by Frank Norris
“Well,” observed Freye, “we’ve got to get him in.”
“Talk to me about that now,” Sweeny answered. “I’m new to some parts o’ this scheme o’ yours yet. Why is Crookes so keen on having him in? I’m not so keen. We could get along without him. He ain’t so god-awful rich, y’ know.”
“No, but he’s a solid, conservative cash grain man,” answered Freye, “who hasn’t been associated with speculating for years. Crookes has got to have that element in the clique before we can approach Stires & Co. We may have to get a pile of money from them, and they’re apt to be scary and cautious. Cressler being in, do you see, gives the clique a substantial, conservative character. You let Crookes manage it. He knows his business.”
“Say,” exclaimed Sweeny, an idea occurring to him, “I thought Crookes was going to put us wise to-day. He must know by now who the Big Bull is.”
“No doubt he does know,” answered the other. “He’ll tell us when he’s ready. But I think I could copper the individual. There was a great big jag of wheat sold to Liverpool a little while ago through Gretry, Converse & Co., who’ve been acting for Curtis Jadwin for a good many years.”
“Oh, Jadwin, hey? Hi! we’re after big game now, I’m thinking.”
“But look here,” warned Freye. “Here’s a point. Cressler is not to know by the longest kind of chalk; anyhow not until he’s so far in, he can’t pull out. He and Jadwin are good friends, I’m told. Hello, it’s raining a little. Well, I’ve got to be moving. See you at lunch to-morrow.”
As Cressler turned into La Salle Street the light sprinkle of rain suddenly swelled to a deluge, and he had barely time to dodge into the portico of the Illinois Trust to escape a drenching. All the passers-by close at hand were making for the same shelter, and among these Cressler was surprised to see Curtis Jadwin, who came running up the narrow lane from the cafe entrance of the Grand Pacific Hotel.
“Hello! Hello, J.,” he cried, when his friend came panting up the steps, “as the whale said to Jonah, ‘Come in out of the wet.’”
The two friends stood a moment under the portico, their coat collars turned up, watching the scurrying in the street.
“Well,” said Cressler, at last, “I see we got ‘dollar wheat’ this morning.”
“Yes,” answered Jadwin, nodding, “‘dollar wheat.’”
“I suppose,” went on Cressler, “I suppose you are sorry, now that you’re not in it any more.”
“Oh, no,” replied Jadwin, nibbling off the end of a cigar. “No, I’m — I’m just as well out of it.”
“And it’s for good and all this time, eh?”
“For good and all.”
“Well,” commented Cressler, “some one else has begun where you left off, I guess. This Unknown Bull, I mean. All the boys are trying to find out who he is. Crookes, though, was saying to me — Cal Crookes, you know — he was saying he didn’t care who he was. Crookes is out of the market, too, I understand — and means to keep out, he says, till the Big Bull gets tired. Wonder who the Big Bull is.”
“Oh, there isn’t any Big Bull,” blustered Jadwin. “There’s simply a lot of heavy buying, or maybe there might be a ring of New York men operating through Gretry. I don’t know; and I guess I’m like Crookes, I don’t care — now that I’m out of the game. Real estate is too lively now to think of anything else; keeps me on the keen jump early and late. I tell you what, Charlie, this city isn’t half grown yet. And do you know, I’ve noticed another thing — cities grow to the westward. I’ve got a building and loan association going, out in the suburbs on the West Side, that’s a dandy. Well, looks as though the rain had stopped. Remember me to madam. So long, Charlie.”
On leaving Cressler Jadwin went on to his offices in The Rookery, close at hand. But he had no more than settled himself at his desk, when he was called up on his telephone.
“Hello!” said a small, dry transformation of Gretry’s voice. “Hello, is that you, J.? Well, in the matter of that cash wheat in Duluth, I’ve bought that for you.”
“All right,” answered Jadwin, then he added, “I guess we had better have a long talk now.”
“I was going to propose that,” answered the broker. “Meet me this evening at seven at the Grand Pacific. It’s just as well that we’re not seen together nowadays. Don’t ask for me. Go right into the smoking-room. I’ll be there. And, by the way, I shall expect a reply from Minneapolis about half-past five this afternoon. I would like to be able to get at you at once when that comes in. Can you wait down for that?”
