VI

The months passed. Soon three years had gone by, and the third winter

since the ceremony in St. James' Church drew to its close.

Since that day when--acting upon the foreknowledge of the French import

duty--Jadwin had sold his million of bushels short, the price of wheat

had been steadily going down. From ninety-three and ninety-four it had

dropped to the eighties. Heavy crops the world over had helped the

decline. No one was willing to buy wheat. The Bear leaders were strong,

unassailable. Lower and lower sagged the price; now it was

seventy-five, now seventy-two. From all parts of the country in solid,

waveless tides wheat--the mass of it incessantly crushing down the

price--came rolling in upon Chicago and the Board of Trade Pit. All

over the world the farmers saw season after season of good crops. They

were good in the Argentine Republic, and on the Russian steppes. In

India, on the little farms of Burmah, of Mysore, and of Sind the grain,

year after year, headed out fat, heavy, and well-favoured. In the great

San Joaquin valley of California the ranches were one welter of

fertility. All over the United States, from the Dakotas, from Nebraska,

Iowa, Kansas, and Illinois, from all the wheat belt came steadily the

reports of good crops.

But at the same time the low price of grain kept the farmers poor. New

mortgages were added to farms already heavily "papered"; even the crops

were mortgaged in advance. No new farm implements were bought.

Throughout the farming communities of the "Middle West" there were no

longer purchases of buggies and parlour organs. Somewhere in other

remoter corners of the world the cheap wheat, that meant cheap bread,

made living easy and induced prosperity, but in the United States the

poverty of the farmer worked upward through the cogs and wheels of the

whole great machine of business. It was as though a lubricant had dried

up. The cogs and wheels worked slowly and with dislocations. Things

were a little out of joint. Wall Street stocks were down. In a word,

"times were bad." Thus for three years. It became a proverb on the

Chicago Board of Trade that the quickest way to make money was to sell

wheat short. One could with almost absolute certainty be sure of buying

cheaper than one had sold. And that peculiar, indefinite thing

known--among the most unsentimental men in the world--as "sentiment,"

prevailed more and more strongly in favour of low prices. "The

'sentiment,'" said the market reports, "was bearish"; and the traders,

speculators, eighth-chasers, scalpers, brokers, bucket-shop men, and

the like--all the world of La Salle Street--had become so accustomed to

these "Bear conditions," that it was hard to believe that they would

not continue indefinitely.

Jadwin, inevitably, had been again drawn into the troubled waters of

the Pit. Always, as from the very first, a Bear, he had once more

raided the market, and had once more been successful. Two months after

this raid he and Gretry planned still another coup, a deal of greater

magnitude than any they had previously hazarded. Laura, who knew very

little of her husband's affairs--to which he seldom alluded--saw by the

daily papers that at one stage of the affair the "deal" trembled to its

base.

But Jadwin was by now "blooded to the game." He no longer needed

Gretry's urging to spur him. He had developed into a strategist, bold,

of inconceivable effrontery, delighting in the shock of battle, never

more jovial, more daring than when under stress of the most merciless

attack. On this occasion, when the "other side" resorted to the usual

tactics to drive him from the Pit, he led on his enemies to make one

single false step. Instantly--disregarding Gretry's entreaties as to

caution--Jadwin had brought the vast bulk of his entire fortune to

bear, in the manner of a general concentrating his heavy artillery, and

crushed the opposition with appalling swiftness.

He issued from the grapple triumphantly, and it was not till long

afterward that Laura knew how near, for a few hours, he had been to

defeat.

And again the price of wheat declined. In the first week in April, at

the end of the third winter of Jadwin's married life, May wheat was

selling on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade at sixty-four, the

July option at sixty-five, the September at sixty-six and an eighth.

During February of the same year Jadwin had sold short five hundred

thousand bushels of May. He believed with Gretry and with the majority

of the professional traders that the price would go to sixty.

March passed without any further decline. All through this month and

through the first days of April Jadwin was unusually thoughtful. His

short wheat gave him no concern. He was now so rich that a mere

half-million bushels was not a matter for anxiety. It was the

"situation" that arrested his attention.

In some indefinable way, warned by that blessed sixth sense that had

made him the successful speculator he was, he felt that somewhere, at

some time during the course of the winter, a change had quietly,

gradually come about, that it was even then operating. The conditions

that had prevailed so consistently for three years, were they now to be

shifted a little? He did not know, he could not say. But in the plexus

of financial affairs in which he moved and lived he felt--a difference.

For one thing "times" were better, business was better. He could not

fail to see that trade was picking up. In dry goods, in hardware, in

manufactures there seemed to be a different spirit, and he could

imagine that it was a spirit of optimism. There, in that great city

where the Heart of the Nation beat, where the diseases of the times, or

the times' healthful activities were instantly reflected, Jadwin sensed

a more rapid, an easier, more untroubled run of life blood. All through

the Body of Things, money, the vital fluid, seemed to be flowing more

easily. People seemed richer, the banks were lending more, securities

seemed stable, solid. In New York, stocks were booming. Men were making

money--were making it, spending it, lending it, exchanging it. Instead

of being congested in vaults, safes, and cash boxes, tight, hard,

congealed, it was loosening, and, as it were, liquefying, so that it

spread and spread and permeated the entire community. The People had

money. They were willing to take chances.

So much for the financial conditions.

The spring had been backward, cold, bitter, inhospitable, and Jadwin

began to suspect that the wheat crop of his native country, that for so

long had been generous, and of excellent quality, was now to prove--it

seemed quite possible--scant and of poor condition. He began to watch

the weather, and to keep an eye upon the reports from the little county

seats and "centres" in the winter wheat States. These, in part, seemed

to confirm his suspicions.

