"Well," he asserted, gravely, choosing his words with deliberation, "it
might be so, but all depends upon the man and woman. Love," he added,
with tremendous gravity, "is the greatest power in the universe."
"I have never been in love," said Page. "Yes, love is a wonderful
power."
"I've never been in love, either."
"Never, never been in love?"
"Oh, I've thought I was in love," he said, with a wave of his hand.
"I've never even thought I was," she answered, musing.
"Do you believe in early marriages?" demanded Landry.
"A man should never marry," she said, deliberately, "till he can give
his wife a good home, and good clothes and--and that sort of thing. I
do not think I shall ever marry."
"You! Why, of course you will. Why not?"
"No, no. It is my disposition. I am morose and taciturn. Laura says so."
Landry protested with vehemence.
"And," she went on, "I have long, brooding fits of melancholy."
"Well, so have I," he threw out recklessly. "At night, sometimes--when
I wake up. Then I'm all down in the mouth, and I say, 'What's the use,
by jingo?'"
"Do you believe in pessimism? I do. They say Carlyle was a terrible
pessimist."
"Well--talking about love. I understand that you can't believe in
pessimism and love at the same time. Wouldn't you feel unhappy if you
lost your faith in love?"
"Oh, yes, terribly."
There was a moment's silence, and then Landry remarked:
"Now you are the kind of woman that would only love once, but love for
that once mighty deep and strong."
Page's eyes grew wide. She murmured:
"'Tis a woman's whole existence--whole existence.' Yes, I think I am
like that."
"Do you think Enoch Arden did right in going away after he found them
married?"
"Oh, have you read that? Oh, isn't that a beautiful poem? Wasn't he
noble? Wasn't he grand? Oh, yes, yes, he did right."
"By George, I wouldn't have gone away. I'd have gone right into that
house, and I would have made things hum. I'd have thrown the other
fellow out, lock, stock, and barrel."
"That's just like a man, so selfish, only thinking of himself. You
don't know the meaning of love--great, true, unselfish love."
"I know the meaning of what's mine. Think I'd give up the woman I loved
to another man?"
"Even if she loved the other man best?"
"I'd have my girl first, and find out how she felt about the other man
afterwards."
"Oh, but think if you gave her up, how noble it would be. You would
have sacrificed all that you held the dearest to an ideal. Oh, if I
were in Enoch Arden's place, and my husband thought I was dead, and I
knew he was happy with another woman, it would just be a joy to deny
myself, sacrifice myself to spare him unhappiness. That would be my
idea of love. Then I'd go into a convent."
"Not much. I'd let the other fellow go to the convent. If I loved a
woman, I wouldn't let anything in the world stop me from winning her."
"You have so much determination, haven't you?" she said, looking at him.
Landry enlarged his shoulders a little and wagged his head.
"Well," he said, "I don't know, but I'd try pretty hard to get what I
wanted, I guess."
"I love to see that characteristic in men," she observed. "Strength,
determination."
"Just as a man loves to see a woman womanly," he answered. "Don't you
hate strong-minded women?"
"Utterly."
"Now, you are what I would call womanly--the womanliest woman I've ever
known."
"Oh, I don't know," she protested, a little confused.
"Yes, you are. You are beautifully womanly--and so high-minded and well
read. It's been inspiring to me. I want you should know that. Yes, sir,
a real inspiration. It's been inspiring, elevating, to say the least."
"I like to read, if that's what you mean," she hastened to say.
"By Jove, I've got to do some reading, too. It's so hard to find time.
But I'll make time. I'll get that 'Stones of Venice' I've heard you
speak of, and I'll sit up nights--and keep awake with black coffee--but
I'll read that book from cover to cover."
"That's your determination again," Page exclaimed. "Your eyes just
flashed when you said it. I believe if you once made up your mind to do
a thing, you would do it, no matter how hard it was, wouldn't you?"
"Well, I'd--I'd make things hum, I guess," he admitted.
The next day was Easter Sunday, and Page came down to nine o'clock
breakfast a little late, to find Jadwin already finished and deep in
the pages of the morning paper. Laura, still at table, was pouring her
last cup of coffee.
They were in the breakfast-room, a small, charming apartment, light and
airy, and with many windows, one end opening upon the house
conservatory. Jadwin was in his frock coat, which later he would wear
to church. The famous gardenia was in his lapel. He was freshly shaven,
and his fine cigar made a blue haze over his head. Laura was radiant in
a white morning gown. A newly cut bunch of violets, large as a cabbage,
lay on the table before her.
