← catalogue

The pit

by Frank Norris · English · Gutenberg #4382 · 718,033 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The pit
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The pit
        a story of Chicago

Author: Frank Norris


        
Release date: August 1, 2003 [eBook #4382]
                Most recently updated: December 27, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4382

Credits: Produced by Charles Aldarondo.  HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PIT ***




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 

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/4382