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Title: The Pit

Author: Frank Norris

Posting Date: January 26, 2009 [EBook #4382]
Release Date: August, 2003
First Posted: January 20, 2002

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Charles Aldarondo.  HTML version by Al Haines.









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 the 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
unruffled 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 would be
doing you a service in hiding the match box."

"A service! You! What have I to hide?" cried Laura, almost
inarticulate. "Of course I said we were in the art gallery the whole
evening. So we were. We did--I do remember now--we did come up here for
an instant, to see how my picture hung. We went downstairs again at
once. We did not so much as sit down. He was not in the room two
minutes."

"He was here," returned Page, "long enough to smoke half a dozen
times." She pointed to a silver pen tray on the mahogany table, hidden
behind a book rack and littered with the ashes and charred stumps of
some five or six cigarettes.

"Really, Laura," Page remarked. "Really, you manage very awkwardly, it
seems to me."

Laura caught her riding-crop in her right hand

"Don't you--don't you make me forget myself;" she cried, breathlessly.

"It seems to me," observed Page, quietly, "that you've done that long
since, yourself."

Laura flung the crop down and folded her arms.

"Now," she cried, her eyes blazing and rivetted upon Page's. "Now, just
what do you mean? Sit down," she commanded, flinging a hand towards a
chair, "sit down, and tell me just what you mean by all this."

But Page remained standing. She met her sister's gaze without wavering.

"Do you want me to believe," she answered, "that it made no difference
to you that Mr. Corthell's match safe was here?"

"Not the least," exclaimed Laura. "Not the least."

"Then why did you search for it so when you came in? I was not asleep
all of the time. I saw you."

"Because," answered Laura, "because--I--because--" Then all at once she
burst out afresh: "Have I got to answer to you for what I do? Have I
got to explain? All your life long you've pretended to judge your
sister. Now you've gone too far. Now I forbid it--from this day on.
What I do is my affair; I'll ask nobody's advice. I'll do as I please,
do you understand?" The tears sprang to her eyes, the sobs strangled in
her throat. "I'll do as I please, as I please," and with the words she
sank down in the chair by her desk and struck her bare knuckles again
and again upon the open lid, crying out through her tears and her sobs,
and from between her tight-shut teeth: "I'll do as I please, do you
understand? As I please, as I please! I will be happy. I will, I will,
I will!"

"Oh, darling, dearest--" cried Page, running forward. But Laura, on her
feet once more, thrust her back.

"Don't touch me," she cried. "I hate you!" She put her fists to her
temples and, her eyes closed, rocked herself to and fro. "Don't you
touch me. Go away from me; go away from me. I hate you; I hate you all.
I hate this house, I hate this life. You are all killing me. Oh, my
God, if I could only die!"

She flung herself full length upon the couch, face downward. Her sobs
shook her from head to foot.

Page knelt at her side, an arm about her shoulder, but to all her
sister's consolations Laura, her voice muffled in her folded arms, only
cried:

"Let me alone, let me alone. Don't touch me."

For a time Page tried to make herself heard; then, after a moment's
reflection, she got up and drew out the pin in Laura's hat. She took
off the hat, loosened the scarf around Laura's neck, and then deftly,
silently, while her sister lay inert and sobbing beneath her hands,
removed the stiff, tight riding-habit. She brought a towel dipped in
cold water from the adjoining room and bathed Laura's face and hands.

But her sister would not be comforted, would not respond to her
entreaties or caresses. The better part of an hour went by; Page,
knowing her sister's nature, in the end held her peace, waiting for the
paroxysm to wear itself out.

After a while Laura's weeping resolved itself into long, shuddering
breaths, and at length she managed to say, in a faint, choked voice:

"Will you bring me the cologne from my dressing-table, honey? My head
aches so."

And, as Page ran towards the door, she added: "And my hand mirror, too.
Are my eyes all swollen?"

And that was the last word upon the subject between the two sisters.

But the evening of the same day, between eight and nine o'clock, while
Laura was searching the shelves of the library for a book with which to
while away the long evening that she knew impended, Corthell's card was
brought to her.

"I am not at home," she told the servant. "Or--wait," she added. Then,
after a moment's thought, she said: "Very well. Show him in here."

Laura received the artist, standing very erect and pale upon the great
white rug before the empty fireplace. Her hands were behind her back
when he came in, and as he crossed the room she did not move.

"I was not going to see you at first," she said. "I told the servant I
was not at home. But I changed my mind--I wanted to say something to
you."

He stood at the other end of the fireplace, an elbow upon an angle of
the massive mantel, and as she spoke the last words he looked at her
quickly. As usual, they were quite alone. The heavy, muffling curtain
of the doorway shut them in effectually.

"I have something to say to you," continued Laura. Then, quietly
enough, she said:

"You must not come to see me any more."

He turned abruptly away from her, and for a moment did not speak. Then
at last, his voice low, he faced her again and asked:

"Have I offended?"

She shook her head.

"No," he said, quietly. "No, I knew it was not that." There was a long
silence. The artist looked at the floor his hand slowly stroking the
back of one of the big leather chairs.

"I knew it must come," he answered, at length, "sooner or later. You
are right--of course. I should not have come back to America. I should
not have believed that I was strong enough to trust myself. Then"--he
looked at her steadily. His words came from his lips one by one, very
slowly. His voice was hardly more than a whisper. "Then, I am--never to
see you--again... Is that it?"

"Yes."

"Do you know what that means for me?" he cried. "Do you realise--" he
drew in his breath sharply. "Never to see you again! To lose even the
little that is left to me now. I--I--" He turned away quickly and
walked to a window and stood a moment, his back turned, looking out,
his hands clasped behind him. Then, after a long moment, he faced
about. His manner was quiet again, his voice very low.

"But before I go," he said, "will you answer me, at least, this--it can
do no harm now that I am to leave you--answer me, and I know you will
speak the truth: Are you happy, Laura?"

She closed her eyes.

"You have not the right to know."

"You are not happy," he declared. "I can see it, I know it. If you
were, you would have told me so.... If I promise you," he went on. "If
I promise you to go away now, and never to try to see you again, may I
come once more--to say good-by?"

She shook her head.

"It is so little for you to grant," he pleaded, "and it is so
incalculably much for me to look forward to in the little time that yet
remains. I do not even ask to see you alone. I will not harass you with
any heroics."

"Oh, what good will it do," she cried, wearily, "for you to see me
again? Why will you make me more unhappy than I am? Why did you come
back?"

"Because," he answered, steadily, "because I love you more than"--he
partly raised a clenched fist and let it fall slowly upon the back of
the chair, "more than any other consideration in the world."

"Don't!" she cried. "You must not. Never, never say that to me again.
Will you go--please?"

"Oh, if I had not gone from you four years ago!" he cried. "If I had
only stayed then! Not a day of my life since that I have not regretted
it. You could have loved me then. I know it, I know it, and, God
forgive me, but I know you could love me now--"

"Will you go?" she cried.

"I dare you to say you could not," he flashed out

Laura shut her eyes and put her hands over her ears. "I could not, I
could not," she murmured, monotonously, over and over again. "I could
not, I could not."

She heard him start suddenly, and opened her eyes in time to see him
come quickly towards her. She threw out a defensive hand, but he caught
the arm itself to him and, before she could resist, had kissed it again
and again through the interstices of the lace sleeve. Upon her bare
shoulder she felt the sudden passion of his lips.

A quick, sharp gasp, a sudden qualm of breathlessness wrenched through
her, to her very finger tips, with a fierce leap of the blood, a wild
bound of the heart.

She tore back from him with a violence that rent away the lace upon her
arm, and stood off from him, erect and rigid, a fine, delicate,
trembling vibrating through all her being. On her pale cheeks the
colour suddenly flamed.

"Go, go," was all she had voice to utter.

"And may I see you once more--only once?"

"Yes, yes, anything, only go, go--if you love me!"

He left the room. In another moment she heard the front door close.

"Curtis," said Laura, when next she saw her husband, "Curtis, you could
not--stay with me, that last time. Remember? When we were to go for a
drive. Can you spend this evening with me? Just us two, here at
home--or I'll go out with you. I'll do anything you say." She looked at
him steadily an instant. "It is not--not easy for a woman to ask--for
me to ask favours like this. Each time I tell myself it will be the
last. I am--you must remember this, Curtis, I am--perhaps I am a little
proud. Don't you see?"

They were at breakfast table again. It was the morning after Laura had
given Corthell his dismissal. As she spoke Jadwin brought his hand down
upon the table with a bang.

"You bet I will," he exclaimed; "you bet I'll stay with you to-night.
Business can go to the devil! And we won't go out either; we'll stay
right here. You get something to read to me, and we'll have one of our
old evenings again. We--"

All at once Jadwin paused, laid down his knife and fork, and looked
strangely to and fro about the room.

"We'll have one of our old evenings again," he repeated, slowly.

"What is it, Curtis?" demanded his wife. "What is the matter?"

"Oh--nothing," he answered.

"Why, yes there was. Tell me."

"No, no. I'm all right now," he returned, briskly enough.

"No," she insisted. "You must tell me. Are you sick?"

He hesitated a moment. Then:

"Sick?" he queried. "No, indeed. But--I'll tell you. Since a few days
I've had," he put his fingers to his forehead between his eyes, "I've
had a queer sensation right there. It comes and goes."

"A headache?"

"N-no. It's hard to describe. A sort of numbness. Sometimes it's as
though there was a heavy iron cap--a helmet on my head. And sometimes
it--I don't know it seems as if there were fog, or something or other,
inside. I'll take a good long rest this summer, as soon as we can get
away. Another month or six weeks, and I'll have things ship-shape and
so as I can leave them. Then we'll go up to Geneva, and, by Jingo, I'll
loaf." He was silent for a moment, frowning, passing his hand across
his forehead and winking his eyes. Then, with a return of his usual
alertness, he looked at his watch.

"Hi!" he exclaimed. "I must be off. I won't be home to dinner to-night.
But you can expect me by eight o'clock, sure. I promise I'll be here on
the minute."

But, as he kissed his wife good-by, Laura put her arms about his neck.

"Oh, I don't want you to leave me at all, ever, ever! Curtis, love me,
love me always, dear. And be thoughtful of me and kind to me. And
remember that you are all I have in the world; you are father and
mother to me, and my dear husband as well. I know you do love me; but
there are times--Oh," she cried, suddenly "if I thought you did not
love me--love me better than anything, anything--I could not love you;
Curtis, I could not, I could not. No, no," she cried, "don't interrupt.
Hear me out. Maybe it is wrong of me to feel that way, but I'm only a
woman, dear. I love you but I love Love too. Women are like that; right
or wrong, weak or strong, they must be--must be loved above everything
else in the world. Now go, go to your business; you mustn't be late.
Hark, there is Jarvis with the team. Go now. Good-by, good-by, and I'll
expect you at eight."

True to his word, Jadwin reached his home that evening promptly at the
promised hour. As he came into the house, however, the door-man met him
in the hall, and, as he took his master's hat and stick, explained that
Mrs. Jadwin was in the art gallery, and that she had said he was to
come there at once.

Laura had planned a little surprise. The art gallery was darkened. Here
and there behind the dull-blue shades a light burned low. But one of
the movable reflectors that were used to throw a light upon the
pictures in the topmost rows was burning brilliantly. It was turned
from Jadwin as he entered, and its broad cone of intense white light
was thrown full upon Laura, who stood over against the organ in the
full costume of "Theodora."

For an instant Jadwin was taken all aback.

"What the devil!" he ejaculated, stopping short in the doorway.

Laura ran forward to him, the chains, ornaments, and swinging pendants
chiming furiously as she moved.

"I did surprise you, I did surprise you," she laughed. "Isn't it
gorgeous?" She turned about before him, her arms raised. "Isn't it
superb? Do you remember Bernhardt--and that scene in the Emperor
Justinian's box at the amphitheatre? Say now that your wife isn't
beautiful. I am, am I not?" she exclaimed defiantly, her head raised.
"Say it, say it."

"Well, what for a girl!" gasped Jadwin, "to get herself up--"

"Say that I am beautiful," commanded Laura.

"Well, I just about guess you are," he cried.

"The most beautiful woman you have ever known?" she insisted. Then on
the instant added: "Oh, I may be really as plain as a kitchen-maid, but
you must believe that I am not. I would rather be ugly and have you
think me beautiful, than to be the most beautiful woman in the world
and have you think me plain. Tell me--am I not the most beautiful woman
you ever saw?"

"The most beautiful I ever saw," he repeated, fervently. "But--Lord,
what will you do next? Whatever put it into your head to get into this
rig?"

"Oh, I don't know. I just took the notion. You've seen me in every one
of my gowns. I sent down for this, this morning, just after you left.
Curtis, if you hadn't made me love you enough to be your wife, Laura
Dearborn would have been a great actress. I feel it in my finger tips.
Ah!" she cried, suddenly flinging up her head till the pendants of the
crown clashed again. "I could have been magnificent. You don't believe
it. Listen. This is Athalia--the queen in the Old Testament, you
remember."

"Hold on," he protested. "I thought you were this Theodora person."

"I know--but never mind. I am anything I choose. Sit down; listen. It's
from Racine's 'Athalie,' and the wicked queen has had this terrible
dream of her mother Jezabel. It's French, but I'll make you see."

And "taking stage," as it were, in the centre of the room, Laura began:

"Son ombre vers mon lit a paru se baisser Et moi, je lui tendais les
mains pour l'embrasser; Mais je n'ai plus trouve q'un horrible melange
D'os et de chair meurtris et traines dans la fange, Des lambeaux pleins
de sang, et des membres affreux Que les chiens d'evorants se
disputaient entre eux."

"Great God!" exclaimed Jadwin, ignorant of the words yet, in spite of
himself, carried away by the fury and passion of her rendering.

Laura struck her palms together.

"Just what 'Abner' says," she cried. "The very words."

"Abner?"

"In the play. I knew I could make you feel it."

"Well, well," murmured her husband, shaking his head, bewildered even
yet. "Well, it's a strange wife I've got here."

"When you've realised that," returned Laura, "you've just begun to
understand me."

Never had he seen her gayer. Her vivacity was bewildering.

"I wish," she cried, all at once, "I wish I had dressed as 'Carmen,'
and I would have danced for you. Oh, and you could have played the air
for me on the organ. I have the costume upstairs now. Wait! I will, I
will! Sit right where you are--no, fix the attachment to the organ
while I'm gone. Oh, be gay with me to-night," she cried, throwing her
arms around him. "This is my night, isn't it? And I am to be just as
foolish as I please."

With the words she ran from the room, but was back in an incredibly
short time, gowned as Bizet's cigarette girl, a red rose in her black
hair, castanets upon her fingers.

Jadwin began the bolero.

"Can you see me dance, and play at the same time?"

"Yes, yes. Go on. How do you know anything about a Spanish dance?"

"I learned it long ago. I know everything about anything I choose,
to-night. Play, play it _fast_."

She danced as though she would never tire, with the same force of
passion that she had thrown into Athalie. Her yellow skirt was a flash
of flame spurting from the floor, and her whole body seemed to move
with the same wild, untamed spirit as a tongue of fire. The castanets
snapped like the crackling of sparks; her black mantilla was a hovering
cloud of smoke. She was incarnate flame, capricious and riotous,
elusive and dazzling.

Then suddenly she tossed the castanets far across the room and dropped
upon the couch, panting and laughing.

"There," she cried, "now I feel better. That had to come out. Come over
here and sit by me. Now, maybe you'll admit that I can dance too."

"You sure can," answered Jadwin, as she made a place for him among the
cushions. "That was wonderful. But, at the same time, old girl, I
wouldn't--wouldn't--"

"Wouldn't what?"

"Well, do too much of that. It's sort of over-wrought--a little, and
unnatural. I like you best when you are your old self, quiet, and calm,
and dignified. It's when you are quiet that you are at your best. I
didn't know you had this streak in you. You are that excitable
to-night!"

"Let me be so then. It's myself, for the moment whatever it is. But now
I'll be quiet. Now we'll talk. Have you had a hard day? Oh, and did
your head bother you again?"

"No, things were a little easier down town to-day. But that queer
feeling in my head did come back as I was coming home--and my head
aches a little now, besides."

"Your head aches!" she exclaimed. "Let me do something for it. And I've
been making it worse with all my foolishness."

"No, no; that's all right," he assured her. "I tell you what we'll do.
I'll lie down here a bit, and you play something for me. Something
quiet. I get so tired down there in La Salle Street, Laura, you don't
know."

And while he stretched out at full length upon the couch, his wife, at
the organ, played the music she knew he liked best--old songs, "Daisy
Dean," "Lord Lovell," "When Stars Are in the Quiet Sky," and "Open Thy
Lattice to Me."

When at length she paused, he nodded his head with pleasure.

"That's pretty," he said. "Ah, that is blame pretty. Honey, it's just
like medicine to me," he continued, "to lie here, quiet like this, with
the lights low, and have my dear girl play those old, old tunes. My old
governor, Laura, used to play that 'Open the Lattice to me,' that and
'Father, oh, Father, Come Home with me Now'--used to play 'em on his
fiddle." His arm under his head, he went on, looking vaguely at the
opposite wall. "Lord love me, I can see that kitchen in the old
farmhouse as plain! The walls were just logs and plaster, and there
were upright supports in each corner, where we used to measure our
heights--we children. And the fireplace was there," he added, gesturing
with his arm, "and there was the wood box, and over here was an old
kind of dresser with drawers, and the torty-shell cat always had her
kittens under there. Honey, I was happy then. Of course I've got you
now, and that's all the difference in the world. But you're the only
thing that does make a difference. We've got a fine place and a mint of
money I suppose--and I'm proud of it. But I don't know.... If they'd
let me be and put us two--just you and me--back in the old house with
the bare floors and the rawhide chairs and the shuck beds, I guess we'd
manage. If you're happy, you're happy; that's about the size of it. And
sometimes I think that we'd be happier--you and I--chumming along
shoulder to shoulder, poor an' working hard, than making big money an'
spending big money, why--oh, I don't know ... if you're happy, that's
the thing that counts, and if all this stuff," he kicked out a careless
foot at the pictures, the heavy hangings, the glass cabinets of
bibelots, "if all this stuff stood in the way of it--well--it could go
to the devil! That's not poetry maybe, but it's the truth."

Laura came over to where her husband lay, and sat by him, and took his
head in her lap, smoothing his forehead with her long white hands.

"Oh, if I could only keep you like this always," she murmured. "Keep
you untroubled, and kind, and true. This is my husband again. Oh, you
are a man, Curtis; a great, strong, kind-hearted man, with no little
graces, nor petty culture, nor trivial fine speeches, nor false sham,
imitation polish. I love you. Ah, I love you, love you, dear!"

"Old girl!" said Jadwin, stroking her hand.

"Do you want me to read to you now?" she asked.

"Just this is pretty good, it seems to me."

As he spoke, there came a step in the hall and a knock.

Laura sat up, frowning.

"I told them I was not to be disturbed," she exclaimed under her
breath. Then, "Come in," she called.

"Mr. Gretry, sir," announced the servant. "Said he wished to see you at
once, sir."

"Tell him," cried Laura, turning quickly to Jadwin, "tell him you're
not at home--that you can't see him."

"I've got to see him," answered Jadwin, sitting up. "He wouldn't come
here himself unless it was for something important."

"Can I come in, J.?" spoke the broker, from the hall. And even through
the thick curtains they could hear how his voice rang with excitement
and anxiety.

"Can I come in? I followed the servant right up, you see. I know--"

"Yes, yes. Come in," answered Jadwin. Laura, her face flushing, threw a
fold of the couch cover over her costume as Gretry, his hat still on
his head, stepped quickly into the room.

Jadwin met him half way, and Laura from her place on the couch heard
the rapidly spoken words between the general and his lieutenant.

"Now we're in for it!" Gretry exclaimed.

"Yes--well?" Jadwin's voice was as incisive and quick as the fall of an
axe.

"I've just found out," said Gretry, "that Crookes and his crowd are
going to take hold to-morrow. There'll be hell to pay in the morning.
They are going to attack us the minute the gong goes."

"Who's with them?"

"I don't know; nobody does. Sweeny, of course. But he has a gang back
of him--besides, he's got good credit with the banks. I told you you'd
have to fight him sooner or later."

"Well, we'll fight him then. Don't get scared. Crookes ain't the Great
Mogul."

"Holy Moses, I'd like to know who is, then."

"_I_ am. And he's got to know it. There's not room for Crookes and me
in this game. One of us two has got to control this market. If he gets
in my way, by God, I'll smash him!"

"Well, then, J., you and I have got to do some tall talking to-night.
You'd better come down to the Grand Pacific Hotel right away. Court is
there already. It was him, nervy little cuss, that found out about
Crookes. Can you come now, at once? Good evening, Mrs. Jadwin. I'm
sorry to take him from you, but business is business."

No, it was not. To the wife of the great manipulator, listening with a
sinking heart to this courier from the front, it was battle. The Battle
of the Streets was again in array. Again the trumpet sounded, again the
rush of thousands of feet filled all the air. Even here, here in her
home, her husband's head upon her lap, in the quiet and stillness of
her hour, the distant rumble came to her ears. Somewhere, far off there
in the darkness of the night, the great forces were manoeuvring for
position once more. To-morrow would come the grapple, and one or the
other must fall--her husband or the enemy. How keep him to herself when
the great conflict impended? She knew how the thunder of the captains
and the shoutings appealed to him. She had seen him almost leap to his
arms out of her embrace. He was all the man she had called him, and
less strong, less eager, less brave, she would have loved him less.

