One morning in November of the same year Laura joined her husband at
breakfast, preoccupied and a little grave, her mind full of a subject
about which, she told herself, she could no longer keep from speaking.
So soon as an opportunity presented itself, which was when Jadwin laid
down his paper and drew his coffee-cup towards him, Laura exclaimed:
"Curtis."
"Well, old girl?"
"Curtis, dear, ... when is it all going to end--your speculating? You
never used to be this way. It seems as though, nowadays, I never had
you to myself. Even when you are not going over papers and reports and
that, or talking by the hour to Mr. Gretry in the library--even when
you are not doing all that, your mind seems to be away from me--down
there in La Salle Street or the Board of Trade Building. Dearest, you
don't know. I don't mean to complain, and I don't want to be exacting
or selfish, but--sometimes I--I am lonesome. Don't interrupt," she
said, hastily. "I want to say it all at once, and then never speak of
it again. Last night, when Mr. Gretry was here, you said, just after
dinner, that you would be all through your talk in an hour. And I
waited.... I waited till eleven, and then I went to bed. Dear I--I--I
was lonesome. The evening was so long. I had put on my very prettiest
gown, the one you said you liked so much, and you never seemed to
notice. You told me Mr. Gretry was going by nine, and I had it all
planned how we would spend the evening together."
But she got no further. Her husband had taken her in his arms, and had
interrupted her words with blustering exclamations of self-reproach and
self-condemnation. He was a brute, he cried, a senseless, selfish ass,
who had no right to such a wife, who was not worth a single one of the
tears that by now were trembling on Laura's lashes.
"Now we won't speak of it again," she began. "I suppose I am selfish--"
"Selfish, nothing!" he exclaimed. "Don't talk that way. I'm the one--"
"But," Laura persisted, "some time you will--get out of this
speculating for good? Oh, I do look forward to it so! And, Curtis, what
is the use? We're so rich now we can't spend our money. What do you
want to make more for?"
"Oh, it's not the money," he answered. "It's the fun of the thing; the
excitement--"
"That's just it, the 'excitement.' You don't know, Curtis. It is
changing you. You are so nervous sometimes, and sometimes you don't
listen to me when I talk to you. I can just see what's in your mind.
It's wheat--wheat--wheat, wheat--wheat--wheat, all the time. Oh, if you
knew how I hated and feared it!"
"Well, old girl, that settles it. I wouldn't make you unhappy a single
minute for all the wheat in the world."
"And you will stop speculating?"
"Well, I can't pull out all in a moment, but just as soon as a chance
comes I'll get out of the market. At any rate, I won't have any
business of mine come between us. I don't like it any more than you do.
Why, how long is it since we've read any book together, like we used to
when you read aloud to me?"
"Not since we came back from the country."
"By George, that's so, that's so." He shook his head. "I've got to
taper off. You're right, Laura. But you don't know, you haven't a guess
how this trading in wheat gets a hold of you. And, then, what am I to
do? What are we fellows, who have made our money, to do? I've got to be
busy. I can't sit down and twiddle my thumbs. And I don't believe in
lounging around clubs, or playing with race horses, or murdering game
birds, or running some poor, helpless fox to death. Speculating seems
to be about the only game, or the only business that's left open to
me--that appears to be legitimate. I know I've gone too far into it,
and I promise you I'll quit. But it's fine fun. When you know how to
swing a deal, and can look ahead, a little further than the other
fellows, and can take chances they daren't, and plan and manoeuvre, and
then see it all come out just as you had known it would all along--I
tell you it's absorbing."
"But you never do tell me," she objected. "I never know what you are
doing. I hear through Mr. Court or Mr. Gretry, but never through you.
Don't you think you could trust me? I want to enter into your life on
its every side, Curtis. Tell me," she suddenly demanded, "what are you
doing now?"
"Very well, then," he said, "I'll tell you. Of course you mustn't speak
about it. It's nothing very secret, but it's always as well to keep
quiet about these things."
She gave her word, and leaned her elbows on the table, prepared to
listen intently. Jadwin crushed a lump of sugar against the inside of
his coffee cup.
"Well," he began, "I've not been doing anything very exciting, except
to buy wheat."
"What for?"
"To sell again. You see, I'm one of those who believe that wheat is
going up. I was the very first to see it, I guess, way back last April.
Now in August this year, while we were up at the lake, I bought three
million bushels."
"Three--million--bushels!" she murmured. "Why, what do you do with it?
Where do you put it?"
He tried to explain that he had merely bought the right to call for the
grain on a certain date, but she could not understand this very clearly.
"Never mind," she told him, "go on."
"Well, then, at the end of August we found out that the wet weather in
England would make a short crop there, and along in September came the
news that Siberia would not raise enough to supply the southern
provinces of Russia. That left only the United States and the Argentine
Republic to feed pretty much the whole world. Of course that would make
wheat valuable. Seems to be a short-crop year everywhere. I saw that
wheat would go higher and higher, so I bought another million bushels
in October, and another early in this month. That's all. You see, I
figure that pretty soon those people over in England and Italy and
Germany--the people that eat wheat--will be willing to pay us in
America big prices for it, because it's so hard to get. They've got to
have the wheat--it's bread 'n' butter to them."
"Oh, then why not give it to them?" she cried. "Give it to those poor
people--your five million bushels. Why, that would be a godsend to
them."
Jadwin stared a moment.
"Oh, that isn't exactly how it works out," he said.
Before he could say more, however, the maid came in and handed to
Jadwin three despatches.
"Now those," said Laura, when the servant had gone out, "you get those
every morning. Are those part of your business? What do they say?"
"I'll read them to you," he told her as he slit the first envelopes.
"They are cablegrams from agents of mine in Europe. Gretry arranged to
have them sent to me. Here now, this is from Odessa. It's in cipher,
but"--he drew a narrow memorandum-book from his breast pocket--"I'll
translate it for you."
He turned the pages of the key book a few moments, jotting down the
translation on the back of an envelope with the gold pencil at the end
of his watch chain.
"Here's how it reads," he said at last. "'Cash wheat advanced one cent
bushel on Liverpool buying, stock light. Shipping to interior. European
price not attractive to sellers.'"
"What does that mean?" she asked.
"Well, that Russia will not export wheat, that she has no more than
enough for herself, so that Western Europe will have to look to us for
her wheat."
"And the others? Read those to me."
Again Jadwin translated.
"This is from Paris:
"'Answer on one million bushels wheat in your market--stocks lighter
than expected, and being cleared up.'"
"Which is to say?" she queried.
"They want to know how much I would ask for a million bushels. They
find it hard to get the stuff over there--just as I said they would."
"Will you sell it to them?"
"Maybe. I'll talk to Sam about it."
"And now the last one."
"It's from Liverpool, and Liverpool, you must understand, is the great
buyer of wheat. It's a tremendously influential place."
He began once more to consult the key book, one finger following the
successive code words of the despatch.
Laura, watching him, saw his eyes suddenly contract. "By George," he
muttered, all at once, "by George, what's this?"
