Complete Works of Frank Norris

by Frank Norris

  “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.”

&
nbsp; “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.