Yet she had lost him again, lost him at the very moment she believed
she had won him back.

"Don't go, don't go," she whispered to him, as he kissed her good-by.
"Oh, dearest, don't go! This was my evening."

"I must, I must, Laura. Good-by, old girl. Don't keep me--see, Sam is
waiting."

He kissed her hastily twice.

"Now, Sam," he said, turning toward the broker.

"Good night, Mrs. Jadwin."

"Good-by, old girl."

They turned toward the door.

"You see, young Court was down there at the bank, and he noticed that
checks--"

The voices died away as the hangings of the entrance fell to place. The
front door clashed and closed.

Laura sat upright in her place, listening, one fist pressed against her
lips.

There was no more noise. The silence of the vast empty house widened
around her at the shutting of the door as the ripples widen on a pool
with the falling of the stone. She crushed her knuckles tighter and
tighter over her lips, she pressed her fingers to her eyes, she slowly
clasped and reclasped her hands, listening for what she did not know.
She thought of her husband hurrying away from her, ignoring her, and
her love for him in the haste and heat of battle. She thought of
Corthell, whom she had sent from her, forever, shutting his love from
out her life.

Crushed, broken, Laura laid herself down among the cushions, her face
buried in her arm. Above her and around her rose the dimly lit gallery,
lowering with luminous shadows. Only a point or two of light
illuminated the place. The gold frames of the pictures reflected it
dully; the massive organ pipes, just outlined in faint blurs of light,
towered far into the gloom above. The whole place, with its half-seen
gorgeous hangings, its darkened magnificence, was like a huge, dim
interior of Byzantium.

Lost, beneath the great height of the dome, and in the wide reach of
the floor space, in her foolish finery of bangles, silks, high comb,
and little rosetted slippers, Laura Jadwin lay half hidden among the
cushions of the couch. If she wept, she wept in silence, and the
muffling stillness of the lofty gallery was broken but once, when a
cry, half whisper, half sob, rose to the deaf, blind darkness:

"Oh, now I am alone, alone, alone!"




IX


"Well, that's about all then, I guess," said Gretry at last, as he
pushed back his chair and rose from the table.

He and Jadwin were in a room on the third floor of the Grand Pacific
Hotel, facing Jackson Street. It was three o'clock in the morning. Both
men were in their shirt-sleeves; the table at which they had been
sitting was scattered over with papers, telegraph blanks, and at
Jadwin's elbow stood a lacquer tray filled with the stumps of cigars
and burnt matches, together with one of the hotel pitchers of ice water.

"Yes," assented Jadwin, absently, running through a sheaf of telegrams,
"that's all we can do--until we see what kind of a game Crookes means
to play. I'll be at your office by eight."

"Well," said the broker, getting into his coat, "I guess I'll go to my
room and try to get a little sleep. I wish I could see how we'll be
to-morrow night at this time."

Jadwin made a sharp movement of impatience.

"Damnation, Sam, aren't you ever going to let up croaking? If you're
afraid of this thing, get out of it. Haven't I got enough to bother me?"

"Oh, say! Say, hold on, hold on, old man," remonstrated the broker, in
an injured voice. "You're terrible touchy sometimes, J., of late. I was
only trying to look ahead a little. Don't think I want to back out. You
ought to know me by this time, J."

"There, there, I'm sorry, Sam," Jadwin hastened to answer, getting up
and shaking the other by the shoulder. "I am touchy these days. There's
so many things to think of, and all at the same time. I do get nervous.
I never slept one little wink last night--and you know the night before
I didn't turn in till two in the morning."

"Lord, you go swearing and damning 'round here like a pirate sometimes,
J.," Gretry went on. "I haven't heard you cuss before in twenty years.
Look out, now, that I don't tell on you to your Sunday-school
superintendents."

"I guess they'd cuss, too," observed Jadwin, "if they were long forty
million wheat, and had to know just where every hatful of it was every
second of the time. It was all very well for us to whoop about swinging
a corner that afternoon in your office. But the real thing--well, you
don't have any trouble keeping awake. Do you suppose we can keep the
fact of our corner dark much longer?"

"I fancy not," answered the broker, putting on his hat and thrusting
his papers into his breast pocket. "If we bust Crookes, it'll come
out--and it won't matter then. I think we've got all the shorts there
are."

"I'm laying particularly for Dave Scannel," remarked Jadwin. "I hope
he's in up to his neck, and if he is, by the Great Horn Spoon, I'll
bankrupt him, or my name is not Jadwin! I'll wring him bone-dry. If I
once get a twist of that rat, I won't leave him hide nor hair to cover
the wart he calls his heart."

"Why, what all has Scannel ever done to you?" demanded the other,
amazed.

"Nothing, but I found out the other day that old Hargus--poor old,
broken-backed, half-starved Hargus--I found out that it was Scannel
that ruined him. Hargus and he had a big deal on, you know--oh, ages
ago--and Scannel sold out on him. Great God, it was the dirtiest,
damnedest treachery I ever heard of! Scannel made his pile, and what's
Hargus now? Why, he's a scarecrow. And he has a little niece that he
supports, heaven only knows how. I've seen her, and she's pretty as a
picture. Well, that's all right; I'm going to carry fifty thousand
wheat for Hargus, and I've got another scheme for him, too. By God, the
poor old boy won't go hungry again if I know it! But if I lay my hands
on Scannel--if we catch him in the corner--holy, suffering Moses, but
I'll make him squeal!"

Gretry nodded, to say he understood and approved.

"I guess you've got him," he remarked. "Well, I must get to bed. Good
night, J."

"Good night, Sam. See you in the morning."

And before the door of the room was closed, Jadwin was back at the
table again. Once more, painfully, toilfully, he went over his plans,
retesting, altering, recombining, his hands full of lists, of
despatches, and of endless columns of memoranda. Occasionally he
murmured fragments of sentences to himself. "H'm ... I must look out
for that.... They can't touch us there.... The annex of that Nickel
Plate elevator will hold--let's see ... half a million.... If I buy the
grain within five days after arrival I've got to pay storage, which is,
let's see--three-quarters of a cent times eighty thousand...."

An hour passed. At length Jadwin pushed back from the table, drank a
glass of ice water, and rose, stretching.

"Lord, I must get some sleep," he muttered.

He threw off his clothes and went to bed, but even as he composed
himself to sleep, the noises of the street in the awakening city
invaded the room through the chink of the window he had left open. The
noises were vague. They blended easily into a far-off murmur; they came
nearer; they developed into a cadence:

"Wheat-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-wheat."

Jadwin roused up. He had just been dropping off to sleep. He rose and
shut the window, and again threw himself down. He was weary to death;
not a nerve of his body that did not droop and flag. His eyes closed
slowly. Then, all at once, his whole body twitched sharply in a sudden
spasm, a simultaneous recoil of every muscle. His heart began to beat
rapidly, his breath failed him. Broad awake, he sat up in bed.

"H'm!" he muttered. "That was a start--must have been dreaming, surely."

Then he paused, frowning, his eyes narrowing; he looked to and fro
about the room, lit by the subdued glow that came in through the
transom from a globe in the hall outside. Slowly his hand went to his
forehead.

With almost the abruptness of a blow, that strange, indescribable
sensation had returned to his head. It was as though he were struggling
with a fog in the interior of his brain; or again it was a numbness, a
weight, or sometimes it had more of the feeling of a heavy, tight-drawn
band across his temples.

"Smoking too much, I guess," murmured Jadwin. But he knew this was not
the reason, and as he spoke, there smote across his face the first
indefinite sensation of an unnamed fear.

He gave a quick, short breath, and straightened himself, passing his
hands over his face.

"What the deuce," he muttered, "does this mean?"

For a long moment he remained sitting upright in bed, looking from wall
to wall of the room. He felt a little calmer. He shrugged his shoulders
impatiently.

"Look here," he said to the opposite wall, "I guess I'm not a
schoolgirl, to have nerves at this late date. High time to get to
sleep, if I'm to mix things with Crookes to-morrow."

But he could not sleep. While the city woke to its multitudinous life
below his windows, while the grey light of morning drowned the yellow
haze from the gas jet that came through the transom, while the "early
call" alarms rang in neighbouring rooms, Curtis Jadwin lay awake,
staring at the ceiling, now concentrating his thoughts upon the vast
operation in which he found himself engaged, following out again all
its complexities, its inconceivable ramifications, or now puzzling over
the inexplicable numbness, the queer, dull weight that descended upon
his brain so soon as he allowed its activity to relax.

By five o'clock he found it intolerable to remain longer in bed; he
rose, bathed, dressed, ordered his breakfast, and, descending to the
office of the hotel, read the earliest editions of the morning papers
for half an hour.

Then, at last, as he sat in the corner of the office deep in an
armchair, the tired shoulders began to droop, the wearied head to nod.
The paper slipped from his fingers, his chin sank upon his collar.

To his ears the early clamour of the street, the cries of newsboys, the
rattle of drays came in a dull murmur. It seemed to him that very far
off a great throng was forming. It was menacing, shouting. It stirred,
it moved, it was advancing. It came galloping down the street, shouting
with insensate fury; now it was at the corner, now it burst into the
entrance of the hotel. Its clamour was deafening, but intelligible. For
a thousand, a million, forty million voices were shouting in cadence:

"Wheat-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-wheat."

Jadwin woke abruptly, half starting from his chair. The morning sun was
coming in through the windows; the clock above the hotel desk was
striking seven, and a waiter stood at his elbow, saying:

"Your breakfast is served, Mr. Jadwin."

He had no appetite. He could eat nothing but a few mouthfuls of toast,
and long before the appointed hour he sat in Gretry's office, waiting
for the broker to appear, drumming on the arm of his chair, plucking at
the buttons of his coat, and wondering why it was that every now and
then all the objects in his range of vision seemed to move slowly back
and stand upon the same plane.

By degrees he lapsed into a sort of lethargy, a wretched counterfeit of
sleep, his eyes half closed, his breath irregular. But, such as it was,
it was infinitely grateful. The little, over-driven cogs and wheels of
the mind, at least, moved more slowly. Perhaps by and by this might
actually develop into genuine, blessed oblivion.

But there was a quick step outside the door. Gretry came in.

"Oh, J.! Here already, are you? Well, Crookes will begin to sell at the
very tap of the bell."

"He will, hey?" Jadwin was on his feet. Instantly the jaded nerves
braced taut again; instantly the tiny machinery of the brain spun again
at its fullest limit. "He's going to try to sell us out, is he? All
right. We'll sell, too. We'll see who can sell the most--Crookes or
Jadwin."

"Sell! You mean buy, of course."

"No, I don't. I've been thinking it over since you left last night.
Wheat is worth exactly what it is selling for this blessed day. I've
not inflated it up one single eighth yet; Crookes thinks I have. Good
Lord, I can read him like a book! He thinks I've boosted the stuff
above what it's worth, and that a little shove will send it down. He
can send it down to ten cents if he likes, but it'll jump back like a
rubber ball. I'll sell bushel for bushel with him as long as he wants
to keep it up."

"Heavens and earth, J.," exclaimed Gretry, with a long breath, "the
risk is about as big as holding up the Bank of England. You are
depreciating the value of about forty million dollars' worth of your
property with every cent she breaks."

"You do as I tell you--you'll see I'm right," answered Jadwin. "Get
your boys in here, and we'll give 'em the day's orders."

The "Crookes affair"--as among themselves the group of men who centred
about Jadwin spoke of it--was one of the sharpest fights known on the
Board of Trade for many a long day. It developed with amazing
unexpectedness and was watched with breathless interest from every
produce exchange between the oceans.

It occupied every moment of each morning's session of the Board of
Trade for four furious, never-to-be-forgotten days. Promptly at
half-past nine o'clock on Tuesday morning Crookes began to sell May
wheat short, and instantly, to the surprise of every Pit trader on the
floor, the price broke with his very first attack. In twenty minutes it
was down half a cent. Then came the really big surprise of the day.
Landry Court, the known representative of the firm which all along had
fostered and encouraged the rise in the price, appeared in the Pit, and
instead of buying, upset all precedent and all calculation by selling
as freely as the Crookes men themselves. For three days the battle went
on. But to the outside world--even to the Pit itself--it seemed less a
battle than a rout. The "Unknown Bull" was down, was beaten at last. He
had inflated the price of the wheat, he had backed a false, an
artificial, and unwarrantable boom, and now he was being broken. Ah
Crookes knew when to strike. Here was the great general--the real
leader who so long had held back.

By the end of the Friday session, Crookes and his clique had sold five
million bushels, "going short," promising to deliver wheat that they
did not own, but expected to buy at low prices. The market that day
closed at ninety-five.

Friday night, in Jadwin's room in the Grand Pacific, a conference was
held between Gretry, Landry Court, two of Gretry's most trusted
lieutenants, and Jadwin himself. Two results issued from this
conference. One took the form of a cipher cable to Jadwin's Liverpool
agent, which, translated, read: "Buy all wheat that is offered till
market advances one penny." The other was the general order issued to
Landry Court and the four other Pit traders for the Gretry-Converse
house, to the effect that in the morning they were to go into the Pit
and, making no demonstration, begin to buy back the wheat they had been
selling all the week. Each of them was to buy one million bushels.
Jadwin had, as Gretry put it, "timed Crookes to a split second,"
foreseeing the exact moment when he would make his supreme effort. Sure
enough, on that very Saturday Crookes was selling more freely than
ever, confident of breaking the Bull ere the closing gong should ring.

But before the end of the morning wheat was up two cents. Buying orders
had poured in upon the market. The price had stiffened almost of
itself. Above the indicator upon the great dial there seemed to be an
invisible, inexplicable magnet that lifted it higher and higher, for
all the strenuous efforts of the Bears to drag it down.

A feeling of nervousness began to prevail. The small traders, who had
been wild to sell short during the first days of the movement, began on
Monday to cover a little here and there.

"Now," declared Jadwin that night, "now's the time to open up all along
the line hard. If we start her with a rush to-morrow morning, she'll go
to a dollar all by herself."

Tuesday morning, therefore, the Gretry-Converse traders bought another
five million bushels. The price under this stimulus went up with the
buoyancy of a feather. The little shorts, more and more uneasy, and
beginning to cover by the scores, forced it up even higher.

The nervousness of the "crowd" increased. Perhaps, after all, Crookes
was not so omnipotent. Perhaps, after all, the Unknown Bull had another
fight in him. Then the "outsiders" came into the market. All in a
moment all the traders were talking "higher prices." Everybody now was
as eager to buy as, a week before, they had been eager to sell. The
price went up by convulsive bounds. Crookes dared not buy, dared not
purchase the wheat to make good his promises of delivery, for fear of
putting up the price on himself higher still. Dismayed, chagrined, and
humiliated, he and his clique sat back inert, watching the tremendous
reaction, hoping against hope that the market would break again.

But now it became difficult to get wheat at all. All of a sudden nobody
was selling. The buyers in the Pit commenced to bid against each other,
offering a dollar and two cents. The wheat did not "come out." They bid
a dollar two and a half, a dollar two and five-eighths; still no wheat.
Frantic, they shook their fingers in the very faces of Landry Court and
the Gretry traders, shouting: "A dollar, two and seven-eighths! A
dollar, three! Three and an eighth! A quarter! Three-eighths! A half!"
But the others shook their heads. Except on extraordinary advances of a
whole cent at a time, there was no wheat for sale.

At the last-named price Crookes acknowledged defeat. Somewhere in his
big machine a screw had been loose. Somehow he had miscalculated. So
long as he and his associates sold and sold and sold, the price would
go down. The instant they tried to cover there was no wheat for sale,
and the price leaped up again with an elasticity that no power could
control.

He saw now that he and his followers had to face a loss of several
cents a bushel on each one of the five million they had sold. They had
not been able to cover one single sale, and the situation was back
again exactly as before his onslaught, the Unknown Bull in securer
control than ever before.

But Crookes had, at last, begun to suspect the true condition of
affairs, and now that the market was hourly growing tighter and more
congested, his suspicion was confirmed. Alone, locked in his private
office, he thought it out, and at last remarked to himself:

"Somebody has a great big line of wheat that is not on the market at
all. Somebody has got all the wheat there is. I guess I know his name.
I guess the visible supply of May wheat in the Chicago market is
cornered."

This was at a time when the price stood at a dollar and one cent.
Crookes--who from the first had managed and handled the operations of
his confederates--knew very well that if he now bought in all the wheat
his clique had sold short, the price would go up long before he could
complete the deal. He said nothing to the others, further than that
they should "hold on a little longer, in the hopes of a turn," but very
quietly he began to cover his own personal sales--his share of the five
million sold by his clique. Foreseeing the collapse of his scheme, he
got out of the market; at a loss, it was true, but still no more than
he could stand. If he "held on a little longer, in the hopes of a
turn," there was no telling how deep the Bull would gore him. This was
no time to think much about "obligations." It had got to be "every man
for himself" by now.

A few days after this Crookes sat in his office in the building in La
Salle Street that bore his name. It was about eleven o'clock in the
morning. His dry, small, beardless face creased a little at the corners
of the mouth as he heard the ticker chattering behind him. He knew how
the tape read. There had been another flurry on the Board that morning,
not half an hour since, and wheat was up again. In the last thirty-six
hours it had advanced three cents, and he knew very well that at that
very minute the "boys" on the floor were offering nine cents over the
dollar for the May option--and not getting it. The market was in a
tumult. He fancied he could almost hear the thunder of the Pit as it
swirled. All La Salle Street was listening and watching, all Chicago,
all the nation, all the world. Not a "factor" on the London 'Change who
did not turn an ear down the wind to catch the echo of this turmoil,
not an agent de change in the peristyle of the Paris Bourse, who did
not strain to note the every modulation of its mighty diapason.

"Well," said the little voice of the man-within-the-man, who in the
person of Calvin Hardy Crookes sat listening to the ticker in his
office, "well, let it roar. It sure can't hurt C. H. C."

"Can you see Mr. Cressler?" said the clerk at the door.

He came in with a hurried, unsteady step. The long, stooping figure was
unkempt; was, in a sense, unjointed, as though some support had been
withdrawn. The eyes were deep-sunk, the bones of the face were gaunt
and bare; and from moment to moment the man swallowed quickly and
moistened his lips.

Crookes nodded as his ally came up, and one finger raised, pointed to a
chair. He himself was impassive, calm. He did not move. Taciturn as
ever, he waited for the other to speak.

"I want to talk with you, Mr. Crookes," began Cressler, hurriedly.
"I--I made up my mind to it day before yesterday, but I put it off. I
had hoped that things would come our way. But I can't delay now.... Mr.
Crookes, I can't stand this any longer. I must get out of the clique. I
haven't the ready money to stand this pace."

There was a silence. Crookes neither moved nor changed expression. His
small eyes fixed upon the other, he waited for Cressler to go on.

"I might remind you," Cressler continued, "that when I joined your
party I expressly stipulated that our operations should not be
speculative."

"You knew--" began Crookes.

"Oh, I have nothing to say," Cressler interrupted. "I did know. I knew
from the first it was to be speculation. I tried to deceive myself.
I--well, this don't interest you. The point is I must get out of the
market. I don't like to go back on you others"--Cressler's fingers were
fiddling with his watch chain--"I don't like to--I mean to say you must
let me out. You must let me cover--at once. I am--very nearly bankrupt
now. Another half-cent rise, and I'm done for. It will take as it
is--my--my--all my ready money--all my savings for the last ten years
to buy in my wheat."

"Let's see. How much did I sell for you?" demanded Crookes. "Five
hundred thousand?"

"Yes, five hundred thousand at ninety-eight--and we're at a dollar nine
now. It's an eleven-cent jump. I--I can't stand another eighth. I must
cover at once."

Crookes, without answering, drew his desk telephone to him.

"Hello!" he said after a moment. "Hello! ... Buy five hundred May, at
the market, right away."

He hung up the receiver and leaned back in his chair.

"They'll report the trade in a minute," he said. "Better wait and see."

Cressler stood at the window, his hands clasped behind his back,
looking down into the street. He did not answer. The seconds passed,
then the minutes. Crookes turned to his desk and signed a few letters,
the scrape of his pen the only noise to break the silence of the room.
Then at last he observed:

"Pretty bum weather for this time of the year."

Cressler nodded. He took off his hat, and pushed the hair back from his
forehead with a slow, persistent gesture; then as the ticker began to
click again, he faced around quickly, and crossing the room, ran the
tape through his fingers.

"God," he muttered, between his teeth, "I hope your men didn't lose any
time. It's up again."

There was a step at the door, and as Crookes called to come in, the
office messenger entered and put a slip of paper into his hands.
Crookes looked at it, and pushed it across his desk towards Cressler.

"Here you are," he observed. "That's your trade. Five hundred May, at a
dollar ten. You were lucky to get it at that--or at any price."

"Ten!" cried the other, as he took the paper.

Crookes turned away again, and glanced indifferently over his letters.
Cressler laid the slip carefully down upon the ledge of the desk, and
though Crookes did not look up, he could almost feel how the man braced
himself, got a grip of himself, put all his resources to the stretch to
meet this blow squarely in the front.

"And I said another eighth would bust me," Cressler remarked, with a
short laugh. "Well," he added, grimly, "it looks as though I were
busted. I suppose, though, we must all expect to get the knife once in
a while--mustn't we? Well, there goes fifty thousand dollars of my good
money."

