by Frank Norris
“Fiddlesticks!” said Mr. Cressler, resuming his paper.
“I’m positive that Sheldon Corthell asked her to marry him,” mused Mrs. Cressler after a moment’s silence. “I’m sure that’s why he left so suddenly.”
Her husband grunted grimly as he turned his paper so as to catch the reflection of the vestibule light.
“Don’t you think so, Charlie?”
“Uh! I don’t know. I never had much use for that fellow, anyhow.”
“He’s wonderfully talented,” she commented, “and so refined. He always had the most beautiful manners. Did you ever notice his hands?”
“I thought they were like a barber’s. Put him in ‘J.’s’ rig there, behind those horses of his, and how long do you suppose he’d hold those trotters with that pair of hands? Why,” he blustered, suddenly, “they’d pull him right over the dashboard.”
“Poor little Landry Court!” murmured his wife, lowering her voice. “He’s just about heart-broken. He wanted to marry her too. My goodness, she must have brought him up with a round turn. I can see Laura when she is really angry. Poor fellow!”
“If you women would let that boy alone, he might amount to something.”
“He told me his life was ruined.”
Cressler threw his cigar from him with vast impatience.
“Oh, rot!” he muttered.
“He took it terribly, seriously, Charlie, just the same.”
“I’d like to take that young boy in hand and shake some of the nonsense out of him that you women have filled him with. He’s got a level head. On the floor every day, and never yet bought a hatful of wheat on his own account. Don’t know the meaning of speculation and don’t want to. There’s a boy with some sense.”
“It’s just as well,” persisted Mrs. Cressler reflectively, “that Laura wouldn’t have him. Of course they’re not made for each other. But I thought that Corthell would have made her happy. But she won’t ever marry ‘J.’ He asked her to; she didn’t tell me, but I know he did. And she’s refused him flatly. She won’t marry anybody, she says. Said she didn’t love anybody, and never would. I’d have loved to have seen her married to ‘J.,’ but I can see now that they wouldn’t have been congenial; and if Laura wouldn’t have Sheldon Corthell, who was just made for her, I guess it was no use to expect she’d have ‘J.’ Laura’s got a temperament, and she’s artistic, and loves paintings, and poetry, and Shakespeare, and all that, and Curtis don’t care for those things at all. They wouldn’t have had anything in common. But Corthell — that was different. And Laura did care for him, in a way. He interested her immensely. When he’d get started on art subjects Laura would just hang on every word. My lands, I wouldn’t have gone away if I’d been in his boots. You mark my words, Charlie, there was the man for Laura Dearborn, and she’ll marry him yet, or I’ll miss my guess.”
“That’s just like you, Carrie — you and the rest of the women,” exclaimed Cressler, “always scheming to marry each other off. Why don’t you let the girl alone? Laura’s all right. She minds her own business, and she’s perfectly happy. But you’d go to work and get up a sensation about her, and say that your ‘heart bleeds for her,’ and that she’s born to trouble, and has sad eyes. If she gets into trouble it’ll be because some one else makes it for her. You take my advice, and let her paddle her own canoe. She’s got the head to do it; don’t you worry about that. By the way—” Cressler interrupted himself, seizing the opportunity to change the subject. “By the way, Carrie, Curtis has been speculating again. I’m sure of it.”
“Too bad,” she murmured.
“So it is,” Cressler went on. “He and Gretry are thick as thieves these days. Gretry, I understand, has been selling September wheat for him all last week, and only this morning they closed out another scheme — some corn game. It was all over the Floor just about closing time. They tell me that Curtis landed between eight and ten thousand. Always seems to win. I’d give a lot to keep him out of it; but since his deal in May wheat he’s been getting into it more and more.”
“Did he sell that property on Washington Street?” she inquired.
“Oh,” exclaimed her husband, “I’d forgot. I meant to tell you. No, he didn’t sell it. But he did better. He wouldn’t sell, and those department store people took a lease. Guess what they pay him. Three hundred thousand a year. ‘J.’ is getting richer all the time, and why he can’t be satisfied with his own business instead of monkeying ‘round La Salle Street is a mystery to me.”