"What is it?" she demanded. "Is it important?"
But all-absorbed, Jadwin neither heard nor responded. Three times he
verified the same word.
"Oh, please tell me," she begged.
Jadwin shook his head impatiently and held up a warning hand.
"Wait, wait," he said. "Wait a minute."
Word for word he wrote out the translation of the cablegram, and then
studied it intently.
"That's it," he said, at last. Then he got to his feet. "I guess I've
had enough breakfast," he declared. He looked at his watch, touched the
call bell, and when the maid appeared said:
"Tell Jarvis to bring the buggy around right away."
"But, dear, what is it?" repeated Laura. "You said you would tell me.
You see," she cried, "it's just as I said. You've forgotten my very
existence. When it's a question of wheat I count for nothing. And just
now, when you read the despatch to yourself, you were all different;
such a look came into your face, so cruelly eager, and triumphant and
keen."
"You'd be eager, too," he exclaimed, "if you understood. Look; read it
for yourself."
He thrust the cable into her hands. Over each code word he had written
its translation, and his wife read:
"Large firms here short and in embarrassing position, owing to
curtailment in Argentine shipments. Can negotiate for five million
wheat if price satisfactory."
"Well?" she asked.
"Well, don't you see what that means? It's the 'European demand' at
last. They must have wheat, and I've got it to give 'em--wheat that I
bought, oh! at seventy cents, some of it, and they'll pay the market
that is, eighty cents, for it. Oh, they'll pay more. They'll pay
eighty-two if I want 'em to. France is after the stuff, too. Remember
that cable from Paris I just read. They'd bid against each other. Why,
if I pull this off, if this goes through--and, by George," he went on,
speaking as much to himself as to her, new phases of the affair
presenting themselves to him at every moment, "by George, I don't have
to throw this wheat into the Pit and break down the price--and Gretry
has understandings with the railroads, through the elevator gang, so we
get big rebates. Why, this wheat is worth eighty-two cents to them--and
then there's this 'curtailment in Argentine shipments.' That's the
first word we've had about small crops there. Holy Moses, if the
Argentine crop is off, wheat will knock the roof clean off the Board of
Trade!" The maid reappeared in the doorway. "The buggy?" queried
Jadwin. "All right. I'm off, Laura, and--until it's over keep quiet
about all this, you know. Ask me to read you some more cables some day.
It brings good luck."
He gathered up his despatches and the mail and was gone. Laura, left
alone, sat looking out of the window a long moment. She heard the front
door close, and then the sound of the horses' hoofs on the asphalt by
the carriage porch. They died down, ceased, and all at once a great
silence seemed to settle over the house.
Laura sat thinking. At last she rose.
"It is the first time," she said to herself, "that Curtis ever forgot
to kiss me good-by."
The day, for all that the month was December, was fine. The sun shone;
under foot the ground was dry and hard. The snow which had fallen ten
days before was practically gone. In fine, it was a perfect day for
riding. Laura called her maid and got into her habit. The groom with
his own horse and "Crusader" were waiting for her when she descended.
That forenoon Laura rode further and longer than usual. Preoccupied at
first, her mind burdened with vague anxieties, she nevertheless could
not fail to be aroused and stimulated by the sparkle and effervescence
of the perfect morning, and the cold, pure glitter of Lake Michigan,
green with an intense mineral hue, dotted with whitecaps, and flashing
under the morning sky. Lincoln Park was deserted and still; a blue haze
shrouded the distant masses of leafless trees, where the gardeners were
burning the heaps of leaves. Under her the thoroughbred moved with an
ease and a freedom that were superb, throwing back one sharp ear at her
lightest word; his rippling mane caressed her hand and forearm, and as
she looked down upon his shoulder she could see the long, slender
muscles, working smoothly, beneath the satin sheen of the skin. At the
water works she turned into the long, straight road that leads to North
Lake, and touched Crusader with the crop, checking him slightly at the
same time. With a little toss of his head he broke from a trot into a
canter, and then, as she leaned forward in the saddle, into his long,
even gallop. There was no one to see; she would not be conspicuous, so
Laura gave the horse his head, and in another moment he was carrying
her with a swiftness that brought the water to her eyes, and that sent
her hair flying from her face. She had him completely under control. A
touch upon the bit, she knew, would suffice to bring him to a
standstill. She knew him to be without fear and without nerves, knew
that his every instinct made for her safety, and that this morning's
gallop was as much a pleasure to him as to his rider. Beneath her and
around her the roadway and landscape flew; the cold air sang in her
ears and whipped a faint colour to her pale cheeks; in her deep brown
eyes a frosty sparkle came and went, and throughout all her slender
figure the blood raced spanking and careering in a full, strong tide of
health and gaiety.
She made a circle around North Lake, and came back by way of the Linne
monument and the Palm House, Crusader ambling quietly by now, the groom
trotting stolidly in the rear. Throughout all her ride she had seen no
one but the park gardeners and the single grey-coated, mounted
policeman whom she met each time she rode, and who always touched his
helmet to her as she cantered past. Possibly she had grown a little
careless in looking out for pedestrians at the crossings, for as she
turned eastward at the La Salle statue, she all but collided with a
gentleman who was traversing the road at the same time.
She brought her horse to a standstill with a little start of
apprehension, and started again as she saw that the gentleman was
Sheldon Corthell.
"Well," she cried, taken all aback, unable to think of formalities, and
relapsing all at once into the young girl of Barrington, Massachusetts,
"well, I never--of all the people."
But, no doubt, she had been more in his mind than he in hers, and a
meeting with her was for him an eventuality not at all remote. There
was more of pleasure than of embarrassment in that first look in which
he recognised the wife of Curtis Jadwin.
The artist had changed no whit in the four years since last she had
seen him. He seemed as young as ever; there was the same "elegance" to
his figure; his hands were just as long and slim as ever; his black
beard was no less finely pointed, and the mustaches were brushed away
from his lips in the same French style that she remembered he used to
affect. He was, as always, carefully dressed. He wore a suit of tweeds
of a foreign cut, but no overcoat, a cloth cap of greenish plaid was
upon his head, his hands were gloved in dogskin, and under his arm he
carried a slender cane of varnished brown bamboo. The only
unconventionality in his dress was the cravat, a great bow of black
silk that overflowed the lapels of his coat.
But she had no more than time to register a swift impression of the
details, when he came quickly forward, one hand extended, the other
holding his cap.
"I cannot tell you how glad I am," he exclaimed.
It was the old Corthell beyond doubting or denial. Not a single
inflection of his low-pitched, gently modulated voice was wanting; not
a single infinitesimal mannerism was changed, even to the little
tilting of the chin when he spoke, or the quick winking of the eyelids,
or the smile that narrowed the corners of the eyes themselves, or the
trick of perfect repose of his whole body. Even his handkerchief, as
always, since first she had known him, was tucked into his sleeve at
the wrist.
"And so you are back again," she cried. "And when, and how?"