From Keokuk, in Iowa, came the news that winter wheat was suffering

from want of moisture. Benedict, Yates' Centre, and Douglass, in

southeastern Kansas, sent in reports of dry, windy weather that was

killing the young grain in every direction, and the same conditions

seemed to prevail in the central counties. In Illinois, from Quincy and

Waterloo in the west, and from Ridgway in the south, reports came

steadily to hand of freezing weather and bitter winds. All through the

lower portions of the State the snowfall during the winter had not been

heavy enough to protect the seeded grain. But the Ohio crop, it would

appear, was promising enough, as was also that of Missouri. In Indiana,

however, Jadwin could guess that the hopes of even a moderate yield

were fated to be disappointed; persistent cold weather, winter

continuing almost up to the first of April, seemed to have definitely

settled the question.

But more especially Jadwin watched Nebraska, that State which is one

single vast wheat field. How would Nebraska do, Nebraska which alone

might feed an entire nation? County seat after county seat began to

send in its reports. All over the State the grip of winter held firm

even yet. The wheat had been battered by incessant gales, had been

nipped and harried by frost; everywhere the young half-grown grain

seemed to be perishing. It was a massacre, a veritable slaughter.

But, for all this, nothing could be decided as yet. Other winter wheat

States, from which returns were as yet only partial, might easily

compensate for the failures elsewhere, and besides all that, the Bears

of the Board of Trade might keep the price inert even in face of the

news of short yields. As a matter of fact, the more important and

stronger Bear traders were already piping their usual strain. Prices

were bound to decline, the three years, sagging was not over yet. They,

the Bears, were too strong; no Bull news could frighten them. Somehow

there was bound to be plenty of wheat. In face of the rumours of a

short crop they kept the price inert, weak.

On the tenth of April came the Government report on the condition of

winter wheat. It announced an average far below any known for ten years

past. On March tenth the same bulletin had shown a moderate supply in

farmers' hands, less than one hundred million bushels in fact, and a

visible supply of less than forty millions.

The Bear leaders promptly set to work to discount this news. They

showed how certain foreign conditions would more than offset the effect

of a poor American harvest. They pointed out the fact that the

Government report on condition was brought up only to the first of

April, and that since that time the weather in the wheat belt had been

favorable beyond the wildest hopes.

The April report was made public on the afternoon of the tenth of the

month. That same evening Jadwin invited Gretry and his wife to dine at

the new house on North Avenue; and after dinner, leaving Mrs. Gretry

and Laura in the drawing-room, he brought the broker up to the

billiard-room for a game of pool.

But when Gretry had put the balls in the triangle, the two men did not

begin to play at once. Jadwin had asked the question that had been

uppermost in the minds of each during dinner.

"Well, Sam," he had said, by way of a beginning, "what do you think of

this Government report?"

The broker chalked his cue placidly.

"I expect there'll be a bit of reaction on the strength of it, but the

market will go off again. I said wheat would go to sixty, and I still

say it. It's a long time between now and May."

"I wasn't thinking of crop conditions only," observed Jadwin. "Sam,

we're going to have better times and higher prices this summer."

Gretry shook his head and entered into a long argument to show that

Jadwin was wrong.

But Jadwin refused to be convinced. All at once he laid the flat of his

hand upon the table.

"Sam, we've touched bottom," he declared, "touched bottom all along the

line. It's a paper dime to the Sub-Treasury."

"I don't care about the rest of the line," said the broker doggedly,

sitting on the edge of the table, "wheat will go to sixty." He

indicated the nest of balls with a movement of his chin. "Will you

break?"

Jadwin broke and scored, leaving one ball three inches in front of a

corner pocket. He called the shot, and as he drew back his cue he said,

deliberately:

"Just as sure as I make this pocket wheat will--not

go--off--another--_cent._"

With the last word he drove the ball home and straightened up. Gretry

laid down his cue and looked at him quickly. But he did not speak.

Jadwin sat down on one of the straight-backed chairs upon the raised

platform against the wall and rested his elbows upon his knees.

"Sam," he said, "the time is come for a great big change." He

emphasised the word with a tap of his cue upon the floor. "We can't

play our game the way we've been playing it the last three years. We've

been hammering wheat down and down and down, till we've got it below

the cost of production; and now she won't go any further with all the

hammering in the world. The other fellows, the rest of this Bear crowd,

don't seem to see it, but I see it. Before fall we're going to have

higher prices. Wheat is going up, and when it does I mean to be right

there."

"We're going to have a dull market right up to the beginning of

winter," persisted the other.

"Come and say that to me at the beginning of winter, then," Jadwin

retorted. "Look here, Sam, I'm short of May five hundred thousand

bushels, and to-morrow morning you are going to send your boys on the

floor for me and close that trade."

"You're crazy, J.," protested the broker. "Hold on another month, and I

promise you, you'll thank me."

"Not another day, not another hour. This Bear campaign of ours has come

to an end. That's said and signed."

"Why, it's just in its prime," protested the broker. "Great heavens,

you mustn't get out of the game now, after hanging on for three years."

"I'm not going to get out of it."

"Why, good Lord!" said Gretry, "you don't mean to say that--"

"That I'm going over. That's exactly what I do mean. I'm going to

change over so quick to the other side that I'll be there before you

can take off your hat. I'm done with a Bear game. It was good while it

lasted, but we've worked it for all there was in it. I'm not only going

to cover my May shorts and get out of that trade, but"--Jadwin leaned

forward and struck his hand upon his knee--"but I'm going to buy. I'm

going to buy September wheat, and I'm going to buy it to-morrow, five

hundred thousand bushels of it, and if the market goes as I think it

will later on, I'm going to buy more. I'm no Bear any longer. I'm going

to boost this market right through till the last bell rings; and from

now on Curtis Jadwin spells B-u-double l--Bull."