"I can tell you who's got it, if you care to know," answered Crookes.
"It's a pewter quarter to Government bonds that Gretry, Converse & Co.
sold that wheat to you. They've got about all the wheat there is."

"I know, of course, they've been heavy buyers--for this Unknown Bull
they talk so much about."

"Well, he ain't Unknown to me," declared Crookes. "I know him. It's
Curtis Jadwin. He's the man we've been fighting all along, and all
hell's going to break loose down here in three or four days. He's
cornered the market."

"Jadwin! You mean J.--Curtis--my friend?"

Crookes grunted an affirmative.

"But--why, he told me he was out of the market--for good."

Crookes did not seem to consider that the remark called for any useless
words. He put his hands in his pockets and looked at Cressler.

"Does he know?" faltered Cressler. "Do you suppose he could have heard
that I was in this clique of yours?"

"Not unless you told him yourself."

Cressler stood up, clearing his throat.

"I have not told him, Mr. Crookes," he said. "You would do me an
especial favor if you would keep it from the public, from everybody,
from Mr. Jadwin, that I was a member of this ring."

Crookes swung his chair around and faced his desk.

"Hell! You don't suppose I'm going to talk, do you?"

"Well.... Good-morning, Mr. Crookes."

"Good-morning."

Left alone, Crookes took a turn the length of the room. Then he paused
in the middle of the floor, looking down thoughtfully at his trim,
small feet.

"Jadwin!" he muttered. "Hm! ... Think you're boss of the boat now,
don't you? Think I'm done with you, hey? Oh, yes, you'll run a corner
in wheat, will you? Well, here's a point for your consideration Mr.
Curtis Jadwin, 'Don't get so big that all the other fellows can see
you--they throw bricks.'"

He sat down in his chair, and passed a thin and delicate hand across
his lean mouth.

"No," he muttered, "I won't try to kill you any more. You've cornered
wheat, have you? All right.... Your own wheat, my smart Aleck, will do
all the killing I want."

Then at last the news of the great corner, authoritative, definite,
went out over all the country, and promptly the figure and name of
Curtis Jadwin loomed suddenly huge and formidable in the eye of the
public. There was no wheat on the Chicago market. He, the great man,
the "Napoleon of La Salle Street," had it all. He sold it or hoarded
it, as suited his pleasure. He dictated the price to those men who must
buy it of him to fill their contracts. His hand was upon the indicator
of the wheat dial of the Board of Trade, and he moved it through as
many or as few of the degrees of the circle as he chose.

The newspapers, not only of Chicago, but of every city in the Union,
exploited him for "stories." The history of his corner, how he had
effected it, its chronology, its results, were told and retold, till
his name was familiar in the homes and at the firesides of uncounted
thousands. "Anecdotes" were circulated concerning him,
interviews--concocted for the most part in the editorial rooms--were
printed. His picture appeared. He was described as a cool, calm man of
steel, with a cold and calculating grey eye, "piercing as an eagle's";
as a desperate gambler, bold as a buccaneer, his eye black and fiery--a
veritable pirate; as a mild, small man with a weak chin and a
deprecatory demeanour; as a jolly and roistering "high roller,"
addicted to actresses, suppers, and to bathing in champagne.

In the Democratic press he was assailed as little better than a thief,
vituperated as an oppressor of the people, who ground the faces of the
poor, and battened in the luxury wrung from the toiling millions. The
Republican papers spoke solemnly of the new era of prosperity upon
which the country was entering, referred to the stimulating effect of
the higher prices upon capitalised industry, and distorted the
situation to an augury of a sweeping Republican victory in the next
Presidential campaign.

Day in and day out Gretry's office, where Jadwin now fixed his
headquarters, was besieged. Reporters waited in the anteroom for whole
half days to get but a nod and a word from the great man. Promoters,
inventors, small financiers, agents, manufacturers, even "crayon
artists" and horse dealers, even tailors and yacht builders rubbed
shoulders with one another outside the door marked "Private."

Farmers from Iowa or Kansas come to town to sell their little quotas of
wheat at the prices they once had deemed impossible, shook his hand on
the street, and urged him to come out and see "God's own country."

But once, however, an entire deputation of these wheat growers found
their way into the sanctum. They came bearing a presentation cup of
silver, and their spokesman, stammering and horribly embarrassed in
unwonted broadcloth and varnished boots, delivered a short address. He
explained that all through the Middle West, all through the wheat
belts, a great wave of prosperity was rolling because of Jadwin's
corner. Mortgages were being paid off, new and improved farming
implements were being bought, new areas seeded new live stock acquired.
The men were buying buggies again, the women parlor melodeons, houses
and homes were going up; in short, the entire farming population of the
Middle West was being daily enriched. In a letter that Jadwin received
about this time from an old fellow living in "Bates Corners," Kansas,
occurred the words:

"--and, sir, you must know that not a night passes that my little girl,
now going on seven, sir, and the brightest of her class in the county
seat grammar school, does not pray to have God bless Mister Jadwin, who
helped papa save the farm."

If there was another side, if the brilliancy of his triumph yet threw a
shadow behind it, Jadwin could ignore it. It was far from him, he could
not see it. Yet for all this a story came to him about this time that
for long would not be quite forgotten. It came through Corthell, but
very indirectly, passed on by a dozen mouths before it reached his ears.

It told of an American, an art student, who at the moment was on a
tramping tour through the north of Italy. It was an ugly story. Jadwin
pished and pshawed, refusing to believe it, condemning it as ridiculous
exaggeration, but somehow it appealed to an uncompromising sense of the
probable; it rang true.

"And I met this boy," the student had said, "on the high road, about a
kilometre outside of Arezzo. He was a fine fellow of twenty or
twenty-two. He knew nothing of the world. England he supposed to be
part of the mainland of Europe. For him Cavour and Mazzini were still
alive. But when I announced myself American, he roused at once.

"'Ah, American,' he said. 'We know of your compatriot, then, here in
Italy--this Jadwin of Chicago, who has bought all the wheat. We have no
more bread. The loaf is small as the fist, and costly. We cannot buy
it, we have no money. For myself, I do not care. I am young. I can eat
lentils and cress. But' and here his voice was a whisper--'but my
mother--my mother!'"

"It's a lie!" Jadwin cried. "Of course it's a lie. Good God, if I were
to believe every damned story the papers print about me these days I'd
go insane."

Yet when he put up the price of wheat to a dollar and twenty cents, the
great flour mills of Minnesota and Wisconsin stopped grinding, and
finding a greater profit in selling the grain than in milling it, threw
their stores upon the market. Though the bakers did not increase the
price of their bread as a consequence of this, the loaf--even in
Chicago, even in the centre of that great Middle West that weltered in
the luxury of production--was smaller, and from all the poorer
districts of the city came complaints, protests, and vague grumblings
of discontent.

On a certain Monday, about the middle of May, Jadwin sat at Gretry's
desk (long since given over to his use), in the office on the ground
floor of the Board of Trade, swinging nervously back and forth in the
swivel chair, drumming his fingers upon the arms, and glancing
continually at the clock that hung against the opposite wall. It was
about eleven in the morning. The Board of Trade vibrated with the vast
trepidation of the Pit, that for two hours had spun and sucked, and
guttered and disgorged just overhead. The waiting-room of the office
was more than usually crowded. Parasites of every description polished
the walls with shoulder and elbow. Millionaires and beggars jostled one
another about the doorway. The vice-president of a bank watched the
door of the private office covertly; the traffic manager of a railroad
exchanged yarns with a group of reporters while awaiting his turn.

As Gretry, the great man's lieutenant, hurried through the anteroom,
conversation suddenly ceased, and half a dozen of the more impatient
sprang forward. But the broker pushed his way through the crowd,
shaking his head, excusing himself as best he might, and entering the
office, closed the door behind him.

At the clash of the lock Jadwin started half-way from his chair, then
recognising the broker, sank back with a quick breath.

"Why don't you knock, or something, Sam?" he exclaimed. "Might as well
kill a man as scare him to death. Well, how goes it?"

"All right. I've fixed the warehouse crowd--and we just about 'own' the
editorial and news sheets of these papers." He threw a memorandum down
upon the desk. "I'm off again now. Got an appointment with the
Northwestern crowd in ten minutes. Has Hargus or Scannel shown up yet?"

"Hargus is always out in your customers' room," answered Jadwin. "I can
get him whenever I want him. But Scannel has not shown up yet. I
thought when we put up the price again Friday we'd bring him in. I
thought you'd figured out that he couldn't stand that rise."

"He can't stand it," answered Gretry. "He'll be in to see you to-morrow
or next day."

"To-morrow or next day won't do," answered Jadwin. "I want to put the
knife into him to-day. You go up there on the floor and put the price
up another cent. That will bring him, or I'll miss my guess."

Gretry nodded. "All right," he said, "it's your game. Shall I see you
at lunch?"

"Lunch! I can't eat. But I'll drop around and hear what the
Northwestern people had to say to you."

A few moments after Gretry had gone Jadwin heard the ticker on the
other side of the room begin to chatter furiously; and at the same time
he could fancy that the distant thunder of the Pit grew suddenly more
violent, taking on a sharper, shriller note. He looked at the tape. The
one-cent rise had been effected.

"You will hold out, will you, you brute?" muttered Jadwin. "See how you
like that now." He took out his watch. "You'll be running in to me in
just about ten minutes' time."

He turned about, and calling a clerk, gave orders to have Hargus found
and brought to him.

When the old fellow appeared Jadwin jumped up and gave him his hand as
he came slowly forward.

His rusty top hat was in his hand; from the breast pocket of his faded
and dirty frock coat a bundle of ancient newspapers protruded. His
shoestring tie straggled over his frayed shirt front, while at his
wrist one of his crumpled cuffs, detached from the sleeve, showed the
bare, thin wrist between cloth and linen, and encumbered the fingers in
which he held the unlit stump of a fetid cigar.

Evidently bewildered as to the cause of this summons, he looked up
perplexed at Jadwin as he came up, out of his dim, red-lidded eyes.

"Sit down, Hargus. Glad to see you," called Jadwin.

"Hey?"

The voice was faint and a little querulous.

"I say, sit down. Have a chair. I want to have a talk with you. You ran
a corner in wheat once yourself."

"Oh.... Wheat."

"Yes, your corner. You remember?"

"Yes. Oh, that was long ago. In seventy-eight it was--the September
option. And the Board made wheat in the cars 'regular.'"

His voice trailed off into silence, and he looked vaguely about on the
floor of the room, sucking in his cheeks, and passing the edge of one
large, osseous hand across his lips.

"Well, you lost all your money that time, I believe. Scannel, your
partner, sold out on you."

"Hey? It was in seventy-eight.... The secretary of the Board announced
our suspension at ten in the morning. If the Board had not voted to
make wheat in the cars 'regular'--"

He went on and on, in an impassive monotone, repeating, word for word,
the same phrases he had used for so long that they had lost all
significance.

"Well," broke in Jadwin, at last, "it was Scannel your partner, did for
you. Scannel, I say. You know, Dave Scannel."

The old man looked at him confusedly. Then, as the name forced itself
upon the atrophied brain, there flashed, for one instant, into the
pale, blurred eye, a light, a glint, a brief, quick spark of an old,
long-forgotten fire. It gleamed there an instant, but the next sank
again.

Plaintively, querulously he repeated:

"It was in seventy-eight.... I lost three hundred thousand dollars."

"How's your little niece getting on?" at last demanded Jadwin.

"My little niece--you mean Lizzie? ... Well and happy, well and happy.
I--I got"--he drew a thick bundle of dirty papers from his pocket,
envelopes, newspapers, circulars, and the like--"I--I--I got, I got her
picture here somewheres."

"Yes, yes, I know, I know," cried Jadwin. "I've seen it. You showed it
to me yesterday, you remember."

"I--I got it here somewheres ... somewheres," persisted the old man,
fumbling and peering, and as he spoke the clerk from the doorway
announced:

"Mr. Scannel."

This latter was a large, thick man, red-faced, with white, short
whiskers of an almost wiry texture. He had a small, gimlet-like eye,
enormous, hairy ears, wore a "sack" suit, a highly polished top hat,
and entered the office with a great flourish of manner and a defiant
trumpeting "Well, how do, Captain?"

Jadwin nodded, glancing up under his scowl.

"Hello!" he said.

The other subsided into a chair, and returned scowl for scowl.

"Oh, well," he muttered, "if that's your style."

He had observed Hargus sitting by the other side of the desk, still
fumbling and mumbling in his dirty memoranda, but he gave no sign of
recognition. There was a moment's silence, then in a voice from which
all the first bluffness was studiously excluded, Scannel said:

"Well, you've rung the bell on me. I'm a sucker. I know it. I'm one of
the few hundred other God-damned fools that you've managed to catch out
shooting snipe. Now what I want to know is, how much is it going to
cost me to get out of your corner? What's the figure? What do you say?"

"I got a good deal to say," remarked Jadwin, scowling again.

But Hargus had at last thrust a photograph into his hands.

"There it is," he said. "That's it. That's Lizzie."

Jadwin took the picture without looking at it, and as he continued to
speak, held it in his fingers, and occasionally tapped it upon the desk.

"I know. I know, Hargus," he answered. "I got a good deal to say, Mr.
David Scannel. Do you see this old man here?"

"Oh-h, cut it out!" growled the other.

"It's Hargus. You know him very well. You used to know him better. You
and he together tried to swing a great big deal in September wheat once
upon a time. Hargus! I say, Hargus!"

The old man looked up.

"Here's the man we were talking about, Scannel, you remember. Remember
Dave Scannel, who was your partner in seventy-eight? Look at him. This
is him now. He's a rich man now. Remember Scannel?"

Hargus, his bleared old eyes blinking and watering, looked across the
desk at the other.

"Oh, what's the game?" exclaimed Scannel. "I ain't here on exhibition,
I guess. I--"

But he was interrupted by a sharp, quick gasp that all at once issued
from Hargus's trembling lips. The old man said no word, but he leaned
far forward in his chair, his eyes fixed upon Scannel, his breath
coming short, his fingers dancing against his chin.

"Yes, that's him, Hargus," said Jadwin. "You and he had a big deal on
your hands a long time ago," he continued, turning suddenly upon
Scannel, a pulse in his temple beginning to beat. "A big deal, and you
sold him out."

"It's a lie!" cried the other.

Jadwin beat his fist upon the arm of his chair. His voice was almost a
shout as he answered:

"_You--sold--him--out._ I know you. I know the kind of bug you are. You
ruined him to save your own dirty hide, and all his life since poor old
Hargus has been living off the charity of the boys down here, pinched
and hungry and neglected, and getting on, God knows how; yes, and
supporting his little niece, too, while you, you have been loafing
about your clubs, and sprawling on your steam yachts, and dangling
round after your kept women--on the money you stole from him."

Scannel squared himself in his chair, his little eyes twinkling.

"Look here," he cried, furiously, "I don't take that kind of talk from
the best man that ever wore shoe-leather. Cut it out, understand? Cut
it out."

Jadwin's lower jaw set with a menacing click; aggressive, masterful, he
leaned forward.

"You interrupt me again," he declared, "and you'll go out of that door
a bankrupt. You listen to me and take my orders. That's what you're
here to-day for. If you think you can get your wheat somewheres else,
suppose you try."

Scannel sullenly settled himself in his place. He did not answer.
Hargus, his eye wandering again, looked distressfully from one to the
other. Then Jadwin, after shuffling among the papers of his desk, fixed
a certain memorandum with his glance. All at once, whirling about and
facing the other, he said quickly:

"You are short to our firm two million bushels at a dollar a bushel."

"Nothing of the sort," cried the other. "It's a million and a half."

Jadwin could not forbear a twinkle of grim humour as he saw how easily
Scannel had fallen into the trap.

"You're short a million and a half, then," he repeated. "I'll let you
have six hundred thousand of it at a dollar and a half a bushel."

"A dollar and a half! Why, my God, man! Oh well"--Scannel spread out
his hands nonchalantly--"I shall simply go into bankruptcy--just as you
said."

"Oh, no, you won't," replied Jadwin, pushing back and crossing his
legs. "I've had your financial standing computed very carefully, Mr.
Scannel. You've got the ready money. I know what you can stand without
busting, to the fraction of a cent."

"Why, it's ridiculous. That handful of wheat will cost me three hundred
thousand dollars."

"Pre-cisely."

And then all at once Scannel surrendered. Stony, imperturbable, he drew
his check book from his pocket.

"Make it payable to bearer," said Jadwin.

The other complied, and Jadwin took the check and looked it over
carefully.

"Now," he said, "watch here, Dave Scannel. You see this check? And
now," he added, thrusting it into Hargus's hands, "you see where it
goes. There's the principal of your debt paid off."

"The principal?"

"You haven't forgotten the interest, have you? won't compound it,
because that might bust you. But six per cent interest on three hundred
thousand since 1878, comes to--let's see--three hundred and sixty
thousand dollars. And you still owe me nine hundred thousand bushels of
wheat." He ciphered a moment on a sheet of note paper. "If I charge you
a dollar and forty a bushel for that wheat, it will come to that sum
exactly.... Yes, that's correct. I'll let you have the balance of that
wheat at a dollar forty. Make the check payable to bearer as before."

For a second Scannel hesitated, his face purple, his teeth grinding
together, then muttering his rage beneath his breath, opened his check
book again.

"Thank you," said Jadwin as he took the check.

He touched his call bell.

"Kinzie," he said to the clerk who answered it, "after the close of the
market to-day send delivery slips for a million and a half wheat to Mr.
Scannel. His account with us has been settled."

Jadwin turned to the old man, reaching out the second check to him.

"Here you are, Hargus. Put it away carefully. You see what it is, don't
you? Buy your Lizzie a little gold watch with a hundred of it, and tell
her it's from Curtis Jadwin, with his compliments.... What, going,
Scannel? Well, good-by to you, sir, and hey!" he called after him,
"please don't slam the door as you go out."

But he dodged with a defensive gesture as the pane of glass almost
leaped from its casing, as Scannel stormed across the threshold.

Jadwin turned to Hargus, with a solemn wink.

"He did slam it after all, didn't he?"

The old fellow, however, sat fingering the two checks in silence. Then
he looked up at Jadwin, scared and trembling.

"I--I don't know," he murmured, feebly. "I am a very old man.
This--this is a great deal of money, sir. I--I can't say; I--I don't
know. I'm an old man ... an old man."

"You won't lose 'em, now?"

"No, no. I'll deposit them at once in the Illinois Trust. I shall
ask--I should like."

"I'll send a clerk with you."

"Yes, yes, that is about what--what I--what I was about to suggest. But
I must say, Mr. Jadwin--"

He began to stammer his thanks. But Jadwin cut him off. Rising, he
guided Hargus to the door, one hand on his shoulder, and at the
entrance to the outer office called a clerk.

"Take Mr. Hargus over to the Illinois Trust, Kinzie, and introduce him.
He wants to open an account."

The old man started off with the clerk, but before Jadwin had reseated
himself at his desk was back again. He was suddenly all excitement, as
if a great idea had abruptly taken possession of him. Stealthy,
furtive, he glanced continually over his shoulder as he spoke, talking
in whispers, a trembling hand shielding his lips.

"You--you are in--you are in control now," he said. "You could
give--hey? You could give me--just a little--just one word. A word
would be enough, hey? hey? Just a little tip. My God, I could make
fifty dollars by noon."

"Why, man, I've just given you about half a million."

"Half a million? I don't know. But"--he plucked Jadwin tremulously by
the sleeve--"just a word," he begged. "Hey, just yes or no."

"Haven't you enough with those two checks?"

"Those checks? Oh, I know, I know, I know I'll salt 'em down. Yes, in
the Illinois Trust. I won't touch 'em--not those. But just a little tip
now, hey?"

"Not a word. Not a word. Take him along, Kinzie."

One week after this Jadwin sold, through his agents in Paris, a
tremendous line of "cash" wheat at a dollar and sixty cents the bushel.
By now the foreign demand was a thing almost insensate. There was no
question as to the price. It was, "Give us the wheat, at whatever cost,
at whatever figure, at whatever expense; only that it be rushed to our
markets with all the swiftness of steam and steel." At home, upon the
Chicago Board of Trade, Jadwin was as completely master of the market
as of his own right hand. Everything stopped when he raised a finger;
everything leaped to life with the fury of obsession when he nodded his
head. His wealth increased with such stupefying rapidity, that at no
time was he able to even approximate the gains that accrued to him
because of his corner. It was more than twenty million, and less than
fifty million. That was all he knew. Nor were the everlasting hills
more secure than he from the attack of any human enemy. Out of the
ranks of the conquered there issued not so much as a whisper of
hostility. Within his own sphere no Czar, no satrap, no Caesar ever
wielded power more resistless.

"Sam," said Curtis Jadwin, at length to the broker, "Sam, nothing in
the world can stop me now. They think I've been doing something big,
don't they, with this corner. Why, I've only just begun. This is just a
feeler. Now I'm going to let 'em know just how big a gun C. J. really
is. I'm going to swing this deal right over into July. I'm going to buy
in my July shorts."

The two men were in Gretry's office as usual, and as Jadwin spoke, the
broker glanced up incredulously.

"Now you are for sure crazy."

Jadwin jumped to his feet.

