"
"Maybe. I'll talk to Sam about it."
"And now the last one."
"It's from Liverpool, and Liverpool, you must understand, is the
great buyer of wheat. It's a tremendously influential place."
He began once more to consult the key book, one finger following the
successive code words of the despatch.
Laura, watching him, saw his eyes suddenly contract. "By George," he
muttered, all at once, "by George, what's this?"
"What is it?" she demanded. "Is it important?"
But all-absorbed, Jadwin neither heard nor responded. Three times he
verified the same word.
"Oh, please tell me," she begged.
Jadwin shook his head impatiently and held up a warning hand.
"Wait, wait," he said. "Wait a minute."
Word for word he wrote out the translation of the cablegram, and
then studied it intently.
"That's it," he said, at last. Then he got to his feet. "I guess
I've had enough breakfast," he declared. He looked at his watch,
touched the call bell, and when the maid appeared said:
"Tell Jarvis to bring the buggy around right away."
"But, dear, what is it?" repeated Laura. "You said you would tell
me. You see," she cried, "it's just as I said. You've forgotten my
very existence. When it's a question of wheat I count for nothing.
And just now, when you read the despatch to yourself, you were all
different; such a look came into your face, so cruelly eager, and
triumphant and keen."
"You'd be eager, too," he exclaimed, "if you understood. Look; read
it for yourself."
He thrust the cable into her hands. Over each code word he had
written its translation, and his wife read:
"Large firms here short and in embarrassing position, owing to
curtailment in Argentine shipments. Can negotiate for five million
wheat if price satisfactory."
"Well?" she asked.
"Well, don't you see what that means? It's the 'European demand' at
last. They must have wheat, and I've got it to give 'em--wheat that
I bought, oh! at seventy cents, some of it, and they'll pay the
market that is, eighty cents, for it. Oh, they'll pay more. They'll
pay eighty-two if I want 'em to. France is after the stuff, too.
Remember that cable from Paris I just read. They'd bid against each
other. Why, if I pull this off, if this goes through--and, by
George," he went on, speaking as much to himself as to her, new
phases of the affair presenting themselves to him at every moment,
"by George, I don't have to throw this wheat into the Pit and break
down the price--and Gretry has understandings with the railroads,
through the elevator gang, so we get big rebates. Why, this wheat is
worth eighty-two cents to them--and then there's this 'curtailment
in Argentine shipments.' That's the first word we've had about small
crops there. Holy Moses, if the Argentine crop is off, wheat will
knock the roof clean off the Board of Trade!" The maid reappeared in
the doorway. "The buggy?" queried Jadwin. "All right. I'm off,
Laura, and--until it's over keep quiet about all this, you know. Ask
me to read you some more cables some day. It brings good luck."
He gathered up his despatches and the mail and was gone. Laura, left
alone, sat looking out of the window a long moment. She heard the
front door close, and then the sound of the horses' hoofs on the
asphalt by the carriage porch. They died down, ceased, and all at
once a great silence seemed to settle over the house.
Laura sat thinking. At last she rose.
"It is the first time," she said to herself, "that Curtis ever
forgot to kiss me good-by."
The day, for all that the month was December, was fine. The sun
shone; under foot the ground was dry and hard. The snow which had
fallen ten days before was practically gone. In fine, it was a
perfect day for riding. Laura called her maid and got into her
habit. The groom with his own horse and "Crusader" were waiting for
her when she descended.
That forenoon Laura rode further and longer than usual. Preoccupied
at first, her mind burdened with vague anxieties, she nevertheless
could not fail to be aroused and stimulated by the sparkle and
effervescence of the perfect morning, and the cold, pure glitter of
Lake Michigan, green with an intense mineral hue, dotted with
whitecaps, and flashing under the morning sky. Lincoln Park was
deserted and still; a blue haze shrouded the distant masses of
leafless trees, where the gardeners were burning the heaps of
leaves. Under her the thoroughbred moved with an ease and a freedom
that were superb, throwing back one sharp ear at her lightest word;
his rippling mane caressed her hand and forearm, and as she looked
down upon his shoulder she could see the long, slender muscles,
working smoothly, beneath the satin sheen of the skin. At the water
works she turned into the long, straight road that leads to North
Lake, and touched Crusader with the crop, checking him slightly at
the same time. With a little toss of his head he broke from a trot
into a canter, and then, as she leaned forward in the saddle, into
his long, even gallop. There was no one to see; she would not be
conspicuous, so Laura gave the horse his head, and in another moment
he was carrying her with a swiftness that brought the water to her
eyes, and that sent her hair flying from her face. She had him
completely under control. A touch upon the bit, she knew, would
suffice to bring him to a standstill. She knew him to be without
fear and without nerves, knew that his every instinct made for her
safety, and that this morning's gallop was as much a pleasure to him
as to his rider. Beneath her and around her the roadway and
landscape flew; the cold air sang in her ears and whipped a faint
colour to her pale cheeks; in her deep brown eyes a frosty sparkle
came and went, and throughout all her slender figure the blood raced
spanking and careering in a full, strong tide of health and gaiety.
She made a circle around North Lake, and came back by way of the
Linne monument and the Palm House, Crusader ambling quietly by now,
the groom trotting stolidly in the rear. Throughout all her ride she
had seen no one but the park gardeners and the single grey-coated,
mounted policeman whom she met each time she rode, and who always
touched his helmet to her as she cantered past. Possibly she had
grown a little careless in looking out for pedestrians at the
crossings, for as she turned eastward at the La Salle statue, she
all but collided with a gentleman who was traversing the road at the
same time.
She brought her horse to a standstill with a little start of
apprehension, and started again as she saw that the gentleman was
Sheldon Corthell.
"Well," she cried, taken all aback, unable to think of formalities,
and relapsing all at once into the young girl of Barrington,
Massachusetts, "well, I never--of all the people."
But, no doubt, she had been more in his mind than he in hers, and a
meeting with her was for him an eventuality not at all remote. There
was more of pleasure than of embarrassment in that first look in
which he recognised the wife of Curtis Jadwin.
The artist had changed no whit in the four years since last she had
seen him. He seemed as young as ever; there was the same "elegance"
to his figure; his hands were just as long and slim as ever; his
black beard was no less finely pointed, and the mustaches were
brushed away from his lips in the same French style that she
remembered he used to affect. He was, as always, carefully dressed.
He wore a suit of tweeds of a foreign cut, but no overcoat, a cloth
cap of greenish plaid was upon his head, his hands were gloved in
dogskin, and under his arm he carried a slender cane of varnished
brown bamboo. The only unconventionality in his dress was the
cravat, a great bow of black silk that overflowed the lapels of his
coat.
But she had no more than time to register a swift impression of the
details, when he came quickly forward, one hand extended, the other
holding his cap.
"I cannot tell you how glad I am," he exclaimed.
It was the old Corthell beyond doubting or denial. Not a single
inflection of his low-pitched, gently modulated voice was wanting;
not a single infinitesimal mannerism was changed, even to the little
tilting of the chin when he spoke, or the quick winking of the
eyelids, or the smile that narrowed the corners of the eyes
themselves, or the trick of perfect repose of his whole body. Even
his handkerchief, as always, since first she had known him, was
tucked into his sleeve at the wrist.
"And so you are back again," she cried. "And when, and how?"
"And so--yes--so I am back again," he repeated, as they shook hands.
"Only day before yesterday, and quite surreptitiously. No one knows
yet that I am here. I crept in--or my train did--under the cover of
night. I have come straight from Tuscany."
"From Tuscany?"
"--and gardens and marble pergolas."
"Now why any one should leave Tuscan gardens and--and all that kind
of thing for a winter in Chicago, I cannot see," she said.
"It is a little puzzling," he answered. "But I fancy that my gardens
and pergolas and all the rest had come to seem to me a little--as
the French would put it--_malle._ I began to long for a touch of our
hard, harsh city again. Harshness has its place, I think, if it is
only to cut one's teeth on."
Laura looked down at him, smiling.
"I should have thought you had cut yours long ago," she said.
"Not my wisdom teeth," he urged. "I feel now that I have come to
that time of life when it is expedient to have wisdom."
"I have never known that feeling," she confessed, "and I live in the
'hard, harsh' city."
"Oh, that is because you have never known what it meant not to have
wisdom," he retorted. "Tell me about everybody," he went on. "Your
husband, he is well, of course, and distressfully rich. I heard of
him in New York. And Page, our little, solemn Minerva of Dresden
china?"
"Oh, yes, Page is well, but you will hardly recognise her; such a
young lady nowadays."
"And Mr. Court, 'Landry'? I remember he always impressed me as
though he had just had his hair cut; and the Cresslers, and Mrs.
Wessels, and--"
"All well. Mrs. Cressler will be delighted to hear you are back.
Yes, everybody is well."
"And, last of all, Mrs. Jadwin? But I needn't ask; I can see how
well and happy you are."
"And Mr. Corthell," she queried, "is also well and happy?"
"Mr. Corthell," he responded, "is very well, and--tolerably--happy,
thank you. One has lost a few illusions, but has managed to keep
enough to grow old on. One's latter days are provided for."
"I shouldn't imagine," she told him, "that one lost illusions in
Tuscan gardens."
"Quite right," he hastened to reply, smiling cheerfully. "One lost
no illusions in Tuscany. One went there to cherish the few that yet
remained. But," he added, without change of manner, "one begins to
believe that even a lost illusion can be very beautiful
sometimes--even in Chicago."
"I want you to dine with us," said Laura. "You've hardly met my
husband, and I think you will like some of our pictures. I will have
all your old friends there, the Cresslers and Aunt Wess, and all.
When can you come?"
"Oh, didn't you get my note?" he asked. "I wrote you yesterday,
asking if I might call to-night. You see, I am only in Chicago for a
couple of days. I must go on to St. Louis to-morrow, and shall not
be back for a week."
"Note? No, I've had no note from you. Oh, I know what happened.
Curtis left in a hurry this morning, and he swooped all the mail
into his pocket the last moment. I knew some of my letters were with
his. There's where your note went. But, never mind, it makes no
difference now that we've met. Yes, by all means, come to-night--to
dinner. We're not a bit formal. Curtis won't have it. We dine at
six; and I'll try to get the others. Oh, but Page won't be there, I
forgot. She and Landry Court are going to have dinner with Aunt
Wess', and they are all going to a lecture afterwards."
The artist expressed his appreciation and accepted her invitation.
"Do you know where we live?" she demanded. "You know we've moved
since."
"Yes, I know," he told her. "I made up my mind to take a long walk
here in the Park this morning, and I passed your house on my way
out. You see, I had to look up your address in the directory before
writing. Your house awed me, I confess, and the style is
surprisingly good."
"But tell me," asked Laura, "you never speak of yourself, what have
you been doing since you went away?"
"Nothing. Merely idling, and painting a little, and studying some
thirteenth century glass in Avignon and Sienna."
"And shall you go back?"
"Yes, I think so, in about a month. So soon as I have straightened
out some little businesses of mine--which puts me in mind," he said,
glancing at his watch, "that I have an appointment at eleven, and
should be about it."
He said good-by and left her, and Laura cantered homeward in high
spirits. She was very glad that Corthell had come back. She had
always liked him. He not only talked well himself, but seemed to
have the faculty of making her do the same. She remembered that in
the old days, before she had met Jadwin, her mind and conversation,
for undiscoverable reasons, had never been nimbler, quicker, nor
more effective than when in the company of the artist.
Arrived at home, Laura (as soon as she had looked up the definition
of "pergola" in the dictionary) lost no time in telephoning to Mrs.
Cressler.
"What," this latter cried when she told her the news, "that Sheldon
Corthell back again! Well, dear me, if he wasn't the last person in
my mind. I do remember the lovely windows he used to paint, and how
refined and elegant he always was--and the loveliest hands and
voice."
"He's to dine with us to-night, and I want you and Mr. Cressler to
come."
"Oh, Laura, child, I just simply can't. Charlie's got a man from
Milwaukee coming here to-night, and I've got to feed him. Isn't it
too provoking? I've got to sit and listen to those two, clattering
commissions and percentages and all, when I might be hearing Sheldon
Corthell talk art and poetry and stained glass. I declare, I never
have any luck."