"And so--yes--so I am back again," he repeated, as they shook hands.
"Only day before yesterday, and quite surreptitiously. No one knows yet
that I am here. I crept in--or my train did--under the cover of night.
I have come straight from Tuscany."
"From Tuscany?"
"--and gardens and marble pergolas."
"Now why any one should leave Tuscan gardens and--and all that kind of
thing for a winter in Chicago, I cannot see," she said.
"It is a little puzzling," he answered. "But I fancy that my gardens
and pergolas and all the rest had come to seem to me a little--as the
French would put it--_malle._ I began to long for a touch of our hard,
harsh city again. Harshness has its place, I think, if it is only to
cut one's teeth on."
Laura looked down at him, smiling.
"I should have thought you had cut yours long ago," she said.
"Not my wisdom teeth," he urged. "I feel now that I have come to that
time of life when it is expedient to have wisdom."
"I have never known that feeling," she confessed, "and I live in the
'hard, harsh' city."
"Oh, that is because you have never known what it meant not to have
wisdom," he retorted. "Tell me about everybody," he went on. "Your
husband, he is well, of course, and distressfully rich. I heard of him
in New York. And Page, our little, solemn Minerva of Dresden china?"
"Oh, yes, Page is well, but you will hardly recognise her; such a young
lady nowadays."
"And Mr. Court, 'Landry'? I remember he always impressed me as though
he had just had his hair cut; and the Cresslers, and Mrs. Wessels,
and--"
"All well. Mrs. Cressler will be delighted to hear you are back. Yes,
everybody is well."
"And, last of all, Mrs. Jadwin? But I needn't ask; I can see how well
and happy you are."
"And Mr. Corthell," she queried, "is also well and happy?"
"Mr. Corthell," he responded, "is very well, and--tolerably--happy,
thank you. One has lost a few illusions, but has managed to keep enough
to grow old on. One's latter days are provided for."
"I shouldn't imagine," she told him, "that one lost illusions in Tuscan
gardens."
"Quite right," he hastened to reply, smiling cheerfully. "One lost no
illusions in Tuscany. One went there to cherish the few that yet
remained. But," he added, without change of manner, "one begins to
believe that even a lost illusion can be very beautiful sometimes--even
in Chicago."
"I want you to dine with us," said Laura. "You've hardly met my
husband, and I think you will like some of our pictures. I will have
all your old friends there, the Cresslers and Aunt Wess, and all. When
can you come?"
"Oh, didn't you get my note?" he asked. "I wrote you yesterday, asking
if I might call to-night. You see, I am only in Chicago for a couple of
days. I must go on to St. Louis to-morrow, and shall not be back for a
week."
"Note? No, I've had no note from you. Oh, I know what happened. Curtis
left in a hurry this morning, and he swooped all the mail into his
pocket the last moment. I knew some of my letters were with his.
There's where your note went. But, never mind, it makes no difference
now that we've met. Yes, by all means, come to-night--to dinner. We're
not a bit formal. Curtis won't have it. We dine at six; and I'll try to
get the others. Oh, but Page won't be there, I forgot. She and Landry
Court are going to have dinner with Aunt Wess', and they are all going
to a lecture afterwards."
The artist expressed his appreciation and accepted her invitation.
"Do you know where we live?" she demanded. "You know we've moved since."
"Yes, I know," he told her. "I made up my mind to take a long walk here
in the Park this morning, and I passed your house on my way out. You
see, I had to look up your address in the directory before writing.
Your house awed me, I confess, and the style is surprisingly good."
"But tell me," asked Laura, "you never speak of yourself, what have you
been doing since you went away?"
"Nothing. Merely idling, and painting a little, and studying some
thirteenth century glass in Avignon and Sienna."
"And shall you go back?"
"Yes, I think so, in about a month. So soon as I have straightened out
some little businesses of mine--which puts me in mind," he said,
glancing at his watch, "that I have an appointment at eleven, and
should be about it."
He said good-by and left her, and Laura cantered homeward in high
spirits. She was very glad that Corthell had come back. She had always
liked him. He not only talked well himself, but seemed to have the
faculty of making her do the same. She remembered that in the old days,
before she had met Jadwin, her mind and conversation, for
undiscoverable reasons, had never been nimbler, quicker, nor more
effective than when in the company of the artist.
Arrived at home, Laura (as soon as she had looked up the definition of
"pergola" in the dictionary) lost no time in telephoning to Mrs.
Cressler.
"What," this latter cried when she told her the news, "that Sheldon
Corthell back again! Well, dear me, if he wasn't the last person in my
mind. I do remember the lovely windows he used to paint, and how
refined and elegant he always was--and the loveliest hands and voice."
"He's to dine with us to-night, and I want you and Mr. Cressler to
come."
"Oh, Laura, child, I just simply can't. Charlie's got a man from
Milwaukee coming here to-night, and I've got to feed him. Isn't it too
provoking? I've got to sit and listen to those two, clattering
commissions and percentages and all, when I might be hearing Sheldon
Corthell talk art and poetry and stained glass. I declare, I never have
any luck."
At quarter to six that evening Laura sat in the library, before the
fireplace, in her black velvet dinner gown, cutting the pages of a new
novel, the ivory cutter as it turned and glanced in her hand, appearing
to be a mere prolongation of her slender fingers. But she was not
interested in the book, and from time to time glanced nervously at the
clock upon the mantel-shelf over her head. Jadwin was not home yet, and
she was distressed at the thought of keeping dinner waiting. He usually
came back from down town at five o'clock, and even earlier. To-day she
had expected that quite possibly the business implied in the Liverpool
cable of the morning might detain him, but surely he should be home by
now; and as the minutes passed she listened more and more anxiously for
the sound of hoofs on the driveway at the side of the house.
At five minutes of the hour, when Corthell was announced, there was
still no sign of her husband. But as she was crossing the hall on her
way to the drawing-room, one of the servants informed her that Mr.
Jadwin had just telephoned that he would be home in half an hour.
"Is he on the telephone now?" she asked, quickly. "Where did he
telephone from?"
But it appeared that Jadwin had "hung up" without mentioning his
whereabouts.
"The buggy came home," said the servant. "Mr. Jadwin told Jarvis not to
wait. He said he would come in the street cars."
Laura reflected that she could delay dinner a half hour, and gave
orders to that effect.
"We shall have to wait a little," she explained to Corthell as they
exchanged greetings in the drawing-room. "Curtis has some special
business on hand to-day, and is half an hour late."
They sat down on either side of the fireplace in the lofty apartment,
with its sombre hangings of wine-coloured brocade and thick, muffling
rugs, and for upwards of three-quarters of an hour Corthell interested
her with his description of his life in the cathedral towns of northern
Italy. But at the end of that time dinner was announced.
"Has Mr. Jadwin come in yet?" Laura asked of the servant.
"No, madam."
She bit her lip in vexation.
"I can't imagine what can keep Curtis so late," she murmured. "Well,"
she added, at the end of her resources, "we must make the best of it. I
think we will go in, Mr. Corthell, without waiting. Curtis must be here
soon now."