“Well, I was going home,” objected Jadwin. “I wasn’t home to dinner last night, and Mrs. Jadwin—”
“This is pretty important, you know,” warned the broker. “And if I call you up on your residence telephone, there’s always the chance of somebody cutting in and overhearing us.”
“Oh, very well, then,” assented Jadwin. “I’ll call it a day. I’ll get home for luncheon to-morrow. It can’t be helped. By the way, I met Cressler this afternoon, Sam, and he seemed sort of suspicious of things, to me — as though he had an inkling.”
“Better hang up,” came back the broker’s voice. “Better hang up, J. There’s big risk telephoning like this. I’ll see you to-night. Good-by.”
And so it was that about half an hour later Laura was called to the telephone in the library.
“Oh, not coming home at all to-night?” she cried blankly in response to Jadwin’s message.
“It’s just impossible, old girl,” he answered.
“But why?” she insisted.
“Oh, business; this building and loan association of mine.”
“Oh, I know it can’t be that. Why don’t you let Mr. Gretry manage your—”
But at this point Jadwin, the warning of Gretry still fresh in his mind, interrupted quickly:
“I must hang up now, Laura. Good-by. I’ll see you to-morrow noon and explain it all to you. Good-by.... Laura.... Hello! ... Are you there yet? ... Hello, hello!”
But Jadwin had heard in the receiver the rattle and click as of a tiny door closing. The receiver was silent and dead; and he knew that his wife, disappointed and angry, had “hung up” without saying good-by.
The days passed. Soon another week had gone by. The wheat market steadied down after the dollar mark was reached, and for a few days a calmer period intervened. Down beneath the surface, below the ebb and flow of the currents, the great forces were silently at work reshaping the “situation.” Millions of dollars were beginning to be set in motion to govern the millions of bushels of wheat. At the end of the third week of the month Freye reported to Crookes that Cressler was “in,” and promptly negotiations were opened between the clique and the great banking house of the Stires. But meanwhile Jadwin and Gretry, foreseeing no opposition, realising the incalculable advantage that their knowledge of the possibility of a “corner” gave them, were, quietly enough, gathering in the grain. As early as the end of March Jadwin, as incidental to his contemplated corner of May wheat, had bought up a full half of the small supply of cash wheat in Duluth, Chicago, Liverpool and Paris — some twenty million bushels; and against this had sold short an equal amount of the July option. Having the actual wheat in hand he could not lose. If wheat went up, his twenty million bushels were all the more valuable; if it went down, he covered his short sales at a profit. And all the while, steadily, persistently, he bought May wheat, till Gretry’s book showed him to be possessed of over twenty million bushels of the grain deliverable for that month.
But all this took not only his every minute of time, but his every thought, his every consideration. He who had only so short a while before considered the amount of five million bushels burdensome, demanding careful attention, was now called upon to watch, govern, and control the tremendous forces latent in a line of forty million. At times he remembered the Curtis Jadwin of the spring before his marriage, the Curtis Jadwin who had sold a pitiful million on the strength of the news of the French import duty, and had considered th
e deal “big.” Well, he was a different man since that time. Then he had been suspicious of speculation, had feared it even. Now he had discovered that there were in him powers, capabilities, and a breadth of grasp hitherto unsuspected. He could control the Chicago wheat market, and the man who could do that might well call himself “great,” without presumption. He knew that he overtopped them all — Gretry, the Crookes gang, the arrogant, sneering Bears, all the men of the world of the Board of Trade. He was stronger, bigger, shrewder than them all. A few days now would show, when they would all wake to the fact that wheat, which they had promised to deliver before they had it in hand, was not to be got except from him — and at whatever price he chose to impose. He could exact from them a hundred dollars a bushel if he chose, and they must pay him the price or become bankrupts.