The whole scene impressed itself sharply upon Page's mind--the fine
sunlit room, with its gay open spaces and the glimpse of green leaves
from the conservatory, the view of the smooth, trim lawn through the
many windows, where an early robin, strayed from the park, was
chirruping and feeding; her beautiful sister Laura, with her splendid,
overshadowing coiffure, her pale, clear skin, her slender figure;
Jadwin, the large, solid man of affairs, with his fine cigar, his
gardenia, his well-groomed air. And then the little accessories that
meant so much--the smell of violets, of good tobacco, of fragrant
coffee; the gleaming damasks, china and silver of the breakfast table;
the trim, fresh-looking maid, with her white cap, apron, and cuffs, who
came and went; the thoroughbred setter dozing in the sun, and the
parrot dozing and chuckling to himself on his perch upon the terrace
outside the window.
At the bottom of the lawn was the stable, and upon the concrete in
front of its wide-open door the groom was currying one of the carriage
horses. While Page addressed herself to her fruit and coffee, Jadwin
put down his paper, and, his elbows on the arms of his rattan chair,
sat for a long time looking out at the horse. By and by he got up and
said:
"That new feed has filled 'em out in good shape. Think I'll go out and
tell Jarvis to try it on the buggy team." He pushed open the French
windows and went out, the setter sedately following.
Page dug her spoon into her grape-fruit, then suddenly laid it down and
turned to Laura, her chin upon her palm.
"Laura," she said, "do you think I ought to marry--a girl of my
temperament?"
"Marry?" echoed Laura.
"Sh-h!" whispered Page. "Laura--don't talk so loud. Yes, do you?"
"Well, why not marry, dearie? Why shouldn't you marry when the time
comes? Girls as young as you are not supposed to have temperaments."
But instead of answering Page put another question:
"Laura, do you think I am womanly?"
"I think sometimes, Page, that you take your books and your reading too
seriously. You've not been out of the house for three days, and I never
see you without your note-books and text-books in your hand. You are at
it, dear, from morning till night. Studies are all very well--"
"Oh, studies!" exclaimed Page. "I hate them. Laura, what is it to be
womanly?"
"To be womanly?" repeated Laura. "Why, I don't know, honey. It's to be
kind and well-bred and gentle mostly, and never to be bold or
conspicuous--and to love one's home and to take care of it, and to love
and believe in one's husband, or parents, or children--or even one's
sister--above any one else in the world."
"I think that being womanly is better than being well read," hazarded
Page.
"We can be both, Page," Laura told her. "But, honey, I think you had
better hurry through your breakfast. If we are going to church this
Easter, we want to get an early start. Curtis ordered the carriage half
an hour earlier."
"Breakfast!" echoed Page. "I don't want a thing." She drew a deep
breath and her eyes grew large. "Laura," she began again presently,
"Laura ... Landry Court was here last night, and--oh, I don't know,
he's so silly. But he said--well, he said this--well, I said that I
understood how he felt about certain things, about 'getting on,' and
being clean and fine and all that sort of thing you know; and then he
said, 'Oh, you don't know what it means to me to look into the eyes of
a woman who really understands.'"
"_Did_ he?" said Laura, lifting her eyebrows.
"Yes, and he seemed so fine and earnest. Laura, wh--" Page adjusted a
hairpin at the back of her head, and moved closer to Laura, her eyes on
the floor. "Laura--what do you suppose it did mean to him--don't you
think it was foolish of him to talk like that?"
"Not at all," Laura said, decisively. "If he said that he meant
it--meant that he cared a great deal for you."
"Oh, I didn't mean that!" shrieked Page. "But there's a great deal more
to Landry than I think we've suspected. He wants to be more than a mere
money-getting machine, he says, and he wants to cultivate his mind and
understand art and literature and that. And he wants me to help him,
and I said I would. So if you don't mind, he's coming up here certain
nights every week, and we're going to--I'm going to read to him. We're
going to begin with the 'Ring and the Book.'"
In the later part of May, the weather being unusually hot, the Jadwins,
taking Page with them, went up to Geneva Lake for the summer, and the
great house fronting Lincoln Park was deserted.
Laura had hoped that now her husband would be able to spend his entire
time with her, but in this she was disappointed. At first Jadwin went
down to the city but two days a week, but soon this was increased to
alternate days. Gretry was a frequent visitor at the country house, and
often he and Jadwin, their rocking-chairs side by side in a remote
corner of the porch, talked "business" in low tones till far into the
night.
"Dear," said Laura, finally, "I'm seeing less and less of you every
day, and I had so looked forward to this summer, when we were to be
together all the time."
"I hate it as much as you do, Laura," said her husband. "But I do feel
as though I ought to be on the spot just for now. I can't get it out of
my head that we're going to have livelier times in a few months."
"But even Mr. Gretry says that you don't need to be right in your
office every minute of the time. He says you can manage your Board of
Trade business from out here just as well, and that you only go into
town because you can't keep away from La Salle Street and the sound of
the Wheat Pit."
Was this true? Jadwin himself had found it difficult to answer. There
had been a time when Gretry had been obliged to urge and coax to get
his friend to so much as notice the swirl of the great maelstrom in the
Board of Trade Building. But of late Jadwin's eye and ear were forever
turned thitherward, and it was he, and no longer Gretry, who took
initiatives.