"Crazy!" he vociferated. "Crazy! What do you mean? Crazy! For God's
sake, Sam, what--Look here, don't use that word to me. I--it don't
suit. What I've done isn't exactly the work of--of--takes brains, let
me tell you. And look here, look here, I say, I'm going to swing this
deal right over into July. Think I'm going to let go now, when I've
just begun to get a real grip on things? A pretty fool I'd look like to
get out now--even if I could. Get out? How are we going to unload our
big line of wheat without breaking the price on us? No, sir, not much.
This market is going up to two dollars." He smote a knee with his
clinched fist, his face going abruptly crimson. "I say two dollars," he
cried. "Two dollars, do you hear? It will go there, you'll see, you'll
see."

"Reports on the new crop will begin to come in in June." Gretry's
warning was almost a cry. "The price of wheat is so high now, that God
knows how many farmers will plant it this spring. You may have to take
care of a record harvest."

"I know better," retorted Jadwin. "I'm watching this thing. You can't
tell me anything about it. I've got it all figured out, your 'new
crop.'"

"Well, then you're the Lord Almighty himself."

"I don't like that kind of joke. I don't like that kind of joke. It's
blasphemous," exclaimed Jadwin. "Go, get it off on Crookes. He'd
appreciate it, but I don't. But this new crop now--look here."

And for upwards of two hours Jadwin argued and figured, and showed to
Gretry endless tables of statistics to prove that he was right.

But at the end Gretry shook his head. Calmly and deliberately he spoke
his mind.

"J., listen to me. You've done a big thing. I know it, and I know, too,
that there've been lots of times in the last year or so when I've been
wrong and you've been right. But now, J., so help me God, we've reached
our limit. Wheat is worth a dollar and a half to-day, and not one cent
more. Every eighth over that figure is inflation. If you run it up to
two dollars--"

"It will go there of itself, I tell you."

"--if you run it up to two dollars, it will be that top-heavy, that the
littlest kick in the world will knock it over. Be satisfied now with
what you got. J., it's common sense. Close out your long line of May,
and then stop. Suppose the price does break a little, you'd still make
your pile. But swing this deal over into July, and it's ruin, ruin. I
may have been mistaken before, but I know I'm right now. And do you
realise, J., that yesterday in the Pit there were some short sales?
There's some of them dared to go short of wheat against you--even at
the very top of your corner--and there was more selling this morning.
You've always got to buy, you know. If they all began to sell to you at
once they'd bust you. It's only because you've got 'em so scared--I
believe--that keeps 'em from it. But it looks to me as though this
selling proved that they were picking up heart. They think they can get
the wheat from the farmers when harvesting begins. And I tell you, J.,
you've put the price of wheat so high, that the wheat areas are
extending all over the country."

"You're scared," cried Jadwin. "That's the trouble with you, Sam.
You've been scared from the start. Can't you see, man, can't you see
that this market is a regular tornado?"

"I see that the farmers all over the country are planting wheat as
they've never planted it before. Great Scott, J., you're fighting
against the earth itself."

"Well, we'll fight it, then. I'll stop those hayseeds. What do I own
all these newspapers and trade journals for? We'll begin sending out
reports to-morrow that'll discourage any big wheat planting."

"And then, too," went on Gretry, "here's another point. Do you know,
you ought to be in bed this very minute. You haven't got any nerves
left at all. You acknowledge yourself that you don't sleep any more.
And, good Lord, the moment any one of us contradicts you, or opposes
you, you go off the handle to beat the Dutch. I know it's a strain, old
man, but you want to keep yourself in hand if you go on with this
thing. If you should break down now--well, I don't like to think of
what would happen. You ought to see a doctor."

"Oh-h, fiddlesticks," exclaimed Jadwin, "I'm all right. I don't need a
doctor, haven't time to see one anyhow. Don't you bother about me. I'm
all right."

Was he? That same night, the first he had spent under his own roof for
four days, Jadwin lay awake till the clocks struck four, asking himself
the same question. No, he was not all right. Something was very wrong
with him, and whatever it might be, it was growing worse. The sensation
of the iron clamp about his head was almost permanent by now, and just
the walk between his room at the Grand Pacific and Gretry's office left
him panting and exhausted. Then had come vertigoes and strange,
inexplicable qualms, as if he were in an elevator that sank under him
with terrifying rapidity.

Going to and fro in La Salle Street, or sitting in Gretry's office,
where the roar of the Pit dinned forever in his ears, he could forget
these strange symptoms. It was the night he dreaded--the long hours he
must spend alone. The instant the strain was relaxed, the gallop of
hoofs, or as the beat of ungovernable torrents began in his brain.
Always the beat dropped to the same cadence, always the pulse spelled
out the same words:

"Wheat-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-wheat."

And of late, during the long and still watches of the night, while he
stared at the ceiling, or counted the hours that must pass before his
next dose of bromide of potassium, a new turn had been given to the
screw.

This was a sensation, the like of which he found it difficult to
describe. But it seemed to be a slow, tense crisping of every tiniest
nerve in his body. It would begin as he lay in bed--counting
interminably to get himself to sleep--between his knees and ankles, and
thence slowly spread to every part of him, creeping upward, from loin
to shoulder, in a gradual wave of torture that was not pain, yet
infinitely worse. A dry, pringling aura as of billions of minute
electric shocks crept upward over his flesh, till it reached his head,
where it seemed to culminate in a white flash, which he felt rather
than saw.

His body felt strange and unfamiliar to him. It seemed to have no
weight, and at times his hands would appear to swell swiftly to the
size of mammoth boxing-gloves, so that he must rub them together to
feel that they were his own.

He put off consulting a doctor from day to day, alleging that he had
not the time. But the real reason, though he never admitted it, was the
fear that the doctor might tell him what he guessed to be the truth.

Were his wits leaving him? The horror of the question smote through him
like the drive of a javelin. What was to happen? What nameless calamity
impended?

"Wheat-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-wheat."

His watch under his pillow took up the refrain. How to grasp the
morrow's business, how control the sluice gates of that torrent he had
unchained, with this unspeakable crumbling and disintegrating of his
faculties going on?

Jaded, feeble, he rose to meet another day. He drove down town, trying
not to hear the beat of his horses' hoofs. Dizzy and stupefied, he
gained Gretry's office, and alone with his terrors sat in the chair
before his desk, waiting, waiting.

Then far away the great gong struck. Just over his head, penetrating
wood and iron, he heard the mighty throe of the Pit once more
beginning, moving. And then, once again, the limp and ravelled fibres
of being grew tight with a wrench. Under the stimulus of the roar of
the maelstrom, the flagging, wavering brain righted itself once more,
and--how, he himself could not say--the business of the day was
despatched, the battle was once more urged. Often he acted upon what he
knew to be blind, unreasoned instinct. Judgment, clear reasoning, at
times, he felt, forsook him. Decisions that involved what seemed to be
the very stronghold of his situation, had to be taken without a
moment's warning. He decided for or against without knowing why. Under
his feet fissures opened. He must take the leap without seeing the
other edge. Somehow he always landed upon his feet; somehow his great,
cumbersome engine, lurching, swaying, in spite of loosened joints,
always kept the track.

Luck, his golden goddess, the genius of glittering wings, was with him
yet. Sorely tried, flouted even she yet remained faithful, lending a
helping hand to lost and wandering judgment.

So the month of May drew to its close. Between the twenty-fifth and the
thirtieth Jadwin covered his July shortage, despite Gretry's protests
and warnings. To him they seemed idle enough. He was too rich, too
strong now to fear any issue. Daily the profits of the corner
increased. The unfortunate shorts were wrung dry and drier. In Gretry's
office they heard their sentences, and as time went on, and Jadwin
beheld more and more of these broken speculators, a vast contempt for
human nature grew within him.

Some few of his beaten enemies were resolute enough, accepting defeat
with grim carelessness, or with sphinx-like indifference, or even with
airy jocularity. But for the most part their alert, eager deference,
their tame subservience, the abject humility and debasement of their
bent shoulders drove Jadwin to the verge of self-control. He grew to
detest the business; he regretted even the defiant brutality of
Scannel, a rascal, but none the less keeping his head high. The more
the fellows cringed to him, the tighter he wrenched the screw. In a few
cases he found a pleasure in relenting entirely, selling his wheat to
the unfortunates at a price that left them without loss; but in the end
the business hardened his heart to any distress his mercilessness might
entail. He took his profits as a Bourbon took his taxes, as if by right
of birth. Somewhere, in a long-forgotten history of his brief school
days, he had come across a phrase that he remembered now, by some
devious and distant process of association, and when he heard of the
calamities that his campaign had wrought, of the shipwrecked fortunes
and careers that were sucked down by the Pit, he found it possible to
say, with a short laugh, and a lift of one shoulder:

_"Vae victis."_

His wife he saw but seldom. Occasionally they breakfasted together;
more often they met at dinner. But that was all. Jadwin's life by now
had come to be so irregular, and his few hours of sleep so precious and
so easily disturbed, that he had long since occupied a separate
apartment.

What Laura's life was at this time he no longer knew. She never spoke
of it to him; never nowadays complained of loneliness. When he saw her
she appeared to be cheerful. But this very cheerfulness made him
uneasy, and at times, through the murk of the chaff of wheat, through
the bellow of the Pit, and the crash of collapsing fortunes there
reached him a suspicion that all was not well with Laura.

Once he had made an abortive attempt to break from the turmoil of La
Salle Street and the Board of Trade, and, for a time at least, to get
back to the old life they both had loved--to get back, in a word, to
her. But the consequences had been all but disastrous. Now he could not
keep away.

"Corner wheat!" he had exclaimed to her, the following day. "Corner
wheat! It's the wheat that has cornered me. It's like holding a wolf by
the ears, bad to hold on, but worse to let go."

But absorbed, blinded, deafened by the whirl of things, Curtis Jadwin
could not see how perilously well grounded had been his faint suspicion
as to Laura's distress.

On the day after her evening with her husband in the art gallery, the
evening when Gretry had broken in upon them like a courier from the
front, Laura had risen from her bed to look out upon a world suddenly
empty.

Corthell she had sent from her forever. Jadwin was once more snatched
from her side. Where, now, was she to turn? Jadwin had urged her to go
to the country--to their place at Geneva Lake--but she refused. She saw
the change that had of late come over her husband, saw his lean face,
the hot, tired eyes, the trembling fingers and nervous gestures.
Vaguely she imagined approaching disaster. If anything happened to
Curtis, her place was at his side.

During the days that Jadwin and Crookes were at grapples Laura found
means to occupy her mind with all manner of small activities. She
overhauled her wardrobe, planned her summer gowns, paid daily visits to
her dressmakers, rode and drove in the park, till every turn of the
roads, every tree, every bush was familiar, to the point of wearisome
contempt.

Then suddenly she began to indulge in a mania for old books and first
editions. She haunted the stationers and second-hand bookstores,
studied the authorities, followed the auctions, and bought right and
left, with reckless extravagance. But the taste soon palled upon her.
With so much money at her command there was none of the spice of the
hunt in the affair. She had but to express a desire for a certain
treasure, and forthwith it was put into her hand.

She found it so in all other things. Her desires were gratified with an
abruptness that killed the zest of them. She felt none of the joy of
possession; the little personal relation between her and her belongings
vanished away. Her gowns, beautiful beyond all she had ever imagined,
were of no more interest to her than a drawerful of outworn gloves. She
bought horses till she could no longer tell them apart; her carriages
crowded three supplementary stables in the neighbourhood. Her flowers,
miracles of laborious cultivation, filled the whole house with their
fragrance. Wherever she went deference moved before her like a guard;
her beauty, her enormous wealth, her wonderful horses, her exquisite
gowns made of her a cynosure, a veritable queen.

And hardly a day passed that Laura Jadwin, in the solitude of her own
boudoir, did not fling her arms wide in a gesture of lassitude and
infinite weariness, crying out:

"Oh, the ennui and stupidity of all this wretched life!"

She could look forward to nothing. One day was like the next. No one
came to see her. For all her great house and for all her money, she had
made but few friends. Her "grand manner" had never helped her
popularity. She passed her evenings alone in her "upstairs
sitting-room," reading, reading till far into the night, or, the lights
extinguished, sat at her open window listening to the monotonous lap
and wash of the lake.

At such moments she thought of the men who had come into her life--of
the love she had known almost from her girlhood. She remembered her
first serious affair. It had been with the impecunious theological
student who was her tutor. He had worn glasses and little black side
whiskers, and had implored her to marry him and come to China, where he
was to be a missionary. Every time that he came he had brought her a
new book to read, and he had taken her for long walks up towards the
hills where the old powder mill stood. Then it was the young
lawyer--the "brightest man in Worcester County"--who took her driving
in a hired buggy, sent her a multitude of paper novels (which she never
read), with every love passage carefully underscored, and wrote very
bad verse to her eyes and hair, whose "velvet blackness was the shadow
of a crown." Or, again, it was the youthful cavalry officer met in a
flying visit to her Boston aunt, who loved her on first sight, gave her
his photograph in uniform and a bead belt of Apache workmanship. He was
forever singing to her--to a guitar accompaniment--an old love song:

"At midnight hour Beneath the tower He murmured soft, 'Oh nothing
fearing With thine own true soldier fly.'"

Then she had come to Chicago, and Landry Court, with his bright
enthusiasms and fine exaltations had loved her. She had never taken him
very seriously but none the less it had been very sweet to know his
whole universe depended upon the nod of her head, and that her
influence over him had been so potent, had kept him clean and loyal and
honest.

And after this Corthell and Jadwin had come into her life, the artist
and the man of affairs. She remembered Corthell's quiet, patient,
earnest devotion of those days before her marriage. He rarely spoke to
her of his love, but by some ingenious subtlety he had filled her whole
life with it. His little attentions, his undemonstrative solicitudes
came precisely when and where they were most appropriate. He had never
failed her. Whenever she had needed him, or even, when through caprice
or impulse she had turned to him, it always had been to find that long
since he had carefully prepared for that very contingency. His
thoughtfulness of her had been a thing to wonder at. He remembered for
months, years even, her most trivial fancies, her unexpressed dislikes.
He knew her tastes, as if by instinct; he prepared little surprises for
her, and placed them in her way without ostentation, and quite as
matters of course. He never permitted her to be embarrassed; the little
annoying situations of the day's life he had smoothed away long before
they had ensnared her. He never was off his guard, never disturbed,
never excited.

And he amused her, he entertained her without seeming to do so. He made
her talk; he made her think. He stimulated and aroused her, so that she
herself talked and thought with a brilliancy that surprised herself. In
fine, he had so contrived that she associated him with everything that
was agreeable.

She had sent him away the first time, and he had gone without a murmur;
only to come back loyal as ever, silent, watchful, sympathetic, his
love for her deeper, stronger than before, and--as always
timely--bringing to her a companionship at the moment of all others
when she was most alone.

Now she had driven him from her again, and this time, she very well
knew, it was to be forever. She had shut the door upon this great love.

Laura stirred abruptly in her place, adjusting her hair with nervous
fingers.

And, last of all, it had been Jadwin, her husband. She rose and went to
the window, and stood there a long moment, looking off into the night
over the park. It was warm and very still. A few carriage lamps
glimpsed among the trees like fireflies. Along the walks and upon the
benches she could see the glow of white dresses and could catch the
sound of laughter. Far off somewhere in the shrubbery, she thought she
heard a band playing. To the northeast lay the lake, shimmering under
the moon, dotted here and there with the coloured lights of steamers.

She turned back into the room. The great house was still. From all its
suites of rooms, its corridors, galleries, and hallways there came no
sound. There was no one upon the same floor as herself. She had read
all her books. It was too late to go out--and there was no one to go
with. To go to bed was ridiculous. She was never more wakeful, never
more alive, never more ready to be amused, diverted, entertained.

She thought of the organ, and descending to the art gallery, played
Bach, Palestrina, and Stainer for an hour; then suddenly she started
from the console, with a sharp, impatient movement of her head.

"Why do I play this stupid music?" she exclaimed. She called a servant
and asked:

"Has Mr. Jadwin come in yet?"

"Mr. Gretry just this minute telephoned that Mr. Jadwin would not be
home to-night."

When the servant had gone out Laura, her lips compressed, flung up her
head. Her hands shut to hard fists, her eye flashed. Rigid, erect in
the middle of the floor, her arms folded, she uttered a smothered
exclamation over and over again under her breath.

All at once anger mastered her--anger and a certain defiant
recklessness, an abrupt spirit of revolt. She straightened herself
suddenly, as one who takes a decision. Then, swiftly, she went out of
the art gallery, and, crossing the hallway, entered the library and
opened a great writing-desk that stood in a recess under a small
stained window.

She pulled the sheets of note paper towards her and wrote a short
letter, directing the envelope to Sheldon Corthell, The Fine Arts
Building, Michigan Avenue.

"Call a messenger," she said to the servant who answered her ring, "and
have him take--or send him in here when he comes."

She rested the letter against the inkstand, and leaned back in her
chair, looking at it, her fingers plucking swiftly at the lace of her
dress. Her head was in a whirl. A confusion of thoughts, impulses,
desires, half-formed resolves, half-named regrets, swarmed and spun
about her. She felt as though she had all at once taken a leap--a leap
which had landed her in a place whence she could see a new and terrible
country, an unfamiliar place--terrible, yet beautiful--unexplored, and
for that reason all the more inviting, a place of shadows.

Laura rose and paced the floor, her hands pressed together over her
heart. She was excited, her cheeks flushed, a certain breathless
exhilaration came and went within her breast, and in place of the
intolerable ennui of the last days, there came over her a sudden, an
almost wild animation, and from out her black eyes there shot a kind of
furious gaiety.

But she was aroused by a step at the door. The messenger stood there, a
figure ridiculously inadequate for the intensity of all that was
involved in the issue of the hour--a weazened, stunted boy, in a
uniform many sizes too large.

Laura, seated at her desk, held the note towards him resolutely. Now
was no time to hesitate, to temporise. If she did not hold to her
resolve now, what was there to look forward to? Could one's life be
emptier than hers--emptier, more intolerable, more humiliating?

"Take this note to that address," she said, putting the envelope and a
coin in the boy's hand. "Wait for an answer."

The boy shut the letter in his book, which he thrust into his breast
pocket, buttoning his coat over it. He nodded and turned away.

Still seated, Laura watched him moving towards the door. Well, it was
over now. She had chosen. She had taken the leap. What new life was to
begin for her to-morrow? What did it all mean? With an inconceivable
rapidity her thoughts began racing through, her brain.

She did not move. Her hands, gripped tight together, rested upon the
desk before her. Without turning her head, she watched the retreating
messenger, from under her lashes. He passed out of the door, the
curtain fell behind him.

And only then, when the irrevocableness of the step was all but an
accomplished fact, came the reaction.

"Stop!" she cried, springing up. "Stop! Come back here. Wait a moment."

What had happened? She could neither understand nor explain. Somehow an
instant of clear vision had come, and in that instant a power within
her that was herself and not herself, and laid hold upon her will. No,
no, she could not, she could not, after all. She took the note back.

"I have changed my mind," she said, abruptly. "You may keep the money.
There is no message to be sent."

As soon as the boy had gone she opened the envelope and read what she
had written. But now the words seemed the work of another mind than her
own. They were unfamiliar; they were not the words of the Laura Jadwin
she knew. Why was it that from the very first hours of her acquaintance
with this man, and in every circumstance of their intimacy, she had
always acted upon impulse? What was there in him that called into being
all that was reckless in her?

And for how long was she to be able to control these impulses? This
time she had prevailed once more against that other impetuous self of
hers. Would she prevail the next time? And in these struggles, was she
growing stronger as she overcame, or weaker? She did not know. She tore
the note into fragments, and making a heap of them in the pen tray,
burned them carefully.

During the week following upon this, Laura found her trouble more than
ever keen. She was burdened with a new distress. The incident of the
note to Corthell, recalled at the last moment, had opened her eyes to
possibilities of the situation hitherto unguessed. She saw now what she
might be capable of doing in a moment of headstrong caprice, she saw
depths in her nature she had not plumbed. Whether these hidden pitfalls
were peculiarly hers, or whether they were common to all women placed
as she now found herself, she did not pause to inquire. She thought
only of results, and she was afraid.

But for the matter of that, Laura had long since passed the point of
deliberate consideration or reasoned calculation. The reaction had been
as powerful as the original purpose, and she was even yet struggling
blindly, intuitively.

For what she was now about to do she could give no reason, and the
motives for this final and supreme effort to conquer the league of
circumstances which hemmed her in were obscure. She did not even ask
what they were. She knew only that she was in trouble, and yet it was
to the cause of her distress that she addressed herself. Blindly she
turned to her husband; and all the woman in her roused itself, girded
itself, called up its every resource in one last test, in one ultimate
trial of strength between her and the terrible growing power of that
blind, soulless force that roared and guttered and sucked, down there
in the midst of the city.

She alone, one unaided woman, her only auxiliaries her beauty, her wit,
and the frayed, strained bands of a sorely tried love, stood forth like
a challenger, against Charybdis, joined battle with the Cloaca, held
back with her slim, white hands against the power of the maelstrom that
swung the Nations in its grip.

In the solitude of her room she took the resolve. Her troubles were
multiplying; she, too, was in the current, the end of which was a
pit--a pit black and without bottom. Once already its grip had seized
her, once already she had yielded to the insidious drift. Now suddenly
aware of a danger, she fought back, and her hands beating the air for
help, turned towards the greatest strength she knew.

"I want my husband," she cried, aloud, to the empty darkness of the
night. "I want my husband. I will have him; he is mine, he is mine.
There shall nothing take me from him; there shall nothing take him from
me."