But, as a matter of fact, he was not. In the great dining-room, filled
with a dull crimson light, the air just touched with the scent of
lilies of the valley, Corthell and Mrs. Jadwin dined alone.
"I suppose," observed the artist, "that Mr. Jadwin is a very busy man."
"Oh, no," Laura answered. "His real estate, he says, runs itself, and,
as a rule, Mr. Gretry manages most of his Board of Trade business. It
is only occasionally that anything keeps him down town late. I scolded
him this morning, however, about his speculating, and made him promise
not to do so much of it. I hate speculation. It seems to absorb some
men so; and I don't believe it's right for a man to allow himself to
become absorbed altogether in business."
"Oh, why limit one's absorption to business?" replied Corthell, sipping
his wine. "Is it right for one to be absorbed 'altogether' in
anything--even in art, even in religion?"
"Oh, religion, I don't know," she protested.
"Isn't that certain contribution," he hazarded, "which we make to the
general welfare, over and above our own individual work, isn't that the
essential? I suppose, of course, that we must hoe, each of us, his own
little row, but it's the stroke or two we give to our neighbour's
row--don't you think?--that helps most to cultivate the field."
"But doesn't religion mean more than a stroke or two?" she ventured to
reply.
"I'm not so sure," he answered, thoughtfully. "If the stroke or two is
taken from one's own work instead of being given in excess of it. One
must do one's own hoeing first. That's the foundation of things. A
religion that would mean to be 'altogether absorbed' in my neighbour's
hoeing would be genuinely pernicious, surely. My row, meanwhile, would
lie open to weeds."
"But if your neighbour's row grew flowers?"
"Unfortunately weeds grow faster than the flowers, and the weeds of my
row would spread until they choked and killed my neighbour's flowers, I
am sure."
"That seems selfish though," she persisted. "Suppose my neighbour were
maimed or halt or blind? His poor little row would never be finished.
My stroke or two would not help very much."
"Yes, but every row lies between two others, you know. The hoer on the
far side of the cripple's row would contribute a stroke or two as well
as you. No," he went on, "I am sure one's first duty is to do one's own
work. It seems to me that a work accomplished benefits the whole
world--the people--pro rata. If we help another at the expense of our
work instead of in excess of it, we benefit only the individual, and,
pro rata again, rob the people. A little good contributed by everybody
to the race is of more, infinitely more, importance than a great deal
of good contributed by one individual to another."
"Yes," she admitted, beginning at last to be convinced, "I see what you
mean. But one must think very large to see that. It never occurred to
me before. The individual--I, Laura Jadwin--counts for nothing. It is
the type to which I belong that's important, the mould, the form, the
sort of composite photograph of hundreds of thousands of Laura Jadwins.
Yes," she continued, her brows bent, her mind hard at work, "what I am,
the little things that distinguish me from everybody else, those pass
away very quickly, are very ephemeral. But the type Laura Jadwin, that
always remains, doesn't it? One must help building up only the
permanent things. Then, let's see, the individual may deteriorate, but
the type always grows better.... Yes, I think one can say that."
"At least the type never recedes," he prompted.
"Oh, it began good," she cried, as though at a discovery, "and can
never go back of that original good. Something keeps it from going
below a certain point, and it is left to us to lift it higher and
higher. No, the type can't be bad. Of course the type is more important
than the individual. And that something that keeps it from going below
a certain point is God."
"Or nature."
"So that God and nature," she cried again, "work together? No, no, they
are one and the same thing."
"There, don't you see," he remarked, smiling back at her, "how simple
it is?"
"Oh-h," exclaimed Laura, with a deep breath, "isn't it beautiful?" She
put her hand to her forehead with a little laugh of deprecation. "My,"
she said, "but those things make you think."
Dinner was over before she was aware of it, and they were still talking
animatedly as they rose from the table.
"We will have our coffee in the art gallery," Laura said, "and please
smoke."
He lit a cigarette, and the two passed into the great glass-roofed
rotunda.
"Here is the one I like best," said Laura, standing before the
Bougereau.
"Yes?" he queried, observing the picture thoughtfully. "I suppose," he
remarked, "it is because it demands less of you than some others. I see
what you mean. It pleases you because it satisfies you so easily. You
can grasp it without any effort."
"Oh, I don't know," she ventured.
"Bougereau 'fills a place.' I know it," he answered. "But I cannot
persuade myself to admire his art."
"But," she faltered, "I thought that Bougereau was considered the
greatest--one of the greatest--his wonderful flesh tints, the drawing,
and colouring."
"But I think you will see," he told her, "if you think about it, that
for all there is in his picture--back of it--a fine hanging, a
beautiful vase would have exactly the same value upon your wall. Now,
on the other hand, take this picture." He indicated a small canvas to
the right of the bathing nymphs, representing a twilight landscape.
"Oh, that one," said Laura. "We bought that here in America, in New
York. It's by a Western artist. I never noticed it much, I'm afraid."
"But now look at it," said Corthell. "Don't you know that the artist
saw something more than trees and a pool and afterglow? He had that
feeling of night coming on, as he sat there before his sketching easel
on the edge of that little pool. He heard the frogs beginning to pipe,
I'm sure, and the touch of the night mist was on his hands. And he was
very lonely and even a little sad. In those deep shadows under the
trees he put something of himself, the gloom and the sadness that he
felt at the moment. And that little pool, still and black and
sombre--why, the whole thing is the tragedy of a life full of dark,
hidden secrets. And the little pool is a heart. No one can say how deep
it is, or what dreadful thing one would find at the bottom, or what
drowned hopes or what sunken ambitions. That little pool says one word
as plain as if it were whispered in the ear--despair. Oh, yes, I prefer
it to the nymphs."
"I am very much ashamed," returned Laura, "that I could not see it all
before for myself. But I see it now. It is better, of course. I shall
come in here often now and study it. Of all the rooms in our house this
is the one I like best. But, I am afraid, it has been more because of
the organ than of the pictures."
Corthell turned about.
"Oh, the grand, noble organ," he murmured. "I envy you this of all your
treasures. May I play for you? Something to compensate for the
dreadful, despairing little tarn of the picture."
"I should love to have you," she told him.
He asked permission to lower the lights, and stepping outside the door
an instant, pressed the buttons that extinguished all but a very few of
them. After he had done this he came back to the organ and detached the
self-playing "arrangement" without comment, and seated himself at the
console.
Laura lay back in a long chair close at hand. The moment was
propitious. The artist's profile silhouetted itself against the shade
of a light that burned at the side of the organ, and that gave light to
the keyboard. And on this keyboard, full in the reflection, lay his
long, slim hands. They were the only things that moved in the room, and
the chords and bars of Mendelssohn's "Consolation" seemed, as he
played, to flow, not from the instrument, but, like some invisible
ether, from his finger-tips themselves.
"You hear," he said to Laura, "the effect of questions and answer in
this. The questions are passionate and tumultuous and varied, but the
answer is always the same, always calm and soothing and dignified."
