IL LUNG


I


S


UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN





      PRODUCTION NOTE


  University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign Library
Brittle Books Project, 2009.



























PLI BPZARY'W
   OF THE
 UN IVERSITY
 OfI LLINO I S
   813
























    THE PIT
A STORY OF CHICAGO















A STORY OF


CHICAGO


BY


         FRANK NORRIS


         WITH A FOREWORD BY
         JULIET WILBOR TOMPKINS




            VOLUME IX





















               1928

DOUBLEDAY, DORAN     COMPANY, INC.
       GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK



















































































          COPYRIGHT, 1928
BY DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC.
          COPYRIGHT, 1903
   BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
          COPYRIGHT, 1902
 BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
        ALl RIGHTS RESERVED
  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT
      THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
         GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
























            DEDICATED TO MY BROTHER

         CHARLES GILMAN NORRIS

IN MEMORY OF CERTAIN LAMENTABLE TALES OF THE ROUND
(DINING-ROOM) TABLE HEROES, OF THE EPIC OF THE PEWTER
PLATOONS, AND THE ROMANCE-CYCLE OF "GASTON LE FOX,
WHICH WE INVENTED, MAINTAINED, AND FOUND MARVELLOUS
         AT A TIME WHEN WE BOTH WERE BOYS













          ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  THE author's most sincere thanks for assistance ren-
dered in the preparation of the following novel are due
to Mr. G. D. Moulson of New York, whose unwearied
patience and untiring kindness helped him to the better
understanding of the technical difficulties of a very
complicated subject. And more especially he herewith
acknowledges his unmeasured obligation and gratitude
to Her Who Helped the Most of All.
                                          F.N.
New York,
June 4, 19o01











FOREWORD


  I see Frank Norris in glimpses, as one sees the Sierra
through the cracks of the snowsheds: a flash of living
colour, and then the darkness of the twenty-five years in
between. His romantic good looks-thick iron-grey hair
with a young, brown face; the stare that had always a
widening of astonishment in it; the rather swaggering
clothes-his hat was a broad-brimmed Stetson, his
coat had a line at the waist, and the stick in his hand was
telling the world as he took the Avenue. There was
something of mousquetaire in him, of actor and ro-
mancer. We were all touched with Stevenson in those
days, self-conscious adventurers who slept under the
stars and strewed pennies to pay for the night's lodging,
and Frank thrilled to the picaresque even while he was
writing of dentists and brokers. I could never see much
connection between what he was and what he wrote.
His talk was boyish; he argued with passion, but wound
up with a despairing, "Now don't begin to agree with
me or I'll think I'm wrong!" Going home from joyous
and noisy evenings with him, one read his works with a
wondering, "How came he by that!" I remember one
night when we were discussing the ultimate rewards of
talent, Frank declared for going into a restaurant and
having the diners elbow their neighbours with a thrilled,
"That's him!" And he would greatly have loved it, but
robustly, humorously. Vanity was only an endearing
game, for surface things; it did not touch the deeper
side, where his work was.
  Never was there a writer so free from irritable resent-
ment of criticism. He could, even laugh when he was
                        vii





FOREWORD


laughed at. The banquet scene in The Octopus, where
the starving crowd huddles without, tried for a supreme
splendour, and a lady's remark, "These ortolans are
delicious!" struck us as funny. We were not very clear
what ortolans were, but we disputed the probability of
them and took the stilted comment for a catch phrase.
"These ortolans are delicious!" one would say of a
poached egg. Frank stood it with flawless good humour,
and worked down the scene to a less lurid and more
artistic level under the jeers. And he continued to try
scenes on us, which was magnanimity on the grand
scale.
  He had many games. When he brought his bride to
South Washington Square, he had done with his Latin
Quarter days and was loud against Bohemia. He loved
to say: "Je suis bon bourgeois, moi-pere de famille!"
with a thump on the chest. So they played Good Society
in their two rooms and made a rite of dressing for
dinner. One night, invited with formality, I arrived to
find Jeannette cooking the dinner clad in a black eve-
ning gown of glittering scales, scant above and volumi-
nous below, and from underneath peeping the stout tan
shoes that she had not had time to change, while Frank
completed his toilet in the closet. But there was never
any game about the food; it was wonderful. And the
talk was alive, though somewhat under control. If
Frank did not like a topic or an argument, he came down
on it with an, "Eat, woman-eat!" that effectually
settled it.
  The average person would have to inherit a fortune
and go round the world to get the high adventure that
Frank found in moving from two to six rooms and buy-
ing a new desk. Being a parent was also a game, entered
upon reluctantly, for they were having a magnificent
time by themselves, but cheered by such sport as they
could devise. They wanted to name the child Billy,
                        viii





FOREWORD


simply because it would be such fun to call "Billy!"
and then have a little girl appear. My protests finally
achieved for her a normal female name to sign on checks
and documents, even though it was never used. I ar-
rived one day to find them relieving the boredom of
staying in with the baby by playing Hunt the Thimble,
Billy being the Thimble. Frank had hidden her so suc-
cessfully that we searched all the six rooms in vain until
a crow from the Thimble led us under the valance of the
bed. Later Frank woke up to the pleasures of paternity.
Jeannette told me how, as they sat on the grass in
Golden Gate Park, the baby began to crawl over
Frank, and how he lifted that astonished gaze of his to
say, "You know, I kind of like the little thing!" He had
only a brief time left to enjoy it.
  Frank, dying in the early thirties, left an amazing
volume of work. Through the romance and the realism
and the massive drama of the unfinished trilogy shines
the promise of what he would have written at forty, at
fifty, when he had outgrown his masters and become
himself a master. Surely there would have been plays,
dramas done on broad lines, hot with conflict, impor-
tant with meaning. The high moments of his books are
always pictured; the final crash in The Pit, where Jad-
win goes down, could be played almost without words,
and there was sound theatre in the unrolling of it before
the eyes of a young girl who did not quite know what
it was all about. Moran of the Lady Letty grew out of
Frank's desire to stage a physical fight between a man
and a woman. He loved that fight. The struggle for sex
supremacy had a thrill for one who was so consciously,
so unwaveringly master in his own house. "My wife
does so-and-so," he would lay down the law, and indeed
she did. There was the coat that Frank considered
loud, though it would be thought tame enough to-day.
Jeannette's only alternative at that stage of their
                         ix





FOREWORD


finances was a rain coat, but it was the rain coat that
she wore.
  But he had charm! Charm and beauty and a living
sense of romance. Every day in their lives was a fresh
adventure. I think that even a girl of this generation
would submit to the rain coat for the sake of such a
mate.
                       JULIET WILBOR TOMPKINS.
















PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
        IN THE NOVEL

 CURTIS JADWIN, capitalist and speculator.
 SHELDON CORTHELL, an artist.
 LANDRY COURT, broker's clerk.
 SAMUEL GRETRY, a broker.
 CHARLES CRESSLER, a dealer in grain.
 MRS. CRESSLER, his wife.
 LAURA DEARBORN, protegee of Mrs. Cressler.
 PAGE DEARBORN, her sister.
 MRs. EMILY WESSELS, aunt of Laura and Page.


























     THE PIT

A STORY OF CHICAGO












                THE PIT

                   CHAPTER I

AT EIGHT o'clock in the inner vestibule of the
Auditorium Theatre by the window of the box office,
Laura Dearborn, her younger sister Page, and their
aunt-Aunt Wess'-were still waiting for the rest of the
theatre-party to appear. A great, slow-moving press
of men and women in evening dress filled the vestibule
from one wall to another. A confused murmur of talk
and the shuffling of many feet arose on all sides, while
from time to time, when the outside and inside doors
of the entrance chanced to be open simultaneously, a
sudden draught of air gushed in, damp, glacial, and
edged with the penetrating keenness of aChicago eve-
ning at the end of February.
  The Italian Grand Opera Company gave one of the
most popular pieces of its repertoire on that particular
night, and the Cresslers had invited the two sisters
and their aunt to share their box with them. It had
been arranged that the party should assemble in the
Auditorium vestibule at a quarter of eight; but by
now the quarter was gone and the Cresslers still failed
to arrive.
  "I don't see," murmured Laura anxiously for the
last time, "what can be keeping them. Are you sure,
Page, that Mrs. Cressler meant here---inside ?"
  She was a tall young girl of about twenty-two or
three, holding herself erect and with fine dignity. Even
beneath the opera cloak it was easy to infer that her





                      THE PIT
neck and shoulders were beautiful. Her almost extreme
slenderness was, however, her characteristic; the curves
of her figure, the contour of her shoulders, the swell
of hip and breast were all low; from head to foot one
could discover no pronounced salience. Yet there was
no trace, no suggestion of angularity. She was slender as
a willow shoot is slender-and equally graceful, equally
erect.
   Next to this charming tenuity, perhaps her paleness
was her most noticeable trait. But it was not a paleness
of lack of colour. Laura Dearborn's pallor was in itself
a colour. It was a tint rather than a shade, like ivory;
a warm white, blending into an exquisite, delicate
brownness toward the throat. Set in the middle of this
paleness of brow and cheek, her deep brown eyes glowed
lambent and intense. They were not large, but in some
indefinable way they were important. It was very nat-
ural to speak of her eyes, and in speaking to her, her
friends always found that they must look squarely into
their pupils. And all this beauty of pallid face and
brown eyes was crowned by, and sharply contrasted
with, the intense blackness of her hair, abundant, thick,
extremely heavy, continually coruscating with sombre,
murky reflections, tragic, in a sense vaguely portentous,
-the coiffure of a heroine of romance, doomed. to dark
crises.
  On this occasion at the side of the topmost coil, a
white aigrette scintillated and trembled with her every
movement. She was unquestionably beautiful. Her
mouth was a little large, the lips firm set, and one
would not have expected that she would smile easily;
in fact, the general expression of her face was rather
serious.
  "Perhaps," continued Laura, "they would look for
us outside." But Page shook her head. She was five
years younger than Laura, just turned seventeen. Her





                     THE PIT
 hair, dressed high for the first time this night, was
 brown. But Page's beauty was no less marked than
 her sister's. The seriousness of her expression, however,
 was more noticeable. At times it amounted to undeni-
 able gravity. She was straight, and her figure, all
 immature as yet, exhibited hardly any softer outlines
 than that of a boy.
   "No, no," she said, in answer to Laura's question.
 "They would come in here; they wouldn't wait out-
 side-not on such a cold night as this. Don't you think
 so, Aunt Wess'?"
 But Mrs. Wessels, a lean, middle-aged little lady,
 with a flat, pointed nose, had no suggestions to offer.
 She disengaged herself from any responsibility in the
 situation and, while waiting, found a vague amuse-
 ment in counting the number of people who filtered
 in single file through the wicket where the tickets were
 presented. A great, stout gentleman in evening dress,
 perspiring, his cravat limp, stood here, tearing the
 checks from the tickets, and without ceasing, main-
 taining a continuous outcry that dominated the murmur
 of the throng:
 "Have your tickets ready, please! Have your tickets
 ready."
 "Such a crowd," murmured Page. "Did you ever
 see-and everyone you ever knew or heard of. And
 such toilettes!"
 With every instant the number of people increased;
 progress became impossible, except an inch at a time.
 The women were, almost without exception, in light-
 coloured gowns, white, pale blue, Nile-green, and pink,
 while over these costumes were thrown opera cloaks
 and capes of astonishing complexity and elaborateness.
Nearly all were bareheaded, and nearly all wore
aigrettes; a score of these, a hundred of them, nodded
and vibrated with an incessant agitation over the heads
                         3





                      THE PIT
 of the crowd and flashed like mica flakes as the wearers
 moved. Everywhere the eye was arrested by the luxury
 of stuffs, the brilliance and delicacy of fabrics, laces as
 white and soft as froth, crisp, shining silks, suave satins,
 heavy gleaming velvets, and brocades and plushes,
 nearly all of them white-violently so-dazzling and
 splendid under the blaze of the electrics. The gentlemen,
 in long, black overcoats, and satin mufflers, and opera
 hats; their hands under the elbows of their women-folk,
 urged or guided them forward, distressed, preoccupied,
 adjuring their parties to keep together; in their white-
 gloved fingers they held their tickets ready. For all the
 icy blasts that burst occasionally through the storm
 doors, the vestibule was uncomfortably warm, and into
 this steam-heated atmosphere a multitude of heavy
 odours exhaled-the scent of crushed flowers, of per-
 fume, of sachet, and even-occasionally-the strong
 smell of damp sealskin.
 Outside it was bitterly cold. All day a freezing wind
 had blown from off the Lake, and since five in the after-
 noon a fine powder of snow had been falling. The coach-
 men on the boxes of the carriages that succeeded one
 another in an interminable line before the entrance
 of the theatre, were swathed to the eyes in furs. The
 spume and froth froze on the bits of the horses, and the
carriage wheels crunching through the dry, frozen
snow gave off a shrill staccato whine. Yet for all this,
a crowd had collected about the awning on the sidewalk,
and even upon the opposite side of the street, peeping
and peering from behind the broad shoulders of police-
men-a crowd of miserables, shivering in rags and
tattered comforters, who found, nevertheless, an un-
explainable satisfaction in watching this prolonged
defile of millionaires.
  So great was the concourse of teams, that two blocks
distant from the theatre they were obliged to fall into
                          4





THE PIT


line, advancing only at intervals, and from door to
door of the carriages thus immobilized ran a score of
young men, their arms encumbered with pamphlets,
shouting: "Score books, score books and librettos;
score books with photographs of all the artists."
   However, in the vestibule the press was thinning out.
 It was understood that the overture had begun. Other
 people who were waiting like Laura and her sister had
 been joined by their friends and had gone inside. Laura,
 for whom this opera night had been an event, a thing
 desired and anticipated with all the eagerness of a girl
 who had lived for twenty-two years in a second-class
 town of central Massachusetts, was in great distress.
 She had never seen Grand Opera, she would not have
 missed a note, and now she was in a fair way to lose the
 whole overture.
 "Oh, dear," she cried. "Isn't it too bad. I can't
 imagine why they don't come."
 Page, more metropolitan, her keenness of appreci-
 ation a little lost by two years of city life and fashion-
 able schooling, tried to reassure her.
 "You won't lose much," she said. "The air of the
 overture is repeated in the first act-I've heard it
 once before."
 "If we even see the first act," mourned Laura. She
 scanned the faces of the late comers anxiously. Nobody
 seemed to mind being late. Even some of the other
 people who were waiting, chatted calmly among them-
 selves. Directly behind them two men, their faces close
 together, elaborated an interminable conversation, of
which from time to time they could overhear a phrase or
two.
  "-    and I guess he'll do well if he settles for thirty
cents on the dollar. I tell you, dear boy, it was a
smash!"
  "     Never should have tried to swing a corner.





THE PIT


The short interest was too small and the visible supply
was too great."'
  Page nudged her sister and whispered: "That's the
Helmick failure they're talking about, those men.
Landry Court told ime all about it. Mr. Helmick had
a corner in corn, and he failed to-day, or will fail soon,
or something."
  But Laura, preoccupied with looking for the Cress-
lers, hardly listened. Aunt Wess', whose count was
confused by all these figures murmured just behind her,
began over again, her lips silently forming the words,
"sixty-one, sixty-two, and two is sixty-four." Behind
them the voice continued:
  "They say Porteous will peg the market at twenty-
six."
  "Well, he ought to. Corn is worth that."
  "-    Never saw such a call for margins in my life.
Some of the houses called eight cents."
  Page turned to Mrs. Wessels: "By the way, Aunt
Wess'; look at that man there by the box office windows
the one with his back toward us, the one with his
hands in his overcoat pockets. Isn't that Mr. Jadwin?
The gentleman we are going to meet to-night. See who
I mean?"
  "Who? Mr. Jadwin? I don't know. I don't know,
child. I never saw him, you know."
  "Well, I think it is he," continued Page. "He was
to be with our party to-night. I heard Mrs. Cressler
say she would ask him. That's Mr. Jadwin, I'm sure.
He's waiting for them, too."
  "Oh, then ask him about it, Page," exclaimed Laura.
"We're missing everything."
  But Page shook her head:
  "I only met him once, ages ago; he wouldn't know
me. It was at the Cresslers', and we just said 'How
do you do.' And then maybe it isn't Mr. Jadwin."





                     THE PIT
   "Oh, I wouldn't bother, girls," said Mrs. Wessels.
"It's all right. They'll be here in a minute. I don't
believe the curtain has gone up yet."
   But the man of whom they spoke turned around at
the moment and cast a glance about the vestibule.
They saw a gentleman of an indeterminate age-
judged by his face he might as well have been forty as
thirty-five. A heavy moustache touched with grey
covered his lips. The eyes were twinkling and good-
tempered. Between his teeth he held an unlighted
cigar.
  "It is Mr. Jadwin," murmured Page, looking quickly
away. "But he don't recognize me."
  Laura also averted her eyes.
  "Well, why not go right up to him and introduce
yourself, or recall yourself to him?" she hazarded.
  "Oh, Laura, I couldn't," gasped Page. "I wouldn't
for worlds."
  "Couldn't she, Aunt Wess' ?" appealed Laura.
"Wouldn't it be all right?"
  But Mrs. Wessels, ignoring forms and customs, was
helpless. Again she withdrew from any responsibility
in the matter.
  "I don't know anything about it," she answered.
"But Page oughtn't to be bold."
  "Oh, bother; it isn't that," protested Page. "But
it's just because-I don't know, I don't want to-
Laura, I should just die," she exclaimed with abrupt
irrelevance, "and besides, how would that help any?"
she added.
  "Well, we're just going to miss it all," declared
Laura decisively. There were actual tears in her eyes.
"And I had looked forward to it so."
  "Well," hazarded Aunt Wess', "you girls can do just
as you please. Only I wouldn't be bold."
  "Well, would it be bold if Page, or if if I were to





THE PIT


speak to him? We're going to meet him anyways in just
a few minutes."
   "Better wait, hadn't you, Laura," said Aunt Wess',
 "and see. Maybe he'll come up and speak to us."
   "Oh, as if!" contradicted Laura. "He don't know
us,-just as Page says. And if he did, he wouldn't. He
wouldn't think it polite."
   "Then I guess, girlie, it wouldn't be polite for
you."
  "I think it would," she answered. "I think it would
be a woman's place. If he's a gentleman, he would feel
that he just couldn't speak first. I'm going to do it,"
she announced suddenly.
  "Just as you think best, Laura," said her aunt.
  But nevertheless Laura did not move, and another
five minutes went by.
  Page took advantage of the interval to tell Laura
about Jadwin. He was very rich, but a bachelor, and
had made his money in Chicago real estate. Some of his
holdings in the business quarter of the city were enor-
mous; Landry Court had told her about him. Jadwin,
unlike Mr. Cressler, was not opposed to speculation.
Though not a member of the Board of Trade, he never-
theless at very long intervals took part in a "deal" in
wheat, or corn, or provisions. He believed that all cor-
ners were doomed to failure, however, and had pre-
dicted Helmick's collapse six months ago. He had in-
fluence, was well known to all Chicago people, what he
said carried weight, financiers consulted him, promoters
sought his friendship, his name on the board of directors
of a company was an all-sufficing endorsement; in a
word, a "strong" man.
  "I can't understand," exclaimed Laura, distrait, re-
ferring to the delay on the part of the Cresslers. "This
was the night, and this was the place, and it is long past
the time. We could telephone to the house, you know,"





THE PIT


she said, struck with an idea, "and see if they've started,
pr what has happened."
   "I don't know-I don't know," murmured Mrs.
 Wessels vaguely. No one seemed ready to act upon
 Laura's suggestion, and again the minutes passed.
   "I'm going," declared Laura again, looking at the
 other two, as if to demand what they had to say against
 the idea.
   "I just couldn't," declared Page flatly.
   "Well," continued Laura, "I'll wait just three
minutes more, and then if the Cresslers are not here I
will speak to him. It seems to me to be perfectly natural
and not at all bold."
  She waited three minutes, and the Cresslers still
failing to appear, temporized yet further, for the
twentieth time repeating:
  "I don't see-I can't understand."
  Then, abruptly drawing her cape about her, she
crossed the vestibule and came up to Jadwin.
  As she approached she saw him catch her eye. Then
as he appeared to understand that this young woman
was about to speak to him, she noticed an expression
of suspicion, almost of distrust, come into his face.
No doubt he knew nothing of this other party who
were to join the Cresslers in the vestibule. Why should
this girl speak to him? Something had gone wrong,
and the instinct of the man, no longer very young, to
keep out of strange young women's troubles betrayed
itself in the uneasy glance that he shot at her from under
his heavy eyebrows. But the look faded as quickly as it
had come. Laura guessed that he had decided that in
such a place as this he need have no suspicions. He
took the cigar from his mouth, and she, immensely
relieved, realized that she had to do with a man who was
a gentleman. Full of trepidation as she had been in
crossing the vestibule, she was quite mistress of herself





                    THE PIT
when the instant came for her to speak, and it was in a
steady voice and without embarrassment that she said:
  "I beg your pardon, but I believe this is Mr. Jad-
win."
  He took off his hat, evidently a little nonplussed that
she should know his name, and by now she was ready
even to browbeat him a little should it be necessary.
  "Yes, yes," he answered, now much more confused
than she, "my name is Jadwin."
  "I believe," continued Laura steadily, "we were
all to be in the same party to-night with the Cresslers.
But they don't seem to come, and we-my sister and
my aunt and I-don't know what to do."
  She saw that he was embarrassed, convinced, and
the knowledge that she controlled the little situation,
that she could command him, restored her all her
equanimity.
  "My name is Miss Dearborn," she continued. "I
believe you know my sister Page."
  By some trick of manner she managed to convey to
him the impression that if he did not know her sister
Page, that if for one instant he should deem her to be
bold, he would offer a mortal affront. She had not yet
forgiven him that stare of suspicion when first their
eyes had met; he should pay her for that yet.
  "Miss Page,-your sister,-Miss Page Dearborn?
Certainly I know her," he answered. "And you have
been waiting, too? What a pity!" And he permitted
himself the awkwardness of adding: "I did not know
that you were to be of our party."
  "No," returned Laura upon the instant, "I did not
know you were to be one of us to-night-until Page told
me." She accented the pronouns a little, but it was
enough for him to know that he had been rebuked. How,
he could not just say; and for what it was impossible
for him at the moment to determine; and she could see
                         IO





                     THE PIT
 that he began to experience a certain distress, was beat-
 ing a retreat, was ceding place to her. Who was she,
 then, this tall and pretty young woman, with the
 serious, unsmiling face, who was so perfectly at ease,
 and who hustled him about and made him feel as though
 he were to blame for the Cresslers' non-appearance; as
 though itwas his fault that she mustwait in the draughty
 vestibule. She had a great air with her; how had he
 offended her? If he had introduced himself to her, had
 forced himself upon her, she could not be more lofty,
 more reserved.
 "I thought perhaps you might telephone," she
 observed.
 "They haven't a telephone, unfortunately," he
 answered.
 "Oh!"
 This was quite the last slight, the Cresslers had not
 a telephone! He was to blame for that, too, it seemed.
 At his wits' end, he entertained for an instant the
 notion of dashing out into the street in a search for a
 messenger boy, who would take a note to Cressler and
 set him right again; and his agitation was not allayed
 when Laura, in frigid tones, declared:
 "It seems to me that something might be done."
 "I don't know," he replied helplessly. "I guess there's
 nothing to be done but just wait. They are sure to be
 along."
 In the background, Page and Mrs. Wessels had
 watched the interview, and had guessed that Laura was
 none too gracious. Always anxious that her sister should
 make a good impression, the little girl was now in great
 distress.
 "Laura is putting on her 'grand manner,'" she
lamented. "I just know how she's talking. The man
will hate the very sound of her name all the rest of his
life." Then all at once she uttered a joyful exclamation:
                         II





                    THE PIT
"At last, at last," she cried, "and about time, too!"
  The Cresslers and the rest of the party-two young
men--had appeared, and Page and her aunt came up
just in time to hear Mrs. Cressler-a fine old lady, in
a wonderful ermine-trimmed cape, whose hair was
powdered-exclaim at the top of her voice, as if the
mere declaration of fact was final, absolutely the last
word upon the subject, "The bridge was turned!"
  The Cresslers lived on the North Side. The incident
seemed to be closed with the abruptness of a slammed
door.
  Page and Aunt Wess' were introduced to Jadwin, who
was particular to announce that he remembered the
young girl perfectly. The two young men were already
acquainted with the Dearborn sisters and Mrs. Wessels.
Page and Laura knew one of them well enough to ad-
dress him familiarly by his Christian name.
  This was Landry Court, a young fellow just turned
twenty-three, who was "connected with" the staff of
the great brokerage firm of Gretry, Converse and Co.
He was astonishingly good-looking, small-made, wiry,
alert, nervous, debonair, with blond hair and dark eyes
that snapped like a terrier's. He made friends almost
at first sight, and was one of those fortunate few who
were favoured equally of men and women. The healthi-
ness of his eye and skin persuaded to a belief in the
healthiness of his mind; and, in fact, Landry was as
clean without as within. He was frank, open-hearted,
full of fine sentiments and exaltations and enthusiasms.
Until he was eighteen he had cherished an ambition to
become the President of the United States.
  "Yes, yes," he said to Laura, "the bridge was turned.
It was an imposition. We had to wait while they let
three tows through. I think two at a time is as much as is
legal. And we had to wait for three. Yes, sir; three, think
of that! I shall look into that to-morrow. Yes, sir; don't
                         I2





                     THE PIT
you be afraid of that. I'll look into it." He nodded his
head with profound seriousness.
  "Well," announced Mr. Cressler, marshalling the
party, "shall we go in? I'm afraid, Laura, we've missed
the overture."
  Smiling, she shrugged her shoulders, while they
moved to the wicket, as if to say that it could not be
helped now.
  Cressler, tall, lean, bearded, and stoop-shouldered,
belonging to the same physical type that includes
Lincoln-the type of the Middle West was almost a
second father to the parentless Dearborn girls. In
Massachusetts, thirty years before this time, he had
been a farmer, and the miller Dearborn used to grind
his grain regularly. The two had been boys together,
and had always remained fast friends, almost brothers.
Then, in the years just before the War, had come the
great movement westward, and Cressler had been one
bof those to leave an "abandoned" New England farm
behind him, and with his family emigrate toward the
Mississippi. He had come to Sangamon County in
Illinois. For a time he tried wheat-raising, until the
War, which skied the prices of all food-stuffs, had made
him-for those days-a rich man. Giving up farming,
he came to live in Chicago, bought a seat on the Board
of Trade, and in a few years was a millionaire. At the
time of the Turco-Russian War he and two Milwaukee
men had succeeded in cornering all the visible supply
of spring wheat. At the end of the thirtieth day of the
corner the clique figured out its profits at close upon a
million; a week later it looked like a million and a half.
Then the three lost their heads; they held the corner
just a fraction of a month too long, and when the time
came that the three were forced to take profits, they
found that they were unable to close out their immense
holdings without breaking the price. In two days wheat
                         '3






                    THE PIT
that they had held at a dollar and ten cents collapsed
to sixty. The two Milwaukee men were ruined, and
two thirds of Cressler's immense fortune vanished like
a whiff of smoke.
  But he had learned his lesson. Never since then had
he speculated. Though keeping his seat on the Board,
he had confined himself to commission trading, un-
influenced by fluctuations in the market. And he was
never wearied of protesting against that evil and the
danger of trading in margins. Speculation he abhorred
as the small-pox, believing it to be impossible to corner
grain by any means or under any circumstances. He
was accustomed to say: "It can't be done; first, for
the reason that there is a great harvest of wheat some-
where in the world for every month in the year; and,
second, because the smart man who runs the corner has
every other smart man in the world against him. And,
besides, it's wrong; the world's food should not be at
the mercy of the Chicago wheat pit."
  As the party filed in through the wicket, the other
young man who had come with Landry Court managed
to place himself next to Laura. Meeting her eyes, he
murmured:
   "Ah, you did not wear them after all. My poor little
flowers. "
  But she showed him a single American Beauty,
pinned to the shoulder of her gown beneath her cape.
  "Yes, Mr. Corthell," she answered, "one. I tried
to select the prettiest, and I think I succeeded-don't
you? It was hard to choose."
  "Since you have worn it, it is the prettiest," he
answered.
  He was a slightly built man of about twenty-eight
or thirty; dark, wearing a small, pointed beard, and a
moustache that he brushed away from his lips like a
                         '4





                     THE PIT
Frenchman. By profession he was an artist, devoting
himself more especially to the designing of stained
windows. In this, his talent was indisputable. But he
was by no means dependent upon his profession for a
living, his parents-long since dead-having left him
to the enjoyment of a very considerable fortune. He had
a beautiful studio in the Fine Arts Building, where he
held receptions once every two months, or whenever
he had a fine piece of glass to expose. He had travelled,
read, studied, occasionally written, and in matters per-
taining to the colouring and fusing of glass was cited
as an authority. He was one of the directors of the new
Art Gallery that had taken the place of the old Ex-
position Building on the Lake Front.
  Laura had known him for some little time. On the
occasion of her two previous visits to Page he had found
means to see her two or three times each week. Once,
even, he had asked her to marry him, but she, deep in
her studies at the time, consumed with vague am-
bitions to be a great actress of Shakespearian r6les,
had told him she could care for nothing but her art. He
had smiled and said that he could wait, and, strangely
enough, their relations had resumed again upon the
former footing. Even after she had gone away they had
corresponded regularly, and he had made and sent her
a tiny window-a veritable jewel-illustrative of a scene
from "Twelfth Night."
  In the foyer, as the gentlemen were checking their
coats, Laura overheard Jadwin say to Mr. Cressler:
  "Well, how about Helmick?"
  The other made an impatient movement of his
shoulders.
  "Ask me, what was the fool thinking of-a corner!
Pshaw!"
  There were one or two other men about, making
                         '5





                     THE PIT
their overcoats and opera hats into neat bundles pre-
paratory to checking them; and instantly there was a
flash of a half-dozen eyes in the direction of the two
men. Evidently the collapse of the Helmick deal was
in the air. All the city seemed interested.
  But from behind the heavy curtains that draped the
entrance to the theatre proper, came a muffled burst
of music, followed by a long salvo of applause. Laura's
cheeks flamed with impatience, she hurried after Mrs.
Cressler; Corthell drew the curtains for her to pass, and
she entered.
  Inside it was dark, and a prolonged puff of hot air,
thick with the mingled odours of flowers, perfume, up-
holstery, and gas, enveloped her upon the instant. It
was the unmistakable, unforgettable, entrancing aroma
of the theatre, that she had known only too seldom, but
that in a second set her heart galloping.
  Every available space seemed to be occupied. Men,
even women, were standing up, compacted into a suffo-
cating pressure, and for the moment everybody was
applauding vigorously. On all sides Laura heard:
   "Bravo!"
   "Good, good!"
   "Very well done!"
   "Encore! Encore!"
   Between the people's heads and below the low dip
of the overhanging balcony-a brilliant glare in the sur-
rounding darkness-she caught a glimpse of the stage.
It was set for a garden; at the back and in the dis-
tance a chateau; on the left a bower, and on the right
a pavilion. Before the footlights, a famous contralto,
dressed as a boy, was bowing to the audience, her arms
full of flowers.
  "Too bad," whispered Corthell to Laura, as they
followed the others down the side-aisle, to the box.
"Too bad, this is the second act already; you've missed
                         i6





                     THE PIT
the whole first act-and this song. She'll sing it over
again, though, just for you, if I have to lead the applause
myself. I particularly wanted you to hear that."
  Once in the box, the party found itself a little crowded,
and Jadwin and Cressler were obliged to stand, in order
to see the stage. Although they all spoke in whispers,
their arrival was the signal for certain murmurs of
"Sh! Sh!" Mrs. Cressler made Laura occupy the front
seat. Jadwin took her cloak from her, and she settled
herself in her chair and looked about her. She could see
but little of the house or audience. All the lights were
lowered; only through the gloom the swaying of a multi-
tude of fans, pale coloured, like night-moths balancing
in the twilight, defined itself.
  But soon she turned toward the stage. The applause
died away, and the contralto once more sang the aria.
The melody was simple, the tempo easily followed: it
was not a very high order of music. But to Laura it was
nothing short of a revelation.
  She sat spell-bound, her hands clasped tight, her
every faculty of attention at its highest pitch. It was
wonderful, such music as that; wonderful, such a voice;
wonderful, such orchestration; wonderful, such ex-
altation inspired by mere beauty of sound. Never,
never was this night to be forgotten, this her first night
of Grand Opera. All this excitement, this world of
perfume, of flowers, of exquisite costumes, of beautiful
women, of fine, brave men. She looked back with
immense pity to the narrow little life of her native town
she had just left forever, the restricted horizon, the
petty round of petty duties, the rare and barren
pleasures-the library, the festival, the few concerts,
the trivial plays. How easy it was to be good and noble
when music such as this had become a part of one's
life; how desirable was wealth when it could make
possible such exquisite happiness as hers of the moment.
                          I7





                     THE PIT
Nobility, purity, courage, sacrifice seemed much more
worth while now than a few moments ago. All things
not positively unworthy became heroic, all things and
all men. Landry Court was a young chevalier, pure as
Galahad. Corthell was a beautiful artist-priest of the
early Renaissance. Even Jadwin was a merchant prince,
a great financial captain. And she herself-ah, she did
not know; she dreamed of another Laura, a better, gen-
tler, more beautiful Laura, whom everybody, everybody
loved dearly and tenderly, and who loved everybody,
and who should die beautifully, gently, in some garden
far away-die because of a great love-beautifully,
gently in the midst of flowers, die of a broken heart,
and all the world should be sorry for her, and would
weep over her when they found her dead and beautiful
in her garden, amid the flowers and the birds, in some
far-off place, where it was always earlymorning and
where there was soft music. And she was so sorry for
herself, and so hurt with the sheer strength of her long-
ing to be good and true, and noble and womanly, that
as she sat in the front of the Cresslers' box on that
marvellous evening, the tears ran down her cheeks
again and again, and dropped upon her tight-shut,
white-gloved fingers.
   But the contralto had disappeared, and in her place
the tenor held the stage-a stout, short young man in
red plush doublet and grey silk tights. His chin ad-
vanced, an arm extended, one hand pressed to his
breast, he apostrophized the pavilion, that now and
then swayed a little in the draught from the wings.
  The aria was received with furor; thrice he was
obliged to repeat it. Even Corthell, who was critical
to extremes, approved, nodding his head. Laura and
Page clapped their hands till the very last. But Landry
Court, to create an impression, assumed a certain
disaffection.





THE PIT


  "He's not in voice to-night. Too bad. You should
have heard him Friday in Aida"
  The opera continued. The great soprano, the prima
donna, appeared and delivered herself of a song for
which she was famous with astonishing eclat. Then
in a little while the stage grew dark, the orchestration
lapsed to a murmur, and the tenor and the soprano
reentered. He clasped her in his arms and sang a half-
dozen bars, then holding her hand, one arm still about
her waist, withdrew from her gradually, till she occupied
the front-centre of the stage. He assumed an attitude
of adoration and wonderment, his eyes uplifted as if
entranced, and she, very softly, to the accompaniment
of the sustained, dreamy chords of the orchestra,
began her solo.
  Laura shut her eyes. Never had she felt so soothed,
so cradled and lulled and languid. Ah, to love like that!
To love and be loved. There was no such love as that to-
day. She wished that she could loose her clasp upon the
sordid, material modern life that, perforce, she must
hold to, she knew not why, and drift, drift off into the
past, far away, through rose-coloured mists and dia-
phanous veils, or resign herself, reclining in a silver
skiff drawn by swans, to the gentle current of some
smooth-flowing river that ran on forever and for-
ever.
  But a discordant element developed. Close by-the
lights were so low she could not tell where-a conver-
sation, kept up in low whispers, began by degrees to
intrude itself upon her attention. Try as she would, she
could not shut it out, and now, as the music died away
fainter and fainter, till voice and orchestra blended
together in a single, barely audible murmur, vibrating
with emotion, with romance, and with sentiment, she
heard, in a hoarse, masculine whisper, the words:
  "The shortage is a million bushels at the very least.
                          '9





THE PIT


Two hundred carloads were to arrive from Milwaukee
last night-"
  She made a little gesture of despair, turning her head
for an instant, searching the gloom about her. But she
could see no one not interested in the stage. Why could
not men leave their business outside? why must the jar
of commerce spoil all the harmony of this moment?
  However, all sounds were drowned suddenly in a
long burst of applause. The tenor and soprano bowed
and smiled across the footlights. The soprano vanished,
only to reappear on the balcony of the pavilion, and
while she declared that the stars and the night-bird
together sang "He loves thee," the voices close at hand
continued:
  "---one hundred and six carloads   "
  "----paralyzed the bulls- "
  "----fifty thousand dollars--"
  Then all at once the lights went up. The act was
over.
  Laura seemed only to come to herself some five
minutes later. She and Corthell were out in the foyer
behind the boxes. Everybody was promenading. The
air was filled with the staccato chatter of a multitude
of women. But she herself seemed far away-she and
Sheldon Corthell. His face, dark, romantic, with the
silky beard and eloquent eyes, appeared to be all she
cared to see, while his low voice, that spoke close to
her ear, was in a way a mere continuation of the melody
of the duet just finished.
   Instinctively she knew what he was about to say,
for what he was trying to prepare her. She felt, too,
that he had not expected to talk thus to her to-night.
She knew that he loved her, that inevitably, sooner or
later, they must return to a subject that for long had
been excluded from their conversations, but it was
to have been when they were alone, remote, secluded,
                         20





THE PIT


not in the midst of a crowd, brilliant electrics dazzling
their eyes, the humming of the talk of hundreds as-
saulting their ears. But it seemed as if these important
things came of themselves, independent of time and
place, like birth and death. There was nothing to do
but to accept the situation. and it was without surprise
that at last, from out the murmur of Corthell's talk,
she was suddenly conscious of the words:
  "So that it is hardly necessary, is it, to tell you once
more that I love you?"
  She drew a long breath.
  "I know. I know you love me."
  They had sat down on a divan, at one end of the
promenade; and Corthell, skilful enough in the little
arts of the drawing-room, made it appear as though
they talked of commonplaces; as for Laura, exalted,
all but hypnotized with this marvellous evening, she
hardly cared; she would not even stoop to maintain
appearances.
  "Yes, yes," she said; "I know you love me."
  "And is that all you can say?" he urged. "Does
it mean nothing to you that you are everything to me?"
  She was coming a little to herself again. Love was,
after all, sweeter in the actual-even in this crowded
foyer, in this atmosphere of silk and jewels, in this
show-place of a great city's society-than in a mystic
garden of some romantic dreamland. She felt herself
a woman again, modern, vital, and no longer a maiden
of a legend of chivalry.
  "Nothing to me?" she answered. "I don't know.
I should rather have you love me than-not."
  "Let me love you then for always," he went on.
"You know what I mean. We have understood each
other from the very first. Plainly, and very simply,
I love you with all my heart. You know now that
I speak the truth, you know that you can trust me. I
                         21





                     THE PIT
shall not ask you to share your life with mine. I ask you
for the great happiness"-he raised his head sharply,
suddenly proud-" the great honour of the opportunity
of giving you all that I have of good. God give me hu-
mility, but that is much since I have known you. If I
were a better man because of myself, I would not
presume to speak of it, but if I am in anything less
selfish, if I am more loyal, if I am stronger, or braver, it
is only something of you that has become a part of me,
and made me to be born again. So when I offer myself
to you, I am only bringing back to you the gift you
gave me for a little while. I have tried to keep it for
you, to keep it bright and sacred and unspotted. It is
yours again now if you will have it."
  There was a long pause; a group of men in opera hats
and white gloves came up the stairway close at hand.
The tide of promenaders set toward the entrances
of the theatre. A little electric bell shrilled a note of
warning.
  Laura looked up at length, and as their glances met,
he saw that there were tears in her eyes. This declaration
of his love for her was the last touch to. the greatest
exhilaration of happiness she had ever known. Ah yes,
she was loved, just as that young girl of the opera had
been loved. For this one evening, at least, the beauty
of life was unmarred, and no cruel word of hers should
spoil it. The world was beautiful. All people were good
and noble and true. To-morrow, with the material
round of duties and petty responsibilities and cold,
calm reason, was far, far away. Suddenly she turned to
him, surrendering to the impulse, forgetful of conse-
quences.
  "Oh, I am glad, glad," she cried, "glad that you love
me!"
  But before Corthell could say anything more Landry
Court and Page came up.
                         22





THE PIT


  "We've been looking for you," said the young girl
quietly. Page was displeased. She took herself and
her sister-in fact, the whole scheme of existence-
with extraordinary seriousness. She had no sense of
humour. She was not tolerant; her ideas of propriety
and the amenities were as immutable as the fixed stars.
A fine way for Laura to act, getting off into corners
with Sheldon Corthell. It would take less than that to
make talk. If she had no sense of her obligations to Mrs.
Cressler, at least she ought to think of the looks of
things.
  "They're beginning again," she said solemnly. "I
should think you'd feel as though you had missed about
enough of this opera."
  They returned to the box. The rest of the party were
reassembling.
  "Well, Laura," said Mrs. Cressler, when they had
sat down, "do you like it?"
  "I don't want to leave it-ever," she answered.
"I could stay here always."
  "I like the young man best," observed Aunt Wess'.
"The one who seems to be the friend of the tall fellow
with a cloak. But why does he seem so sorry? Why don't
he marry the young lady? Let's see, I don't remember
his name."
  "Beastly voice," declared Landry Court. "He almost
broke there once. Too bad. He's not what he used to be.
It seems he's terribly dissipated-drinks. Yes, sir, like
a fish. He had delirium tremens once behind the scenes
in Philadelphia, and stabbed a scene shifter with his
stage dagger. A bad lot, to say the least."
  "Now, Landry," protested Mrs. Cressler, "you're
making it up as you go along." And in the laugh that
followed Landry himself joined.
  "After all," said Corthell, "this music seems to be
just the right medium between the naive melody of the
                         23





THE PIT


Italian school and the elaborate complexity of Wagner.
I can't help but be carried away with it at times-in
spite of my better judgment."
  Jadwin, who had been smoking a cigar in the vestibule
during the entr'acte, rubbed his chin reflectively.
  "Well," he said, "it's all very fine. I've no doubt of
that, but I give you my word I would rather hear my
old governor take his guitar and sing 'Father, oh father,
come home with me now,' than all the fiddle-faddle,
tweedle-deedle opera business in the whole world."
  But the orchestra was returning, the musicians crawl-
ing out one by one from a little door beneath the stage
hardly bigger than the entrance of a rabbit hutch.
They settled themselves in front of their racks, adjust-
ing their coat-tails, fingering their sheet music. Soon
they began to tune up, and a vague bourdon of many
sounds-the subdued snarl of the cornets, the dull mut-
ter of the bass viols, the liquid gurgling of the flageolets
and wood-wind instruments, now and then pierced by
the strident chirps and cries of the violins, rose into
the air dominating the incessant clamour of conver-
sation that came from all parts of the theatre.
  Then suddenly the house lights sank and the foot-
lights rose. From all over the theatre came energetic
whispers of "Sh! Sh!" Three strokes, as of a great
mallet, sepulchral, grave, came from behind the wings;
the leader of the orchestra raised his baton, then
brought it slowly down, and while from all the instru-
ments at once issued a prolonged minor chord, empha-
sized by a muffled roll of the kettle-drum, the curtain
rose upon a mediaeval public square. The soprano was
seated languidly upon a bench. Her grande scene oc-
curred in this act. Her hair was unbound; she wore
a loose robe of cream-white, with flowing sleeves, which
left the arms bare to the shoulder. At the waist it was
caught in by a girdle of silk rope.
                         24





                     THE PIT
   "This is the great act," whispered Mrs. Cressler,
leaning over Laura's shoulder. "She is superb later on.
Superb."
   "I wish those men would stop talking," murmured
Laura, searching the darkness distressfully, for between
the strains of the music she had heard the words:
   "-   Clearing House balance of three thousand
dollars."
  Meanwhile the prima donna, rising to her feet, de-
livered herself of a lengthy recitative, her chin upon her
breast, her eyes looking out from under her brows, an
arm stretched out over the footlights. The baritone
entered, striding to the left of the footlights, apostro-
phizing the prima donna in a rage. She clasped her
hands imploringly, supplicating him to leave her, ex-
claiming from time to time:

                  "JVa via, va via-
                  Fel chieco per pietd."