Her first opportunity came upon a Sunday soon afterward. Jadwin,
wakeful all the Saturday night, slept a little in the forenoon, and
after dinner Laura came to him in his smoking-room, as he lay on the
leather lounge trying to read. His wife seated herself at a
writing-table in a corner of the room, and by and by began turning the
slips of a calendar that stood at her elbow. At last she tore off one
of the slips and held it up.

"Curtis."

"Well, old girl?"

"Do you see that date?"

He looked over to her.

"Do you see that date? Do you know of anything that makes that day
different--a little--from other days? It's June thirteenth. Do you
remember what June thirteenth is?"

Puzzled, he shook his head.

"No--no."

Laura took up a pen and wrote a few words in the space above the
printed figures reserved for memoranda. Then she handed the slip to her
husband, who read aloud what she had written.

"'Laura Jadwin's birthday.' Why, upon my word," he declared, sitting
upright. "So it is, so it is. June thirteenth, of course. And I was
beast enough not to realise it. Honey, I can't remember anything these
days, it seems."

"But you are going to remember this time?" she said. "You are not going
to forget it now. That evening is going to mark the beginning of--oh,
Curtis, it is going to be a new beginning of everything. You'll see.
I'm going to manage it. I don't know how, but you are going to love me
so that nothing, no business, no money, no wheat will ever keep you
from me. I will make you. And that evening, that evening of June
thirteenth is mine. The day your business can have you, but from six
o'clock on you are mine." She crossed the room quickly and took both
his hands in hers and knelt beside him. "It is mine," she said, "if you
love me. Do you understand, dear? You will come home at six o'clock,
and whatever happens--oh, if all La Salle Street should burn to the
ground, and all your millions of bushels of wheat with it--whatever
happens, you--will--not--leave--me--nor think of anything else but just
me, me. That evening is mine, and you will give it to me, just as I
have said. I won't remind you of it again. I won't speak of it again. I
will leave it to you. But--you will give me that evening if you love
me. Dear, do you see just what I mean? ... If you love me.... No--no
don't say a word, we won't talk about it at all. No, no, please. Not
another word. I don't want you to promise, or pledge yourself, or
anything like that. You've heard what I said--and that's all there is
about it. We'll talk of something else. By the way, have you seen Mr.
Cressler lately?"

"No," he said, falling into her mood. "No haven't seen Charlie in over
a month. Wonder what's become of him?"

"I understand he's been sick," she told him. "I met Mrs. Cressler the
other day, and she said she was bothered about him."

"Well, what's the matter with old Charlie?"

"She doesn't know, herself. He's not sick enough to go to bed, but he
doesn't or won't go down town to his business. She says she can see him
growing thinner every day. He keeps telling her he's all right, but for
all that, she says, she's afraid he's going to come down with some kind
of sickness pretty soon."

"Say," said Jadwin, "suppose we drop around to see them this afternoon?
Wouldn't you like to? I haven't seen him in over a month, as I say. Or
telephone them to come up and have dinner. Charlie's about as old a
friend as I have. We used to be together about every hour of the day
when we first came to Chicago. Let's go over to see him this afternoon
and cheer him up."

"No," said Laura, decisively. "Curtis, you must have one day of rest
out of the week. You are going to lie down all the rest of the
afternoon, and sleep if you can. I'll call on them to-morrow."

"Well, all right," he assented. "I suppose I ought to sleep if I can.
And then Sam is coming up here, by five. He's going to bring some
railroad men with him. We've got a lot to do. Yes, I guess, old girl,
I'll try to get forty winks before they get here. And, Laura," he
added, taking her hand as she rose to go, "Laura, this is the last lap.
In just another month now--oh, at the outside, six weeks--I'll have
closed the corner, and then, old girl, you and I will go somewheres,
anywhere you like, and then we'll have a good time together all the
rest of our lives--all the rest of our lives, honey. Good-by. Now I
think I can go to sleep."

She arranged the cushions under his head and drew the curtains close
over the windows, and went out, softly closing the door behind her. And
a half hour later, when she stole in to look at him, she found him
asleep at last, the tired eyes closed, and the arm, with its broad,
strong hand, resting under his head. She stood a long moment in the
middle of the room, looking down at him; and then slipped out as
noiselessly as she had come, the tears trembling on her eyelashes.

Laura Jadwin did not call on the Cresslers the next day, nor even the
next after that. For three days she kept indoors, held prisoner by a
series of petty incidents; now the delay in the finishing of her new
gowns, now by the excessive heat, now by a spell of rain. By Thursday,
however, at the beginning of the second week of the month, the storm
was gone, and the sun once more shone. Early in the afternoon Laura
telephoned to Mrs. Cressler.

"How are you and Mr. Cressler?" she asked. "I'm coming over to take
luncheon with you and your husband, if you will let me."

"Oh, Charlie is about the same, Laura," answered Mrs. Cressler's voice.
"I guess the dear man has been working too hard, that's all. Do come
over and cheer him up. If I'm not here when you come, you just make
yourself at home. I've got to go down town to see about railroad
tickets and all. I'm going to pack my old man right off to Oconomowoc
before I'm another day older. Made up my mind to it last night, and I
don't want him to be bothered with tickets or time cards, or baggage or
anything. I'll run down and do it all myself. You come right up
whenever you're ready and keep Charlie company. How's your husband,
Laura child?"

"Oh, Curtis is well," she answered. "He gets very tired at times."

"Well, I can understand it. Lands alive, child whatever are you going
to do with all your money? They tell me that J. has made millions in
the last three or four months. A man I was talking to last week said
his corner was the greatest thing ever known on the Chicago Board of
Trade. Well, good-by, Laura, come up whenever you're ready. I'll see
you at lunch. Charlie is right here. He says to give you his love." An
hour later Laura's victoria stopped in front of the Cressler's house,
and the little footman descended with the agility of a monkey, to
stand, soldier-like, at the steps, the lap robe over his arm.

Laura gave orders to have the victoria call for her at three, and ran
quickly up the front steps. The front entrance was open, the screen
door on the latch, and she entered without ceremony.

"Mrs. Cressler!" she called, as she stood in the hallway drawing off
her gloves. "Mrs. Cressler! Carrie, have you gone yet?"

But the maid, Annie, appeared at the head of the stairs, on the landing
of the second floor, a towel bound about her head, her duster in her
hand.

"Mrs. Cressler has gone out, Mrs. Jadwin," she said. "She said you was
to make yourself at home, and she'd be back by noon."

Laura nodded, and standing before the hatrack in the hall, took off her
hat and gloves, and folded her veil into her purse. The house was
old-fashioned, very homelike and spacious, cool, with broad halls and
wide windows. In the "front library," where Laura entered first, were
steel engravings of the style of the seventies, "whatnots" crowded with
shells, Chinese coins, lacquer boxes, and the inevitable sawfish bill.
The mantel was mottled white marble, and its shelf bore the usual
bronze and gilt clock, decorated by a female figure in classic
draperies, reclining against a globe. An oil painting of a mountain
landscape hung against one wall; and on a table of black walnut, with a
red marble slab, that stood between the front windows, were a
stereoscope and a rosewood music box.

The piano, an old style Chickering, stood diagonally across the far
corner of the room, by the closed sliding doors, and Laura sat down
here and began to play the "Mephisto Walzer," which she had been at
pains to learn since the night Corthell had rendered it on her great
organ in the art gallery.

But when she had played as much as she could remember of the music, she
rose and closed the piano, and pushed back the folding doors between
the room she was in and the "back library," a small room where Mrs.
Cressler kept her books of poetry.

As Laura entered the room she was surprised to see Mr. Cressler there,
seated in his armchair, his back turned toward her.

"Why, I didn't know you were here, Mr. Cressler," she said, as she came
up to him.

She laid her hand upon his arm. But Cressler was dead; and as Laura
touched him the head dropped upon the shoulder and showed the bullet
hole in the temple, just in front of the ear.




X


The suicide of Charles Cressler had occurred on the tenth of June, and
the report of it, together with the wretched story of his friend's
final surrender to a temptation he had never outlived, reached Curtis
Jadwin early on the morning of the eleventh.

He and Gretry were at their accustomed places in the latter's office,
and the news seemed to shut out all the sunshine that had been flooding
in through the broad plate-glass windows. After their first incoherent
horror, the two sat staring at each other, speechless.

"My God, my God," groaned Jadwin, as if in the throes of a deadly
sickness. "He was in the Crookes' ring, and we never knew it--I've
killed him, Sam. I might as well have held that pistol myself." He
stamped his foot, striking his fist across his forehead, "Great God--my
best friend--Charlie--Charlie Cressler! Sam, I shall go mad if this--if
this--"

"Steady, steady does it, J.," warned the broker, his hand upon his
shoulder, "we got to keep a grip on ourselves to-day. We've got a lot
to think of. We'll think about Charlie, later. Just now ... well it's
business now. Mathewson & Knight have called on us for margins--twenty
thousand dollars."

He laid the slip down in front of Jadwin, as he sat at his desk.

"Oh, this can wait?" exclaimed Jadwin. "Let it go till this afternoon.
I can't talk business now. Think of Carrie--Mrs. Cressler, I--"

"No," answered Gretry, reflectively and slowly, looking anywhere but in
Jadwin's face. "N--no, I don't think we'd better wait. I think we'd
better meet these margin calls promptly. It's always better to keep our
trades margined up."

Jadwin faced around.

"Why," he cried, "one would think, to hear you talk, as though there
was danger of me busting here at any hour."

Gretry did not answer. There was a moment's silence Then the broker
caught his principal's eye and held it a second.

"Well," he answered, "you saw how freely they sold to us in the Pit
yesterday. We've got to buy, and buy and buy, to keep our price up; and
look here, look at these reports from our correspondents--everything
points to a banner crop. There's been an increase of acreage
everywhere, because of our high prices. See this from Travers"--he
picked up a despatch and read: "'Preliminary returns of spring wheat in
two Dakotas, subject to revision, indicate a total area seeded of
sixteen million acres, which added to area in winter wheat states,
makes total of forty-three million, or nearly four million acres
greater than last year.'"

"Lot of damned sentiment," cried Jadwin, refusing to be convinced.
"Two-thirds of that wheat won't grade, and Europe will take nearly all
of it. What we ought to do is to send our men into the Pit and buy
another million, buy more than these fools can offer. Buy 'em to a
standstill."

"That takes a big pile of money then," said the broker. "More than we
can lay our hands on this morning. The best we can do is to take all
the Bears are offering, and support the market. The moment they offer
us wheat and we don't buy it, that moment--as you know,
yourself--they'll throw wheat at you by the train load, and the price
will break, and we with it."

"Think we'll get rid of much wheat to-day?" demanded Jadwin.

By now it had became vitally necessary for Jadwin to sell out his
holdings. His "long line" was a fearful expense, insurance and storage
charges were eating rapidly into the profits. He must get rid of the
load he was carrying, little by little. To do this at a profit, he had
adopted the expedient of flooding the Pit with buying orders just
before the close of the session, and then as the price rose under this
stimulus, selling quickly, before it had time to break. At first this
had succeeded. But of late he must buy more and more to keep the price
up, while the moment that he began to sell, the price began to drop; so
that now, in order to sell one bushel, he must buy two.

"Think we can unload much on 'em to-day?" repeated Jadwin.

"I don't know," answered Gretry, slowly and thoughtfully.
"Perhaps--there's a chance--. Frankly, J., I don't think we can. The
Pit is taking heart, that's the truth of it. Those fellows are not so
scared of us as they were a while ago. It's the new crop, as I've said
over and over again. We've put wheat so high, that all the farmers have
planted it, and are getting ready to dump it on us. The Pit knows that,
of course. Why, just think, they are harvesting in some places. These
fellows we've caught in the corner will be able to buy all the wheat
they want from the farmers if they can hold out a little longer. And
that Government report yesterday showed that the growing wheat is in
good condition."

"Nothing of the sort. It was a little over eighty-six."

"Good enough," declared Gretry, "good enough so that it broke the price
down to a dollar and twenty. Just think, we were at a dollar and a half
a little while ago."

"And we'll be at two dollars in another ten days, I tell you."

"Do you know how we stand, J.?" said the broker gravely. "Do you know
how we stand--financially? It's taken pretty nearly every cent of our
ready money to support this July market. Oh, we can figure out our
paper profits into the millions. We've got thirty, forty, fifty million
bushels of wheat that's worth over a dollar a bushel, but if we can't
sell it, we're none the better off--and that wheat is costing us six
thousand dollars a day. Hell, old man, where's the money going to come
from? You don't seem to realise that we are in a precarious condition."
He raised an arm, and pointed above him in the direction of the floor
of the Board of Trade.

"The moment we can't give our boys--Landry Court, and the rest of
'em--the moment we can't give them buying orders, that Pit will suck us
down like a chip. The moment we admit that we can't buy all the wheat
that's offered, there's the moment we bust."

"Well, we'll buy it," cried Jadwin, through his set teeth. "I'll show
those brutes. Look here, is it money we want? You cable to Paris and
offer two million, at--oh, at eight cents below the market; and to
Liverpool, and let 'em have twopence off on the same amount. They'll
snap it up as quick as look at it. That will bring in one lot of money,
and as for the rest, I guess I've got some real estate in this town
that's pretty good security."

"What--you going to mortgage part of that?"

"No," cried Jadwin, jumping up with a quick impatient gesture, "no, I'm
going to mortgage all of it, and I'm going to do it to-day--this
morning. If you say we're in a precarious condition, it's no time for
half measures. I'll have more money than you'll know what to do with in
the Illinois Trust by three o'clock this afternoon, and when the Board
opens to-morrow morning, I'm going to light into those cattle in the
Pit there, so as they'll think a locomotive has struck 'em. They'd
stand me off, would they? They'd try to sell me down; they won't cover
when I turn the screw! I'll show 'em, Sam Gretry. I'll run wheat up so
high before the next two days, that the Bank of England can't pull it
down, and before the Pit can catch its breath, I'll sell our long line,
and with the profits of that, by God! I'll run it up again. Two
dollars! Why, it will be two fifty here so quick you won't know how
it's happened. I've just been fooling with this crowd until now. Now,
I'm really going to get down to business."

Gretry did not answer. He twirled his pencil between his fingers, and
stared down at the papers on his desk. Once he started to speak, but
checked himself. Then at last he turned about.

"All right," he said, briskly. "We'll see what that will do."

"I'm going over to the Illinois Trust now," said Jadwin, putting on his
hat. "When your boys come in for their orders, tell them for to-day
just to support the market. If there's much wheat offered they'd better
buy it. Tell them not to let the market go below a dollar twenty. When
I come back we'll make out those cables."

That day Jadwin carried out his programme so vehemently announced to
his broker. Upon every piece of real estate that he owned he placed as
heavy a mortgage as the property would stand. Even his old house on
Michigan Avenue, even the "homestead" on North State Street were
encumbered. The time was come, he felt, for the grand coup, the last
huge strategical move, the concentration of every piece of heavy
artillery. Never in all his multitude of operations on the Chicago
Board of Trade had he failed. He knew he would not fail now; Luck, the
golden goddess, still staid at his shoulder. He did more than mortgage
his property; he floated a number of promissory notes. His credit,
always unimpeachable, he taxed to its farthest stretch; from every
source he gathered in the sinews of the war he was waging. No sum was
too great to daunt him, none too small to be overlooked. Reserves, van
and rear, battle line and skirmish outposts he summoned together to
form one single vast column of attack.

It was on this same day while Jadwin, pressed for money, was leaving no
stone unturned to secure ready cash, that he came across old Hargus in
his usual place in Gretry's customers' room, reading a two days old
newspaper. Of a sudden an idea occurred to Jadwin. He took the old man
aside. "Hargus," he said, "do you want a good investment for your
money, that money I turned over to you? I can give you a better rate
than the bank, and pretty good security. Let me have about a hundred
thousand at--oh, ten per cent."

"Hey--what?" asked the old fellow querulously. Jadwin repeated his
request.

But Hargus cast a suspicious glance at him and drew away.

"I--I don't lend my money," he observed.

"Why--you old fool," exclaimed Jadwin. "Here, is it more interest you
want? Why, we'll say fifteen per cent., if you like."

"I don't lend my money," exclaimed Hargus, shaking his head. "I ain't
got any to lend," and with the words took himself off.

One source of help alone Jadwin left untried. Sorely tempted, he
nevertheless kept himself from involving his wife's money in the
hazard. Laura, in her own name, was possessed of a little fortune; sure
as he was of winning, Jadwin none the less hesitated from seeking an
auxiliary here. He felt it was a matter of pride. He could not bring
himself to make use of a woman's succour.

But his entire personal fortune now swung in the balance. It was the
last fight, the supreme attempt--the final consummate assault, and the
thrill of a victory more brilliant, more conclusive, more decisive than
any he had ever known, vibrated in Jadwin's breast, as he went to and
fro in Jackson, Adams, and La Salle streets all through that day of the
eleventh.

But he knew the danger--knew just how terrible was to be the grapple.
Once that same day a certain detail of business took him near to the
entrance of the Floor. Though he did not so much as look inside the
doors, he could not but hear the thunder of the Pit; and even in that
moment of confidence, his great triumph only a few hours distant,
Jadwin, for the instant, stood daunted. The roar was appalling, the
whirlpool was again unchained, the maelstrom was again unleashed. And
during the briefest of seconds he could fancy that the familiar bellow
of its swirling, had taken on another pitch. Out of that hideous
turmoil, he imagined, there issued a strange unwonted note; as it were,
the first rasp and grind of a new avalanche just beginning to stir, a
diapason more profound than any he had yet known, a hollow distant
bourdon as of the slipping and sliding of some almighty and chaotic
power.

It was the Wheat, the Wheat! It was on the move again. From the farms
of Illinois and Iowa, from the ranches of Kansas and Nebraska, from all
the reaches of the Middle West, the Wheat, like a tidal wave, was
rising, rising. Almighty, blood-brother to the earthquake, coeval with
the volcano and the whirlwind, that gigantic world-force, that colossal
billow, Nourisher of the Nations, was swelling and advancing.

There in the Pit its first premonitory eddies already swirled and spun.
If even the first ripples of the tide smote terribly upon the heart,
what was it to be when the ocean itself burst through, on its eternal
way from west to east? For an instant came clear vision. What were
these shouting, gesticulating men of the Board of Trade, these brokers,
traders, and speculators? It was not these he fought, it was that fatal
New Harvest; it was the Wheat; it was--as Gretry had said--the very
Earth itself. What were those scattered hundreds of farmers of the
Middle West, who because he had put the price so high had planted the
grain as never before? What had they to do with it? Why the Wheat had
grown itself; demand and supply, these were the two great laws the
Wheat obeyed. Almost blasphemous in his effrontery, he had tampered
with these laws, and had roused a Titan. He had laid his puny human
grasp upon Creation and the very earth herself, the great mother,
feeling the touch of the cobweb that the human insect had spun, had
stirred at last in her sleep and sent her omnipotence moving through
the grooves of the world, to find and crush the disturber of her
appointed courses.

The new harvest was coming in; the new harvest of wheat, huge beyond
possibility of control; so vast that no money could buy it, so swift
that no strategy could turn it. But Jadwin hurried away from the sound
of the near roaring of the Pit. No, no. Luck was with him; he had
mastered the current of the Pit many times before--he would master it
again. The day passed and the night, and at nine o'clock the following
morning, he and Gretry once more met in the broker's office.

Gretry turned a pale face upon his principal.

"I've just received," he said, "the answers to our cables to Liverpool
and Paris. I offered wheat at both places, as you know, cheaper than
we've ever offered it there before."

"Yes--well?"

"Well," answered Gretry, looking gravely into Jadwin's eyes,
"well--they won't take it."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

On the morning of her birthday--the thirteenth of the month--when Laura
descended to the breakfast room, she found Page already there. Though
it was barely half-past seven, her sister was dressed for the street.
She wore a smart red hat, and as she stood by the French windows,
looking out, she drew her gloves back and forth between her fingers,
with a nervous, impatient gesture.

"Why," said Laura, as she sat down at her place, "why, Pagie, what is
in the wind to-day?"

"Landry is coming," Page explained, facing about and glancing at the
watch pinned to her waist. "He is going to take me down to see the
Board of Trade--from the visitor's gallery, you know. He said this
would probably be a great day. Did Mr. Jadwin come home last night?"

Laura shook her head, without speech. She did not choose to put into
words the fact that for three days--with the exception of an hour or
two, on the evening after that horrible day of her visit to the
Cresslers' house--she had seen nothing of her husband.

"Landry says," continued Page, "that it is awful--down there, these
days. He says that it is the greatest fight in the history of La Salle
Street. Has Mr. Jadwin, said anything to you? Is he going to win?"

"I don't know," answered Laura, in a low voice; "I don't know anything
about it, Page."

She was wondering if even Page had forgotten. When she had come into
the room, her first glance had been towards her place at table. But
there was nothing there, not even so much as an envelope; and no one
had so much as wished her joy of the little anniversary. She had
thought Page might have remembered, but her sister's next words showed
that she had more on her mind than birthdays.

"Laura," she began, sitting down opposite to her, and unfolding her
napkin, with laborious precision. "Laura--Landry and I--Well ... we're
going to be married in the fall."

"Why, Pagie," cried Laura, "I'm just as glad as I can be for you. He's
a fine, clean fellow, and I know he will make you a good husband."

Page drew a deep breath.