But, as Mrs. Cressler was about to reply, Laura came to the open window of the parlour.
“Oh, Mrs. Cressler,” she called, “I don’t seem to find your ‘Idylls’ after all. I thought they were in the little book-case.”
“Wait. I’ll find them for you,” exclaimed Mrs. Cressler.
“Would you mind?” answered Laura, as Mrs. Cressler rose.
Inside, the gas had not been lighted. The library was dark and cool, and when Mrs. Cressler had found the book for Laura the girl pleaded a headache as an excuse for remaining within. The two sat down by the raised sash of a window at the side of the house, that overlooked the “side yard,” where the morning-glories and nasturtiums were in full bloom.
“The house is cooler, isn’t it?” observed Mrs. Cressler.
Laura settled herself in her wicker chair, and with a gesture that of late had become habitual with her pushed her heavy coils of hair to one side and patted them softly to place.
“It is getting warmer, I do believe,” she said, rather listlessly. “I understand it is to be a very hot summer.” Then she added, “I’m to be married in July, Mrs. Cressler.”
Mrs. Cressler gasped, and sitting bolt upright stared for one breathless instant at Laura’s face, dimly visible in the darkness. Then, stupefied, she managed to vociferate:
“What! Laura! Married? My darling girl!”
“Yes,” answered Laura calmly. “In July — or maybe sooner.”
“Why, I thought you had rejected Mr. Corthell. I thought that’s why he went away.”
“Went away? He never went away. I mean it’s not Mr. Corthell. It’s Mr. Jadwin.”
“Thank God!” declared Mrs. Cressler fervently, and with the words kissed Laura on both cheeks. “My dear, dear child, you can’t tell how glad I am. From the very first I’ve said you were made for one another. And I thought all the time that you’d told him you wouldn’t have him.”
“I did,” said Laura. Her manner was quiet. She seemed a little grave. “I told him I did not love him. Only last week I told him so.”
“Well, then, why did you promise?”
“My goodness!” exclaimed Laura, with a show of animation. “You don’t realize what it’s been. Do you suppose you can say ‘no’ to that man?”
“Of course not, of course not,” declared Mrs. Cressler joyfully. “That’s ‘J.’ all over. I might have known he’d have you if he set out to do it.”
“Morning, noon, and night,” Laura continued. “He seemed willing to wait as long as I wasn’t definite; but one day I wrote to him and gave him a square ‘No,’ so as he couldn’t mistake, and just as soon as I’d said that he — he — began. I didn’t have any peace until I’d promised him, and the moment I had promised he had a ring on my finger. He’d had it ready in his pocket for weeks it seems. No,” she explained, as Mrs. Cressler laid her fingers upon her left hand, “That I would not have — yet.”
“Oh, it was like ‘J.’ to be persistent,” repeated Mrs. Cressler.
“Persistent!” murmured Laura. “He simply wouldn’t talk of anything else. It was making him sick, he said. And he did have a fever — often. But he would come out to see me just the same. One night, when it was pouring rain — Well, I’ll tell you. He had been to dinner with us, and afterwards, in the drawing-room, I told him ‘no’ for the hundredth time just as plainly as I could, and he went away early — it wasn’t eight. I thought that now at last he had given up. But he was back again before ten the same evenin
g. He said he had come back to return a copy of a book I had loaned him— ‘Jane Eyre’ it was. Raining! I never saw it rain as it did that night. He was drenched, and even at dinner he had had a low fever. And then I was sorry for him. I told him he could come to see me again. I didn’t propose to have him come down with pneumonia, or typhoid, or something. And so it all began over again.”
“But you loved him, Laura?” demanded Mrs. Cressler. “You love him now?”
Laura was silent. Then at length:
“I don’t know,” she answered.
“Why, of course you love him, Laura,” insisted Mrs. Cressler. “You wouldn’t have promised him if you hadn’t. Of course you love him, don’t you?”