By now his mind was upon this one great fact — May Wheat — continually. It was with him the instant he woke in the morning. It kept him company during his hasty breakfast; in the rhythm of his horses’ hoofs, as the team carried him down town he heard, “Wheat — wheat — wheat, wheat — wheat — wheat.” No sooner did he enter La Salle Street, than the roar of traffic came to his ears as the roar of the torrent of wheat which drove through Chicago from the Western farms to the mills and bakeshops of Europe. There at the foot of the street the torrent swirled once upon itself, forty million strong, in the eddy which he told himself he mastered. The afternoon waned, night came on. The day’s business was to be gone over; the morrow’s campaign was to be planned; little, unexpected side issues, a score of them, a hundred of them, cropped out from hour to hour; new decisions had to be taken each minute. At dinner time he left the office, and his horses carried him home again, while again their hoofs upon the asphalt beat out unceasingly the monotone of the one refrain, “Wheat — wheat — wheat, wheat — wheat — wheat.” At dinner table he could not eat. Between each course he found himself going over the day’s work, testing it, questioning himself, “Was this rightly done?” “Was that particular decision sound?” “Is there a loophole here?” “Just what was the meaning of that despatch?” After the meal the papers, contracts, statistics and reports which he had brought with him in his Gladstone bag were to be studied. As often as not Gretry called, and the two, shut in the library, talked, discussed, and planned till long after midnight.
Then at last, when he had shut the front door upon his lieutenant and turned to face the empty, silent house, came the moment’s reaction. The tired brain flagged and drooped; exhaustion, like a weight of lead, hung upon his heels. But somewhere a hall clock struck, a single, booming note, like a gong — like the signal that would unchain the tempest in the Pit to-morrow morning. Wheat — wheat — wheat, wheat — wheat — wheat! Instantly the jaded senses braced again, instantly the wearied mind sprang to its post. He turned out the lights, he locked the front door. Long since the great house was asleep. In the cold, dim silence of the earliest dawn Curtis Jadwin went to bed, only to lie awake, staring up into the darkness, planning, devising new measures, reviewing the day’s doings, while the faint tides of blood behind the eardrums murmured ceaselessly to the overdriven brain, “Wheat — wheat — wheat, wheat — wheat — wheat. Forty million bushels, forty million, forty million.”
Whole days now went by when he saw his wife only at breakfast and at dinner. At times she was angry, hurt, and grieved that he should leave her so much alone. But there were moments when she was sorry for him. She seemed to divine that he was not all to blame.
What Laura thought he could only guess. She no longer spoke of his absorption in business. At times he thought he saw reproach and appeal in her dark eyes, at times anger and a pride cruelly wounded. A few months ago this would have touched him. But now he all at once broke out vehemently:
“You think I am wilfully doing this! You don’t know, you haven’t a guess. I corner the wheat! Great heavens, it is the wheat that has cornered me! The corner made itself. I happened to stand between two sets of circumstances, and they made me do what I’ve done. I couldn’t get out of it now, with all the good will in the world. Go to the theatre to-night with you and the Cresslers? Why, old girl, you might as well ask me to go to Jericho. Let that Mr. Corthell take my place.”
And very naturally this is what was done. The artist sent a great bunch of roses to Mrs. Jadwin upon the receipt of her invitation, and after the play had the party to supper in his apartments, that overlooked the Lake Front. Supper over, he escorted her, Mrs. Cressler, and Page back to their respective homes.
By a coincidence that struck them all as very amusing, he was the only man of the party. At the last moment Page had received a telegram from Landry. He was, it appeared, sick, and in bed. The day’s work on the Board of Trade had quite used him up for the moment, and his doctor forbade him to stir out of doors. Mrs. Cressler explained that Charlie had something on his mind these days, that was making an old man of him.
“He don’t ever talk shop with me,” she said. “I’m sure he hasn’t been speculating, but he’s worried and fidgety to beat all I ever saw, this last week; and now this evening he had to take himself off to meet some customer or other at the Palmer House.”
They dropped Mrs. Cressler at the door of her home and then went on to the Jadwins’.
“I remember,” said Laura to Corthell, “that once before the three of us came home this way. Remember? It was the night of the opera. That was the night I first met Mr. Jadwin.”
“It was the night of the Helmick failure,” said Page, seriously, “and the office buildings were all lit up. See,” she added, as they drove up to the house, “there’s a light in the library, and it must be nearly one o’clock. Mr. Jadwin is up yet.”