"They'll slaughter you," said Gretry, "slaughter you in cold blood.

You're just one man against a gang--a gang of cutthroats. Those Bears

have got millions and millions back of them. You don't suppose, do you,

that old man Crookes, or Kenniston, or little Sweeny, or all that lot

would give you one little bit of a chance for your life if they got a

grip on you. Cover your shorts if you want to, but, for God's sake,

don't begin to buy in the same breath. You wait a while. If this market

has touched bottom, we'll be able to tell in a few days. I'll admit,

for the sake of argument, that just now there's a pause. But nobody can

tell whether it will turn up or down yet. Now's the time to be

conservative, to play it cautious."

"If I was conservative and cautious," answered Jadwin, "I wouldn't be

in this game at all. I'd be buying U.S. four percents. That's the big

mistake so many of these fellows down here make. They go into a game

where the only ones who can possibly win are the ones who take big

chances, and then they try to play the thing cautiously. If I wait a

while till the market turns up and everybody is buying, how am I any

the better off? No, sir, you buy the September option for me

to-morrow--five hundred thousand bushels. I deposited the margin to

your credit in the Illinois Trust this afternoon."

There was a long silence. Gretry spun a ball between his fingers,

top-fashion.

"Well," he said at last, hesitatingly, "well--I don't know, J.--you are

either Napoleonic--or--or a colossal idiot."

"Neither one nor the other, Samuel. I'm just using a little common

sense.... Is it your shot?"

"I'm blessed if I know."

"Well, we'll start a new game. Sam, I'll give you six balls and beat

you in"--he looked at his watch--"beat you before half-past nine."

"For a dollar?"

"I never bet, Sam, and you know it."

Half an hour later Jadwin said:

"Shall we go down and join the ladies? Don't put out your cigar. That's

one bargain I made with Laura before we moved in here--that smoking was

allowable everywhere."

"Room enough, I guess," observed the broker, as the two stepped into

the elevator. "How many rooms have you got here, by the way?"

"Upon my word, I don't know," answered Jadwin. "I discovered a new one

yesterday. Fact. I was having a look around, and I came out into a

little kind of smoking-room or other that, I swear, I'd never seen

before. I had to get Laura to tell me about it."

The elevator sank to the lower floor, and Jadwin and the broker stepped

out into the main hallway. From the drawing-room near by came the sound

of women's voices.

"Before we go in," said Jadwin, "I want you to see our art gallery and

the organ. Last time you were up, remember, the men were still at work

in here."

They passed down a broad corridor, and at the end, just before parting

the heavy, sombre curtains, Jadwin pressed a couple of electric

buttons, and in the open space above the curtain sprang up a lambent,

steady glow.

The broker, as he entered, gave a long whistle. The art gallery took in

the height of two of the stories of the house. It was shaped like a

rotunda, and topped with a vast airy dome of coloured glass. Here and

there about the room were glass cabinets full of bibelots, ivory

statuettes, old snuff boxes, fans of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries. The walls themselves were covered with a multitude of

pictures, oils, water-colours, with one or two pastels.

But to the left of the entrance, let into the frame of the building,

stood a great organ, large enough for a cathedral, and giving to view,

in the dulled incandescence of the electrics, its sheaves of mighty

pipes.

"Well, this is something like," exclaimed the broker.

"I don't know much about 'em myself," hazarded Jadwin, looking at the

pictures, "but Laura can tell you. We bought most of 'em while we were

abroad, year before last. Laura says this is the best." He indicated a

large "Bougereau" that represented a group of nymphs bathing in a

woodland pool.

"H'm!" said the broker, "you wouldn't want some of your Sunday-school

superintendents to see this now. This is what the boys down on the

Board would call a bar-room picture."

But Jadwin did not laugh.

"It never struck me in just that way," he said, gravely.

"It's a fine piece of work, though," Gretry hastened to add. "Fine,

great colouring."

"I like this one pretty well," continued Jadwin, moving to a canvas by

Detaille. It was one of the inevitable studies of a cuirassier; in this

case a trumpeter, one arm high in the air, the hand clutching the

trumpet, the horse, foam-flecked, at a furious gallop. In the rear,

through clouds of dust, the rest of the squadron was indicated by a few

points of colour.

"Yes, that's pretty neat," concurred Gretry. "He's sure got a gait on.

Lord, what a lot of accoutrements those French fellows stick on. Now

our boys would chuck about three-fourths of that truck before going

into action.... Queer way these artists work," he went on, peering

close to the canvas. "Look at it close up and it's just a lot of little

daubs, but you get off a distance"--he drew back, cocking his head to

one side--"and you see now. Hey--see how the thing bunches up. Pretty

neat, isn't it?" He turned from the picture and rolled his eyes about

the room.

"Well, well," he murmured. "This certainly is the real thing, J. I

suppose, now, it all represents a pretty big pot of money."

"I'm not quite used to it yet myself," said Jadwin. "I was in here last

Sunday, thinking it all over, the new house, and the money and all. And

it struck me as kind of queer the way things have turned out for me....

Sam, do you know, I can remember the time, up there in Ottawa County,

Michigan, on my old dad's farm, when I used to have to get up before

day-break to tend the stock, and my sister and I used to run out quick

into the stable and stand in the warm cow fodder in the stalls to warm

our bare feet.... She up and died when she was about

eighteen--galloping consumption. Yes, sir. By George, how I loved that

little sister of mine! You remember her, Sam. Remember how you used to

come out from Grand Rapids every now and then to go squirrel shooting

with me?"

"Sure, sure. Oh, I haven't forgot."