She answered with a long breath, speaking just above a whisper:
"Oh, yes, yes, I understand."
He finished and turned towards her a moment. "Possibly not a very high
order of art," he said; "a little too 'easy,' perhaps, like the
Bougereau, but 'Consolation' should appeal very simply and directly,
after all. Do you care for Beethoven?"
"I--I am afraid--" began Laura, but he had continued without waiting
for her reply.
"You remember this? The 'Appassionata,' the F minor sonata just the
second movement."
But when he had finished Laura begged him to continue.
"Please go on," she said. "Play anything. You can't tell how I love it."
"Here is something I've always liked," he answered, turning back to the
keyboard. "It is the 'Mephisto Walzer' of Liszt. He has adapted it
himself from his own orchestral score, very ingeniously. It is
difficult to render on the organ, but I think you can get the idea of
it." As he spoke he began playing, his head very slightly moving to the
rhythm of the piece. At the beginning of each new theme, and without
interrupting his playing, he offered a word, of explanation:
"Very vivid and arabesque this, don't you think? ... And now this
movement; isn't it reckless and capricious, like a woman who hesitates
and then takes the leap? Yet there's a certain nobility there, a
feeling for ideals. You see it, of course.... And all the while this
undercurrent of the sensual, and that feline, eager sentiment ... and
here, I think, is the best part of it, the very essence of passion, the
voluptuousness that is a veritable anguish.... These long, slow
rhythms, tortured, languishing, really dying. It reminds one of
'Phedre'--'Venus toute entiere,' and the rest of it; and Wagner has the
same. You find it again in Isolde's motif continually."
Laura was transfixed, all but transported. Here was something better
than Gounod and Verdi, something above and beyond the obvious one, two,
three, one, two, three of the opera scores as she knew them and played
them. Music she understood with an intuitive quickness; and those
prolonged chords of Liszt's, heavy and clogged and cloyed with passion,
reached some hitherto untouched string within her heart, and with
resistless power twanged it so that the vibration of it shook her
entire being, and left her quivering and breathless, the tears in her
eyes, her hands clasped till the knuckles whitened.
She felt all at once as though a whole new world were opened to her.
She stood on Pisgah. And she was ashamed and confused at her ignorance
of those things which Corthell tactfully assumed that she knew as a
matter of course. What wonderful pleasures she had ignored! How
infinitely removed from her had been the real world of art and artists
of which Corthell was a part! Ah, but she would make amends now. No
more Verdi and Bougereau. She would get rid of the "Bathing Nymphs."
Never, never again would she play the "Anvil Chorus." Corthell should
select her pictures, and should play to her from Liszt and Beethoven
that music which evoked all the turbulent emotion, all the impetuosity
and fire and exaltation that she felt was hers.
She wondered at herself. Surely, surely there were two Laura Jadwins.
One calm and even and steady, loving the quiet life, loving her home,
finding a pleasure in the duties of the housewife. This was the Laura
who liked plain, homely, matter-of-fact Mrs. Cressler, who adored her
husband, who delighted in Mr. Howells's novels, who abjured society and
the formal conventions, who went to church every Sunday, and who was
afraid of her own elevator.
But at moments such as this she knew that there was another Laura
Jadwin--the Laura Jadwin who might have been a great actress, who had a
"temperament," who was impulsive. This was the Laura of the "grand
manner," who played the role of the great lady from room to room of her
vast house, who read Meredith, who revelled in swift gallops through
the park on jet-black, long-tailed horses, who affected black velvet,
black jet, and black lace in her gowns, who was conscious and proud of
her pale, stately beauty--the Laura Jadwin, in fine, who delighted to
recline in a long chair in the dim, beautiful picture gallery and
listen with half-shut eyes to the great golden organ thrilling to the
passion of Beethoven and Liszt.
The last notes of the organ sank and faded into silence--a silence that
left a sense of darkness like that which follows upon the flight of a
falling star, and after a long moment Laura sat upright, adjusting the
heavy masses of her black hair with thrusts of her long, white fingers.
She drew a deep breath.
"Oh," she said, "that was wonderful, wonderful. It is like a new
language--no, it is like new thoughts, too fine for language."
"I have always believed so," he answered. "Of all the arts, music, to
my notion, is the most intimate. At the other end of the scale you have
architecture, which is an expression of and an appeal to the common
multitude, a whole people, the mass. Fiction and painting, and even
poetry, are affairs of the classes, reaching the groups of the
educated. But music--ah, that is different, it is one soul speaking to
another soul. The composer meant it for you and himself. No one else
has anything to do with it. Because his soul was heavy and broken with
grief, or bursting with passion, or tortured with doubt, or searching
for some unnamed ideal, he has come to you--you of all the people in
the world--with his message, and he tells you of his yearnings and his
sadness, knowing that you will sympathise, knowing that your soul has,
like his, been acquainted with grief, or with gladness; and in the
music his soul speaks to yours, beats with it, blends with it, yes, is
even, spiritually, married to it."
And as he spoke the electrics all over the gallery flashed out in a
sudden blaze, and Curtis Jadwin entered the room, crying out:
"Are you here, Laura? By George, my girl, we pulled it off, and I've
cleaned up five--hundred--thousand--dollars."
Laura and the artist faced quickly about, blinking at the sudden glare,
and Laura put her hand over her eyes.
"Oh, I didn't mean to blind you," said her husband, as he came forward.
"But I thought it wouldn't be appropriate to tell you the good news in
the dark."
Corthell rose, and for the first time Jadwin caught sight of him.
"This is Mr. Corthell, Curtis," Laura said. "You remember him, of
course?"
"Why, certainly, certainly," declared Jadwin, shaking Corthell's hand.
"Glad to see you again. I hadn't an idea you were here." He was
excited, elated, very talkative. "I guess I came in on you abruptly,"
he observed. "They told me Mrs. Jadwin was in here, and I was full of
my good news. By the way, I do remember now. When I came to look over
my mail on the way down town this morning, I found a note from you to
my wife, saying you would call to-night. Thought it was for me, and
opened it before I found the mistake."
"I knew you had gone off with it," said Laura.
"Guess I must have mixed it up with my own mail this morning. I'd have
telephoned you about it, Laura, but upon my word I've been so busy all
day I clean forgot it. I've let the cat out of the bag already, Mr.
Corthell, and I might as well tell the whole thing now. I've been
putting through a little deal with some Liverpool fellows to-day, and I
had to wait down town to get their cables to-night. You got my
telephone, did you, Laura?"
"Yes, but you said then you'd be up in half an hour."
"I know--I know. But those Liverpool cables didn't come till all hours.