"Well," she said, "I'm glad you think so, too. Before you and Mr.
Jadwin were married, I wasn't sure about having him care for me,
because at that time--well--" Page looked up with a queer little smile,
"I guess you could have had him--if you had wanted to."

"Oh, that," cried Laura. "Why, Landry never really cared for me. It was
all the silliest kind of flirtation. The moment he knew you better, I
stood no chance at all."

"We're going to take an apartment on Michigan Avenue, near the
Auditorium," said Page, "and keep house. We've talked it all over, and
know just how much it will cost to live and keep one servant. I'm going
to serve the loveliest little dinners; I've learned the kind of cooking
he likes already. Oh, I guess there he is now," she cried, as they
heard the front door close.

Landry came in, carrying a great bunch of cut flowers, and a box of
candy. He was as spruce as though he were already the bridegroom, his
cheeks pink, his blonde hair radiant. But he was thin and a little
worn, a dull feverish glitter came and went in his eyes, and his
nervousness, the strain and excitement which beset him were in his
every gesture, in every word of his rapid speech.

"We'll have to hurry," he told Page. "I must be down there hours ahead
of time this morning."

"How is Curtis?" demanded Laura. "Have you seen him lately? How is he
getting on with--with his speculating?"

Landry made a sharp gesture of resignation.

"I don't know," he answered. "I guess nobody knows. We had a fearful
day yesterday, but I think we controlled the situation at the end. We
ran the price up and up and up till I thought it would never stop. If
the Pit thought Mr. Jadwin was beaten, I guess they found out how they
were mistaken. For a time there, we were just driving them. But then
Mr. Gretry sent word to us in the Pit to sell, and we couldn't hold
them. They came back at us like wolves; they beat the price down five
cents, in as many minutes. We had to quit selling, and buy again. But
then Mr. Jadwin went at them with a rush. Oh, it was grand! We steadied
the price at a dollar and fifteen, stiffened it up to eighteen and a
half, and then sent it up again, three cents at a time, till we'd
hammered it back to a dollar and a quarter."

"But Curtis himself," inquired Laura, "is he all right, is he well?"

"I only saw him once," answered Landry. "He was in Mr. Gretry's office.
Yes, he looked all right. He's nervous, of course. But Mr. Gretry looks
like the sick man. He looks all frazzled out."

"I guess, we'd better be going," said Page, getting up from the table.
"Have you had your breakfast, Landry? Won't you have some coffee?"

"Oh, I breakfasted hours ago," he answered. "But you are right. We had
better be moving. If you are going to get a seat in the gallery, you
must be there half an hour ahead of time, to say the least. Shall I
take any word to your husband from you, Mrs. Jadwin?"

"Tell him that I wish him good luck," she answered, "and--yes, ask him,
if he remembers what day of the month this is--or no, don't ask him
that. Say nothing about it. Just tell him I send him my very best love,
and that I wish him all the success in the world."

It was about nine o'clock, when Landry and Page reached the foot of La
Salle Street. The morning was fine and cool. The sky over the Board of
Trade sparkled with sunlight, and the air was full of fluttering wings
of the multitude of pigeons that lived upon the leakage of grain around
the Board of Trade building.

"Mr. Cressler used to feed them regularly," said Landry, as they paused
on the street corner opposite the Board. "Poor--poor Mr. Cressler--the
funeral is to-morrow, you know."

Page shut her eyes.

"Oh," she murmured, "think, think of Laura finding him there like that.
Oh, it would have killed me, it would have killed me."

"Somehow," observed Landry, a puzzled expression in his eyes, "somehow,
by George! she don't seem to mind very much. You'd have thought a shock
like that would have made her sick."

"Oh! Laura," cried Page. "I don't know her any more these days, she is
just like stone--just as though she were crowding down every emotion or
any feeling she ever had. She seems to be holding herself in with all
her strength--for something--and afraid to let go a finger, for fear
she would give way altogether. When she told me about that morning at
the Cresslers' house, her voice was just like ice; she said, 'Mr.
Cressler has shot himself. I found him dead in his library.' She never
shed a tear, and she spoke, oh, in such a terrible monotone. Oh! dear,"
cried Page, "I wish all this was over, and we could all get away from
Chicago, and take Mr. Jadwin with us, and get him back to be as he used
to be, always so light-hearted, and thoughtful and kindly. He used to
be making jokes from morning till night. Oh, I loved him just as if he
were my father."

They crossed the street, and Landry, taking her by the arm, ushered her
into the corridor on the ground floor of the Board.

"Now, keep close to me," he said, "and see if we can get through
somewhere here."

The stairs leading up to the main floor were already crowded with
visitors, some standing in line close to the wall, others aimlessly
wandering up and down, looking and listening, their heads in the air.
One of these, a gentleman with a tall white hat, shook his head at
Landry and Page, as they pressed by him.

"You can't get up there," he said, "even if they let you in. They're
packed in like sardines already."

But Landry reassured Page with a knowing nod of his head.

"I told the guide up in the gallery to reserve a seat for you. I guess
we'll manage."

But when they reached the staircase that connected the main floor with
the visitors' gallery, it became a question as to whether or not they
could even get to the seat. The crowd was packed solidly upon the
stairs, between the wall and the balustrades. There were men in top
hats, and women in silks; rough fellows of the poorer streets, and
gaudily dressed queens of obscure neighborhoods, while mixed with these
one saw the faded and shabby wrecks that perennially drifted about the
Board of Trade, the failures who sat on the chairs of the customers'
rooms day in and day out, reading old newspapers, smoking vile cigars.
And there were young men of the type of clerks and bookkeepers, young
men with drawn, worn faces, and hot, tired eyes, who pressed upward,
silent, their lips compressed, listening intently to the indefinite
echoing murmur that was filling the building.

For on this morning of the thirteenth of June, the Board of Trade, its
halls, corridors, offices, and stairways were already thrilling with a
vague and terrible sound. It was only a little after nine o'clock. The
trading would not begin for another half hour, but, even now, the
mutter of the whirlpool, the growl of the Pit was making itself felt.
The eddies were gathering; the thousands of subsidiary torrents that
fed the cloaca were moving. From all over the immediate neighborhood
they came, from the offices of hundreds of commission houses, from
brokers' offices, from banks, from the tall, grey buildings of La Salle
Street, from the street itself. And even from greater distances they
came; auxiliary currents set in from all the reach of the Great
Northwest, from Minneapolis, Duluth, and Milwaukee. From the Southwest,
St. Louis, Omaha, and Kansas City contributed to the volume. The
Atlantic Seaboard, New York, and Boston and Philadelphia sent out their
tributary streams; London, Liverpool, Paris, and Odessa merged their
influences with the vast world-wide flowing that bore down upon
Chicago, and that now began slowly, slowly to centre and circle about
the Wheat Pit of the Board of Trade.

Small wonder that the building to Page's ears vibrated to a strange and
ominous humming. She heard it in the distant clicking of telegraph
keys, in the echo of hurried whispered conversations held in dark
corners, in the noise of rapid footsteps, in the trilling of telephone
bells. These sounds came from all around her; they issued from the
offices of the building below her, above her and on either side. She
was surrounded with them, and they mingled together to form one
prolonged and muffled roar, that from moment to moment increased in
volume.

The Pit was getting under way; the whirlpool was forming, and the sound
of its courses was like the sound of the ocean in storm, heard at a
distance.

Page and Landry were still halfway up the last stairway. Above and
below, the throng was packed dense and immobilised. But, little by
little, Landry wormed a way for them, winning one step at a time. But
he was very anxious; again and again he looked at his watch. At last he
said:

"I've got to go. It's just madness for me to stay another minute. I'll
give you my card."

"Well, leave me here," Page urged. "It can't be helped. I'm all right.
Give me your card. I'll tell the guide in the gallery that you kept the
seat for me--if I ever can get there. You must go. Don't stay another
minute. If you can, come for me here in the gallery, when it's over.
I'll wait for you. But if you can't come, all right. I can take care of
myself."

He could but assent to this. This was no time to think of small things.
He left her and bore back with all his might through the crowd, gained
the landing at the turn of the balustrade, waved his hat to her and
disappeared.

A quarter of an hour went by. Page, caught in the crowd, could neither
advance nor retreat. Ahead of her, some twenty steps away, she could
see the back rows of seats in the gallery. But they were already
occupied. It seemed hopeless to expect to see anything of the floor
that day. But she could no longer extricate herself from the press;
there was nothing to do but stay where she was.

On every side of her she caught odds and ends of dialogues and scraps
of discussions, and while she waited she found an interest in listening
to these, as they reached her from time to time.

"Well," observed the man in the tall white hat, who had discouraged
Landry from attempting to reach the gallery, "well, he's shaken 'em up
pretty well. Whether he downs 'em or they down him, he's made a good
fight."

His companion, a young man with eyeglasses, who wore a wonderful white
waistcoat with queer glass buttons, assented, and Page heard him add:

"Big operator, that Jadwin."

"They're doing for him now, though."

"I ain't so sure. He's got another fight in him. You'll see."

"Ever see him?"

"No, no, he don't come into the Pit--these big men never do."

Directly in front of Page two women kept up an interminable discourse.

"Well," said the one, "that's all very well, but Mr. Jadwin made my
sister-in-law--she lives in Dubuque, you know--a rich woman. She bought
some wheat, just for fun, you know, a long time ago, and held on till
Mr. Jadwin put the price up to four times what she paid for it. Then
she sold out. My, you ought to see the lovely house she's building, and
her son's gone to Europe, to study art, if you please, and a year ago,
my dear, they didn't have a cent, not a cent, but her husband's salary."

"There's the other side, too, though," answered her companion, adding
in a hoarse whisper: "If Mr. Jadwin fails to-day--well, honestly,
Julia, I don't know what Philip will do."

But, from another group at Page's elbow, a man's bass voice cut across
the subdued chatter of the two women.

"'Guess we'll pull through, somehow. Burbank & Co., though--by George!
I'm not sure about them. They are pretty well involved in this thing,
and there's two or three smaller firms that are dependent on them. If
Gretry-Converse & Co. should suspend, Burbank would go with a crash
sure. And there's that bank in Keokuk; they can't stand much more.
Their depositors would run 'em quick as how-do-you-do, if there was a
smash here in Chicago."

"Oh, Jadwin will pull through."

"Well, I hope so--by Jingo! I hope so. Say, by the way, how did you
come out?"

"Me! Hoh! Say my boy, the next time I get into a wheat trade you'll
know it. I was one of the merry paretics who believed that Crookes was
the Great Lum-tum. I tailed on to his clique. Lord love you! Jadwin put
the knife into me to the tune of twelve thousand dollars. But, say,
look here; aren't we ever going to get up to that blame gallery? We
ain't going to see any of this, and I--_hark!--by God! there goes the
gong._ They've begun. Say, say, hear 'em, will you! Holy Moses!
say--listen to that! Did you ever hear--Lord! I wish we could
see--could get somewhere where we could see something."

His friend turned to him and spoke a sentence that was drowned in the
sudden vast volume of sound that all at once shook the building.

"Hey--what?"

The other shouted into his ear. But even then his friend could not
hear. Nor did he listen. The crowd upon the staircases had surged
irresistibly forward and upward. There was a sudden outburst of cries.
Women's voices were raised in expostulation, and even fear.

"Oh, oh--don't push so!"

"My arm! oh!--oh, I shall faint ... please."

But the men, their escorts, held back furiously; their faces purple,
they shouted imprecations over their shoulders.

"Here, here, you damn fools, what you doing?"

"Don't crowd so!"

"Get back, back!"

"There's a lady fainted here. Get back you! We'll all have a chance to
see. Good Lord! ain't there a policeman anywheres?"

"Say, say! It's going down--the price. It broke three cents, just then,
at the opening, they say."

"This is the worst I ever saw or heard of."

"My God! if Jadwin can only hold 'em.

"You bet he'll hold 'em."

"Hold nothing!--Oh! say my friend, it don't do you any good to crowd
like that."

"It's the people behind: I'm not doing it. Say, do you know where
they're at on the floor? The wheat, I mean, is it going up or down?"

"Up, they tell me. There was a rally; I don't know. How can we tell
here? We--Hi! there they go again. Lord! that must have been a smash. I
guess the Board of Trade won't forget this day in a hurry. Heavens, you
can't hear yourself think!

"Glad I ain't down there in the Pit."

But, at last, a group of policemen appeared. By main strength they
shouldered their way to the top of the stairs, and then began pushing
the crowd back. At every instant they shouted:

"Move on now, clear the stairway. No seats left!"

But at this Page, who, by the rush of the crowd had been carried almost
to the top of the stairs, managed to extricate an arm from the press,
and hold Landry's card in the air. She even hazarded a little deception:

"I have a pass. Will you let me through, please?"

Luckily one of the officers heard her. He bore down heavily with all
the mass of his two hundred pounds and the majesty of the law he
represented, to the rescue and succour of this very pretty girl.

"Let the lady through," he roared, forcing a passage with both elbows.
"Come right along, Miss. Stand back you, now. Can't you see the lady
has a pass? Now then, Miss, and be quick about it, I can't keep 'em
back forever."

Jostled and hustled, her dress crumpled, her hat awry, Page made her
way forward, till the officer caught her by the arm, and pulled her out
of the press. With a long breath she gained the landing of the gallery.

The guide, an old fellow in a uniform of blue, with brass buttons and a
visored cap, stood near by, and to him she presented Landry's card.

"Oh, yes, oh, yes," he shouted in her ear, after he had glanced it
over. "You were the party Mr. Court spoke about. You just came in time.
I wouldn't 'a dared hold your seat a minute longer."

He led her down the crowded aisle between rows of theatre chairs, all
of which were occupied, to one vacant seat in the very front row.

"You can see everything, now," he cried, making a trumpet of his palm.
"You're Mister Jadwin's niece. I know, I know. Ah, it's a wild day,
Miss. They ain't done much yet, and Mr. Jadwin's holding his own, just
now. But I thought for a moment they had him on the run. You see
that--my, my, there was a sharp rally. But he's holding on strong yet."

Page took her seat, and leaning forward looked down into the Wheat Pit.

Once free of the crowd after leaving Page, Landry ran with all the
swiftness of his long legs down the stair, and through the corridors
till, all out of breath, he gained Gretry's private office. The other
Pit traders for the house, some eight or ten men, were already
assembled, and just as Landry entered by one door, the broker himself
came in from the customers' room. Jadwin was nowhere to be seen.

"What are the orders for to-day, sir?"

Gretry was very pale. Despite his long experience on the Board of
Trade, Landry could see anxiety in every change of his expression, in
every motion of his hands. The broker before answering the question
crossed the room to the water cooler and drank a brief swallow. Then
emptying the glass he refilled it, moistened his lips again, and again
emptied and filled the goblet. He put it down, caught it up once more,
filled it, emptied it, drinking now in long draughts, now in little
sips. He was quite unconscious of his actions, and Landry as he
watched, felt his heart sink. Things must, indeed, be at a desperate
pass when Gretry, the calm, the clear-headed, the placid, was thus
upset.

"Your orders?" said the broker, at last. "The same as yesterday; keep
the market up--that's all. It must not go below a dollar fifteen. But
act on the defensive. Don't be aggressive, unless I send word. There
will probably be very heavy selling the first few moments. You can buy,
each of you, up to half a million bushels apiece. If that don't keep
the price up, if they still are selling after that ... well"; Gretry
paused a moment, irresolutely, "well," he added suddenly, "if they are
still selling freely after you've each bought half a million, I'll let
you know what to do. And, look here," he continued, facing the group,
"look here--keep your heads cool ... I guess to-day will decide things.
Watch the Crookes crowd pretty closely. I understand they're up to
something again. That's all, I guess."

Landry and the other Gretry traders hurried from the office up to the
floor. Landry's heart was beating thick and slow and hard, his teeth
were shut tight. Every nerve, every fibre of him braced itself with the
rigidity of drawn wire, to meet the issue of the impending hours. Now,
was to come the last grapple. He had never lived through a crisis such
as this before. Would he prevail, would he keep his head? Would he
avoid or balk the thousand and one little subterfuges, tricks, and
traps that the hostile traders would prepare for him--prepare with a
quickness, a suddenness that all but defied the sharpest, keenest
watchfulness?

Was the gong never going to strike? He found himself, all at once, on
the edge of the Wheat Pit. It was jammed tight with the crowd of
traders and the excitement that disengaged itself from that tense,
vehement crowd of white faces and glittering eyes was veritably
sickening, veritably weakening. Men on either side of him were shouting
mere incoherencies, to which nobody, not even themselves, were
listening. Others silent, gnawed their nails to the quick, breathing
rapidly, audibly even, their nostrils expanding and contracting. All
around roared the vague thunder that since early morning had shaken the
building. In the Pit the bids leaped to and fro, though the time of
opening had not yet come; the very planks under foot seemed spinning
about in the first huge warning swirl of the Pit's centripetal
convulsion. There was dizziness in the air. Something, some infinite
immeasurable power, onrushing in its eternal courses, shook the Pit in
its grasp. Something deafened the ears, blinded the eyes, dulled and
numbed the mind, with its roar, with the chaff and dust of its
whirlwind passage, with the stupefying sense of its power, coeval with
the earthquake and glacier, merciless, all-powerful, a primal basic
throe of creation itself, unassailable, inviolate, and untamed.

Had the trading begun? Had the gong struck? Landry never knew, never so
much as heard the clang of the great bell. All at once he was fighting;
all at once he was caught, as it were, from off the stable earth, and
flung headlong into the heart and centre of the Pit. What he did, he
could not say; what went on about him, he could not distinguish. He
only knew that roar was succeeding roar, that there was crashing
through his ears, through his very brain, the combined bellow of a
hundred Niagaras. Hands clutched and tore at him, his own tore and
clutched in turn. The Pit was mad, was drunk and frenzied; not a man of
all those who fought and scrambled and shouted who knew what he or his
neighbour did. They only knew that a support long thought to be secure
was giving way; not gradually, not evenly, but by horrible collapses,
and equally horrible upward leaps. Now it held, now it broke, now it
reformed again, rose again, then again in hideous cataclysms fell from
beneath their feet to lower depths than before. The official reporter
leaned back in his place, helpless. On the wall overhead, the indicator
on the dial was rocking back and forth, like the mast of a ship caught
in a monsoon. The price of July wheat no man could so much as
approximate. The fluctuations were no longer by fractions of a cent,
but by ten cents, fifteen cents twenty-five cents at a time. On one
side of the Pit wheat sold at ninety cents, on the other at a dollar
and a quarter.

And all the while above the din upon the floor, above the tramplings
and the shoutings in the Pit, there seemed to thrill and swell that
appalling roar of the Wheat itself coming in, coming on like a tidal
wave, bursting through, dashing barriers aside, rolling like a
measureless, almighty river, from the farms of Iowa and the ranches of
California, on to the East--to the bakeshops and hungry mouths of
Europe.

Landry caught one of the Gretry traders by the arm.

"What shall we do?" he shouted. "I've bought up to my limit. No more
orders have come in. The market has gone from under us. What's to be
done?"

"I don't know," the other shouted back, "I don't know. We're all gone
to hell; looks like the last smash. There are no more supporting
orders--something's gone wrong. Gretry hasn't sent any word."

Then, Landry, beside himself with excitement and with actual terror,
hardly knowing even yet what he did, turned sharply about. He fought
his way out of the Pit; he ran hatless and panting across the floor, in
and out between the groups of spectators, down the stairs to the
corridor below, and into the Gretry-Converse offices.

In the outer office a group of reporters and the representatives of a
great commercial agency were besieging one of the heads of the firm.
They assaulted him with questions.

"Just tell us where you are at--that's all we want to know."

"Just what is the price of July wheat?"

"Is Jadwin winning or losing?"

But the other threw out an arm in a wild gesture of helplessness.

"We don't know, ourselves," he cried. "The market has run clean away
from everybody. You know as much about it as I do. It's simply hell
broken loose, that's all. We can't tell where we are at for days to
come."

Landry rushed on. He swung open the door of the private office and
entered, slamming it behind him and crying out:

"Mr. Gretry, what are we to do? We've had no orders."

But no one listened to him. Of the group that gathered around Gretry's
desk, no one so much as turned a head.

Jadwin stood there in the centre of the others, hatless, his face pale,
his eyes congested with blood. Gretry fronted him, one hand upon his
arm. In the remainder of the group Landry recognised the senior clerk
of the office, one of the heads of a great banking house, and a couple
of other men--confidential agents, who had helped to manipulate the
great corner.

"But you can't," Gretry was exclaiming. "You can't; don't you see we
can't meet our margin calls? It's the end of the game. You've got no
more money."

"It's a lie!" Never so long as he lived did Landry forget the voice in
which Jadwin cried the words: "It's a lie! Keep on buying, I tell you.
Take all they'll offer. I tell you we'll touch the two dollar mark
before noon."

"Not another order goes up to that floor," retorted Gretry. "Why, J.,
ask any of these gentlemen here. They'll tell you."

"It's useless, Mr. Jadwin," said the banker, quietly. "You were
practically beaten two days ago."

"Mr. Jadwin," pleaded the senior clerk, "for God's sake listen to
reason. Our firm--"

But Jadwin was beyond all appeal. He threw off Gretry's hand.

"Your firm, your firm--you've been cowards from the start. I know you,
I know you. You have sold me out. Crookes has bought you. Get out of my
way!" he shouted. "Get out of my way! Do you hear? I'll play my hand
alone from now on."