Meanwhile he was making money. As he had predicted, the price of wheat
had advanced. May had been a fair-weather month with easy prices, the
monthly Government report showing no loss in the condition of the crop.
Wheat had gone up from sixty to sixty-six cents, and at a small profit
Jadwin had sold some two hundred and fifty thousand bushels. Then had
come the hot weather at the end of May. On the floor of the Board of
Trade the Pit traders had begun to peel off their coats. It began to
look like a hot June, and when cash wheat touched sixty-eight, Jadwin,
now more than ever convinced of a coming Bull market, bought another
five hundred thousand bushels.
This line he added to in June. Unfavorable weather--excessive heat,
followed by flooding rains--had hurt the spring wheat, and in every
direction there were complaints of weevils and chinch bugs. Later on
other deluges had discoloured and damaged the winter crop. Jadwin was
now, by virtue of his recent purchases, "long" one million bushels, and
the market held firm at seventy-two cents--a twelve-cent advance in two
months.
"She'll react," warned Gretry, "sure. Crookes and Sweeny haven't taken
a hand yet. Look out for a heavy French crop. We'll get reports on it
soon now. You're playing with a gun, J., that kicks further than it
shoots."
"We've not shot her yet," Jadwin said. "We're only just loading
her--for Bears," he added, with a wink.
In July came the harvesting returns from all over the country, proving
conclusively that for the first time in six years, the United States
crop was to be small and poor. The yield was moderate. Only part of it
could be graded as "contract." Good wheat would be valuable from now
on. Jadwin bought again, and again it was a "lot" of half a million
bushels.
Then came the first manifestation of that marvellous golden luck that
was to follow Curtis Jadwin through all the coming months. The French
wheat crop was announced as poor. In Germany the yield was to be far
below the normal. All through Hungary the potato and rye crops were
light.
About the middle of the month Jadwin again called the broker to his
country house, and took him for a long evening's trip around the lake,
aboard the "Thetis." They were alone. MacKenny was at the wheel, and,
seated on camp stools in the stern of the little boat, Jadwin outlined
his plans for the next few months.
"Sam," he said, "I thought back in April there that we were to touch
top prices about the first of this month, but this French and German
news has coloured the cat different. I've been figuring that I would
get out of this market around the seventies, but she's going higher.
I'm going to hold on yet awhile."
"You do it on your own responsibility, then," said the broker. "I warn
you the price is top heavy."
"Not much. Seventy-two cents is too cheap. Now I'm going into this
hard; and I want to have my own lines out--to be independent of the
trade papers that Crookes could buy up any time he wants to. I want you
to get me some good, reliable correspondents in Europe; smart, bright
fellows that we can depend on. I want one in Liverpool, one in Paris,
and one in Odessa, and I want them to cable us about the situation
every day."
Gretry thought a while.
"Well," he said, at length, "... yes. I guess I can arrange it. I can
get you a good man in Liverpool--Traynard is his name--and there's two
or three in Paris we could pick up. Odessa--I don't know. I couldn't
say just this minute. But I'll fix it."
These correspondents began to report at the end of July. All over
Europe the demand for wheat was active. Grain handlers were not only
buying freely, but were contracting for future delivery. In August came
the first demands for American wheat, scattered and sporadic at first,
then later, a little, a very little more insistent.
Thus the summer wore to its end. The fall "situation" began slowly to
define itself, with eastern Europe--densely populated,
overcrowded--commencing to show uneasiness as to its supply of food for
the winter; and with but a moderate crop in America to meet foreign
demands. Russia, the United States, and Argentine would have to feed
the world during the next twelve months.
Over the Chicago Wheat Pit the hand of the great indicator stood at
seventy-five cents. Jadwin sold out his September wheat at this figure,
and then in a single vast clutch bought three million bushels of the
December option.
Never before had he ventured so deeply into the Pit. Never before had
he committed himself so irrevocably to the send of the current. But
something was preparing. Something indefinite and huge. He guessed it,
felt it, knew it. On all sides of him he felt a quickening movement.
Lethargy, inertia were breaking up. There was buoyancy to the current.
In its ever-increasing swiftness there was exhilaration and exuberance.
And he was upon the crest of the wave. Now the forethought, the
shrewdness, and the prompt action of those early spring days were
beginning to tell. Confident, secure, unassailable, Jadwin plunged in.
Every week the swirl of the Pit increased in speed, every week the
demands of Europe for American wheat grew more frequent; and at the end
of the month the price--which had fluctuated between seventy-five and
seventy-eight--in a sudden flurry rushed to seventy-nine, to
seventy-nine and a half, and closed, strong, at the even eighty cents.
On the day when the latter figure was reached Jadwin bought a seat upon
the Board of Trade.