Well, as I was saying, Mr. Corthell, I had this deal on hand--it was
that wheat, Laura, I was telling you about this morning--five million
bushels of it, and I found out from my English agent that I could slam
it right into a couple of fellows over there, if we could come to
terms. We came to terms right enough. Some of that wheat I sold at a
profit of fifteen cents on every bushel. My broker and I figured it out
just now before I started home, and, as I say, I'm a clean half million
to the good. So much for looking ahead a little further than the next
man." He dropped into a chair and stretched his arms wide. "Whoo! I'm
tired Laura. Seems as though I'd been on my feet all day. Do you
suppose Mary, or Martha, or Maggie, or whatever her name is, could
rustle me a good strong cup of tea.
"Haven't you dined, Curtis?" cried Laura.
"Oh, I had a stand-up lunch somewhere with Sam. But we were both so
excited we might as well have eaten sawdust. Heigho, I sure am tired.
It takes it out of you, Mr. Corthell, to make five hundred thousand in
about ten hours."
"Indeed I imagine so," assented the artist. Jadwin turned to his wife,
and held her glance in his a moment. He was full of triumph, full of
the grim humour of the suddenly successful American.
"Hey?" he said. "What do you think of that, Laura," he clapped down his
big hand upon his chair arm, "a whole half million--at one grab? Maybe
they'll say down there in La Salle Street now that I don't know wheat.
Why, Sam--that's Gretry my broker, Mr. Corthell, of Gretry, Converse &
Co.--Sam said to me Laura, to-night, he said, 'J.,'--they call me 'J.'
down there, Mr. Corthell--'J., I take off my hat to you. I thought you
were wrong from the very first, but I guess you know this game better
than I do.' Yes, sir, that's what he said, and Sam Gretry has been
trading in wheat for pretty nearly thirty years. Oh, I knew it," he
cried, with a quick gesture; "I knew wheat was going to go up. I knew
it from the first, when all the rest of em laughed at me. I knew this
European demand would hit us hard about this time. I knew it was a good
thing to buy wheat; I knew it was a good thing to have special agents
over in Europe. Oh, they'll all buy now--when I've showed 'em the way.
Upon my word, I haven't talked so much in a month of Sundays. You must
pardon me, Mr. Corthell. I don't make five hundred thousand every day."
"But this is the last--isn't it?" said Laura.
"Yes," admitted Jadwin, with a quick, deep breath. "I'm done now. No
more speculating. Let some one else have a try now. See if they can
hold five million bushels till it's wanted. My, my, I am tired--as I've
said before. D'that tea come, Laura?"
"What's that in your hand?" she answered, smiling.
Jadwin stared at the cup and saucer he held, whimsically. "Well, well,"
he exclaimed, "I must be flustered. Corthell," he declared between
swallows, "take my advice. Buy May wheat. It'll beat art all hollow."
"Oh, dear, no," returned the artist. "I should lose my senses if I won,
and my money if I didn't.
"That's so. Keep out of it. It's a rich man's game. And at that,
there's no fun in it unless you risk more than you can afford to lose.
Well, let's not talk shop. You're an artist, Mr. Corthell. What do you
think of our house?"
Later on when they had said good-by to Corthell, and when Jadwin was
making the rounds of the library, art gallery, and drawing-rooms--a
nightly task which he never would intrust to the servants--turning down
the lights and testing the window fastenings, his wife said:
"And now you are out of it--for good."
"I don't own a grain of wheat," he assured her. "I've got to be out of
it."
The next day he went down town for only two or three hours in the
afternoon. But he did not go near the Board of Trade building. He
talked over a few business matters with the manager of his real estate
office, wrote an unimportant letter or two, signed a few orders, was
back at home by five o'clock, and in the evening took Laura, Page, and
Landry Court to the theatre.
After breakfast the next morning, when he had read his paper, he got
up, and, thrusting his hands in his pockets, looked across the table at
his wife.
"Well," he said. "Now what'll we do?"
She put down at once the letter she was reading.
"Would you like to drive in the park?" she suggested. "It is a
beautiful morning."
"M--m--yes," he answered slowly. "All right. Let's drive in the park."
But she could see that the prospect was not alluring to him.
"No," she said, "no. I don't think you want to do that."
"I don't think I do, either," he admitted. "The fact is, Laura, I just
about know that park by heart. Is there anything good in the magazines
this month?"
She got them for him, and he installed himself comfortably in the
library, with a box of cigars near at hand.
"Ah," he said, fetching a long breath as he settled back in the
deep-seated leather chair. "Now this is what I call solid comfort.
Better than stewing and fussing about La Salle Street with your mind
loaded down with responsibilities and all. This is my idea of life."
But an hour later, when Laura--who had omitted her ride that
morning--looked into the room, he was not there. The magazines were
helter-skeltered upon the floor and table, where he had tossed each one
after turning the leaves. A servant told her that Mr. Jadwin was out in
the stables.
She saw him through the window, in a cap and great-coat, talking with
the coachman and looking over one of the horses. But he came back to
the house in a little while, and she found him in his smoking-room with
a novel in his hand.
"Oh, I read that last week," she said, as she caught a glimpse of the
title. "Isn't it interesting? Don't you think it is good?"
"Oh--yes--pretty good," he admitted. "Isn't it about time for lunch?
Let's go to the matinee this afternoon, Laura. Oh, that's so, it's
Thursday; I forgot."
"Let me read that aloud to you," she said, reaching for the book. "I
know you'll be interested when you get farther along."
"Honestly, I don't think I would be," he declared. "I've looked ahead
in it. It seems terribly dry. Do you know," he said, abruptly, "if the
law was off I'd go up to Geneva Lake and fish through the ice. Laura,
how would you like to go to Florida?"
"Oh, I tell you," she exclaimed. "Let's go up to Geneva Lake over
Christmas. We'll open up the house and take some of the servants along
and have a house party."
Eventually this was done. The Cresslers and the Gretrys were invited,
together with Sheldon Corthell and Landry Court. Page and Aunt Wess'
came as a matter of course. Jadwin brought up some of the horses and a
couple of sleighs. On Christmas night they had a great tree, and
Corthell composed the words and music for a carol which had a great
success.
About a week later, two days after New Year's day, when Landry came
down from Chicago on the afternoon train, he was full of the tales of a
great day on the Board of Trade. Laura, descending to the sitting-room,
just before dinner, found a group in front of the fireplace, where the
huge logs were hissing and crackling. Her husband and Cressler were
there, and Gretry, who had come down on an earlier train. Page sat near
at hand, her chin on her palm, listening intently to Landry, who held
the centre of the stage for the moment. In a far corner of the room
Sheldon Corthell, in a dinner coat and patent-leather pumps, a
cigarette between his fingers, read a volume of Italian verse.
"It was the confirmation of the failure of the Argentine crop that did
it," Landry was saying; "that and the tremendous foreign demand. She
opened steady enough at eighty-three, but just as soon as the gong
tapped we began to get it. Buy, buy, buy. Everybody is in it now. The
public are speculating. For one fellow who wants to sell there are a
dozen buyers. We had one of the hottest times I ever remember in the
Pit this morning."
Laura saw Jadwin's eyes snap.
"I told you we'd get this, Sam," he said, nodding to the broker.