"Well, I was wishing the other day that I could bring Sadie down here,

and--oh, I don't know--give her a good time. She never had a good time

when she was alive. Work, work, work; morning, noon, and night. I'd

like to have made it up to her. I believe in making people happy, Sam.

That's the way I take my fun. But it's too late to do it now for my

little sister."

"Well," hazarded Gretry, "you got a good wife in yonder to--"

Jadwin interrupted him. He half turned away, thrusting his hands

suddenly into his pockets. Partly to himself, partly to his friend he

murmured:

"You bet I have, you bet I have. Sam," he exclaimed, then turned away

again. "... Oh, well, never mind," he murmured.

Gretry, embarrassed, constrained, put his chin in the air, shutting his

eyes in a knowing fashion.

"I understand," he answered. "I understand, J."

"Say, look at this organ here," said Jadwin briskly. "Here's the thing

I like to play with."

They crossed to the other side of the room.

"Oh, you've got one of those attachment things," observed the broker.

"Listen now," said Jadwin. He took a perforated roll from the case near

at hand and adjusted it, Gretry looking on with the solemn interest

that all American business men have in mechanical inventions. Jadwin

sat down before it, pulled out a stop or two, and placed his feet on

the pedals. A vast preliminary roaring breath soughed through the

pipes, with a vibratory rush of power. Then there came a canorous snarl

of bass, and then, abruptly, with resistless charm, and with

full-bodied, satisfying amplitude of volume the opening movement of the

overture of "Carmen."

"Great, great!" shouted Gretry, his voice raised to make himself heard.

"That's immense."

The great-lunged harmony was filling the entire gallery, clear cut,

each note clearly, sharply treated with a precision that, if

mechanical, was yet effective. Jadwin, his eyes now on the stops, now

on the sliding strip of paper, played on. Through the sonorous clamour

of the pipes Gretry could hear him speaking, but he caught only a word

or two.

"Toreador ... horse power ... Madame Calve ... electric motor ... fine

song ... storage battery."

The movement thinned out, and dwindled to a strain of delicate

lightness, sustained by the smallest pipes and developing a new motive;

this was twice repeated, and then ran down to a series of chords and

bars that prepared for and prefigured some great effect close at hand.

There was a short pause, then with the sudden releasing of a tremendous

rush of sound, back surged the melody, with redoubled volume and power,

to the original movement.

"That's bully, bully!" shouted Gretry, clapping his hands, and his eye,

caught by a movement on the other side of the room, he turned about to

see Laura Jadwin standing between the opened curtains at the entrance.

Seen thus unexpectedly, the broker was again overwhelmed with a sense

of the beauty of Jadwin's wife. Laura was in evening dress of black

lace; her arms and neck were bare. Her black hair was piled high upon

her head, a single American Beauty rose nodded against her bare

shoulder. She was even yet slim and very tall, her face pale with that

unusual paleness of hers that was yet a colour. Around her slender neck

was a marvellous collar of pearls many strands deep, set off and held

in place by diamond clasps.

With Laura came Mrs. Gretry and Page. The broker's wife was a

vivacious, small, rather pretty blonde woman, a little angular, a

little faded. She was garrulous, witty, slangy. She wore turquoises in

her ears morning, noon, and night.

But three years had made a vast difference in Page Dearborn. All at

once she was a young woman. Her straight, hard, little figure had

developed, her arms were rounded, her eyes were calmer. She had grown

taller, broader. Her former exquisite beauty was perhaps not quite so

delicate, so fine, so virginal, so charmingly angular and boyish. There

was infinitely more of the woman in it; and perhaps because of this she

looked more like Laura than at any time of her life before. But even

yet her expression was one of gravity, of seriousness. There was always

a certain aloofness about Page. She looked out at the world solemnly,

and as if separated from its lighter side. Things humorous interested

her only as inexplicable vagaries of the human animal.

"We heard the organ," said Laura, "so we came in. I wanted Mrs. Gretry

to listen to it."

The three years that had just passed had been the most important years

of Laura Jadwin's life. Since her marriage she had grown intellectually

and morally with amazing rapidity. Indeed, so swift had been the

change, that it was not so much a growth as a transformation. She was

no longer the same half-formed, impulsive girl who had found a delight

in the addresses of her three lovers, and who had sat on the floor in

the old home on State Street and allowed Landry Court to hold her hand.

She looked back upon the Miss Dearborn of those days as though she were

another person. How she had grown since then! How she had changed! How

different, how infinitely more serious and sweet her life since then

had become!

A great fact had entered her world, a great new element, that dwarfed

all other thoughts, all other considerations. This was her love for her

husband. It was as though until the time of her marriage she had walked

in darkness, a darkness that she fancied was day; walked perversely,

carelessly, and with a frivolity that was almost wicked. Then,

suddenly, she had seen a great light. Love had entered her world. In

her new heaven a new light was fixed, and all other things were seen

only because of this light; all other things were touched by it,

tempered by it, warmed and vivified by it.

It had seemed to date from a certain evening at their country house at

Geneva Lake in Wisconsin, where she had spent her honeymoon with her

husband. They had been married about ten days. It was a July evening,

and they were quite alone on board the little steam yacht the "Thetis."

She remembered it all very plainly. It had been so warm that she had

not changed her dress after dinner--she recalled that it was of Honiton

lace over old-rose silk, and that Curtis had said it was the prettiest

he had ever seen. It was an hour before midnight, and the lake was so

still as to appear veritably solid. The moon was reflected upon the

surface with never a ripple to blur its image. The sky was grey with

starlight, and only a vague bar of black between the star shimmer and

the pale shield of the water marked the shore line. Never since that

night could she hear the call of whip-poor-wills or the piping of night

frogs that the scene did not come back to her. The little "Thetis" had

throbbed and panted steadily. At the door of the engine room, the

engineer--the grey MacKenny, his back discreetly turned--sat smoking a

pipe and taking the air. From time to time he would swing himself into

the engine room, and the clink and scrape of his shovel made itself

heard as he stoked the fire vigorously.