  Then all at once, while the orchestra blared, they fell
into each other's arms.
  "Why do they do that?" murmured Aunt Wess',
perplexed. "I thought the gentleman with the beard
didn't like her at all."
  "Why, that's the duke, don't you see, Aunt Wess'?"
said Laura, trying to explain. "And he forgives her. I
don't know exactly. Look at your libretto."
  "-a conspiracy of the Bears . . . seventy cents ..
and naturally he busted."
  The mezzo-soprano, the confidante of the prima
donna, entered, and a trio developed that had but a
mediocre success. At the end the baritone abruptly
drew his sword, and the prima donna fell to her knees,
chanting:
                   "Io tremo ahime!"






THE PIT


  "And now he's mad again," whispered Aunt Wess',
consulting her libretto, all at sea once more. "I can't
understand. She says-the opera book says she says,
'I tremble.' I don't see why."
  "Look now," said Page, "here comes the tenor. Now
they're going to have it out."
  The tenor, hatless, debouched suddenly upon the
scene, and furious, addressed himself to the baritone,
leaning forward, his hands upon his chest. Though
the others sang in Italian, the tenor, a Parisian, used
the French book continually, and now vilified the bari-
tone, crying out:
                  "0 tra'tre infame
                  0 lche et coupable"

  "I don't see why he don't marry the young lady and
be done with it," commented Aunt Wess'.
  The act drew to its close. The prima donna went
through her "great scene," wherein her voice climbed
to C in alt, holding the note so long that Aunt Wess'
became uneasy. As she finished, the house rocked with
applause, and the soprano, who had gone out supported
by her confidante, was recalled three times. A duel
followed between the baritone and tenor, and the
latter, mortally wounded, fell into the arms of his
friends uttering broken, vehement notes. The chorus-
made up of the city watch and town's people crowded
in upon the back of the stage. The soprano and her
confidante returned. The basso, a black-bearded, bull-
necked man, sombre, mysterious, parted the chorus to
right and left, and advanced to the footlights. The
contralto, dressed as a boy, appeared. The soprano took
stage, and abruptly the closing scene of the act de-
veloped.
  The violins raged and wailed in unison, all the bows
moving together like parts of a well-regulated machine.
                         26





                     THE PIT
The kettle-drums, marking the cadences, rolled at exact
intervals. The director beat time furiously, as though
dragging up the notes and chords with the end of his
baton, while the horns and cornets blared, the bass viols
growled, and the flageolets and piccolos lost themselves
in an amazing complication of liquid gurgles and
modulated roulades.
  On the stage every one was singing. The soprano
in the centre, vocalized in her highest register, bringing
out the notes with vigorous twists of her entire body,
and tossing them off into the air with sharp flirts of her
head. On the right, the basso, scowling, could be heard
in the intervals of the music repeating:
                 "Il perfido, l'ingrato"
while to the left of the soprano, the baritone intoned
indistinguishable, sonorous phrases, striking his breast
and pointing to the fallen tenor with his sword. At the
extreme left of the stage the contralto, in tights and
plush doublet, turned to the audience, extending her
hands, or flinging back her arms. She raised her eye-
brows with each high note, and sunk her chin into her
ruff when her voice descended. At certain intervals
her notes blended with those of the soprano's while she
sang:
                "Addio, felicitd de ciell "
  The tenor, raised upon one hand, his shoulders sup-
ported by his friends, sustained the theme which the
soprano led with the words:
                  " ,e me meurs,
                  AhI malheur,
                  Ah! je souffre,
                  Mon 5me s'envole."
  The chorus formed a semi-circle just behind him.
The women on one side, the men on the other. They
                          27





THE PIT


left much to be desired; apparently scraped hastily
together from heaven knew what sources, after the
manner of a management suddenly become economical.
The women were fat, elderly, and painfully homely;
the men lean, osseous, and distressed, in misfitting
hose. But they had been conscientiously drilled. They
made all their gestures together, moved in masses
simultaneously, and, without ceasing, chanted over and
over again:
                  "0 terror, 0 blasfema."
  The finale commenced. Everybody on the stage took
a step forward, beginning all over again upon a higher
key. The soprano's voice thrilled to the very chandelier.
The orchestra redoubled its efforts, the director beating
time with hands, head, and body.
                  " Il perfido, l'ingrato,"
thundered the basso.
                   "Inefabil mistero,"
answered the baritone, striking his breast and pointing
with his sword; while all at once the soprano's voice,
thrilling out again, ran up an astonishing crescendo
that evoked veritable gasps from all parts of the audi-
ence, then jumped once more to her famous C in alt, and
held it long enough for the chorus to repeat
                  "0 terror, 0 blasfema"
four times.
  Then the director's baton descended with the vio-
lence of a blow. There was a prolonged crash of har-
mony, a final enormous chord, to which every voice and
every instrument contributed. The singers struck tab-
leau attitudes, the tenor fell back with a last wail:
                    ",e me meurs,"
                         28





THE PIT


and the soprano fainted into the arms of her confidante.
The curtain fell.
  The house roared with applause. The scene was re-
called again and again. The tenor, scrambling to his
feet, joined hands with the baritone, soprano, and
other artists, and all bowed repeatedly. Then the cur-
tain fell for the last time, the lights of the great chande-
lier clicked and blazed up, and from every quarter of the
house came the cries of the programme sellers:
  "Opera books. Books of the opera. Words and music
of the opera."
  During this, the last entr'acte, Laura remained in the
box with Mrs. Cressler, Corthell, and Jadwin. The
others went out to look down upon the foyer from a
certain balcony.
  In the box the conversation turned upon stage man-
agement, and Corthell told how, in L'Africaine, at
the Opera, in Paris, the entire superstructure of the
stage-wings, drops, and backs-turned when Vasco
da Gama put the ship about. Jadwin having criticized
the effect because none of the actors turned with it,
was voted a Philistine by Mrs. Cressler and Corthell.
But as he was about to answer, Mrs. Cressler turned
to the artist, passing him her opera glasses, and ask-
ing:
  "Who are those people down there in the third row
of the parquet-see, on the middle aisle-the woman
is in red. Aren't those the Gretrys?"
  This left Jadwin and Laura out of the conversation,
and the capitalist was quick to seize the chance of talk-
ing to her. Soon she was surprised to notice that he was
trying hard to be agreeable, and before they had ex-
changed a dozen sentences, he had turned an awkward
compliment. She guessed by his manner that paying
attention to young girls was for him a thing altogether
unusual. Intuitively she divined that she, on this, the
                         29





                     THE PIT
very first night of their acquaintance, had suddenly
interested him.
  She had had neither opportunity nor inclination
to observe him closely during their interview in the
vestibule, but now, as she sat and listened to him talk,
she could not help being a little attracted. He was a
heavy-built man, would have made two of Corthell,
and his hands were large and broad, the hands of a man
of affairs, who knew how to grip, and, above all, how to
hang on. Those broad, strong hands, and keen, calm
eyes would enfold and envelop a Purpose with tre-
mendous strength, and they would persist and persist
and persist, unswerving, unwavering, untiring, till the
Purpose was driven home. And the two long, lean,
fibrous arms of him; what a reach they could attain,
and how wide and huge and even formidable would be
their embrace of affairs. One of those great manoeuvres
of a fellow money-captain had that very day been con-
cluded, the Helmick failure, and between the chords
and bars of a famous opera men talked in excited whis-
pers, and one great leader lay at that very moment,
broken and spent, fighting with his last breath for bare
existence. Jadwin had seen it all. Uninvolved in the
crash, he had none the less been close to it, watching it,
in touch with it, foreseeing each successive collapse by
which it reeled fatally to the final catastrophe. The
voices of the two men that had so annoyed her in the
early part of the evening were suddenly raised again:
  "-    It was terrific, there on the floor of the Board
this morning. By the Lord! they fought each other when
the Bears began throwing the grain at 'em-in carload
lots."
  And abruptly, midway between two phases of that
music-drama, of passion and romance, there came to
Laura the swift and vivid impression of that other
drama that simultaneously-even at that very mo-
                         30





                    THE PIT:
ment-was working itself out close at hand, equally
picturesque, equally romantic, equally passionate;
but more than that, real, actual, modern, a thing in the
very heart of the very life in which she moved.
And here he sat, this Jadwin, quiet, in evening dress,
listening good-naturedly to this beautiful music, for
which he did not care, to this rant and fustian, watch-
ing quietly all this posing and attitudinizing. How small
and petty it must all seem to him!
  Laura found time to be astonished. What! She had
first met this man haughtily, in all the panoply of her
"grand manner," and had promised herself that she
would humble him, and pay him for that first mistrust-
ful stare at her. And now, behold, she was studying him,
and finding the study interesting. Out of harmony
though she knew him to be with those fine emotions of
hers of the early part of the evening, she nevertheless
found much in him to admire. It was always just like
that. She told herself that she was forever doing the
unexpected thing, the inconsistent thing. Women were
queer creatures, mysterious even to themselves.
  "I am so pleased that you are enjoying it all," said Cor-
thell's voice at her shoulder. "I knew you would. There
is nothing like music such as this to appeal to the emo-
tions, the heart-and with your temperament   "
  Straightway he made her feel her sex. Now she was
just a woman again, with all a woman's limitations,
and her relations with Corthell could never be-so she
realized-any other than sex-relations. With Jadwin
somehow it had been different. She had felt his manhood
more than herwomanhood, her sex side. And between
them it was more a give-and-take affair, more equality,
more companionship. Corthell spoke only of her heart
and to her heart. But Jadwin made her feel-or rather
she made herself feel when he talked to her-that she
had a head as well as a heart.
                         31





                     THE PIT
  And the last act of the opera did not wholly absorb
her attention. The artists came and went, the orchestra
wailed and boomed, the audience applauded, and in the
end the tenor, fired by a sudden sense of duty and of
stern obligation, tore himself from the arms of the so-
prano, and calling out upon remorseless fate and upon
heaven, and declaiming about the vanity of glory, and
his heart that broke yet disdained tears, allowed himself
to be dragged off the scene by his friend the basso. For
the fifth time during the piece the soprano fainted into
the arms of her long-suffering confidante. The audience,
suddenly remembering hats and wraps, bestirred itself,
and many parties were already upon their feet and filing
out at the time the curtain fell.
  The Cresslers and their friends were among the last
to regain the vestibule. But as they came out from the
foyer, where the first draughts of outside air began to
make themselves felt, there were exclamations:
  "It's raining."
  "Why, it's raining right down."
  It was true. Abruptly the weather had moderated,
and the fine, dry snow that had been falling since early
evening had changed to a lugubrious drizzle. A wave of
consternation invaded the vestibule for those who had
not come in carriages, or whose carriages had not ar-
rived. Tempers were lost; women, cloaked to the ears,
their heads protected only by fichus or mantillas, quar-
relled with husbands or cousins or brothers over the
question of umbrellas. The vestibules were crowded to
suffocation, and the aigrettes nodded and swayed again
in alternate gusts, now of moist, chill atmosphere from
without, and now of stale, hot air that exhaled in long
puffs from the inside doors of the theatre itself. Here
and there in the press, footmen, their top hats in rubber
cases, their' hands full of umbrellas, searched anxiously
for their masters.
                          32





                     THE PIT
   Outside upon the sidewalks and by the curbs, an
 apparently inextricable confusion prevailed; policemen
 with drawn clubs laboured and objurgated: anxious,
 preoccupied young men, their opera hats and gloves
 beaded with rain, hurried to and fro, searching for their
 carriages. At the edge of the awning, the caller, a gigan-
 tic fellow in gold-faced uniform, shouted the numbers in
 a roaring sing-song that dominated every other sound.
 Coachmen, their wet rubber coats reflecting the lamp-
 light, called back and forth, furious quarrels broke out
 between hansom drivers and the police officers, steaming
 horses with jingling bits, their backs covered with dark
 green cloths, plunged and pranced, carriage doors
 banged, and the roll of wheels upon the pavement was
 as the reverberation of artillery caissons.
   "Get your carriage, sir?" cried a ragged, half-grown
arab at Cressler's elbow.
   "Hurry up, then," said Cressler. Then, raising his
voice, for the clamour was increasing with every second:
"What's your number, Laura? You girls first. Ninety-
three? Get that, boy? Ninety-three. Quick now."
  The carriage appeared. Hastily they said good-bye;
hastily Laura expressed to Mrs. Cressler her apprecia-
tion and enjoyment. Corthell saw them to the carriage,
and getting in after them, shut the door behind him.
They departed.
  Laura sank back in the cool gloom of the carriage's
interior redolent of damp leather and upholstery.
  "What an evening! What an evening!" she mur-
mured.
  On the way home both she and Page appealed to the
artist, who knew the opera well, to hum or whistle for
them the arias that had pleased them most. Each time
they were enthusiastic. Yes, yes, that was the air.
Wasn't it pretty, wasn't it beautiful?
  But Aunt Wess' was still unsatisfied.
                         33





THE PIT


   "I don't see yet," she complained, "why the young
 man, the one with the pointed beard, didn't marry that
 lady and be done with it. Just as soon as they'd seem to
 have it all settled, he'd begin to take on again, and
 strike his breast and go away. I declare, I think it was
 all kind of foolish."
   "Why, the duke-don't you see. The one who sang
 bass-" Page laboured to explain.
   "Oh, I didn't like him at all," said Aunt Wess'. "He
stamped around so." But the audience itself had inter-
ested her, and the d6collet6 gowns had been particularly
impressing.
   "I never saw such dressing in all my life," she de-
clared. "And that woman in the box next ours. Well!
did you notice that ?" She raised her eyebrows and set
her lips together. "Well, I don't want to say anything."
  The carriage rolled on through the darkened down-
town streets, toward the North Side, where the Dear-
borns lived. They could hear the horses plashing through
the layer of slush-mud, half-melted snow and rain-
that encumbered the pavement. In the gloom the girls'
wraps glowed pallid and diaphanous. The rain left long,
slanting parallels on the carriage windows. They passed
on down Wabash Avenue, and crossed over to State
Street and Clarke Street, dark, deserted.
  Laura, after a while, lost in thought, spoke but little.
It had been a great evening-because of other things
than mere music. Corthell had again asked her to marry
him, and she, carried away by the excitement of the
moment, had answered him encouragingly. On the heels
of this she had had that little talk with the capitalist
Jadwin, and somehow since then she had been steadied,
calmed. The cold air and the rain in her face had cooled
her flaming cheeks and hot temples. She asked herself
now if she did really, honestly love the artist. No, she
did not; really and honestly she did not; and now as the
                         34





                     THE PIT
carriage rolled on through the deserted streets of the
business districts, she knew very well that she did not
want to marry him. She had done him an injustice; but
in the matter of righting herself with him, correcting his
false impression, she was willing to procrastinate. She
wanted him to love her, to pay her all those innumerable
little attentions which he managed with such faultless
delicacy. To say: "No, Mr. Corthell, I do not love you,
I will never be your wife," would-this time-be final.
He would go away, and she had no intention of allowing
him to do that.
  But abruptly her reflections were interrupted. While
she thought it all over she had been looking out of the
carriage window through a little space where she had
rubbed the steam from the pane. Now, all at once, the
strange appearance of the neighbourhood as the carriage
turned north from out Jackson Street into La Salle,
forced itself upon her attention. She uttered an ex-
clamation.
  The office buildings on both sides of the street were
lighted from basement to roof. Through the windows
she could get glimpses of clerks and book-keepers in
shirt-sleeves bending over desks. Every office was open,
and every one of them full of a feverish activity. The
sidewalks were almost as crowded as though at noon-
time. Messenger boys ran to and fro, and groups of men
stood on the corners in earnest conversation. The whole
neighbourhood was alive, and this, though it was close
upon one o'clock ii the morning!
  "Why, what is it all ?" she murmured.
  Corthell could not explain, but all at once Page cried:
  "Oh, oh, I know. See this is Jackson and La Salle
streets. Landry was telling me. The 'commission dis-
trict,' he called it. And these are the brokers' offices
working overtime-that Helmick deal, you know."
  Laura looked, suddenly stupefied. Here it was, then,
                         35





THE PIT


that other drama, that other tragedy, working on there
furiously, fiercely through the night, while she and all
those others had sat there in that atmosphere of flowers
and perfume, listening to music. Suddenly it loomed
portentous in the eye of her mind, terrible, tremendous.
Ah, this drama of the "Provision Pits," where the rush
of millions of bushels of grain, and the clatter of millions
of dollars, and the tramping and the wild shouting of
thousands of men filled all the air with the noise of bat-
tle! Yes, here was drama in deadly earnest-drama and
tragedy and death, and the jar of mortal fighting. And
the echoes of it invaded the very sanctuary of art, and
cut athwart the music of Italy and the cadence of polite
conversation, and the shock of it endured when all the
world should have slept, and galvanized into vivid life
all these sombre piles of office buildings. It was dreadful,
this labour through the night. It had all the significance
of field hospitals after the battle-hospitals and the
tents of commanding generals. The wounds of the day
were being bound up, the dead were being counted,
while, shut in their headquarters, the captains and the
commanders drew the plans for the grapple of armies
that was to recommence with daylight.
  "Yes, yes, that's just what it is," continued Page.
"See, there's the Rookery, and there's the Constable
Building, where Mr. Helmick has his offices. Landry
showed me it all one day. And, look back." She raised
the flap that covered the little window at the back of the
carriage. "See, down there, at the end of the street.
There's the Board of Trade Building, where the grain
speculating is done,-where the wheat pits and corn
pits are."
  Laura turned and looked back. On either side of the
vista in converging lines stretched the blazing office
buildings. But over the end of the street the lead-
coloured sky was rifted a little. A long, faint bar of light
                         36





                     THE PIT
stretched across the prospect, and silhouetted against
this rose a sombre mass, unbroken by any lights, rearing
a black and formidable facade against the blur of light
behind it.
  And this was her last impression of the evening. The
lighted office buildings, the murk of rain, the haze of
light in the heavens, and raised against it the pile of the
Board of Trade Building, black, grave, monolithic,
crouching on its foundations, like a monstrous sphinx
with blind eyes, silent, grave,-crouching there without
a sound, without sign of life under the night and the
drifting veil of rain.


37











                  CHAPTER II

LAURA DEARBORN'S native town was Barring-
ton, in Worcester County, Massachusetts. Both she and
Page had been born there, and there had lived until the
death of their father, at a time when Page was ready
for the High School. The mother, a North Carolina girl,
had died long before.
  Laura's education had been unusual. After leaving
the High School her father had for four years allowed
her a private tutor (an impecunious graduate from the
Harvard Theological School). She was ambitious, a
devoted student, and her instructor's task was rather
to guide than to enforce her application. She soon ac-
quired a reading knowledge of French, and knew her
Racine in the original almost as well as her Shakespeare.
Literature became for her an actual passion. She delved
into Tennyson and the Victorian poets, and soon was
on terms of intimacy with the poets and essayists of
New England. The novelists of the day she ignored
almost completely, and voluntarily. Only occasionally,
and then as a concession, she permitted herself a reading
of Mr. Howells.
  Moderately prosperous while he himself was conduct-
ing his little mill, Dearborn had not been able to put by
any money to speak of, and when Laura and the local
lawyer had come to close up the business, to dispose
of the mill, and to settle the claims against what
the lawyer grandiloquently termed "the estate," there
was just enough money left to pay for Page's tick-
ets to Chicago and a course of tuition for her at a semi-
nary.
                        38





THE PIT


  The Cresslers on the event of Dearborn's death had
advised both sisters to come West, and had pledged
themselves to look after Page during the period of her
schooling. Laura had sent the little girl on at once,
but delayed taking the step herself.
  Fortunately, the two sisters were not obliged to live
upon their inheritance. Dearborn himself had a sister
-a twin of Aunt Wess'-who had married a wealthy
woollen merchant of Boston, and this one, long since,
had provided for the two girls. A large sum had been
set aside, which was to be made over to them when the
father died. For years now this sum had been accumu-
lating interest. So that when Laura and Page faced the
world, alone, upon the steps of the Barrington cemetery,
they had the assurance that, at least, they were inde-
pendent.
  For two years, in the solidly built colonial dwelling,
with its low ceilings and ample fireplaces, where once
the minute-men had swung their kettles, Laura, alone,
thought it all over. Mother and father were dead; even
the Boston aunt was dead. Of all her relations, Aunt
Wess' alone remained. Page was at her finishing school
at Geneva Lake, within two hours of Chicago. The
Cresslers were the dearest friends of the orphan girls.
Aunt Wess', herself a widow, living also in Chicago,
added her entreaties to Mrs. Cressler's. All things
seemed to point her westward, all things seemed to in-
dicate that one phase of her life was ended.
  Then, too, she had her ambitions. These hardly took
definite shape in her mind; but vaguely she chose to see
herself, at some far-distant day, an actress, a trage-
dienne, playing the r61es of Shakespeare's heroines.
This idea of hers was more a desire than an ambition,
but it could not be realized in Barrington, Massachu-
setts. For a year she temporized, procrastinated, loth
to leave the old home, loth to leave the grave in the
                         39





                     THE PIT
cemetery back of the Methodist-Episcopal chapel.
Twice during this time she visited Page, and each time
the great grey city threw the spell of its fascination
about her. Each time she returned to Barrington the
town dwindled in her estimation. It was picturesque,
but lamentably narrow. The life was barren, the "New
England spirit" prevailed in all its severity; and this
spirit seemed to her a veritable cult, a sort of religion,
wherein the Old Maid was the priestess, the Spinster
the officiating devotee, the thing worshipped the Great
Unbeautiful, and the ritual unremitting, unrelenting
Housework. She detested it.
  That she was an Episcopalian, and preferred to read
her prayers rather than to listen to those written and
memorized by the Presbyterian minister, seemed to be
regarded as a relic of heathenish rites-a thing almost
cannibalistic. When she elected to engage a woman and
a "hired man" to manage her house, she felt the dis-
approbation of the entire village, as if she had sunk
into some decadent and enervating Lower-Empire de-
generacy.
  The crisis came when Laura travelled alone to Boston
to hear Modjeska in Marie Stuart and Macbeth, and
upon returning full of enthusiasm, allowed it to be
understood that she had a half-formed desire of emulat-
ing such an example. A group of lady-deaconesses,
headed by the Presbyterian minister, called upon her,
with some intention of reasoning and labouring with
her.
   They got no farther than the statement of the cause
of this visit. The spirit and temper of the South, that
she had from her mother, flamed up in Laura at last,
and the members of the "committee," before they were
well aware, came to themselves in the street outside
the front gate, dazed and bewildered, staring at each
other, all confounded and stunned by the violence of an
                          40





THE PIT


outbreak of long-repressed emotion and long-restrained
anger, that like an actual physical force had swept them
out of the house.
  At the same moment Laura, thrown across her bed,
wept with a vehemence that shook her from head to
foot. But she had not the least compunction for what
she had said, and before the month was out had said
good-bye to Barrington forever, and was on her way to
Chicago, henceforth to be her home.
  A house was bought on the North Side, and it was
arranged that Aunt Wess' should live with her two
nieces. Pending the installation Laura and Page lived
at a little family hotel in the same neighbourhood. The
Cresslers' invitation to join the theatre party at the
Auditorium had fallen inopportunely enough, squarely
in the midst of the ordeal of moving in. Indeed the two
girls had already passed one night in the new home,
and they must dress for the affair by lamplight in their
unfurnished quarters and under inconceivable difficul-
ties. Only the lure of Italian opera, heard from a box,
could have tempted them to have accepted the invita-
tion at such a time and under such circumstances.
  The morning after the opera, Laura woke in her bed
-almost the only article of furniture that was in place
in the whole house-with the depressing consciousness
of a hard day's work at hand. Outside it was still raining,
the room was cold, heated only by an inadequate oil
stove, and through the slats of the inside shutters,
which, pending the hanging of the curtains they had
been obliged to close, was filtering a gloomy light of a
wet Chicago morning.
  It was all very mournful, and she regretted now that
she had not abided by her original decision to remain
at the hotel until the new house was ready for occu-
pancy. But it had happened that their month at the
hotel was just up, and rather than engage the rooms for
                         41





THE PIT


another four weeks she had thought it easier as well as
cheaper to come to the house. It was all a new experience
for her, and she had imagined that everything could
be moved in, put in place, and the household running
smoothly in a week's time.
  She sat up in bed, hugging her shoulders against the
chill of the room and looking at her theatre gown, that
-in default of a clean closet-she had hung from the
gas fixture the night before. From the direction of the
kitchen came the sounds of the newly engaged "girl"
making the fire for breakfast, while through the register
a thin wisp of blue smoke curled upward to prove that
the "hired man" was tinkering with the unused furnace.
The room itself was in lamentable confusion. Crates and
packing boxes encumbered the uncarpeted floor; chairs
wrapped in excelsior and jute were piled one upon an-
other; a roll of carpet leaned in one corner and a pile of
mattresses occupied another.
  As Laura considered the prospect she realized her
blunder.
   "Why, and oh, why," she murmured, "didn't we
stay at the hotel till all this was straightened out?"
   But in an adjoining room she heard Aunt Wess' stir-
ring. She turned to Page, who upon the pillows beside
her still slept, her stocking around her neck as a guar-
antee against draughts.
   "Page, Page! Wake up, girlie. It's late, and there's
worlds to do."
   Page woke blinking.
   "Oh, it's freezing cold, Laura. Let's light the oil
stove and stay in bed till the room gets warm. Oh, dear,
aren't you sleepy, and, oh, wasn't last night lovely?
Which one of us will get up to light the stove? We'll
count for it. Lie down, sissie, dear," she begged, "you're
letting all the cold air in."
   Laura complied, and the two sisters, their noses all
                         42





                    THE PIT
but touching, the bedclothes up to their ears, put their
arms about each other to keep the warmer.
  Amused at the foolishness, they "counted" to decide
as to who should get up to light the oil stove, Page
beginning:
  "Eeny-meeny-myny-mo-           "
  But before the "count" was decided Aunt Wess'
came in, already dressed, and in a breath the two girls
implored her to light the stove. While she did so, Aunt
Wess' remarked, with the alacrity of a woman who ob-
serves the difficulties of a proceeding in which she has
no faith:
  "I don't believe that hired girl knows her business.
She says now she can't light a fire in that stove. My
word, Laura, I do believe you'll have enough of all this
before you're done. You know I advised you from the
very first to take a flat."
  "Nonsense, Aunt Wess'," answered Laura, good-
naturedly. "We'll work it out all right. I know what's
the matter with that range. I'll be right down and see
to it so soon as I'm dressed."
  It was nearly ten o'clock before breakfast, such as it
was, was over. They ate it on the kitchen table, with
the kitchen knives and forks, and over the meal, Page
having remarked: "Well, what will we do first?" dis-
cussed the plan of campaign.
  "Landry Court does not have to work to-day-he
told me why, but I've forgotten-and he said he was
coming up to help," observed Laura, and at once Aunt
Wess' smiled. Landry Court was openly and strenu-
ously in love with Laura, and no one of the new house-
hold ignored the fact. Aunt Wess' chose to consider the
affair as ridiculous, and whenever the subject was
mentioned spoke of Landry as "that boy."
  Page, however, bridled with seriousness as often as
the matter came up. Yes, that was all very well, but
                        43





                     THE PIT
Landry was a decent, hard-working young fellow, with
all his way to make and no time to waste, and if Laura
didn't mean that it should come to anything it wasn't
very fair to him to keep him dangling along like that.
  "I guess," Laura was accustomedto reply, looking
significantly at Aunt Wess', "that our little girlie has
a little bit of an eye on a certain hard-working young
fellow herself." And the answer invariably roused Page.
  "Now, Laura," she would cry, her eyes snapping, her
breath coming fast. "Now, Laura, that isn't right at all,
and you know I don't like it, and you just say it because
you know it makes me cross. I won't have you insinuate
that I would run after any man or care in the least
whether he's in love or not. I just guess I've got some
self-respect; and as for Landry Court, we're no more nor
less than just good friends, and I appreciate his business
talents and the way he rustles 'round, and he merely
respects me as a friend, and it don't go any farther than
that. 'An eye on him,' I do declare! As if I hadn't yet
to see the man I'd so much as look at a second time."
  And Laura, remembering her "Shakespeare," was
ever ready with the words:

         "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

  Just after breakfast, in fact, Landry did appear.
  "Now," he began, with a long breath, addressing
Laura, who was unwrapping the pieces of cut glass and
bureau ornaments as Page passed them to her from
the depths of a crate. "Now, I've done a lot already.
That's what made me late. I've ordered your newspaper
sent here, and I've telephoned the hotel to forward
any mail that comes for you to this address, and I sent
word to the gas company to have your gas turned
on
   "Oh, that's good," said Laura.
                         44





                     THE PIT
   "Yes, I thought of that; the man will be up right
 away to fix it, and I've ordered a cake of ice left here
 every day, and told the telephone company that you
 wanted a telephone put in. Oh, yes, and the bottled-
 milk man-I stopped in at a dairy on the way up. Now,
 what do we do first?"
 He took off his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and
 plunged into the confusion of crates and boxes that con-
 gested the rooms and hallways on the first floor of the
 house. The two sisters could hear him attacking his task
 with tremendous blows of the kitchen hammer. From
 time to time he called up the stairway:
 "Hey, what do you want done with this jardiniere
 thing?... Where does this hanging lamp go, Laura?"
 Laura, having unpacked all the cut-glass ornaments,
 came downstairs, and she and Landry set about hang-
 ing the parlour curtains.
 Landry fixed the tops of the window mouldings with
 a piercing eye, his arms folded.
 "I see, I see," he answered to Laura's explanations.
 "I see. Now, where's a screw-driver, and a step-ladder?
 Yes, and I'll have to have some brass nails, and your
 hired man must let me have that hammer again."
 He sent the cook after the screw-driver, called the
 hired man from the furnace, shouted upstairs to Page
 to ask for the whereabouts of the brass nails, and dele-
 gated Laura to steady the step-ladder.
 "Now, Landry," directed Laura, "those rods want
 to be about three inches from the top."
 "Well," he said, climbing up, "I'll mark the place
 with the screw and you tell me if it is right."
 She stepped back, her head to one side.
 "No; higher, Landry. There, that's about it-or a
little lower-so. That's just right. Come down now and
help me put the hooks in."
  They pulled a number of sofa cushions together and
                         45





THE PIT


sat down on the floor side by side, Landry snapping the
hooks in place where Laura had gathered the pleats.
Inevitably his hands touched hers, and their heads drew
close together. Page and Mrs. Wessels were unpacking
linen in the upstairs hall. The cook and hired man raised
a great noise of clanking stove lids and grates as they
wrestled with the range in the kitchen.
   "Well," said Landry, "you are going to have a pretty
home." He was meditating a phrase of which he pur-
posed delivering himself when opportunity afforded. It
had to do with Laura's eyes, and her ability of under-
standing him. She understood him; she was to know
that he thought so, that it was of immense importance
to him. It was thus he conceived of the manner of love
making. The evening before that palavering artist
seemed to have managed to monopolize her about all
of the time. Now it was his turn, and this day of house-
hold affairs, of little domestic commotions, appeared to
him to be infinitely more desirous than the pomp and
formality of evening dress and opera boxes. This morn-
ing the relations between himself and Laura seemed
charming, intimate, unconventional, and full of oppor-
tunities. Never had she appeared prettier to him. She
wore a little pink flannel dressing-sack with full sleeves,
and her hair, carelessly twisted into great piles, was in
a beautiful disarray, curling about her cheeks and ears.
"I didn't see anything of you at all last night," he
grumbled.
  "Well, you didn't try."
  "Oh, it was the Other Fellow's turn," he went on.
"Say," he added, "how often are you going to let me
come to see you when you get settled here? Twice a
week-three times?"
  "As if you wanted to see me as often as that. Why,
Landry, I'm growing up to be an old maid. You can't
want to lose your time calling on old maids."
                         46





                     THE PIT
  He was voluble in protestations. He was tired of
young girls. They were all very well to dance with, but
when a man got too old for that sort of thing, he wanted
someone with sense to talk to. Yes, he did. Someone
with sense. Why, he would rather talk five minutes with
her-
  "Honestly; Landry?" she asked, as though he were
telling a thing incredible.
  He swore to her it was true. His eyes snapped. He
struck his palm with his fist.
   "An old maid like me?" repeated Laura.
   "Old maid nothing!" he vociferated. "Ah," he cried,
"you seem to understand me. When I look at you,
straight into your eyes---"
  From the doorway the cook announced that the man
with the last load of furnace coal had come, and handed
Laura the voucher to sign. Then needs must that Laura
go with the cook to see if the range was finally and
properly adjusted, and while she was gone the man
from the gas company called to turn on the meter, and
Landry was obliged to look after him. It was half an
hour before he and Laura could once more settle them-
selves on the cushions in the parlour.
  "Such a lot of things to do," she said; "and you are
such a help, Landry. It was so dear of you to want to
come."
  "I would do anything in the world for you, Laura,"
he exclaimed, encouraged by her words; "anything.
You know I would. It isn't so much that I want you to
care for me-and I guess I want that bad enough-but
it's because I love to be with you, and be helping you,
and all that sort of thing. Now, all this," he waved a
hand at the confusion of furniture, "all this to-day-
I just feel," he declared with tremendous earnestness,
"I just feel as though I were entering into your life.
And just sitting here beside you and putting in these
                         47





                     THE PIT
curtain hooks, I want you to know that it's inspiring to
me. Yes, it is, inspiring; it's elevating. You don't know
how it makes a man feel to have the companionship of a
good and lovely woman."
  "Landry, as though I were all that. Here, put another
hook in here."
  She held the fold toward him. But he took her hand
as their fingers touched and raised it to his lips and
kissed it. She did not withdraw it, nor rebuke him,
crying out instead, as though occupied with quite an-
other matter:
  "Landry, careful, my dear boy; you'll make me prick
my fingers. Ah-there, you did."
  He was all commiseration and self-reproach at once,
and turned her hand palm upward, looking for the
scratch.
  "Um!" she breathed. "It hurts."
  "Where now," he cried, "where was it? Ah, I was a
beast; I'm so ashamed." She indicated a spot on her
wrist instead of her fingers, and very naturally Landry
kissed it again.
  "How foolish!" she remonstrated. "The idea! As if
I wasn't old enough to be-"
  "You're not so old but what you're going to marry
me some day," he declared.
  "How perfectly silly, Landry!" she retorted. "Aren't
you done with my hand yet?"
  "No, indeed," he cried, his clasp tightening over her
fingers. "It's mine. You can't have it till I say-or
till you say that-some day-you'll give it to me for
good-for better or for worse."
  "As if you really meant that," she said, willing to
prolong the little situation. It was very sweet to have
this clean, fine-fibred young boy so earnestly in love
with her, very sweet that the lifting of her finger, the
mere tremble of her eyelid should so perturb him.
                         48





                     THE PIT
   "Mean it! Mean it!" he vociferated. "You don't
 know how much I do mean it. Why, Laura, why-why,
 I can't think of anything else."
   "You!" she mocked. "As if I believed that. How
 many other girls have you said it to this year?"
   Landry compressed his lips.
   "Miss Dearborn, you insult me."
   "Oh, my!" exclaimed Laura, at last withdrawing her
 hand.
   "And now you're mocking me. It isn't kind. No, it
isn't; it isn't kind."
   "I never answered your question yet," she observed.
   "What question?"
   "About your coming to see me when we were settled.
 I thought you wanted to know."
   "How about lunch?" said Page, from the doorway.
"Do you know it's after twelve?"
   "The girl has got something for us," said Laura. "I
told her about it. Oh, just a pick-up lunch-coffee,
chops. I thought we wouldn't bother to-day. We'll have
to eat in the kitchen."
  "Well, let's be about it," declared Landry, "and
finish with these curtains afterward. Inwardly I'm a
ravening wolf."
  It was past one o'clock by the time that luncheon,
"picked up" though it was, was over. By then every-
body was very tired. Aunt Wess' exclaimed that she
could not stand another minute, and retired to her room.
Page, indefatigable, declaring they never would get
settled if they let things dawdle along, set to work
unpacking her trunk and putting her clothes away.
Her fox terrier, whom the family, for obscure reasons,
called the Pig, arrived in the middle of the afternoon in
a crate, and shivering with the chill of the house, was
tied up behind the kitchen range, where, for all the heat,
he still trembled and shuddered at long intervals, his
                        49




THE PIT


head down, his eyes rolled up, bewildered and discoun-
tenanced by so much confusion and so many new faces.
   Outside the weather continued lamentable. The rain
 beat down steadily upon the heaps of snow on the
 grass-plats by the curbstones, melting it, dirtying it,
 and reducing it to viscid slush. The sky was lead-grey;
 the trees, bare and black as though built of iron and
 wire, dripped incessantly. The sparrows, huddling under
 the house-eaves or in interstices of the mouldings,
 chirped feebly from time to time, sitting disconsolate,
 their feathers puffed out till their bodies assumed globu-
 lar shapes. Delivery wagons trundled up and down the
 street at intervals, the horses and drivers housed in
 oil-skins.
 The neighbourhood was quiet. There was no sound
 of voices in the streets. But occasionally, from far away
 in the direction of the river or the Lake Front, came
 the faint sounds of steamer and tug whistles. The side-
 walks in either direction were deserted. Only a solitary
 policeman, his star pinned to the outside of his dripping
 rubber coat, his helmet shedding rivulets, stood on the
 corner absorbed in the contemplation of the brown tor-
 rent of the gutter plunging into a sewer vent.
 Landry and Laura were in the library at the rear of
 the house, a small room, two sides of which were occu-
 pied with book-cases. They were busy putting the books
 in place. Laura stood halfway up the step-ladder taking
 volume after volume from Landry as he passed them
 to her.
 "Do you wipe them carefully, Landry?" she asked.
 He held a strip of cloth torn from an old sheet in his
 hand, and rubbed the dust from each book before he
 handed it to her.
 "Yes, yes; very carefully," he assured her. "Say," he
 added, "where are all your modern novels? You've got
Scott and Dickens and Thackeray, of course, and
                         so





THE PIT


Eliot-yes, and here's Hawthorne and Poe. But I
haven't struck anything later than Oliver Wendell
Holmes."
   Laura put up her chin. "Modern novels-no indeed.
 When I've yet to read Jane Eyre and have only read
 Ivanhoe and The Newcomes once."
   She made a point of the fact that her taste was the
 extreme of conservatism, refusing to acknowledge hardly
 any fiction that was not almost classic. Even Stevenson
 aroused her suspicions.
   "Well, here's The Wreckers," observed Landry, hand-
ing it up to her. "I read it last summer-vacation at
Waukesha. Just about took the top of my head off."
   "I tried to read it," she answered. "Such an out-
landish story, no love story in it, and so coarse, so
brutal, and then so improbable. I couldn't get inter-
ested."
   But abruptly Landry uttered an exclamation:
   "Well, what do you call this? Wanda, by Ouida.
How is this for modern?"
  She blushed to her hair, snatching the book from him.
  "Page brought it home. It's hers."
  But her confusion betrayed her, and Landry shouted
derisively.
  "Well, I did read it then," she suddenly declared de-
fiantly. "No, I'm not ashamed. Yes, I read it from
cover to cover. It made me cry like I haven't cried over
a book since I was a little tot. You can say what you
like, but it's beautiful-a beautiful love story-and it
does tell about noble, unselfish people. I suppose it has
its faults, but it makes you feel better for reading it,
and that's what all your Wreckers in the world would
never do."
  "Well," answered Landry, "I don't know much
about that sort of thing. Corthell does. He can talk
you blind about literature. I've heard him run on by
                        51





THE PIT


the hour. He says the novel of the future is going to
be the novel without a love story."
   But Laura nodded her head incredulously.
   "It will be long after I am dead-that's one consola-
 tion," she said.
   "Corthell is full of crazy ideas anyhow," Landry
went on, still continuing to pass the books up to her.
"He's a good sort, and I like him well enough, but he's
the kind of man that gets up a reputation for being
clever and artistic by running down the very one par-
ticular thing that everyone likes, and cracking up some
book or picture or play that no one has ever heard of.
Just let anything get popular once and Sheldon Corthell
can't speak of it without shuddering. But he'll go over
here to some Archer Avenue pawn shop, dig up an old
brass stewpan, or coffee-pot that some greasy old Rus-
sian Jew has chucked away, and he'll stick it up in his
studio and regularly kow-tow to it, and talk about the
'decadence of American industrial arts.' I've heard him.
I say it's pure affectation, that's what it is, pure affec-
tation."
  But the book-case meanwhile had been filling up,
and now Laura remarked:
   "No more, Landry. That's all that will go here."
   She prepared to descend from the ladder. In filling
the higher shelves she had mounted almost to the top-
most step.
  "Careful now," said Landry, as he came forward.
"Give me your hand."
  She gave it to him, and then, as she descended, Lan-
dry had the assurance to put his arm around her waist
as if to steady her. He was surprised at his own audacity,
for he had premeditated nothing, and his arm was about
her before he was well aware. He yet found time to ex-
perience a qualm of apprehension. Just how would
Laura take it? Had he gone too far?
                         52





