by Frank Norris
For an instant Jadwin was taken all aback.
“What the devil!” he ejaculated, stopping short in the doorway.
Laura ran forward to him, the chains, ornaments, and swinging pendants chiming furiously as she moved.
“I did surprise you, I did surprise you,” she laughed. “Isn’t it gorgeous?” She turned about before him, her arms raised. “Isn’t it superb? Do you remember Bernhardt — and that scene in the Emperor Justinian’s box at the amphitheatre? Say now that your wife isn’t beautiful. I am, am I not?” she exclaimed defiantly, her head raised. “Say it, say it.”
“Well, what for a girl!” gasped Jadwin, “to get herself up—”
“Say that I am beautiful,” commanded Laura.
“Well, I just about guess you are,” he cried.
“The most beautiful woman you have ever known?” she insisted. Then on the instant added: “Oh, I may be really as plain as a kitchen-maid, but you must believe that I am not. I would rather be ugly and have you think me beautiful, than to be the most beautiful woman in the world and have you think me plain. Tell me — am I not the most beautiful woman you ever saw?”
“The most beautiful I ever saw,” he repeated, fervently. “But — Lord, what will you do next? Whatever put it into your head to get into this rig?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I just took the notion. You’ve seen me in every one of my gowns. I sent down for this, this morning, just after you left. Curtis, if you hadn’t made me love you enough to be your wife, Laura Dearborn would have been a great actress. I feel it in my finger tips. Ah!” she cried, suddenly flinging up her head till the pendants of the crown clashed again. “I could have been magnificent. You don’t believe it. Listen. This is Athalia — the queen in the Old Testament, you remember.”
“Hold on,” he protested. “I thought you were this Theodora person.”
“I know — but never mind. I am anything I choose. Sit down; listen. It’s from Racine’s ‘Athalie,’ and the wicked queen has had this terrible dream of her mother Jezabel. It’s French, but I’ll make you see.”
And “taking stage,” as it were, in the centre of the room, Laura began:
“Son ombre vers mon lit a paru se baisser Et moi, je lui tendais les mains pour l’embrasser; Mais je n’ai plus trouve q’un horrible melange D’os et de chair meurtris et traines dans la fange, Des lambeaux pleins de sang, et des membres affreux Que les chiens d’evorants se disputaient entre eux.”
“Great God!” exclaimed Jadwin, ignorant of the words yet, in spite of himself, carried away by the fury and passion of her rendering.
Laura struck her palms together.
“Just what ‘Abner’ says,” she cried. “The very words.”
“Abner?”
“In the play. I knew I could make you feel it.”
“Well, well,” murmured her husband, shaking his head, bewildered even yet. “Well, it’s a strange wife I’ve got here.”
“When you’ve realised that,” returned Laura, “you’ve just begun to understand me.”
Never had he seen her gayer. Her vivacity was bewildering.
“I wish,” she cried, all at once, “I wish I had dressed as ‘Carmen,’ and I would have danced for you. Oh, and you could have played the air for me on the organ. I have the costume upstairs now. Wait! I will, I will! Sit right where you are — no, fix the attachment to the organ while I’m gone. Oh, be gay with me to-night,” she cried, throwing her arms around him. “This is my night, isn’t it? And I am to be just as foolish as I please.”
With the words she ran from the room, but was back in an incredibly short time, gowned as Bizet’s cigarette girl, a red rose in her black hair, castanets upon her fingers.
Jadwin began the bolero.
“Can you see me dance, and play at the same time?”
“Yes, yes. Go on. How do you know anything about a Spanish dance?”
“I learned it long ago. I know everything about anything I choose, to-night. Play, play it fast.”
She danced as though she would never tire, with the same force of passion that she had thrown into Athalie. Her yellow skirt was a flash of flame spurting from the floor, and her whole body seemed to move with the same wild, untamed spirit as a tongue of fire. The castanets snapped like the crackling of sparks; her black mantilla was a hovering cloud of smoke. She was incarnate flame, capricious and riotous, elusive and dazzling.