Stretched out in a long wicker deck chair, hatless, a drab coat thrown

around her shoulders, Laura had sat near her husband, who had placed

himself upon a camp stool, where he could reach the wheel with one hand.

"Well," he had said at last, "are you glad you married me, Miss

Dearborn?" And she had caught him about the neck and drawn his face

down to hers, and her head thrown back, their lips all but touching,

had whispered over and over again:

"I love you--love you--love you!"

That night was final. The marriage ceremony, even that moment in her

room, when her husband had taken her in his arms and she had felt the

first stirring of love in her heart, all the first week of their

married life had been for Laura a whirl, a blur. She had not been able

to find herself. Her affection for her husband came and went

capriciously. There were moments when she believed herself to be really

unhappy. Then, all at once, she seemed to awake. Not the ceremony at

St. James' Church, but that awakening had been her marriage. Now it was

irrevocable; she was her husband's; she belonged to him indissolubly,

forever and forever, and the surrender was a glory. Laura in that

moment knew that love, the supreme triumph of a woman's life, was less

a victory than a capitulation.

Since then her happiness had been perfect. Literally and truly there

was not a cloud, not a mote in her sunshine. She had everything--the

love of her husband, great wealth, extraordinary beauty, perfect

health, an untroubled mind, friends, position--everything. God had been

good to her, beyond all dreams and all deserving. For her had been

reserved all the prizes, all the guerdons; for her who had done nothing

to merit them.

Her husband she knew was no less happy. In those first three years

after their marriage, life was one unending pageant; and their

happiness became for them some marvellous, bewildering thing, dazzling,

resplendent, a strange, glittering, jewelled Wonder-worker that

suddenly had been put into their hands.

As one of the first results of this awakening, Laura reproached herself

with having done but little for Page. She told herself that she had not

been a good sister, that often she had been unjust, quick tempered, and

had made the little girl to suffer because of her caprices. She had not

sympathised sufficiently with her small troubles--so she made herself

believe--and had found too many occasions to ridicule Page's

intenseness and queer little solemnities. True she had given her a good

home, good clothes, and a good education, but she should have given

more--more than mere duty-gifts. She should have been more of a

companion to the little girl, more of a help; in fine, more of a

mother. Laura felt all at once the responsibilities of the elder sister

in a family bereft of parents. Page was growing fast, and growing

astonishingly beautiful; in a little while she would be a young woman,

and over the near horizon, very soon now, must inevitably loom the

grave question of her marriage.

But it was only this realisation of certain responsibilities that

during the first years of her married life at any time drew away

Laura's consideration of her husband. She began to get acquainted with

the real man-within-the-man that she knew now revealed himself only

after marriage. Jadwin her husband was so different from, so infinitely

better than, Jadwin her lover, that Laura sometimes found herself

looking back with a kind of retrospective apprehension on the old days

and the time when she was simply Miss Dearborn. How little she had

known him after all! And how, in the face of this ignorance, this

innocence, this absence of any insight into his real character, had she

dared to take the irretrievable step that bound her to him for life?

The Curtis Jadwin of those early days was so much another man. He might

have been a rascal; she could not have known it. As it was, her husband

had promptly come to be, for her, the best, the finest man she had ever

known. But it might easily have been different.

His attitude towards her was thoughtfulness itself. Hardly ever was he

absent from her, even for a day, that he did not bring her some little

present, some little keep-sake--or even a bunch of flowers--when he

returned in the evening. The anniversaries--Christmas, their wedding

day, her birthday--he always observed with great eclat. He took a

holiday from his business, surprised her with presents under her

pillow, or her dinner-plate, and never failed to take her to the

theatre in the evening.

However, it was not only Jadwin's virtues that endeared him to his

wife. He was no impeccable hero in her eyes. He was tremendously human.

He had his faults, his certain lovable weaknesses, and it was precisely

these traits that Laura found so adorable.

For one thing, Jadwin could be magnificently inconsistent. Let him set

his mind and heart upon a given pursuit, pleasure, or line of conduct

not altogether advisable at the moment, and the ingenuity of the

excuses by which he justified himself were monuments of elaborate

sophistry. Yet, if later he lost interest, he reversed his arguments

with supreme disregard for his former words.

Then, too, he developed a boyish pleasure in certain unessential though

cherished objects and occupations, that he indulged extravagantly and

to the neglect of things, not to say duties, incontestably of more

importance.

One of these objects was the "Thetis." In every conceivable particular

the little steam yacht was complete down to the last bolt, the last

coat of varnish; but at times during their summer vacations, when

Jadwin, in all reason, should have been supervising the laying out of

certain unfinished portions of the "grounds"--supervision which could

be trusted to no subordinate--he would be found aboard the "Thetis,"

hatless, in his shirt-sleeves, in solemn debate with the grey MacKenny

and--a cleaning rag, or monkey-wrench, or paint brush in his

hand--tinkering and pottering about the boat, over and over again.

Wealthy as he was, he could have maintained an entire crew on board

whose whole duty should have been to screw, and scrub, and scour. But

Jadwin would have none of it. "Costs too much," he would declare, with

profound gravity. He had the self-made American's handiness with

implements and paint brushes, and he would, at high noon and under a

murderous sun, make the trip from the house to the dock where the

"Thetis" was moored, for the trivial pleasure of tightening a

bolt--which did not need tightening; or wake up in the night to tell

Laura of some wonderful new idea he had conceived as to the equipment

or decoration of the yacht. He had blustered about the extravagance of

a "crew," but the sums of money that went to the brightening,

refitting, overhauling, repainting, and reballasting of the boat--all

absolutely uncalled-for--made even Laura gasp, and would have

maintained a dozen sailors an entire year.