THE PIT


  But Laura did not even seem to notice, all her atten-
tion apparently fixed upon coming safely down to the
floor. She descended and shook out her skirts.
  "There," she said, "that's over with. Look, I'm all
dusty."
  There was a knock at the half-open door. It was the
cook.
  "What are you going to have for supper, Miss Dear-
born?" she inquired. "There's nothing in the house."
  "Oh, dear," said Laura with sudden blankness. "I
never thought of supper. Isn't there anything?"
  "Nothing but some eggs and coffee." The cook as-
sumed an air of aloofness, as if the entire affair were
totally foreign to any interest or concern of hers. Laura
dismissed her, saying that she would see to it.
  "We'll have to go out and get some things," she said.
"We'll all go. I'm tired of staying in the house."
  "No, I've a better scheme," announced Landry.
"I'll invite you all out to dine with me. I know a place
where you can get the best steak in America. It has
stopped raining. See," he showed her the window.
  "But, Landry, we are all so dirty and miserable."
  "We'll go right now and get there early. There will
be nobody there, and we can have a room to ourselves.
Oh, it's all right," he declared. "You just trust me."
  "We'll see what Page and Aunt Wess' say. Of course
Aunt Wess' would have to come."
  "Of course," he said. "I wouldn't think of asking
you unless she could come."
  A little later the two sisters, Mrs. Wessels, and
Landry came out of the house, but before taking their
car they crossed to the opposite side of the street, Laura
having said that she wanted to note the effect of her
parlour curtains from the outside.
  "I think they are looped up just far enough," she de-
clared. But Landry was observing the house itself.
                         53





                     THE PIT
  "It is the best-looking place on the block," he an-
swered.
  In fact, the house was not without a certain attrac-
tiveness. It occupied a corner lot at the intersection of
Huron and North State streets. Directly opposite was
St. James' Church, and at one time the house had
served as the rectory. For the matter of that, it had
been built for just that purpose. Its style of architecture
was distantly ecclesiastic, with a suggestion of Gothic
to some of the doors and windows. The material used
was solid, massive, the walls thick, the foundation
heavy. It did not occupy the entire lot, the original
builder seeming to have preferred garden space to mere
amplitude of construction, and in addition to the in-
evitable "back yard," a lawn bordered it on three sides.
It gave the place a certain air of distinction and exclu-
siveness. Vines grew thick upon the southern walls; in
the summer time fuchsias, geraniums, and pansies would
flourish in the flower beds by the front stoop. The grass
plat by the curb boasted a couple of trees. The whole
place was distinctive, individual, and very homelike,
and came as a grateful relief to the endless lines of houses
built of yellow Michigan limestone that pervaded the
rest of the neighbourhood in every direction.
  "I love the place," exclaimed Laura. "I think it's as
pretty a house as I have seen in Chicago."
  "Well, it isn't so spick and span," commented Page.
"It gives you the idea that we're not new-rich and
showy and all."
   But Aunt Wess' was not yet satisfied.
   "You may see, Laura," she remarked, "how you are
going to heat all that house with that one furnace, but
I declare I don't."
  Their car, or rather their train of cars, coupled to-
gether in threes, in Chicago style, came, and Landry
escorted them down town. All the way Laura could
                          54





THE PIT


not refrain from looking out of the windows, absorbed
in the contemplation of the life and aspects of the streets.
  "You will give yourself away," said Page. "Every-
body will know you're from the country."
  "I am," she retorted. "But there's a difference be-
tween just mere 'country' and Massachusetts, and I'm
not ashamed of it."
   Chicago, the great grey city, interested her at every
instant and under every condition. As yet she was not
sure that she liked it; she could not forgive its dirty
streets, the unspeakable squalor of some of its poorer
neighbourhoods that sometimes developed, like cancer-
ous growths, in the very heart of fine residence districts.
The black murk that closed every vista of the business
streets oppressed her, and the soot that stained linen
and gloves each time she stirred abroad was a never-
ending distress.
   But the life was tremendous. All around, on every
side, in every direction the vast machinery of Common-
wealth clashed and thundered from dawn to dark and
from dark till dawn. Even now, as the car carried her
farther into the business quarter, she could hear it, see
it, and feel in her every fibre the trepidation of its mo-
tion. The blackened waters of the river, seen an instant
between stanchions as the car trundled across the State
Street bridge, disappeared under fleets of tugs of lake
steamers, of lumber barges from Sheboygan and Mack-
inac, of grain boats from Duluth, of coal scows that
filled the air with impalpable dust, of cumbersome
schooners laden with produce, of grimy rowboats dodg-
ing the prows and paddles of the larger craft, while on
all sides, blocking the horizon, red in colour and desig-
nated by Brobdingnag letters, towered the hump-shoul-
dered grain elevators.
   Just before crossing the bridge on the north side of
 the river she had caught a glimpse of a great railway
                          55





                     THE PIT
terminus. Down there below, rectilinear, scientifically
paralleled and squared, the Yard disclosed itself. A
system of grey rails beyond words complicated opened
out and spread immeasurably. Switches, semaphores,
and signal towers, stood here and there. A dozen trains,
freight and passenger, puffed and steamed, waiting the
word to depart. Detached engines hurried in and out
of sheds and roundhouses, seeking their trains, or bunted
the ponderous freight cars into switches; trundling up
and down, clanking, shrieking, their bells filling the air
with the clangour of tocsins. Men in visored caps
shouted hoarsely, waving their arms or red flags; drays,
their big dappled horses, feeding in their nose bags,
stood backed up to the open doors of freight cars and
received their loads. A train departed roaring. Before
midnight it would be leagues away boring through the
Great Northwest, carrying Trade-the life blood of
nations-into communities of which Laura had never
heard. Another train, reeking with fatigue, the air brakes
screaming, arrived and halted, debouching a flood of
passengers, business men, bringing Trade-a galvaniz-
ing elixir-from the very ends and corners of the con-
tinent.
  Or, again, it was South Water Street-a jam of de-
livery wagons and market carts backed to the curbs,
leaving only a tortuous path between the endless files
of horses, suggestive of an actual barrack of cavalry.
Provisions, market produce, "garden truck" and fruits,
in an infinite welter of crates and baskets, boxes and
sacks, crowded the sidewalks. The gutter was choked
with an overflow of refuse cabbage leaves, soft oranges,
decaying beet tops. The air was thick with the heavy
smell of vegetation. Food was trodden under foot, food
crammed the stores and warehouses to bursting. Food
mingled with the mud of the highway. The very dray
horses were gorged with an unending nourishment of
                          56





                     TIHE PIT
snatched mouthfuls picked from backboard, from barrel
top, and from the edge of the sidewalk. The entire local-
ity reeked with the fatness of a hundred thousand
furrows. A land of plenty, the inordinate abundance of
the earth itself emptied itself upon the asphalt and
cobbles of the quarter. It was the Mouth of the City,
and drawn from all directions, over a territory of im-
mense area, this glut of crude subsistence was sucked in,
as if into a rapacious gullet, to feed the sinews and to
nourish the fibres of an immeasurable colossus.
  Suddenly the meaning and significance of it all
dawned upon Laura. The Great Grey City, brooking
no rival, imposed its dominion upon a reach of country
larger than many a kingdom of the Old World. For
thousands of miles beyond its confines was its influence
felt. Out, far out, far away in the snow and shadow of
northern Wisconsin forests, axes and saws bit the bark
of century-old trees, stimulated by this city's energy.
Just as far to the southward pick and drill leaped to the
assault of veins of anthracite, moved by her central
power. Her force turned the wheels of harvester and
seeder a thousand miles distant in Iowa and Kansas.
Her force spun the screws and propellers of innumerable
squadrons of lake steamers crowding the Sault Sainte
Marie. For her and because of her all the Central States,
all the Great Northwest roared with traffic and industry;
sawmills screamed; factories, their smoke blackening
the sky, clashed and flamed; wheels turned, pistons
leaped in their cylinders; cog gripped cog; beltings
clasped the drums of mammoth wheels; and converters
of forges belched into the clouded air their tempest
breath of molten steel.
  It was Empire, the resistless subjugation of all this
central world of the lakes and the prairies. Here, mid-
most in the land, beat the Heart of the Nation, whence
inevitably must come its immeasurable power, its in-
                         57





THE PIT


finite, infinite, inexhaustible vitality. Here, of all her
cities, throbbed the true life-the true power and spirit
of America; gigantic, crude with the crudity of youth,
disdaining rivalry; sane and healthy and vigorous;
brutal in its ambition, arrogant in the new-found
knowledge of its giant strength, prodigal of its wealth,
infinite in its desires. In its capacity boundless, in its
courage indomitable; subduing the wilderness in a
single generation, defying calamity, and through the
flame and the d6bris of a commonwealth in ashes, rising
suddenly renewed, formidable, and Titanic.
  Laura, her eyes dizzied, her ears stunned, watched
tirelessly.
   "There is something terrible about it," she mur-
mured, half to herself, "something insensate. In a way,
it doesn't seem human. It's like a great tidal wave. It's
all very well for the individual just so long as he can
keep afloat, but once fallen, how horribly quick it would
crush him, annihilate him, how horribly quick, and with
such horrible indifference! I suppose it's civilization in
the making, the thing that isn't meant to be seen, as
though it were too elemental, too-primordial; like the
first verses of Genesis."
   The impression remained long with her, and not even
the gaiety of their little supper could altogether disperse
it. She was a little frightened-frightened of the vast,
cruel machinery of the city's life, and of the men who
could dare it, who conquered it. For a moment they
seemed, in a sense, more terrible than the city itself-
men for whom all this crash of conflict and commerce
had no terrors. Those who could subdue it to their pur-
poses, must they not be themselves more terrible, more
pitiless, more brutal? She shrank a little. What could
women ever know of the life of men, after all? Even
Landry, extravagant as he was, so young, so exuberant,
so seemingly innocent-she knew that he was spoken of




                     THE PIT
as a good business man. He, too, then had his other side.
For him the Battle of the Street was an exhilaration.
Beneath that boyish exterior was the tough coarseness,
the male hardness, the callousness that met the brunt
and withstood the shock of onset.
  Ah, these men of the city, what could women ever
know of them, of their lives, of that other existence
through which-freed from the influence of wife or
mother, or daughter or sister-they passed every day
from nine o'clock till evening? It was a life in which
women had no part, and in which, should they enter
it, they would no longer recognize son or husband, or
father or brother. The gentle-mannered fellow, clean-
minded, clean-handed, of the breakfast or supper table
was one man. The other, who and what was he? Down
there in the murk and grime of the business district
raged the Battle of the Street, and therein he was a
being transformed, case hardened, supremely selfish,
asking no quarter; no, nor giving any. Fouled with the
clutchings and grapplings of the attack, besmirched
with the elbowing of low associates and obscure allies,
he set his feet toward conquest, and mingled with the
marchings of an army that surged forever forward and
back; now in merciless assault, beating the fallen enemy
under foot, now in repulse, equally merciless, trampling
down the auxiliaries of the day before, in a panic dash
for safety; always cruel, always selfish, always pitiless.
  To contrast these men with such as Corthell was in-
evitable. She remembered him, to whom the business
district was an unexplored country, who kept himself
far from the fighting, his hands unstained, his feet un-
sullied. He passed his life gently, in the calm, still at-
mosphere of art, in the cult of the beautiful, unper-
turbed, tranquil; painting, reading, or, piece by piece,
developing his beautiful stained glass. Him women
could know, with him they could sympathize. And he
                          59




                     THE PIT
could enter fully into their lives and help and stimulate
them. Of the two existences which did she prefer, that
of the business man, or that of the artist?
  Then suddenly Laura surprised herself. After all, she
was a daughter of the frontier, and the blood of those
who had wrestled with a new world flowed in her body.
Yes, Corthell's was a beautiful life; the charm of dim
painted windows, the attraction of darkened studios
with their harmonies of colour, their orientalisms, and
their arabesques was strong. No doubt it all had its
place. It fascinated her at times, in spite of herself. To
relax the mind, to indulge the senses, to live in an en-
vironment of pervading beauty was delightful. But the
men to whom the woman in her turned were not those
of the studio. Terrible as the Battle of the Street was,
it was yet battle. Only the strong and the brave might
dare it, and the figure that held her imagination and her
sympathy was not the artist, soft of hand and of speech,
elaborating graces of sound and colour and form, refined,
sensitive, and temperamental; but the fighter, unknown
and unknowable to women as he was; hard, rigorous,
panoplied in the harness of the warrior, who strove
among the trumpets, and who, in the brunt of conflict,
conspicuous, formidable, set the battle in a rage around
him, and exulted like a champion in the shoutings of
the captains.
  They were not long at table, and by the time they
were ready to depart it was about half-past five. But
when they emerged into the street, it was discovered
that once more the weather had abruptly changed. It
was snowing thickly. Again a bitter wind from off the
Lake tore through the streets. The slush and melted
snow was freezing, and the north side of everi lamp post
and telegraph pole was sheeted with ice.
  To add to their discomfort, the North State Street
cars were blocked. When they gained the corner of
                         60





THE PIT


Washington Street they could see where the congestion
began, a few squares distant.
  "There's nothing for it," declared Landry, "but to
go over and get the Clarke Street cars-and at that you
may have to stand up all the way home, at this time of
day."
  They paused, irresolute, a moment on the corner. It
was the centre of the retail quarter. Close at hand a
vast dry goods house, built in the old "iron-front"
style, towered from the pavement, and through its hun-
dreds of windows presented to view a world of stuffs
and fabrics, upholsteries and textiles, kaleidoscopic,
gleaming in the fierce brilliance of a multitude of lights.
From each street doorway was pouring an army of
"shoppers," women for the most part; and these-
since the store catered to a rich clientele-fashionably
dressed. Manyof them stood for a moment on the thresh-
old of the storm-doorways, turning up the collars of
their sealskins, settling their hands in their muffs, and
searching the street for their coup6s and carriages.
  Among the number of those thus engaged, one, sud-
denly catching sight of Laura, waved a muffin her direc-
tion, then came quickly forward. It was Mrs. Cressler.
  "Laura, my dearest girl! Of all the people. I am
so glad to see you!" She kissed Laura on the cheek,
shook hands all around, and asked about the sisters'
new home. Did they want anything, or was there any-
thing she could do to help? Then interrupting herself,
and laying a glove on Laura's arm:
  "I've got more to tell you."
  She compressed her lips and stood off from Laura,
fixing her with a significant glance.
  "Me? To tell me?"
  "Where are you going now?"
  "Home; but our cars are stopped. We must go over
to     "
                         6i





                    THE PIT
  "Fiddlesticks! You and Page and Mrs. Wessels-all
of you are coming home and dine with me."
  "But we've had dinner already," they all cried,
speaking at once.
  Page explained the situation, but Mrs. Cressler would
not be denied.
  "The carriage is right here," she said. "I don't have
to call for Charlie. He's got a man from Cincinnati in
tow, and they are going to dine at the Calumet Club."
  It ended by the two sisters and Mrs. Wessels getting
into Mrs. Cressler's carriage. Landry excused himself.
He lived on the South Side, on Michigan Avenue, and
declaring that he knew they had had enough of him for
one day, took himself off.
  But whatever Mrs. Cressler had to tell Laura, she
evidently was determined to save for her ears only.
Arrived at the Dearborns' home, she sent her footman
in to tell the "girl" that the family would not be home
that night. The Cresslers lived hard by on the same
street, and within ten minutes' walk of the Dearborns.
The two sisters and their aunt would be back immedi-
ately after breakfast.
  When they had got home with Mrs. Cressler, this
latter suggested hot tea and sandwiches in the library,
for the ride had been cold. But the others, worn out,
declared for bed as soon as Mrs. Cressler herself had
dined.
  "Oh, bless you, Carrie," said Aunt Wess'; "I couldn't
think of tea. My back is just about broken, and I'm
going straight to my bed."
  Mrs. Cressler showed them to their rooms. Page and
Mrs. Wessels elected to sleep together, and once the
door had closed upon them the little girl unburdened
herself.
  "I suppose Laura thinks it's all right, running off like
this for the whole blessed night, and no one to look
                         62





                     THE PIT
 after the house but those two servants that nobody
 knows anything about. As though there weren't heaven
 knows what all to tend to there in the morning. I just
 don't see," she exclaimed decisively, "how we're going
 to get settled at all. That Landry Court! My goodness,
 he's more hindrance than help. Did you ever see ! He
 just dashes in as though he were doing it all, and messes
 everything up, and loses things, and gets things into the
 wrong place, and forgets this and that, and then he and
 Laura sit down and spoon. I never saw anything like it.
 First it's Corthell and then Landry, and next it will be
 somebody else. Laura regularly mortifies me; a great,
 grown-up girl like that, flirting, and letting every man
 she meets think that he's just the one particular one of
 the whole earth. It's not good form. And Landry-as if
 he didn't know we've got more to do now than just to
 dawdle and dawdle. I could slap him. I like to see a man
 take life seriously and try to amount to something, and
 not waste the best years of his life trailing after women
 who are old enough to be his grandmother, and don't
 mean that it will ever come to anything."
 In her room, in the front of the house, Laura was
 partly undressed when Mrs. Cressler knocked at her
 door. The latter had put on a wrapper of flowered
 silk, and her hair was bound in "invisible nets."
 "I brought you a dressing-gown," she said. She hung
 it over the foot of the bed, and sat down on the bed it-
 self, watching Laura, who stood before the glass of the
 bureau, her head bent upon her breast, her hands busy
with the back of her hair. From time to time the hairpins
clicked as she laid them down in the silver trays close at
hand. Then putting her chin in the air, she shook her
head, and the great braids, unlooped, fell to her waist.
  "What pretty hair you have, child," murmured Mrs.
Cressler. She was settling herself for a long talk with
her protegee. She had much to tell, but now that they
                         63





                     THE PI
had the whole night before them, could afford to take
her time.
   Between the two women the conversation began
slowly, with detached phrases and observations that did
not call necessarily for answers-mere beginnings that
they did not care to follow up.
   "They tell me," said Mrs. Cressler, "that that Gretry
girl smokes ten cigarettes every night before she goes
to bed. You know the Gretrys-they were at the opera
the other night."
  Laura permitted herself an indefinite murmur of in-
terest. Her head to one side, she drew the brush in slow,
deliberate movements downward underneath the long,
thick strands of her hair. Mrs. Cressler watched her
attentively.
   "Why don't you wear your hair that new way,
Laura," she remarked, "farther down on your neck?
I see everyone doing it now."
  The house was very still. Outside the double windows
they could hear the faint murmuring click of the frozen
snow. A radiator in the hallway clanked and strangled
for a moment, then fell quiet again.
  "What a pretty room this is," said Laura. "I think
I'll have to do our guest room something like this-a
sort of white and gold effect. My hair? Oh, I don't
know. Wearing it low that way makes it catch so on
the hooks of your collar, and, besides, I was afraid it
would make my head look so flat."
  There was a silence. Laura braided a long strand,
with quick, regular motions of both hands, and letting
it fall over her shoulder, shook it into place with a twist
of her head. She stepped out of her skirt, and Mrs.
Cressler handed her her dressing-gown, and brought
out a pair of quilted slippers of red satin from the ward-
robe.
  In the grate, the fire that had been lighted just before
                         64





                    THE PIT
they had come upstairs was crackling sharply. Laura
drew up an armchair and sat down in front of it, her
chin in her hand. Mrs. Cressler stretched herself upon
the bed, an arm behind her head.
  "Well, Laura," she began at length, "I have some
real news for you. My dear, I believe you've made a
conquest."
  "I!" murmured Laura, looking around. She feigned
a surprise, though she guessed at once that Mrs. Cress-
ler had Corthell in mind.
  "That Mr. Jadwin-the one you met at the opera."
  Genuinely taken aback, Laura sat upright and stared
wide-eyed.
  "Mr. Jadwin!" she exclaimed. "Why, we didn't
have five minutes' talk. Why, I hardly know the man.
I only met him last night."
  But Mrs. Cressler shook her head, closing her eyes
and putting her lips together.
  "That don't make any difference, Laura. Trust me
to tell when a man is taken with a girl. My dear, you
can have him as easy as that." She snapped her fingers,
  "Oh, I'm sure you're mistaken, Mrs. Cressler."
  "Not in the least. I've known Curtis Jadwin now for
fifteen years-nobody better. He's as old a family
friend as Charlie and I have. I know him like a book.
And I tell you the man is in love with you."
  "Well, I hope he didn't tell you as much," cried
Laura, promising herself to be royally angry if such was
the case. But Mrs. Cressler hastened to reassure her.
  "Oh my, no. But all the way home last night-he
came home with us, you know-he kept referring to
you, and just so soon as the conversation got on some
other subject he would lose interest. He wanted to
know all about you-oh, you know how a man will
talk," she exclaimed. "And he said you had more sense
and more intelligence than any girl he had ever known."
     a                  65





                    THE PIT
  "Oh, well," answered Laura deprecatingly, as if to
say that that did not count for much with her.
  "And that you were simply beautiful. He said that
he never remembered to have seen a more beautiful
woman."
  Laura turned her head away, a hand shielding her
cheek. She did not answer immediately, then at length:
  "Has he-this Mr. Jadwin-has he ever been mar-
ried before?"
  "No, no. He's a bachelor, and rich! He could buy
and sell us. And don't think, Laura dear, that I'm
jumping at conclusions. I hope I'm woman of the
world enough to know that a man who's taken with a
pretty face and smart talk isn't going to rush right into
matrimony because of that. It wasn't so much what
Curtis Jadwin said-though, dear me suz, he talked
enough about you-as what he didn't say. I could tell.
He was thinking hard. He was hit, Laura. I know he
was. And Charlie said he spoke about you again this
morning at breakfast. Charlie makes me tired some-
times," she added irrelevantly.
  "Charlie?" repeated Laura.
  "Well, of course I spoke to him about Jadwin, and
how taken he seemed with you, and the man roared at
me."
  "He didn't believe it, then."
  "Yes, he did-when I could get him to talk seriously
about it, and when I made him remember how Mr.
Jadwin had spoken in the carriage coming home."
  Laura curled her leg under her and sat nursing her
foot and looking into the fire. For a long time neither
spoke. A little clock of brass and black marble began
to chime, very prettily, the half hour of nine. Mrs.
Cressler observed:
   "That Sheldon Corthell seems to be a very agreeable
kind of a young man, doesn't he?"
                         66





THE PIT


  "Yes," replied Laura thoughtfully, "he is agreeable."
  "And a talented fellow, too," continued Mrs. Cress-
ler. "But somehow it never impressed me that there
was very much to him."
  "Oh," murmured Laura indifferently, "I don't
know."
  "I suppose," Mrs. Cressler went on, in a tone of
resignation, "I suppose he thinks the world and all of
you ?"
  Laura raised a shoulder without answering.
  "Charlie can't abide him," said Mrs. Cressler.
"Funny, isn't it, what prejudices men have? Charlie
always speaks of him as though he were a higher order
of glazier. Curtis Jadwin seems to like him . . . What
do you think of him, Laura-of Mr. Jadwin?"
  "I don't know," she answered, looking vaguely into
the fire. "I thought he was a strong man-mentally
I mean, and that he would be kindly and-and-gen-
erous. Somehow," she said, musingly, "I didn't think
he would be the sort of man that women would take to,
at first-but then I don't know. I saw very little of
him, as I say. He didn't impress me as being a woman's
man."
  "All the better," said the other. "Who would want
to marry a woman's man? I wouldn't. Sheldon Cor-
thell is that. I tell you one thing, Laura, and when
you are as old as I am, you'll know it's true: the kind
of a man that men like-not women-is the kind of a
man that makes the best husband."
  Laura nodded her head.
  "Yes," she answered, listlessly, "I suppose that's
  true."
  "You said Jadwin struck you as being a kindly man,
  a generous man. He's just that, and that charitable!
  You know he has a Sunday-school over on the West
  Side, a Sunday-school for mission children, and I do
                        67





THE PIT


believe he's more interested in that than in his business.
He wants to make it the biggest Sunday-school in Chi-
cago. It's an ambition of his. I don't want you to think
that he's good in a goody-goody way, because he's not.
Laura," she exclaimed, "he's afine man. I didn't intend
to brag him up to you, because I wanted you to like him.
But no one knows-as I say-no one knows Curtis
Jadwin better than Charlie and I, and we just love him.
The kindliest, biggest-hearted fellow-oh, well, you'll
know him for yourself, and then you'll see. He passes
the plate in our church."
  "Dr. Wendell's church?" asked Laura.
  "Yes, you know-the Second Presbyterian."
  "I'm Episcopalian myself," observed Laura, still
thoughtfully gazing into the fire.
   "I know, I know. But Jadwin isn't the blue-nosed
sort. And now see here, Laura, I want to tell you. J.-
that's what Charlie and I call Jadwin-J. was talking
to us the other day about supporting a ward in the Chil-
dren's Hospital for the children of his Sunday-school
that get hurt or sick. You see he has nearly eight hun-
dred boys and girls in his school, and there's not a week
passes that he don't hear of some one of them who has
been hurt or taken sick. And he wants to start a ward
at the Children's Hospital, that can take care of them.
He says he wants to get other people interested, too, and
so he wants to start a contribution. He says he'll double
any amount that's raised in the next six months-that is
if there's two thousand raised, he'll make it four
thousand; understand? And so Charlie and I and the
Gretrys are going to get up an amateur play-a charity
affair-and raise as much money as we can. J. thinks
it's a good idea, and-here's the point-we were talking
about it coming home in the carriage, and J. said he
wondered if that Miss Dearborn wouldn't take part.
And we are all wild to have you. You know you do that
                         68





THE PIT


sort of thing so well. Now don't say yes or no to-night.
You sleep over it. J. is crazy to have you in it."
  "I'd love to do it," answered Laura. "But I would
have to see-it takes so long to get settled, and there's
so much to do about a big house like ours, I might not
have time. But I will let you know."
  Mrs. Cressler told her in detail about the proposed
play. Landry Court was to take part, and she enlisted
Laura's influence to get Sheldon Corthell to undertake
a r6le. Page, it appeared, had already promised to help.
Laura remembered now that she had heard her speak
of it. However, the plan was so immature as yet, that it
hardly admitted of very much discussion, and inevitably
the conversation came back to its starting-point.
  "You know," Laura had remarked in answer to one
of Mrs. Cressler's observations upon the capabilities
and business ability of "J.," "you know I never heard
of him before you spoke of our theatre party. I don't
know anything about him."
  But Mrs. Cressler promptly supplied the information.
Curtis Jadwin was a man about thirty-five, who had
begun life without a sou in his pockets. He was a native
of Michigan. His people were farmers, nothing more
nor less than hardy, honest fellows, who ploughed and
sowed for a living. Curtis had only a rudimentary school-
ing, because he had given up the idea of finishing his
studies in the High School in Grand Rapids, on the
chance of going into business with a livery-stable keeper.
Then in time he had bought out the business and had
run it for himself. Someone in Chicago owed him money,
and in default of payment had offered him a couple of
lots on Wabash Avenue. That was how he happened to
come to Chicago. Naturally enough as the city grew the
Wabash Avenue property-it was near Monroe Street
-increased in value. He sold the lots and bought other
real estate, sold that and bought somewhere else, and
                         69





THE PIT


so on, till he owned some of the best business sites in the
city. Just his ground rent alone brought him, heaven
knew how many thousands a year. He was one of the
largest real estate owners in Chicago. But he no longer
bought and sold. His property had grown so large that
just the management of it alone took up most of his
time. He had an office in the Rookery, and perhaps
being so close to the Board of Trade Building, had given
him a taste for trying a little deal in wheat now and
then. As a rule, he deplored speculation. He had no fixed
principles about it, like Charlie. Only he was conserva-
tive; occasionally he hazarded small operations. Some-
how he had never married. There had been affairs. Oh,
yes, one or two, of course. Nothing very serious. He
just didn't seem to have met the right girl, that was
all. He lived on Michigan Avenue, near the corner of
Twenty-first Street, in one of those discouraging eternal
yellow limestone houses with a basement dining room.
His aunt kept house for him, and his nieces and nephews
overran the place. There was always a raft of them
there, either coming or going; and the way they ex-
ploited him! He supported them all; heaven knew how
many there were; such drabs and gawks, all elbows and
knees, who soaked themselves with cologne and made
companions of the servants. They and the second girls
were always squabbling about their things that they
found in each other's rooms.
   It was growing late. At length Mrs. Cressler rose.
   "My goodness, Laura, look at the time; and I've
been keeping you up when you must be killed for
sleep."
   She took herself away, pausing at the doorway long
enough to say:
   "Do try to manage to take part in the play. 'J.' made
 me promise that I would get you."
   "Well, I think I can," Laura answered. "Only I'll
                         70





                     THE PIT
have to see first how our new r6gime is going to run-
the house I mean."
  When Mrs. Cressle-" had gone Laura lost no time in
getting to bed. But after she turned out the gas she
remembered that she had not "covered" the fire, a
custom that she still retained from the daily round of
her life at Barrington. She did not light the gas again,
but guided by the firelight, spread a shovelful of ashes
over the top of the grate. Yet when she had done this,
she still knelt there a moment, looking wide-eyed into
the glow, thinking over the events of the last twenty-
four hours. When all was said and done, she had, after
all, found more in Chicago than the clash and trepida-
tion of empire-making, more than the reverberation of
the thunder of battle, more than the piping and choiring
of sweet music.
  First it had been Sheldon Corthell, quiet, persuasive,
eloquent. Then Landry Court with his exuberance and
extravagance and boyishness, and now-unexpectedly
-behold, a new element had appeared-this other one,
this man of the world, of affairs, mature, experienced,
whom she hardly knew. It was charming she told her-
self, exciting. Life never had seemed half so delightful.
Romantic, she felt Romance, unseen, intangible, at
work all about her. And love, which of all things know-
able was dearest to her, came to her unsought.
  Her first aversion to the Great Grey City was fast
disappearing. She saw it now in a kindlier aspect.
  "I think," she said at last, as she still knelt before
the fire, looking deep into the coals, absorbed, ab-
stracted, "I think that I am going to be very happy
here."


71











                  CHAPTER III

ON A certain Monday morning, about a month later,
Curtis Jadwin descended from his office in the Rookery
Building, and turning southward, took his way toward
the brokerage and commission office of Gretry, Converse
& Co., on the ground floor of the Board of Trade Build
ing, only a few steps away.
  It was about nine o'clock; the weather was mild, the
sun shone. La Salle Street swarmed with the multitudi-
nous life that seethed about the doors of the innumerable
offices of brokers and commission men of the neighbour-
hood. To the right, in the peristyle of the Illinois Trust
Building, groups of clerks, of messengers, of brokers, of
clients, and of depositors formed and broke incessantly.
To the left, where the facade of the Board of Trade
blocked the street, the activity was astonishing, and in
and out of the swing doors of its entrance streamed an
incessant tide of coming and going. All the life of the
neighbourhood seemed to centre at this point-the en-
trance of the Board of Trade. Two currents that trended
swiftly through La Salle and Jackson streets, and that
fed, or were fed by, other tributaries that poured in
through Fifth Avenue and through Clarke and Dearborn
streets, met at this point-one setting in, the other out.
The nearer the currents the greater their speed. Men-
mere flotsam in the flood-as they turned into La Salle
Street from Adams or from Monroe, or even from as far
as Madison, seemed to accelerate their pace as they
approached. At the Illinois Trust the walk became a
stride, at the Rookery the stride was almost a trot.
                          72





                     THE PIT
 But at the corner of Jackson Street, the Board of Trade
 now merely the width of the street away, the trot be-
 came a run, and young men and boys, under the pre-
 tense of escaping the trucks and wagons of the cobbles,
 dashed across at a veritable gallop, flung themselves
 panting into the entrance of the Board, were engulfed
 in the turmoil of the spot, and disappeared with a sud-
 den fillip into the gloom of the interior.
   Often Jadwin had noted the scene, and, unimagina-
tive though he was, had long since conceived the notion
of some great, some resistless force within the Board of
Trade Building that held the tide of the streets within
its grip, alternately drawing it in and throwing it forth.
Within there, a great whirlpool, a pit of roaring waters
spun and thundered, sucking in the life tides of the
city, sucking them in as into the mouth of some tre-
mendous cloaca, the maw of some colossal sewer; then
vomiting them forth again, spewing them up and out,
only to catch them in the return eddy and suck them
in afresh.
  Thus it went, day after day. Endlessly, ceaselessly
the Pit, enormous, thundering, sucked in and spewed
out, sending the swirl of its mighty central eddy far out
through the city's channels. Terrible at the centre, it
was, at the circumference, gentle, insidious, and per-
suasive, the send of the flowing so mild, that to embark
upon it, yielding to the influence, was a pleasure that
seemed all devoid of risk. But the circumference was
not bounded by the city. All through the Northwest,
all through the central world of the Wheat the set and
whirl of that innermost Pit made itself felt; and it spread
and spread and spread till grain in the elevators of west-
ern Iowa moved and stirred and answered to its centripe-
tal force, and men upon the streets of New York felt
the mysterious tugging of its undertow engage their
feet, embrace their bodies, overwhelm them, and carry
                         73





                     THE PIT
them bewildered and unresisting back and downward
to the Pit itself.
  Nor was the Pit's centrifugal power any less. Because
of some sudden eddy spinning outward from the middle
of its turmoil, a dozen bourses of continental Europe
clamoured with panic, a dozen Old-World banks, firm
as the established hills, trembled and vibrated. Because
of an unexpected caprice in the swirling of the inner
current, some far-distant channel suddenly dried, and
the pinch of famine made itself felt among the vine
dressers of northern Italy, the coal miners of western
Prussia. Or another channel filled, and the starved mou-
jik of the steppes, and the hunger-shrunken coolie of the
Ganges' watershed fed suddenly fat and made thank
offerings before ikon and idol.
  There in the centre of the Nation, midmost of that
continent that lay between the oceans of the New
World and the Old, in the heart's heart of the affairs
of men, roared and rumbled the Pit. It was as if the
Wheat, Nourisher of the Nations, as it rolled gigantic
and majestic in a vast flood from West to East, here,
like a Niagara, finding its flow impeded, burst suddenly
into the appalling fury of the Maelstrom, into the cha-
otic spasm of a world-force, a primeval energy, blood-
brother of the earthquake and the glacier, raging and
wrathful that its power should be braved by some pinch
of human spawn that dared raise barriers across its
courses.
  Small wonder that Cressler laughed at the thought
of cornering wheat, and even now as Jadwin crossed
Jackson Street, on his way to his broker's office on the
lower floor of the Board of Trade Building, he noted
the ebb and flow that issued from its doors, and remem-
bered the huge river of wheat that rolled through this
place from the farms of Iowa and ranches of Dakota to
the mills and bakeshops of Europe.
                         74





THE PIT


  "There's something, perhaps, in what Charlie says,"
he said to himself. "Corner this stuff-my God!"
  Gretry, Converse & Co., was the name of the broker-
age firm that always handled Jadwin's rare speculative
ventures. Converse was dead long since, but the firm
still retained its original name. The house was as old
and as well established as any on the Board of Trade.
It had a reputation for conservatism, and was known
more as a Bear than a Bull concern. It was immensely
wealthy and immensely important. It discouraged the
growth of a clientele of country customers, of small ad-
venturers, knowing well that these were the first to go
in a crash, unable to meet margin calls, and leaving
to their brokers the responsibility of their disastrous
trades. The large, powerful Bears were its friends, the
Bears strong of grip, tenacious of jaw, capable of pulling
down the strongest Bull. Thus the firm had no consider-
ation for the "outsiders," the "public"-the Lambs.
The Lambs! Such a herd, timid, innocent, feeble, as
much out of place in La Salle Street as a puppy in a
cage of panthers; the Lambs, whom Bull and Bear did
not so much as condescend to notice, but who, in their
mutual struggle of horn and claw, they crushed to death
by the mere rolling of their bodies.
  Jadwin did not go directly into Gretry's main office,
but instead made his way in at the entrance of the
Board of Trade Building, and going on past the stair-
ways that on either hand led up to the "Floor" on the
second story, entered the corridor beyond, and thence
gained the customers' room of Gretry, Converse & Co.
All the more important brokerage firms had offices on
the ground floor of the building, offices that had two en-
trances, one giving upon the street, and one upon the
corridor of the Board. Generally the corridor entrance
admitted directly to the firm's customers' room. This
was the case with the Gretry-Converse house.
                         75





THE PIT


  Once in the customers' room, Jadwin paused, looking
about him.
  He could not tell why Gretry had so earnestly desired
him to come to his office that morning, but he wanted
to know how wheat was selling before talking to the
broker. The room was large, and but for the lighted gas,
burning crudely without globes, would have been dark.
All one wall opposite the door was taken up by a great
blackboard covered with chalked figures in columns, and
illuminated by a row of overhead gas jets burning under
a tin reflector. Before this board files of chairs were
placed, and these were occupied by groups of nonde-
scripts, shabbily dressed men, young and old, with tired
eyes and unhealthy complexions, who smoked and ex-
pectorated, or engaged in interminable conversations.
   In front of the blackboard, upon a platform, a young
man in shirt-sleeves, his cuffs caught up by metal
clamps, walked up and down. Screwed to the black-
board itself was a telegraph instrument, and from time
to time, as this buzzed and ticked, the young man
chalked up cabalistic and almost illegible figures under
columns headed by initials of certain stocks and bonds,
or by the words "Pork," "Oats," or, larger than all the
others, "May Wheat." The air of the room was stale,
close, and heavy with tobacco fumes. The only noises
were the low hum of conversations, the unsteady click
of the telegraph key, and the tapping of the chalk in
the marker's fingers.
   But no one in the room seemed to pay the least atten-
 tion to the blackboard. One quotation replaced another,
 and the key and the chalk clicked and tapped inces-
 santly. The occupants of the room, sunk in their chairs,
 seemed to give no heed; some even turned their backs;
 one, his handkerchief over his knee, adjusted his specta-
 cles, and opening a newspaper two days old, began to
 read with peering deliberation, his lips forming each
                          76





                     THE PIT
word. These nondescripts gathered there, they knew not
why. Every day found them in the same place, always
with the same fetid, unlighted cigars, always with the
same frayed newspapers two days old. There they sat,
inert, stupid, their decaying senses hypnotized and
soothed by the sound of the distant rumble of the Pit,
that came through the ceiling from the floor of the
Board overhead.
  One of these figures, that of a very old man, blear-
eyed, decrepit, dirty, in a battered top hat and faded
frock coat, discoloured and weather-stained at the
shoulders, seemed familiar to Jadwin. It recalled some
ancient association, he could not say what. But he was
unable to see the old man's face distinctly; the light
was bad, and he sat with his face turned from him, eat-
ing a sandwich, which he held in a trembling hand.
  Jadwin, having noted that wheat was selling at 94,
went away, glad to be out of the depressing atmosphere
of the room.
  Gretry was in his office, and Jadwin was admitted at
once. He sat down in a chair by the broker's desk,
and for the moment the two talked of trivialities. Gre-
try was a large, placid, smooth-faced man, stolid as an
ox; inevitably dressed in blue serge, a quill toothpick
behind his ear, a Grand Army button in his lapel. He
and Jadwin were intimates. The two had come to Chi-
cago almost simultaneously, and had risen together to
become the wealthy men they were at the moment.
They belonged to the same club, lunched together every
day at Kinsley's, and took each other driving behind
their respective trotters on alternate Saturday after-
noons. In the middle of summer each stole a fortnight
from his business, and went fishing at Geneva Lake in
Wisconsin.
  "I say," Jadwin observed, "I saw an old fellow out-
side in your customers' room just now that put me in
                         77





                    THE PIT
mind of Hargus. You remember that deal of his, the
one he tried to swing before he died. Oh-how long ago
was that? Bless my soul, that must have been fifteen,
yes, twenty years ago."
  The deal of which Jadwin spoke was the legendary
operation of the Board of Trade-a mammoth corner
in September wheat, manipulated by this same Hargus,
a millionaire, who had tripled his fortune by the corner,
and had lost it by some chicanery on the part of his asso-
ciate before another year. He had run wheat up to
nearly two dollars, had been in his day a king all-power-
ful. Since then all deals had been spoken of in terms of
the Hargus affair. Speculators said, "It was almost as
bad as the Hargus deal." "It was like the Hargus
smash." "It was as big a thing as the Hargus corner."
Hargus had become a sort of creature of legends, myth-
ical, heroic, transfigured in the glory of his millions.
  "Easily twenty years ago," continued Jadwin. "If
Hargus could come to life now, he'd be surprised at
the difference in the way we do business these days.
Twenty years. Yes, it's all of that. I declare, Sam,
we're getting old, aren't we?"
  "I guess that was Hargus you saw out there," an-
swered the broker. "He's not dead. Old fellow in a
stove-pipe and greasy frock coat? Yes, that's Hargus."
  "What!" exclaimed Jadwin. "That Hargus ?"
  "Of course it was. He comes 'round every day. The
clerks give him a dollar every now and then."
  "And he's not dead? And that was Hargus, that
wretched, broken-whew! I don't want to think of it,
Sam!" And Jadwin, taken all aback, sat for a moment
speechless.
  "Yes, sir," muttered the broker grimly, "that was
Hargus."
  There was a long silence. Then at last Gretry ex-
claimed briskly:
                        78





                    THE PIT
  "Well, here's what I want to see you about."
  He lowered his voice: "You know I've got a corre-
spondent or two at Paris-all the brokers have-and we
make no secret as to who they are. But I've had an
extra man at work over there for the last six months,
very much on the quiet. I don't mind telling you this
much-that he's not the least important member of the
United States Legation. Well, now and then he is
supposed to send me what the reporters call "exclu-
sive news" that's what I feed him for, and I could
run a private steam yacht on what it costs me. But
news I get from him is a day or so in advance of every-
body else. He hasn't sent me anything very important
till this morning. This here just came in."
  He picked up a despatch from his desk and read:
  "'Utica - headquarters - modification - organic-
concomitant-within one month,' which means," he
added, "this. I've just deciphered it," and he handed
Jadwin a slip of paper on which was written:
  "Bill providing for heavy import duties on foreign
grains certain to be introduced in French Chamber of
Deputies within one month."
  "Have you got it?" he demanded of Jadwin, as he
took the slip back. "Won't forget it?" He twisted
the paper into a roll and burned it carefully in the of-
fice cuspidor.
  "Now," he remarked, "do you come in? It's just
the two of us, J., and I think we can make that Porteous
clique look very sick."
  "Hum!" murmured Jadwin, surprised. "That does
give you a twist on the situation. But to tell the truth,
Sam, I had sort of made up my mind to keep out of
speculation since my last little deal. A man gets into
this game, and into it, and into it, and before you know
he can't pull out-and he don't want to. Next he gets
his nose scratched, and he hits back to make up for it,
                        79