Then suddenly she tossed the castanets far across the room and dropped upon the couch, panting and laughing.
“There,” she cried, “now I feel better. That had to come out. Come over here and sit by me. Now, maybe you’ll admit that I can dance too.”
“You sure can,” answered Jadwin, as she made a place for him among the cushions. “That was wonderful. But, at the same time, old girl, I wouldn’t — wouldn’t—”
“Wouldn’t what?”
“Well, do too much of that. It’s sort of over-wrought — a little, and unnatural. I like you best when you are your old self, quiet, and calm, and dignified. It’s when you are quiet that you are at your best. I didn’t know you had this streak in you. You are that excitable to-night!”
“Let me be so then. It’s myself, for the moment whatever it is. But now I’ll be quiet. Now we’ll talk. Have you had a hard day? Oh, and did your head bother you again?”
“No, things were a little easier down town to-day. But that queer feeling in my head did come back as I was coming home — and my head aches a little now, besides.”
“Your head aches!” she exclaimed. “Let me do something for it. And I’ve been making it worse with all my foolishness.”
“No, no; that’s all right,” he assured her. “I tell you what we’ll do. I’ll lie down here a bit, and you play something for me. Something quiet. I get so tired down there in La Salle Street, Laura, you don’t know.”
And while he stretched out at full length upon the couch, his wife, at the organ, played the music she knew he liked best — old songs, “Daisy Dean,” “Lord Lovell,” “When Stars Are in the Quiet Sky,” and “Open Thy Lattice to Me.”
When at length she paused, he nodded his head with pleasure.
“That’s pretty,” he said. “Ah, that is blame pretty. Honey, it’s just like medicine to me,” he continued, “to lie here, quiet like this, with the lights low, and have my dear girl play those old, old tunes. My old governor, Laura, used to play that ‘Open the Lattice to me,’ that and ‘Father, oh, Father, Come Home with me Now’ — used to play ’em on his fiddle.” His arm under his head, he went on, looking vaguely at the opposite wall. “Lord love me, I can see that kitchen in the old farmhouse as plain! The walls were just logs and plaster, and there were upright supports in each corner, where we used to measure our heights — we children. And the fireplace was there,” he added, gesturing with his arm, “and there was the wood box, and over here was an old kind of dresser with drawers, and the torty-shell cat always had her kittens under there. Honey, I was happy then. Of course I’ve got you now, and that’s all the difference in the world. But you’re the only thing that does make a difference. We’ve got a fine place and a mint of money I suppose — and I’m proud of it. But I don’t know.... If they’d let me be and put us two — just you and me — back in the old house with the bare floors and the rawhide chairs and the shuck beds, I guess we’d manage. If you’re happy, you’re happy; that’s about the size of it. And sometimes I think that we’d be happier — you and I — chumming along shoulder to shoulder, poor an’ working hard, than making big money an’ spending big money, why — oh, I don’t know ... if you’re happy, that’s the thing that counts, and if all this stuff,” he kicked out a careless foot at the pictures, the heavy hangings, the glass cabinets of bibelots, “if all this stuff stood in the way of it — well — it could go to the devil! That’s not poetry maybe, but it’s the truth.”
Laura came over to where her husband lay, and sat by him, and took his head in her lap, smoothing his forehead with her
long white hands.
“Oh, if I could only keep you like this always,” she murmured. “Keep you untroubled, and kind, and true. This is my husband again. Oh, you are a man, Curtis; a great, strong, kind-hearted man, with no little graces, nor petty culture, nor trivial fine speeches, nor false sham, imitation polish. I love you. Ah, I love you, love you, dear!”
“Old girl!” said Jadwin, stroking her hand.
“Do you want me to read to you now?” she asked.
“Just this is pretty good, it seems to me.”
As he spoke, there came a step in the hall and a knock.
Laura sat up, frowning.
“I told them I was not to be disturbed,” she exclaimed under her breath. Then, “Come in,” she called.
“Mr. Gretry, sir,” announced the servant. “Said he wished to see you at once, sir.”
“Tell him,” cried Laura, turning quickly to Jadwin, “tell him you’re not at home — that you can’t see him.”