This same inconsistency prevailed also in other directions. In the

matter of business Jadwin's economy was unimpeachable. He would cavil

on a half-dollar's overcharge; he would put himself to downright

inconvenience to save the useless expenditure of a dime--and boast of

it. But no extravagance was ever too great, no time ever too valuable,

when bass were to be caught.

For Jadwin was a fisherman unregenerate. Laura, though an early riser

when in the city, was apt to sleep late in the country, and never

omitted a two-hours' nap in the heat of the afternoon. Her husband

improved these occasions when he was deprived of her society, to

indulge in his pastime. Never a morning so forbidding that his lines

were not in the water by five o'clock; never a sun so scorching that he

was not coaxing a "strike" in the stumps and reeds in the shade under

the shores.

It was the one pleasure he could not share with his wife. Laura was

unable to bear the monotony of the slow-moving boat, the hours spent

without results, the enforced idleness, the cramped positions. Only

occasionally could Jadwin prevail upon her to accompany him. And then

what preparations! Queen Elizabeth approaching her barge was attended

with no less solicitude. MacKenny (who sometimes acted as guide and

oarsman) and her husband exhausted their ingenuity to make her

comfortable. They held anxious debates: "Do you think she'll like

that?" "Wouldn't this make it easier for her?" "Is that the way she

liked it last time?" Jadwin himself arranged the cushions, spread the

carpet over the bottom of the boat, handed her in, found her old gloves

for her, baited her hook, disentangled her line, saw to it that the

mineral water in the ice-box was sufficiently cold, and performed an

endless series of little attentions looking to her comfort and

enjoyment. It was all to no purpose, and at length Laura declared:

"Curtis, dear, it is no use. You just sacrifice every bit of your

pleasure to make me comfortable--to make me enjoy it; and I just don't.

I'm sorry, I want to share every pleasure with you, but I don't like to

fish, and never will. You go alone. I'm just a hindrance to you." And

though he blustered at first, Laura had her way.

Once in the period of these three years Laura and her husband had gone

abroad. But her experience in England--they did not get to the

Continent--had been a disappointment to her. The museums, art

galleries, and cathedrals were not of the least interest to Jadwin, and

though he followed her from one to another with uncomplaining stoicism,

she felt his distress, and had contrived to return home three months

ahead of time.

It was during this trip that they had bought so many of the pictures

and appointments for the North Avenue house, and Laura's disappointment

over her curtailed European travels was mitigated by the anticipation

of her pleasure in settling in the new home. This had not been possible

immediately after their marriage. For nearly two years the great place

had been given over to contractors, architects, decorators, and

gardeners, and Laura and her husband had lived, while in Chicago, at a

hotel, giving up the one-time rectory on Cass Street to Page and to

Aunt Wess'.

But when at last Laura entered upon possession of the North Avenue

house, she was not--after the first enthusiasm and excitement over its

magnificence had died down--altogether pleased with it, though she told

herself the contrary. Outwardly it was all that she could desire. It

fronted Lincoln Park, and from all the windows upon that side the most

delightful outlooks were obtainable--green woods, open lawns, the

parade ground, the Lincoln monument, dells, bushes, smooth drives,

flower beds, and fountains. From the great bay window of Laura's own

sitting-room she could see far out over Lake Michigan, and watch the

procession of great lake steamers, from Milwaukee, far-distant Duluth,

and the Sault Sainte Marie--the famous "Soo"--defiling majestically

past, making for the mouth of the river, laden to the water's edge with

whole harvests of wheat. At night, when the windows were open in the

warm weather, she could hear the mournful wash and lapping of the water

on the embankments.

The grounds about her home were beautiful. The stable itself was half

again as large as her old home opposite St. James's, and the

conservatory, in which she took the keenest delight, was a wonderful

affair--a vast bubble-like structure of green panes, whence, winter and

summer, came a multitude of flowers for the house--violets, lilies of

the valley, jonquils, hyacinths, tulips, and her own loved roses.

But the interior of the house was, in parts, less satisfactory. Jadwin,

so soon as his marriage was a certainty, had bought the house, and had

given over its internal furnishings to a firm of decorators. Innocently

enough he had intended to surprise his wife, had told himself that she

should not be burdened with the responsibility of selection and

planning. Fortunately, however, the decorators were men of taste. There

was nothing to offend, and much to delight in the results they obtained

in the dining-room, breakfast-room, parlors, drawing-rooms, and suites

of bedrooms. But Laura, though the beauty of it all enchanted her,

could never rid herself of a feeling that it was not hers. It impressed

her with its splendour of natural woods and dull "colour effects," its

cunning electrical devices, its mechanical contrivances for comfort,

like the ready-made luxury and "convenience" of a Pullman.

However, she had intervened in time to reserve certain of the rooms to

herself, and these--the library, her bedroom, and more especially that

apartment from whose bay windows she looked out upon the Lake, and

which, as if she were still in her old home, she called the "upstairs

sitting-room"--she furnished to suit herself.

For very long she found it difficult, even with all her resolution,

with all her pleasure in her new-gained wealth, to adapt herself to a

manner of living upon so vast a scale. She found herself continually

planning the marketing for the next day, forgetting that this now was

part of the housekeeper's duties. For months she persisted in "doing

her room" after breakfast, just as she had been taught to do in the old

days when she was a little girl at Barrington. She was afraid of the

elevator, and never really learned how to use the neat little system of

telephones that connected the various parts of the house with the

servants' quarters. For months her chiefest concern in her wonderful

surroundings took the form of a dread of burglars.