THE PIT


and just hits into the air and loses his balance-and
down he goes. I don't want to make any more money,
Sam. I've got my little pile, and before I get too old
I want to have some fun out of it."
   "But lord love you, J.," objected the other, "this
ain't speculation. You can see for yourself how sure it
is. I'm not a baby at this business, am I? You'll let
me know something of this game, won't you? And I
tell you, J., it's found money. The man that sells wheat
short on the strength of this has as good as got the
money in his vest pocket already. Oh, nonsense, of
course you'll come in. I've been laying for that Bull
gang since long before the Helmick failure, and now
I've got it right where I want it. Look here, J., you
aren't the man to throw money away. You'd buy a
business block if you knew you could sell it over again
at a profit. Now here's the chance to make really a fine
Bear deal. Why, as soon as this news gets on the floor
there, the price will bust right down, and down, and
down. Porteous and his crowd couldn't keep it up to
save 'em from the receiver's hand one single minute."
  "I know, Sam," answered Jadwin, "and the trouble
is, not that I don't want to speculate, but that I do-
too much. That's why I said I'd keep out of it. It isn't
so much the money as the fun of playing the game.
With half a show, I would get in a little more and a
little more, till by and by I'd try to throw a big thing,
and instead, the big thing would throw me. Why, Sam,
when you told me that that wreck out there mumbling
a sandwich was Hargus, it made me turn cold."
  "Yes, in your feet," retorted Gretry. "I'm not ask-
ing you to risk all your money, am I, or a fifth of it,
or a twentieth of it? Don't be an ass, J. Are we a con-
servative house, or aren't we? Do I talk like this when
I'm not sure? Look here. Let me sell a million bushels
for you. Yes, I know it's a bigger order than I've handled
                         80





                     THE PIT
 for you before. But this time I want to go right into it,
 head down and heels up, and get a twist on those Porte-
 ous buckoes, and raise 'em right out of their boots. We
 get a crop report this morning, and if the visible supply
 is as large as I think it is, the price will go off and unset-
 tle the whole market. I'll sell short for you at the best
 figures we can get, and you can cover on the slump any
 time between now and the end of May."
 Jadwin hesitated. In spite of himself he felt a Chance
 had come. Again that strange sixth sense of his, the
 inexplicable instinct, that only the born speculator
 knows, warned him. Every now and then during the
 course of his business career, this intuition came to him,
 this flair, this intangible, vague premonition, this pre-
 sentiment that he must seize Opportunity or else For-
 tune, that so long had stayed at his elbow, would desert
 him. In the air about him he seemed to feel an influence,
 a sudden new element, the presence of a new force. It
 was Luck, the great power, the great goddess, and all
 at once it had stooped from out the invisible, and
 just over his head passed swiftly in a rush of glittering
 wings.
 "The thing would have to be handled like glass," ob-
 served the broker thoughtfully, his eyes narrowing.
 "A tip like this is public property in twenty-four hours,
 and it don't give us any too much time. I don't want
 to break the price by unloading a million or more bushels
 on 'em all of a sudden. I'll scatter the orders pretty
 evenly. You see," he added, "here's a big point in our
 favour. We'll be able to sell on a strong market. The Pit
 traders have got some crazy war rumour going, and
 they're as flighty over it as a young ladies' seminary
 over a great big rat. And even without that, the market
 is top-heavy. Porteous makes me weary. He and his
 gang have been bucking it up till we've got an abnormal
price. Ninety-four for May wheat! Why, it's ridiculous.
                         81





                     THE PIT
Ought to be selling way down in the eighties. The least
little jolt would tip her over. Well," he said abruptly,
squaring himself at Jadwin, "do we come in? If that
same luck of yours is still in working order, here's your
chance, J., to make a killing. There's just that gilt-
edged, full-morocco chance that a report of big 'visible'
would give us."
  Jadwin laughed. "Sam," he said, "I'll flip a coin for
it."
  "Oh, get out," protested the broker; then suddenly
-the gambling instinct that a lifetime passed in that
place had cultivated in him-exclaimed:
  "All right. Flip a coin. But give me your word you'll
stay by it. Heads you come in; tails you don't. Will you
give me your word?"
  "Oh, I don't know about that," replied Jadwin,
amused at the foolishness of the whole proceeding.
But as he balanced the half-dollar on his thumb-nail,
he was all at once absolutely assured that it would fall
heads. He flipped it in the air, and even as he watched
it spin, said to himself, "It will come heads. It could
not possibly be anything else. I know it will be heads."
  And as a matter of course the coin fell heads.
  "All right," he said, "I'll come in."
  "For a million bushels?"
  "Yes-for a million. How much in margins will you
want?"
  Gretry figured a moment on the back of an envelope.
  "Fifty thousand dollars," he announced at length.
  Jadwin wrote the check on a corner of the broker's
desk, and held it a moment before him.
  "Good-bye," he said, apostrophizing the bit of paper.
"Good-bye. I ne'er shall look upon your like ,again."
  Gretry did not laugh.
  "Huh!" he grunted. "You'll look upon a hatful of
them before the month is out."
                         82




THE PIT


  The same morning Landry Court found himself in
the corridor on the ground floor of the Board of Trade
about nine o'clock. He had just come out of the office
of Gretry, Converse & Co., where he and the other
Pit traders for the house had been receiving their orders
for the day.
  As he was buying a couple of apples at the news
stand at the end of the corridor, Semple and a young
Jew named Hirsch, Pit traders for small firms in La
Salle Street, joined him.
   "Hello, Court, what do you know?"
   "Hello, Barry Semple! Hello, Hirsch!" Landry of-
fered the halves of his second apple, and the three stood
there a moment, near the foot of the stairs, talking
and eating their apples from the points of their pen-
knives.
   "I feel sort of seedy this morning," Semple observed
between mouthfuls. "Was up late last night at a stag.
A friend of mine just got back from Europe, and some
of the boys were giving him a little dinner. He was
all over the shop, this friend of mine; spent most of
his time in Constantinople; had some kind of news-
paper business there. It seems that it's a pretty crazy
proposition, Turkey and the Sultan and all that. He
said that there was nearly a row over the 'Higgins-
Pasha' incident, and that the British agent put it pretty
straight to the Sultan's secretary. My friend said Con-
stantinople put him in mind of a lot of opera bouffe
scenery that had got spilled out in the mud. Say, Court,
he said the streets were dirtier than the Chicago streets."
  "Oh, come now," said Hirsch.
  "Fact! And the dogs! He told us he knows now where
all the yellow dogs go to when they die."
  "But say," remarked Hirsch, "what is that about the
Higgins-Pasha business? I thought that was over long
ago."
                         83





                     THE PIT
   "Oh, it is," answered Semple easily. He looked at
his watch. "I guess it's about time to go up, pretty
near half-past nine."
   The three mounted the stairs, mingling with the
groups of floor traders who, in steadily increasing
numbers, had begun to move in the same direction.
But on the way Hirsch was stopped by his brother.
   "Hey, I got that box of cigars for you."
   Hirsch paused. "Oh! All right," he said, then he
added: "Say, how about that Higgins-Pasha affair?
You remember that row between England and Turkey.
They tell me the British agent in Constantinople put it
pretty straight to the Sultan the other day."
  The other was interested. "He did, hey?" he said.
"The market hasn't felt it, though. Guess there's noth-
ing to it. But there's Kelly yonder. He'd know. He's
pretty thick with Porteous' men. Might ask him."
   "You ask him and let me know. I got to go on the
floor. It's nearly time for the gong."
  Hirsch's brother found Kelly in the centre of a group
of settlement clerks.
  "Say, boy," he began, "you ought to know. They
tell me there may be trouble between England and
Turkey over the Higgins-Pasha incident, and that the
British Foreign Office has threatened the Sultan with an
ultimatum. I can see the market if that's so."
  "Nothing in it," retorted Kelly. "But I'll find out-
to make sure, by jingo."
  Meanwhile Landry had gained the top of the stairs,
and turning to the right, passed through a great door-
way, and came out upon the floor of the Board of Trade.
  It was a vast enclosure, lighted on either side by
great windows of coloured glass, the roof supported by
thin iron pillars elaborately decorated. To the left were
the bulletin blackboards, and beyond these, in the
northwest angle of the floor, a great railed-in space
                         84





                     THE PIT
where the Western Union Telegraph was installed.
To the right, on the other side of the room, a row of
tables, laden with neatly arranged paper bags half full
of samples of grains, stretched along the east wall from
the doorway of the public room at one end to the tele-
phone room at the other.
  The centre of the floor was occupied by the pits.
To the left and to the front of Landry the provision pit,
to the right the corn pit, while further on at the north
extremity of the floor, and nearly under the visitors'
gallery, much larger than the other two, and flanked
by the wicket of the official recorder, was the wheat
pit itself.
  Directly opposite the visitors' gallery, high upon the
south wall, a great dial was affixed, and on the dial a
marking hand that indicated the current price of wheat,
fluctuating with the changes made in the Pit. Just now
it stood at ninety-three and three-eighths, the closing
quotation of the preceding day.
  As yet all the pits were empty. It was some fifteen
minutes after nine. Landry checked his hat and coat
at the coat room near the north entrance, and slipped
into an old tennis jacket of striped blue flannel. Then,
hatless, his hands in his pockets, he leisurely crossed the
floor, and sat down in one of the chairs that were
ranged in files upon the floor in front of the telegraph
enclosure. He scrutinized again the despatches and
orders that he held in his hands; then, having fixed
them in his memory, tore them into very small bits,
looking vaguely about the room, developing his plan
of campaign for the morning.
  In a sense Landry Court had a double personality.
Away from the neighbourhood and influence of La Salle
Street, he was "rattle-brained," absent-minded, im-
practical, and easily excited, the last fellow in the world
to be trusted with any business responsibility. But the
                          85





THE PIT


thunder of the streets around the Board of Trade, and,
above all, the movement and atmosphere of the floor
itself awoke within him a very different Landry Court;
a whole new set of nerves came into being with the tap
of the nine-thirty gong, a whole new system of brain
machinery began to move with the first figure called
in the Pit. And from that instant until the close of the
session, no floor trader, no broker's clerk nor scalper
was more alert, more shrewd, or kept his head more
surely than the same young fellow who confused his
social engagements for the evening of the same day.
The Landry Court the Dearborn girls knew was a far
different young man from him who now leaned his el-
bows on the arms of the chair upon the floor of the
Board, and, his eyes narrowing, his lips tightening, be-
gan to speculate upon what was to be the temper of the
Pit that morning.
  Meanwhile the floor was beginning to fill up. Over
in the railed-in space, where the hundreds of telegraph
instruments were in place, the operators were arriving
in twos and threes. They hung their hats and ulsters
upon the pegs in the wall back of them, and in linen
coats, or in their shirt-sleeves, went to their seats, or,
sitting upon their tables, called back and forth to each
other, joshing, cracking jokes. Some few addressed
themselves directly to work, and here and there the in-
termittent clicking of a key began, like a diligent cricket
busking himself in advance of its mates.
  From the corridors on the ground floor up through
the south doors came the pit traders in increasing
groups. The noise of footsteps began to echo from the
high vaulting of the roof. A messenger boy crossed the
floor chanting an unintelligible name.
  The groups of traders gradually converged upon the
corn and wheat pits, and on the steps of the latter,
their arms crossed upon their knees, two men, one
                          86





                     THE PIT
 wearing a silk skull cap all awry, conversed earnestly
 in low tones.
   Winston, a great broad-shouldered bass-voiced fellow
 of some thirty-five years, who was associated with
 Landry in executing the orders of the Gretry-Converse
 house, came up to him, and, omitting any salutation,
 remarked, deliberately, slowly:
   "What's all this about this trouble between Turkey
 and England?"
   But before Landry could reply a third trader for the
 Gretry Company joined the two. This was a young
 fellow named Rusbridge, lean, black-haired, a constant
 excitement glinting in his deep-set eyes.
   "Say," he exclaimed, "there's something in that,
 there's something in that!"
   "Where did you hear it?" demanded Landry.
   "Oh-everywhere!" Rusbridge made a vague ges-
ture with one arm. "Hirsch seemed to know all about
it. It appears that there's talk of mobilizing the Medi-
terranean squadron. Darned if I know."
   "Might ask that Inter-Ocean reporter. He'd be
likely to know. I've seen him 'round here this morning,
or you might telephone the Associated Press," suggested
Landry. "The office never said a word to me."
  "Oh, the 'Associated.' They know a lot always, don't
they?" jeered Winston. "Yes, I rung 'em up. They
'couldn't confirm the rumour.' That's always the way.
You can spend half a million a year in leased wires and
special service and subscriptions to news agencies,
and you get the first smell of news like this right here
on the Floor. Remember that time when the North-
western millers sold a hundred and fifty thousand bar-
rels at one lick? The Floor was talking of it three hours
before the news slips were sent 'round, or a single wire
was in. Suppose we had waited for the Associated people
or the Commercial people then?"
                         87





THE PIT


   "It's that Higgins-Pasha incident, I'll bet," observed
Rusbridge, his eyes snapping.
   "I heard something about that this morning," re-
turned Landry. "But only that it was
   "There! What did I tell you?" interrupted Rus-
bridge. "I said it was everywhere. There's no smoke
without some fire. And I wouldn't be a bit surprised
if we get cables before noon that the British War Of-
fice had sent an ultimatum."
  And very naturally a few minutes later Winston, at
that time standing on the steps of the corn pit, heard
from a certain broker, who had it from a friend who
had just received a despatch from someone "in the
know," that the British Secretary of State for War
had forwarded an ultimatum to the Porte, and that
diplomatic relations between Turkey and England were
about to be suspended.
  All in a moment the entire Floor seemed to be talk-
ing of nothing else, and on the outskirts of every group
one could overhear the words: "Seizure of custom
house," "ultimatum," "Eastern question," "Higgins-
Pasha incident." It was the rumour of the day, and
before very long the pit traders began to receive a
multitude of despatches countermanding selling orders,
and directing them not to close out trades under cer-
tain very advanced quotations. The brokers began
wiring their principals that the market promised to
open strong and bullish.
  But by now it was near to half-past nine. From the
Western Union desks the clicking of the throng of
instruments rose into the air in an incessant staccato
stridulation. The messenger boys ran back and forth
at top speed, dodging in and out among the knots of
clerks and traders, colliding with one another, and with-
out interruption intoning the names of those for whom
they had despatches. The throng of traders concen-
                         88





                     THE PIT
trated upon the pits, and at every moment the deep-
toned hum of the murmur of many voices swelled like
the rising of a tide.
  And at this moment, as Landry stood on the rim of
the wheat pit, looking toward the telephone booth
under the visitors' gallery, he saw the osseous, stoop-
shouldered figure of Mr. Cressler-who, though he
never speculated, appeared regularly upon the. Board
every morning-making his way toward one of the
windows in the front of the building. His pocket was
full of wheat, taken from a bag on one of the sample
tables. Opening the window, he scattered the grain
upon the sill, and stood for a long moment absorbed
and interested in the dazzling flutter of the wings of
innumerable pigeons who came to settle upon the ledge,
pecking the grain with little, nervous, fastidious taps of
their yellow beaks.
  Landry cast a glance at the clock beneath the dial
on the wall behind him. It was twenty-five minutes after
nine. He stood in his accustomed place on the north
side of the Wheat Pit, upon the topmost stair. The
Pit was full. Below him and on either side of him were
the brokers, scalpers, and traders-Hirsch, Semple,
Kelly, Winston, and Rusbridge. The redoubtable Leay-
craft, who, bidding for himself, was supposed to hold
the longest line of May wheat of any one man in the
Pit, the insignificant Grossmann, a Jew who wore a
flannel shirt, and to whose outcries no one ever paid
the least attention. Fairchild, Paterson, and Goodlock,
the inseparable trio who represented the Porteous gang,
silent men, middle-aged, who had but to speak in order
to buy or sell a million bushels on the spot. And others,
and still others, veterans of sixty-five, recruits just out
of their teens, men who-some of them-in the past
had for a moment dominated the entire Pit, but who
now were content to play the part of "eighth-chasers,"
                         89





                     THE PIT
buying and selling on the same day, content with a profit
of ten dollars. Others who might at that very moment be
nursing plans which in a week's time would make them
millionaires; still others who, under a mask of noncha-
lance, strove to hide the chagrin of yesterday's defeat.
And they were there, ready, inordinately alert, ears
turned to the faintest sound, eyes searching for the
vaguest trace of meaning in those of their rivals, nerv-
ous, keyed to the highest tension, ready to thrust deep
into the slightest opening, to spring, mercilessly, upon
the smallest undefended spot. Grossmann, the little
Jew of the grimy flannel shirt, perspired in the stress
of the suspense, all but powerless to maintain silence
till the signal should be given, drawing trembling fin-
gers across his mouth. Winston, brawny, solid, unper-
turbed, his hands behind his back, waited immovably
planted on his feet with all the gravity of a statue, his
eyes preternaturally watchful, keeping Kelly-who he
had divined had some "funny business" on hand-
perpetually in sight. The Porteous trio-Fairchild,
Paterson, and Goodlock-as if unalarmed, unassailable,
all but turned their backs to the Pit, laughing among
themselves.
  The official reporter climbed to his perch in the little
cage on the edge of the Pit, shutting the door after
him. By now the chanting of the messenger boys was
an uninterrupted chorus. From all sides of the build-
ing, and in every direction they crossed and recrossed
each other, always running, their hands full of yellow
envelopes. From the telephone alcoves came the pro-
longed, musical rasp of the call bells. In the Western
Union booths the keys of the multitude of instruments
raged incessantly. Bare-headed young men hurried up
to one another, conferred an instant comparing de-
spatches, then separated, darting away at top speed.
Men called to each other halfway across the building.
                          90





THE PIT


Over by the bulletin boards clerks and agents made
careful memoranda of primary receipts, and noted down
the amount of wheat on passage, the exports and the
imports.
   And all these sounds, the chatter of the telegraph,
the intoning of the messenger boys, the shouts and
cries of clerks and traders, the shuffle and trampling
of hundreds of feet, the whirring of telephone signals
rose into the troubled air, and mingled overhead to form
a vast note, prolonged, sustained, that reverberated
from vault to vault of the airy roof, and issued from
every doorway, every opened window in one long roll of
uninterrupted thunder. In the Wheat Pit the bids, no
longer obedient of restraint, began one by one to burst
out, like the first isolated shots of a skirmish line. Gross-
mann had flung out an arm crying:
   "'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and an eighth,"
 while Kelly and Semple had almost simultaneously
,shouted, "'Give seven-eighths for May!"
   The official reporter had been leaning far over to
 catch the first quotations, one eye upon the clock at the
 end of the room. The hour and minute hands were at
 right angles.
   Then suddenly, cutting squarely athwart the vague
 crescendo of the Floor came the single incisive stroke of
 a great gong. Instantly a tumult was unchained. Arms
 were flung upward in strenuous gestures, and from
 above the crowding heads in the Wheat Pit a multitude
 of hands, eager, the fingers extended, leaped into the
 air. All articulate expression was lost in the single
 explosion of sound as the traders surged downward
 to the centre of the Pit, grabbing each other, struggling
 toward each other, tramping, stamping, charging
 through with might and main. Promptly the hand on
 the great dial above the clock stirred and trembled, and
 as though driven by the tempest breath of the Pit moved
                          91





                    THE PIT
upward through the degrees of its circle. It paused,
wavered, stopped at length, and on the instant the hun-
dreds of telegraph keys scattered throughout the build-
ing began clicking off the news to the whole country,
from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Mackinac to
Mexico, that the Chicago market had made a slight ad-
vance and that May wheat, which had closed the day
before at ninety-three and three-eighths, had opened
that morning at ninety-four and a half.
  But the advance brought out no profit-taking sales.
The redoubtable Leaycraft and the Porteous trio, Fair-
child, Paterson, and Goodlock, shook their heads when
the Pit offered ninety-four for parts of their holding.
The price held firm. Goodlock even began to offer
ninety-four. At every suspicion of a flurry Grossmann
always with the same gesture as though hurling a jave-
lin, always with the same lamentable wail of distress,
cried out:
   "'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and a fourth."
   He held his five fingers spread to indicate the number
of "contracts," or lots of five thousand bushels, which
he wished to sell, each finger representing one "con-
tract."
   And it was at this moment that selling orders began
suddenly to pour in upon the Gretry-Converse traders.
Even other houses-Teller & West, Burbank & Co.,
Mattieson & Knight-received their share. The move-
ment was inexplicable, puzzling. With a powerful Bull
clique dominating the trading and every prospect of a
strong market, who was it who ventured to sell short?
   Landry among others found himself commissioned to
 sell. His orders were to unload three hundred thousand
 bushels on any advance over and above ninety-four.
 He kept his eyes on Leaycraft, certain that he would
 force up the figure. But, as it happened, it was not Leay-
 craft but the Porteous trio who made the advance.
                          92





                     THE PIT
Standing in the centre of the Pit, Paterson suddenly
flung up his hand and drew it toward him, clutching the
air-the conventional gesture of the buyer.
  "'Give an eighth for May."
  Landry was at him in a second. Twenty voices
shouted "sold," and as many traders sprang toward
him with outstretched arms. Landry, however, was
before them, and his rush carried Paterson halfway
across the middle space of the Pit.
  "Sold, sold."
  Paterson nodded, and as Landry noted down the
transaction the hand on the dial advanced again, and
again held firm.
  But after this the activity of the Pit fell away. The
trading languished. By degrees the tension of the open-
ing was relaxed. Landry, however, had refrained from
selling more than ten "contracts" to Paterson. He
had a feeling that another advance would come later
on. Rapidly he made his plans. He would sell another
fifty thousand bushels if the price went to ninety-four
and a half, and would then "feel" the market, letting
go small lots here and there, to test its strength, then,
the instant he felt the market strong enough, throw a
full hundred thousand upon it with a rush before it had
time to break. He could feel-almost at his very finger
tips-how this market moved, how it strengthened, how
it weakened. He knew just when to nurse it, to humour
it, to let it settle, and when to crowd it, when to
hustle it, when it would stand rough handling.
  Grossmann still uttered his plaint from time to time,
but no one so much as pretended to listen. The Por-
teous trio and Leaycraft kept the price steady atninety-
four and an eighth, but showed no inclination to force
it higher. For a full five minutes not a trade was re-
corded. The Pit waited for the Report on the Visible
Supply.
                         93






THE PIT


  And it was during this lull in the morning's business
that the idiocy of the English ultimatum to the Porte
melted away. As inexplicably and as suddenly as the
rumour had started, it now disappeared. Everyone,
simultaneously, seemed to ridicule it. England declare
war on Turkey! Where was the joke? Who was the
damn fool to have started that old, worn-out war scare?
But, for all that, there was no reaction from the ad-
vance. It seemed to be understood that either Leay-
craft or the Porteous crowd stood ready to support the
market; and in place of the ultimatum story a feeling
began to gain ground that the expected report would
indicate a falling off in the "visible," and that it was
quite on the cards that the market might even advance
another point.
  As the interest in the immediate situation declined,
the crowd in the Pit grew less dense. Portions of it
were deserted; even Grossmann, discouraged, retired to
a bench under the visitors' gallery. And a spirit of horse-
play, sheer foolishness, strangely inconsistent with the
hot-eyed excitement of the few moments after the open-
ing, invaded the remaining groups. Leaycraft, the
formidable, as well as Paterson of the Porteous gang,
and even the solemn Winston, found an apparently in-
exhaustible diversion in folding their telegrams into
pointed javelins and sending them sailing across the
room, watching the course of the missiles with profound
gravity. A visitor in the gallery-no doubt a Western
farmer on a holiday-having put his feet upon the rail,
the entire ,Pit began to groan "boots, boots, boots."
  A little later a certain broker came scurrying across
the floor from the direction of the telephone room.
Panting, he flung himself up the steps of the Pit, forced
his way among the traders with vigorous workings of
his elbows, and shouted a bid.
  "He's sick," shouted Hirsch. "Look out, he's sick.
                         94





                     THE PIT
He's going to have a fit." He grabbed the broker by
both arms and hustled him into the centre of the Pit.
The others caught up the cry, a score of hands pushed
the newcomer from man to man. The Pit traders
clutched him, pulled his necktie loose, knocked off his
hat, vociferating all the while at top voice, "He's sick!
He's sick!"
  Other brokers and traders came up, and Grossmann,
mistaking the commotion for a flurry, ran into the Pit,
his eyes wide, waving his arm and wailing:
   "'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and a quarter."
   But the victim, good-natured, readjusted his battered
hat, and again repeated his bid.
   "Ah, go to bed," protested Hirsch.
   "He's the man who struck Billy Paterson."
   "Say, a horse bit him. Look out for him, he's going
to have a duck-fit."
   The incident appeared to be the inspiration for a new
"josh," that had a great success, and a group of traders
organized themselves into an "anti-cravat committee,"
and made the rounds of the Pit, twitching the carefully
tied scarfs of the unwary out of place. Grossmann, in-
dignant at "t'ose monkey-doodle pizeness," withdrew
from the centre of the Pit. But while he stood in front
of Leaycraft, his back turned, muttering his disgust,
the latter, while carrying on a grave conversation with
his neighbour, carefully stuck a file of paper javelins
all around the Jew's hat band, and then-still without
mirth and still continuing to talk-set them on fire.
   Landry imagined by now that ninety-four and an
 eighth was as high a figure as he could reasonably ex-
 pect that morning, and so began to "work off" his sell-
 ing orders: Little by little he sold the wheat "short,"
 till all but one large lot was gone.
   Then all at once, and for no discoverable immediate
 reason, wheat, amid an explosion of shouts and vocifera-
                          95





                     TH1E PIT
 tions, jumped to ninety-four and a quarter, and before
 the Pit could take breath, had advanced another eighth,
 broken to one-quarter, then jumped to the five-eighths
 mark.
   It was the Report on the Visible Supply beyond ques-
tion, and though it had not yet been posted, this sudden
flurry was a sign that it was not only near at hand, but
would be bullish.
  A few moments later it was bulletined in the gallery
beneath the dial, and proved a tremendous surprise to
nearly every man upon the floor. No one had imagined
the supply was so ample, so all-sufficient to meet the
demand. Promptly the Pit responded. Wheat began
to pour in heavily. Hirsch, Kelly, Grossmann, Leay-
craft, the stolid Winston, and the excitable Rusbridge
were hard at it. The price began to give. Suddenly it
broke sharply. The hand on the great dial dropped to
ninety-three and seven-eighths."
  Landry was beside himself. He had not foreseen this
break. There was no reckoning on that cursed "vis-
ible," and he still had 50,000 bushels to dispose of.
There was no telling now how low the price might sink.
He must act quickly, radically. He fought his way to-
ward the Porteous crowd, reached over the shoulder
of the little Jew Grossmann, who stood in his way, and
thrust his hand almost into Paterson's face, shouting:
  "'Sell fifty May at seven-eighths."
  It was the last one of his unaccountable selling orders
of the early morning.
  The other shook his head.
  'Sell fifty May at three-quarters."
  Suddenly some instinct warned Landry that another
break was coming. It was in the very air around him.
He could almost physically feel the pressure of renewed
avalanches of wheat crowding down the price. Des-
perate, he grabbed Paterson by the shoulder.
                         96





                      THE PIT
   "'Sell fifty May at five-eighths."
   "Take it," vociferated the other, as though answering
 a challenge.
   And in the heart of this confusion, in this downward
 rush of the price, Luck, the golden goddess, passed with
 the flirt and flash of glittering wings, and hardly before
 the ticker in Gretry's office had signalled the decline, the
 memorandum of the trade was down upon Landry's card
 and Curtis Jadwin stood pledged to deliver, before noon
 on the last day of May, one million bushels of wheat
 into the hands of the representatives of the great Bulls
 of the Board of Trade.
   But by now the real business of the morning was over.
 The Pit knew it. Grossmann, obstinate, hypnotized as
 it were by one idea, still stood in his accustomed place on
 the upper edge of the Pit, and from time to time, with
 the same despairing gesture, emitted his doleful outcry
 of "'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and three-
 quarters."
   Nobody listened. The traders stood around in ex-
pectant attitudes, looking into one another's faces, wait-
ing for what they could not exactly say; loath to leave
the Pit lest something should "turn up" the moment
their backs were turned.
  By degrees the clamour died away, ceased, began
again irregularly, then abruptly stilled. Here and there
a bid was called, an offer made, like the intermittent
crack of small arms after the stopping of the cannonade.
  "'Sell five May at one-eighth."
  "'Sell twenty at one-quarter."
  "'Give one-eighth for May."
  For an instant the shoutings were renewed. Then
suddenly the gong struck. The traders began slowly
to leave the Pit. One of the floor officers, an old fellow
in uniform and vizored cap, appeared, gently shoulder-
ing toward the door the groups wherein the bidding
                         97





THE PIT


and offering were still languidly going on. His voice
full of remonstration, he repeated continually:
   "Time's up, gentlemen. Go on now and get your
lunch. Lunch time now. Go on now, or I'll have to report
you. Time's up."
   The tide set toward the doorways. In the gallery the
few visitors rose, putting on coats and wraps. Over
by the check counter, to the right of the south entrance
to the floor, a throng of brokers and traders jostled each
other, reaching over one another's shoulders for hats
and ulsters. In steadily increasing numbers they poured
out of the north and south entrances, on their way to
turn in their trading cards to the offices.
  Little by little the floor emptied. The provision and
grain pits were deserted, and as the clamour of the
place lapsed away the telegraph instruments began to
make themselves heard, once more, together with the
chanting of the messenger boys.
  Swept clean in the morning, the floor itself, seen now
through the thinning groups, was littered from end to
end with scattered grain-oats, wheat, corn, and barley,
with wisps of hay, peanut shells, apple parings, and
orange peel, with torn newspapers, odds and ends of
memoranda, crushed paper darts, and above all with
a countless multitude of yellow telegraph forms, thou-
sands upon thousands, crumpled and muddied under the
trampling of innumerable feet. It was the debris of the
battle-field, the abandoned impedimenta and broken
weapons of contending armies, the detritus of conflict,
torn, broken, and rent, that at the end of each day's
combat encumbered the field.
  At last even the click of the last of telegraph keys
died down. Shouldering themselves into their overcoats,
the operators departed, calling back and forth to one
another, making "dates," and cracking jokes. Washer-
women appeared with steaming pails, porters pushing
                         98





THE PIT


great brooms before them began gathering the refuse
of the floor into heaps.
  Between the wheat and corn pits a band of young
fellows, some of them absolute boys, appeared. These
were the settlement clerks. They carried long account
books. It was their duty to get the trades of the day
into a "ring"--to trace the course of a lot of wheat
which had changed hands perhaps a score of times dur-
ing the trading-and their calls of "Wheat sold to Teller
& West," "May wheat sold to Burbank & Co.," "May
oats sold to Matthewson & Knight," "Wheat sold to
Gretry, Converse & Co.," began to echo from wall to
wall of the almost deserted room.
  A cat, grey and striped, and wearing a dog collar of
nickel and red leather, issued from the coat-room and
picked her way across the floor. Evidently she was in
a mood of the most ingratiating friendliness, and as one
after another of the departing traders spoke to her,
raised her tail in the air and arched her back against
the legs of the empty chairs. The janitor put in an ap-
pearance, lowering the tall coloured windows with a long
rod. A noise of hammering and the scrape of saws began
to issue from a corner where a couple of carpenters
tinkered about one of the sample tables.
  Then at last even the settlement clerks took them-
selves off. At once there was a great silence, broken
only by the harsh rasp of the carpenters' saws and the
voice of the janitor exchanging jokes with the washer-
women. The sound of footsteps in distant quarters re-
echoed as if in a church.
  The washerwomen invaded the floor, spreading soapy
and steaming water before them. Over by the sample
tables a negro porter in shirt-sleeves swept entire bush-
els of spilled wheat, crushed, broken, and sodden, into
his dust pans.
  The day's campaign was over. It was past two o'clock.
                         99





                     THE PIT
On the great dial against the eastern wall the indicator
stood-sentinel fashion--at ninety-three. Not till the
following morning would the whirlpool, the great central
force that spun the Niagara of wheat in its grip, thunder
and bellow again.
  Later on even the washerwomen, even the porter and
janitor, departed. An unbroken silence, the peacefulness
of an untroubled calm, settled over the place. The rays
of the afternoon sun flooded through the west windows
in long parallel shafts full of floating golden motes.
There was no sound; nothing stirred. The floor of the
Board of Trade was deserted. Alone, on the edge of
the abandoned Wheat Pit, in a spot where the sunlight
fell warmest-an atom of life, lost in the immensity of
the empty floor-the grey cat made her toilet, diligently
licking the fur on the inside of her thigh, one leg, as if
dislocated, thrust into the air above her head.


IO0











                  CHAPTER IV

 IN THE front parlour of the Cresslers' house a little
 company was gathered-Laura Dearborn and Page,
 Mrs. Wessels, Mrs. Cressler, and young Miss Gretry,
 an awkward, plain-faced girl of about nineteen, dressed
 extravagantly in a decollet6 gown of blue silk. Curtis
 Jadwin and Cressler himself stood by the open fireplace
 smoking. Landry Court fidgeted on the sofa, pretend-
 ing to listen to the Gretry girl, who told an interminable
 story of a visit to some wealthy relative who had a
 country seat in Wisconsin and who raised fancy poultry.
 She possessed, it appeared, three thousand hens,
 Brahma, Faverolles, Houdans, Dorkings, even peacocks
 and tame quails.
 Sheldon Corthell, in a dinner coat, an unlighted ciga-
 rette between his fingers, discussed the spring exhibit of
 water-colours with Laura and Mrs. Cressler, Page listen-
ing with languid interest. Aunt Wess' turned the leaves
of a family album, counting the number of photographs
of Mrs. Cressler which it contained.
  Black coffee had just been served. It was the occa-
sion of the third rehearsal for the play which was to be
given for the benefit of the hospital ward for Jadwin's
mission children, and Mrs. Cressler had invited the
members of the company for dinner. Just now every-
one awaited the arrival of the "coach," Monsieur
Gerardy, who was always late.
  "To my notion," observed Corthell," the water-colour
that pretends to be anything more than a sketch over-
steps its intended limits. The elaborated water-colour, I
                         IOI





                     THE PIT
contend, must be judged by the same standards as an
oil painting. And if that is so, why not have the oil
painting at once?"
  "And with all that, if you please, not an egg on the
place for breakfast," declared the Gretry girl in her thin
voice. She was constrained, embarrassed. Of all those
present she was the only one to mistake the character
of the gathering and appear in formal costume. But
one forgave Isabel Gretry such lapses as these. Invari-
ably she did the wrong thing; invariably she was out of
place in the matter of inadvertent speech, an awkward
accident, the wrong toilet. For all her nineteen years,
she yet remained the hoyden, young, undeveloped, and
clumsy.
  "Never an egg, and three thousand hens in the runs,"
she continued. "Think of that! The Plymouth Rocks
had the pip. And the others, my lands! I don't know.
They just didn't lay."
  "Ought to tickle the soles of their feet," declared
Landry with profound gravity.
  "Tickle their feet!"
  "Best thing in the world for hens that don't lay. It
sort of stirs them up. Oh, everyone knows that."
  "Fancy now! I'll write to Aunt Alice to-morrow."
  Cressler clipped the tip of a fresh cigar, and, turning
to Curtis Jadwin, remarked:
  "I understand that Leaycraft alone lost nearly fifteen
thousand."
  He referred to Jadwin's deal in May wheat, the con-
summation of which had been effected the previous
week. Squarely in the midst of the morning session,
on the day following the "short" sale of Jadwin's mil-
lion of bushels, had exploded the news of the intended
action of the French chamber. Amid a tremendous clam-
our the price fell. The Bulls were panicstricken. Leay-
craft the redoubtable was overwhelmed at the very
                         IO2





                     THE PIT
start. The Porteous trio heroically attempted to shoul-
der the wheat, but the load was too much. They as
well gave ground, and, bereft of their support, May
wheat, which had opened at ninety-three and five-
eighths to ninety-two and a half, broke with the very
first attack to ninety-two, hung there a moment, then
dropped again to ninety-one and a half, then to ninety-
one. Then, in a prolonged shudder of weakness, sank
steadily down by quarters to ninety, to eight-nine,
and at last-a final collapse-touched eight-eight cents.
At that figure Jadwin began to cover. There was danger
that the buying of so large a lot might bring about a
rally in the price. But Gretry, a consummate master of
Pit tactics, kept his orders scattered and bought gradu-
ally, taking some two or three days to accumulate the
grain. Jadwin's luck-the never-failing guardian of the
golden wings-seemed to have the affair under immedi-
ate supervision, and reports of timely rains in the wheat
belt kept the price inert while the trade was being closed.
In the end the "deal" was brilliantly successful, and
Gretry was still chuckling over the setback to the Porte-
ous gang. Exactly the amount of his friend's profits
Jadwin did not know. As for himself, he had receive1
from Gretry a check for fifty thousand dollars, every
cent of which was net profit.
  "I'm not going to congratulate you," continued
Cressler. "As far as that's concerned, I would rather
you had lost than won-if it would have kept you out
of the Pit for good. You're cocky now. I know-good
Lord, don't I know. I had my share of it. I know how
a man gets drawn into this speculating game, "
  "Charlie, this wasn't speculating," interrupted Jad-
win. "It was a certainty. It was found money. If I
had known a certain piece of real estate was going to
appreciate in value I would have bought it, wouldn't I ?"
  "All the worse, if it made it seem easy and sure to
                         103





                     THE PIT
you. Do you know," he added suddenly. "Do you
know that Leaycraft has gone to keep books for a manu-
facturing concern out in Dubuque?"
  Jadwin pulled his moustache. He was looking at Laura
Dearborn over the heads of Landry and the Gretry girl.
  "I didn't suppose he'd be getting measured for a
private yacht," he murmured. Then he continued, pull-
ing his moustache vigorously:
  "Charlie, upon my word, what a beautiful-what
beautiful hair that girl has!"
  Laura was wearing it very high that evening, the shin-
ing black coils transfixed by a strange hand-cut ivory
comb that had been her grandmother's. She was dressed
in black taffeta, with a single great cabbage-rose pinned
to her shoulder. She sat very straight in her chair, one
hand upon her slender hip, her head a little to one side,
listening attentively to Corthell.
  By this time the household of the former rectory was
running smoothly; everything was in place, the Dear-
borns were "settled," and a routine had begun. Her
first month in her new surroundings had been to Laura
an unbroken series of little delights. For formal social
distractions she had but little taste. She left those to
Page, who, as soon as Lent was over, promptly became
involved in a bewildering round of teas, "dancing
clubs," dinners, and theatre parties. Mrs. Wessels was
her chaperon, and the little middle-aged lady found the
satisfaction of a belated youth in conveying her pretty
niece to the various functions that occupied her time.
Each Friday night saw her in the gallery of a certain
smart dancing school of the South Side, where she
watched Page dance her way from the "first waltz" to
the last figure of the german. She counted the couples
carefully, and on the way home was always able to say
how the attendance of that particular evening compared
with that of the former occasion, and also to inform
                         10o4





                     THE PIT
Laura how many times Page had danced with the same
young man.
  Laura herself was more serious. She had begun a
course of reading; no novels, but solemn works full of
allusions to "Man" and "Destiny," which she under-
lined and annotated. Twice a week-on Mondays and
Thursdays-she took a French lesson. Corthell man-
aged to enlist the good services of Mrs. Wessels and
escorted her to numerous piano and 'cello recitals, to
lectures, to concerts. He even succeeded in achieving
the consecration of a specified afternoon once a week,
spent in his studio in the Fine Arts' Building on the
Lake Front, where he read to them "Saint Agnes Eve,"
"Sordello," "The Light of Asia"-poems which, with
their inversions, obscurities, and astonishing arabesques
of rhetoric, left Aunt Wess' bewildered, breathless, all
but stupefied.
  Laura found these readings charming. The studio
was beautiful, lofty, the light dim; the sound of Cor-
thell's voice returned from the thick hangings of velvet
and tapestry in a subdued murmur. The air was full of
the odour of pastilles.
  Laura could not fail to be impressed with the artist's
tact, his delicacy. In words he never referred to their
conversation in the foyer of the Auditorium; only by
some unexplained subtlety of attitude he managed to
convey to her the distinct impression that he loved her
always. That he was patient, waiting for some indefinite,
unexpressed development.
  Landry Court called upon her as often as she would
allow. Once he had prevailed upon her and Page to
accompany him to the matinee to see a comic opera.
He had pronounced it "bully," unable to see that Laura
evinced only a mild interest in the performance. On
each propitious occasion he had made love to her ex-
travagantly. He continually protested his profound
                         105





                     THE PIT
respect with a volubility and earnestness that was quite
uncalled for.
  But, meanwhile, the situation had speedily become
more complicated by the entrance upon the scene of an
unexpected personage. This was Curtis Jadwin. It
was impossible to deny the fact that "J." was in love
with Mrs. Cressler's protegee. The business man had
none of Corthell's talent for significant reticence, none
of his tact, and older than she, a man of the world, ac-
customed to deal with situations with unswerving direct-
ness, he, unlike Landry Court, was not in the least afraid
of her. From the very first she found herself upon the
defensive. Jadwin was aggressive, assertive, and his ad-
dresses had all the persistence and vehemence of ver-
itable attack. Landry she could manage with the lift-
ing of a finger, Corthell disturbed her only upon those
rare occasions when he made love to her. But Jadwin
gave her no time to so much as think of finesse. She
was not even allowed to choose her own time and place
for fencing, and to parry his invasion upon those inti-
mate personal grounds which she pleased herself to keep
secluded called upon her every feminine art of procras-
tination and strategy.
  He contrived to meet her everywhere. He impressed
Mrs. Cressler as auxiliary into his campaign, and a series
of rencontres followed one another with astonishing
rapidity. Now it was another opera party, now a box
at McVicker's, now a dinner, or more often a drive
through Lincoln Park behind Jadwin's trotters. He
even had the Cresslers and Laura over to his mission
Sunday-school for the Easter festival, an occasion of
which Laura carried away a confused recollection of
enormous canvas mottoes, that looked more like cam-
paign banners than texts from the Scriptures, sheaves of
calla lilies, imitation bells of tin-foil, revival hymns
vociferated with deafening vehemence from seven hun-
                         io6