“I’ve got to see him,” answered Jadwin, sitting up. “He wouldn’t come here himself unless it was for something important.”
“Can I come in, J.?” spoke the broker, from the hall. And even through the thick curtains they could hear how his voice rang with excitement and anxiety.
“Can I come in? I followed the servant right up, you see. I know—”
“Yes, yes. Come in,” answered Jadwin. Laura, her face flushing, threw a fold of the couch cover over her costume as Gretry, his hat still on his head, stepped quickly into the room.
Jadwin met him half way, and Laura from her place on the couch heard the rapidly spoken words between the general and his lieutenant.
“Now we’re in for it!” Gretry exclaimed.
“Yes — well?” Jadwin’s voice was as incisive and quick as the fall of an axe.
“I’ve just found out,” said Gretry, “that Crookes and his crowd are going to take hold to-morrow. There’ll be hell to pay in the morning. They are going to attack us the minute the gong goes.”
“Who’s with them?”
“I don’t know; nobody does. Sweeny, of course. But he has a gang back of him — besides, he’s got good credit with the banks. I told you you’d have to fight him sooner or later.”
“Well, we’ll fight him then. Don’t get scared. Crookes ain’t the Great Mogul.”
“Holy Moses, I’d like to know who is, then.”
“I am. And he’s got to know it. There’s not room for Crookes and me in this game. One of us two has got to control this market. If he gets in my way, by God, I’ll smash him!”
“Well, then, J., you and I have got to do some tall talking to-night. You’d better come down to the Grand Pacific Hotel right away. Court is there already. It was him, nervy little cuss, that found out about Crookes. Can you come now, at once? Good evening, Mrs. Jadwin. I’m sorry to take him from you, but business is business.”
No, it was not. To the wife of the great manipulator, listening with a sinking heart to this courier from the front, it was battle. The Battle of the Streets was again in array. Again the trumpet sounded, again the rush of thousands of feet filled all the air. Even here, here in her home, her husband’s head upon her lap, in the quiet and stillness of her hour, the distant rumble came to her ears. Somewhere, far off there in the darkness of the night, the great forces were manoeuvring for position once more. To-morrow would come the grapple, and one or the other must fall — her husband or the enemy. How keep him to herself when the great conflict impended? She knew how the thunder of the captains and the shoutings appealed to him. She had seen him almost leap to his arms out of her embrace. He was all the man she had called him, and less strong, less eager, less brave, she would have loved him less.
Yet she had lost him again, lost him at the very moment she believed she had won him back.
“Don’t go, don’t go,” she whispered to him, as he kissed her good-by. “Oh, dearest, don’t go! This was my evening.”
“I must, I must, Laura. Good-by, old girl. Don’t keep me — see, Sam is waiting.”
He kissed her hastily twice.
“Now, Sam,” he said, turning toward the broker.
“Good night, Mrs. Jadwin.”
“Good-by, old girl.”
They turned toward the door.
“You see, young Court was down there at the bank, and he noticed that checks—”
The voices died away as the hangings of the entrance fell to place. The front door clashed and closed.
Laura sat upright in her place, listening, one fist pressed against her lips.
There was no more noise. The silence of the vast empty house widened around her at the shutting of the door as the ripples widen on a pool with the falling of the stone. She crushed her knuckles tighter and tighter over her lips, she pressed her fingers to her eyes, she slowly clasped and reclasped her hands, listening for what she did not know. She thought of her husband hurrying away from her, ignoring her, and her love for him in the haste and heat of battle. She thought of Corthell, whom she had sent from her, forever, shutting his love from out her life.
Crushed, broken, Laura laid herself down among the cushions, her face buried in her arm. Above her and around her rose the dimly lit gallery, lowering with luminous shadows. Only a point or two of light illuminated the place. The gold frames of the pictures reflected it dully; the massive organ pipes, just outlined in faint blurs of light, towered far into the gloom above. The whole place, with its half-seen gorgeous hangings, its darkened magnificence, was like a huge, dim interior of Byzantium.