"Oh, there's plenty of wheat," answered Gretry, easily. "Wait till we
get dollar wheat--if we do--and see it come out. The farmers haven't
sold it all yet. There's always an army of ancient hayseeds who have
the stuff tucked away--in old stockings, I guess--and who'll dump it on
you all right if you pay enough. There's plenty of wheat. I've seen it
happen before. Work the price high enough, and, Lord, how they'll
scrape the bins to throw it at you! You'd never guess from what
out-of-the-way places it would come."
"I tell you, Sam," retorted Jadwin, "the surplus of wheat is going out
of the country--and it's going fast. And some of these shorts will have
to hustle lively for it pretty soon."
"The Crookes gang, though," observed Landry, "seem pretty confident the
market will break. I'm sure they were selling short this morning."
"The idea," exclaimed Jadwin, incredulously, "the idea of selling short
in face of this Argentine collapse, and all this Bull news from Europe!"
"Oh, there are plenty of shorts," urged Gretry. "Plenty of them."
Try as he would, the echoes of the rumbling of the Pit reached Jadwin
at every hour of the day and night. The maelstrom there at the foot of
La Salle Street was swirling now with a mightier rush than for years
past. Thundering, its vortex smoking, it sent its whirling far out over
the country, from ocean to ocean, sweeping the wheat into its currents,
sucking it in, and spewing it out again in the gigantic pulses of its
ebb and flow.
And he, Jadwin, who knew its every eddy, who could foretell its every
ripple, was out of it, out of it. Inactive, he sat there idle while the
clamour of the Pit swelled daily louder, and while other men, men of
little minds, of narrow imaginations, perversely, blindly shut their
eyes to the swelling of its waters, neglecting the chances which he
would have known how to use with such large, such vast results. That
mysterious event which long ago he felt was preparing, was not yet
consummated. The great Fact, the great Result which was at last to
issue forth from all this turmoil was not yet achieved. Would it refuse
to come until a master hand, all powerful, all daring, gripped the
levers of the sluice gates that controlled the crashing waters of the
Pit? He did not know. Was it the moment for a chief?
Was this upheaval a revolution that called aloud for its Napoleon?
Would another, not himself, at last, seeing where so many shut their
eyes, step into the place of high command?
Jadwin chafed and fretted in his inaction. As the time when the house
party should break up drew to its close, his impatience harried him
like a gadfly. He took long drives over the lonely country roads, or
tramped the hills or the frozen lake, thoughtful, preoccupied. He still
held his seat upon the Board of Trade. He still retained his agents in
Europe. Each morning brought him fresh despatches, each evening's paper
confirmed his forecasts.
"Oh, I'm out of it for good and all," he assured his wife. "But I know
the man who could take up the whole jing-bang of that Crookes crowd in
one hand and"--his large fist swiftly knotted as he spoke the
words--"scrunch it up like an eggshell, by George."
Landry Court often entertained Page with accounts of the doings on the
Board of Trade, and about a fortnight after the Jadwins had returned to
their city home he called on her one evening and brought two or three
of the morning's papers.
"Have you seen this?" he asked. She shook her head.
"Well," he said, compressing his lips, and narrowing his eyes, "let me
tell you, we are having pretty--lively--times--down there on the Board
these days. The whole country is talking about it."
He read her certain extracts from the newspapers he had brought. The
first article stated that recently a new factor had appeared in the
Chicago wheat market. A "Bull" clique had evidently been formed,
presumably of New York capitalists, who were ousting the Crookes crowd
and were rapidly coming into control of the market. In consequence of
this the price of wheat was again mounting.
Another paper spoke of a combine of St. Louis firms who were advancing
prices, bulling the market. Still a third said, at the beginning of a
half-column article:
"It is now universally conceded that an Unknown Bull has invaded the
Chicago wheat market since the beginning of the month, and is now
dominating the entire situation. The Bears profess to have no fear of
this mysterious enemy, but it is a matter of fact that a multitude of
shorts were driven ignominiously to cover on Tuesday last, when the
Great Bull gathered in a long line of two million bushels in a single
half hour. Scalping and eighth-chasing are almost entirely at an end,
the smaller traders dreading to be caught on the horns of the Unknown.
The new operator's identity has been carefully concealed, but whoever
he is, he is a wonderful trader and is possessed of consummate nerve.
It has been rumoured that he hails from New York, and is but one of a
large clique who are inaugurating a Bull campaign. But our New York
advices are emphatic in denying this report, and we can safely state
that the Unknown Bull is a native, and a present inhabitant of the
Windy City."
Page looked up at Landry quickly, and he returned her glance without
speaking. There was a moment's silence.
"I guess," Landry hazarded, lowering his voice, "I guess we're both
thinking of the same thing."
"But I know he told my sister that he was going to stop all that kind
of thing. What do you think?"
"I hadn't ought to think anything."
"Say 'shouldn't think,' Landry."
"Shouldn't think, then, anything about it. My business is to execute
Mr. Gretry's orders."
"Well, I know this," said Page, "that Mr. Jadwin is down town all day
again. You know he stayed away for a while."
"Oh, that may be his real estate business that keeps him down town so
much," replied Landry.
"Laura is terribly distressed," Page went on. "I can see that. They
used to spend all their evenings together in the library, and Laura
would read aloud to him. But now he comes home so tired that sometimes
he goes to bed at nine o'clock, and Laura sits there alone reading till
eleven and twelve. But she's afraid, too, of the effect upon him. He's
getting so absorbed. He don't care for literature now as he did once,
or was beginning to when Laura used to read to him; and he never thinks
of his Sunday-school. And then, too, if you're to believe Mr. Cressler,
there's a chance that he may lose if he is speculating again."
But Landry stoutly protested:
"Well, don't think for one moment that Mr. Curtis Jadwin is going to
let any one get the better of him. There's no man--no, nor gang of
men--could down him. He's head and shoulders above the biggest of them
down there. I tell you he's Napoleonic. Yes, sir, that's what he is,
Napoleonic, to say the least. Page," he declared, solemnly, "he's the
greatest man I've ever known."
Very soon after this it was no longer a secret to Laura Jadwin that her
husband had gone back to the wheat market, and that, too, with such
impetuosity, such eagerness, that his rush had carried him to the very
heart's heart of the turmoil.
He was now deeply involved; his influence began to be felt. Not an
important move on the part of the "Unknown Bull," the nameless
mysterious stranger that was not duly noted and discussed by the entire
world of La Salle Street.
Almost his very first move, carefully guarded, executed with
profoundest secrecy, had been to replace the five million bushels sold
to Liverpool by five million more of the May option. This was in
January, and all through February and all through the first days of
March, while the cry for American wheat rose, insistent and vehement,
from fifty cities and centres of eastern Europe; while the jam of men
in the Wheat Pit grew ever more frantic, ever more furious, and while
the impassive hand on the great dial over the floor of the Board rose,
resistless, till it stood at eighty-seven, he bought steadily,
gathering in the wheat, calling for it, welcoming it, receiving full in
the face and with opened arms the cataract that poured in upon the Pit
from Iowa and Nebraska, Minnesota and Dakota, from the dwindling bins
of Illinois and the fast-emptying elevators of Kansas and Missouri.