"J., old man--why--see here, man," Gretry implored, still holding him
by the arm; "here, where are you going?"

Jadwin's voice rang like a trumpet call:

_"Into the Pit."_

"Look here--wait--here. Hold him back, gentlemen. He don't know what
he's about."

"If you won't execute my orders, I'll act myself. I'm going into the
Pit, I tell you."

"J., you're mad, old fellow. You're ruined--don't you
understand?--you're ruined."

"Then God curse you, Sam Gretry, for the man who failed me in a
crisis." And as he spoke Curtis Jadwin struck the broker full in the
face.

Gretry staggered back from the blow, catching at the edge of his desk.
His pale face flashed to crimson for an instant, his fists clinched;
then his hands fell to his sides.

"No," he said, "let him go, let him go. The man is merely mad."

But, Jadwin, struggling for a second in the midst of the group that
tried to hold him, suddenly flung off the restraining clasps, thrust
the men to one side, and rushed from the room.

Gretry dropped into his chair before his desk.

"It's the end," he said, simply.

He drew a sheet of note paper to him, and in a shaking hand wrote a
couple of lines.

"Take that," he said, handing the note to the senior clerk, "take that
to the secretary of the Board at once."

And straight into the turmoil and confusion of the Pit, to the scene of
so many of his victories, the battle ground whereon again and again,
his enemies routed, he had remained the victor undisputed, undismayed
came the "Great Bull." No sooner had he set foot within the entrance to
the Floor, than the news went flashing and flying from lip to lip. The
galleries knew it, the public room, and the Western Union knew it, the
telephone booths knew it, and lastly even the Wheat Pit, torn and
tossed and rent asunder by the force this man himself had unchained,
knew it, and knowing stood dismayed.

For even then, so great had been his power, so complete his dominion,
and so well-rooted the fear which he had inspired, that this last move
in the great game he had been playing, this unexpected, direct,
personal assumption of control struck a sense of consternation into the
heart of the hardiest of his enemies.

Jadwin himself, the great man, the "Great Bull" in the Pit! What was
about to happen? Had they been too premature in their hope of his
defeat? Had he been preparing some secret, unexpected manoeuvre? For a
second they hesitated, then moved by a common impulse, feeling the push
of the wonderful new harvest behind them, they gathered themselves
together for the final assault, and again offered the wheat for sale;
offered it by thousands upon thousands of bushels; poured, as it were,
the reapings of entire principalities out upon the floor of the Board
of Trade.

Jadwin was in the thick of the confusion by now. And the avalanche, the
undiked Ocean of the Wheat, leaping to the lash of the hurricane,
struck him fairly in the face.

He heard it now, he heard nothing else. The Wheat had broken from his
control. For months, he had, by the might of his single arm, held it
back; but now it rose like the upbuilding of a colossal billow. It
towered, towered, hung poised for an instant, and then, with a thunder
as of the grind and crash of chaotic worlds, broke upon him, burst
through the Pit and raced past him, on and on to the eastward and to
the hungry nations.

And then, under the stress and violence of the hour, something snapped
in his brain. The murk behind his eyes had been suddenly pierced by a
white flash. The strange qualms and tiny nervous paroxysms of the last
few months all at once culminated in some indefinite, indefinable
crisis, and the wheels and cogs of all activities save one lapsed away
and ceased. Only one function of the complicated machine persisted; but
it moved with a rapidity of vibration that seemed to be tearing the
tissues of being to shreds, while its rhythm beat out the old and
terrible cadence:

"Wheat--wheat--wheat, wheat--wheat--wheat."

Blind and insensate, Jadwin strove against the torrent of the Wheat.
There in the middle of the Pit, surrounded and assaulted by herd after
herd of wolves yelping for his destruction, he stood braced, rigid upon
his feet, his head up, his hand, the great bony hand that once had held
the whole Pit in its grip, flung high in the air, in a gesture of
defiance, while his voice like the clangour of bugles sounding to the
charge of the forlorn hope, rang out again and again, over the din of
his enemies:

"Give a dollar for July--give a dollar for July!"

With one accord they leaped upon him. The little group of his traders
was swept aside. Landry alone, Landry who had never left his side since
his rush from out Gretry's office, Landry Court, loyal to the last, his
one remaining soldier, white, shaking, the sobs strangling in his
throat, clung to him desperately. Another billow of wheat was
preparing. They two--the beaten general and his young armour
bearer--heard it coming; hissing, raging, bellowing, it swept down upon
them. Landry uttered a cry. Flesh and blood could not stand this
strain. He cowered at his chief's side, his shoulders bent, one arm
above his head, as if to ward off an actual physical force.

But Jadwin, iron to the end, stood erect. All unknowing what he did, he
had taken Landry's hand in his and the boy felt the grip on his fingers
like the contracting of a vise of steel. The other hand, as though
holding up a standard, was still in the air, and his great deep-toned
voice went out across the tumult, proclaiming to the end his battle cry:

"Give a dollar for July--give a dollar for July!"

But, little by little, Landry became aware that the tumult of the Pit
was intermitting. There were sudden lapses in the shouting, and in
these lapses he could hear from somewhere out upon the floor voices
that were crying: "Order--order, order, gentlemen."

But, again and again the clamour broke out. It would die down for an
instant, in response to these appeals, only to burst out afresh as
certain groups of traders started the pandemonium again, by the wild
outcrying of their offers. At last, however, the older men in the Pit,
regaining some measure of self-control, took up the word, going to and
fro in the press, repeating "Order, order."

And then, all at once, the Pit, the entire floor of the Board of Trade
was struck dumb. All at once the tension was relaxed, the furious
struggling and stamping was stilled. Landry, bewildered, still holding
his chief by the hand, looked about him. On the floor, near at hand,
stood the president of the Board of Trade himself, and with him the
vice-president and a group of the directors. Evidently it had been
these who had called the traders to order. But it was not toward them
now that the hundreds of men in the Pit and on the floor were looking.

In the little balcony on the south wall opposite the visitors' gallery
a figure had appeared, a tall grave man, in a long black coat--the
secretary of the Board of Trade. Landry with the others saw him, saw
him advance to the edge of the railing, and fix his glance upon the
Wheat Pit. In his hand he carried a slip of paper.

And then in the midst of that profound silence the secretary announced:

"All trades with Gretry, Converse & Co. must be closed at once."

The words had not ceased to echo in the high vaultings of the roof
before they were greeted with a wild, shrill yell of exultation and
triumph, that burst from the crowding masses in the Wheat Pit.

Beaten; beaten at last, the Great Bull! Smashed! The great corner
smashed! Jadwin busted! They themselves saved, saved, saved! Cheer
followed upon cheer, yell after yell. Hats went into the air. In a
frenzy of delight men danced and leaped and capered upon the edge of
the Pit, clasping their arms about each other, shaking each others'
hands, cheering and hurrahing till their strained voices became hoarse
and faint.

Some few of the older men protested. There were cries of:

"Shame, shame!"

"Order--let him alone."

"Let him be; he's down now. Shame, shame!"

But the jubilee was irrepressible, they had been too cruelly pressed,
these others; they had felt the weight of the Bull's hoof, the rip of
his horn. Now they had beaten him, had pulled him down.

"Yah-h-h, whoop, yi, yi, yi. Busted, busted, busted. Hip, hip, hip, and
a tiger!"

"Come away, sir. For God's sake, Mr. Jadwin, come away."

Landry was pleading with Jadwin, clutching his arm in both his hands,
his lips to his chief's ear to make himself heard above the yelping of
the mob.

Jadwin was silent now. He seemed no longer to see or hear; heavily,
painfully he leaned upon the young man's shoulder.

"Come away, sir--for God's sake!"

The group of traders parted before them, cheering even while they gave
place, cheering with eyes averted, unwilling to see the ruin that meant
for them salvation.

"Yah-h-h. Yah-h-h, busted, busted!"

Landry had put his arm about Jadwin, and gripped him close as he led
him from the Pit. The sobs were in his throat again, and tears of
excitement, of grief, of anger and impotence were running down his face.

"Yah-h-h. Yah-h-h, he's done for, busted, busted!"

"Damn you all," cried Landry, throwing out a furious fist, "damn you
all; you brutes, you beasts! If he'd so much as raised a finger a week
ago, you'd have run for your lives."

But the cheering drowned his voice; and as the two passed out of the
Pit upon the floor, the gong that closed the trading struck and, as it
seemed, put a period, definite and final to the conclusion of Curtis
Jadwin's career as speculator.

Across the floor towards the doorway Landry led his defeated captain.
Jadwin was in a daze, he saw nothing, heard nothing. Quietly he
submitted to Landry's guiding arm. The visitors in the galleries bent
far over to see him pass, and from all over the floor, spectators,
hangers-on, corn-and-provision traders, messenger boys, clerks and
reporters came hurrying to watch the final exit of the Great Bull, from
the scene of his many victories and his one overwhelming defeat.

In silence they watched him go by. Only in the distance from the
direction of the Pit itself came the sound of dying cheers. But at the
doorway stood a figure that Landry recognised at once--a small man,
lean-faced, trimly dressed, his clean-shaven lips pursed like the mouth
of a shut money bag, imperturbable as ever, cold, unexcited--Calvin
Crookes himself.

And as Jadwin passed, Landry heard the Bear leader say:

"They can cheer now, all they want. They didn't do it. It was the wheat
itself that beat him; no combination of men could have done it--go on,
cheer, you damn fools! He was a bigger man than the best of us."

With the striking of the gong, and the general movement of the crowd in
the galleries towards the exits, Page rose, drawing a long breath,
pressing her hands an instant to her burning cheeks. She had seen all
that had happened, but she had not understood. The whole morning had
been a whirl and a blur. She had looked down upon a jam of men, who for
three hours had done nothing but shout and struggle. She had seen
Jadwin come into the Pit, and almost at once the shouts had turned to
cheers. That must have meant, she thought, that Jadwin had done
something to please those excited men. They were all his friends, no
doubt. They were cheering him--cheering his success. He had won then!
And yet that announcement from the opposite balcony, to the effect that
business with Mr. Gretry must be stopped, immediately! That had an
ominous ring. Or, perhaps, that meant only a momentary check.

As she descended the stairways, with the departing spectators, she
distinctly heard a man's voice behind her exclaim:

"Well, that does for him!"

Possibly, after all, Mr. Jadwin had lost some money that morning. She
was desperately anxious to find Landry, and to learn the truth of what
had happened, and for a long moment after the last visitors had
disappeared she remained at the foot of the gallery stairway, hoping
that he would come for her. But she saw nothing of him, and soon
remembered she had told him to come for her, only in case he was able
to get away. No doubt he was too busy now. Even if Mr. Jadwin had won,
the morning's work had evidently been of tremendous importance. This
had been a great day for the wheat speculators. It was not surprising
that Landry should be detained. She would wait till she saw him the
next day to find out all that had taken place.

Page returned home. It was long past the hour for luncheon when she
came into the dining-room of the North Avenue house.

"Where is my sister?" she asked of the maid, as she sat down to the
table; "has she lunched yet?"

But it appeared that Mrs. Jadwin had sent down word to say that she
wanted no lunch, that she had a headache and would remain in her room.

Page hurried through with her chocolate and salad, and ordering a cup
of strong tea, carried it up to Laura's "sitting-room" herself.

Laura, in a long tea-gown lay back in the Madeira chair, her hands
clasped behind her head, doing nothing apparently but looking out of
the window. She was paler even than usual, and to Page's mind seemed
preoccupied, and in a certain indefinite way tense and hard. Page, as
she had told Landry that morning, had remarked this tenseness, this
rigidity on the part of her sister, of late. But to-day it was more
pronounced than ever. Something surely was the matter with Laura. She
seemed like one who had staked everything upon a hazard and, blind to
all else, was keeping back emotion with all her strength, while she
watched and waited for the issue. Page guessed that her sister's
trouble had to do with Jadwin's complete absorption in business, but
she preferred to hold her peace. By nature the young girl "minded her
own business," and Laura was not a woman who confided her troubles to
anybody. Only once had Page presumed to meddle in her sister's affairs,
and the result had not encouraged a repetition of the intervention.
Since the affair of the silver match box she had kept her distance.

Laura on this occasion declined to drink the tea Page had brought. She
wanted nothing, she said; her head ached a little, she only wished to
lie down and be quiet.

"I've been down to the Board of Trade all the morning," Page remarked.

Laura fixed her with a swift glance; she demanded quickly:

"Did you see Curtis?"

"No--or, yes, once; he came out on the floor. Oh, Laura, it was so
exciting there this morning. Something important happened, I know. I
can't believe it's that way all the time. I'm afraid Mr. Jadwin lost a
great deal of money. I heard some one behind me say so, but I couldn't
understand what was going on. For months I've been trying to get a
clear idea of wheat trading, just because it was Landry's business, but
to-day I couldn't make anything of it at all."

"Did Curtis say he was coming home this evening?"

"No. Don't you understand, I didn't see him to talk to."

"Well, why didn't you, Page?"

"Why, Laura, honey, don't be cross. You don't know how rushed
everything was. I didn't even try to see Landry."

"Did he seem very busy?"

"Who, Landry? I--"

"No, no, no, Curtis."

"Oh, I should say so. Why, Laura, I think, honestly, I think wheat went
down to--oh, way down. They say that means so much to Mr. Jadwin, and
it went down, down, down. It looked that way to me. Don't that mean
that he'll lose a great deal of money? And Landry seemed so brave and
courageous through it all. Oh, I felt for him so; I just wanted to go
right into the Pit with him and stand by his shoulder."

Laura started up with a sharp gesture of impatience and exasperation,
crying:

"Oh, what do I care about wheat--about this wretched scrambling for
money. Curtis was busy, you say? He looked that way?"

Page nodded: "Everybody was," she said. Then she hazarded:

"I wouldn't worry, Laura. Of course, a man must give a great deal of
time to his business. I didn't mind when Landry couldn't come home with
me."

"Oh--Landry," murmured Laura.

On the instant Page bridled, her eyes snapping.

"I think that was very uncalled for," she exclaimed, sitting bolt
upright, "and I can tell you this, Laura Jadwin, if you did care a
little more about wheat--about your husband's business--if you had
taken more of an interest in his work, if you had tried to enter more
into his life, and be a help to him--and--and sympathise--and--" Page
caught her breath, a little bewildered at her own vehemence and
audacity. But she had committed herself now; recklessly she plunged on.
"Just think; he may be fighting the battle of his life down there in La
Salle Street, and you don't know anything about it--no, nor want to
know. 'What do you care about wheat,' that's what you said. Well, I
don't care either, just for the wheat itself, but it's Landry's
business, his work; and right or wrong--" Page jumped to her feet, her
fists tight shut, her face scarlet, her head upraised, "right or wrong,
good or bad, I'd put my two hands into the fire to help him."

"What business--" began Laura; but Page was not to be interrupted. "And
if he did leave me alone sometimes," she said; "do you think I would
draw a long face, and think only of my own troubles. I guess he's got
his own troubles too. If my husband had a battle to fight, do you think
I'd mope and pine because he left me at home; no I wouldn't. I'd help
him buckle his sword on, and when he came back to me I wouldn't tell
him how lonesome I'd been, but I'd take care of him and cry over his
wounds, and tell him to be brave--and--and--and I'd help him."

And with the words, Page, the tears in her eyes and the sobs in her
throat, flung out of the room, shutting the door violently behind her.

Laura's first sensation was one of anger only. As always, her younger
sister had presumed again to judge her, had chosen this day of all
others, to annoy her. She gazed an instant at the closed door, then
rose and put her chin in the air. She was right, and Page her husband,
everybody, were wrong. She had been flouted, ignored. She paced the
length of the room a couple of times, then threw herself down upon the
couch, her chin supported on her palm.

As she crossed the room, however, her eye had been caught by an opened
note from Mrs. Cressler, received the day before, and apprising her of
the date of the funeral. At the sight, all the tragedy leaped up again
in her mind and recollection, and in fancy she stood again in the back
parlour of the Cressler home; her fingers pressed over her mouth to
shut back the cries, horror and the terror of sudden death rending her
heart, shaking the brain itself. Again and again since that dreadful
moment had the fear come back, mingled with grief, with compassion, and
the bitter sorrow of a kind friend gone forever from her side. And
then, her resolution girding itself, her will power at fullest stretch,
she had put the tragedy from her. Other and--for her--more momentous
events impended. Everything in life, even death itself, must stand
aside while her love was put to the test. Life and death were little
things. Love only existed; let her husband's career fail; what did it
import so only love stood the strain and issued from the struggle
triumphant? And now, as she lay upon her couch, she crushed down all
compunction for the pitiful calamity whose last scene she had
discovered, her thoughts once more upon her husband and herself. Had
the shock of that spectacle in the Cresslers' house, and the wearing
suspense in which she had lived of late, so torn and disordered the
delicate feminine nerves that a kind of hysteria animated and directed
her impulses, her words, and actions? Laura did not know. She only knew
that the day was going and that her husband neither came near her nor
sent her word.

Even if he had been very busy, this was her birthday,--though he had
lost millions! Could he not have sent even the foolishest little
present to her, even a line--three words on a scrap of paper? But she
checked herself. The day was not over yet; perhaps, perhaps he would
remember her, after all, before the afternoon was over. He was managing
a little surprise for her, no doubt. He knew what day this was. After
their talk that Sunday in his smoking-room he would not forget. And,
besides, it was the evening that he had promised should be hers. "If he
loved her," she had said, he would give that evening to her. Never,
never would Curtis fail her when conjured by that spell.

Laura had planned a little dinner for that night. It was to be served
at eight. Page would have dined earlier; only herself and her husband
were to be present. It was to be her birthday dinner. All the noisy,
clamourous world should be excluded; no faintest rumble of the Pit
would intrude. She would have him all to herself. He would, so she
determined, forget everything else in his love for her. She would be
beautiful as never before--brilliant, resistless, and dazzling. She
would have him at her feet, her own, her own again, as much her own as
her very hands. And before she would let him go he would forever and
forever have abjured the Battle of the Street that had so often caught
him from her. The Pit should not have him; the sweep of that great
whirlpool should never again prevail against the power of love.

Yes, she had suffered, she had known the humiliation of a woman
neglected. But it was to end now; her pride would never again be
lowered, her love never again be ignored.

But the afternoon passed and evening drew on without any word from him.
In spite of her anxiety, she yet murmured over and over again as she
paced the floor of her room, listening for the ringing of the door bell:

"He will send word, he will send word. I know he will."

By four o'clock she had begun to dress. Never had she made a toilet
more superb, more careful. She disdained a "costume" on this great
evening. It was not to be "Theodora" now, nor "Juliet," nor "Carmen."
It was to be only Laura Jadwin--just herself, unaided by theatricals,
unadorned by tinsel. But it seemed consistent none the less to choose
her most beautiful gown for the occasion, to panoply herself in every
charm that was her own. Her dress, that closely sheathed the low, flat
curves of her body and that left her slender arms and neck bare, was
one shimmer of black scales, iridescent, undulating with light to her
every movement. In the coils and masses of her black hair she fixed her
two great cabochons of pearls, and clasped about her neck her
palm-broad collaret of pearls and diamonds. Against one shoulder nodded
a bunch of Jacqueminots, royal red, imperial.

It was hard upon six o'clock when at last she dismissed her maid. Left
alone, she stood for a moment in front of her long mirror that
reflected her image from head to foot, and at the sight she could not
forbear a smile and a sudden proud lifting of her head. All the woman
in her preened and plumed herself in the consciousness of the power of
her beauty. Let the Battle of the Street clamour never so loudly now,
let the suction of the Pit be never so strong, Eve triumphed. Venus
toute entiere s'attachait a sa proie.

These women of America, these others who allowed business to draw their
husbands from them more and more, who submitted to those cruel
conditions that forced them to be content with the wreckage left after
the storm and stress of the day's work--the jaded mind, the exhausted
body, the faculties dulled by overwork--she was sorry for them. They,
less radiant than herself, less potent to charm, could not call their
husbands back. But she, Laura, was beautiful; she knew it; she gloried
in her beauty. It was her strength. She felt the same pride in it as
the warrior in a finely tempered weapon.

And to-night her beauty was brighter than ever. It was a veritable
aureole that crowned her. She knew herself to be invincible. So only
that he saw her thus, she knew that she would conquer. And he would
come. "If he loved her," she had said. By his love for her he had
promised; by his love she knew she would prevail.

And then at last, somewhere out of the twilight, somewhere out of those
lowest, unplumbed depths of her own heart, came the first tremor of
doubt, come the tardy vibration of the silver cord which Page had
struck so sharply. Was it--after all--Love, that she cherished and
strove for--love, or self-love? Ever since Page had spoken she seemed
to have fought against the intrusion of this idea. But, little by
little, it rose to the surface. At last, for an instant, it seemed to
confront her.

Was this, after all, the right way to win her husband back to her--this
display of her beauty, this parade of dress, this exploitation of self?

Self, self. Had she been selfish from the very first? What real
interest had she taken in her husband's work? "Right or wrong, good or
bad, I would put my two hands into the fire to help him." Was this the
way? Was not this the only way? Win him back to her? What if there were
more need for her to win back to him? Oh, once she had been able to say
that love, the supreme triumph of a woman's life, was less a victory
than a capitulation. Had she ordered her life upon that ideal? Did she
even believe in the ideal at this day? Whither had this cruel cult of
self led her?