THE PIT


dred distended mouths, and through it all the disagree-
able smell of poverty, the odour of uncleanliness that
mingled strangely with the perfume of the lilies and the
aromatic whiffs from the festoons of evergreen.
  Thus the first month of her new life had passed. Laura
did not trouble herself to look very far into the future.
She was too much amused with her emancipation from
the narrow horizon of her New England environment.
She did not concern herself about consequences. Things
would go on for themselves, and consequences develop
without effort on her part. She never asked herself
whether or not she was in love with any of the three
men who strove for her favour. She was quite sure she
was not ready-yet-to be married. There was even
something distasteful in the idea of marriage. She liked
Landry Court immensely; she found the afternoons in
Corthell's studio delightful; she loved the rides in the
park behind Jadwin's horses. She had no desire that
any one of these affairs should exclude the other two.
She wished nothing to be consummated. As for love,
she never let slip an occasion to shock Aunt Wess' by
declaring:
   "I love-nobody. I shall never marry."
   Page, prim, with great parades of her ideas of "good
 form," declared between her pursed lips that her sister
 was a flirt. But this was not so. Laura never ma-
 nceuvred with her lovers, nor intrigued to keep from any
 one of them knowledge of her companionship with the
 other two. So upon such occasions as this, when all
 three found themselves face to face, she remained un-
 perturbed.
   At last, toward half-past eight, Monsieur Gerardy
 arrived. All through the winter amateur plays had been
 in great favour, and Gerardy had become, in a sense,
 a fad. He was in great demand. Consequently, he
 gave himself airs. His method was that of severity; he
                         I07





                     THE PIT
posed as a task-master, relentless, never pleased, hus-
tling the amateur actors about without ceremony, scold-
ing and brow-beating. He was a small, excitable man
who wore a frock-coat much too small for him, a flowing
purple cravatte drawn through a finger ring, and enor-
mous cuffs set off with huge buttons of Mexican onyx.
In his lapel was an inevitable carnation, dried, shrunken,
and lamentable. He was redolent of perfume and spoke
of himself as an artist. He caused it to be understood
that in the intervals of "coaching society plays" he gave
his attention to the painting of landscapes. Corthell
feigned to ignore his very existence.
  The play-book in his hand, Monsieur Gerardy clicked
his heels in the middle of the floor and punctiliously
saluted everyone present, bowing only from his shoul-
ders, his head dropping forward as if propelled by suc-
cessive dislocations of the vertebrae of his neck.
  He explained the cause of his delay. His English was
without accent, but at times suddenly entangled itself in
curious Gallic constructions.
   "Then I propose we begin at once," he announced.
"The second act to-night, then, if we have time, the
third act-from the book. And I expect the second act
to be letter-perfect-let-ter-per-fect. There is nothing
there but that." He held up his hand, as if to refuse to
consider the least dissension. "There is nothing but
that-no other thing."
   All but Corthell listened attentively. The artist, how-
ever, turning his back, had continued to talk to Laura
without lowering his tone, and all through Monsieur
Gerardy's exhortation his voice had made itself heard.
"Management of light and shade" . . . . "colour
scheme" . . . "effects of composition."
   Monsieur Gerardy's eye glinted in his direction. He
 struck his play-book sharply into the palm of his hand.
   "Come, come!" he cried. "No more nonsense. Now
                         io8





THE PIT


we leave the girls alone and get to work. Here is the
scene. Mademoiselle Gretry, if I derange you!" He
cleared a space at the end of the parlour, pulling the
chairs about. "Be attentive now. Here"-he placed a
chair at his right with a flourish, as though planting a
banner--"is the porch of Lord Glendale's country
house."
  "Ah," murmured Landry, winking solemnly at Page,
"the chair is the porch of the house."
  "And here," shouted Monsieur Gerardy, glaring at
him and slamming down another chair, "is a rustic
bench and practicable table set for breakfast."
  Page began to giggle behind her play-book. Gerardy,
his nostrils expanded, gave her his back. The older
people, who were not to take part-Jadwin, the Cress-
lers, and Aunt Wess'-retired to a far corner, Mrs.
Cressler declaring that they would constitute the audi-
ence.
  "On stage," vociferated Monsieur Gerardy, perspir-
ing from his exertions with the furniture. "'Marion en-
ters, timid and hesitating, L. C.' Come, who's Marion?
Mademoiselle Gretry, if you please, and for the love of
God remember your crossings. Sh! sh!" he cried, wav-
ing his arms at the others. "A little silence if you please.
Now, Marion."
  Isabel Gretry, holding her play-book at her side, one
finger marking the place, essayed an entrance with the
words:
  "'Ah, the old home once more. See the clambering
roses have    '"
  But Monsieur Gerardy, suddenly compressing his lips
as if in a heroic effort to repress his emotion, flung him-
self into a chair, turning his back and crossing his legs
violently. Miss Gretry stopped, very much disturbed,
gazing perplexedly at the coach's heaving shoulders.
  There was a strained silence, then:
                         lo09





THE PIT


   "Isn't-isn't that right?"
   As if with the words she had touched a spring, Mon-
sieur Gerardy bounded to his feet.
   "Grand God! Is that left-centre where you have
made the entrance? In fine, I ask you a little-is that
left-centre? You have come in by the rustic bench and
practicable table set for breakfast. A fine sight on the
night of the performance that. Marion climbs over the
rustic breakfast and practicable-over the rustic bench
and practicable table, ha, ha, to make the entrance."
Still holding the play-book, he clapped hands with elab-
orate sarcasm. "Ah, yes, good business that. That will
bring down the house."
  Meanwhile the Gretry girl turned again from left-
centre.
  "'Ah, the old home again. See  '
  "Stop!" thundered Monsieur Gerardy. "Is that what
you call timid and hesitating? Once more, those lines.
... No, no. It is not it at all. More of slowness, more of-
Here, watch me."
  He made the entrance with laborious exaggeration of
effect, dragging one foot after another, clutching at the
palings of an imaginary fence, while pitching his voice
at a feeble falsetto, he quavered:
  "'Ah! The old home-ah... once more. See   ' like
that," he cried, straightening up. "Now then. We try
that entrance again. Don't come on too quick after
the curtain. Attention. I clap my hands for the curtain,
and count three." He backed away and, tucking the
play-book under his arm, struck his palms together.
"Now, one-two-three."
  But this time Isabel Gretry, in remembering her
"business," confused her stage directions once more.
  "'Ah, the old home     '"
  "Left-centre," interrupted the coach, in a tone of
long-suffering patience.
                         IIO





                    THE PIT
  She paused bewildered, and believing that she had
spoken her lines too abruptly, began again:
  "'See, the clambering- '"
  "Left-centre."
  "'Ah, the old home-'"
  Monsieur Gerardy settled himself deliberately in his
chair and resting his head upon one hand closed his
eyes. His manner was that of Galileo under torture
declaring "still it moves."
  "Left-centre."
  "Oh-oh, yes. I forgot."
  Monsieur Gerardy apostrophized the chandelier with
mirthless humour.
  "Oh, ha, ha! She forgot."
  Still another time Marion tried the entrance, and, as
she came on, Monsieur Gerardy made vigorous signals
to Page, exclaiming in a hoarse whisper:
  "Lady Mary, ready. In a minute you come on. Re-
member the cue."
  Meanwhile Marion had continued:
  "'See the clambering vines  "
  "Roses."
  "'The clambering rose vines-
  "Roses, pure and simple."
  "'See! The clambering roses, pure and- '"
  "Mademoiselle Gretry, will you do me the ex-
treme obligation to bound yourself by the lines of the
book?"
  "I thought you said-"
  "Go on, go on, go on! Is it God-possible to be thus
stupid? Lady Mary, ready."
  "'See, the clambering roses have wrapped the old
stones in a loving embrace. The birds build in the same
old nests  '"
  "Well, well, Lady Mary, where are you? You enter
from the porch."
                         III





THE PIT


  "I'm waiting for my cue," protested Page. "My cue
is: 'Are there none that will remember me.'"
  "Say," whispered Landry, coming up behind Page,
"it would look bully if you could come out leading a
greyhound."
  "Ah, so, Mademoiselle Gretry," cried Monsieur
Gerardy, "you left out the cue." He became painfully
polite. "Give the speech once more, if you please."
  "A dog would look bully on the stage," whispered
Landry. "And I know where I could get one."
  "Where?"
  "A friend of mine. He's got a beauty, blue-grey "
  They become suddenly aware of a portentous silence.
The coach, his arms folded, was gazing at Page with
tightened lips.
  "'None who will remember me,'" he burst out at
last. "Three times she gave it."
  Page hurried upon the scene with the words:
  "' Ah, another glorious morning. The vines are
drenched in dew.'" Then, raising her voice and turning
toward the "house," "'Arthur.'"
  "'Arthur,"' warned the coach. "That's you, Mr.
Corthell. Ready. Well, then, Mademoiselle Gretry, you
have something to say there."
  "I can't say it," murmured the Gretry girl, her hand-
kerchief to her face.
  "What now? Continue. Your lines are 'I must not
be seen here. It would betray all,' then conceal your-
self in the arbour. Continue. Speak the line. It is the cue
of Arthur."
  "I can't," mumbled the girl behind her handkerchief.
  "Can't? Why, then?"
  "I-I have the nose-bleed."
  Upon the instant Monsieur Gerardy quite lost his
temper. He turned away, one hand to his head, rolling
his eyes as if in mute appeal to heaven, then, whirling
                        II2





                    THE PIT
about, shook his play-book at the unfortunate Marion,
crying out furiously:
  "Ah, it lacked but that. You ought to understand
at last, that when one rehearses for a play one does not
have the nose-bleed. It is not decent."
  Miss Gretry retired precipitately, and Laura came
forward to say that she would read Marion's lines.
  "No, no!" cried Monsieur Gerardy. "You-ah, if
they were all like you! You are obliging, but it does not
suffice. I am insulted."
  The others, astonished, gathered about the "coach."
They laboured to explain. Miss Gretry had intended no
slight. In fact, she was often taken that way; she was
excited, nervous. But Monsieur Gerardy was not to be
placated. Ah, no! He knew what was due a gentle-
man. He closed his eyes and raised his eyebrows to his
very hair, murmuring superbly that he was offended.
He had but one phrase in answer to all their explana-
tions:
   "One does not permit one's self to bleed at the nose
 during rehearsal."
   Laura began to feel a certain resentment. The unfor-
 tunate Gretry girl had gone away in tears. What with
 the embarrassment of the wrong gown, the brow-beat-
 ing, and the nose-bleed, she was not far from hysterics.
 She had retired to the dining room with Mrs. Cressler,
 and from time to time the sounds of her distress made
 themselves heard. Laura believed it quite time to inter-
 fere. After all, who was this Gerardy person, to give
 himself such airs? Poor Miss Gretry was to blame for
 nothing. She fixed the little Frenchman with a direct
 glance, and Page, who caught a glimpse of her face,
 recognized "the grand manner," and whispered to
 Landry:
   "He'd better look out; he's gone just about as far as
 Laura will allow."
                         II3





                    THE PIT
  "It is not convenient," vociferated the "coach." "It
is not permissible. I am offended."
  "Monsieur Gerardy," said Laura, "we will say noth-
ing more about it, if you please."
  There was a silence. Monsieur Gerardy had pre-
tended not to hear. He breathed loud through his nose,
and Page hastened to observe that anyhow Marion was
not on in the next scenes. Then abruptly, and resum-
ing his normal expression, Monsieur Gerardy said:
  "Let us proceed. It advances nothing to lose time.
Come. Lady Mary and Arthur, ready."
  The rehearsal continued. Laura, who did not come
on during the act, went back to her chair in the corner
of the room.
  But the original group had been broken up. Mrs.
Cressler was in the dining room with the Gretry girl,
while Jadwin, Aunt Wess', and Cressler himself were
deep in a discussion of mind-reading and spiritual-
ism.
  As Laura came up, Jadwin detached himself from the
others and met her.
   "Poor Miss Gretry!" he observed. "Always the
 square peg in the round hole. I've sent out for some
 smelling salts."
   It seemed to Laura that the capitalist was especially
 well-looking on this particular evening. He never dressed
 with the "smartness" of Sheldon Corthell or Landry
 Court, but in some way she did not expect that he
 should. His clothes were not what she was aware were
 called "stylish," but she had had enough experience
 with her own tailor-made gowns to know that the ma-
 terial was the very best that money could buy. The
 apparent absence of any padding in the broad shoulders
 of the frock-coat he wore, to her mind, more than com-
 pensated for the "ready-made" scarf, and if the white
 waistcoat was not fashionably cut, she knew that she had
                         II4





THE PIT


never been able to afford a piqu6 skirt of just that par-
ticular grade.
  "Suppose we go into the reception room," he ob-
served abruptly. "Charlie bought a new clock last
week that's a marvel. You ought to see it."
  "No," she answered. "I am quite comfortable here,
and I want to see how Page does in this act."
  "I am afraid, Miss Dearborn," he continued as they
found their places, "that you did not have a very good
time Sunday afternoon."
  He referred to the Easter festival at his mission
school. Laura had left rather early, alleging neuralgia
and a dinner engagement.
   "Why, yes, I did," she replied. "Only, to tell the
truth, my head ached a little." She was ashamed that
she did not altogether delight in her remembrance of Jad-
win on that afternoon. He had "addressed" the school,
with earnestness it was true, but in a strain decidedly
conventional. And the picture he made leading the
singing, beating time with the hymn-book, and between
the verses declaring that "he wanted to hear everyone's
voice in the next verse," did not appeal very forcibly to
her imagination. She fancied Sheldon Corthell doing
these things, and could not forbear to smile. She had
to admit, despite the protests of conscience, that she
did prefer the studio to the Sunday-school.
   "Oh," remarked Jadwin, "I'm sorry to hear you had
 a headache. I suppose my little micks" (he invariably
 spoke of his mission children thus) "do make more
 noise than music."
   "I found them very interesting."
   "No, excuse me, but I am afraid you didn't. My little
micks are not interesting-to look at nor to listen to.
But I, kind of-well, I don't know," he began, pulling his
moustache. "It seems to suit me to get down there and
get hold of these people. You know Moody put me up
                         I15





THE PIT


to it. He was here about five years ago, and I went
to one of his big meetings, and then to all of them. And
I met the fellow, too, and I tell you, Miss Dearborn, he
stirred me all up. I didn't 'get religion.' No, nothing
like that. But I got a notion it was time to be up and
doing, and I figured it out that business principles were
as good in religion as they are-well, in La Salle Street,
and that if the church people-the men, I mean-put
as much energy, and shrewdness, and competitive spirit
into the saving of souls as they did into the saving
of dollars we might get somewhere. And so I took
hold of a half-dozen broken-down, bankrupt Sunday-
school concerns over here on Archer Avenue that were
fighting each other all the time, and amalgamated them
all- a regular trust, just as if they were iron foundries-
and turned the incompetents out and put my subordi-
nates in, and put the thing on a business basis, and by
now, I'll venture to say, there's not a better organized
Sunday-school in all Chicago, and I'll bet if D. L. Moody
were here to-day he'd say, 'Jadwin, well done, thou
good and faithful servant.'"
   "I haven't a doubt of it, Mr. Jadwin," Laura hastened
to exclaim. "And you must not think that I don't be-
lieve you are doing a splendid work."
   "Well, it suits me," he repeated. "I like my little
micks, and now and then I have a chance to get hold of
the kind that it pays to push along. About four months
ago I came across a boy in the Bible class; I guess he's
about sixteen; name is Bradley-Billy Bradley, father a
confirmed drunk, mother takes in washing, sister-we
won't speak about; and he seemed to be bright and will-
ing to work, and I gave him a job in my agent's office,
just directing envelopes. Well, Miss Dearborn, that
boy has a desk of his own now, and the agent tells me
he's one of the very best men he's got. He does his
work so well that I've been able to discharge two other
                         iI6





THE PIT


fellows who sat around and watched the clock for lunch
hour, and Bradley does their work now better and
quicker than they did, and saves me twenty dollars a
week; that's a thousand a year. So much for a business-
like Sunday-school; so much for taking a good aim when
you cast your bread upon the waters. The last time I saw
Moody I said, 'Moody, my motto is "not slothful in
business, fervent in spirit, praising the Lord."' I re-
member we were out driving at the time, I took him out
behind Lizella-she's almost straight Wilkes' blood and
can trot in two-ten, but you can believe he didn't know
that-and, as I say, I told him what my motto was, and
he said, 'J., good for you; you keep to that. There's
no better motto in the world for the American man of
business.' He shook my hand when he said it, and I
haven't ever forgotten it."
  Not a little embarrassed, Laura was at a loss just
what to say, and in the end remarked lamely enough:
  "I am sure it is the right spirit-the best motto."
  "Miss Dearborn," Jadwin began again suddenly,
"why don't you take a class down there. The little
micks aren't so dreadful when you get to know them."
  "I!" exclaimed Laura, rather blankly. She shook
her head. "Oh, no, Mr. Jadwin. I should be only an
encumbrance. Don't misunderstand me. I approve of
the work with all my heart, but I am not fitted-I feel
no call. I should be so inapt that I know I should do
no good. My training has been so different, you know,"
she said, smiling. "I am an Episcopalian-'of the
straightest sect of the Pharisees.' I should be teaching
your little micks all about the meaning of candles, and
'Eastings,' and the absolution and remission of sins."
   "I wouldn't care if you did," he answered. "It's the
indirect influence I'm thinking of-the indirect influence
that a beautiful, pure-hearted, noble-minded woman
spreads around her wherever she goes. I know what it
                         I 17





                    THE PIT
has done for me. And I know that not only my little
micks, but every teacher and every superintendent in
that school would be inspired, and stimulated, and born
again so soon as ever you set foot in the building. Men
need good women, Miss Dearborn. Men who are doing
the work of the world. I believe in women as I believe
in Christ. But I don't believe they were made-any
more than Christ was-to cultivate-beyond a certain
point-their own souls, and refine their own minds, and
live in a sort of warmed-over, dilettante, stained-glass
world of seclusion and exclusion. No, sir, that won't do
for the United States and the men who are making them
the greatest nation of the world. The men have got all
the get-up-and-get they want, but they need the women
to point them straight, and to show them how to lead
that other kind of life that isn't all grind. Since I've
known you, Miss Dearborn, I've just begun to wake up
to the fact that there is that other kind, but I can't lead
that life without you. There's no kind of life that's worth
anything to me now that don't include you. I don't need
to tell you that I want you to marry me. You know that
by now, I guess, without any words from me. I love you,
and I love you as a man, not as a boy, seriously and ear-
nestly. I can give you no idea how seriously, how ear-
nestly. I want you to be my wife. Laura, my dear girl,
I know I could make you happy."
  "It isn't," answered Laura slowly, perceiving as he
paused that he expected her to say something, "so
much a question of that."
  "What is it, then? I won't make a scene. Don't
you love me? Don't you think, my girl, you could ever
love me?"
  Laura hesitated a long moment. She had taken the
rose from her shoulder, and plucking the petals one by
one, put them delicately between her teeth. From the
other end of the room came the clamorous exhorta-





                    THE PIT
tions of Monsieur Gerardy. Mrs. Cressler and the
Gretry girl watched the progress of the rehearsal atten-
tively from the doorway of the dining room. Aunt
Wess' and Mr. Cressler were discussing psychic re-
search and seances, on the sofa on the other side of the
room. After a while Laura spoke.
  "It isn't that, either," she said, choosing her words
carefully.
  "What is it, then?"
  "I don't know-exactly. For one thing, I don't think
I want to be married, Mr. Jadwin-to anybody."
  "I would wait for you."
  "Or to be engaged."
  "But the day must come, sooner or later, when you
must be both engaged and married. You must ask
yourself some time if you love the man who wishes to
be your husband. Why not ask yourself now?"
  "I do," she answered. "I do ask myself. I have asked
myself."
  "Well, what do you decide?"
  "That I don't know."
  "Don't you think you would love me in time? Laura,
I am sure you would. I would make you."
   "I don't know. I suppose that is a stupid answer.
But it is, if I am to be honest, and I am trying very
hard to be honest-with you and with myself-the only
one I have. I am happy just as I am. I like you and
Mr. Cressler and Mr. Corthell-everybody. But, Mr.
Jadwin "-she looked him full in the face, her dark
eyes full of gravity-"with a woman it is so serious
-to be married. More so than any man ever under-
stood. And, oh, one must be so sure, so sure. And I
am not sure now. I am not sure now. Even if I were sure
of you, I could not say I was sure of myself. Now and
then I tell myself, and even poor, dear Aunt Wess', that
I shall never love anybody, that I shall never marry.
                        II9





                    THE PIT
But I should be bitterly sorry if I thought that was true.
It is one of the greatest happinesses to which I look
forward, that some day I shall love someone with all
my heart and soul, and shall be a true wife, and find
my husband's love for me the sweetest thing in my life.
But I am sure that that day has not come yet."
  "And when it does come," he urged, "may I be the
first to know?"
  She smiled a little gravely.
  "Ah," she answered, "I would not know myself that
that day had come until I woke to the fact that I loved
the man who had asked me to be his wife, and then it
might be too late-for you."
  "But now, at least," he persisted, "you love no one."
  "Now," she repeated, "I love-no one."
  "And I may take such encouragement in that as
I can? "
  And then, suddenly, capriciously even, Laura, an in-
explicable spirit of inconsistency besetting her, was a
very different woman from the one who an instant
before had spoken so gravely of the seriousness of mar-
riage. She hesitated a moment before answering Jad-
win, her head on one side, looking at the rose leaf
between her fingers. In a low voice she said at last:
   "If you like."
   But before Jadwin could reply, Cressler and Aunt
Wess' who had been telling each other of their "ex-
periences," of their "premonitions," of the unaccount-
able things that had happened to them, at length
included the others in their conversation.
   "J.," remarked Cressler, "did anything funny ever
 happen to you-warnings, presentiments, that sort of
 thing? Mrs. Wessels and I have been talking spiritual-
 ism. Laura, have you ever had any 'experiences'? "
   She shook her head.
   "No, no. I am too material, I am afraid."
                         120





                    THE PIT
  "How about you, 'J.'?"
  "Nothing much, except that I believe in 'luck'-a
little. The other day I flipped a coin in Gretry's office.
If it fell heads I was to sell wheat short, and somehow
I knew all the time that the coin would fall heads-and
so it did."
  "And you made a great deal of money," said Laura.
"I know. Mr. Court was telling me. That was splendid."
  "That was deplorable, Laura," said Cressler, gravely.
"I hope some day," he continued, "we can all of us
get hold of this man and make him solemnly promise
never to gamble in wheat again."
  Laura stared. To her mind the word "gambling"
had always been suspect. It had a bad sound; it seemed
to be associated with depravity of the baser sort.
  "Gambling!" she murmured.
  "They call it buying and selling," he went on, "down
there in La Salle Street. But it is simply betting. Betting
on the condition of the market weeks, even months, in
advance. You bet wheat goes up. I bet it goes down.
Those fellows in the Pit don't own the wheat; never
even see it. Wouldn't know what to do with it if they
had it. They don't care in the least about the grain.
But there are thousands upon thousands of farmers out
here in Iowa and Kansas or Dakota who do, and hun-
dreds of thousands of poor pevils in Europe who care
even more than the farmer. I mean the fellows who raise
the grain, and the other fellows who eat it. It's life or
death for either of them. And right between these two
comes the Chicago speculator, who raises or lowers the
price out of all reason, for the benefit of his pocket. You
see, Laura, here is what I mean." Cressler had suddenly
become very earnest. Absorbed, interested, Laura lis-
tened intently." Here is what I mean," pursued Cressler.
"It's like this: If we send the price of wheat down too
far, the farmer suffers, the fellow who raises it; if we
                         121





                     THE PIT
send it up too far, the poor man in Europe suffers, the
fellow who eats it. And food to the peasant on the con-
tinent is bread-not meat or potatoes, as it is with us.
The only way to do so that neither the American farmer
nor the European peasant suffers, is to keep wheat at an
average, legitimate value. The moment you inflate or
depress that, somebody suffers right away. And that is
just what these gamblers are doing all the time, booming
it up or booming it down. Think of it, the food of hun-
dreds and hundreds of thousands of people just at the
mercy of a few men down there on the Board of Trade.
They make the price. They say just how much the peas-
ant shall pay for his loaf of bread. If he can't pay the
price he simply starves. And as for the farmer, why, it's
ludicrous. If I build a house and offer it for sale, I put
my own price on it, and if the price offered don't suit me
I don't sell. But if I go out here in Iowa and raise a crop
of wheat, I've got to sell it, whether I want to or not,
at the figure named by some fellows in Chicago. And
to make themselves rich, they may make me sell it at a
price that bankrupts me."
   Laura nodded. She was intensely interested. A whole
new order of things was being disclosed, and for the first
time in her life she looked into the workings of political
economy.
   "Oh, that's only one side of it," Cressler went on,
heedless of Jadwin's good-humoured protests. "Yes,
I know I am a crank on speculating. I'm going to preach
a little if you'll let me. I've been a speculator myself,
and a ruined one at that, and I know what I am talking
about. Here is what I was going to say. These fellows
themselves, the gamblers-well, call them speculators, if
y6u like. Oh, the fine, promising manly young men I've
seen wrecked-absolutely and hopelessly wrecked and
ruined by speculation! It's as easy to get into as going
across the street. They make three hundred, five hun-
                         122





THE PIT


dred, yes, even a thousand dollars sometimes in a couple
of hours, without so much as raising a finger. Think what
that means to a boy of twenty-five who's doing clerk
work at seventy-five a month. Why, it would take him
maybe ten years to save a thousand, and here he's made
it in a single morning. Think you can keep him out of
speculation then? First thing you know he's thrown up
his honest, humdrum position-oh, I've seen it hundreds
of times-and takes to hanging round the customers'
rooms down there on La Salle Street, and he makes a
little, and makes a little more, and finally he is so far
in that he can't pull out, and then some billionaire fel-
low, who has the market in the palm of his hand, tight-
ens one finger, and our young man is ruined, body and
mind. He's lost the taste, the very capacity for legiti-
mate business, and he stays on hanging round the Board
till he gets to be-all of a sudden-an old man. And
then some day someone says, 'Why, where's So-and-
so?' and you wake up to the fact that the young fellow
has simply disappeared-lost. I tell you the fascination
of this Pit gambling is something no one who hasn't
experienced it can have the faintest conception of. I
believe it's worse than liquor, worse than morphine.
Once you get into it, it grips you and draws you and
draws you, and the nearer you get to the end the easier
it seems to win, till all of a sudden, ah! there's the whirl-
pool... 'J.,' keep away from it, my boy."
  Jadwin laughed, and leaning over, put his fingers
upon Cressler's breast, as though turning off a switch.
   "Now, Miss Dearborn," he announced, "we've shut
 him off. Charlie means all right, but now and then some-
 one brushes against him and opens that switch."
   Cressler good-humouredly laughed with the others,
 but Laura's smile was perfunctory and her eyes were
 grave. But there was a diversion. While the others
 had been talking the rehearsal had proceeded, and now
                         123





THE PIT


Page beckoned to Laura from the far end of the parlour,
calling out:
  "Laura--'Beatrice,' it's the third act. You are
wanted."
  "Oh, I must run," exclaimed Laura, catching up her
play-book. "Poor Monsieur Gerardy-we must be a
trial to him."
  She hurried across the room, where the coach was
disposing the furniture for the scene, consulting the
stage directions in his book:
  "Here's the kitchen table, here the old-fashioned writ-
ing-desk, here the armoire with practicable doors, here
the window. Soh! Who is on? Ah, the young lady of
the sick nose, 'Marion.' She is discovered-knitting.
And then the duchess-later. That's you Mademoi-
selle Dearborn. You interrupt-you remember. But
then you, ah, you always are right. If they were all
like you. Very well, we begin."
  Creditably enough the Gretry girl read her part,
Monsieur Gerardy interrupting to indicate the cross-
ings and business. Then at her cue, Laura, who was
to play the r6le of the duchess, entered with the words:
   "I beg your pardon, but the door stood open. May
 I come in?"
   Monsieur Gerardy murmured:
   "Elle est vraiment superbe."
   Laura to the very life, to every little trick of carriage
 and manner was the high-born gentlewoman visiting
 the home of a dependent. Nothing could have been
 more dignified, more gracious, more gracefully conde-
 scending than her pose. She dramatized not only her
 r6le, but the whole of her surroundings. The interior
 of the little cottage seemed to define itself with almost
 visible distinctness the moment she set foot upon the
 scene.
   Gerardy tiptoed from group to group, whispering:
                          124





                    THE PIT
  "Eh? Very fine, our duchess. She would do well
professionally."
  But Mrs. Wessels was not altogether convinced. Her
eyes following her niece, she said to Corthell:
  "It's Laura's 'grand manner.' My word, I know her
in that part. That's the way she is when she comes down
to the parlour of an evening, and Page introduces her to
one of her young men."
  "I nearly die," protested Page, beginning to laugh.
"Of course it's very natural I should want my friends
to like my sister. And Laura comes in as though she
were walking on eggs, and gets their names wrong,
as though it didn't much matter, and calls them Pinky
when their name is Pinckney, and don't listen to what
they say, till I want to sink right through the floor with
mortification."
   In haphazard fashion the rehearsal wore to a close.
Monsieur Gerardy stormed and fretted and insisted
upon repeating certain scenes over and over again.
By ten o'clock the actors were quite worn out. A little
supper was served, and very soon afterward Laura made
a move toward departing. She was wondering who would
see her home, Landry, Jadwin, or Sheldon Corthell.
   The day had been sunshiny, warm even, but since
 nine o'clock the weather had changed for the worse,
 and by now a heavy rain was falling. Mrs. Cressler
 begged the two sisters and Mrs. Wessels to stay at her
 house over night, but Laura refused. Jadwin was sug-
 gesting to Cressler the appropriateness of having the
 coup6 brought around to take the sisters home, when
 Corthell came up to Laura.
   "I sent for a couple of hansoms long since," he said.
 "They are waiting outside now." And that seemed to
 settle the question.
   For all Jadwin's perseverance, the artist seemed-for
 this time at least-to have the better of the situation.
                         I25





                    THE PIT
  As the good-byes were being said at the front door
Page remarked to Landry:
  "You had better go with us as far as the house, so
that you can take one of our umbrellas. You can get
in with Aunt Wess' and me. There's plenty of room.
You can't go home in this storm without an umbrella."
  Landry at first refused, haughtily. He might be too
poor to parade a lot of hansom cabs around, but he
was too proud, to say the least, to ride in 'em when
someone else paid.
  Page scolded him roundly. What next? The idea.
He was not to be so completely silly. She didn't pro-
pose to have the responsibility of his catching pneu-
monia just for the sake of a quibble.
   "Some people," she declared, "never seemed to be
able to find out that they are grown up."
   "Very well," he announced, "I'll go if I can tip the
driver a dollar."
   Page compressed her lips.
   "The man that can afford dollar tips," she said, "can
 afford to hire the cab in the first place."
   "Seventy-five cents, then," he declared resolutely.
 "Not a cent less. I should feel humiliated with any
 less."
   "Will you please take me down to the cab, Landry
 Court?" she cried. And without further comment Lan-
 dry obeyed.
   "Now, Miss Dearborn, if you are ready," exclaimed
 Corthell, as he came up. He held the umbrella over
 her head, allowing his shoulders to get the drippings.
 'They cried good-bye again all around, and the artist
 guided her down the slippery steps. He handed her
 carefully into the hansom, and following, drew down
 the glasses.
   Laura settled herself comfortably far back in her
 corner, adjusting her skirts and murmuring:
                         126





                    THE PIT
  "Such a wet night. Who would have thought it was
going to rain? I was afraid you were not coming at first,"
she added. "At dinner Mrs. Cressler said you had an
important committee meeting--something to do with
the Art Institute, the award of prizes; was that it?"
  "Oh, yes," he answered, indifferently, "something
of the sort was on. I suppose it was important-for
the Institute. But for me there is only one thing of im-
portance nowadays," he spoke with a studied careless-
ness, as though announcing a fact that Laura must
know already, "and that is, to be near you. It is aston-
ishing. You have no idea of it, how I have ordered
my whole life according to that idea."
   "As though you expected me to believe that," she
 answered.
   In her other lovers she knew her words would have
 provoked vehement protestation. But for her it was part
 of the charm of Corthell's attitude that he never did
 or said the expected, the ordinary. Just now he seemed
 more interested in the effect of his love for Laura upon
 himself than in the manner of her reception of it.
   "It is curious," he continued. "I am no longer a boy.
 I have no enthusiasm. I have known many women, and
 I have seen enough of what the crowd calls love to
 know how futile it is, how empty, a vanity of vanities.
 I had imagined that the poets were wrong, were idealists,
 seeing the things that should be rather than the things
 that were. And then," suddenly he drew a deep breath:
 "this happiness; and to me. And the miracle, the won-
 derful is there-all at once-in my heart, in my very
 hand, like a mysterious, beautiful exotic. The poets are
 wrong," he added. "They have not been idealists
 enough. I wish-ah, well, never mind."
   "What is it that you wish?" she asked, as he broke
 off suddenly. Laura knew even before she spoke that
 it would have been better not to have prompted him
                         127





THE PIT


to continue. Intuitively she had something more than
a suspicion that he had led her on to say these very
words. And in admitting that she cared to have the
conversation proceed upon this footing, she realized
that she was sheering toward unequivocal coquetry.
She saw the false move now, knew that she had lowered
her guard. On all accounts it would have been more
dignified to have shown only a mild interest in what
Corthell wished. She realized that once more she had
acted upon impulse, and she even found time to wonder
again how it was that when with this man her impulses,
and not her reason, prevailed so often. With Landry or
with Curtis Jadwin she was always calm, tranquilly
self-possessed. But Corthell seemed able to reach all
that was impetuous, all that was unreasoned in her
nature. To Landry she was more than anything else,
an older sister, indulgent, kind-hearted. With Jadwin
she found that all the serious, all the sincere, earnest
side of her character was apt to come to the front. But
Corthell stirred troublous, unknown deeps in her,
certain undefined trends of recklessness; and for so long
as he held her within his influence, she could not forget
her sex a single instant.
   It dismayed her to have this strange personality of
 hers, this other headstrong, impetuous self, discovered
 to her. She hardly recognized it. It made her a little
 afraid; and yet, wonder of wonders, she could not
 altogether dislike it. There was a certain fascination
 in resigning herself for little instants to the dominion
 of this daring stranger that was yet herself.
   Meanwhile Corthell had answered her:
   "I wish," he said, "I wish you could say something-
 I hardly know what-something to me. So little would
 be so much."
   "But what can I say?" she protested. "I don't know
 -I-what can I say?"
                          128





                    THE PIT
  "It must be yes or no for me," he broke out. "I can't
go on this way."
  "But why not? Why not?" exclaimed Laura. "Why
must we--terminate anything? Why not let things go
on just as they are? We are quite happy as we are.
There's never been a time of my life when I've been
happier than this last three or four months. I don't
want to change anything. Ah, here we are."
  The hansom drew up in front of the house. Aunt
Wess' and Page were already inside. The maid stood
in the vestibule in the light that streamed from the
half-open front door, an umbrella in her hand. And as
Laura alighted, she heard Page's voice calling from
the front hall that the others had umbrellas, that the
maid was not to wait.
  The hansom splashed away, and Corthell and Laura
mounted the steps of the house.
  "Won't you come in?" she said. "There is a fire in
the library."
  But he said no, and for a few seconds they stood
under the vestibule light, talking. Then Corthell, draw-
ing off his right-hand glove, said:
  "I suppose that I have my answer. You do not wish
for a change. I understand. You wish to say by that,
that you do not love me. If you did love me as I love
you, you would wish for just that-a change. You
would be as eager as I for that wonderful, wonderful
change that makes a new heaven and a new earth."
  This time Laura did not answer. There was a mo-
ment's silence. Then Corthell said:
  "Do you know, I think I shall go away."
  "Go away?"
  "Yes, to New York. Possibly to Paris. There is a
new method of fusing glass that I've promised myself
long ago I would look into. I don't know that it inter-
ests me much-now. But I think I had better go. At
                        129





                     THE PIT
once, within the week. I've not much heart in it; but
it seems-under the circumstances-to be appropriate."
He held out his bared hand. Laura saw that he was
smiling.
  "Well, Miss Dearborn-good-bye."
  "But why should you go?" she cried, distressfully.
"How perfectly-ah, don't go," she exclaimed, then in
desperate haste added: "It would be absolutely foolish."
  "Shall I stay?" he urged. "Do you tell me to stay?"
  "Of course I do," she answered. "It would break
up the play-your going. It would spoil my part. You
play opposite me, you know. Please stay."
  "Shall I stay," he asked, "for the sake of your part?
There is no one else you would rather have?" He was
smiling straight into her eyes, and she guessed what
he meant.
  She smiled back at him, and the spirit of daring
never more awake in her, replied, as she caught his eye:
  "There is no one else I would rather have."
  Corthell caught her hand of a sudden.
  "Laura," he cried, "let us end this fencing and
quibbling once and for all. Dear, dear girl, I love you
with all the strength of all the good in me. Let me be
the best a man can be to the woman he loves."
  Laura flashed a smile at him.
  "If you can make me love you enough," she an-
swered.
  "And you think I can?" he exclaimed,
  "You have my permission to try," she said.
  She hoped fervently that now, without further words,
he would leave her. It seemed to her that it would be
the most delicate chivalry on his part-having won
this much--to push his advantage no further. She
waited anxiously for his next words. She began to fear
that she had trusted too much upon her assurance of
his tact.
                        130





                    THE PIT
   Corthell held out his hand again.
   "It is good-night, then, not good-bye."
   "It is good-night," said Laura.
   With the words he was gone, and Laura, entering
the house, shut the door behind her with a long breath
of satisfaction.
  Page and Landry were still in the library. Laura
joined them, and for a few moments the three stood
before the fireplace talking about the play. Page at
length, at the first opportunity, excused herself and
went to bed. She made a great show of leaving Landry
and Laura alone, and managed to convey the impres-
sion that she understood they were anxious to be rid
of her.
  "Only remember," she remarked to Laura severely,
"to lock up and turn out the hall gas. Annie has gone
to bed long ago."
  "I must dash along, too," declared Landry when
Page was gone.
  He buttoned his coat about his neck, and Laura fol-
lowed him out into the hall and found an umbrella for
him.
  "You were beautiful to-night," he said, as he stood
with his hand on the door knob. "Beautiful. I could not
keep my eyes off of you, and I could not listen to any-
body but you. And now," he declared, solemnly, "I will
see your eyes and hear your voice all the rest of the
night. I want to explain," he added, "about those
hansoms-about coming home with Miss Page and
Mrs. Wessels. Mr. Corthell-those were his hansoms, of
course. But I wanted an umbrella, and I gave the
driver seventy-five cents."
  "Why, of course, of course," said Laura, not quite
divining what he was driving at.
  "I don't want you to think that I would be willing to
put myself under obligations to anybody."
                        I3I




THE PIT


   "Of course, Landry; I understand."
   He thrilled at once.
   "Ah," he cried, "you don't know what it means to
me to look into the eyes of a woman who really under-
stands."
  Laura stared, wondering just what she had said.
  "Will you turn this hall light out for me, Landry?"
she asked. "I never can reach."
  He left the front door open and extinguished the jet
in its dull red globe. Promptly they we'e involved in
darkness.
  "Good-night," she said. "Isn't it dark?"
  He stretched out his hand to take hers, but instead
his groping fingers touched her waist. Suddenly Laura
felt his arm clasp her. Then all at once, before she had
time to so much as think of resistance, he had put both
arms about her and kissed her squarely on her cheek.
  Then the front door closed, and she was left abruptly
alone, breathless, stunned, staring wide-eyed into the
darkness.
  Her first sensation was one merely of amazement.
She put her hand quickly to her cheek, first the palm
and then the back, murmuring confusedly:
  "What? Why?-why?"
  Then she whirled about and ran up the stairs, her
silks clashing and fluttering about her as she fled,
gained her own room, and swung the door violently
shut behind her. She turned up the lowered gas and,
without knowing why, faced her mirror at once, study-
ing her reflection and watching her hand as it all but
scoured the offended cheek.
  Then, suddenly, with an upward, uplifting rush, her
anger surged within her. She, Laura, Miss Dearborn,
who loved no man, who never conceded, never capitu-
lated, whose "grand manner" was a thing proverbial,
in all her pitch of pride, in her own home, her own
                        132





                      THE PIT
 fortress, had been kissed, like a school-girl, like a
 chambermaid, in the dark, in a corner.
   And by-great heavens!-Landry Court. The boy
 whom she fancied she held in such subjection, such pro-
 found respect. Landry Court had dared, had dared to
 kiss her, to offer her this wretchedly commonplace and
 petty affront, degrading her to the level of a pretty
 waitress, making her ridiculous.
   She stood rigid, drawn to her full height, in the centre
 of her bedroom, her fists tense at her sides, her breath
 short, her eyes flashing, her face aflame. From time to
 time her words, half smothered, burst from her.
   "What does he think I am ? How dared he? How
 dared he?"
   All that she could say, any condemnation she could
 formulate only made her position the more absurd, the
 more humiliating. It had all been said before by gener-
 ations of shop-girls, school-girls, and servants, in whose
 company the affront had ranged her. Landry was to be
 told in effect that he was never to presume to seek her
 acquaintance again. Just as the enraged hussy of the
 street corners and Sunday picnics shouted that the
 offender should "never dare speak to her again as long
 as he lived." Never before had she been subjected to
 this kind of indignity. And simultaneously with the
 assurance she could hear the shrill voice of the drab of
 the public balls proclaiming that she had "never been
 kissed in all her life before."
 Of all slights, of all insults, it was the one that robbed
 her of the very dignity she should assume to rebuke it.
 The more vehemently she resented it, the more laugh-
 able became the whole affair.
 But she would resent it, she would resent it, and
Landry Court should be driven to acknowledge that
the sorriest day of his life was the one on which he had
forgotten the respect in which he had pretended to
                         133





THE PIT


hold her. He had deceived her, then, all along. Because
she had-foolishly-relaxed a little towards him, per-
mitted a certain intimacy, this was how he abused it.
Ah, well, it would teach her a lesson. Men were like
that. She might have known it would come to this.
Wilfully they chose to misunderstand, to take ad-
vantage of her frankness, her good nature, her good
comradeship.
  She had been foolish all along, flirting-yes, that
was the word for it-flirting with Landry and Corthell
and Jadwin. No doubt they all compared notes about
her. Perhaps they had bet who first should kiss her.
Or, at least, there was not one of them who would not
kiss her if she gave him a chance.
  But if she, in any way, had been to blame for what
Landry had done, she would atone for it. She had made
herself too cheap, she had found amusement in en-
couraging these men, in equivocating, in coquetting
with them. Now it was time to end the whole business,
to send each one of them to the right-about with an
un-equivocal definite word. She was a good girl, she
told herself. She was, in her heart, sincere; she was
above the inexpensive diversion of flirting. She had
started wrong in her new life, and it was time, high
time, to begin over again-with a clean page-to show
these men that they dared not presume to take liberties
with so much as the tip of her little finger.
  So great was her agitation, so eager her desire to
act upon her resolve, that she could not wait till morn-
ing. It was a physical impossibility for her to remain
under what she chose to believe suspicion another hour.
If there was any remotest chance that her three lovers
had permitted themselves to misunderstand her, they
were to be corrected at once, were to be shown their
place, and that without mercy.
  She called for the maid, Annie, whose husband was
                         134






THE PIT


the janitor of the house, and who slept in the top story.
   "If Henry hasn't gone to bed," said Laura, "tell him
to wait up till I call him, or to sleep with his clothes on.
There is something I want him to do for me-some-
thing important."
   It was close upon midnight. Laura turned back into
her room, removed her hat and veil, and tossed them,
with her coat, upon the bed. She lit another burner of
the chandelier, and drew a chair to her writing-desk
between the windows.
   Her first note was to Landry Court. She wrote it
almost with a single spurt of the pen, and dated it care-
fully, so that he might know it had been written im-
mediately after he had left. Thus it ran:
  Please do not try to see me again at any time or under any
circumstances. I want you to understand, very clearly, that I do
not wish to continue our acquaintance.