At quarter to six that evening Laura sat in the library, before the
fireplace, in her black velvet dinner gown, cutting the pages of a
new novel, the ivory cutter as it turned and glanced in her hand,
appearing to be a mere prolongation of her slender fingers. But she
was not interested in the book, and from time to time glanced
nervously at the clock upon the mantel-shelf over her head. Jadwin
was not home yet, and she was distressed at the thought of keeping
dinner waiting. He usually came back from down town at five o'clock,
and even earlier. To-day she had expected that quite possibly the
business implied in the Liverpool cable of the morning might detain
him, but surely he should be home by now; and as the minutes passed
she listened more and more anxiously for the sound of hoofs on the
driveway at the side of the house.
At five minutes of the hour, when Corthell was announced, there was
still no sign of her husband. But as she was crossing the hall on
her way to the drawing-room, one of the servants informed her that
Mr. Jadwin had just telephoned that he would be home in half an
hour.
"Is he on the telephone now?" she asked, quickly. "Where did he
telephone from?"
But it appeared that Jadwin had "hung up" without mentioning his
whereabouts.
"The buggy came home," said the servant. "Mr. Jadwin told Jarvis not
to wait. He said he would come in the street cars."
Laura reflected that she could delay dinner a half hour, and gave
orders to that effect.
"We shall have to wait a little," she explained to Corthell as they
exchanged greetings in the drawing-room. "Curtis has some special
business on hand to-day, and is half an hour late."
They sat down on either side of the fireplace in the lofty
apartment, with its sombre hangings of wine-coloured brocade and
thick, muffling rugs, and for upwards of three-quarters of an hour
Corthell interested her with his description of his life in the
cathedral towns of northern Italy. But at the end of that time
dinner was announced.
"Has Mr. Jadwin come in yet?" Laura asked of the servant.
"No, madam."
She bit her lip in vexation.
"I can't imagine what can keep Curtis so late," she murmured.
"Well," she added, at the end of her resources, "we must make the
best of it. I think we will go in, Mr. Corthell, without waiting.
Curtis must be here soon now."
But, as a matter of fact, he was not. In the great dining-room,
filled with a dull crimson light, the air just touched with the
scent of lilies of the valley, Corthell and Mrs. Jadwin dined alone.
"I suppose," observed the artist, "that Mr. Jadwin is a very busy
man."
"Oh, no," Laura answered. "His real estate, he says, runs itself,
and, as a rule, Mr. Gretry manages most of his Board of Trade
business. It is only occasionally that anything keeps him down town
late. I scolded him this morning, however, about his speculating,
and made him promise not to do so much of it. I hate speculation. It
seems to absorb some men so; and I don't believe it's right for a
man to allow himself to become absorbed altogether in business."
"Oh, why limit one's absorption to business?" replied Corthell,
sipping his wine. "Is it right for one to be absorbed 'altogether'
in anything--even in art, even in religion?"
"Oh, religion, I don't know," she protested.
"Isn't that certain contribution," he hazarded, "which we make to
the general welfare, over and above our own individual work, isn't
that the essential? I suppose, of course, that we must hoe, each of
us, his own little row, but it's the stroke or two we give to our
neighbour's row--don't you think?--that helps most to cultivate the
field."
"But doesn't religion mean more than a stroke or two?" she ventured
to reply.
"I'm not so sure," he answered, thoughtfully. "If the stroke or two
is taken from one's own work instead of being given in excess of it.
One must do one's own hoeing first. That's the foundation of things.
A religion that would mean to be 'altogether absorbed' in my
neighbour's hoeing would be genuinely pernicious, surely. My row,
meanwhile, would lie open to weeds."
"But if your neighbour's row grew flowers?"
"Unfortunately weeds grow faster than the flowers, and the weeds of
my row would spread until they choked and killed my neighbour's
flowers, I am sure."
"That seems selfish though," she persisted. "Suppose my neighbour
were maimed or halt or blind? His poor little row would never be
finished. My stroke or two would not help very much."
"Yes, but every row lies between two others, you know. The hoer on
the far side of the cripple's row would contribute a stroke or two
as well as you. No," he went on, "I am sure one's first duty is to
do one's own work. It seems to me that a work accomplished benefits
the whole world--the people--pro rata. If we help another at the
expense of our work instead of in excess of it, we benefit only the
individual, and, pro rata again, rob the people. A little good
contributed by everybody to the race is of more, infinitely more,
importance than a great deal of good contributed by one individual
to another."
"Yes," she admitted, beginning at last to be convinced, "I see what
you mean. But one must think very large to see that. It never
occurred to me before. The individual--I, Laura Jadwin--counts for
nothing. It is the type to which I belong that's important, the
mould, the form, the sort of composite photograph of hundreds of
thousands of Laura Jadwins. Yes," she continued, her brows bent, her
mind hard at work, "what I am, the little things that distinguish me
from everybody else, those pass away very quickly, are very
ephemeral. But the type Laura Jadwin, that always remains, doesn't
it? One must help building up only the permanent things. Then, let's
see, the individual may deteriorate, but the type always grows
better.... Yes, I think one can say that."
"At least the type never recedes," he prompted.
"Oh, it began good," she cried, as though at a discovery, "and can
never go back of that original good. Something keeps it from going
below a certain point, and it is left to us to lift it higher and
higher. No, the type can't be bad. Of course the type is more
important than the individual. And that something that keeps it from
going below a certain point is God."
"Or nature."
"So that God and nature," she cried again, "work together? No, no,
they are one and the same thing."
"There, don't you see," he remarked, smiling back at her, "how
simple it is?"
"Oh-h," exclaimed Laura, with a deep breath, "isn't it beautiful?"
She put her hand to her forehead with a little laugh of deprecation.
"My," she said, "but those things make you think."
Dinner was over before she was aware of it, and they were still
talking animatedly as they rose from the table.
"We will have our coffee in the art gallery," Laura said, "and
please smoke."
He lit a cigarette, and the two passed into the great glass-roofed
rotunda.
"Here is the one I like best," said Laura, standing before the
Bougereau.
"Yes?" he queried, observing the picture thoughtfully. "I suppose,"
he remarked, "it is because it demands less of you than some others.
I see what you mean. It pleases you because it satisfies you so
easily. You can grasp it without any effort."
"Oh, I don't know," she ventured.
"Bougereau 'fills a place.' I know it," he answered. "But I cannot
persuade myself to admire his art."
"But," she faltered, "I thought that Bougereau was considered the
greatest--one of the greatest--his wonderful flesh tints, the
drawing, and colouring."
"But I think you will see," he told her, "if you think about it,
that for all there is in his picture--back of it--a fine hanging, a
beautiful vase would have exactly the same value upon your wall.
Now, on the other hand, take this picture." He indicated a small
canvas to the right of the bathing nymphs, representing a twilight
landscape.
"Oh, that one," said Laura. "We bought that here in America, in New
York. It's by a Western artist. I never noticed it much, I'm
afraid."
"But now look at it," said Corthell. "Don't you know that the artist
saw something more than trees and a pool and afterglow? He had that
feeling of night coming on, as he sat there before his sketching
easel on the edge of that little pool. He heard the frogs beginning
to pipe, I'm sure, and the touch of the night mist was on his hands.
And he was very lonely and even a little sad. In those deep shadows
under the trees he put something of himself, the gloom and the
sadness that he felt at the moment. And that little pool, still and
black and sombre--why, the whole thing is the tragedy of a life full
of dark, hidden secrets. And the little pool is a heart. No one can
say how deep it is, or what dreadful thing one would find at the
bottom, or what drowned hopes or what sunken ambitions. That little
pool says one word as plain as if it were whispered in the
ear--despair. Oh, yes, I prefer it to the nymphs."
"I am very much ashamed," returned Laura, "that I could not see it
all before for myself. But I see it now. It is better, of course. I
shall come in here often now and study it. Of all the rooms in our
house this is the one I like best. But, I am afraid, it has been
more because of the organ than of the pictures."
Corthell turned about.
"Oh, the grand, noble organ," he murmured. "I envy you this of all
your treasures. May I play for you? Something to compensate for the
dreadful, despairing little tarn of the picture."
"I should love to have you," she told him.
He asked permission to lower the lights, and stepping outside the
door an instant, pressed the buttons that extinguished all but a
very few of them. After he had done this he came back to the organ
and detached the self-playing "arrangement" without comment, and
seated himself at the console.
Laura lay back in a long chair close at hand. The moment was
propitious. The artist's profile silhouetted itself against the
shade of a light that burned at the side of the organ, and that gave
light to the keyboard. And on this keyboard, full in the reflection,
lay his long, slim hands. They were the only things that moved in
the room, and the chords and bars of Mendelssohn's "Consolation"
seemed, as he played, to flow, not from the instrument, but, like
some invisible ether, from his finger-tips themselves.
"You hear," he said to Laura, "the effect of questions and answer in
this. The questions are passionate and tumultuous and varied, but
the answer is always the same, always calm and soothing and
dignified."
She answered with a long breath, speaking just above a whisper:
"Oh, yes, yes, I understand."
He finished and turned towards her a moment. "Possibly not a very
high order of art," he said; "a little too 'easy,' perhaps, like the
Bougereau, but 'Consolation' should appeal very simply and directly,
after all. Do you care for Beethoven?"
"I--I am afraid--" began Laura, but he had continued without waiting
for her reply.
"You remember this? The 'Appassionata,' the F minor sonata just the
second movement."
But when he had finished Laura begged him to continue.
"Please go on," she said. "Play anything. You can't tell how I love
it."
"Here is something I've always liked," he answered, turning back to
the keyboard. "It is the 'Mephisto Walzer' of Liszt. He has adapted
it himself from his own orchestral score, very ingeniously. It is
difficult to render on the organ, but I think you can get the idea
of it." As he spoke he began playing, his head very slightly moving
to the rhythm of the piece. At the beginning of each new theme, and
without interrupting his playing, he offered a word, of explanation:
"Very vivid and arabesque this, don't you think? ... And now this
movement; isn't it reckless and capricious, like a woman who
hesitates and then takes the leap? Yet there's a certain nobility
there, a feeling for ideals. You see it, of course.... And all the
while this undercurrent of the sensual, and that feline, eager
sentiment ... and here, I think, is the best part of it, the very
essence of passion, the voluptuousness that is a veritable
anguish.... These long, slow rhythms, tortured, languishing, really
dying. It reminds one of 'Phedre'--'Venus toute entiere,' and the
rest of it; and Wagner has the same. You find it again in Isolde's
motif continually."
Laura was transfixed, all but transported. Here was something better
than Gounod and Verdi, something above and beyond the obvious one,
two, three, one, two, three of the opera scores as she knew them and
played them. Music she understood with an intuitive quickness; and
those prolonged chords of Liszt's, heavy and clogged and cloyed with
passion, reached some hitherto untouched string within her heart,
and with resistless power twanged it so that the vibration of it
shook her entire being, and left her quivering and breathless, the
tears in her eyes, her hands clasped till the knuckles whitened.
She felt all at once as though a whole new world were opened to her.
She stood on Pisgah. And she was ashamed and confused at her
ignorance of those things which Corthell tactfully assumed that she
knew as a matter of course. What wonderful pleasures she had
ignored! How infinitely removed from her had been the real world of
art and artists of which Corthell was a part! Ah, but she would make
amends now. No more Verdi and Bougereau. She would get rid of the
"Bathing Nymphs." Never, never again would she play the "Anvil
Chorus." Corthell should select her pictures, and should play to her
from Liszt and Beethoven that music which evoked all the turbulent
emotion, all the impetuosity and fire and exaltation that she felt
was hers.
She wondered at herself. Surely, surely there were two Laura
Jadwins. One calm and even and steady, loving the quiet life, loving
her home, finding a pleasure in the duties of the housewife. This
was the Laura who liked plain, homely, matter-of-fact Mrs. Cressler,
who adored her husband, who delighted in Mr. Howells's novels, who
abjured society and the formal conventions, who went to church every
Sunday, and who was afraid of her own elevator.