Laura fell suddenly silent. When was it all going to end, and how? Night after night her husband shut himself thus in the library, and toiled on till early dawn. She enjoyed no companionship with him. Her evenings were long, her time hung with insupportable heaviness upon her hands.
“Shall you be at home?” inquired Corthell, as he held her hand a moment at the door. “Shall you be at home to-morrow evening? May I come and play to you again?”
“Yes, yes,” she answered. “Yes, I shall be home. Yes, do come.”
Laura’s carriage drove the artist back to his apartments. All the way he sat motionless in his place, looking out of the window with unseeing eyes. His cigarette went out. He drew another from his case, but forgot to light it.
Thoughtful and abstracted he slowly mounted the stairway — the elevator having stopped for the night — to his studio, let himself in, and, throwing aside his hat and coat, sat down without lighting the gas in front of the fireplace, where (the weather being even yet sharp) an armful of logs smouldered on the flagstones.
His man, Evans, came from out an inner room to ask if he wanted anything. Corthell got out of his evening coat, and Evans brought him his smoking-jacket and set the little table with its long tin box of cigarettes and ash trays at his elbow. Then he lit the tall lamp of corroded bronze, with its heavy silk shade, that stood on a table in the angle of the room, drew the curtains, put a fresh log upon the fire, held the tiny silver alcohol burner to Corthell while the latter lighted a fresh cigarette, and then with a murmured “Good-night, sir,” went out, closing the door with the precaution of a depredator.
This suite of rooms, facing the Lake Front, was what Corthell called “home,” Whenever he went away, he left it exactly as it was, in the charge of the faithful Evans; and no mater how long he was absent, he never returned thither without a sense of welcome and relief. Even now, perplexed as he was, he was conscious of a feeling of comfort and pleasure as he settled himself in his chair.
The lamp threw a dull illumination about the room. It was a picturesque apartment, carefully planned. Not an object that had not been chosen with care and the utmost discrimination. The walls had been treated with copper leaf till they produced a sombre, iridescent effect of green and faint gold, that suggested the depth of a forest glade shot through
with the sunset. Shelves bearing eighteenth-century books in seal brown tree calf — Addison, the “Spectator,” Junius and Racine, Rochefoucauld and Pascal hung against it here and there. On every hand the eye rested upon some small masterpiece of art or workmanship. Now it was an antique portrait bust of the days of decadent Rome, black marble with a bronze tiara; now a framed page of a fourteenth-century version of “Li Quatres Filz d’Aymon,” with an illuminated letter of miraculous workmanship; or a Renaissance gonfalon of silk once white but now brown with age, yet in the centre blazing with the escutcheon and quarterings of a dead queen. Between the windows stood an ivory statuette of the “Venus of the Heel,” done in the days of the magnificent Lorenzo. An original Cazin, and a chalk drawing by Baudry hung against the wall close by together with a bronze tablet by Saint Gaudens; while across the entire end of the room opposite the fireplace, worked in the tapestry of the best period of the northern French school, Halcyone, her arms already blossoming into wings, hovered over the dead body of Ceyx, his long hair streaming like seaweed in the blue waters of the AEgean.
For a long time Corthell sat motionless, looking into the fire. In an adjoining room a clock chimed the half hour of one, and the artist stirred, passing his long fingers across his eyes.
After a long while he rose, and going to the fireplace, leaned an arm against the overhanging shelf, and resting his forehead against it, remained in that position, looking down at the smouldering logs.
“She is unhappy,” he murmured at length. “It is not difficult to see that.... Unhappy and lonely. Oh, fool, fool to have left her when you might have stayed! Oh, fool, fool, not to find the strength to leave her now when you should not remain!”
The following evening Corthell called upon Mrs. Jadwin. She was alone, as he usually found her. He had brought a book of poems with him, and instead of passing the evening in the art gallery, as they had planned, he read aloud to her from Rossetti. Nothing could have been more conventional than their conversation, nothing more impersonal. But on his way home one feature of their talk suddenly occurred to him. It struck him as significant; but of what he did not care to put into words. Neither he nor Laura had once spoken of Jadwin throughout the entire evening.