   Her letter to Corthell was more difficult, and it was
not until she had rewritten it two or three times that it
read to her satisfaction.
MY DEAR MR. CORTHELL [SO it was worded]:
  You asked me to-night that our fencing and quibbling be brought
to an end. I quite agree with you that it is desirable. I spoke as I
did before you left upon an impulse that I shall never cease to regret.
I do not wish you to misunderstand me, nor to misinterpret my
attitude in any way. You asked me to be your wife, and, very fool-
ishly and wrongly, I gave you-intentionally-an answer which
might easily be construed into an encouragement. Understand now
that I do not wish you to try to make me love you. I would find it
extremely distasteful. And, believe me, it would be quite hopeless.
I do not now, and never shall care for you as I should care if I were
to be your wife. I beseech you that you will not, in any manner,
refer again to this subject. It would only distress and pain me.
                              Cordially yours,
                                       LAURA DEARBORN.
  The letter to Curtis Jadwin was almost to the same
effect. But she found the writing of it easier than the
                           135






                       THE PIT
others. In addressing him she felt herself grow a little
more serious, a little more dignified and calm. It ran
as follows:
MY DEAR MR. JADWIN:
  When you asked me to become your wife this evening, you de-
served a straightforward answer, and instead I replied in a spirit of
capriciousness and disingenuousness, which I now earnestly regret,
and which I ask you to pardon and to ignore.
  I allowed myself to tell you that you might find encouragement
in my foolishly spoken words. I am deeply sorry that I should have
so forgotten what was due to my own self-respect and to your sincer-
ity.
  If I have permitted myself to convey to you the impression that
I would ever be willing to be your wife, let me hasten to correct it.
Whatever I said to you this evening, I must answer now-as I
should have answered then-truthfully and unhesitatingly, no.
  This, I insist, must be the last word between us upon this un-
fortunate subject, if we are to continue, as I hope, very good friends.
                               Cordially yours,
                                       LAURA DEARBORN.
   She sealed, stamped, and directed the three en-
velopes, and glanced at the little leather-cased travel-
ling clock that stood on the top of her desk. It was
nearly two.
   "I could not sleep, I could not sleep," she murmured,
"if I did not know they were on the way."
  In answer to the bell Henry appeared, and Laura
gave him the letters, with orders to mail them at once
in the nearest box.
  When it was all over she sat down again at her desk,
and leaning an elbow upon it, covered her eyes with
her hand for a long moment. She felt suddenly very
tired, and when at last she lowered her hand, her fingers
were wet. But in the end she grew calmer. She felt
that, at all events, she had vindicated herself, that
her life would begin again to-morrow with a clean page;
and when at length she fell asleep, it was to the dream-
less unconsciousness of an almost tranquil mind.
                           136





                     THE PIT
  She slept late the next morning and breakfasted in
bed between ten and eleven. Then, as the last vibrations
of last night's commotion died away, a very natural
curiosity began to assert itself. She wondered how each
of the three men "would take it." In spite of herself
she could not keep from wishing that she could be by
when they read their dismissals.
  Toward the early part of the afternoon, while Laura
was in the library reading Queen's Gardens, the
special delivery brought Landry Court's reply. It
was one roulade of incoherence, even in places blistered
with tears. Landry protested, implored, debased him-
self to the very dust. His letter bristled with excla-
mation points, and ended with a prolonged wail of
distress and despair.
  Quietly, and with a certain merciless sense of paci-
fication, Laura deliberately reduced the letter to strips,
burned it upon the hearth, and went back to her
Ruskin.
  A little later, the afternoon being fine, she determined
to ride out to Lincoln Park, not fifteen minutes from
her home, to take a little walk there, and to see how
many new buds were out.
  As she was leaving, Annie gave into her hands a
pasteboard box, just brought to the house by a mes-
senger boy.
  The box was full of Jacqueminot rQses, to the stems
of which a note from Corthell was tied. He wrote but a
single line:
         So it should have been "good-bye" after all.
  Laura had Annie put the roses in Page's room.
  "Tell Page she can have them; I don't want them.
She can wear them to her dance to-night," she said.
  While to herself she added:
  "The little buds in the park will be prettier."
                         137





                    THE PIT
  She was gone from the house over two hours, for she
had elected to walk all the way home. She came back
flushed and buoyant from her exercise, her cheeks cool
with the Lake breeze, a young maple leaf in one of the
revers of her coat. Annie let her in, murmuring:
  "A gentleman called just after you went out. I told
him you were not at home, but he said he would wait.
He is in the library now."
  "Who is he? Did he give his name?" demanded
Laura.
  The maid handed her Curtis Jadwin's card.


138











                   CHAPTER V

THAT year the spring burst over Chicago in a pro-
longed scintillation of pallid green. For weeks con-
tinually the sun shone. The Lake, after persistently
cherishing the greys and bitter greens of the winter
months, and the rugged white-caps of the northeast
gales, mellowed at length, turned to a softened azure
blue, and lapsed by degrees to an unruffled calmness,
incrusted with innumerable coruscations.
   In the parks, first of all, the buds and earliest shoots
asserted themselves. The horse-chestnut bourgeons
burst their sheaths to spread into trefoils and flame-
shaped leaves. The elms, maples, and cottonwoods fol-
lowed. The sooty, blackened snow upon the grass plats,
in the residence quarters, had long since subsided,
softening the turf, filling the gutters with rivulets. On
all sides one saw men at work laying down the new sod
in rectangular patches.
   There was a delicious smell of ripening in the air, a
smell of sap once more on the move, of humid earths
disintegrating from the winter rigidity, of twigs and
slender branches stretching themselves under the re-
turning warmth, elastic once more, straining in their
bark.
   On the North Side, in Washington Square, along the
Lake-shore Drive, all up and down the Lincoln Park
Boulevard, and all through Erie, Huron, and Superior
streets, through North State Street, North Clarke
Street, and La Salle Avenue, the minute sparkling of
green flashed from tree top to tree top, like the first
                          139





                     THE PIT
kindling of dry twigs. One could almost fancy that the
click of igniting branch tips was audible as whole beds
of yellow-green sparks defined themselves within cer-
tain elms and cottonwoods.
  Every morning the sun invaded earlier the east win-
dows of Laura Dearborn's bedroom. Every day at noon
it stood more nearly overhead above her home. Every
afternoon the checkered shadows of the leaves thickened
upon the drawn curtains of the library. Within doors
the bottle-green flies came out of their lethargy and
droned and bumped on the panes. The double windows
were removed, screens and awnings took their places;
the summer pieces were put into the fireplaces.
   All of a sudden vans invaded the streets, piled high
with mattresses, rocking-chairs, and bird cages; the
inevitable "spring moving" took place. An these
furniture vans alternated with great trucks laden with
huge elm trees on their way from nursery to lawn.
Families and trees alike submitted to the impulse of
transplanting, abandoning the winter quarters, migrat-
ing with the spring to newer environments, taking root
in other soils. Sparrows wrangled on the sidewalks
and built ragged nests in the interstices of cornice and
coping. In the parks one heard the liquid modulations
of robins. The florists' wagons appeared, and from house
to house, from lawn to lawn, iron urns and window
boxes filled up with pansies, geraniums, fuchsias, and
trailing vines. The flower beds, stripped of straw and
manure, bloomed again, and at length the great cotton-
woods shed their berries, like clusters of tiny grapes,
over street and sidewalk.
   At length came three days of steady rain, followed by
 cloudless sunshine and full-bodied, vigorous winds
 straight from out the south.
   Instantly the living embers in tree top and grass plat
 were fanned to flame. Like veritable fire, the leaves
                          140





THE PIT


blazed up. Branch after branch caught and crackled;
even the dryest, the deadest, were enfolded in the re-
sistless swirl of green. Tree top ignited tree top; the
parks and boulevards were one smother of radiance.
From end to end and from side to side of the city, fed
by the rains, urged by the south winds, spread billowing
and surging the superb conflagration of the coming
summer.
  Then, abruptly, everything hung poised; the leaves,
the flowers, the grass, all at fullest stretch, stood motion-
less, arrested, while the heat, distilled, as it were, from
all this seething green, rose like a vast pillar over the
city, and stood balanced there in the iridescence of the
sky, moveless and immeasureable.
  From time to time it appeared as if this pillar broke
in the guise of summer storms, and came toppling down
upon the city in tremendous detonations of thunder
and weltering avalanches of rain. But it broke only to
re-form, and no sooner had the thunder ceased, the rain
intermitted, and the sun again come forth, than one
received the vague impression of the swift rebuilding of
the vast, invisible column that smothered the city
under its bases, towering higher and higher into the
rain-washed, crystal-clear atmosphere.
  Then the aroma of wet dust, of drenched pavements,
musty, acute-the unforgettable exhalation of the
city's streets after a shower-pervaded all the air, and
the little out-door activities resumed again under the
dripping elms and upon the steaming sidewalks.
  The evenings were delicious. It was yet too early
for the exodus northward to the Wisconsin lakes, but to
stay indoors after nightfall was not to be thought of.
After six o'clock, all through the streets in the neighbour-
hood of the Dearborns' home, one could see the family
groups "sitting out" upon the front "stoop." Chairs
were brought forth, carpets and rugs unrolled upon
                         141





THE PIT


the steps. From within, through the opened windows
of drawing room and parlour, came the brisk gaiety
of pianos. The sidewalks were filled with children
clamouring at "tag," "I spy," or "run-sheep-run."
Girls in shirt-waists and young men in flannel suits
promenaded to and fro. Visits were exchanged from
"stoop" to "stoop," lemonade was served, and claret
punch. In their armchairs on the top step, elderly men,
householders, capitalists, well-to-do, their large stom-
achs covered with white waistcoats, their straw hats
upon their knees, smoked very fragrant cigars in silent
enjoyment, digesting their dinners, taking the air after
the grime and hurry of the business districts.
  It was on such an evening as this, well on toward
the last days of the spring, that Laura Dearborn and
Page joined the Cresslers and their party, sitting out
like other residents of the neighbourhood on the front
steps of their house. Almost every evening nowadays
the Dearborn girls came thus to visit with the Cresslers.
Sometimes Page brought her mandolin.
   Every day of the warm weather seemed only to in-
crease the beauty of the two sisters. Page's brown hair
was never more luxuriant, the exquisite colouring of her
cheeks never more charming, the boyish outlines of her
small, straight figure-immature and a little angular as
yet-never more delightful. The seriousness of her
straight-browed, grave, grey-blue eyes was still present,
but the eyes themselves were, in some indefinable way,
deepening, and all the maturity that as yet was with-
held from her undeveloped little form looked out from
beneath her long lashes.
   But Laura was veritably regal. Very slender as yet,
no trace of fulness to be seen over hip or breast, the
curves all low and flat, she yet carried her extreme
height with tranquil confidence, the unperturbed assur-
ance of a chatelaine of the days of feudalism.
                          142





THE PIT


  Her coal-black hair, high-piled, she wore as if it were
a coronet. The warmth of the exuberant spring days
had just perceptibly mellowed the even paleness of her
face, but to compensate for this all the splendour of
coming midsummer nights flashed from her deep-brown
eyes.
  On this occasion she had put on her coat over her
shirt-waist, and a great bunch of violets was tucked
into her belt. But no sooner had she exchanged greetings
with the others and settled herself in her place than she
slipped her coat from her shoulders.
  It was while she was doing this that she noted, for the
first time, Landry Court standing half in and half out
of the shadow of the vestibule behind Mr. Cressler's
chair.
  "This is the first time he has been here since-since
that night," Mrs. Cressler hastened to whisper in
Laura's ear. "He told me about-well, he told me
what occurred, you know. He came to dinner to-night,
and afterward the poor boy nearly wept in my arms.
You never saw such penitence."
  Laura put her chin in the air with a little movement
of incredulity. But her anger had long since been a
thing of the past. Good-tempered, she could not cherish
resentment very long. But as yet she had greeted
Landry only by the briefest of nods.
  "Such a warm night!" she murmured, fanning her-
self with part of Mr. Cressler's evening paper. "And
I never was so thirsty."
  "Why, of course," exclaimed Mrs. Cressler. "Isa-
bel," she called, addressing Miss Gretry, who sat on the
opposite side of the steps, "isn't the lemonade near
you? Fill a couple of glasses for Laura and Page."
  Page murmured her thanks, but Laura declined.
  "No; just plain water for me," she said. "Isn't there
some inside? Mr. Court can get it for me, can't he?"
                         143





THE PIT


  Landry brought the pitcher back, running at top
speed and spilling half of it in his eagerness. Laura
thanked him with a smile, addressing him, however, by
his last name. She somehow managed to convey to
him in her manner the information that though his
offence was forgotten, their old-time relations were not,
for one instant, to be resumed.
  Later on, while Page was thrumming her mandolin,
Landry whistling a "second," Mrs. Cressler took occa-
sion to remark to Laura:
  "I was reading the Paris letter in the Inter-Ocean
to-day, and I saw Mr. Corthell's name on the list of
American arrivals at the Continental. I guess," she
added, "he's going to be gone a long time. I wonder
sometimes if he will ever come back. A fellow with his
talent, I should imagine would find Chicago-well, less
congenial, anyhow, than Paris. But, just the same, I
do think it was mean of him to break up our play by
going. I'll bet a cookie that he wouldn't take part any
more just because you wouldn't. He was just crazy to
do that love scene in the fourth act with you. And when
you wouldn't play, of course he wouldn't; and then
everybody seemed to lose interest with you two out.
'J.' took it all very decently though, don't you think?"
   Laura made a murmur of mild assent.
   "He was disappointed, too," continued Mrs. Cressler.
 "I could see that. He thought the play was going to
 interest a lot of our church people in his Sunday-school.
 But he never said a word when it fizzled out. Is he
 coming to-night?"
   "Well, I declare," said Laura. "How should I know,
 if you don't?"
   Jadwin was an almost regular visitor at the Cresslers'
 during the first warm evenings. He lived on the South
 Side, and the distance between his home and that of
 the Cresslers' was very considerable. It was seldom,
                         144





THE PIT


however, that Jadwin did not drive over. He came in
his double-seated buggy, his negro coachman beside him,
the two coach dogs, "Rex" and "Rox," trotting under
the rear axle. His horses were not showy, nor were
they made conspicuous by elaborate boots, bandages,
and all the other solemn paraphernalia of the stable, yet
men upon the sidewalks, amateurs, breeders, and the
like-men who understood good stock-never failed to
stop to watch the team go by, heads up, the check rein
swinging loose, ears all alert, eyes all alight, the breath
deep, strong, and slow, and the stride, machine-like,
even as the swing of a metronome, thrown out from the
shoulder to knee, snapped on from knee to fetlock, from
fetlock to pastern, finishing squarely, beautifully, with
the thrust of the hoof, planted an instant, then, as it
were, flinging the roadway behind it, snatched up again,
and again cast forward.
  On these occasions Jadwin himself inevitably wore
a black "slouch" hat, suggestive of the general of the
Civil War, a grey "dust overcoat" with a black velvet
collar, and tan gloves, discoloured with the moisture of
his palms and all twisted and crumpled with the strain
of holding the thoroughbreds to their work.
  He always called the time of the trip from the buggy
at the Cresslers' horse block, his stop watch in his hand,
and, as he joined the groups upon the steps, he was al-
most sure to remark: "Tugs were loose all the way
from the river. They pulled the whole rig by the reins.
My hands are about dislocated."
   "Page plays very well," murmured Mrs. Cressler as
the young girl laid down her mandolin. "I hope J.
does come to-night," she added. "I love to have him
'round. He's so hearty and whole-souled."
  Laura did not reply. She seemed a little preoccupied
this evening, and conversation in the group died away.
The night was very beautiful, serene, quiet and, at this
                         145





                    THE PIT
particular hour of the end of the twilight, no one cared
to talk much. Cressler lit another cigar, and the fila-
ments of delicate blue smoke hung suspended about his
head in the moveless air. Far off, from the direction
of the mouth of the river, a lake steamer whistled a pro-
longed tenor note. Somewhere from an open window
in one of the neighbouring houses a violin, accompanied
by a piano, began to elaborate the sustained phrases of
"Schubert's Serenade." Theatrical as was the theme,
the twilight and the muffled hum of the city, lapsing to
quiet after the febrile activities of the day, combined to
lend it a dignity, a persuasiveness. The children were
still playing along the sidewalks, and their staccato
gaiety was part of the quiet note to which all sounds of
the moment seemed chorded.
  After a while Mrs. Cressler began to talk to Laura in
a low voice. She and Charlie were going to .spend a
part of June at Oconomowoc, in Wisconsin. Why could
not Laura make up her mind to come with them? She
had asked Laura a dozen times already, but couldn't get
a yes or no answer from her. What was the reason she
could not decide? Didn't she think she would have a
good time?
   "Page can go," said Laura. "I would like to have
you take her. But as for me, I don't know. My plans
are so unsettled this summer." She broke off suddenly.
"Oh, now, that I think of it, I want to borrow your
Idylls of the King. May I take it for a day or two?
I'll run in and get it now," she added as she rose. "I
know just where to find it. No, please sit still, Mr.
Cressler. I'll go."
  And with the words she disappeared indoors, leaving
Mrs. Cressler to murmur to her husband:
   "Strange girl. Sometimes I think I don't know
Laura at all. She's so inconsistent. How funny she
acts about going to Oconomowoc with us!"
                         146





                    THE PIT
  Mr. Cressler permitted himself an amiable grunt of
protest.
  "Pshaw! Laura's all right. The handsomest girl in
Cook County."
  "Well, that's not much to do with it, Charlie,"
sighed Mrs. Cressler. "Oh, dear," she added vaguely.
"I don't know."
  "Don't know what?"
  "I hope Laura's life will be happy."
  "Oh, for God's sake, Carrie!"
  "There's something about that girl," continued Mrs.
Cressler, "that makes my heart bleed for her."
   Cressler frowned, puzzled and astonished.
   "Hey-what!" he exclaimed. "You're crazy, Car-
rie!"
   "Just the same," persisted Mrs. Cressler, "I just
yearn toward her sometimes like a mother. Some
people are born to trouble, Charlie; born to trouble, as
the sparks fly upward. And you mark my words, Charlie
Cressler, Laura is that sort. There's all the pathos in
the world in just the way she looks at you from under
all that black, black hair, and out of her eyes-the
saddest eyes sometimes, great, sad, mournful eyes."
  "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?"
                         147





THE PIT


  "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 im-
patience.
  "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 reflec-
tively, "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 Shel-
don Corthell, who was just made for her, I guess it was
no use to expect she'd have 'J.' Laura's got a tempera-
                        148





                    THE PIT
ment, 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.
                        149





                     THE PIT
  "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. Cress-
ler.
   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
                         15o





THE PIT


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. Cress-
 ler 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 prom-
 ised 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 fin-
 gers upon her left hand, "that I would not have-yet."
   "Oh, it was like 'J.' to be persistent," repeated Mrs.
 Cressler.
                        15'





                    THE PIT
  "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 afterward, 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 evening. 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. Cress-
ler. "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, I1 suppose I must love him, or-as you say-
  I wouldn't have promised to marry him. He does every-
  thing, 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,
                        152





                    THE PIT
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-" Sud-
denly 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 '7.' 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
                        153





THE PIT


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 sur-
prise.
  "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 recognize
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. Cress-
ler's arm as the two moved toward the front door-
"this is all absolutely a secret as yet."
                        154





                    THE PIT
  "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 pro-
posed to send the coachman home, and to take Laura
for a drive toward 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."
                         155





THE PIT


  "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 un-
steadiness 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 Mrs. 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
                         I56





                     THE PIT
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 lucubra-
tions quite meaningless and futile, but which at times
she re-read with vague thrills of emotion and mys-
tery.
  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.
   "Oh, dear," she whispered, "there's a thread started,
 and now it will simply run the whole length . . ."
 Page's scratching paused again.
                         '57






THE PIT


  "Laura," she asked dreamily, "Laura, how do you
spell 'abysmal'?"
  "With a y, honey," answered Laura, careful not to
smile.
  "Oh, Laura," asked Page, "do you ever get very,
very sad without knowing why?"
  "No, indeed," answered her sister, as she peeled the
stocking from her arm. "When I'm sad I know just
the reason, you may be sure."
  Page sighed again.
  "Oh, I don't know," she murmured indefinitely. "I
lie awake at night sometimes and wish I were dead."
  "You mustn't get morbid, honey," answered her older
sister calmly. "It isn't natural for a young healthy little
body like you to h'ave such gloomy notions."
  "Last night," continued Page, "I got up out of bed
and sat by the window a long time. And everything
was so still and beautiful, and the moonlight and all-
and I said right out loud to myself,
           "My breath to Heaven in vapour goes-
You know those lines from Tennyson:
           "My breath to Heaven in vapour goes,
           May my soul follow soon.
I said it right out loud just like that, and it was just as
though something in me had spoken. I got my journal
and wrote down, 'Yet in a few days, and thee, the all-
beholding sun shall see no more.' It's from Thanatopsis,
you know, and I thought how beautiful it would be to
leave all this world, and soar and soar, right up to
higher planes and be at peace. Laura, dearest, do you
think I ever ought to marry?"
   "Why not, girlie? Why shouldn't you marry? Of
course you'll marry some day, if you find  "
   "I should like to be a nun," Page interrupted, shak-
ing her head, mournfully.
                         158





                    THE PIT
  "-    if you find the man who loves you," continued
Laura, "and whom you-you admire and respect-
whom you love. What would you say, honey, if-if
your sister, if I should be married some of these days?"
  Page wheeled about in her chair.
  "Oh, Laura, tell me," she cried, "are you joking?
Are you going to be married? Who to? I hadn't an
idea, but I thought-I suspected  "
  "Well," observed Laura, slowly, "I might as well
tell you-someone will if I don't-Mr. Jadwin wants
me to marry him."
  "And what did you say? What did you say? Oh, I'll
never tell. Oh, Laura, tell me all about it."
   "Well, why shouldn't I marry him? Yes-I promised.
I said yes. Why shouldn't I? He loves me, and he is rich.
Isn't that enough?"
   "Oh, no. It isn't. You must love-you do love him?"
   "I? Love? Pooh!" cried Laura. "Indeed not. I love
nobody."
   "Oh, Laura," protested Page earnestly. "Don't,
 don't talk that way. You mustn't. It's wicked."
 Laura put her head in the air.
   "I wouldn't give any man that much satisfaction. I
 think that is the way it ought to be. A man ought to
 love a woman more than she loves him. It ought to
 be enough for him if she lets him give her everything
 she wants in the world. He ought to serve her like
 the old knights-give up his whole life to satisfy some
 whim of hers; and it's her part, if she likes, to be cold
 and distant. That's my idea of love."
   "Yes, but they weren't cold and proud to their
 knights after they'd promised to marry them," urged
 Page. "They loved them in the end, and married them
 for love."
   "Oh, 'love'!" mocked Laura. "I don't believe in
 love. You only get your ideas of it from trashy novels
                         159





                    THE PIT
and matines. Girlie," cried Laura, "I am going to
have the most beautiful gowns. They're the last things
that Miss Dearborn shall buy for herself, and "-she
fetched a long breath-"I tell you they are going to be
creations."
  When at length the lunch bell rang Laura jumped to
her feet, adjusting her coiffure with thrusts of her long,
white hands, the fingers extended, and ran from the
room exclaiming that the whole morning had gone and
that half her bureau drawers were still in disarray.
  Page, left alone, sat for a long time lost in thought,
sighing deeply at intervals, then at last she wrote in
her journal:
  "A world without love-oh, what an awful thing
that would be. Oh, love is so beautiful-so beautiful,
that it makes me sad. When I think of love in all its
beauty I am sad, sad like Romola in George Eliot's
well-known novel of the same name."
  She locked up her journal in the desk drawer, and
wiped her pen point until it shone, upon a little square
of chamois skin. Her writing-desk was a miracle of
neatness, everything in its precise place, the writing-
paper in geometrical parallelograms, the pen tray neatly
polished.
  On the hearth rug, where Laura had sat, Page's
searching eye discovered traces of her occupancy-a
glove button, a white thread, a hairpin. Page was at
great pains to gather them up carefully and drop them
into the waste basket.
  "Laura is so fly-away," she observed, soberly.
  When Laura told the news to Aunt Wess' the little
old lady showed no surprise.
   "I've been expecting it of late," she remarked. "Well,
Laura, Mr. Jadwin is a man of parts. Though, to tell
the truth, I thought at first it was to be that Mr.
Corthell. He always seemed so distinguished-looking
                         i6o





                    THE PIT
and elegant. I suppose now that that young Mr. Court
will have a regular conniption fit."
  "Oh, Landry," murmured Laura.
  "Where are you going to live, Laura? Here? My
word, child, don't be afraid to tell me I must pack.
Why, bless you     "
  "No, no," exclaimed Laura, energetically, "you are
to stay right here. We'll talk it all over just as soon
as I know more decidedly what our plans are to be.
No, we won't live here. Mr. Jadwin is going to buy a
new house-on the corner of North Avenue and State
Street. It faces Lincoln Park-you know it, the Farns-
worth place."
  "Why, my word, Laura," cried Aunt Wess', amazed,
"why, it's a palace! Of course I know it. Why, it takes
in the whole block, child, and there's a conservatory
pretty near as big as this house. Well!"
  "Yes, I know," answered Laura, shaking her head.
"It takes my breath away sometimes. Mr. Jadwin
tells me there's an art gallery, too, with an organ in it-
a full-sized church organ. Think of it. Isn't it beautiful,
beautiful? Isn't it a happiness? And I'll have my own
carriage and coupe, and oh, Aunt Wess', a saddle horse
if I want to, and a box at the opera, and a country
place-that is to be bought day after to-morrow. It's
at Geneva Lake. We're to go there after we are married,
and Mr. Jadwin has bought the dearest, loveliest,
daintiest little steam yacht. He showed the photograph
of her yesterday. Oh, honey, honey! It all comes over
me sometimes. Think, only a year ago, less than that,
I was vegetating there at Barrington, among those
wretched old blue-noses, helping Martha with the
preserves and all and all; and now"-she threw her
arms wide-"I'm just going to live. Think of it, that
beautiful house, and servants, and carriages, and paint-
ings, and, oh, honey, how I will dress the part!"
                        161





                    THE PIT
  "But I wouldn't think of those things so much,
Laura," answered Aunt Wess', rather seriously. "Child,
you are not marrying him for carriages and organs and
saddle horses and such. You're marrying this Mr. Jad-
win because you love him. Aren't you?"
  "Oh," cried Laura, "I would marry a ragamuffin if
he gave me all these things-gave them to me because
he loved me."
  Aunt Wess' stared. "I wouldn't talk that way,
Laura," she remarked. "Even in fun. At least not
before Page."
  That same evening Jadwin came to dinner with the
two sisters and their aunt. The usual evening drive
with Laura was foregone for this occasion. Jadwin had
stayed very late at his office, and from there was to come
direct to the Dearborns'. Besides that, Nip-the trotters
were named Nip and Tuck-was lame.
  As early as four o'clock in the afternoon Laura, sud-
denly moved by an unreasoning caprice, began to pre-
pare an elaborate toilet. Not since the opera night had
she given so much attention to her appearance. She
sent out for an extraordinary quantity of flowers;
flowers for the table, flowers for Page and Aunt Wess',
great "American beauties" for her corsage, and a
huge bunch of violets for the bowl in the library. She
insisted that Page should wear her smartest frock,
and Mrs. Wessels her grenadine of great occasions.
As for herself, she decided upon a dinner gown of black,
d6collet6, with sleeves of lace. Her hair she dressed
higher than ever. She resolved upon wearing all her
jewellery, and to that end put on all her rings, secured
the roses in place with an amethyst brooch, caught
up the little locks at the back of her head with a heart-
shaped pin of tiny diamonds, and even fastened the
ribbon of satin that girdled her waist with a clasp
of flawed turquoises.
                         162





                    THE PIT
  Until five in the afternoon she was in the gayest
spirits, and went down to the dining room to supervise
the setting of the table, singing to herself.
  Then, almost at the very last, when Jadwin might be
expected at any moment, her humour changed again,
and again, for no discoverable reason.
  Page, who came into her sister's room after dressing,
to ask how she looked, found her harassed and out of
sorts. She was moody, spoke in monosyllables, and
suddenly declared that the wearing anxiety of house-
keeping was driving her to distraction. Of all days in
the week, why had Jadwin chosen this particular one
to come to dinner. Men had no sense, could not appreci-
ate a woman's difficulties. Oh, she would be glad when
the evening was over.
  Then, as an ultimate disaster, she declared that she
herself looked "Dutchy." There was no style, no
smartness to her dress; her hair was arranged unbecom-
ingly; she was growing thin, peaked. In a word, she
looked "Dutchy."
  All at once she flung off her roses and dropped into a
chair.
  "I will not go down to-night," she cried. "You and
Aunt Wess' must make out to receive Mr. Jadwin. I
simply will not see anyone to-night, Mr. Jadwin least
of all. Tell him I'm gone to bed sick-which is the truth.
I am going to bed, my head is splitting."
  All persuasion, entreaty, or cajolery availed nothing.
Neither Page nor Aunt Wess' could shake her decision.
At last Page hazarded a remonstrance to the effect that
if she had known that Laura was not going to be at
dinner she would not have taken such pains with her
own toilet.
  Promptly thereat Laura losther temper.
  "I do declare, Page," she exclaimed, "it seems to me
that I get very little thanks for ever taking any interest
                        163





                    THE PIT
in your personal appearance. There is not a girl in
Chicago-no millionaire's daughter-has any prettier
gowns than you. I plan and plan, and go to the most
expensive dressmakers so that you will be well dressed,
and just as soon as I dare to express the desire to see
you appear like a gentlewoman, I get it thrown in my
face. And why do I do it? I'm sure I don't know.
It's because I'm a poor weak, foolish, indulgent sister.
I've given up the idea of ever being loved by you; but
I do insist on being respected." Laura rose, stately,
severe. It was the "grand manner" now, unequivo-
cally, unmistakably. "I do insist upon being respected,"
she repeated. "It would be wrong and wicked of me
to allow you to ignore and neglect my every wish. I'll
not have it, I'll not tolerate it."
  Page, aroused, indignant, disdained an answer, but
drew in her breath and held it hard,her lips tight pressed.
  "It's all very well for you to pose, miss," Laura went
on; "to pose as injured innocence. But you understand
very well what I mean. If you don't love me, at least I
shall not allow you to flout me-deliberately, defiantly.
And it does seem strange," she added, her voice begin-
ning to break, "that when we two are all alone in the
world, when there's no father or mother-and y6u are
all I have, and when I love you as I do, that there might
be on your part-a little consideration-when I only
want to be loved for my own sake, and not-and not-
when I want to be, oh, loved-loved-loved      "
  The two sisters were in each other's arms by now, and
Page was crying no less than Laura.
  "Oh, little sister," exclaimed Laura, "I know you love
me. I know you do. I didn't mean to say that. You
must forgive me and be very kind to me these days. I
know I'm cross, but sometimes these days I'm so ex-
cited and nervous I can't help it, and you must try to
bear with me. Hark, there's the bell."
                         164





THE PIT


  Listening, they heard the servant open the door, and
then the sound of Jadwin's voice and the clank of his
cane in the porcelain cane rack. But still Laura could
not be persuaded to go down. No, she was going to bed;
she had neuralgia; she was too nervous to so much as
think. Her gown was "Dutchy." And in the end, so
unshakable was her resolve, that Page and her aunt
had to sit through the dinner with Jadwin and entertain
him as best they could.
  But as the coffee was being served the three received
a genuine surprise. Laura appeared. All her finery
was laid off. She wore the simplest, the most veritably
monastic, of her dresses, plain to the point of severity.
Her hands were bare of rings. Not a single jewel, not
even the most modest ornament relieved her sober
appearance. She was very quiet, spoke in a low voice,
and declared she had come down only to drink a glass
of mineral water and then to return at once to her room.
  As a matter of fact, she did nothing of the kind. The
others prevailed upon her to take a cup of coffee. Then
the dessert was recalled, and, forgetting herself in an
animated discussion with Jadwin as to the name of their
steam yacht, she ate two plates of wine jelly before she
was aware. She expressed a doubt as to whether a little
salad would do her good, and after a vehement exhor-
tation from Jadwin, allowed herself to be persuaded into
accepting a sufficiently generous amount.
  "I think a classical name would be best for the boat,"
she declared. "Something like Arethusa or The Nereid."
  They rose from the table and passed into the library.
The evening was sultry, threatening a rain-storm, and
they preferred not to sit on the "stoop." Jadwin lit
a cigar; he still wore his business clothes-the inevitable
"cutaway," white waistcoat, and grey trousers of the
middle-aged man of affairs.
  "Oh, call her the Artemis," suggested Page.
                         i65





                    THE PIT
  "Well, now, to tell the truth," observed Jadwin,
"those names look pretty in print; but somehow I don't
fancy them. They're hard to read, and they sound some-
how frilled up and fancy. But if you're satisfied,
Laura-"
  "I knew a young man once," began Aunt Wess',
"who had a boat-that was when we lived at Kenwood
and Mr. Wessels belonged to the Farragut-and this
young man had a boat he called Fanchon. He got
tipped over in her one day, he and the three daughters
of a lady I knew well, and two days afterward they
found them at the bottom of the lake, all holding on to
each other; and they fetched them up just like that in
one piece. The mother of those girls never smiled once
since that day, and her hair turned snow-white. That
was in 'seventy-nine. I remember it perfectly. The boat's
name was Fanchon."
  "But that was a sail boat, Aunt Wess'," objected
Laura. "Ours is a steam yacht. There's all the difference
in the world."
  "I guess they're all pretty risky, those pleasure
boats," answered Aunt Wess'. "My word, you couldn't
get me to set foot on one."
  Jadwin nodded his head at Laura, his eyes twinkling.
  "Well, we'll leave 'em all at home, Laura, when we
go," he said.
  A little later one of Page's "young men" called to
see her, and Page took him off into the drawing room
across the hall. Mrs. Wessels seized upon the occasion
to slip away unobserved, and Laura and Jadwin were
left alone.
  "Well, my girl," began Jadwin, "how's the day gone
with you?"
  She had been seated at the centre table, by the drop
light-the only light in the room-turning over the
leaves of The Age of Fable, looking for graceful and
                        166





THE PIT


appropriate names for the yacht. Jadwin leaned over
her and put his hand upon her shoulder.
  "Oh, about the same as usual," she answered. "I told
Page and Aunt Wess' this morning."
  "What did they have to say?" Jadwin laid a soft
but clumsy hand upon Laura's head, adding, "Laura,
you have the most wonderful hair I ever saw."
  "Oh, they were not surprised. Curtis, don't, you are
mussing me." She moved her head impatiently; but
then smiling, as if to mitigate her abruptness, said, "It
always makes me nervous to have my hair touched.
No, they were not surprised; unless it was that we were
to be married so soon. They were surprised at that.
You know I always said it was too soon. Why not put
it off, Curtis-until the winter?"
  But he scouted this, and then, as she returned to the
subject again, interrupted her, drawing some papers
from his pocket.
  "Oh, by the way," he said, "here are the sketch plans
for the alterations of the house at Geneva. The con-
tractor brought them to the office to-day. He's made
that change about the dining room."
  "Oh," exclaimed Laura, interested at once, "you
mean about building on the conservatory?"
  "Hum-no," answered Jadwin a little slowly. "You
see, Laura, the difficulty is in getting the thing done
this summer. When we go up there we want everything
finished, don't we? We don't want a lot of workmen
clattering around. I thought maybe we could wait
about that conservatory till next year, if you didn't
mind."
  Laura acquiesced readily enough, but Jadwin could
see that she was a little disappointed. Thoughtful, he
tugged his moustache in silence for a moment. Perhaps,
after all, it could be arranged. Then an idea presented
itself to him. Smiling a little awkwardly, he said:
                        167





THE PIT


  "Laura, I tell you what. I'll make a bargain with
you.
  She looked up as he hesitated. Jadwin sat down at
the table opposite her and leaned forward upon his
folded arms.
  "Do you know," he began, "I happened to think-
Well, here's what I mean," he suddenly declared de-
cisively. "'Do you know, Laura, that ever since we've
been engaged you've never-- Well, you've never-
never kissed me of your own accord. It's foolish to talk
that way now, isn't it? But, by George! That would
be-would be such a wonderful thing for me. I know,"
he hastened to add, "I know, Laura, you aren't demon-
strative. I ought not to expect, maybe, that you-
Well, maybe it isn't much. But I was thinking awhile
ago that there wouldn't be a sweeter thing imaginable
for me than if my own girl would come up to me some
time-when I wasn't thinking-and of her own accord
put her two arms around me and kiss me. And-well, I
was thinking about it, and-   " He hesitated again,
then finished abruptly with, "And it occurred to me that
you never had."
  Laura made no answer, but smiled rather indefinitely,
as she continued to search the pages of the book, her
head to one side.
  Jadwin continued:
  "We'll call it a bargain. Some day-before very
long, mind you-you are going to kiss me-that way,
understand, of your own accord, when I'm not thinking
of it; and I'll get that conservatory in for you. I'll man-
age it somehow. I'll start those fellows at it to-morrow-
twenty of 'em if it's necessary. How about it? Is it a
bargain? Some day before long. What do you say?"
  Laura hesitated, singularly embarrassed, unable to
find the right words.
  "Is it a bargain?" persisted Jadwin.
                        168





                     THE PIT
   "Oh, if you put it that way," she murmured, "I sup-
pose so-yes."
   "You won't forget, because I sha'n't speak about it
again. Promise you won't forget."
   "No, I won't forget. Why not call her the Thetis?"
   "I was going to suggest the Dart, or the Swallow,
or the Arrow. Something like that-to give a notion
of speed."
   "No. I like the Thetis best."
   "That settles it then. She's your steam yacht, Laura."
   Later on, when Jadwin was preparing to depart, they
stood for a moment in the hallway, while he drew on
his gloves and took a fresh cigar from his case.
   "I'll call for you here at about ten," he said. "Will
that do?"
  He spoke of the following morning. He had planned
to take Page, Mrs. Wessels, and Laura on a day's
excursion to Geneva Lake to see how work was pro-
gressing on the country house. Jadwin had set his mind
upon passing the summer months after the marriage at
the lake, and as the early date of the ceremony made it
impossible to erect a new building, he had bought, and
was now causing to be remodelled, an old but very well-
constructed house just outside of the town and once
occupied by a local magistrate. The grounds were
ample, filled with shade and fruit trees, and fronted
upon the lake. Laura had never seen her future country
home. But for the past month Jadwin had had a small
army of workmen and mechanics busy about the place,
and had managed to galvanize the contractors with
some of his own energy and persistence. There was
every probability that the house and grounds would be
finished in time.
  "Very well," said Laura, in answer to his question,
"at ten we'll be ready. Good-night." She held out her
hand. But Jadwin put it quickly aside, and took her
                        169





THE PIT


swiftly and strongly into his arms, and turning her face
to his, kissed her cheek again and again.
  Laura submitted, protesting:
  "Curtis! Such foolishness. Oh, dear; can't you love
me without crumpling me so? Curtis! Please. You are
so rough with me, dear."
  She pulled away from him, and looked up into his
face, surprised to find it suddenly flushed; his eyes were
flashing.
  "My God," he murmured, with a quick intake of
breath, "my God, how I love you, my girl! Just the
touch of your hand, the smell of your hair. Oh, sweet-
heart. It is wonderful! Wonderful!" Then abruptly
he was master of himself again.
  "Good-night," he said. "Good-night. God bless you,"
and with the words was gone.
  They were married on the last day of June of that
summer at eleven o'clock in the morning in the church
opposite Laura's house-the Episcopalian church of
which she was a member. The wedding was very quiet.
Only the Cresslers, Miss Gretry, Page, and Aunt Wess'
were present. Immediately afterward the couple were
to take the, train for Geneva Lake-Jadwin having
chartered a car for the occasion.
  But the weather on the wedding day was abominable.
A warm drizzle, which had set in early in the morning,
developed by eleven o'clock into a steady downpour,
accompanied by sullen grumblings of very distant
thunder.
  About an hour before the appointed time Laura in-
sisted that her aunt and sister should leave her. She
would allow only Mrs. Cressler to help her. The time
passed. The rain continued to fall. At last it wanted
but fifteen minutes to eleven.
  Page and Aunt Wess', who presented themselves at
the church in advance of the others, found the interior
                        170





                    THE PIT
cool, dark, and damp. They sat down in a front pew,
talking in whispers, looking about them. Druggeting
shrouded the reader's stand, the baptismal font, and
bishop's chair. Every footfall and every minute sound
echoed noisily from the dark vaulting of the nave and
chancel. The janitor or sexton, a severe old fellow,
who wore a skull cap and loose slippers, was making a
great to-do with a pile of pew cushions in a remote
corner. The rain drummed with incessant monotony
upon the slates overhead, and upon the stained windows
on either hand. Page, who attended the church regu-
larly every Sunday morning, now found it all strangely
unfamiliar. The saints in the windows looked odd and
unecclesiastical; the whole suggestion of the place was
uncanonical. In the organ loft a tuner was at work upon
the organ, and from time to time the distant mumbling
of the thunder was mingled with a sonorous, prolonged
note from the pipes.
  "My word, how it is raining," whispered Aunt Wess',
as the pour upon the roof suddenly swelled in volume.
  But Page had taken a prayer book from the rack,
and kneeling upon a hassock was repeating the Litany
to herself.
  It annoyed Aunt Wess'. Excited, aroused, the little
old lady was never more in need of a listener. Would
Page never be through?
  "And Laura's new frock," she whispered, vaguely.
"It's going to be ruined."
  Page, her lips forming the words, "Good Lord de-
liver us," fixed her aunt with a reproving glance. To pass
the time Aunt Wess' began counting the pews, missing
a number here and there, confusing herself, always
obliged to begin over again. From the direction of the
vestry room came the sound of a closing door. Then
all fell silent again. Even the shuffling of the janitor
ceased for an instant.
                         171





