by Frank Norris
“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 a
nswer. 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.
He was now no longer an “outsider.”
VII
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.”