Lost, beneath the great height of the dome, and in the wide reach of the floor space, in her foolish finery of bangles, silks, high comb, and little rosetted slippers, Laura Jadwin lay half hidden among the cushions of the couch. If she wept, she wept in silence, and the muffling stillness of the lofty gallery was broken but once, when a cry, half whisper, half sob, rose to the deaf, blind darkness:
“Oh, now I am alone, alone, alone!”
IX
“Well, that’s about all then, I guess,” said Gretry at last, as he pushed back his chair and rose from the table.
He and Jadwin were in a room on the third floor of the Grand Pacific Hotel, facing Jackson Street. It was three o’clock in the morning. Both men were in their shirt-sleeves; the table at which they had been sitting was scattered over with papers, telegraph blanks, and at Jadwin’s elbow stood a lacquer tray filled with the stumps of cigars and burnt matches, together with one of the hotel pitchers of ice water.
“Yes,” assented Jadwin, absently, running through a sheaf of telegrams, “that’s all we can do — until we see what kind of a game Crookes means to play. I’ll be at your office by eight.”
“Well,” said the broker, getting into his coat, “I guess I’ll go to my room and try to get a little sleep. I wish I could see how we’ll be to-morrow night at this time.”
Jadwin made a sharp movement of impatience.
“Damnation, Sam, aren’t you ever going to let up croaking? If you’re afraid of this thing, get out of it. Haven’t I got enough to bother me?”
“Oh, say! Say, hold on, hold on, old man,” remonstrated the broker, in an injured voice. “You’re terrible touchy sometimes, J., of late. I was only trying to look ahead a little. Don’t think I want to back out. You ought to know me by this time, J.”
“There, there, I’m sorry, Sam,” Jadwin hastened to answer, getting up and shaking the other by the shoulder. “I am touchy these days. There’s so many things to think of, and all at the same time. I do get nervous. I never slept one little wink last night — and you know the night before I didn’t turn in till two in the morning.”
“Lord, you go swearing and damning ‘round here like a pirate sometimes, J.,” Gretry went on. “I haven’t heard you cuss before in twenty years. Look out, now, that I don’t tell on you to your Sunday-school superintendents.”
“I guess they’d cuss, too,” observed Jadwin, “if they were long forty million wheat, and
had to know just where every hatful of it was every second of the time. It was all very well for us to whoop about swinging a corner that afternoon in your office. But the real thing — well, you don’t have any trouble keeping awake. Do you suppose we can keep the fact of our corner dark much longer?”
“I fancy not,” answered the broker, putting on his hat and thrusting his papers into his breast pocket. “If we bust Crookes, it’ll come out — and it won’t matter then. I think we’ve got all the shorts there are.”
“I’m laying particularly for Dave Scannel,” remarked Jadwin. “I hope he’s in up to his neck, and if he is, by the Great Horn Spoon, I’ll bankrupt him, or my name is not Jadwin! I’ll wring him bone-dry. If I once get a twist of that rat, I won’t leave him hide nor hair to cover the wart he calls his heart.”
“Why, what all has Scannel ever done to you?” demanded the other, amazed.
“Nothing, but I found out the other day that old Hargus — poor old, broken-backed, half-starved Hargus — I found out that it was Scannel that ruined him. Hargus and he had a big deal on, you know — oh, ages ago — and Scannel sold out on him. Great God, it was the dirtiest, damnedest treachery I ever heard of! Scannel made his pile, and what’s Hargus now? Why, he’s a scarecrow. And he has a little niece that he supports, heaven only knows how. I’ve seen her, and she’s pretty as a picture. Well, that’s all right; I’m going to carry fifty thousand wheat for Hargus, and I’ve got another scheme for him, too. By God, the poor old boy won’t go hungry again if I know it! But if I lay my hands on Scannel — if we catch him in the corner — holy, suffering Moses, but I’ll make him squeal!”
Gretry nodded, to say he understood and approved.
“I guess you’ve got him,” he remarked. “Well, I must get to bed. Good night, J.”
“Good night, Sam. See you in the morning.”