But at moments such as this she knew that there was another Laura
Jadwin--the Laura Jadwin who might have been a great actress, who
had a "temperament," who was impulsive. This was the Laura of the
"grand manner," who played the role of the great lady from room to
room of her vast house, who read Meredith, who revelled in swift
gallops through the park on jet-black, long-tailed horses, who
affected black velvet, black jet, and black lace in her gowns, who
was conscious and proud of her pale, stately beauty--the Laura
Jadwin, in fine, who delighted to recline in a long chair in the
dim, beautiful picture gallery and listen with half-shut eyes to the
great golden organ thrilling to the passion of Beethoven and Liszt.
The last notes of the organ sank and faded into silence--a silence
that left a sense of darkness like that which follows upon the
flight of a falling star, and after a long moment Laura sat upright,
adjusting the heavy masses of her black hair with thrusts of her
long, white fingers. She drew a deep breath.
"Oh," she said, "that was wonderful, wonderful. It is like a new
language--no, it is like new thoughts, too fine for language."
"I have always believed so," he answered. "Of all the arts, music,
to my notion, is the most intimate. At the other end of the scale
you have architecture, which is an expression of and an appeal to
the common multitude, a whole people, the mass. Fiction and
painting, and even poetry, are affairs of the classes, reaching the
groups of the educated. But music--ah, that is different, it is one
soul speaking to another soul. The composer meant it for you and
himself. No one else has anything to do with it. Because his soul
was heavy and broken with grief, or bursting with passion, or
tortured with doubt, or searching for some unnamed ideal, he has
come to you--you of all the people in the world--with his message,
and he tells you of his yearnings and his sadness, knowing that you
will sympathise, knowing that your soul has, like his, been
acquainted with grief, or with gladness; and in the music his soul
speaks to yours, beats with it, blends with it, yes, is even,
spiritually, married to it."
And as he spoke the electrics all over the gallery flashed out in a
sudden blaze, and Curtis Jadwin entered the room, crying out:
"Are you here, Laura? By George, my girl, we pulled it off, and I've
cleaned up five--hundred--thousand--dollars."
Laura and the artist faced quickly about, blinking at the sudden
glare, and Laura put her hand over her eyes.
"Oh, I didn't mean to blind you," said her husband, as he came
forward. "But I thought it wouldn't be appropriate to tell you the
good news in the dark."
Corthell rose, and for the first time Jadwin caught sight of him.
"This is Mr. Corthell, Curtis," Laura said. "You remember him, of
course?"
"Why, certainly, certainly," declared Jadwin, shaking Corthell's
hand. "Glad to see you again. I hadn't an idea you were here." He
was excited, elated, very talkative. "I guess I came in on you
abruptly," he observed. "They told me Mrs. Jadwin was in here, and I
was full of my good news. By the way, I do remember now. When I came
to look over my mail on the way down town this morning, I found a
note from you to my wife, saying you would call to-night. Thought it
was for me, and opened it before I found the mistake."
"I knew you had gone off with it," said Laura.
"Guess I must have mixed it up with my own mail this morning. I'd
have telephoned you about it, Laura, but upon my word I've been so
busy all day I clean forgot it. I've let the cat out of the bag
already, Mr. Corthell, and I might as well tell the whole thing now.
I've been putting through a little deal with some Liverpool fellows
to-day, and I had to wait down town to get their cables to-night.
You got my telephone, did you, Laura?"
"Yes, but you said then you'd be up in half an hour."
"I know--I know. But those Liverpool cables didn't come till all
hours. Well, as I was saying, Mr. Corthell, I had this deal on
hand--it was that wheat, Laura, I was telling you about this
morning--five million bushels of it, and I found out from my English
agent that I could slam it right into a couple of fellows over
there, if we could come to terms. We came to terms right enough.
Some of that wheat I sold at a profit of fifteen cents on every
bushel. My broker and I figured it out just now before I started
home, and, as I say, I'm a clean half million to the good. So much
for looking ahead a little further than the next man." He dropped
into a chair and stretched his arms wide. "Whoo! I'm tired Laura.
Seems as though I'd been on my feet all day. Do you suppose Mary, or
Martha, or Maggie, or whatever her name is, could rustle me a good
strong cup of tea.
"Haven't you dined, Curtis?" cried Laura.
"Oh, I had a stand-up lunch somewhere with Sam. But we were both so
excited we might as well have eaten sawdust. Heigho, I sure am
tired. It takes it out of you, Mr. Corthell, to make five hundred
thousand in about ten hours."
"Indeed I imagine so," assented the artist. Jadwin turned to his
wife, and held her glance in his a moment. He was full of triumph,
full of the grim humour of the suddenly successful American.
"Hey?" he said. "What do you think of that, Laura," he clapped down
his big hand upon his chair arm, "a whole half million--at one
grab? Maybe they'll say down there in La Salle Street now that I
don't know wheat. Why, Sam--that's Gretry my broker, Mr. Corthell,
of Gretry, Converse & Co.--Sam said to me Laura, to-night, he said,
'J.,'--they call me 'J.' down there, Mr. Corthell--'J., I take off
my hat to you. I thought you were wrong from the very first, but I
guess you know this game better than I do.' Yes, sir, that's what he
said, and Sam Gretry has been trading in wheat for pretty nearly
thirty years. Oh, I knew it," he cried, with a quick gesture; "I
knew wheat was going to go up. I knew it from the first, when all
the rest of em laughed at me. I knew this European demand would hit
us hard about this time. I knew it was a good thing to buy wheat; I
knew it was a good thing to have special agents over in Europe. Oh,
they'll all buy now--when I've showed 'em the way. Upon my word, I
haven't talked so much in a month of Sundays. You must pardon me,
Mr. Corthell. I don't make five hundred thousand every day."
"But this is the last--isn't it?" said Laura.
"Yes," admitted Jadwin, with a quick, deep breath. "I'm done now. No
more speculating. Let some one else have a try now. See if they can
hold five million bushels till it's wanted. My, my, I am tired--as
I've said before. D'that tea come, Laura?"
"What's that in your hand?" she answered, smiling.
Jadwin stared at the cup and saucer he held, whimsically. "Well,
well," he exclaimed, "I must be flustered. Corthell," he declared
between swallows, "take my advice. Buy May wheat. It'll beat art all
hollow."
"Oh, dear, no," returned the artist. "I should lose my senses if I
won, and my money if I didn't.
"That's so. Keep out of it. It's a rich man's game. And at that,
there's no fun in it unless you risk more than you can afford to
lose. Well, let's not talk shop. You're an artist, Mr. Corthell.
What do you think of our house?"
Later on when they had said good-by to Corthell, and when Jadwin was
making the rounds of the library, art gallery, and drawing-rooms--a
nightly task which he never would intrust to the servants--turning
down the lights and testing the window fastenings, his wife said:
"And now you are out of it--for good."
"I don't own a grain of wheat," he assured her. "I've got to be out
of it."
The next day he went down town for only two or three hours in the
afternoon. But he did not go near the Board of Trade building. He
talked over a few business matters with the manager of his real
estate office, wrote an unimportant letter or two, signed a few
orders, was back at home by five o'clock, and in the evening took
Laura, Page, and Landry Court to the theatre.
After breakfast the next morning, when he had read his paper, he got
up, and, thrusting his hands in his pockets, looked across the table
at his wife.
"Well," he said. "Now what'll we do?"
She put down at once the letter she was reading.
"Would you like to drive in the park?" she suggested. "It is a
beautiful morning."
"M--m--yes," he answered slowly. "All right. Let's drive in the
park."
But she could see that the prospect was not alluring to him.
"No," she said, "no. I don't think you want to do that."
"I don't think I do, either," he admitted. "The fact is, Laura, I
just about know that park by heart. Is there anything good in the
magazines this month?"
She got them for him, and he installed himself comfortably in the
library, with a box of cigars near at hand.
"Ah," he said, fetching a long breath as he settled back in the
deep-seated leather chair. "Now this is what I call solid comfort.
Better than stewing and fussing about La Salle Street with your mind
loaded down with responsibilities and all. This is my idea of life."
But an hour later, when Laura--who had omitted her ride that
morning--looked into the room, he was not there. The magazines were
helter-skeltered upon the floor and table, where he had tossed each
one after turning the leaves. A servant told her that Mr. Jadwin was
out in the stables.
She saw him through the window, in a cap and great-coat, talking
with the coachman and looking over one of the horses. But he came
back to the house in a little while, and she found him in his
smoking-room with a novel in his hand.
"Oh, I read that last week," she said, as she caught a glimpse of
the title. "Isn't it interesting? Don't you think it is good?"
"Oh--yes--pretty good," he admitted. "Isn't it about time for lunch?
Let's go to the matinee this afternoon, Laura. Oh, that's so, it's
Thursday; I forgot."
"Let me read that aloud to you," she said, reaching for the book. "I
know you'll be interested when you get farther along."
"Honestly, I don't think I would be," he declared. "I've looked
ahead in it. It seems terribly dry. Do you know," he said, abruptly,
"if the law was off I'd go up to Geneva Lake and fish through the
ice. Laura, how would you like to go to Florida?"
"Oh, I tell you," she exclaimed. "Let's go up to Geneva Lake over
Christmas. We'll open up the house and take some of the servants
along and have a house party."
Eventually this was done. The Cresslers and the Gretrys were
invited, together with Sheldon Corthell and Landry Court. Page and
Aunt Wess' came as a matter of course. Jadwin brought up some of the
horses and a couple of sleighs. On Christmas night they had a great
tree, and Corthell composed the words and music for a carol which
had a great success.
About a week later, two days after New Year's day, when Landry came
down from Chicago on the afternoon train, he was full of the tales
of a great day on the Board of Trade. Laura, descending to the
sitting-room, just before dinner, found a group in front of the
fireplace, where the huge logs were hissing and crackling. Her
husband and Cressler were there, and Gretry, who had come down on an
earlier train. Page sat near at hand, her chin on her palm,
listening intently to Landry, who held the centre of the stage for
the moment. In a far corner of the room Sheldon Corthell, in a
dinner coat and patent-leather pumps, a cigarette between his
fingers, read a volume of Italian verse.
"It was the confirmation of the failure of the Argentine crop that
did it," Landry was saying; "that and the tremendous foreign demand.
She opened steady enough at eighty-three, but just as soon as the
gong tapped we began to get it. Buy, buy, buy. Everybody is in it
now. The public are speculating. For one fellow who wants to sell
there are a dozen buyers. We had one of the hottest times I ever
remember in the Pit this morning."
Laura saw Jadwin's eyes snap.
"I told you we'd get this, Sam," he said, nodding to the broker.
"Oh, there's plenty of wheat," answered Gretry, easily. "Wait till
we get dollar wheat--if we do--and see it come out. The farmers
haven't sold it all yet. There's always an army of ancient hayseeds
who have the stuff tucked away--in old stockings, I guess--and
who'll dump it on you all right if you pay enough. There's plenty of
wheat. I've seen it happen before. Work the price high enough, and,
Lord, how they'll scrape the bins to throw it at you! You'd never
guess from what out-of-the-way places it would come."
"I tell you, Sam," retorted Jadwin, "the surplus of wheat is going
out of the country--and it's going fast. And some of these shorts
will have to hustle lively for it pretty soon."
"The Crookes gang, though," observed Landry, "seem pretty confident
the market will break. I'm sure they were selling short this
morning."
"The idea," exclaimed Jadwin, incredulously, "the idea of selling
short in face of this Argentine collapse, and all this Bull news
from Europe!"
"Oh, there are plenty of shorts," urged Gretry. "Plenty of them."
Try as he would, the echoes of the rumbling of the Pit reached
Jadwin at every hour of the day and night. The maelstrom there at
the foot of La Salle Street was swirling now with a mightier rush
than for years past. Thundering, its vortex smoking, it sent its
whirling far out over the country, from ocean to ocean, sweeping the
wheat into its currents, sucking it in, and spewing it out again in
the gigantic pulses of its ebb and flow.