Dimly Laura Jadwin began to see and to understand a whole new
conception of her little world. The birth of a new being within her was
not for that night. It was conception only--the sensation of a new
element, a new force that was not herself, somewhere in the inner
chambers of her being.

The woman in her was too complex, the fibres of character too intricate
and mature to be wrenched into new shapes by any sudden revolution. But
just so surely as the day was going, just so surely as the New Day
would follow upon the night, conception had taken place within her.
Whatever she did that evening, whatever came to her, through whatever
crises she should hurry, she would not now be quite the same. She had
been accustomed to tell herself that there were two Lauras. Now
suddenly, behold, she seemed to recognise a third--a third that rose
above and forgot the other two, that in some beautiful, mysterious way
was identity ignoring self.

But the change was not to be abrupt. Very, very vaguely the thoughts
came to her. The change would be slow, slow--would be evolution, not
revolution. The consummation was to be achieved in the coming years.
For to-night she was--what was she? Only a woman, weak, torn by
emotion, driven by impulse, and entering upon what she imagined was a
great crisis in her life.

But meanwhile the time was passing. Laura descended to the library and,
picking up a book, composed herself to read. When six o'clock struck,
she made haste to assure herself that of course she could not expect
him exactly on the hour. No, she must make allowances; the day--as Page
had suspected--had probably been an important one. He would be a little
late, but he would come soon. "If you love me, you will come," she had
said.

But an hour later Laura paced the room with tight-shut lips and burning
cheeks. She was still alone; her day, her hour, was passing, and he had
not so much as sent word. For a moment the thought occurred to her that
he might perhaps be in great trouble, in great straits, that there was
an excuse. But instantly she repudiated the notion.

"No, no," she cried, beneath her breath. "He should come, no matter
what has happened. Or even, at the very least, he could send word."

The minutes dragged by. No roll of wheels echoed under the carriage
porch; no step sounded at the outer door. The house was still, the
street without was still, the silence of the midsummer evening widened,
unbroken around her, like a vast calm pool. Only the musical Gregorians
of the newsboys chanting the evening's extras from corner to corner of
the streets rose into the air from time to time. She was once more
alone. Was she to fail again? Was she to be set aside once more, as so
often heretofore--set aside, flouted, ignored, forgotten? "If you love
me," she had said.

And this was to be the supreme test. This evening was to decide which
was the great influence of his life--was to prove whether or not love
was paramount. This was the crucial hour. "And he knows it," cried
Laura. "He knows it. He did not forget, could not have forgotten."

The half hour passed, then the hour, and as eight o'clock chimed from
the clock over the mantelshelf Laura stopped, suddenly rigid, in the
midst of the floor.

Her anger leaped like fire within her. All the passion of the woman
scorned shook her from head to foot. At the very moment of her triumph
she had been flouted, in the pitch of her pride! And this was not the
only time. All at once the past disappointments, slights, and
humiliations came again to her memory. She had pleaded, and had been
rebuffed again and again; she had given all and had received
neglect--she, Laura, beautiful beyond other women, who had known love,
devoted service, and the most thoughtful consideration from her
earliest girlhood, had been cast aside.

Suddenly she bent her head quickly, listening intently. Then she drew a
deep breath, murmuring "At last, at last!"

For the sound of a footstep in the vestibule was unmistakable. He had
come after all. But so late, so late! No, she could not be gracious at
once; he must be made to feel how deeply he had offended; he must sue
humbly, very humbly, for pardon. The servant's step sounded in the hall
on the way towards the front door.

"I am in here, Matthew," she called. "In the library. Tell him I am in
here."

She cast a quick glance at herself in the mirror close at hand, touched
her hair with rapid fingers, smoothed the agitation from her forehead,
and sat down in a deep chair near the fireplace, opening a book,
turning her back towards the door.

She heard him come in, but did not move. Even as he crossed the floor
she kept her head turned away. The footsteps paused near at hand. There
was a moment's silence. Then slowly Laura, laying down her book, turned
and faced him.

"With many very, very happy returns of the day," said Sheldon Corthell,
as he held towards her a cluster of deep-blue violets.

Laura sprang to her feet, a hand upon her cheek, her eyes wide and
flashing.

"You?" was all she had breath to utter. "You?"

The artist smiled as he laid the flowers upon the table. "I am going
away again to-morrow," he said, "for always, I think. Have I startled
you? I only came to say good-by--and to wish you a happy birthday."

"Oh you remembered!" she cried. "_You_ remembered! I might have known
you would."

But the revulsion had been too great. She had been wrong after all.
Jadwin had forgotten. Emotions to which she could put no name swelled
in her heart and rose in a quick, gasping sob to her throat. The tears
sprang to her eyes. Old impulses, forgotten impetuosities whipped her
on.

"Oh, you remembered, you remembered!" she cried again, holding out both
her hands.

He caught them in his own.

"Remembered!" he echoed. "I have never forgotten."

"No, no," she replied, shaking her head, winking back the tears. "You
don't understand. I spoke before I thought. You don't understand."

"I do, believe me, I do," he exclaimed. "I understand you better than
you understand yourself."

Laura's answer was a cry.

"Oh, then, why did you ever leave me--you who did understand me? Why
did you leave me only because I told you to go? Why didn't you make me
love you then? Why didn't you make me understand myself?" She clasped
her hands tight together upon her breast; her words, torn by her sobs,
came all but incoherent from behind her shut teeth. "No, no!" she
exclaimed, as he made towards her. "Don't touch me, don't touch me! It
is too late."

"It is not too late. Listen--listen to me."

"Oh, why weren't you a man, strong enough to know a woman's weakness?
You can only torture me now. Ah, I hate you! I hate you!"

"You love me! I tell you, you love me!" he cried, passionately, and
before she was aware of it she was in his arms, his lips were against
her lips, were on her shoulders, her neck.

"You love me!" he cried. "You love me! I defy you to say you do not."

"Oh, make me love you, then," she answered. "_Make_ me believe that you
do love me."

"Don't you know," he cried, "don't you know how I have loved you? Oh,
from the very first! My love has been my life, has been my death, my
one joy, and my one bitterness. It has always been you, dearest, year
after year, hour after hour. And now I've found you again. And now I
shall never, never let you go."

"No, no! Ah, don't, don't!" she begged. "I implore you. I am weak,
weak. Just a word, and I would forget everything."

"And I do speak that word, and your own heart answers me in spite of
you, and you will forget--forget everything of unhappiness in your
life--"

"Please, please," she entreated, breathlessly. Then, taking the leap:
"Ah, I love you, I love you!"

"--Forget all your unhappiness," he went on, holding her close to him.
"Forget the one great mistake we both made. Forget everything,
everything, everything but that we love each other."

"Don't let me think, then," she cried. "Don't let me think. Make me
forget everything, every little hour, every little moment that has
passed before this day. Oh, if I remembered once, I would kill you,
kill you with my hands! I don't know what I am saying," she moaned, "I
don't know what I am saying. I am mad, I think. Yes--I--it must be
that." She pulled back from him, looking into his face with wide-opened
eyes.

"What have I said, what have we done, what are you here for?"

"To take you away," he answered, gently, holding her in his arms,
looking down into her eyes. "To take you far away with me. To give my
whole life to making you forget that you were ever unhappy."

"And you will never leave me alone--never once?"

"Never, never once."

She drew back from him, looking about the room with unseeing eyes, her
fingers plucking and tearing at the lace of her dress; her voice was
faint and small, like the voice of a little child.

"I--I am afraid to be alone. Oh, I must never be alone again so long as
I shall live. I think I should die."

"And you never shall be; never again. Ah, this is my birthday, too,
sweetheart. I am born again to-night."

Laura clung to his arm; it was as though she were in the dark,
surrounded by the vague terrors of her girlhood. "And you will always
love me, love me, love me?" she whispered. "Sheldon, Sheldon, love me
always, always, with all your heart and soul and strength."

Tears stood in Corthell's eyes as he answered:

"God forgive whoever--whatever has brought you to this pass," he said.

And, as if it were a realisation of his thought, there suddenly came to
the ears of both the roll of wheels upon the asphalt under the carriage
porch and the trampling of iron-shod hoofs.

"Is that your husband?" Corthell's quick eye took in Laura's
disarranged coiffure, one black lock low upon her neck, the roses at
her shoulder crushed and broken, and the bright spot on either cheek.

"Is that your husband?"

"My husband--I don't know." She looked up at him with unseeing eyes.
"Where is my husband? I have no husband. You are letting me remember,"
she cried, in terror. "You are letting me remember. Ah, no, no, you
don't love me! I hate you!"

Quickly he bent and kissed her.

"I will come for you to-morrow evening," he said. "You will be ready
then to go with me?"

"Ready then? Yes, yes, to go with you anywhere."

He stood still a moment, listening. Somewhere a door closed. He heard
the hoofs upon the asphalt again.

"Good-by," he whispered. "God bless you! Good-by till to-morrow night."
And with the words he was gone. The front door of the house closed
quietly.

Had he come back again? Laura turned in her place on the long divan at
the sound of a heavy tread by the door of the library.

Then an uncertain hand drew the heavy curtain aside. Jadwin, her
husband, stood before her, his eyes sunken deep in his head, his face
dead white, his hand shaking. He stood for a long instant in the middle
of the room, looking at her. Then at last his lips moved:

"Old girl.... Honey."

Laura rose, and all but groped her way towards him, her heart beating,
the tears streaming down her face.

"My husband, my husband!"

Together they made their way to the divan, and sank down upon it side
by side, holding to each other, trembling and fearful, like children in
the night.

"Honey," whispered Jadwin, after a while. "Honey, it's dark, it's dark.
Something happened.... I don't remember," he put his hand uncertainly
to his head, "I can't remember very well; but it's dark--a little."

"It's dark," she repeated, in a low whisper. "It's dark, dark.
Something happened. Yes. I must not remember."

They spoke no further. A long time passed. Pressed close together,
Curtis Jadwin and his wife sat there in the vast, gorgeous room, silent
and trembling, ridden with unnamed fears, groping in the darkness.

And while they remained thus, holding close by one another, a prolonged
and wailing cry rose suddenly from the street, and passed on through
the city under the stars and the wide canopy of the darkness.

"Extra, oh-h-h, extra! All about the Smash of the Great Wheat Corner!
All about the Failure of Curtis Jadwin!"






CONCLUSION





The evening had closed in wet and misty. All day long a chill wind had
blown across the city from off the lake, and by eight o'clock, when
Laura and Jadwin came down to the dismantled library, a heavy rain was
falling.

Laura gave Jadwin her arm as they made their way across the room--their
footsteps echoing strangely from the uncarpeted boards.

"There, dear," she said. "Give me the valise. Now sit down on the
packing box there. Are you tired? You had better put your hat on. It is
full of draughts here, now that all the furniture and curtains are out."

"No, no. I'm all right, old girl. Is the hack there yet?"

"Not yet. You're sure you're not tired?" she insisted. "You had a
pretty bad siege of it, you know, and this is only the first week
you've been up. You remember how the doctor--"

"I've had too good a nurse," he answered, stroking her hand, "not to be
fine as a fiddle by now. You must be tired yourself, Laura. Why, for
whole days there--and nights, too, they tell me--you never left the
room."

She shook her head, as though dismissing the subject.

"I wonder," she said, sitting down upon a smaller packing-box and
clasping a knee in her hands, "I wonder what the West will be like. Do
you know I think I am going to like it, Curtis?"

"It will be starting in all over again, old girl," he said, with a
warning shake of his head. "Pretty hard at first, I'm afraid."

She laughed an almost contemptuous note.

"Hard! Now?" She took his hand and laid it to her cheek.

"By all the rules you ought to hate me," he began. "What have I done
for you but hurt you and, at last, bring you to--"

But she shut her gloved hand over his mouth.

"Stop!" she cried. "Hush, dear. You have brought me the greatest
happiness of my life."

Then under her breath, her eyes wide and thoughtful, she murmured:

"A capitulation and not a triumph, and I have won a victory by
surrendering."

"Hey--what?" demanded Jadwin. "I didn't hear."

"Never mind," she answered. "It was nothing. 'The world is all before
us where to choose,' now, isn't it? And this big house and all the life
we have led in it was just an incident in our lives--an incident that
is closed."

"Looks like it, to look around this room," he said, grimly. "Nothing
left but the wall paper. What do you suppose are in these boxes?"

"They're labelled 'books and portieres.'"

"Who bought 'em I wonder? I'd have thought the party who bought the
house would have taken them. Well, it was a wrench to see the place and
all go so dirt cheap, and the 'Thetis', too, by George! But I'm glad
now. It's as though we had lightened ship." He looked at his watch.
"That hack ought to be here pretty soon. I'm glad we checked the trunks
from the house; gives us more time."

"Oh, by the way," exclaimed Laura, all at once opening her satchel. "I
had a long letter from Page this morning, from New York. Do you want to
hear what she has to say? I've only had time to read part of it myself.
It's the first one I've had from her since their marriage."

He lit a cigar.

"Go ahead," he said, settling himself on the box. "What does Mrs. Court
have to say?"

"'My dearest sister,'" began Laura. "'Here we are, Landry and I, in New
York at last. Very tired and mussed after the ride on the cars, but in
a darling little hotel where the proprietor is head cook and everybody
speaks French. I know my accent is improving, and Landry has learned
any quantity of phrases already. We are reading George Sand out loud,
and are making up the longest vocabulary. To-night we are going to a
concert, and I've found out that there's a really fine course of
lectures to be given soon on "Literary Tendencies," or something like
that. Quel chance. Landry is intensely interested. You've no idea what
a deep mind he has, Laura--a real thinker.

"'But here's really a big piece of news. We may not have to give up our
old home where we lived when we first came to Chicago. Aunt Wess' wrote
the other day to say that, if you were willing, she would rent it, and
then sublet all the lower floor to Landry and me, so we could have a
real house over our heads and not the under side of the floor of the
flat overhead. And she is such an old dear, I know we could all get
along beautifully. Write me about this as soon as you can. I know
you'll be willing, and Aunt Wess, said she'd agree to whatever rent you
suggested.

"'We went to call on Mrs. Cressler day before yesterday. She's been
here nearly a fortnight by now, and is living with a maiden sister of
hers in a very beautiful house fronting Central Park (not so beautiful
as our palace on North Avenue. Never, never will I forget that house).
She will probably stay here now always. She says the very sight of the
old neighbourhoods in Chicago would be more than she could bear. Poor
Mrs. Cressler! How fortunate for her that her sister'--and so on, and
so on," broke in Laura, hastily.

"Read it, read it," said Jadwin, turning sharply away. "Don't skip a
line. I want to hear every word."

"That's all there is to it," Laura returned. "'We'll be back,'" she
went on, turning a page of the letter, "'in about three weeks, and
Landry will take up his work in that railroad office. No more
speculating for him, he says. He talks of Mr. Jadwin continually. You
never saw or heard of such devotion. He says that Mr. Jadwin is a
genius, the greatest financier in the country, and that he knows he
could have won if they all hadn't turned against him that day. He never
gets tired telling me that Mr. Jadwin has been a father to him--the
kindest, biggest-hearted man he ever knew--'"

Jadwin pulled his mustache rapidly.

"Pshaw, pish, nonsense--little fool!" he blustered.

"He simply worshipped you from the first, Curtis," commented Laura.
"Even after he knew I was to marry you. He never once was jealous,
never once would listen to a word against you from any one."

"Well--well, what else does Mrs. Court say?"

"'I am glad to hear,'" read Laura, "'that Mr. Gretry did not fail,
though Landry tells me he must have lost a great deal of money. Landry
tells me that eighteen brokers' houses failed in Chicago the day after
Mr. Gretry suspended. Isabel sent us a wedding present--a lovely
medicine chest full of homoeopathic medicines, little pills and things,
you know. But, as Landry and I are never sick and both laugh at
homoeopathy, I declare I don't know just what we will do with it.
Landry is as careful of me as though I were a wax doll. But I do wish
he would think more of his own health. He never will wear his
mackintosh in rainy weather. I've been studying his tastes so
carefully. He likes French light opera better than English, and bright
colours in his cravats, and he simply adores stuffed tomatoes.

"'We both send our love, and Landry especially wants to be remembered
to Mr. Jadwin. I hope this letter will come in time for us to wish you
both bon voyage and _bon succes._ How splendid of Mr. Jadwin to have
started his new business even while he was convalescent! Landry says he
knows he will make two or three more fortunes in the next few years.

"'Good-by, Laura, dear. Ever your loving sister,

"'PAGE COURT.

"'P.S.--I open this letter again to tell you that we met Mr. Corthell
on the street yesterday. He sails for Europe to-day.'"

"Oh," said Jadwin, as Laura put the letter quickly down,
"Corthell--that artist chap. By the way, whatever became of him?"

Laura settled a comb in the back of her hair.

"He went away," she said. "You remember--I told you--told you all about
it."

She would have turned away her head, but he laid a hand upon her
shoulder.

"I remember," he answered, looking squarely into her eyes, "I remember
nothing--only that I have been to blame for everything. I told you
once--long ago--that I understood. And I understand now, old girl,
understand as I never did before. I fancy we both have been living
according to a wrong notion of things. We started right when we were
first married, but I worked away from it somehow and pulled you along
with me. But we've both been through a great big change, honey, a great
big change, and we're starting all over again.... Well, there's the
carriage, I guess."

They rose, gathering up their valises.

"Hoh!" said Jadwin. "No servants now, Laura, to carry our things down
for us and open the door, and it's a hack, old girl, instead of the
victoria or coupe."

"What if it is?" she cried. "What do 'things,' servants, money, and all
amount to now?"

As Jadwin laid his hand upon the knob of the front door, he all at once
put down his valise and put his arm about his wife. She caught him
about the neck and looked deep into his eyes a long moment. And then,
without speaking, they kissed each other.

In the outer vestibule, he raised the umbrella and held it over her
head.

"Hold it a minute, will you, Laura?" he said.

He gave it into her hand and swung the door of the house shut behind
him. The noise woke a hollow echo throughout all the series of empty,
denuded rooms. Jadwin slipped the key in his pocket.

"Come," he said.

They stepped out from the vestibule. It was already dark. The rain was
falling in gentle slants through the odorous, cool air. Across the
street in the park the first leaves were beginning to fall; the lake
lapped and washed quietly against the stone embankments and a belated
bicyclist stole past across the asphalt, with the silent flitting of a
bat, his lamp throwing a fan of orange-coloured haze into the mist of
rain.

In the street in front of the house the driver, descending from the
box, held open the door of the hack. Jadwin handed Laura in, gave an
address to the driver, and got in himself, slamming the door after.
They heard the driver mount to his seat and speak to his horses.

"Well," said Jadwin, rubbing the fog from the window pane of the door,
"look your last at the old place, Laura. You'll never see it again."

But she would not look.

"No, no," she said. "I'll look at you, dearest, at you, and our future,
which is to be happier than any years we have ever known."

Jadwin did not answer other than by taking her hand in his, and in
silence they drove through the city towards the train that was to carry
them to the new life. A phase of the existences of each was closed
definitely. The great corner was a thing of the past; the great corner
with the long train of disasters its collapse had started. The great
failure had precipitated smaller failures, and the aggregate of smaller
failures had pulled down one business house after another. For weeks
afterward, the successive crashes were like the shock and reverberation
of undermined buildings toppling to their ruin. An important bank had
suspended payment, and hundreds of depositors had found their little
fortunes swept away. The ramifications of the catastrophe were
unbelievable. The whole tone of financial affairs seemed changed. Money
was "tight" again, credit was withdrawn. The business world began to
speak of hard times, once more.

But Laura would not admit her husband was in any way to blame. He had
suffered, too. She repeated to herself his words, again and again:

"The wheat cornered itself. I simply stood between two sets of
circumstances. The wheat cornered me, not I the wheat."

And all those millions and millions of bushels of Wheat were gone now.
The Wheat that had killed Cressler, that had ingulfed Jadwin's fortune
and all but unseated reason itself; the Wheat that had intervened like
a great torrent to drag her husband from her side and drown him in the
roaring vortices of the Pit, had passed on, resistless, along its
ordered and predetermined courses from West to East? like a vast
Titanic flood, had passed, leaving Death and Ruin in its wake, but
bearing Life and Prosperity to the crowded cities and centres of Europe.

For a moment, vague, dark perplexities assailed her, questionings as to
the elemental forces, the forces of demand and supply that ruled the
world. This huge resistless Nourisher of the Nations--why was it that
it could not reach the People, could not fulfil its destiny, unmarred
by all this suffering, unattended by all this misery?

She did not know. But as she searched, troubled and disturbed for an
answer, she was aware of a certain familiarity in the neighbourhood the
carriage was traversing. The strange sense of having lived through this
scene, these circumstances, once before, took hold upon her.

She looked out quickly, on either hand, through the blurred glasses of
the carriage doors. Surely, surely, this locality had once before
impressed itself upon her imagination. She turned to her husband, an
exclamation upon her lips; but Jadwin, by the dim light of the carriage
lanterns, was studying a railroad folder.

All at once, intuitively, Laura turned in her place, and raising the
flap that covered the little window at the back of the carriage, looked
behind. On either side of the vista in converging lines stretched the
tall office buildings, lights burning in a few of their windows, even
yet. Over the end of the street the lead-coloured sky was broken by a
pale faint haze of light, and silhouetted against this rose a sombre
mass, unbroken by any glimmer, rearing a black and formidable facade
against the blur of the sky behind it.

And this was the last impression of the part of her life that that day
brought to a close; the tall gray 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, 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.









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