“Yes, I — I suppose I must love him, or — as you say — I wouldn’t have promised to marry him. He does everything, every little thing I say. He just seems to think of nothing else but to please me from morning until night. And when I finally said I would marry him, why, Mrs. Cressler, he choked all up, and the tears ran down his face, and all he could say was, ‘May God bless you! May God bless you!’ over and over again, and his hand shook so that — Oh, well,” she broke off abruptly. Then added, “Somehow it makes tears come to my eyes to think of it.”
“But, Laura,” urged Mrs. Cressler, “you love Curtis, don’t you? You — you’re such a strange girl sometimes. Dear child, talk to me as though I were your mother. There’s no one in the world loves you more than I do. You love Curtis, don’t you?”
Laura hesitated a long moment.
“Yes,” she said, slowly at length. “I think I love him very much — sometimes. And then sometimes I think I don’t. I can’t tell. There are days when I’m sure of it, and there are others when I wonder if I want to be married, after all. I thought when love came it was to be — oh, uplifting, something glorious like Juliet’s love or Marguerite’s. Something that would—” Suddenly she struck her hand to her breast, her fingers shut tight, closing to a fist. “Oh, something that would shake me all to pieces. I thought that was the only kind of love there was.”
“Oh, that’s what you read about in trashy novels,” Mrs. Cressler assured her, “or the kind you see at the matinees. I wouldn’t let that bother me, Laura. There’s no doubt that ‘J.’ loves you.”
Laura brightened a little. “Oh, no,” she answered, “there’s no doubt about that. It’s splendid, that part of it. He seems to think there’s nothing in the world too good for me. Just imagine, only yesterday I was saying something about my gloves, I really forget what — something about how hard it was for me to get the kind of gloves I liked. Would you believe it, he got me to give him my measure, and when I saw him in the evening he told me he had cabled to Brussels to some famous glovemaker and had ordered I don’t know how many pairs.”
“Just like him, just like him!” cried Mrs. Cressler. “I know you will be happy, Laura, dear. You can’t help but be with a man who loves you as ‘J.’ does.”
“I think I shall be happy,” answered Laura, suddenly grave. “Oh, Mrs. Cressler, I want to be. I hope that I won’t come to myself some day, after it is too late, and find that it was all a mistake.” Her voice shook a little. “You don’t know how nervous I am these days. One minute I am one kind of girl, and the next another kind. I’m so nervous and — oh, I don’t know. Oh, I guess it will be all right.” She wiped her eyes, and laughed a note. “I don’t see why I should cry about it,” she murmured.
“Well, Laura,” answered Mrs. Cressler, “if you don’t love Curtis, don’t marry him. That’s very simple.”
“It’s like this, Mrs. Cressler,” Laura explained. “I suppose I am very uncharitable and unchristian, but I like the people that like me, and I hate those that don’t like me. I can’t help it. I know it’s wrong, but that’s the way I am. And I love to be loved. The man that would love me the most would make me love him. And when Mr. Jadwin seems to care so much, and do so much, and — you know how I mean; it does make a difference of course. I suppose I care as much for Mr. Jadwin as I ever will care for any man. I suppose I must be cold and unemotional.”
Mrs. Cressler could not restrain a movement of surprise.
“You unemotional? Why, I thought you just said, Laura, that you had imagined love would be like Juliet and like that girl in ‘Faust’ — that it was going to shake you all to pieces.”
“Did I say that? Well, I told you I was one girl one minute and another another. I don’t know myself these days. Oh, hark,” she said, abruptly, as the cadence of hoofs began to make itself audible from the end of the side street. “That’s the team now. I could recognise those horses’ trot as far as I could hear it. Let’s go out. I know he would like to have me there when he drives up. And you know” — she put her hand on Mrs. Cressler’s arm as the two moved towards the front door— “this is all absolutely a secret as yet.”
“Why, of course, Laura dear. But tell me just one thing more,” Mrs. Cressler asked, in a whisper, “are you going to have a church wedding?”
“Hey, Carrie,” called Mr. Cressler from the stoop, “here’s J.”
Laura shook her head.
“No, I want it to be very quiet — at our house. We’ll go to Geneva Lake for the summer. That’s why, you see, I couldn’t promise to go to Oconomowoc with you.”