Then, squarely in the midst of the commotion, at a time when Curtis
Jadwin owned some ten million bushels of May wheat, fell the Government
report on the visible supply.
"Well," said Jadwin, "what do you think of it?"
He and Gretry were in the broker's private room in the offices of
Gretry, Converse & Co. They were studying the report of the Government
as to the supply of wheat, which had just been published in the
editions of the evening papers. It was very late in the afternoon of a
lugubrious March day. Long since the gas and electricity had been
lighted in the office, while in the streets the lamps at the corners
were reflected downward in long shafts of light upon the drenched
pavements. From the windows of the room one could see directly up La
Salle Street. The cable cars, as they made the turn into or out of the
street at the corner of Monroe, threw momentary glares of red and green
lights across the mists of rain, and filled the air continually with
the jangle of their bells. Further on one caught a glimpse of the Court
House rising from the pavement like a rain-washed cliff of black
basalt, picked out with winking lights, and beyond that, at the extreme
end of the vista, the girders and cables of the La Salle Street bridge.
The sidewalks on either hand were encumbered with the "six o'clock
crowd" that poured out incessantly from the street entrances of the
office buildings. It was a crowd almost entirely of men, and they moved
only in one direction, buttoned to the chin in rain coats, their
umbrellas bobbing, their feet scuffling through the little pools of wet
in the depressions of the sidewalk. They streamed from out the brokers'
offices and commission houses on either side of La Salle Street,
continually, unendingly, moving with the dragging sluggishness of the
fatigue of a hard day's work. Under that grey sky and blurring veil of
rain they lost their individualities, they became conglomerate--a mass,
slow-moving, black. All day long the torrent had seethed and thundered
through the street--the torrent that swirled out and back from that
vast Pit of roaring within the Board of Trade. Now the Pit was stilled,
the sluice gates of the torrent locked, and from out the thousands of
offices, from out the Board of Trade itself, flowed the black and
sluggish lees, the lifeless dregs that filtered back to their level for
a few hours, stagnation, till in the morning, the whirlpool revolving
once more, should again suck them back into its vortex.
The rain fell uninterruptedly. There was no wind. The cable cars jolted
and jostled over the tracks with a strident whir of vibrating window
glass. In the street, immediately in front of the entrance to the Board
of Trade, a group of pigeons, garnet-eyed, trim, with coral-coloured
feet and iridescent breasts, strutted and fluttered, pecking at the
handfuls of wheat that a porter threw them from the windows of the
floor of the Board.
"Well," repeated Jadwin, shifting with a movement of his lips his unlit
cigar to the other corner of his mouth, "well, what do you think of it?"
The broker, intent upon the figures and statistics, replied only by an
indefinite movement of the head.
"Why, Sam," observed Jadwin, looking up from the paper, "there's less
than a hundred million bushels in the farmers' hands.... That's awfully
small. Sam, that's awfully small."
"It ain't, as you might say, colossal," admitted Gretry.
There was a long silence while the two men studied the report still
further. Gretry took a pamphlet of statistics from a pigeon-hole of his
desk, and compared certain figures with those mentioned in the report.
Outside the rain swept against the windows with the subdued rustle of
silk. A newsboy raised a Gregorian chant as he went down the street.
"By George, Sam," Jadwin said again, "do you know that a whole pile of
that wheat has got to go to Europe before July? How have the shipments
been?"
"About five millions a week."
"Why, think of that, twenty millions a month, and it's--let's see,
April, May, June, July--four months before a new crop. Eighty million
bushels will go out of the country in the next four months--eighty
million out of less than a hundred millions."
"Looks that way," answered Gretry.
"Here," said Jadwin, "let's get some figures. Let's get a squint on the
whole situation. Got a 'Price Current' here? Let's find out what the
stocks are in Chicago. I don't believe the elevators are exactly
bursting, and, say," he called after the broker, who had started for
the front office, "say, find out about the primary receipts, and the
Paris and Liverpool stocks. Bet you what you like that Paris and
Liverpool together couldn't show ten million to save their necks."
In a few moments Gretry was back again, his hands full of pamphlets and
"trade" journals.
By now the offices were quite deserted. The last clerk had gone home.
Without, the neighbourhood was emptying rapidly. Only a few stragglers
hurried over the glistening sidewalks; only a few lights yet remained
in the facades of the tall, grey office buildings. And in the widening
silence the cooing of the pigeons on the ledges and window-sills of the
Board of Trade Building made itself heard with increasing distinctness.
Before Gretry's desk the two men leaned over the litter of papers. The
broker's pencil was in his hand and from time to time he figured
rapidly on a sheet of note paper.
"And," observed Jadwin after a while, "and you see how the millers up
here in the Northwest have been grinding up all the grain in sight. Do
you see that?"
"Yes," said Gretry, then he added, "navigation will be open in another
month up there in the straits."
"That's so, too," exclaimed Jadwin, "and what wheat there is here will
be moving out. I'd forgotten that point. Ain't you glad you aren't
short of wheat these days?"
"There's plenty of fellows that are, though," returned Gretry. "I've
got a lot of short wheat on my books--a lot of it."
All at once as Gretry spoke Jadwin started, and looked at him with a
curious glance.
"You have, hey?" he said. "There are a lot of fellows who have sold
short?"
"Oh, yes, some of Crookes' followers--yes, quite a lot of them."
Jadwin was silent a moment, tugging at his mustache. Then suddenly he
leaned forward, his finger almost in Gretry's face.
"Why, look here," he cried. "Don't you see? Don't you see?"
"See what?" demanded the broker, puzzled at the other's vehemence.
Jadwin loosened his collar with a forefinger.
"Great Scott! I'll choke in a minute. See what? Why, I own ten million
bushels of this wheat already, and Europe will take eighty million out
of the country. Why, there ain't going to be any wheat left in Chicago
by May! If I get in now and buy a long line of cash wheat, where are
all these fellows who've sold short going to get it to deliver to me?
Say, where are they going to get it? Come on now, tell me, where are
they going to get it?"
Gretry laid down his pencil and stared at Jadwin, looked long at the
papers on his desk, consulted his pencilled memoranda, then thrust his
hands deep into his pockets, with a long breath. Bewildered, and as if
stupefied, he gazed again into Jadwin's face.
"My God!" he murmured at last.
"Well, where are they going to get it?" Jadwin cried once more, his
face suddenly scarlet.
"J.," faltered the broker, "J., I--I'm damned if I know."
And then, all in the same moment, the two men were on their feet. The
event which all those past eleven months had been preparing was
suddenly consummated, suddenly stood revealed, as though a veil had
been ripped asunder, as though an explosion had crashed through the air
upon them, deafening, blinding.
Jadwin sprang forward, gripping the broker by the shoulder.
"Sam," he shouted, "do you know--great God!--do you know what this
means? Sam, we can corner the market!"