And he, Jadwin, who knew its every eddy, who could foretell its
every ripple, was out of it, out of it. Inactive, he sat there idle
while the clamour of the Pit swelled daily louder, and while other
men, men of little minds, of narrow imaginations, perversely,
blindly shut their eyes to the swelling of its waters, neglecting
the chances which he would have known how to use with such large,
such vast results. That mysterious event which long ago he felt was
preparing, was not yet consummated. The great Fact, the great Result
which was at last to issue forth from all this turmoil was not yet
achieved. Would it refuse to come until a master hand, all powerful,
all daring, gripped the levers of the sluice gates that controlled
the crashing waters of the Pit? He did not know. Was it the moment
for a chief?
Was this upheaval a revolution that called aloud for its Napoleon?
Would another, not himself, at last, seeing where so many shut their
eyes, step into the place of high command?
Jadwin chafed and fretted in his inaction. As the time when the
house party should break up drew to its close, his impatience
harried him like a gadfly. He took long drives over the lonely
country roads, or tramped the hills or the frozen lake, thoughtful,
preoccupied. He still held his seat upon the Board of Trade. He
still retained his agents in Europe. Each morning brought him fresh
despatches, each evening's paper confirmed his forecasts.
"Oh, I'm out of it for good and all," he assured his wife. "But I
know the man who could take up the whole jing-bang of that Crookes
crowd in one hand and"--his large fist swiftly knotted as he spoke
the words--"scrunch it up like an eggshell, by George."
Landry Court often entertained Page with accounts of the doings on
the Board of Trade, and about a fortnight after the Jadwins had
returned to their city home he called on her one evening and brought
two or three of the morning's papers.
"Have you seen this?" he asked. She shook her head.
"Well," he said, compressing his lips, and narrowing his eyes, "let
me tell you, we are having pretty--lively--times--down there on the
Board these days. The whole country is talking about it."
He read her certain extracts from the newspapers he had brought. The
first article stated that recently a new factor had appeared in the
Chicago wheat market. A "Bull" clique had evidently been formed,
presumably of New York capitalists, who were ousting the Crookes
crowd and were rapidly coming into control of the market. In
consequence of this the price of wheat was again mounting.
Another paper spoke of a combine of St. Louis firms who were
advancing prices, bulling the market. Still a third said, at the
beginning of a half-column article:
"It is now universally conceded that an Unknown Bull has invaded the
Chicago wheat market since the beginning of the month, and is now
dominating the entire situation. The Bears profess to have no fear
of this mysterious enemy, but it is a matter of fact that a
multitude of shorts were driven ignominiously to cover on Tuesday
last, when the Great Bull gathered in a long line of two million
bushels in a single half hour. Scalping and eighth-chasing are
almost entirely at an end, the smaller traders dreading to be caught
on the horns of the Unknown. The new operator's identity has been
carefully concealed, but whoever he is, he is a wonderful trader and
is possessed of consummate nerve. It has been rumoured that he hails
from New York, and is but one of a large clique who are inaugurating
a Bull campaign. But our New York advices are emphatic in denying
this report, and we can safely state that the Unknown Bull is a
native, and a present inhabitant of the Windy City."
Page looked up at Landry quickly, and he returned her glance without
speaking. There was a moment's silence.
"I guess," Landry hazarded, lowering his voice, "I guess we're both
thinking of the same thing."
"But I know he told my sister that he was going to stop all that
kind of thing. What do you think?"
"I hadn't ought to think anything."
"Say 'shouldn't think,' Landry."
"Shouldn't think, then, anything about it. My business is to execute
Mr. Gretry's orders."
"Well, I know this," said Page, "that Mr. Jadwin is down town all
day again. You know he stayed away for a while."
"Oh, that may be his real estate business that keeps him down town
so much," replied Landry.
"Laura is terribly distressed," Page went on. "I can see that. They
used to spend all their evenings together in the library, and Laura
would read aloud to him. But now he comes home so tired that
sometimes he goes to bed at nine o'clock, and Laura sits there alone
reading till eleven and twelve. But she's afraid, too, of the effect
upon him. He's getting so absorbed. He don't care for literature now
as he did once, or was beginning to when Laura used to read to him;
and he never thinks of his Sunday-school. And then, too, if you're
to believe Mr. Cressler, there's a chance that he may lose if he is
speculating again."
But Landry stoutly protested:
"Well, don't think for one moment that Mr. Curtis Jadwin is going to
let any one get the better of him. There's no man--no, nor gang of
men--could down him. He's head and shoulders above the biggest of
them down there. I tell you he's Napoleonic. Yes, sir, that's what
he is, Napoleonic, to say the least. Page," he declared, solemnly,
"he's the greatest man I've ever known."
Very soon after this it was no longer a secret to Laura Jadwin that
her husband had gone back to the wheat market, and that, too, with
such impetuosity, such eagerness, that his rush had carried him to
the very heart's heart of the turmoil.
He was now deeply involved; his influence began to be felt. Not an
important move on the part of the "Unknown Bull," the nameless
mysterious stranger that was not duly noted and discussed by the
entire world of La Salle Street.
Almost his very first move, carefully guarded, executed with
profoundest secrecy, had been to replace the five million bushels
sold to Liverpool by five million more of the May option. This was
in January, and all through February and all through the first days
of March, while the cry for American wheat rose, insistent and
vehement, from fifty cities and centres of eastern Europe; while the
jam of men in the Wheat Pit grew ever more frantic, ever more
furious, and while the impassive hand on the great dial over the
floor of the Board rose, resistless, till it stood at eighty-seven,
he bought steadily, gathering in the wheat, calling for it,
welcoming it, receiving full in the face and with opened arms the
cataract that poured in upon the Pit from Iowa and Nebraska,
Minnesota and Dakota, from the dwindling bins of Illinois and the
fast-emptying elevators of Kansas and Missouri.
Then, squarely in the midst of the commotion, at a time when Curtis
Jadwin owned some ten million bushels of May wheat, fell the
Government report on the visible supply.
"Well," said Jadwin, "what do you think of it?"
He and Gretry were in the broker's private room in the offices of
Gretry, Converse & Co. They were studying the report of the
Government as to the supply of wheat, which had just been published
in the editions of the evening papers. It was very late in the
afternoon of a lugubrious March day. Long since the gas and
electricity had been lighted in the office, while in the streets the
lamps at the corners were reflected downward in long shafts of light
upon the drenched pavements. From the windows of the room one could
see directly up La Salle Street. The cable cars, as they made the
turn into or out of the street at the corner of Monroe, threw
momentary glares of red and green lights across the mists of rain,
and filled the air continually with the jangle of their bells.
Further on one caught a glimpse of the Court House rising from the
pavement like a rain-washed cliff of black basalt, picked out with
winking lights, and beyond that, at the extreme end of the vista,
the girders and cables of the La Salle Street bridge.
The sidewalks on either hand were encumbered with the "six o'clock
crowd" that poured out incessantly from the street entrances of the
office buildings. It was a crowd almost entirely of men, and they
moved only in one direction, buttoned to the chin in rain coats,
their umbrellas bobbing, their feet scuffling through the little
pools of wet in the depressions of the sidewalk. They streamed from
out the brokers' offices and commission houses on either side of La
Salle Street, continually, unendingly, moving with the dragging
sluggishness of the fatigue of a hard day's work. Under that grey
sky and blurring veil of rain they lost their individualities, they
became conglomerate--a mass, slow-moving, black. All day long the
torrent had seethed and thundered through the street--the torrent
that swirled out and back from that vast Pit of roaring within the
Board of Trade. Now the Pit was stilled, the sluice gates of the
torrent locked, and from out the thousands of offices, from out the
Board of Trade itself, flowed the black and sluggish lees, the
lifeless dregs that filtered back to their level for a few hours,
stagnation, till in the morning, the whirlpool revolving once more,
should again suck them back into its vortex.
The rain fell uninterruptedly. There was no wind. The cable cars
jolted and jostled over the tracks with a strident whir of vibrating
window glass. In the street, immediately in front of the entrance to
the Board of Trade, a group of pigeons, garnet-eyed, trim, with
coral-coloured feet and iridescent breasts, strutted and fluttered,
pecking at the handfuls of wheat that a porter threw them from the
windows of the floor of the Board.
"Well," repeated Jadwin, shifting with a movement of his lips his
unlit cigar to the other corner of his mouth, "well, what do you
think of it?"
The broker, intent upon the figures and statistics, replied only by
an indefinite movement of the head.
"Why, Sam," observed Jadwin, looking up from the paper, "there's
less than a hundred million bushels in the farmers' hands.... That's
awfully small. Sam, that's awfully small."
"It ain't, as you might say, colossal," admitted Gretry.
There was a long silence while the two men studied the report still
further. Gretry took a pamphlet of statistics from a pigeon-hole of
his desk, and compared certain figures with those mentioned in the
report.
Outside the rain swept against the windows with the subdued rustle
of silk. A newsboy raised a Gregorian chant as he went down the
street.
"By George, Sam," Jadwin said again, "do you know that a whole pile
of that wheat has got to go to Europe before July? How have the
shipments been?"
"About five millions a week."
"Why, think of that, twenty millions a month, and it's--let's see,
April, May, June, July--four months before a new crop. Eighty
million bushels will go out of the country in the next four
months--eighty million out of less than a hundred millions."
"Looks that way," answered Gretry.
"Here," said Jadwin, "let's get some figures. Let's get a squint on
the whole situation. Got a 'Price Current' here? Let's find out what
the stocks are in Chicago. I don't believe the elevators are exactly
bursting, and, say," he called after the broker, who had started for
the front office, "say, find out about the primary receipts, and the
Paris and Liverpool stocks. Bet you what you like that Paris and
Liverpool together couldn't show ten million to save their necks."
In a few moments Gretry was back again, his hands full of pamphlets
and "trade" journals.
By now the offices were quite deserted. The last clerk had gone
home. Without, the neighbourhood was emptying rapidly. Only a few
stragglers hurried over the glistening sidewalks; only a few lights
yet remained in the facades of the tall, grey office buildings. And
in the widening silence the cooing of the pigeons on the ledges and
window-sills of the Board of Trade Building made itself heard with
increasing distinctness.
Before Gretry's desk the two men leaned over the litter of papers.
The broker's pencil was in his hand and from time to time he figured
rapidly on a sheet of note paper.
"And," observed Jadwin after a while, "and you see how the millers
up here in the Northwest have been grinding up all the grain in
sight. Do you see that?"
"Yes," said Gretry, then he added, "navigation will be open in
another month up there in the straits."
"That's so, too," exclaimed Jadwin, "and what wheat there is here
will be moving out. I'd forgotten that point. Ain't you glad you
aren't short of wheat these days?"
"There's plenty of fellows that are, though," returned Gretry. "I've
got a lot of short wheat on my books--a lot of it."
All at once as Gretry spoke Jadwin started, and looked at him with a
curious glance.
"You have, hey?" he said. "There are a lot of fellows who have sold
short?"
"Oh, yes, some of Crookes' followers--yes, quite a lot of them."
Jadwin was silent a moment, tugging at his mustache. Then suddenly
he leaned forward, his finger almost in Gretry's face.
"Why, look here," he cried. "Don't you see? Don't you see?"
"See what?" demanded the broker, puzzled at the other's vehemence.
Jadwin loosened his collar with a forefinger.
"Great Scott! I'll choke in a minute. See what? Why, I own ten
million bushels of this wheat already, and Europe will take eighty
million out of the country. Why, there ain't going to be any wheat
left in Chicago by May! If I get in now and buy a long line of cash
wheat, where are all these fellows who've sold short going to get it
to deliver to me? Say, where are they going to get it? Come on now,
tell me, where are they going to get it?"
Gretry laid down his pencil and stared at Jadwin, looked long at the
papers on his desk, consulted his pencilled memoranda, then thrust
his hands deep into his pockets, with a long breath. Bewildered, and
as if stupefied, he gazed again into Jadwin's face.
"My God!" he murmured at last.