Her keenest delights were her stable and the great organ in the art

gallery; and these alone more than compensated for her uneasiness in

other particulars.

Horses Laura adored--black ones with flowing tails and manes, like

certain pictures she had seen. Nowadays, except on the rarest

occasions, she never set foot out of doors, except to take her

carriage, her coupe, her phaeton, or her dog-cart. Best of all she

loved her saddle horses. She had learned to ride, and the morning was

inclement indeed that she did not take a long and solitary excursion

through the Park, followed by the groom and Jadwin's two spotted coach

dogs.

The great organ terrified her at first. But on closer acquaintance she

came to regard it as a vast-hearted, sympathetic friend. She already

played the piano very well, and she scorned Jadwin's self-playing

"attachment." A teacher was engaged to instruct her in the intricacies

of stops and of pedals, and in the difficulties of the "echo" organ,

"great" organ, "choir," and "swell." So soon as she had mastered these,

Laura entered upon a new world of delight. Her taste in music was as

yet a little immature--Gounod and even Verdi were its limitations. But

to hear, responsive to the lightest pressures of her finger-tips, the

mighty instrument go thundering through the cadences of the "Anvil

Chorus" gave her a thrilling sense of power that was superb.

The untrained, unguided instinct of the actress in Laura had fostered

in her a curious penchant toward melodrama. She had a taste for the

magnificent. She revelled in these great musical "effects" upon her

organ, the grandiose easily appealed to her, while as for herself, the

role of the "_grande dame,_" with this wonderful house for background

and environment, came to be for her, quite unconsciously, a sort of

game in which she delighted.

It was by this means that, in the end, she succeeded in fitting herself

to her new surroundings. Innocently enough, and with a harmless, almost

childlike, affectation, she posed a little, and by so doing found the

solution of the incongruity between herself--the Laura of moderate

means and quiet life--and the massive luxury with which she was now

surrounded. Without knowing it, she began to act the part of a great

lady--and she acted it well. She assumed the existence of her numerous

servants as she assumed the fact of the trees in the park; she gave

herself into the hands of her maid, not as Laura Jadwin of herself

would have done it, clumsily and with the constraint of inexperience,

but as she would have done it if she had been acting the part on the

stage, with an air, with all the nonchalance of a marquise, with--in

fine--all the superb condescension of her "grand manner."

She knew very well that if she relaxed this hauteur, that her servants

would impose on her, would run over her, and in this matter she found

new cause for wonder in her husband.

The servants, from the frigid butler to the under groom, adored Jadwin.

A half-expressed wish upon his part produced a more immediate effect

than Laura's most explicit orders. He never descended to familiarity

with them, and, as a matter of fact, ignored them to such an extent

that he forgot or confused their names. But where Laura was obeyed with

precise formality and chilly deference, Jadwin was served with

obsequious alacrity, and with a good humour that even livery and

"correct form" could not altogether conceal.

Laura's eyes were first opened to this genuine affection which Jadwin

inspired in his servants by an incident which occurred in the first

months of their occupancy of the new establishment. One of the

gardeners discovered the fact that Jadwin affected gardenias in the

lapel of his coat, and thereat was at immense pains to supply him with

a fresh bloom from the conservatory each morning. The flower was to be

placed at Jadwin's plate, and it was quite the event of the day for the

old fellow when the master appeared on the front steps with the flower

in his coat. But a feud promptly developed over this matter between the

gardener and the maid who took the butler's place at breakfast every

morning. Sometimes Jadwin did not get the flower, and the gardener

charged the maid with remissness in forgetting to place it at his plate

after he had given it into her hands. In the end the affair became so

clamourous that Jadwin himself had to intervene. The gardener was

summoned and found to have been in fault only in his eagerness to

please.

"Billy," said Jadwin, to the old man at the conclusion of the whole

matter, "you're an old fool."

And the gardener thereupon had bridled and stammered as though Jadwin

had conferred a gift.

"Now if I had called him 'an old fool,'" observed Laura, "he would have

sulked the rest of the week."

The happiest time of the day for Laura was the evening. In the daytime

she was variously occupied, but her thoughts continually ran forward to

the end of the day, when her husband would be with her. Jadwin

breakfasted early, and Laura bore him company no matter how late she

had stayed up the night before. By half-past eight he was out of the

house, driving down to his office in his buggy behind Nip and Tuck. By

nine Laura's own saddle horse was brought to the carriage porch, and

until eleven she rode in the park. At twelve she lunched with Page, and

in the afternoon--in the "upstairs sitting-room" read her Browning or

her Meredith, the latter one of her newest discoveries, till three or

four. Sometimes after that she went out in her carriage. If it was to

"shop" she drove to the "Rookery," in La Salle Street, after her

purchases were made, and sent the footman up to her husband's office to

say that she would take him home. Or as often as not she called for

Mrs. Cressler or Aunt Wess' or Mrs. Gretry, and carried them off to

some exhibit of painting, or flowers, or more rarely--for she had not

the least interest in social affairs--to teas or receptions.

But in the evenings, after dinner, she had her husband to herself. Page

was almost invariably occupied by one or more of her young men in the

drawing-room, but Laura and Jadwin shut themselves in the library, a

lofty panelled room--a place of deep leather chairs, tall bookcases,

etchings, and sombre brasses--and there, while Jadwin lay stretched out

upon the broad sofa, smoking cigars, one hand behind his head, Laura

read aloud to him.