They came out upon the front steps, Mrs. Cressler’s arm around Laura’s waist. It was dark by now, and the air was perceptibly warmer.
The team was swinging down the street close at hand, the hoof beats exactly timed, as if there were but one instead of two horses.
“Well, what’s the record to-night J.?” cried Cressler, as Jadwin brought the bays to a stand at the horse block. Jadwin did not respond until he had passed the reins to the coachman, and taking the stop watch from the latter’s hand, he drew on his cigar, and held the glowing tip to the dial.
“Eleven minutes and a quarter,” he announced, “and we had to wait for the bridge at that.”
He came up the steps, fanning himself with his slouch hat, and dropped into the chair that Landry had brought for him.
“Upon my word,” he exclaimed, gingerly drawing off his driving gloves, “I’ve no feeling in my fingers at all. Those fellows will pull my hands clean off some day.”
But he was hardly settled in his place before he proposed to send the coachman home, and to take Laura for a drive towards Lincoln Park, and even a little way into the park itself. He promised to have her back within an hour.
“I haven’t any hat,” objected Laura. “I should love to go, but I ran over here to-night without any hat.”
“Well, I wouldn’t let that stand in my way, Laura,” protested Mrs. Cressler. “It will be simply heavenly in the Park on such a night as this.”
In the end Laura borrowed Page’s hat, and Jadwin took her away. In the light of the street lamps Mrs. Cressler and the others watched them drive off, sitting side by side behind the fine horses. Jadwin, broad-shouldered, a fresh cigar in his teeth, each rein in a double turn about his large, hard hands; Laura, slim, erect, pale, her black, thick hair throwing a tragic shadow low upon her forehead.
“A fine-looking couple,” commented Mr. Cressler as they disappeared.
The hoof beats died away, the team vanished. Landry Court, who stood behind the others, watching, turned to Mrs. Cressler. She thought she detected a little unsteadiness in his voice, but he repeated bravely:
“Yes, yes, that’s right. They are a fine, a — a fine-looking couple together, aren’t they? A fine-looking couple, to say the least.”
A week went by, then two, soon May had passed. On the fifteenth of that month Laura’s engagement to Curtis Jadwin was formally announced. The day of the wedding was set for the first week in June.
During this time Laura was never more changeable, more puzzling. Her vivacity seemed suddenly to have been trebled, but it was invaded frequently by strange reactions and perversities that drove her friends and family to distraction.
About a week after her talk with Mr
s. Cressler, Laura broke the news to Page. It was a Monday morning. She had spent the time since breakfast in putting her bureau drawers to rights, scattering sachet powders in them, then leaving them open so as to perfume the room. At last she came into the front “upstairs sitting-room,” a heap of gloves, stockings, collarettes — the odds and ends of a wildly disordered wardrobe — in her lap. She tumbled all these upon the hearth rug, and sat down upon the floor to sort them carefully. At her little desk near by, Page, in a blue and white shirt waist and golf skirt, her slim little ankles demurely crossed, a cone of foolscap over her forearm to guard against ink spots, was writing in her journal. This was an interminable affair, voluminous, complex, that the young girl had kept ever since she was fifteen. She wrote in it — she hardly knew what — the small doings of the previous day, her comings and goings, accounts of dances, estimates of new acquaintances. But besides this she filled page after page with “impressions,” “outpourings,” queer little speculations about her soul, quotations from poets, solemn criticisms of new novels, or as often as not mere purposeless meanderings of words, exclamatory, rhapsodic — involved lucubrations quite meaningless and futile, but which at times she re-read with vague thrills of emotion and mystery.
On this occasion Page wrote rapidly and steadily for a few moments after Laura’s entrance into the room. Then she paused, her eyes growing wide and thoughtful. She wrote another line and paused again. Seated on the floor, her hands full of gloves, Laura was murmuring to herself.
“Those are good ... and those, and the black suedes make eight.... And if I could only find the mate to this white one.... Ah, here it is. That makes nine, nine pair.”
She put the gloves aside, and turning to the stockings drew one of the silk ones over her arm, and spread out her fingers in the foot.