"Well, where are they going to get it?" Jadwin cried once more, his
face suddenly scarlet.
"J.," faltered the broker, "J., I--I'm damned if I know."
And then, all in the same moment, the two men were on their feet.
The event which all those past eleven months had been preparing was
suddenly consummated, suddenly stood revealed, as though a veil had
been ripped asunder, as though an explosion had crashed through the
air upon them, deafening, blinding.
Jadwin sprang forward, gripping the broker by the shoulder.
"Sam," he shouted, "do you know--great God!--do you know what this
means? Sam, we can corner the market!"
VIII
On that particular morning in April, the trading around the Wheat
Pit on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade began practically a
full five minutes ahead of the stroke of the gong; and the throng of
brokers and clerks that surged in and about the Pit itself was so
great that it overflowed and spread out over the floor between the
wheat and corn pits, ousting the traders in oats from their
traditional ground. The market had closed the day before with May
wheat at ninety-eight and five-eighths, and the Bulls had prophesied
and promised that the magic legend "Dollar wheat" would be on the
Western Union wires before another twenty-four hours.
The indications pointed to a lively morning's work. Never for an
instant during the past six weeks had the trading sagged or
languished. The air of the Pit was surcharged with a veritable
electricity; it had the effervescence of champagne, or of a
mountain-top at sunrise. It was buoyant, thrilling.
The "Unknown Bull" was to all appearance still in control; the whole
market hung upon his horns; and from time to time, one felt the
sudden upward thrust, powerful, tremendous, as he flung the wheat up
another notch. The "tailers"--the little Bulls--were radiant. In
the dark, they hung hard by their unseen and mysterious friend who
daily, weekly, was making them richer. The Bears were scarcely
visible. The Great Bull in a single superb rush had driven them
nearly out of the Pit. Growling, grumbling they had retreated, and
only at distance dared so much as to bare a claw. Just the
formidable lowering of the Great Bull's frontlet sufficed, so it
seemed, to check their every move of aggression or resistance. And
all the while, Liverpool, Paris, Odessa, and Buda-Pesth clamoured
ever louder and louder for the grain that meant food to the crowded
streets and barren farms of Europe.
A few moments before the opening Charles Cressler was in the public
room, in the southeast corner of the building, where smoking was
allowed, finishing his morning's cigar. But as he heard the distant
striking of the gong, and the roar of the Pit as it began to get
under way, with a prolonged rumbling trepidation like the advancing
of a great flood, he threw his cigar away and stepped out from the
public room to the main floor, going on towards the front windows.
At the sample tables he filled his pockets with wheat, and once at
the windows raised the sash and spread the pigeons' breakfast on the
granite ledge.
While he was watching the confused fluttering of flashing wings,
that on the instant filled the air in front of the window, he was
all at once surprised to hear a voice at his elbow, wishing him good
morning.
"Seem to know you, don't they?"
Cressler turned about.
"Oh," he said. "Hullo, hullo--yes, they know me all right.
Especially that red and white hen. She's got a lame wing since
yesterday, and if I don't watch, the others would drive her off. The
pouter brute yonder, for instance. He's a regular pirate. Wants all
the wheat himself. Don't ever seem to get enough."
"Well," observed the newcomer, laconically, "there are others."
The man who spoke was about forty years of age. His name was Calvin
Hardy Crookes. He was very small and very slim. His hair was yet
dark, and his face--smooth-shaven and triangulated in shape, like a
cat's--was dark as well. The eyebrows were thin and black, and the
lips too were thin and were puckered a little, like the mouth of a
tight-shut sack. The face was secretive, impassive, and cold.
The man himself was dressed like a dandy. His coat and trousers were
of the very newest fashion. He wore a white waistcoat, drab gaiters,
a gold watch and chain, a jewelled scarf pin, and a seal ring. From
the top pocket of his coat protruded the finger tips of a pair of
unworn red gloves.
"Yes," continued Crookes, unfolding a brand-new pocket handkerchief
as he spoke. "There are others--who never know when they've got
enough wheat."
"Oh, you mean the 'Unknown Bull.'"
"I mean the unknown damned fool," returned Crookes placidly.
There was not a trace of the snob about Charles Cressler. No one
could be more democratic. But at the same time, as this interview
proceeded, he could not fight down nor altogether ignore a certain
qualm of gratified vanity. Had the matter risen to the realm of his
consciousness, he would have hated himself for this. But it went no
further than a vaguely felt increase of self-esteem. He seemed to
feel more important in his own eyes; he would have liked to have his
friends see him just now talking with this man. "Crookes was saying
to-day--" he would observe when next he met an acquaintance. For C.
H. Crookes was conceded to be the "biggest man" in La Salle Street.
Not even the growing importance of the new and mysterious Bull could
quite make the market forget the Great Bear. Inactive during all
this trampling and goring in the Pit, there were yet those who, even
as they strove against the Bull, cast uneasy glances over their
shoulders, wondering why the Bear did not come to the help of his
own.
"Well, yes," admitted Cressler, combing his short beard, "yes, he is
a fool."
The contrast between the two men was extreme. Each was precisely
what the other was not. The one, long, angular, loose-jointed; the
other, tight, trim, small, and compact. The one osseous, the other
sleek; the one stoop-shouldered, the other erect as a corporal of
infantry.
But as Cressler was about to continue Crookes put his chin in the
air.
"Hark!" he said. "What's that?"
For from the direction of the Wheat Pit had come a sudden and
vehement renewal of tumult. The traders as one man were roaring in
chorus. There were cheers; hats went up into the air. On the floor
by the lowest step two brokers, their hands trumpet-wise to their
mouths, shouted at top voice to certain friends at a distance, while
above them, on the topmost step of the Pit, a half-dozen others,
their arms at fullest stretch, threw the hand signals that
interpreted the fluctuations in the price, to their associates in
the various parts of the building. Again and again the cheers rose,
violent hip-hip-hurrahs and tigers, while from all corners and parts
of the floor men and boys came scurrying up. Visitors in the gallery
leaned eagerly upon the railing. Over in the provision pit, trading
ceased for the moment, and all heads were turned towards the
commotion of the wheat traders.
"Ah," commented Crookes, "they did get it there at last."
For the hand on the dial had suddenly jumped another degree, and not
a messenger boy, not a porter not a janitor, none whose work or life
brought him in touch with the Board of Trade, that did not feel the
thrill. The news flashed out to the world on a hundred telegraph
wires; it was called to a hundred offices across the telephone
lines. From every doorway, even, as it seemed, from every window of
the building, spreading thence all over the city, the State, the
Northwest, the entire nation, sped the magic words, "Dollar wheat."
Crookes turned to Cressler.
"Can you lunch with me to-day--at Kinsley's? I'd like to have a talk
with you."
And as soon as Cressler had accepted the invitation, Crookes, with a
succinct nod, turned upon his heel and walked away.
At Kinsley's that day, in a private room on the second floor,
Cressler met not only Crookes, but his associate Sweeny, and another
gentleman by the name of Freye, the latter one of his oldest and
best-liked friends.
Sweeny was an Irishman, florid, flamboyant, talkative, who spoke
with a faint brogue, and who tagged every observation, argument, or
remark with the phrase, "Do you understand me, gen'lemen?" Freye, a
German-American, was a quiet fellow, very handsome, with black side
whiskers and a humourous, twinkling eye. The three were members of
the Board of Trade, and were always associated with the Bear forces.
Indeed, they could be said to be its leaders. Between them, as
Cressler afterwards was accustomed to say, "They could have bought
pretty much all of the West Side."
And during the course of the luncheon these three, with a simplicity
and a directness that for the moment left Cressler breathless,
announced that they were preparing to drive the Unknown Bull out of
the Pit, and asked him to become one of the clique.
Crookes, whom Cressler intuitively singled out as the leader, did
not so much as open his mouth till Sweeny had talked himself
breathless, and all the preliminaries were out of the way. Then he
remarked, his eye as lifeless as the eye of a fish, his voice as
expressionless as the voice of Fate itself:
"I don't know who the big Bull is, and I don't care a curse. But he
don't suit my book. I want him out of the market. We've let him have
his way now for three or four months. We figured we'd let him run to
the dollar mark. The May option closed this morning at a dollar and
an eighth.... Now we take hold.
"But," Cressler hastened to object, "you forget--I'm not a
speculator."
Freye smiled, and tapped his friend on the arm.
"I guess, Charlie," he said, "that there won't be much speculating
about this."
"Why, gen'lemen," cried Sweeny, brandishing a fork, "we're going to
sell him right out o' the market, so we are. Simply flood out the
son-of-a-gun--you understand me, gen'lemen?"
Cressler shook his head.
"No," he answered. "No, you must count me out. I quit speculating
years ago. And, besides, to sell short on this kind of market--I
don't need to tell you what you risk."
"Risk hell!" muttered Crookes.
"Well, now, I'll explain to you, Charlie," began Freye.
The other two withdrew a little from the conversation. Crookes, as
ever monosyllabic, took himself on in a little while, and Sweeny,
his chair tipped back against the wall, his hands clasped behind his
head, listened to Freye explaining to Cressler the plans of the
proposed clique and the lines of their attack.
He talked for nearly an hour and a half, at the end of which time
the lunch table was one litter of papers--letters, contracts,
warehouse receipts, tabulated statistics, and the like.
"Well," said Freye, at length, "well, Charlie, do you see the game?
What do you think of it?"
"It's about as ingenious a scheme as I ever heard of, Billy,"
answered Cressler. "You can't lose, with Crookes back of it."
"Well, then, we can count you in, hey?"
"Count nothing," declared Cressler, stoutly. "I don't speculate."
"But have you thought of this?" urged Freye, and went over the
entire proposition, from a fresh point of view, winding up with the
exclamation: "Why, Charlie, we're going to make our everlasting
fortunes."
"I don't want any everlasting fortune, Billy Freye," protested
Cressler. "Look here, Billy. You must remember I'm a pretty old
cock. You boys are all youngsters. I've got a little money left and
a little business, and I want to grow old quiet-like. I had my
fling, you know, when you boys were in knickerbockers. Now you let
me keep out of all this. You get some one else."
"No, we'll be jiggered if we do," exclaimed Sweeny. "Say, are ye
scared we can't buy that trade journal? Why, we have it in our
pocket, so we have. D'ye think Crookes, now, couldn't make Bear
sentiment with the public, with just the lift o' one forefinger?
Why, he owns most of the commercial columns of the dailies already.
D'ye think he couldn't swamp that market with sellin' orders in the
shorter end o' two days? D'ye think we won't all hold together, now?
Is that the bug in the butter? Sure, now, listen. Let me tell you--"
"You can't tell me anything about this scheme that you've not told
me before," declared Cressler. "You'll win, of course. Crookes & Co.
are like Rothschild--earthquakes couldn't budge 'em. But I promised
myself years ago to keep out of the speculative market, and I mean
to stick by it."
"Oh, get on with you, Charlie," said Freye, good-humouredly, "you're
scared."
"Of what," asked Cressler, "speculating? You bet I am, and when
you're as old as I am, and have been through three panics, and have
known what it meant to have a corner bust under you, you'll be
scared of speculating too."
"But suppose we can prove to you," said Sweeny, all at once, "that
we're not speculating--that the other fellow, this fool Bull is
doing the speculating?"
"I'll go into anything in the way of legitimate trading," answered
Cressler, getting up from the table. "You convince me that your
clique is not a speculative clique, and I'll come in. But I don't
see how your deal can be anything else."
"Will you meet us here to-morrow?" asked Sweeny, as they got into
their overcoats.
"It won't do you any good," persisted Cressler.
"Well, will you meet us just the same?" the other insisted. And in
the end Cressler accepted.
On the steps of the restaurant they parted, and the two leaders
watched Cressler's broad, stooped shoulders disappear down the
street.
"He's as good as in already," Sweeny declared. "I'll fix him
to-morrow. Once a speculator, always a speculator. He was the cock
of the cow-yard in his day, and the thing is in the blood. He gave
himself clean, clean away when he let out he was afraid o'
speculating. You can't be afraid of anything that ain't got a hold
on you. Y' understand me now?"