His tastes in fiction were very positive. Laura at first had tried to

introduce him to her beloved Meredith. But after three chapters, when

he had exclaimed, "What's the fool talking about?" she had given over

and begun again from another starting-point. Left to himself, his wife

sorrowfully admitted that he would have gravitated to the "Mysterious

Island" and "Michael Strogoff," or even to "Mr. Potter of Texas" and

"Mr. Barnes of New York." But she had set herself to accomplish his

literary education, so, Meredith failing, she took up "Treasure Island"

and "The Wrecker." Much of these he made her skip.

"Oh, let's get on with the 'story,'" he urged. But Pinkerton for long

remained for him an ideal, because he was "smart" and "alive."

"I'm not long very many of art," he announced. "But I believe that any

art that don't make the world better and happier is no art at all, and

is only fit for the dump heap."

But at last Laura found his abiding affinity in Howells.

"Nothing much happens," he said. "But I know all those people." He

never could rid himself of a surreptitious admiration for Bartley

Hubbard. He, too, was "smart" and "alive." He had the "get there" to

him. "Why," he would say, "I know fifty boys just like him down there

in La Salle Street." Lapham he loved as a brother. Never a point in the

development of his character that he missed or failed to chuckle over.

Bromfield Cory was poohed and boshed quite out of consideration as a

"loafer," a "dilletanty," but Lapham had all his sympathy.

"Yes, sir," he would exclaim, interrupting the narrative, "that's just

it. That's just what I would have done if I had been in his place.

Come, this chap knows what he's writing about--not like that Middleton

ass, with his 'Dianas' and 'Amazing Marriages.'"

Occasionally the Jadwins entertained. Laura's husband was proud of his

house, and never tired of showing his friends about it. Laura gave Page

a "coming-out" dance, and nearly every Sunday the Cresslers came to

dinner. But Aunt Wess' could, at first, rarely be induced to pay the

household a visit. So much grandeur made the little widow uneasy, even

a little suspicious. She would shake her head at Laura, murmuring:

"My word, it's all very fine, but, dear me, Laura, I hope you do pay

for everything on the nail, and don't run up any bills. I don't know

what your dear father would say to it all, no, I don't." And she would

spend hours in counting the electric bulbs, which she insisted were

only devices for some new-fangled gas.

"Thirty-three in this one room alone," she would say. "I'd like to see

your dear husband's face when he gets his gas bill. And a dressmaker

that lives in the house.... Well,--I don't want to say anything."

Thus three years had gone by. The new household settled to a regime.

Continually Jadwin grew richer. His real estate appreciated in value;

rents went up. Every time he speculated in wheat, it was upon a larger

scale, and every time he won. He was a Bear always, and on those rare

occasions when he referred to his ventures in Laura's hearing, it was

invariably to say that prices were going down. Till at last had come

that spring when he believed that the bottom had been touched, had had

the talk with Gretry, and had, in secret, "turned Bull," with the

suddenness of a strategist.

The matter was yet in Gretry's mind while the party remained in the art

gallery; and as they were returning to the drawing-room he detained

Jadwin an instant.

"If you are set upon breaking your neck," he said, "you might tell me

at what figure you want me to buy for you to-morrow."

"At the market," returned Jadwin. "I want to get into the thing quick."

A little later, when they had all reassembled in the drawing-room, and

while Mrs. Gretry was telling an interminable story of how Isabel had

all but asphyxiated herself the night before, a servant announced

Landry Court, and the young man entered, spruce and debonair, a bouquet

in one hand and a box of candy in the other.

Some days before this Page had lectured him solemnly on the fact that

he was over-absorbed in business, and was starving his soul. He should

read more, she told him, and she had said that if he would call upon

her on this particular night, she would indicate a course of reading

for him.

So it came about that, after a few moments, conversation with the older

people in the drawing-room, the two adjourned to the library.

There, by way of a beginning, Page asked him what was his favourite

character in fiction. She spoke of the beauty of Ruskin's thoughts, of

the gracefulness of Charles Lamb's style. The conversation lagged a

little. Landry, not to be behind her, declared for the modern novel,

and spoke of the "newest book." But Page never read new books; she was

not interested, and their talk, unable to establish itself upon a

common ground, halted, and was in a fair way to end, until at last, and

by insensible degrees, they began to speak of themselves and of each

other. Promptly they were all aroused. They listened to one another's

words with studious attention, answered with ever-ready promptness,

discussed, argued, agreed, and disagreed over and over again.

Landry had said:

"When I was a boy, I always had an ambition to excel all the other

boys. I wanted to be the best baseball player on the block--and I was,

too. I could pitch three curves when I was fifteen, and I find I am the

same now that I am a man grown. When I do a thing, I want to do it

better than any one else. From the very first I have always been

ambitious. It is my strongest trait. Now," he went on, turning to Page,

"your strongest trait is your thoughtfulness. You are what they call

introspective."

"Yes, yes," she answered. "Yes, I think so, too."

"You don't need the stimulation of competition. You are at your best

when you are with just one person. A crowd doesn't interest you."

"I hate it," she exclaimed.

"Now with me, with a man of my temperament, a crowd is a real

inspiration. When every one is talking and shouting around me, or to

me, even, my mind works at its best. But," he added, solemnly, "it must

be a crowd of men. I can't abide a crowd of women."

"They chatter so," she assented. "I can't either."

"But I find that the companionship of one intelligent, sympathetic

woman is as much of a stimulus as a lot of men. It's funny, isn't it,

that I should be like that?"

"Yes," she said, "it is funny--strange. But I believe in companionship.

I believe that between man and woman that is the great

thing--companionship. Love," she added, abruptly, and then broke off

with a deep sigh. "Oh, I don't know," she murmured. "Do you remember

those lines:

"Man's love is of his life a thing apart,

'Tis woman's whole existence.