THE PIT


  "Isn't it still?" murmured Aunt Wess', her head in
the air. "I wonder if that was them. I heard a door
slam. They tell me that the rector has been married
three times." Page, unheeding and demure, turned a
leaf, and began with "All those who travel by land or
water." Mr. Cressler and young Miss Gretry appeared.
They took their seats behind Page and Aunt Wess', and
the party exchanged greetings in low voices. Page re-
luctantly laid down her prayer book.
  "Laura will be over soon," whispered Mr. Cressler.
"Carrie is with her. I'm going into the vestry room.
J. has just come." He took himself off, walking upon
his tiptoes.
  Aunt Wess' turned to Page, repeating:
  "Do you know they say this rector has been married
three times?"
  But Page was once more deep in her prayer book,
so the little old lady addressed her remark to the Gretry
girl.
  This other, however, her lips tightly compressed,
made a despairing gesture with her hand, and at length
managed to say:
  "Can't talk."
  "Why, heavens, child, whatever is the matter?"
  "Makes them worse-when I open my mouth-I've
got the hiccoughs."
  Aunt Wess' flounced back in her seat, exasperated,
out of sorts.
  "Well, my word," she murmured to herself, "I never
saw such girls."
  "Preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth,"
continued Page.
  Isabel Gretry's hiccoughs drove Aunt Wess' into
"the fidgets." They "got on her nerves."' What with
them and Page's uninterrupted murmur, she was at
length obliged to sit in the far end of the pew, and just
                         172





THE PIT


as she had settled herself a second time the door of the
vestry room opened and the wedding party came out;
first Mrs. Cressler, then Laura, then Jadwin and Cress-
ler, and then, robed in billowing white, venerable, his
prayer book in his hand, the bishop of the diocese him-
self. Last of all came the clerk, osseous, perfumed, a
gardenia in the lapel of his frock-coat, terribly excited,
and hurrying about on tiptoe, saying "Sh! Sh!" as a
matter of principle.
  Jadwin wore a new frock-coat and a resplendent
Ascot scarf, which Mr. Cressler had bought for him,
and Page knew at a glance that he was agitated beyond
all measure, and was keeping himself in hand only by a
tremendous effort. She could guess that his teeth were
clenched. He stood by Cressler's side, his head bent
forward, his hands-the fingers incessantly twisting
and untwisting-clasped behind his back. Never for
once did his eyes leave Laura's face.
  She herself was absolutely calm, only a little paler per-
haps than usual; but never more beautiful, never more
charming. Abandoning for this once her accustomed
black, she wore a tan travelling dress, tailor made, very
smart, a picture hat with heavy plumes set off with a
clasp of rhinestones, while into her belt was thrust a
great bunch of violets. She drew off her gloves and
handed them to Mrs. Cressler. At the same moment
Page began to cry softly to herself.
  "There's the last of Laura," she whimpered. "There's
the last of my dear sister for me."
  Aunt Wess' fixed her with a distressful gaze. She
sniffed once or twice, and then began fumbling in her
reticule for her handkerchief.
  "If only her dear father were here," she whispered
huskily. "And to think that's the same little girl I
used to rap on the head with my thimble for annoying
the cat! Oh, if Jonas could be here this day."
                         '73





THE PIT


  "She'll never be the same to me after now," sobbed
Page, and as she spoke the Gretry girl, hypnotized with
emotion and taken all unawares, gave vent to a shrill
hiccough, a veritable yelp, that woke an explosive echo
in every corner of the building.
  Page could not restrain a giggle, and the giggle
strangled with the sobs in her throat, so that the little
girl was not far from hysterics.
  And just then a sonorous voice, magnificent, rotund,
began suddenly from the chancel with the words:
  "Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in
the sight of God, and in the face of this company to
join together this Man and this Woman in holy matri-
mony."
  Promptly a spirit of reverence, not to say solemnity,
pervaded the entire surroundings. The building no
longer appeared secular, unecclesiastical. Not in the
midst of all the pomp and ceremonial of the Easter
service had the chancel and high altar disengaged a
more compelling influence. All other intrusive noises
died away; the organ was hushed; the fussy janitor
was nowhere in sight; the outside clamour of the city
seemed dwindling to the faintest, most distant vibra-
tion; the whole world was suddenly removed, while the
great moment in the lives of the Man and the Woman
began.
  Page held her breath; the intensity of the situation
seemed to her, almost physically, straining tighter and
tighter with every passing instant. She was awed,
stricken; and Laura appeared to her to be all at once
a woman transfigured, semi-angelic, unknowable, ex-
alted. The solemnity of those prolonged, canorous
syllables: "I require and charge you both, as ye shall
answer at the dreadful day of judgment, when the
secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed," weighed down
upon her spirits with an almost intolerable majesty. Oh,
                         '74





                    THE PIT
it was all very well to speak lightly of marriage, to con-
sider it in a vein of mirth. It was a pretty solemn affair,
after all; and she herself, Page Dearborn, was a wicked,
wicked girl, full of sins, full of deceits and frivolities,
meriting of punishment-on "that dreadful day of
judgment." Only last week she had deceived Aunt
Wess' in the matter of one of her "young men." It
was time she stopped. To-day would mark a change.
Henceforward, she resolved, she would lead a new life.
  "God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Ghost . . .
  To Page's mind the venerable bishop's voice was
filling all the church, as on the day of Pentecost, when
the apostles received the Holy Ghost, the building was
filled with a "mighty rushing wind."
  She knelt down again, but could not bring herself
to close her eyes completely. From under her lids she
still watched her sister and Jadwin. How Laura must
be feeling now! She was, in fact, very pale. There was
emotion in Jadwin's eyes. Page could see them plainly.
It seemed beautiful that even he, the strong, modern
man-of-affairs, should be so moved. How he must love
Laura. He was fine, he was noble; and all at once this
fineness and nobility of his so affected her that she
began to cry again. Then suddenly came the words:
   "... That in the world to come ye may have life
everlasting. Amen."
  There was a moment's silence, then the group about
the altar rail broke up.
   "Come," said Aunt Wess', getting to her feet, "it's
all over, Page. Come, and kiss your sister-Mrs. Jad-
win."
   In the vestry room Laura stood for a moment, while
one after another of the wedding party-even Mr.
Cressler-kissed her. When Page's turn came, the two
sisters held each other in a close embrace a long mo-
                         175





THE PIT


ment, but Laura's eyes were always dry. Of all present
she was the least excited.
  "Here's something," vociferated the ubiquitous clerk,
pushing his way forward. "It was on the table when
we came out just now. The sexton says a messenger
boy brought it. It's for Mrs. Jadwin."
  He handed her a large box. Laura opened it. In-
side was a great sheaf of Jacqueminot roses and a card,
on which was written:
  May that same happiness which you have always inspired in the
lives and memories of all who know you be with you always.
                                             Yrs.
                                             S.C.

  The party, emerging from the church, hurried across
the street to the Dearborns' home, where Laura and
Jadwin were to get their valises and hand bags. Jad-
win's carriage was already at the door.
  They all assembled in the parlour, everyone talking
at once, while the servants, bare-headed, carried the
baggage down to the carriage.
  "Oh, wait-wait a minute, I'd forgotten something,"
cried Laura.
  "What is it? Here, I'll get it for you," cried Jadwin
and Cressler as she started toward the door. But she
waved them off, crying:
  "No, no. It's nothing. You wouldn't know where to
look."
  Alone she ran up the stairs, and gained the second
story; then paused a moment on the landing to get her
breath and to listen. The rooms near by were quiet,
deserted. From below she could hear the voices of the
others-their laughter and gaiety. She turned about,
and went from room to room, looking long into each;
first Aunt Wess's bedroom, then Page's, then the "front
sitting room," then, lastly, her own room. It was still
                         176





THE PIT


in the disorder caused by that eventful morning; many
of the ornaments-her own cherished knick-knacks-
were gone, packed and shipped to her new home the
day before. Her writing-desk and bureau were bare.
On the backs of chairs, and across the footboard of the
bed, were the odds and ends of dress she was never to
wear again.
  For a long time Laura stood looking silently at the
empty room. Here she had lived the happiest period
of her life; not an object there, however small, that
was not hallowed by association. Now she was leaving
it forever. Now the new life, the Untried, was to begin.
Forever the old days, the old life were gone. Girlhood
was gone; the Laura Dearborn that only last night had
pressed the pillows of that bed, where was she now?
Where was the little black-haired girl of Barrington?
  And what was this new life to which she was going
forth, under these leaden skies, under this warm mist
of rain? The tears-at last-were in her eyes,,and the
sob in her throat, and she found herself, as she leaned
an arm upon the lintel of the door, whispering:
  "Good-bye. Good-bye. Good-bye."
  Then suddenly Laura, reckless of her wedding finery,
forgetful of trivialities, crossed the room and knelt
down at the side of the bed. Her head ini her folded
arms, she prayed,-prayed in the little unstudied words
of her childhood, prayed that God would take care of
her and make her a good girl; prayed that she might be
happy; prayed to God to help her in the new life, and
that she should be a good and loyal wife.
  And then as she knelt there, all at once she felt an
arm, strong, heavy even, laid upon her. She raised
her head and looked-for the first time-direct into
her husband's eyes.
  "I knew-" began Jadwin. "I thought-        Dear, I
understand, I understand."
                         177





                     THE PIT
  He said no more than that. But suddenly Laura
knew that he, Jadwin, her husband, did "understand,"
and she discovered, too, in that moment just what it
meant to be completely, thoroughly understood-under-
stood without chance of misapprehension, without
shadow of doubt; understood to her heart's heart. And
with the knowledge a new feeling was born within her.
No woman, not her dearest friend; not even Page had
ever seemed so close to her as did her husband now.
How could she be unhappy henceforward? The future
was already brightening.
  Suddenly she threw both arms around his neck, and
drawing his face down to her, kissed him again and
again, and pressed her wet cheek to his-tear-stained
like her own.
  "It's going to be all right, dear," he said, as she stood
from him, though still holding his hand. "It's going to
be all right."
  "Yes, yes, all right, all right," she assented. "I never
seemed to realize it till this minute. From the first I
must have loved you without knowing it. And I've been
cold and hard to you, and now I'm sorry, sorry. You
were wrong, remember that time in the library, when
you said I was undemonstrative. I'm not. I love you
dearly, dearly, and never for once, for one little mo-
ment, am I ever going to allow you to forget it."
  Suddenly, as Jadwin recalled the incident of which
she spoke, an idea occurred to him.
  "Oh, our bargain-remember? You didn't forget,
after all."
  "I did. I did," she cried. "I did forget it. That's the
very sweetest thing about it."


178











                  CHAPTER VI
THE months passed. Soon three years had gone by,
and the third winter since the ceremony in St. James'
Church drew to its close.
  Since that day when-acting upon the foreknowledge
of the French import duty-Jadwin had sold his million
of bushels short, the price of wheat had been steadily
going down. From ninety-three and ninety-four it had
dropped to the eighties. Heavy crop the world over had
helped the decline. No one was willing to buy wheat.
The Bear leaders were strong, unassailable. Lower and
lower sagged the price; now it was seventy-five, now
seventy-two. From all parts of the country in solid,
waveless tides wheat-the mass of it incessantly crush-
ing down the price--came rolling in upon Chicago and
the Board of Trade Pit. All over the world the farmers
saw season after season of good crops. They were good
in the Argentine Republic, and on the Russian steppes.
In India, on the little farms of Burmah, of Mysore, and
of Sind the grain, year after year, headed out fat, heavy,
and well-favoured. In the great San Joaquin valley of
California the ranches were one welter of fertility. All
over the United States, from the Dakotas, from Nebras-
ka, Iowa, Kansas, and Illinois, from all the wheat belt
came steadily the reports of good crops.
   But at the same time the low price of grain kept the
 farmers poor. New mortgages were added to farms
 already heavily "papered"; even the crops were mort-
 gaged in advance. No new farm implements were
 bought. Throughout the farming communities of the
                         '79





                    THE PIT
"Middle West" there were no longer purchases of bug-
gies and parlour organs. Somewhere in other remoter
corners of the world the cheap wheat, that meant cheap
bread, made living easy and induced prosperity, but in
the United States the poverty of the farmer worked up-
ward through the cogs and wheels of the whole great
machine of business. It was as though a lubricant had
dried up. The cogs and wheels worked slowly and with
dislocations. Things were a little out of joint. Wall
Street stocks were down. In a word, "times were bad."
Thus for three years. It became a proverb on the Chi-
cago Board of Trade that the quickest way to make
money was to sell wheat short. One could with almost
absolute certainty be sure of buying cheaper than one
had sold. And that peculiar, indefinite thing known-
among the most unsentimental men in the world-as
"sentiment" prevailed more and more strongly in fa-
vour of low prices. "The 'sentiment,'" said the market
reports, "was bearish"; and the traders, speculators,
eighth-chasers, scalpers, brokers, bucket-shop men, and
the like-all the world of La Salle Street-had become
so accustomed to these "Bear conditions," that it was
hard to believe that they would not continue indefi-
nitely.
   Jadwin, inevitably, had been again drawn into the
 troubled waters of the Pit. Always, as from the very
 first, a Bear, he had once more raided the market, and
 had once more been successful. Two months after this
 raid he and Gretry planned still another coup, a deal of
 greater magnitude than any they had previously haz-
 arded. Laura, who knew very little of her husband's
 affairs-to which he seldom alluded-saw by the daily
 papers that at one stage of the affair the "deal" trem-
 bled to its base.
   But Jadwin was by now "blooded to the game." He
 no longer needed Gretry's urging to spur him. He had
                         18o





                     THE PIT
developed into a strategist, bold, of inconceivable ef-
frontery, delighting in the shock of battle, never more
jovial, more daring than when under stress of the most
merciless attack. On this occasion, when the "other
side" resorted to the usual tactics to drive him from
the Pit, he led on his enemies to make one single false
step. Instantly-disregarding Gretry's entreaties as to
caution-Jadwin had brought the vast bulk of his en-
tire fortune to bear, in the manner of a general concen-
trating his heavy artillery, and crushed the opposition
with appalling swiftness.
  He issued from the grapple triumphantly, and it was
not till long afterward that Laura knew how near, for a
few hours, he had been to defeat.
  And again the price of wheat declined. In the first
week in April, at the end of the third winter of Jadwin's
married life, May wheat was selling on the floor of the
Chicago Board of Trade at sixty-four, the July option
at sixty-five, the September at sixty-six and an eighth.
During February of the same year Jadwin had sold
short five hundred thousand bushels of May. He be-
lieved with Gretry and with the majority of the profes-
sional traders that the price would go to sixty.
  March passed without any further decline. All
through this month and through the first days of April
Jadwin was unusually thoughtful. His short wheat
gave him no concern. He was now so rich that a mere
half-million bushels was not a matter for anxiety. It
was the "situation" that arrested his attention.
  In some indefinable way, warned by that blessed
sixth sense that had made him the successful speculator
he was, he felt that somewhere, at some time during the
course of the winter, a change had quietly, gradually
come about, that it was even then operating. The con-
ditions that had prevailed so consistently for three
years, were they now to be shifted a little? He did not
                          181





                     THE PIT
know, he could not say. But in the plexus of financial
affairs in which he moved and lived he felt-a difference.
  For one thing "times" were better, business was bet-
ter. He could not fail to see that trade was picking up.
In dry goods, in hardware, in manufactures there seemed
to be a different spirit, and he could imagine that it was
a spirit of optimism. There, in that great city where the
Heart of the Nation beat, where the diseases of the
times, or the times' healthful activities were instantly
reflected, Jadwin sensed a more rapid, an easier, more
untroubled run of life blood. All through the Body of
Things, money, the vital fluid, seemed to be flowing
more easily. People seemed richer, the banks were lend-
ing more, securities seemed stable, solid. In New York,
stocks were booming. Men were making money-were
making it, spending it, lending it, exchanging it. Instead
of being congested in vaults, safes, and cash boxes, tight,
hard, congealed, it was loosening, and, as it were, lique-
fying, so that it spread and spread and permeated the
entire community. The People had money. They were
willing to take chances.
  So much for the financial conditions.
  The spring had been backward, cold, bitter, inhos-
pitable, and Jadwin began to suspect that the wheat
crop of his native country, that for so long had been gen-
erous, and of excellent quality, was now to prove-it
seemed quite possible-scant and of poor condition. He
began to watch the weather, and to keep an eye upon
the reports from the little country seats and "centres"
in the winter wheat states. These, in part, seemed to
confirm his suspicions.
  From Keokuk, in Iowa, came the news that winter
wheat was suffering from want of moisture. Benedict,
Yates' Centre, and Douglass, in southeastern Kansas,
sent in reports of dry, windy weather that was killing
the young grain in every direction, and the same con-
                         182





THE PIT


ditions seemed to prevail in the central counties. In
Illinois, from Quincy and Waterloo in the west, and
from Ridgway in the south, reports came steadily to
hand of freezing weather and bitter winds. All through
the lower portions of the State the snowfall during
the winter had riot been heavy enough to protect the
seeded grain. But the Ohio crop, it would appear, was
promising enough, as was also that of Missouri. In In-
diana, however, Jadwin could guess that the hopes of
even a moderate yield were fated to be disappointed;
persistent cold weather, winter continuing almost up
to the first of April, seemed to have definitely settled the
question.
  But more especially Jadwin watched Nebraska, that
State which is one single vast wheat field. How would
Nebraska do, Nebraska which alone might feed an
entire nation? County seat after county seat began to
send in its reports. All over the State the grip of winter
held firm even yet. The wheat had been battered by in-
cessant gales, had been nipped and harried by frost;
everywhere the young half-grown grain seemed to be
perishing. It was a massacre, a veritable slaughter.
  But, for all this, nothing could be decided as yet.
Other winter wheat states, from which returns were as
yet only partial, might easily compensate for the failures
elsewhere, and besides all that, the Bears of the Board
of Trade might keep the price inert even in face of the
news of short yields. As a matter of fact, the more im-
portant and stronger Bear traders were already piping
their usual strain. Prices were bound to decline, the
three years' sagging was not over yet. They, the Bears,
were too strong; no Bull news could frighten them.
Somehow there was bound to be plenty of wheat. In
face of the rumours of a short crop they kept the price
inert, weak.
   On the tenth of April came the Government report on
                         183





THE PIT


the condition of winter wheat. It announced an average
far below any known for ten years past. On March tenth
the same bulletin had shown a moderate supply in
farmers' hands, less than one hundred million bushels,
in fact, and a visible supply of less than forty millions.
  The Bear leaders promptly set to work to discount
this news. They showed how certain foreign conditions
would more than offset the effect of a poor American
harvest. They pointed out the fact that the Government
report on condition was brought up only to the first of
April, and that since that time the weather in the wheat
belt had been favourable beyond the wildest hopes.
  The April report was made public on the afternoon of
the tenth of the month. That same evening Jadwin in-
vited Gretry and his wife to dine at the new house on
North Avenue; and after dinner, leaving Mrs. Gretry
and Laura in the drawing room, he brought the broker
up to the billiard room for a game of pool.
  But when Gretry had put the balls in the triangle,
the two men did not begin to play at once. Jadwin had
asked the question that had been uppermost in the
minds of each during dinner.
   "Well, Sam," he had said, by way of a beginning,
"what do you think of this Government report?"
  The broker chalked his cue placidly.
  "I expect there'll be a bit of reaction on the strength
of it, but the market will go off again. I said wheat
would go to sixty, and I still say it. It's a lohg time be-
tween now and May."
   "I wasn't thinking of crop conditions only," ob-
served Jadwin. "Sam, we're going to have better times
and higher prices this summer."
  Gretry shook his head and entered into a long argu-
  ment to show that Jadwin was wrong.
  But Jadwin refused to be convinced. All at once he
  laid the flat of his hand upon the table.
                         184





THE PIT


   "Sam, we've touched bottom," he declared, "touched
bottom all along the line. It's a paper dime to the Sub-
Treasury."
   "I don't care about the rest of the line," said the
broker doggedly, sitting on the edge of the table,
"wheat will go to sixty." He indicated the nest of balls
with a movement of his chin. "Will you break?"
  Jadwin broke and scored, leaving one ball three inches
in front of a corner pocket. He called the shot, and as
he drew back his cue he said, deliberately:
   "Just as sure as I make this pocket wheat will-not
go-off-another-cent."
  With the last word he drove the ball home and
straightened up. Gretry laid down his cue and looked
at him quickly. But he did not speak. Jadwin sat down
on one of the straight-backed chairs upon the raised
platform against the wall and rested his elbows upon
his knees.
  "Sam," he said, "the time is come for a great big
change." He emphasized the word with a tap of his cue
upon the floor. "We can't play our game the way we've
been playing it the last three years. We've been ham-
mering wheat down and down and down, till we've got
it below the cost of production; and now she won't go
any further with all the hammering in the world. The
other fellows, the rest of this Bear crowd, don't seem to
see it, but I see it. Before fall we're going to have higher
prices. Wheat is going up, and when it does I mean to
be right there."
  "We're going to have a dull market right up to the
beginning of winter," persisted the other.
  "Come and say that to me at the beginning of winter,
then," Jadwin retorted. "Look here, Sam, I'm short of
May five hundred thousand bushels, and to-morrow
morning you are going to send your boys on the floor
for me and close that trade."
                         185





THE PIT


  "You're crazy, J.," protested the broker. "Hold on
another month, and I promise you, you'll thank me."
  "Not another day, not another hour. This Bear cam-
paign of ours has come to an end. That's said and
signed."
  "Why, it's just in its prime," protested the broker.
"Great heavens, you mustn't get out of the game now,
after hanging on for three years."
  "I'm not going to get out of it."
  "Why, good Lord!" said Gretry, "you don't mean
to say that-"
  "That I'm going over. That's exactly what I do mean.
I'm going to change over so quick to the other side that
I'll be there before you can take off your hat. I'm done
with a Bear game. It was good while it lasted, but we've
worked it for all there was in it. I'm not only going to
cover my May shorts and get out of that trade, but "-
Jadwin leaned forward and struck his hand upon his
knee-" but I'm going to buy. I'm going to buy Septem-
ber wheat, and I'm going to buy it to-morrow, five
hundred thousand bushels of it, and if the market goes
as I think it will later on, I'm going to buy more. I'm
no Bear any longer. I'm going to boost this market right
through till the last bell rings; and from now on Curtis
Jadwin spells B-u- double 1I-Bull."
  "They'll slaughter you," said Gretry, "slaughter you
in cold blood. You're just one man against a gang-
a gang of cutthroats. Those Bears have got millions
and millions back of them. You don't suppose, do you,
that old man Crookes, or Kenniston, or little Sweeny,
or all that lot would give you one little bit of a chance
for your life if they got a grip on you. Cover your shorts
if you want to, but, for God's sake, don't begin to buy
in the same breath. You wait awhile. If this market has
touched bottom, we'll be able to tell in a few days.
I'll admit, for the sake of argument, that just now
                        186





                    THE PIT
there's a pause. Now's the time to be conservative, to
play it cautious."
  "If I was conservative and cautious," answered Jad-
win, "I wouldn't be in this game at all. I'd be buying
U. S. four percents. That's the big mistake so many
of these fellows down here make. They go into a game
where the only ones who can possibly win are the ones
who take big chances, and then they try to play the
thing cautiously. If I wait awhile till the market turns
up and everybody is buying, how am I any the better
off? No, sir, you buy the September option for me to-
niorrow-five hundred thousand bushels. I deposited
the margin to your credit in the Illinois Trust this
afternoon."
  There was a long silence. Gretry spun a ball between
his fingers, top-fashion.
   "Well," he said at last, hesitatingly, "well-I don't
know, J.-you are either Napoleonic-or-or a colossal
idiot."
   "Neither one nor the other, Samuel.' I'm just using
a little common sense. . . . Is it your shot?"
   "I'm blessed if I know."
   "Well, we'll start a new game. Sam, I'll give you six
balls and beat you in "-he looked at his watch-" beat
you before half-past nine."
  "For a dollar?"
  "I never bet, Sam, and you know it."
  Half an hour later Jadwin said:
  "Shall we go down and join the ladies? Don't put out
your cigar. That's one bargain I made with Laura be-
fore we moved in here-that smoking was allowable
everywhere."
   "Room enough, I guess," observed the broker, as
 the two stepped into the elevator. "How many rooms
 have you got here, by the way?"
   "Upon my word, I don't know," answered Jadwin.
                         187




THE PIT


"I discovered a new one yesterday. Fact. I was having
a look around, and I came out into a little kind of
smoking room or other that, I swear, I'd never seen
before. I had to get Laura to tell me about it."
  The elevator sank to the lower floor, and Jadwin and
the broker stepped out into the main hallway. From
the drawing room near by came the sound of women's
voices.
  "Before we go in," said Jadwin, "I want you to see
our art gallery and the organ. Last time you were up,
remember, the men were still at work in here."
  They passed down a broad corridor, and at the end,
just before parting the heavy, sombre curtains, Jadwin
pressed a couple of electric buttons, and in the open
space above the curtain sprang up a lambent, steady
glow.
  The broker, as he entered, gave a long whistle. The
art gallery took in the height of two of the stories of
the house. It was shaped like a rotunda, and topped
with a vast airy dome of coloured glass. Here and there
about the room were glass cabinets full of bibelots, ivory
statuettes, old snuff boxes, fans of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. The walls themselves were cov-
ered with a multitude of pictures, oils, water-colours,
with one or two pastels.
   But to the left of the entrance, let into the frame of
the building, stood a great organ, large enough for a
cathedral, and giving to view, in the dulled incandes-
cence of the electrics, its sheaves of mighty pipes.
   "Well, this is something like," exclaimed the broker.
   "I don't know much about 'em myself," hazarded
Jadwin, looking at the pictures, "but Laura can tell
you. We bought most of 'em while we were abroad,
year before last. Laura says this is the best." He indi-
cated a large "Bougereau" that represented a group of
nymphs bathing in a woodland pool.
                         188





                     THE PIT
   "H'm!" said the broker, "you wouldn't want some
of your Sunday-school superintendents to see this now.
This is what the boys down on the Board would call a
bar-room picture."
  But Jadwin did not laugh.
  "It never struck me in just that way," he said,
gravely..
  "It's a fine piece of work, though," Gretry hastened
to add. "Fine, great colouring."
  "I like this one pretty well," continued Jadwin, mov-
ing to a canvas by Detaille. It was one of the inevitable
studies of a cuirassier; in this case a trumpeter, one arm
high in the air, the hand clutching the trumpet, the
horse, foam-flecked, at a furious gallop. In the rear,
through clouds of dust, the rest of the squadron was
indicated by a few points of colour.
  "Yes, that's pretty neat," concurred Gretry. "He's
sure got a gait on. Lord, what a lot of accoutrements
those French fellows stick on. Now our boys would
chuck about three-fourths of that truck before going
into action.... Queer way these artists work," he went
on, peering close to the canvas. "Look at it close up
and it's just a lot of little daubs, but you get off a dis-
tance "-he drew back, cocking his head to one side-
"and you see now. Hey-see how the thing bunches up.
Pretty neat, isn't it?" He turned from the picture and
rolled his eyes about the room.
  "Well, well," he murmured. "This certainly is the
real thing, J. I suppose, now, it all represents a pretty
big pot of money."
  "I'm not quite used to it yet myself," said Jadwin.
"I was in here last Sunday, thinking it all over, the new
house, and the money and all. And it struck me as kind
of queer the way things have turned out for me. . ..
Sam, do you know, I can remember the time, up there
in Ottawa County, Michigan, on my old dad's farm,
                        189





THE PIT


when I used to have to get up before daybreak to tend
the stock, and my sister and I used to run out quick
into the stable and stand in the warm cow fodder in the
stalls to warm our bare feet .. . She up and died when
she was about eighteen-galloping consumption. Yes,
sir. By George, how I loved that little sister of mine!
You remember her, Sam. Remember how you used to
come out from Grand Rapids every now and then to
go squirrel shooting with me?"
  "Sure, sure. Oh, I haven't forgot."
  "Well, I was wishing the other day that I could bring
Sadie down here, and-oh, I don't know-give her a
good time. She never had a good time when she was
alive. Work, work, work; morning, noon, and night. I'd
like to have made it up to her. I believe in making people
happy, Sam. That's the way I take my fun. But it's too
late to do it now for my little sister."
  "Well," hazarded Gretry, "you got a good wife in
yonder to-"
  Jadwin interrupted him. He half turned away, thrust-
ing his hands suddenly into his pockets. Partly to him-
self, partly to his friend he murmured:
  "You bet I have, you bet I have. Sam," he exclaimed,
then turned away again. ". . . Oh, well, never mind,"
he murmured.
  Gretry, embarrassed, constrained, put his chin in the
air, shutting his eyes in a knowing fashion.
  "I understand," he answered. "I understand, J."
  "Say, look at this organ here," said Jadwin, briskly.
"Here's the thing I like to.play with."
  They crossed to the other side of the room.
  "Oh, you've got one of those attachment things," ob-
served the broker.
  "Listen now," said Jadwin. He took a perforated
roll from the case near at hand and adjusted it, Gretry
looking on with the solemn interest that all American
                         190





                    THE PIT
business men have in mechanical inventions. Jadwin
sat down before it, pulled out a stop or two, and placed
his feet on the pedals. A vast preliminary roaring breath
soughed through the pipes, with a vibratory rush of
power. Then there came a canorous snarl of bass, and
then, abruptly, with resistless charm, and with full-
bodied, satisfying amplitude of volume the opening
movement of the overture of Carmen.
  "Great, great!" shouted Gretry, his voice raised to
make himself heard. "That's immense."
  The great-lunged harmony was filling the entire gal-
lery, clear cut, each note clearly, sharply treated with a
precision that, if mechanical, was yet effective. Jadwin,
his eyes now on the stops, now on the sliding strip of
paper, played on. Through the sonorous clamour of the
pipes Gretry could hear him speaking, but he caught
only a word or two.
  "Toreador... horse power... Madame Calve...
electric motor ... fine song ... storage battery."
  The "movement" thinned out, and dwindled to a
strain of delicate lightness, sustained by the smallest
pipes and developing a new motive; this was twice re-
peated, and then ran down to a series of chords and
bars that prepared for and prefigured some great effect
close at hand. There was a short pause, then with the
sudden releasing of a tremendous rush of sound, back
surged the melody, with redoubled volume and power,
to the original movement.
  "That's bully, bully!" shouted Gretry, clapping his
hands, and his eye, caught by a movement on the other
side of the room, he turned about to see Laura Jadwin
standing between the opened curtains at the entrance.
  Seen thus unexpectedly, the broker was again over-
whelmed with a sense of the beauty of Jadwin's wife.
Laura was in evening dress of black lace; her arms and
neck were bare. Her black hair was piled high upon her
                         191





THE PIT


head, a single American Beauty rose nodded against
her bare shoulder. She was even yet slim and very tall,
her face pale with that unusual paleness of hers that
was yet a colour. Around her slender neck was a marvel-
lous collar of pearls many strands deep, set off and held
in place by diamond clasps.
  With Laura came Mrs. Gretry and Page. The broker's
wife was a vivacious, small, rather pretty blonde woman,
a little angular, a little faded. She was garrulous, witty,
slangy. She wore turquoises in her ears morning, noon,
and night.
  But three years had made a vast difference in Page
Dearborn. All at once she was a young woman. Her
straight, hard, little figure had developed, her arms
were rounded, her eyes were calmer. She had grown
taller, broader. Her former exquisite beauty was per-
haps not quite so delicate, so fine, so virginal, so charm-
ingly angular and boyish. There was infinitely more of
the woman in it; and perhaps because of this she looked
more like Laura than at any time of her life before.
But even yet her expression was one of gravity, of se-
riousness. There was always a certain aloofness about
Page. She looked out at the world solemnly, and as if
separated from its lighter side. Things humorous in-
terested her only as inexplicable vagaries of the human
animal.
  "We heard the organ," said Laura, "so we came in.
I wanted Mrs. Gretry to listen to it."


  The three years that had just passed had been the
most important years of Laura Jadwin's life. Since her
marriage she had grown intellectually and morally with
amazing rapidity. Indeed, so swift had been the change,
that it was not so much a growth as a transformation.
She was no longer the same half-formed, impulsive girl
                         192





                     THE PIT
who had found a delight in the addresses of her three
lovers, and who had sat on the floor in the old home
on State Street and allowed Landry Court to hold her
hand. She looked back upon the Miss Dearborn of those
days as though she were another person. How she had
grown since then! How she had changed! How different,
how infinitely more serious and sweet her life since then
had become!
  A great fact had entered her world, a great new ele-
ment, that dwarfed all other thoughts, all other con-
siderations. This was her love for her husband. It was
as though until the time of her marriage she had walked
in darkness, a darkness that she fancied was day; walked
perversely, carelessly, and with a frivolity that was
almost wicked. Then, suddenly, she had seen a great
light. Love had entered her world. In her new heaven a
new light was fixed, and all other things were seen only
because of this light; all other things were touched by
it, tempered by it, warmed and vivified by it.
  It had seemed to date from a certain evening at their
country house at Geneva Lake in Wisconsin, where she
had spent her honeymoon with her husband. They had
been married about ten days. It was a July evening,
and they were quite alone on board the little steam
yacht, the Thetis. She remembered it all very plainly.
It had been so warm that she had not changed her dress
after dinner-she recalled that it was of Honiton lace
over old-rose silk, and that Curtis had said it was the
prettiest he had ever seen. It was an hour before mid-
night, and the lake was so still as to appear veritably
solid. The moon was reflected upon the surface with
never a ripple to blur its image. The sky was grey with
starlight, and only a vague bar of black between the
star shimmer and the pale shield of the water marked
the shore line. Never since that night could she hear
the call of whippoorwills or the piping of night frogs
                         193





                    THE PIT
that the scene did not come back to her. The little
Thetis had throbbed and panted steadily. At the
door of the engine room, the engineer-the grey Mac-
Kenny, his back discreetly turned-sat smoking a pipe
and taking the air. From time to time he would swing
himself into the engine room, and the clink and scrape
of his shovel made itself heard as he stoked the fire
vigorously.
  Stretched out in a long wicker deck chair, hatless, a
drab coat thrown around her shoulders, Laura had sat
near her husband, who had placed himself upon a camp
stool, where he could reach the wheel with one hand.
  "Well," he had said at last, "are you glad you mar-
ried me, Miss Dearborn?" And she had caught him
about the neck and drawn his face down to hers, and
her head thrown back, their lips all but touching, had
whispered over and over again:
  "I love you-love you-love you!"
  That night was final. The marriage ceremony, even
that moment in her room, when her husband had taken
her in his arms and she had felt the first stirring of love
in her heart, all the first week of their married life had
been for Laura a whirl, a blur. She had not been able
to find herself. Her affection for her husband came and
went capriciously. There were moments when she be-
lieved herself to be really unhappy. Then, all at once,
she seemed to awake. Not the ceremony at St. James'
Church, but that awakening had been her marriage.
Now it was irrevocable; she was her husband's; she be-
longed to him indissolubly, forever and forever, and the
surrender was a glory. Laura in that moment knew that
love, the supreme triumph of a woman's life, was less a
victory than a capitulation.
   Since then her happiness had been perfect. Literally
 and truly there was not a cloud, not a mote in her sun-
 shine. She had everything-the love of her husband,
                         194





                     THE PIT
great wealth, extraordinary beauty, perfect health, an
untroubled mind, friends, position-everything. God
had been good to her, beyond all dreams and all deserv-
ing. For her had been reserved all the prizes, all the
guerdons; for her who had done nothing to merit them.
  Her husband she knew was no less happy. In those
first three years after their marriage, life was one un-
ending pageant; and their happiness became for them
some marvellous, bewildering thing, dazzling, resplen-
dent, a strange, glittering, jewelled Wonder-worker that
suddenly had been put into their hands.
  As one of the first results of this awakening, Laura
reproached herself with having done little for Page.
She told herself that she had not been a good sister,
that often she had been unjust, quick tempered, and had
made the little girl to suffer because of her caprices. She
had not sympathized sufficiently with her small troubles
--so she made herself believe--and had found too many
occasions to ridicule Page's intenseness and queer little
solemnities. True she had given her a good home, good
clothes, and a good education, but she should have
given more-more than mere duty-gifts. She should
have been more of a companion to the little girl, more of
a help; in fine, more of a mother. Laura felt all at once
the responsibilities of the elder sister in a family bereft
of parents. Page was growing fast, and growing aston-
ishingly beautiful; in a little while she would be a young
woman, and over the near horizon, very soon now, must
inevitably loom the grave question of her marriage.
  But it was only this realization of certain responsi-
bilities that during the first years of her married life at
any time drew away Laura's consideration of her hus-
band. She began to get acquainted with the real man-
within-the-man that she knew now revealed himself
only after marriage. Jadwin her husband was so differ-
ent from, so infinitely better than, Jadwin her lover,
                         '95





THE PIT


that Laura sometimes found herself looking back with
a kind of retrospective apprehension on the old days
and the time when she was simply Miss Dearborn.
How little she had known him after all! And how, in
the face of this ignorance, this innocence, this absence
of any insight into his real character, had she dared to
take the irretrievable step that bound her to him for
life? The Curtis Jadwi'n of those early days was so much
another man. He might have been a rascal; she could
not have known it. As it was, her husband had promptly
come to be, for her, the best, the finest man she had
ever known. But it might easily have been different.
  His attitude toward her was thoughtfulness itself.
Hardly ever was he absent from her, even for a day, that
he did not bring her some little present, some little keep-
sake-or even a bunch of flowers-when he returned in
the evening. The anniversaries-Christmas, their wed-
ding day, her birthday-he always observed with great
clat. He took a holiday from his business, surprised
her with presents under her pillow, or her dinner-plate,
and never failed to take her to the theatre in the evening.
  However, it was not only Jadwin's virtues that en-
deared him to his wife. He was no impeccable hero in
her eyes. He was tremendously human. He had his
faults, his certain lovable weaknesses, and it was pre-
cisely these traits that Laura found so adorable.
  For one thing, Jadwin could be magnificently incon-
sistent. Let him set his mind and heart upon a given
pursuit, pleasure, or line of conduct not altogether ad-
visable at the moment, and the ingenuity of the excuses
by which he justified himself were monuments of elabo-
rate sophistry. Yet, if later he lost interest, he reversed
his arguments with supreme disregard for his former
words.
  Then, too, he developed a boyish pleasure in certain
unessential though cherished objects and occupations,
                         196





                     THE PIT
that he indulged extravagantly and to the neglect of
things, not to say duties, incontestably of more im-
portance.
  One of these objects was the Thetis. In every con-
ceivable particular the little steam yacht was complete
down to the last bolt, the last coat of varnish; but at
times during their summer vacations, when Jadwin,
in all reason, should have been supervising the laying
out of certain unfinished portions of the "grounds"-
supervision which could be trusted to no subordinate
he would be found abroad the Thetis, hatless, in his
shirt-sleeves, in solemn debate with the grey MacKenny
and-a cleaning rag, or monkey-wrench, or paint brush
in his hand-tinkering and pottering about the boat,
over and over again. Wealthy as he was, he could have
maintained an entire crew on board whose whole duty
should have been to screw, and scrub, and scour. But
Jadwin would have none of it. "Costs too much," he
would declare, with profound gravity. He had the self-
made American's handiness with implements and paint
brushes, and he would, at high noon and under a mur-
derous sun, make the trip from the house to the dock
where the Thetis was moored, for the trivial pleasure
of tightening a bolt-which did not need tightening; or
wake up in the night to tell Laura of some wonderful
new idea he had conceived as to the equipment or
decoration of the yacht. He had blustered about the
extravagance of a "crew," but the sums of money that
went to the brightening, refitting, overhauling, re-
painting, and reballasting of the boat-all absolutely
uncalled-for made even Laura gasp, and would have
maintained a dozen sailors an entire year.
  This same inconsistency prevailed also in other direc-
tions. In the matter of business Jadwin's economy was
unimpeachable. He would cavil on a half-dollar's over-
charge; he would put himself to downright inconve-
                         '97





                    THE PIT
nience to save the useless expenditure of a dime-and
boast of it. But no extravagance was ever too great, no
time ever too valuable, when bass were to be caught.
  For Jadwin was a fisherman unregenerate. Laura,
though an early riser when in the city, was apt to sleep
late in the country, and never omitted a two-hours' nap
in the heat of the afternoon. Her husband improved
these occasions when he was deprived of her society,
to indulge in his pastime. Never a morning so forbidding
that his lines were not in the water by five o'clock;
never a sun so scorching that he was not coaxing a
"strike" in the stumps and reeds in the shade under
the shores.
  It was the one pleasure he could not share with his
wife. Laura was unable to bear the monotony of the
slow-moving boat, the hours spent without results, the
enforced idleness, the cramped positions. Only occasion-
ally could Jadwin prevail upon her to accompany him.
And then what preparations! Queen Elizabeth approach-
ing her barge was attended with no more solicitude.
MacKenny (who sometimes acted as guide and oars-
man) and her husband exhausted their ingenuity to
make her comfortable. They held anxious debates: "Do
you think she'll like that?" "Wouldn't this make it
easier for her?" "Is that the way she liked it last time?"
Jadwin himself arranged the cushions, spread the carpet
over the bottom of the boat, handed her in, found her
old gloves for her, baited her hook, disentangled her
line, saw to it that the mineral water in the ice-box was
sufficiently cold, and performed an endless series of
little attentions looking to her comfort and enjoyment.
It was all to no purpose, and at length Laura declared:
  "Curtis, dear, it is no use. You just sacrifice every
bit of your pleasure to make me comfortable-to make
me enjoy it; and I just don't. I'm sorry, I want to share
every pleasure with you, but I don't like to fish, and
                         198





THE PIT


never will. You go alone. I'm just a hindrance to you."
And though he blustered at first, Laura had her way.
  Once in the period of these three years Laura and her
husband had gone abroad. But her experience in Eng-
land--they did not get to the Continent-had been a
disappointment to her. The museums, art galleries, and
cathedrals were not of the least interest to Jadwin, and
though he followed her from one to another with un-
complaining stoicism, she felt his distress, and had con-
trived to return home three months ahead of time.
  It was during this trip that they had bought so many
of the pictures and appointments for the North Avenue
house, and Laura's disappointment over her curtailed
European travels was mitigated by the anticipation of
her pleasure in settling in the new home. This had not
been possible immediately after their marriage. For
nearly two years the great place had been given over to
contractors, architects, decorators, and gardeners, and
Laura and her husband had lived, while in Chicago, at
a hotel, giving up the one-time rectory on Cass Street
to Page and to Aunt Wess.'
  But when at last Laura entered upon possession of
the North Avenue house, she was not-after the first
enthusiasm and excitement over its magnificence had
died down altogether pleased with it, though she told
herself the contrary. Outwardly it was all that she
could desire. It fronted Lincoln Park, and from all the
windows upon that side the most delightful outlooks
were obtainable-green woods, open lawns, the parade
ground, the Lincoln monument, dells, bushes, smooth
drives, flower beds, and fountains. From the great bay
window of Laura's own sitting room she could see far
out over Lake Michigan, and watch the procession of
great lake steamers, from Milwaukee, far-distant Du-
luth, and the Sault Sainte Marie the famous "Soo"-
defiling majestically past, making for the mouth of the
                         '99