"Well," observed Freye, "we've got to get him in."
"Talk to me about that now," Sweeny answered. "I'm new to some parts
o' this scheme o' yours yet. Why is Crookes so keen on having him
in? I'm not so keen. We could get along without him. He ain't so
god-awful rich, y' know."
"No, but he's a solid, conservative cash grain man," answered Freye,
"who hasn't been associated with speculating for years. Crookes has
got to have that element in the clique before we can approach Stires
& Co. We may have to get a pile of money from them, and they're apt
to be scary and cautious. Cressler being in, do you see, gives the
clique a substantial, conservative character. You let Crookes manage
it. He knows his business."
"Say," exclaimed Sweeny, an idea occurring to him, "I thought
Crookes was going to put us wise to-day. He must know by now who the
Big Bull is."
"No doubt he does know," answered the other. "He'll tell us when
he's ready. But I think I could copper the individual. There was a
great big jag of wheat sold to Liverpool a little while ago through
Gretry, Converse & Co., who've been acting for Curtis Jadwin for a
good many years."
"Oh, Jadwin, hey? Hi! we're after big game now, I'm thinking."
"But look here," warned Freye. "Here's a point. Cressler is not to
know by the longest kind of chalk; anyhow not until he's so far in,
he can't pull out. He and Jadwin are good friends, I'm told. Hello,
it's raining a little. Well, I've got to be moving. See you at lunch
to-morrow."
As Cressler turned into La Salle Street the light sprinkle of rain
suddenly swelled to a deluge, and he had barely time to dodge into
the portico of the Illinois Trust to escape a drenching. All the
passers-by close at hand were making for the same shelter, and among
these Cressler was surprised to see Curtis Jadwin, who came running
up the narrow lane from the cafe entrance of the Grand Pacific
Hotel.
"Hello! Hello, J.," he cried, when his friend came panting up the
steps, "as the whale said to Jonah, 'Come in out of the wet.'"
The two friends stood a moment under the portico, their coat collars
turned up, watching the scurrying in the street.
"Well," said Cressler, at last, "I see we got 'dollar wheat' this
morning."
"Yes," answered Jadwin, nodding, "'dollar wheat.'"
"I suppose," went on Cressler, "I suppose you are sorry, now that
you're not in it any more."
"Oh, no," replied Jadwin, nibbling off the end of a cigar. "No,
I'm--I'm just as well out of it."
"And it's for good and all this time, eh?"
"For good and all."
"Well," commented Cressler, "some one else has begun where you left
off, I guess. This Unknown Bull, I mean. All the boys are trying to
find out who he is. Crookes, though, was saying to me--Cal Crookes,
you know--he was saying he didn't care who he was. Crookes is out of
the market, too, I understand--and means to keep out, he says, till
the Big Bull gets tired. Wonder who the Big Bull is."
"Oh, there isn't any Big Bull," blustered Jadwin. "There's simply a
lot of heavy buying, or maybe there might be a ring of New York men
operating through Gretry. I don't know; and I guess I'm like
Crookes, I don't care--now that I'm out of the game. Real estate is
too lively now to think of anything else; keeps me on the keen jump
early and late. I tell you what, Charlie, this city isn't half grown
yet. And do you know, I've noticed another thing--cities grow to the
westward. I've got a building and loan association going, out in the
suburbs on the West Side, that's a dandy. Well, looks as though the
rain had stopped. Remember me to madam. So long, Charlie."
On leaving Cressler Jadwin went on to his offices in The Rookery,
close at hand. But he had no more than settled himself at his desk,
when he was called up on his telephone.
"Hello!" said a small, dry transformation of Gretry's voice. "Hello,
is that you, J.? Well, in the matter of that cash wheat in Duluth,
I've bought that for you."
"All right," answered Jadwin, then he added, "I guess we had better
have a long talk now."
"I was going to propose that," answered the broker. "Meet me this
evening at seven at the Grand Pacific. It's just as well that we're
not seen together nowadays. Don't ask for me. Go right into the
smoking-room. I'll be there. And, by the way, I shall expect a reply
from Minneapolis about half-past five this afternoon. I would like
to be able to get at you at once when that comes in. Can you wait
down for that?"
"Well, I was going home," objected Jadwin. "I wasn't home to dinner
last night, and Mrs. Jadwin--"
"This is pretty important, you know," warned the broker. "And if I
call you up on your residence telephone, there's always the chance
of somebody cutting in and overhearing us."
"Oh, very well, then," assented Jadwin. "I'll call it a day. I'll
get home for luncheon to-morrow. It can't be helped. By the way, I
met Cressler this afternoon, Sam, and he seemed sort of suspicious
of things, to me--as though he had an inkling."
"Better hang up," came back the broker's voice. "Better hang up, J.
There's big risk telephoning like this. I'll see you to-night.
Good-by."
And so it was that about half an hour later Laura was called to the
telephone in the library.
"Oh, not coming home at all to-night?" she cried blankly in response
to Jadwin's message.
"It's just impossible, old girl," he answered.
"But why?" she insisted.
"Oh, business; this building and loan association of mine."
"Oh, I know it can't be that. Why don't you let Mr. Gretry manage
your--"
But at this point Jadwin, the warning of Gretry still fresh in his
mind, interrupted quickly:
"I must hang up now, Laura. Good-by. I'll see you to-morrow noon and
explain it all to you. Good-by.... Laura.... Hello! ... Are you
there yet? ... Hello, hello!"
But Jadwin had heard in the receiver the rattle and click as of a
tiny door closing. The receiver was silent and dead; and he knew
that his wife, disappointed and angry, had "hung up" without saying
good-by.
The days passed. Soon another week had gone by. The wheat market
steadied down after the dollar mark was reached, and for a few days
a calmer period intervened. Down beneath the surface, below the ebb
and flow of the currents, the great forces were silently at work
reshaping the "situation." Millions of dollars were beginning to be
set in motion to govern the millions of bushels of wheat. At the end
of the third week of the month Freye reported to Crookes that
Cressler was "in," and promptly negotiations were opened between the
clique and the great banking house of the Stires. But meanwhile
Jadwin and Gretry, foreseeing no opposition, realising the
incalculable advantage that their knowledge of the possibility of a
"corner" gave them, were, quietly enough, gathering in the grain. As
early as the end of March Jadwin, as incidental to his contemplated
corner of May wheat, had bought up a full half of the small supply
of cash wheat in Duluth, Chicago, Liverpool and Paris--some twenty
million bushels; and against this had sold short an equal amount of
the July option. Having the actual wheat in hand he could not lose.
If wheat went up, his twenty million bushels were all the more
valuable; if it went down, he covered his short sales at a profit.
And all the while, steadily, persistently, he bought May wheat, till
Gretry's book showed him to be possessed of over twenty million
bushels of the grain deliverable for that month.
But all this took not only his every minute of time, but his every
thought, his every consideration. He who had only so short a while
before considered the amount of five million bushels burdensome,
demanding careful attention, was now called upon to watch, govern,
and control the tremendous forces latent in a line of forty million.
At times he remembered the Curtis Jadwin of the spring before his
marriage, the Curtis Jadwin who had sold a pitiful million on the
strength of the news of the French import duty, and had considered
the deal "big." Well, he was a different man since that time. Then
he had been suspicious of speculation, had feared it even. Now he
had discovered that there were in him powers, capabilities, and a
breadth of grasp hitherto unsuspected. He could control the Chicago
wheat market, and the man who could do that might well call himself
"great," without presumption. He knew that he overtopped them
all--Gretry, the Crookes gang, the arrogant, sneering Bears, all the
men of the world of the Board of Trade. He was stronger, bigger,
shrewder than them all. A few days now would show, when they would
all wake to the fact that wheat, which they had promised to deliver
before they had it in hand, was not to be got except from him--and
at whatever price he chose to impose. He could exact from them a
hundred dollars a bushel if he chose, and they must pay him the
price or become bankrupts.
By now his mind was upon this one great fact--May
Wheat--continually. It was with him the instant he woke in the
morning. It kept him company during his hasty breakfast; in the
rhythm of his horses' hoofs, as the team carried him down town he
heard, "Wheat--wheat--wheat, wheat--wheat--wheat." No sooner did he
enter La Salle Street, than the roar of traffic came to his ears as
the roar of the torrent of wheat which drove through Chicago from
the Western farms to the mills and bakeshops of Europe. There at the
foot of the street the torrent swirled once upon itself, forty
million strong, in the eddy which he told himself he mastered. The
afternoon waned, night came on. The day's business was to be gone
over; the morrow's campaign was to be planned; little, unexpected
side issues, a score of them, a hundred of them, cropped out from
hour to hour; new decisions had to be taken each minute. At dinner
time he left the office, and his horses carried him home again,
while again their hoofs upon the asphalt beat out unceasingly the
monotone of the one refrain, "Wheat--wheat--wheat,
wheat--wheat--wheat." At dinner table he could not eat. Between each
course he found himself going over the day's work, testing it,
questioning himself, "Was this rightly done?" "Was that particular
decision sound?" "Is there a loophole here?" "Just what was the
meaning of that despatch?" After the meal the papers, contracts,
statistics and reports which he had brought with him in his
Gladstone bag were to be studied. As often as not Gretry called, and
the two, shut in the library, talked, discussed, and planned till
long after midnight.
Then at last, when he had shut the front door upon his lieutenant
and turned to face the empty, silent house, came the moment's
reaction. The tired brain flagged and drooped; exhaustion, like a
weight of lead, hung upon his heels. But somewhere a hall clock
struck, a single, booming note, like a gong--like the signal that
would unchain the tempest in the Pit to-morrow morning.
Wheat--wheat--wheat, wheat--wheat--wheat! Instantly the jaded senses
braced again, instantly the wearied mind sprang to its post. He
turned out the lights, he locked the front door. Long since the
great house was asleep. In the cold, dim silence of the earliest
dawn Curtis Jadwin went to bed, only to lie awake, staring up into
the darkness, planning, devising new measures, reviewing the day's
doings, while the faint tides of blood behind the eardrums murmured
ceaselessly to the overdriven brain, "Wheat--wheat--wheat,
wheat--wheat--wheat. Forty million bushels, forty million, forty
million."
Whole days now went by when he saw his wife only at breakfast and at
dinner. At times she was angry, hurt, and grieved that he should
leave her so much alone. But there were moments when she was sorry
for him. She seemed to divine that he was not all to blame.
What Laura thought he could only guess. She no longer spoke of his
absorption in business. At times he thought he saw reproach and
appeal in her dark eyes, at times anger and a pride cruelly wounded.
A few months ago this would have touched him. But now he all at once
broke out vehemently:
"You think I am wilfully doing this! You don't know, you haven't a
guess. I corner the wheat! Great heavens, it is the wheat that has
cornered me! The corner made itself. I happened to stand between two
sets of circumstances, and they made me do what I've done. I
couldn't get out of it now, with all the good will in the world. Go
to the theatre to-night with you and the Cresslers? Why, old girl,
you might as well ask me to go to Jericho. Let that Mr. Corthell
take my place."
And very naturally this is what was done. The artist sent a great
bunch of roses to Mrs. Jadwin upon the receipt of her invitation,
and after the play had the party to supper in his apartments, that
overlooked the Lake Front. Supper over, he escorted her, Mrs.
Cressler, and Page back to their respective homes.
By a coincidence that struck them all as very amusing, he was the
only man of the party. At the last moment Page had received a
telegram from Landry. He was, it appeared, sick, and in bed. The
day's work on the Board of Trade had quite used him up for the
moment, and his doctor forbade him to stir out of doors. Mrs.
Cressler explained that Charlie had something on his mind these
days, that was making an old man of him.
"He don't ever talk shop with me," she said. "I'm sure he hasn't
been speculating, but he's worried and fidgety to beat all I ever
saw, this last week; and now this evening he had to take himself off
to meet some customer or other at the Palmer House."
They dropped Mrs. Cressler at the door of her home and then went on
to the Jadwins'.
"I remember," said Laura to Corthell, "that once before the three of
us came home this way. Remember? It was the night of the opera. That
was the night I first met Mr. Jadwin."
"It was the night of the Helmick failure," said Page, seriously,
"and the office buildings were all lit up. See," she added, as they
drove up to the house, "there's a light in the library, and it must
be nearly one o'clock. Mr. Jadwin is up yet."
Laura fell suddenly silent. When was it all going to end, and how?
Night after night her husband shut himself thus in the library, and
toiled on till early dawn. She enjoyed no companionship with him.
Her evenings were long, her time hung with insupportable heaviness
upon her hands.
"Shall you be at home?" inquired Corthell, as he held her hand a
moment at the door. "Shall you be at home to-morrow evening? May I
come and play to you again?"
"Yes, yes," she answered. "Yes, I shall be home. Yes, do come."
Laura's carriage drove the artist back to his apartments. All the
way he sat motionless in his place, looking out of the window with
unseeing eyes. His cigarette went out. He drew another from his
case, but forgot to light it.
Thoughtful and abstracted he slowly mounted the stairway--the
elevator having stopped for the night--to his studio, let himself
in, and, throwing aside his hat and coat, sat down without lighting
the gas in front of the fireplace, where (the weather being even yet
sharp) an armful of logs smouldered on the flagstones.
His man, Evans, came from out an inner room to ask if he wanted
anything. Corthell got out of his evening coat, and Evans brought
him his smoking-jacket and set the little table with its long tin
box of cigarettes and ash trays at his elbow. Then he lit the tall
lamp of corroded bronze, with its heavy silk shade, that stood on a
table in the angle of the room, drew the curtains, put a fresh log
upon the fire, held the tiny silver alcohol burner to Corthell while
the latter lighted a fresh cigarette, and then with a murmured
"Good-night, sir," went out, closing the door with the precaution of
a depredator.
This suite of rooms, facing the Lake Front, was what Corthell called
"home," Whenever he went away, he left it exactly as it was, in the
charge of the faithful Evans; and no mater how long he was absent,
he never returned thither without a sense of welcome and relief.
Even now, perplexed as he was, he was conscious of a feeling of
comfort and pleasure as he settled himself in his chair.
The lamp threw a dull illumination about the room. It was a
picturesque apartment, carefully planned. Not an object that had not
been chosen with care and the utmost discrimination. The walls had
been treated with copper leaf till they produced a sombre,
iridescent effect of green and faint gold, that suggested the depth
of a forest glade shot through with the sunset. Shelves bearing
eighteenth-century books in seal brown tree calf--Addison, the
"Spectator," Junius and Racine, Rochefoucauld and Pascal hung
against it here and there. On every hand the eye rested upon some
small masterpiece of art or workmanship. Now it was an antique
portrait bust of the days of decadent Rome, black marble with a
bronze tiara; now a framed page of a fourteenth-century version of
"Li Quatres Filz d'Aymon," with an illuminated letter of miraculous
workmanship; or a Renaissance gonfalon of silk once white but now
brown with age, yet in the centre blazing with the escutcheon and
quarterings of a dead queen. Between the windows stood an ivory
statuette of the "Venus of the Heel," done in the days of the
magnificent Lorenzo. An original Cazin, and a chalk drawing by
Baudry hung against the wall close by together with a bronze tablet
by Saint Gaudens; while across the entire end of the room opposite
the fireplace, worked in the tapestry of the best period of the
northern French school, Halcyone, her arms already blossoming into
wings, hovered over the dead body of Ceyx, his long hair streaming
like seaweed in the blue waters of the AEgean.
For a long time Corthell sat motionless, looking into the fire. In
an adjoining room a clock chimed the half hour of one, and the
artist stirred, passing his long fingers across his eyes.
After a long while he rose, and going to the fireplace, leaned an
arm against the overhanging shelf, and resting his forehead against
it, remained in that position, looking down at the smouldering logs.
"She is unhappy," he murmured at length. "It is not difficult to see
that.... Unhappy and lonely. Oh, fool, fool to have left her when
you might have stayed! Oh, fool, fool, not to find the strength to
leave her now when you should not remain!"
The following evening Corthell called upon Mrs. Jadwin. She was
alone, as he usually found her. He had brought a book of poems with
him, and instead of passing the evening in the art gallery, as they
had planned, he read aloud to her from Rossetti. Nothing could have
been more conventional than their conversation, nothing more
impersonal. But on his way home one feature of their talk suddenly
occurred to him. It struck him as significant; but of what he did
not care to put into words. Neither he nor Laura had once spoken of
Jadwin throughout the entire evening.
Little by little the companionship grew. Corthell shut his eyes, his
ears. The thought of Laura, the recollection of their last evening
together, the anticipation of the next meeting filled all his waking
hours. He refused to think; he resigned himself to the drift of the
current. Jadwin he rarely saw. But on those few occasions when he
and Laura's husband met, he could detect no lack of cordiality in
the other's greeting. Once even Jadwin had remarked:
"I'm very glad you have come to see Mrs. Jadwin, Corthell. I have to
be away so much these days, I'm afraid she would be lonesome if it
wasn't for some one like you to drop in now and then and talk art to
her."
By slow degrees the companionship trended toward intimacy. At the
various theatres and concerts he was her escort. He called upon her
two or three times each week. At his studio entertainments Laura was
always present. How--Corthell asked himself--did she regard the
affair? She gave him no sign; she never intimated that his presence
was otherwise than agreeable. Was this tacit acquiescence of hers an
encouragement? Was she willing to afficher herself, as a married
woman, with a cavalier? Her married life was intolerable, he was
sure of that; her husband uncongenial. He told himself that she
detested him.
Once, however, this belief was rather shocked by an unexpected and
(to him) an inconsistent reaction on Laura's part. She had made an
engagement with him to spend an afternoon in the Art Institute,
looking over certain newly acquired canvases. But upon calling for
her an hour after luncheon he was informed that Mrs. Jadwin was not
at home. When next she saw him she told him that she had spent the
entire day with her husband. They had taken an early train and had
gone up to Geneva Lake to look over their country house, and to
prepare for its opening, later on in the spring. They had taken the
decision so unexpectedly that she had no time to tell him of the
change in her plans. Corthell wondered if she had--as a matter of
fact--forgotten all about her appointment with him. He never quite
understood the incident, and afterwards asked himself whether or no
he could be so sure, after all, of the estrangement between the
husband and wife. He guessed it to be possible that on this occasion
Jadwin had suddenly decided to give himself a holiday, and that
Laura had been quick to take advantage of it. Was it true, then,
that Jadwin had but to speak the word to have Laura forget all else?
Was it true that the mere nod of his head was enough to call her
back to him? Corthell was puzzled. He would not admit this to be
true. She was, he was persuaded, a woman of more spirit, of more
pride than this would seem to indicate. Corthell ended by believing
that Jadwin had, in some way, coerced her; though he fancied that
for the few days immediately following the excursion Laura had never
been gayer, more alert, more radiant.
But the days went on, and it was easy to see that his business kept
Jadwin more and more from his wife. Often now, Corthell knew, he
passed the night down town, and upon those occasions when he managed
to get home after the day's work, he was exhausted, worn out, and
went to bed almost immediately after dinner. More than ever now the
artist and Mrs. Jadwin were thrown together.
On a certain Sunday evening, the first really hot day of the year,
Laura and Page went over to spend an hour with the Cresslers,
and--as they were all wont to do in the old days before Laura's
marriage--the party "sat out on the front stoop." For a wonder,
Jadwin was able to be present. Laura had prevailed upon him to give
her this evening and the evening of the following Wednesday--on
which latter occasion she had planned that they were to take a long
drive in the park in the buggy, just the two of them, as it had been
in the days of their courtship.
Corthell came to the Cresslers quite as a matter of course. He had
dined with the Jadwins at the great North Avenue house and
afterwards the three, preferring to walk, had come down to the
Cresslers on foot.
But evidently the artist was to see but little of Laura Jadwin that
evening. She contrived to keep by her husband continually. She even
managed to get him away from the others, and the two, leaving the
rest upon the steps, sat in the parlour of the Cresslers' house,
talking.
By and by Laura, full of her projects, exclaimed:
"Where shall we go? I thought, perhaps, we would not have dinner at
home, but you could come back to the house just a little--a little
bit--early, and you could drive me out to the restaurant there in
the park, and we could have dinner there, just as though we weren't
married just as though we were sweethearts again. Oh, I do hope the
weather will be fine."
"Oh," answered Jadwin, "you mean Wednesday evening. Dear old girl,
honestly, I--I don't believe I can make it after all. You see,
Wednesday--"
Laura sat suddenly erect.
"But you said," she began, her voice faltering a little, "you said--"
"Honey, I know I did, but you must let me off this time again."
She did not answer. It was too dark for him to see her face; but,
uneasy at her silence, he began an elaborate explanation. Laura,
however, interrupted. Calmly enough, she said:
"Oh, that's all right. No, no, I don't mind. Of course, if you are
busy."
"Well, you see, don't you, old girl?"
"Oh, yes, yes, I see," she answered. She rose.
"I think," she said, "we had better be going home. Don't you?"
"Yes, I do," he assented. "I'm pretty tired myself. I've had a hard
day's work. I'm thirsty, too," he added, as he got up. "Would you
like to have a drink of water, too?"
She shook her head, and while he disappeared in the direction of the
Cresslers' dining-room, she stood alone a moment in the darkened
room looking out into the street. She felt that her cheeks were hot.
Her hands, hanging at her sides, shut themselves into tight fists.
"What, you are all alone?" said Corthell's voice, behind her.
She turned about quickly.
"I must be going," he said. "I came to say good night." He held out
his hand.
"Good night," she answered, as she gave him hers. Then all at once
she added:
"Come to see me again--soon, will you? Come Wednesday night."
And then, his heart leaping to his throat, Corthell felt her hand,
as it lay in his, close for an instant firmly about his fingers.
"I shall expect you Wednesday then?" she repeated.
He crushed her hand in his grip, and suddenly bent and kissed it.
"Good night," she said, quietly. Jadwin's step sounded at the
doorway.
"Good night," he whispered, and in another moment was gone.
During these days Laura no longer knew herself. At every hour she
changed; her moods came and went with a rapidity that bewildered all
those who were around her. At times her gaiety filled the whole of
her beautiful house; at times she shut herself in her apartments,
denying herself to every one, and, her head bowed upon her folded
arms, wept as though her heart was breaking, without knowing why.
For a few days a veritable seizure of religious enthusiasm held sway
over her. She spoke of endowing a hospital, of doing church work
among the "slums" of the city. But no sooner had her friends
readjusted their points of view to suit this new development than
she was off upon another tangent, and was one afternoon seen at the
races, with Mrs. Gretry, in her showiest victoria, wearing a great
flaring hat and a bouquet of crimson flowers.
She never repeated this performance, however, for a new fad took
possession of her the very next day. She memorised the role of Lady
Macbeth, built a stage in the ballroom at the top of the house, and,
locking herself in, rehearsed the part, for three days
uninterruptedly, dressed in elaborate costume, declaiming in chest
tones to the empty room:
"'The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the entrance of Duncan
under my battlements.'"
Then, tiring of Lady Macbeth, she took up Juliet, Portia, and
Ophelia; each with appropriate costumes, studying with tireless
avidity, and frightening Aunt Wess' with her declaration that "she
might go on the stage after all." She even entertained the notion of
having Sheldon Corthell paint her portrait as Lady Macbeth.
As often as the thought of the artist presented itself to her she
fought to put it from her. Yes, yes, he came to see her often, very
often. Perhaps he loved her yet. Well, suppose he did? He had always
loved her. It was not wrong to have him love her, to have him with
her. Without his company, great heavens, her life would be lonely
beyond words and beyond endurance. Besides, was it to be thought, for
an instant, that she, she, Laura Jadwin, in her pitch of pride, with
all her beauty, with her quick, keen mind, was to pine, to droop to
fade in oblivion and neglect? Was she to blame? Let those who
neglected her look to it. Her youth was all with her yet, and all
her power to attract, to compel admiration.
When Corthell came to see her on the Wednesday evening in question,
Laura said to him, after a few moments, conversation in the
drawing-room:
"Oh, you remember the picture you taught me to appreciate--the
picture of the little pool in the art gallery, the one you called
'Despair'? I have hung it in my own particular room upstairs--my
sitting-room--so as to have it where I can see it always. I love it
now. But," she added, "I am not sure about the light. I think it
could be hung to better advantage." She hesitated a moment, then,
with a sudden, impulsive movement, she turned to him.
"Won't you come up with me, and tell me where to hang it?"
They took the little elevator to the floor above, and Laura led the
artist to the room in question--her "sitting-room," a wide, airy
place, the polished floor covered with deep skins, the walls
wainscotted half way to the ceiling, in dull woods. Shelves of books
were everywhere, together with potted plants and tall brass lamps. A
long "Madeira" chair stood at the window which overlooked the park
and lake, and near to it a great round table of San Domingo
mahogany, with tea things and almost diaphanous china.
"What a beautiful room," murmured Corthell, as she touched the
button in the wall that opened the current, "and how much you have
impressed your individuality upon it. I should have known that you
lived here. If you were thousands of miles away and I had entered
here, I should have known it was yours--and loved it for such."
"Here is the picture," she said, indicating where it hung. "Doesn't
it seem to you that the light is bad?"
But he explained to her that it was not so, and that she had but to
incline the canvas a little more from the wall to get a good effect.
"Of course, of course," she assented, as he held the picture in
place. "Of course. I shall have it hung over again to-morrow."
For some moments they remained standing in the centre of the room,
looking at the picture and talking of it. And then, without
remembering just how it had happened, Laura found herself leaning
back in the Madeira chair, Corthell seated near at hand by the round
table.
"I am glad you like my room," she said. "It is here that I spend
most of my time. Often lately I have had my dinner here. Page goes
out a great deal now, and so I am left alone occasionally. Last
night I sat here in the dark for a long time. The house was so
still, everybody was out--even some of the servants. It was so warm,
I raised the windows and I sat here for hours looking out over the
lake. I could hear it lapping and washing against the shore--almost
like a sea. And it was so still, so still; and I was thinking of the
time when I was a little girl back at Barrington, years and years
ago, picking whortle-berries down in the 'water lot,' and how I got
lost once in the corn--the stalks were away above my head--and how
happy I was when my father would take me up on the hay wagon. Ah, I
was happy in those days--just a freckled, black-haired slip of a
little girl, with my frock torn and my hands all scratched with the
berry bushes."
She had begun by dramatising, but by now she was acting--acting with
all her histrionic power at fullest stretch, acting the part of a
woman unhappy amid luxuries, who looked back with regret and with
longing towards a joyous, simple childhood. She was sincere and she
was not sincere. Part of her--one of those two Laura Jadwins who at
different times, but with equal right called themselves "I," knew
just what effect her words, her pose, would have upon a man who
sympathised with her, who loved her. But the other Laura Jadwin
would have resented as petty, as even wrong, the insinuation that
she was not wholly, thoroughly sincere. All that she was saying was
true. No one, so she believed, ever was placed before as she was
placed now. No one had ever spoken as now she spoke. Her chin upon
one slender finger, she went on, her eyes growing wide:
"If I had only known then that those days were to be, the happiest
of my life.... This great house, all the beauty of it, and all this
wealth, what does it amount to?" Her voice was the voice of Phedre,
and the gesture of lassitude with which she let her arms fall into
her lap was precisely that which only the day before she had used to
accompany Portia's plaint of
--my little body is a-weary of this great world.
Yet, at the same time, Laura knew that her heart was genuinely
aching with real sadness, and that the tears which stood in her eyes
were as sincere as any she had ever shed.
"All this wealth," she continued, her head dropping back upon the
cushion of the chair as she spoke, "what does it matter; for what
does it compensate? Oh, I would give it all gladly, gladly, to be
that little black-haired girl again, back in Squire Dearborn's water
lot; with my hands stained with the whortle-berries and the nettles
in my fingers--and my little lover, who called me his beau-heart and
bought me a blue hair ribbon, and kissed me behind the pump house."
"Ah," said Corthell, quickly and earnestly, "that is the secret. It
was love--even the foolish boy and girl love--love that after all
made your life sweet then."
She let her hands fall into her lap, and, musing, turned the rings
back and forth upon her fingers.
"Don't you think so?" he asked, in a low voice.
She bent her head slowly, without replying. Then for a long moment
neither spoke. Laura played with her rings. The artist, leaning
forward in his chair, looked with vague eyes across the room. And no
interval of time since his return, no words that had ever passed
between them, had been so fraught with significance, so potent in
drawing them together as this brief, wordless moment.
At last Corthell turned towards her.
"You must not think," he murmured, "that your life is without love
now. I will not have you believe that."
But she made no answer.
"If you would only see," he went on. "If you would only condescend
to look, you would know that there is a love which has enfolded your
life for years. You have shut it out from you always. But it has
been yours, just the same; it has lain at your door, it has
looked--oh, God knows with what longing!--through your windows. You
have never stirred abroad that it has not followed you. Not a
footprint of yours that it does not know and cherish. Do you think
that your life is without love? Why, it is all around you--all
around you but voiceless. It has no right to speak, it only has the
right to suffer."
Still Laura said no word. Her head turned from him, she looked out
of the window, and once more the seconds passed while neither spoke.
The clock on the table ticked steadily. In the distance, through the
open window, came the incessant, mournful wash of the lake. All
around them the house was still. At length Laura sat upright in her
chair.
"I think I will have this room done over while we are away this
summer," she said. "Don't you think it would be effective if the
wainscotting went almost to the ceiling?"
He glanced critically about the room.
"Very," he answered, briskly. "There is no background so beautiful
as wood."
"And I might finish it off at the top with a narrow shelf."
"Provided you promised not to put brass 'plaques' or pewter kitchen
ware upon it."
"Do smoke," she urged him. "I know you want to. You will find
matches on the table."
But Corthell, as he lit his cigarette, produced his own match box.
It was a curious bit of antique silver, which he had bought in a
Viennese pawnshop, heart-shaped and topped with a small ducal
coronet of worn gold. On one side he had caused his name to be
engraved in small script. Now, as Laura admired it, he held it
towards her.
"An old pouncet-box, I believe," he informed her, "or possibly it
held an ointment for her finger nails." He spilled the matches into
his hand. "You see the red stain still on the inside; and--smell,"
he added, as she took it from him. "Even the odour of the sulphur
matches cannot smother the quaint old perfume, distilled perhaps
three centuries ago."
An hour later Corthell left her. She did not follow him further than
the threshold of the room, but let him find his way to the front
door alone.
When he had gone she returned to the room, and for a little while
sat in her accustomed place by the window overlooking the park and
the lake. Very soon after Corthell's departure she heard Page,
Landry Court, and Mrs. Wessels come in; then at length rousing from
her reverie she prepared for bed. But, as she passed the round
mahogany table, on her way to her bedroom, she was aware of a little
object lying upon it, near to where she had sat.
"Oh, he forgot it," she murmured, as she picked up Corthell's
heart-shaped match box. She glanced at it a moment, indifferently;
but her mind was full of other things. She laid it down again upon
the table, and going on to her own room, went to bed.
Jadwin did not come home that night, and in the morning Laura
presided at breakfast table in his place. Landry Court, Page, and
Aunt Wess' were there; for occasionally nowadays, when the trio went
to one of their interminable concerts or lectures, Landry stayed
over night at the house.
"Any message for your husband, Mrs. Jadwin?" inquired Landry, as he
prepared to go down town after breakfast. "I always see him in Mr.
Gretry's office the first thing. Any message for him?"
"No," answered Laura, simply.
"Oh, by the way," spoke up Aunt Wess', "we met that Mr. Corthell on
the corner last night, just as he was leaving. I was real sorry not
to get home here before he left. I've never heard him play on that
big organ, and I've been wanting to for ever so long. I hurried home
last night, hoping I might have caught him before he left. I was
regularly disappointed."
"That's too bad," murmured Laura, and then, for obscure reasons, she
had the stupidity to add: "And we were in the art gallery the whole
evening. He played beautifully."
Towards eleven o'clock that morning Laura took her usual ride, but
she had not been away from the house quite an hour before she turned
back.
All at once she had remembered something. She returned homeward, now
urging Crusader to a flying gallop, now curbing him to his slowest
ambling walk. That which had so abruptly presented itself to her
mind was the fact that Corthell's match box--his name engraved
across its front--still lay in plain sight upon the table in her
sitting-room--the peculiar and particular place of her privacy.
It was so much her own, this room, that she had given orders that
the servants were to ignore it in their day's routine. She looked
after its order herself. Yet, for all that, the maids or the
housekeeper often passed through it, on their way to the suite
beyond, and occasionally Page or Aunt Wess' came there to read, in
her absence. The family spoke of the place sometimes as the
"upstairs sitting-room," sometimes simply as "Laura's room."
Now, as she cantered homeward, Laura had it vividly in her mind that
she had not so much as glanced at the room before leaving the house
that morning. The servants would not touch the place. But it was
quite possible that Aunt Wess' or Page--
Laura, the blood mounting to her forehead, struck the horse sharply
with her crop. The pettiness of the predicament, the small meanness
of her situation struck across her face like the flagellations of
tiny whips. That she should stoop to this! She who had held her head
so high.
Abruptly she reined in the horse again. No, she would not hurry.
Exercising all her self-control, she went on her way with deliberate
slowness, so that it was past twelve o'clock when she dismounted
under the carriage porch.
Her fingers clutched tightly about her crop, she mounted to her
sitting-room and entered, closing the door behind her.
She went directly to the table, and then, catching her breath, with
a quick, apprehensive sinking of the heart, stopped short. The
little heart-shaped match box was gone, and on the couch in the
corner of the room Page, her book fallen to the floor beside her,
lay curled up and asleep.
A loop of her riding-habit over her arm, the toe of her boot tapping
the floor nervously, Laura stood motionless in the centre of the
room, her lips tight pressed, the fingers of one gloved hand
drumming rapidly upon her riding-crop. She was bewildered, and an
anxiety cruelly poignant, a dread of something she could not name,
gripped suddenly at her throat.
Could she have been mistaken? Was it upon the table that she had
seen the match box after all? If it lay elsewhere about the room,
she must find it at once. Never had she felt so degraded as now,
when, moving with such softness and swiftness as she could in her
agitation command, she went here and there about the room, peering
into the corners of her desk, searching upon the floor, upon the
chairs, everywhere, anywhere; her face crimson, her breath failing
her, her hands opening and shutting.
But the silver heart with its crown of worn gold was not to be
found. Laura, at the end of half an hour, was obliged to give over
searching. She was certain the match box lay upon the mahogany table
when last she left the room. It had not been mislaid; of that she
was now persuaded.
But while she sat at the desk, still in habit and hat, rummaging for
the fourth time among the drawers and shelves, she was all at once
aware, even without turning around, that Page was awake and watching
her. Laura cleared her throat.
"Have you seen my blue note paper, Page?" she asked. "I want to drop
a note to Mrs. Cressler, right away."
"No," said Page, as she rose from the couch. "No, I haven't seen
it." She came towards her sister across the room. "I thought,
maybe," she added, gravely, as she drew the heart-shaped match box
from her pocket, "that you might be looking for this. I took it. I
knew you wouldn't care to have Mr. Jadwin find it here."
Laura struck the little silver heart from Page's hand, with a
violence that sent it spinning across the room, and sprang to her
feet.
"You took it!" she cried. "You took it! How dare you! What do you
mean? What do I care if Curtis should find it here? What's it to me
that he should know that Mr. Corthell came up here? Of course he was
here."
But Page, though very pale, was perfectly calm under her sister's
outburst.
"If you didn't care whether any one knew that Mr. Corthell came up
here," she said, quietly, "why did you tell us this morning at
breakfast that you and he were in the art gallery the whole evening?
I thought," she added, with elaborate blandness, "I thought I 
The Pit / Norris, Frank, 1870-1902