THE PIT


river, laden to the water's edge with whole harvests of
wheat. At night, when the windows were open in the
warm weather, she could hear the mournful wash and
lapping of the water on the embankments.
  The grounds about her home were beautiful. The
stable itself was half again as large as her old home op-
posite St. James's, and the conservatory, in which she
took the keenest delight, was a wonderful affair-a vast
bubble-like structure of green panes, whence, winter
and summer, came a multitude of flowers for the house
-violets, lilies of the valley, jonquils, hyacinths, tulips,
and her own loved roses.
  But the interior of the house was, in parts, less satis-
factory. Jadwin, so soon as his marriage was a certainty,
had bought the house, and had given over its internal
furnishings to a firm of decorators. Innocently enough
he had intended to surprise his wife, had told himself
that she should not be burdened with the responsibility
of selection and planning. Fortunately, however, the
decorators were men of taste. There was nothing to
offend, and much to delight in the results they obtained
in the dining room, breakfast room, parlours, drawing
rooms, and suites of bedrooms. But Laura, though the
beauty of it all enchanted her, could never rid herself
of a feeling that it was not hers. It impressed her with
its splendour of natural woods and dull "colour effects,"
its cunning electrical devices, its mechanical contriv-
ances for comfort, like the ready-made luxury and
"convenience" of a Pullman.
  However, she had intervened in time to reserve cer-
tain of the rooms to herself, and these-the library, her
bedroom, and more especially that apartment from
whose bay windows she looked out upon the Lake, and
which, as if she were still in her old home, she called the
"upstairs sitting room"-she furnished to suit herself.
   For very long she found it difficult, even with all her
                         200





THE PIT


resolution, with all her pleasure in her new-gained
wealth, to adapt herself to a manner of living upon so
vast a scale. She found herself continually planning the
marketing for the next day, forgetting that this now
was part of the housekeeper's duties. For months she
persisted in "doing her room" after breakfast, just as
she had been taught to do in the old days when she
was a little girl at Barrington. She was afraid of the
elevator, and never really learned how to use the neat
little system of telephones that connected the various
parts of the house with the servants' quarters. For
months her chiefest concern in her wonderful surround-
ings took the form of a dread of burglars.
  Her keenest delights were her stable and the great
organ in the art gallery; and these alone more than
compensated for her uneasiness in other particulars.
  Horses Laura adored-black ones with flowing tails
and manes, like certain pictures she had seen. Nowa-
days, except on the rarest occasions, she never set foot
out of doors, except to take her carriage, her coupe,
her phaeton, or her dog-cart. Best of all she loved her
saddle horses. She had learned to ride, and the morning
was inclement indeed that she did not take a long and
solitary excursion through the Park, followed by the
groom and Jadwin's two spotted coach dogs.
  The great organ terrified her at first. But on closer
acquaintance she came to regard it as a vast-hearted,
sympathetic friend. She already played the piano very
well, and she scorned Jadwin's self-playing "attach-
ment." A teacher was engaged to instruct her in the
intricacies of stops and of pedals, and in the difficulties
of the "echo" organ, "great" organ, "choir," and
"swell." So soon as she had mastered these, Laura
entered upon a new world of delight. Her taste in music
was as yet a little immature-Gounod and even Verdi
were its limitations. But to hear, responsive to the light-
                         201





                     THE PIT
est pressures of her finger-tips, the mighty instrument
go thundering through the cadences of the "Anvil
Chorus" gave her a thrilling sense of power that was
superb.
  The untrained, unguided instinct of the actress in
Laura had fostered in her a curious penchant toward
melodrama. She had a taste for the magnificent. She
revelled in these great musical "effects" upon her or-
gan, the grandiose easily appealed to her, while as for
herself, the r6le of the grande dame, with this wonder-
ful house for background and environment, came to be
for her, quite unconsciously, a sort of game in which she
delighted.
  It was by this means that, in the end, she succeeded
in fitting herself to her new surroundings. Innocently
enough, and with a harmless, almost childlike, affecta-
tion, she posed a little, and by so doing found the solu-
tion of the incongruity between herself-the Laura of
moderate means and quiet life-and the massive luxury
with which she was now surrounded. Without knowing
it, she began to act the part of a great lady-and she
acted it well. She assumed the existence of her numerous
servants as she assumed the fact of the trees in the park;
she gave herself into the hands of her maid, not as
Laura Jadwin of herself would have done it, clumsily
and with the constraint of inexperience, but as she
would have done it if she had been acting the part on
the stage, with an air, with all the nonchalance of a
marquise, with-in fine-all the superb condescension
of her "grand manner."
  She knew very well that if she relaxed this hauteur,
her servants would impose on her, would run over
her, and in this matter she found new cause for wonder
in her husband.
  The servants, from the frigid butler to the under
groom, adored Jadwin. A half-expressed wish upon his
                         202





                    THE PIT
part produced a more immediate effect than Laura's
most explicit orders. He never descended to familiarity
with them, and, as a matter of fact, ignored them to
such an extent that he forgot or confused their names.
But where Laura was obeyed with precise formality
and chilly deference, Jadwin was served with obse-
quious alacrity, and with a good humour that even
livery and "correct form" could not altogether conceal.
  Laura's eyes were first opened to this genuine affec-
tion which Jadwin inspired in his servants by an incident
which occurred in the first months of their occupancy
of the new establishment. One of the gardeners discov-
ered the fact that Jadwin affected gardenias in the lapel
of his coat, and thereat was at immense pains to supply
him with a fresh bloom from the conservatory each
morning. The flower was to be placed at Jadwin's plate,
and it was quite the event of the day for the old fellow
when the master appeared on the front steps with the
flower in his coat. But a feud promptly developed over
this matter between the gardener and the maid who
took the butler's place at breakfast every morning.
Sometimes Jadwin did not get the flower, and the gar-
dener charged the maid with remissness in forgetting
to place it at his plate after he had given it into her
hands. In the end the affair became so clamorous that
Jadwin himself had to intervene. The gardener was
summoned and found to have been in fault only in his
eagerness to please.
   "Billy," said Jadwin, to the old man at the conclu-
sion of the whole matter, "you're an old fool."
   And the gardener thereupon had bridled and stam-
 mered as though Jadwin had conferred a gift.
   "Now if I had called him 'an old fool,'" observed
 Laura, "he would have sulked the rest of the week."
   The happiest time of the day for Laura was the eve-
 ning. In the daytime she was variously occupied, but
                         203





TIHE PIT


her thoughts continually ran forward to the end of the
day, when her husband would be with her. Jadwin
breakfasted early, and Laura bore him company no
matter how late she had stayed up the night before.
By half-past eight he was out of the house, driving
down to his office in his buggy behind Nip and Tuck.
By nine Laura's own saddle horse was brought to the
carriage porch, and until eleven she rode in the park.
At twelve she lunched with Page, and in the afternoon
-in the "upstairs sitting room"-read her Browning
or her Meredith, the latter one of her newest discoveries,
till three or four. Sometimes after that she went out in
her carriage. If it was to "shop" she drove to the "Rook-
ery," in La Salle Street, after her purchases were made,
and sent the footman up to her husband's office to say
that she would take him home. Or as often as not she
called for Mrs. Cressler or Aunt Wess' or Mrs. Gretry,
and carried them off to some exhibit of painting, or
flowers, or more rarely-for she had not the least inter-
est in social affairs-to teas or receptions.
   But in the evenings, after dinner, she had her husband
to herself. Page was almost invariably occupied by one
or more of her young men in the drawing room, but
Laura and Jadwin shut themselves in the library, a
lofty panelled room-a place of deep leather chairs,
tall book-cases, etchings, and sombre brasses-and
there, while Jadwin lay stretched out upon the broad
sofa, smoking cigars, one hand behind his head, Laura
read aloud to him.
  His tastes in fiction were very positive. Laura at
first had tried to introduce him to her beloved Meredith.
But after three chapters, when he had exclaimed,
"What's the fool talking about?" she had given over
and begun again from another starting-point. Left to
himself, his wife sorrowfully admitted that he would
have gravitated to the Mysterious Island and Mi-
                         204





                    THE PIT
chael Strogoff, or even to Mr. Potter of Texas and
Mr. Barnes of New York. But she had set herself to
accomplish his literary education, so, Meredith failing,
she took up Treasure Island and The Wrecker. Much
of these he made her skip.
  "Oh, let's get on with the 'story,'" he urged. But
Pinkerton for long remained for him an ideal, because
he was "smart" and "alive."
  "I'm not long very many of art," he announced.
"But I believe that any art that don't make the world
better and happier is no art at all, and is only fit for the
dump heap."
  But at last Laura found his abiding affinity in
Howells.
  "Nothing much happens," he said. "But I know all
those people," He never could rid himself of a surrepti-
tious admiration for Bartley Hubbard. He, too, was
"smart" and "alive." He had the "get there" to him.
"Why," he would say, "I know fifty boys just like him
down there in La Salle Street." Lapham he loved as a
brother. Never a point in the development of his charac-
ter that he missed or failed to chuckle over. Bromfield
Cory was poohed and boshed quite out of consideration
as a "loafer," a "dilletanty," but Lapham had all his
sympathy.
  "Yes, sir," he would exclaim, interrupting the nar-
rative, "that's just it. That's just what I would have
done if I had been in his place. Come, this chap knows
what he's writing about-not like that Middleton ass,
with his 'Dianas' and 'Amazing Marriages.'"
  Occasionally the Jadwins entertained. Laura's hus-
band was proud of his house, and never tired of showing
his friends about it. Laura gave Page a "coming-out"
dance, and nearly every Sunday the Cresslers came to
dinner. But Aunt Wess' could, at first, rarely be induced
to pay the household a visit. So much grandeur made
                        205





THE PIT


the little widow uneasy, even a little suspicious. She
would shake her head at Laura, murmuring:
  "My word, it's all very fine, but, dear me, Laura, I
hope you do pay for everything on the nail, and don't
run up any bills. I don't know what your dear father
would say to it all, no, I don't!" And she would spend
hours in counting the electric bulbs, which she insisted
were only devices for some new-fangled gas.
  "Thirty-three in this one room alone," she would
say. "I'd like to see your dear husband's face when
he gets his gas bill. And a dressmaker that lives in the
house.... Well,-I don't want to say anything."
  Thus three years had gone by. The new household
settled to a r6gime. Continually Jadwin grew richer.
His real estate appreciated in value; rents went up.
Every time he speculated in wheat, it was upon a larger
scale, and every time he won. He was a Bear always,
and on those rare occasions when he referred to his
ventures in Laura's hearing, it was invariably to say
that prices were going down. Till at last had come
that spring when he believed that the bottom had been
touched, had had the talk with Gretry, and had, in se-
cret, "turned Bull," with the suddenness of a strategist.
  The matter was yet in Gretry's mind while the party
remained in the art gallery; and as they were return-
ing to the drawing room he detained Jadwin an instant.
  "If you are set upon breaking your neck," he said,
"you might tell me at what figure you want me to buy
for you to-morrow."
  "At the market," returned Jadwin. "I want to get
into the thing quick."
  A little later, when they had all reassembled in the
drawing room, and while Mrs. Gretry was telling, an
interminable story of how Isabel had all but asphyxiated
herself the night before, a servant announced Landry
Court, and the young man entered, spruce and debonair,
                         206





                     THE PIT
a bouquet in one hand and a box of candy in the other.
  Some days before this Page had lectured him sol-
emnly on the fact that he was over-absorbed in business
and was starving his soul. He should read more, she told
him, and she had said that if he would call upon her on
this particular night, she would indicate a course of
reading for him.
  So it came about that, after a few moments' conver-
sation with the older people in the drawing room, the
two adjourned to the library.
  There, by way of a beginning, Page asked him what
was his favourite character in fiction. She spoke of the
beauty of Ruskin's thoughts, of the gracefulness of
Charles Lamb's style. The conversation lagged a little.
Landry, not to be behind her, declared for the modern
novel, and spoke of the "newest book." But Page never
read new books; she was not interested, and their talk,
unable to establish itself upon a common ground,
halted, and was in a fair way to end, until at last, and
by insensible degrees, they began to speak of them-
selves and of each other. Promptly they were all aroused.
They listened to one another's words with studious at-
tention, answered with ever-ready promptness, dis-
cussed, argued, agreed, and disagreed over and over
again.
  Landry had said:
  "When I was a boy, I always had an ambition to excel
all the other boys. I wanted to be the best baseball
player on the block-and I was, too. I could pitch three
curves when I was fifteen, and I find I am the same now
that I am a man grown. When I do a thing, I want to
do it better than anyone else. From the very first I
have always been ambitious. It is my strongest trait.
Now," he went on, turning to Page, "your strongest
trait is your thoughtfulness. You are what they call
introspective."
                         207





THE PIT


  "Yes, yes," she answered. "Yes, I think so, too."
  "You don't need the stimulation of competition.
You are at your best when you are with just one person.
A crowd doesn't interest you."
  "I hate it," she exclaimed.
  "Now with me, with a man of my temperament, a
crowd is a real inspiration. When everyone is talking
and shouting around me, or to me, even, my mind works
at its best. But," he added, solemnly, "it must be a
crowd of men. I can't abide a crowd of women."
  "They chatter so," she assented. "I can't, either."
  "But I find that the companionship of one intelligent,
sympathetic woman is as much of a stimulus as a lot of
men. It's funny, isn't it, that I should be like that?"
  "Yes," she said, "it is funny-strange. But I believe
in companionship. I believe that between man and
woman that is the great thing-companionship. Love,"
she added, abruptly, and then broke off with a deep sigh.
"Oh, I don't know," she murmured. "Do you remember
those lines:
           "Man's love is of his life a thing apart,
             'Tis woman's whole existence.

Do you believe that?"
  "Well,"'' he asserted, gravely, choosing his words with
deliberation, "it might be so, but all depends upon the
man and woman. Love," he added, with tremendous
gravity, "is the greatest power in the universe."
  "I have never been in love," said Page. "Yes, love is
a wonderful power."
  "I've never been in love, either."
  "Never, never been in love?"
  "Oh, I've thought I was in love," he said, with a wave
of his hand.
  "I've never even thought I was," she answered,
musing.
                        2o8





THE PIT


  "Do you believe in early marriages?" demanded
Landry.
  "A man shou_ never marry," she said, deliberately,
" till he can give his wife a good home, and good clothes
and-and that sort of thing. I do not think I shall
ever marry."
  "You! Why, of course you will. Why not?"
  "No, no. It is my disposition. I am morose and taci-
turn. Laura says so."
  Landry protested with vehemence.
  "And," she went on, "I have long, brooding fits of
melancholy."
  "Well, so have I," he threw out recklessly. "At night,
sometimes-when I wake up. Then I'm all down in the
mouth, and I say, 'What's the use, by jingo?'"
  "Do you believe in pessimism? I do. They say Carlyle
was a terrible pessimist."
  "Well-talking about love. I understand that you
can't believe in pessimism and love at the same time.
Wouldn't you feel unhappy if you lost your faith in
love?"
  "Oh, yes, terribly."
  There was a moment's silence, and then Landry re-
marked:
  "Now you are the kind or woman that would only
love once, but love for that once mighty deep and
strong."
  Page's eyes grew wide. She murmured:
  "'"Tis a woman's whole existence-whole existence.'
Yes, I think I am like that."
  "Do you think Enoch Arden did right in going away
after he found them married?"
  "Oh, have you read that? Oh, isn't that a beautiful
poem? Wasn't he noble? Wasn't he grand? Oh, yes, yes,
he did right."
  "By George, I wouldn't have gone away. I'd have
                        209





THE PIT


gone right into that house, and I would have made
things hum. I'd have thrown the other fellow out, lock,
stock, and barrel."
  "That's just like a man, so selfish, only thinking of
himself. You don't know the meaning of love-great,
true, unselfish love."
  "I know the meaning of what's mine. Think I'd give
up the woman I loved to another man?"
  "Even if she loved the other man best?"
  "I'd have my girl first, and find out how she felt
about the other man afterward."
  "Oh, but think if you gave her up, how noble it would
be. You would have sacrificed all that you held the dear-
est to an ideal. Oh, if I were in Enoch Arden's place,
and my husband thought I was dead, and I knew he
was happy with another woman, it would just be a
joy to deny myself, sacrifice myself to spare him un-
happiness. That would be my idea of love. Then I'd go
into a convent."
  "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 ob-
served. "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.
                        210





                    THE PIT
  "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 inspira-
tion. It's been inspiring, elevating, to say the least."
  "I like to read, if that's what you mean," she has-
tened 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-Pd make things hum, I guess," he ad-
mitted.
  The next day was Easter Sunday, and Page came
down to nine-o'clock breakfast a little late, to find Jad-
win already finished and deep in the pages of the morn-
ing 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,
                         211





                     THE PIT
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 fra-
grant 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 par-
rot 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 ad-
dressed 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 sud-
denly 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?"
                         212




                    THE PIT
  "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!" exclainied 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 anyone 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-
                        213





                    THE PIT
don't you think it was foolish of him to talk like
that?"
   "Not at all," Laura said, decisively. "If he said that
she 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.oon 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 hus-
 band. "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
                         214





                    THE PIT
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 answer. 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 pre-
dicted, 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. Unfavourable 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
                        215





                    THE PIT
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 an-
nounced 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, abroad the The-
tis. 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."
                        216





                     THE PIT
  Gretry thought awhile.
  "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 spora-
dic 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 the 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 move-
ment. 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 fore-
thought, the shrewdness, and the prompt action of those
early spring days were beginning to tell. Confident,
                         217





                     THE PIT
secure, unassailable, Jadwin plunged in. Every week the
swirl of the Pit increased in speed, every week the de-
mands of Europe for American wheat grew more fre-
quent; 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."


218











                 CHAPTER 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 toward 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 overpapers 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 exact-
ing 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."
                         219





THE PIT


  But she got no further. Her husbandc had taken her
in his arms, and had interrupted her words with blus-
tering exclamations of self-reproach and self-condem-
nation. 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 for-
ward 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 some-
times, 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 hate and fear 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 be-
tween 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
                        220





                    THE PIT
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 ab-
sorbing."
  "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."
  She gave her word, and leaned her elbows on the
table, prepared to listen intently. Jadwin crushed a
lump of sugar against the inside of his coffee cup.
  "Well," he began, "I've not been doing anything
very exciting, except to buy wheat."
  "What for?
  "To sell again. You see, I'm one of those who be-
lieve that wheat is going up. I was the very first to see
it, I guess,'way back last April. Now in August this year,
while we were up at the Lake, I bought three million
bushels."
                        221






THE PIT


   " Three-million-bushels!" she murmured. "Why,
 what do you do with it? Where do you put it?"
   He tried to explain that he had merely bought the
right to call for the grain on a certain date, but she
could not understand this very clearly.
   "Never mind," she told him, "go on."
   "Well, then, at the end of August we found out that
the wet weather in England would make a short crop
there, and along in September came the news that Si-
beria would not raise enough to supply the southern
provinces of Russia. That left only the United States
and the Argentine Republic to feed pretty much the
whole world. Of course that would make wheat valu-
able. Seems to be a short-crop year everywhere. I
saw that wheat would go higher and higher, so I bought
another million bushels in October, and another early
in this month. That's all. You see, I figure that pretty
soon those people over in England and Italy and Ger-
many-the people that eat wheat-will be willing to
pay us in America big prices for it, because it's so hard
to get. They've got to have the wheat-it's bread 'n'
butter to them."
   "Oh, then, why not give it to them?" she cried. "Give
it to those poor people-your five million bushels. Why,
that would be a godsend to them."
   Jadwin stared a moment.
   "Oh, that isn't exactly how it works out," he said.
   Before he could say more, however, the maid came
in and handed to Jadwin three despatches.
   "Now those," said Laura, when the servant had gone
out, "you get those every morning. Are those part of
your business? What do they say?"
   "I'll read them to you," he told her as he slit the
 first envelopes. "They are cablegrams from agents of
 mine in Europe. Gretry arranged to have them sent
 to me. Here, now, this is from Odessa. It's in cipher,
                         222





                    THE PIT
but"-he drew a narrow memorandum-book from his
breast pocket-" I'll translate it for you."
  He turned the pages of the key book a few moments,
jotting down the translation on the back of an enve-
lope with the gold pencil at the end of his watch chain.
  "Here's how it reads," he said at last. "'Cash wheat
advanced one cent bushel on Liverpool buying, stock
light. Shipping to interior. European price not attractive
to sellers.'"
  "What does that mean?" she asked.
  "Well, that Russia will not export wheat, that she
has no more than enough for herself, so that western
Europe will have to look to us for her wheat."
   "And the others? Read those to me."
   Again Jadwin translated.
   "This is from Paris.
   "'Answer on one million bushels wheat in your mar-
ket-stocks lighter than expected, and being cleared
up.'
   "Which is to say?" she queried.
   "They want to know how much I would ask for a mil-
lion bushels. They find it hard to get the stuff over
there-just as I said they would."
   "Will you sell it to them?"
   "Maybe. I'll talk to Sam about it."
   "And now the last one."
   "It's from Liverpool, and Liverpool, you must under-
stand, is the great buyer of wheat. It's a tremendously
influential place."
   He began once more to consult the key book, one
 finger following the successive code words of the des-
 patch.
   Laura, watching him, saw his eyes suddenly contract.
   "By George," he muttered, all at once, "by George,
 what's this?"
   "What is it?" she demanded. "Is it important?"
                         223






                    THE PIT
  But all-absorbed, Jadwin neither heard nor responded.
Three times he verified the same word.
  "Oh, please tell me," she begged.
  Jadwin shook his head impatiently and held up a
warning hand.
  "Wait, wait," he said. "Wait a minute."
  Word for word he wrote out the translation of the
cablegram, and then studied it intently.
  "That's it," he said, at last. Then he got to his feet.
"I guess I've had enough breakfast," he declared. He
looked at his watch, touched the call bell, and when the
maid appeared said:
  "Tell Jarvis to bring the buggy around right away."
  "But, dear, what is it?" repeated Laura. "You said
you would tell me. You see," she cried, "it's just as I
said. You've forgotten my very existence. When it's a
question of wheat I count for nothing. And just now,
when you read the despatch to yourself, you were all
different; such a look came into your face, so cruelly
eager, and triumphant and keen     )"
  "You'd be eager, too," he exclaimed, "if you under-
stood. Look; read it for yourself."
  He thrust the cable into her hands. Over each code
word he had written its translation, and his wife read:
  "Large firms here short and in embarrassing posi-
tion, owing to curtailment in Argentine shipments. Can
negotiate for five million wheat if price satisfactory."
  "Well?" she asked.
  "Well, don't you see what that means? It's the 'Eu-
ropean demand' at last. They must have wheat, and
I've got it to give 'em-wheat that I bought, oh, at
seventy cents, some of it, and they'll pay the market-
that is, eighty cents, for it. Oh, they'll pay more. They'll
pay eighty-two if I want 'em to. France is after the
stuff, too. Remember that cable from Paris I just read.
They'd bid against each other. Why, if I pull this off,
                         224





                     THE PIT
if this goes through-and, by George," he went on,
speaking as much to himself as to her, new phases of the
affair presenting themselves to him at every moment,
"by George, I don't have to throw this wheat into the
Pit and break down the price-and Gretry has under-
standings with the railroads, through the elevator gang,
so we get big rebates. Why, this wheat is worthy eighty-
two cents to them-and then there's this 'curtailment
in Argentine shipments.' That's the first word we've
had about small crops there. Holy Moses, if the Argen-
tine crop is off, wheat will knock the roof clean off the
Board of Trade!" The maid reappeared in the doorway.
"The buggy?" queried Jadwin. "All right. I'm off,
Laura, and-until it's over keep quiet about all this,
you know. Ask me to read you some more cables some
day. It brings good luck."
  He gathered up his despatches and the mail and was
gone. Laura, left alone, sat looking out of the window
a long moment. She heard the front door close, and
then the sound of the horses' hoofs on the asphalt by
the carriage porch. They died down, ceased, and all
at once a great silence seemed to settle over the house.
  Laura sat thinking. At last she rose.
  "It is the first time," she said to herself, "that Curtis
ever forgot to kiss me good-bye."
  The day, for all that the month was December, was
fine. The sun shone; under foot the ground was dry
and hard. The snow which had fallen ten days before
was practically gone. In fine, it was a perfect day for
riding. Laura called her maid and got into her habit.
The groom with his own horse and "Crusader" were
waiting for her when she descended.
  That forenoon Laura rode further and longer than
usual. Preoccupied at first, her mind burdened with
vague anxieties, she nevertheless could not fail to be
aroused and stimulated by the sparkle and efferves-
                         225





THE PIT


cence of the perfect morning, and the cold, pure glitter
of Lake Michigan, green with an intense mineral hue,
dotted with whitecaps, and flashing under the morn-
ing sky. Lincoln Park was deserted and still; a blue
haze shrouded the distant masses of leafless trees, where
the gardeners were burning the heaps of leaves. Under
her the thoroughbred moved with an ease and a freedom
that were superb, throwing back one sharp ear at her
lightest word; his rippling mane caressed her hand and
forearm, and as she looked down upon his shoulder
she could see the long, slender muscles, working
smoothly, beneath the satin sheen of the skin. At the
water works she turned into the long, straight road
that leads to North Lake, and touched Crusader with
the crop, checking him slightly at the same time.
With a little toss of his head he broke from a trot into
a canter, and then, as she leaned forward in the saddle,
into his long, even gallop. There was no one to see;
she would not be conspicuous, so Laura gave the horse
his head, and in another moment he was carrying her
with a swiftness that brought the water to her eyes,
and that sent her hair flying from her face. She had
him completely under control. A touch upon the bit,
she knew, would suffice to bring him to a standstill.
She knew him to be without fear and without nerves,
knew that his every instinct made for her safety, and
that this morning's gallop was as much a pleasure to
him as to his rider. Beneath her and around her the
roadway and landscape flew; the cold air sang in her
ears and whipped a faint colour to her pale cheeks;
in her deep brown eyes a frosty sparkle came and went,
and throughout all her slender figure the blood raced
spanking and careering in a full, strong tide of health
and gaiety.
  She made a circle around North Lake, and came back
by way of the Linn6 monument and the Palm House,
                         226





THE PIT


Crusader ambling quietly by now, the groom trotting
stolidly in the rear. Throughout all her ride she had seen
no one but the park gardeners and the single grey-
coated, mounted policeman whom she met each time
she rode, and who always touched his helmet to her as
she cantered past. Possibly she had grown a little care-
less in looking out for pedestrians at the crossings, for
as she turned eastward at the La Salle statue, she all
but collided with a gentleman who was traversing the
road at the same time.
  She brought her horse to a standstill with a little start
of apprehension, and started again as she saw that the
gentleman was Sheldon Corthell.
   "Well," she cried, taken all aback, unable to think
of formalities, and relapsing all at once into the young
girl of Barrington, Massachusetts, "well, I never-of
all the people."
   But, no doubt, she had been more in his mind than
 he in hers, and a meeting with her was for him an
 eventuality not at all remote. There was more of pleas-
 ure than of embarrassment in that first look in which
 he recognized the wife of Curtis Jadwin.
   The artist had changed no whit in the four years
 since last she had seen him. He seemed as young as
 ever; there was the same "elegance" to his figure;
 his hands were just as long and slim as ever; his black
 beard was no less finely pointed, and the moustaches
 were brushed away from his lips in the same French
 style that she remembered he used to affect. He was,
 as always, carefully dressed. He wore a suit of tweeds
 of a foreign cut, but no overcoat, a cloth cap of green-
 ish plaid was upon his head, his hands were gloved in
 dogskin, and under his arm he carried a slender cane
 of varnished brown bamboo. The only unconvention-
 ality in his dress was the cravat, a great bow of black
 silk that overflowed the lapels of his coat.
                          227




                     THE PIT
  But she had no more than time to register a swift
impression of the details, when he came quickly for-
ward, one hand extended, the other holding his cap.
  "I cannot tell you how glad I am," he exclaimed.
  It was the old Corthell beyond doubting or denial.
Not a single inflection of his low-pitched, gently modu-
lated voice was wanting; not a single infinitesimal man-
nerism was changed, even to the little tilting of the
chin when he spoke, or the quick winking of the eye-
lids, or the smile that narrowed the corners of the eyes
themselves, or the trick of perfect repose of his whole
body. Even his handkerchief, as always, since first she
had known him, was tucked into his sleeve at the
wrist.
  "And so you are back again," she cried. And when,
and how?"
  "And so-yes-so I am back again," he repeated, as
they shook hands. "Only day before yesterday, and
quite surreptitiously. No one knows yet that I am
here. I crept in--or my train did-under the cover of
night. I have come straight from Tuscany."
   "From Tuscany?"
   "    and gardens and marble pergolas."
   "Now why anyone should leave Tuscan gardens and
-and all that kind of thing for a winter in Chicago, I
cannot see," she said.
   "It is a little puzzling," he answered. "But I fancy
that my gardens and pergolas and all the rest had come
to seem to me a little-as the French would put it-
mea!. I began to long for a touch of our hard, harsh
city again. Harshness has its place, I think, if it is only
to cut one's teeth on."
   Laura looked down at him, smiling.
   "I should have thought you had cut yours long ago,"
 she said.
   "Not my wisdom teeth," he urged. "I feel now that
                          228





                    THE PIT
I have come to that time of life when it is expedient
to have wisdom."
  "I have never known that feeling," she confessed,
"and I live in the 'hard, harsh' city."
  "Oh, that is because you have never known what it
meant not to have wisdom," he retorted. "Tell me
about everybody," he went on. "Your husband, he is
well, of course, and distressfully rich. I heard of him
in New York. And Page, our little, solemn Minerva of
Dresden china?"
  "Oh, yes, Page is well, but you will hardly recognize
her; such a young lady nowadays."
  "And Mr. Court, 'Landry'? I remember he always
impressed me as though he had just had his hair cut;
and the Cresslers, and Mrs. Wessels, and  "
  "All well. Mrs. Cressler will be delighted to hear
you are back. Yes, everybody is well."
  "And, last of all, Mrs. Jadwin? But I needn't ask;
I can see how well and happy you are."
  "And Mr. Corthell," she queried, "is also well and
happy?"
  "Mr. Corthell," he responded, "is very well, and-
tolerably-happy, thank you. One has lost a few illu-
sions, but has managed to keep enough to grow old
on. One's latter days are provided for."
  "I shouldn't imagine," she told him, "that one lost
illusions in Tuscan gardens."
  "Quite right," he hastened to reply, smiling cheer-
fully. "One lost no illusions in Tuscany. One went there
to cherish the few that yet remained. But," he added,
without change of manner, "one begans to believe that
even a lost illusion can be very beautiful sometimes-
even in Chicago."
  "I want you to dine with us," said Laura. "You've
hardly met my husband, and I think you will like some
of our pictures. I will have all your old friends there,
                        229





                    THE PIT
the Cresslers and Aunt Wess' and all. When can you
come?"
  "Oh, didn't you get my note?" he asked. "I wrote
you yesterday, asking if I might call to-night. You
see, I am only in Chicago for a couple of days. I must
go on to St. Louis to-morrow, and shall not be back
for a week."
  "Note? No, I've had no note from you. Oh, I know
what happened. Curtis left in a hurry this morning, and
he swooped all the mail into his pocket the last moment.
I knew some of my letters were with his. There's where
your note went. But, never mind, it makes no difference
now that we've met. Yes, by all means, come to-night-
to dinner. We're not a bit formal. Curtis won't have it.
We dine at six; and I'll try to get the others. Oh, but
Page won't be there, I forgot. She and Landry Court are
going to have dinner with Aunt Wess', and they are all
going to a lecture afterward."
  The artist expressed his appreciation and accepted her
invitation.
  "Do you know where we live?" she demanded. "You
know we've moved since."
  "Yes, I know," he told her. "I made up my mind
to take a long walk here in the Park this morning, and
I passed your house on my way out. You see, I had
to look up your address in the directory before writing.
Your house awed me, I confess, and the style is sur-
prisingly good."
  "But tell me," asked Laura," you never speak of your-
self, what have you been doing since you went away?"
  "Nothing. Merely idling, and painting a little, and
studying some thirteenth-century glass in Avignon and
Siena."
  "And shall you go back?"
  "Yes, I think so, in about a month. So soon as I
have straightened out some little businesses of mine-
                        230





                     THE PIT
which puts me in mind," he said, glancing at his watch,
"that I have an appointment at eleven, and should be
about it."
  He said good-bye and left her, and Laura cantered
homeward in high spirits. She was very glad that Cor-
thell had come back. She had always liked him. He
not only talked vell himself, but seemed to have the
faculty of making her do the same. She remembered
that in the old days, before she had met Jadwin, her
mind and conversation, for undiscoverable reasons, had
never been nimbler, quicker, nor more effective than
when in the company of the artist.
  Arrived at home, Laura (as soon as she had looked
up the definition of "pergola" in the dictionary) lost
no time in telephoning to Mrs. Cressler.
  "What," this latter cried when she told her the news,
"that Sheldon Corthell back again! Well, dear me,
if he wasn't the last person in my mind. I do remember
the lovely windows he used to paint, and how refined
and elegant he always was-and the loveliest hands and
voice."
  "He's to dine with us to-night, and I want you and
Mr. Cressler to come."
  "Oh, Laura, child, I just simply can't. Charlie's got
a man from Milwaukee coming here to-night, and I've
got to feed him. Isn't it too provoking? I've got to sit
and listen to those two, clattering commissions and
percentages and all, when I might be hearing Sheldon
Corthell talk art and poetry and stained glass. I de-
clare, I never have any luck."
  At quarter to six that evening Laura sat in the library,
before the fireplace, in her black velvet dinner gown,
cutting the pages of a new novel, the ivory cutter as
it turned and glanced in her hand, appearing to be a
mere prolongation of her slender fingers. But she was
not interested in the book, and from time to time
                         231






THE PIT


glanced nervously at the clock upon the mantel-shelf
over her head. Jadwin was not home yet, and she was
distressed at the thought of keeping dinner waiting.
He usually came back from down town at five o'clock,
and even earlier. To-day she had expected that quite
possibly the business implied in the Liverpool cable
of the morning might detain him, but surely he should
be home by now; and as the minutes passed she listened
more and more anxiously for the sound of hoofs on the
driveway at the side of the house.
  At five minutes of the hour, when Corthell was an-
nounced, there was still no sign of her husband. But
as she was crossing the hall on her way to the draw-
ing room, one of the servants informed her that Mr
Jadwin had just telephoned that he would be home in
half an hour.
  "Is he on the telephone now?" she asked, quickly.
"Where did he telephone from?"
  But it appeared that Jadwin had "hung up" without
mentioning his whereabouts.
  "The buggy came home," said the servant. "Mr.
Jadwin told Jarvis not to wait. He said he would come
in the street cars."
  Laura reflected that she could delay dinner a half
hour, and gave orders to that effect.
  "We shall have to wait a little," she explained to
Corthell as they exchanged greetings in the drawing
room. "Curtis has some special business on hand to-
day, and is half an hour late."
  They sat down on either side of the fireplace in the
lofty apartment, with its sombre hangings of wine-
coloured brocade and thick, muffling rugs, and for up-
ward of three-quarters of an hour Corthell interested
her with his description of his life in the cathedral towns
of northern Italy. But at the end of that time dinner
was announced.
                        232





                     THE PIT
  "Has Mr. Jadwin come in yet?" Laura asked of the
servant.
  "No, madam."
  She bit her lip in vexation.
  "I can't imagine what can keep Curtis so late," she
murmured. "Well," she added, at the end of her re-
sources, "we must make the best of it. I think we will
go in, Mr. Corthell, without waiting. Curtis must be
here soon now."
  But, as a matter of fact, he was not. In the great din-
ing room, filled with a dull crimson light, the air just
touched with the scent of lilies of the valley, Corthell
and Mrs. Jadwin dined alone.
  "I suppose," observed the artist, "that Mr. Jadwin
is a very busy man."
  "Oh, no," Laura answered. "His real estate, he
says, runs itself, and, as a rule, Mr. Gretry manages
most of his Board of Trade business. It is only occa-
sionally that anything keeps him down town late. I
scolded him this morning, however, about his speculat-
ing, and made him promise not to do so much of it.
I hate speculation. It seems to absorb some men so;
and I don't believe it's right for a man to allow himself
to become absorbed altogether in business."
  "Oh, why limit one's absorption to business?" re-
plied Corthell, sipping his wine. "Is it right for one
to be absorbed 'altogether' in anything-even in art,
even in religion?"
  "Oh, religion, I don't know," she protested.
  "Isn't that certain contribution," he hazarded,
"which we make to the general welfare, over and above
our own individual work, isn't that the essential? I
suppose, of course, that we must hoe, each of us, his
own little row, but it's the stroke or two we give to our
neighbour's row-don't you think?-that helps most
to cultivate the field."
                         233





                    THE PIT
  "But doesn't religion mean more than a stroke or
two?" she ventured to reply.
  "I'm not so sure," he answered, thoughtfully. "If
the stroke or two is taken from one's own work instead
of being given in excess of it. One must do one's own
hoeing first. That's the foundation of things. A religion
that would mean to be 'altogether absorbed' in my
neighbour's hoeing would be genuinely pernicious,
surely. My row, meanwhile, would lie open to weeds."
  "But if your neighbour's row grew flowers?"
  "Unfortunately weeds grow faster than the flowers,
and 'the weeds of my row would spread until they
choked and killed my neighbour's flowers, I am sure."
  "That seems selfish, though," she persisted. "Suppose
my neighbour were maimed or halt or blind? His poor
little row would never be finished. My stroke or two
would not help very much."
  "Yes, but every row lies between two others, you
know. The hoer on the far side of the cripple's row
would contribute a stroke or two as well as you. No,"
he went on, "I am sure one's first duty is to do one's
own work. It seems to me that a work accomplished
benefits the whole world-the people-pro rata. If we
help another at the expense of our work instead of in
excess of it, we benefit only the individual, and, pro
rata again, rob the people. A little good contributed
by everybody to the race is of more, infinitely more,
importance than a great deal of good contributed by
one individual to another."
  "Yes," she admitted, beginning at last to be con-
vinced, "I see what you mean. But one must think
very large to see that. It never occurred to me before.
The individual-I, Laura Jadwin-counts for nothing.
It is the type to which I belong that's important, the
mould, the form, the sort of composite photograph of
hundreds of thousands of Laura Jadwins. Yes," she
                         234





THE PIT


continued, her brows bent, her mind hard at work,
"what I am, the little things that distinguish me
from everybody else, those pass away very quickly,
are very ephemeral. But the type Laura Jadwin, that
always remains, doesn't it? One must help building up
only the permanent things. Then, let's see, the individual
may deteriorate, but the type always grows better ....
Yes, I think -ne can say that."
  "At least the type never recedes," he prompted.
  "Oh, it began good," she cried, as though at a dis-
covery, "and can never go back of that original good.
Something keeps it from going below a certain point,
and it is left to us to lift it higher and higher. No, the
type can't be bad. Of course the type is more important
than the individual. And that something that keeps it
from going below a certain point is God."
  "Or nature."
  "So that God and nature," she cried again, "work
together? No, no, they are one and the same thing."
  "There, don't you see," he remarked, smiling back
at her, "how simple it is?"
  "Oh-h," exclaimed Laura, with a deep breath, "isn't
it beautiful?" She put her hand to her forehead with
a little laugh of deprecation. "My," she said, "but
those things make you think."
  Dinner was over before she was aware of it, and they
were still talking animatedly as they rose from the table.
  "We will have our coffee in the art gallery," Laura
said, "and please smoke."
  He lit a cigarette, and the two passed into the great
glass-roofed rotunda.
   "Here is the one I like best," said Laura, standing
 before the Bougereau.
   "Yes?" he queried, observing the picture thought-
 fully. "I suppose," he remarked, "it is because it de-
 mands less of you than some others. I see what you
                         235





                     THE PIT
mean. It pleases you because it satisfies you so easily.
You can grasp it without any effort."
  "Oh, I don't know," she ventured.
  "Bougereau 'fills a place.' I know it," he answered.
"But I cannot persuade myself to admire his art."
  "But," she faltered, "I thought that Bougereau was
considered the greatest-one of the greatest-his won-
derful flesh tints, the drawing, and colouring----"
  "But I think you will see," he told her, "if you think
about it, that for all there is in his picture-back of it
-a fine hanging, a beautiful vase would have exactly
the same value upon your wall. Now, on the other hand,
take this picture." He indicated a small canvas to the
right of the bathing nymphs, representing a twilight
landscape.
  "Oh, that one," said Laura. "We bought that here
in America, in New York. It's by a Western artist.
I never noticed it much, I'm afraid."
   "But now look at it," said Corthell. "Don't you
know that the artist saw something more than trees
and a pool and afterglow? He had that feeling of night
coming on, as he sat there before his sketching easel
on the edge of that little pool. He heard the frogs be-
ginning to pipe, I'm sure, and the touch of the night
mist was on his hands. And he was very lonely and
even a little sad. In those deep shadows under the trees
he put something of himself, the gloom and the sadness
that he felt at the moment. And that little pool, still
and black and sombre-why, the whole thing is the
tragedy of a life full of dark, hidden secrets. And the
little pool is a heart. No one can say how deep it is, or
what dreadful thing one would find at the bottom, or
what drowned hopes or what sunken ambitions. That
little pool says one word as plain as if it were whispered
in the ear-despair. Oh, yes, I prefer it to the nymphs."
   "I am very much ashamed," returned Laura, "that
                         236





                     THE PIT
I could not see it all before for myself. But I see it now.
It is better, of course. I shall come in here often now
and study it. Of all the rooms in our house, this is the
one I like best. But, I am afraid, it has been more be-
cause of the organ than of the pictures."
  Corthell turned about.
  "Oh, the grand, noble organ," he murmured. "I
envy you this of all your treasures. May I play for
you? Something to compensate for the dreadful, de-
spairing little tarn of the picture."
  "I should love to have you," she told him.
  He asked permission to lower the lights, and stepping
outside the door an instant, pressed the buttons that
extinguished all but a very few of them. After he had
done this he came back to the organ and detached the
self-playing "arrangement" without comment, and
seated himself at the console.
  Laura lay back in a long chair close at hand. The
moment was propitious. The artist's profile silhouetted
itself against the shade of a light that burned at the
side of the organ, and that gave light to the keyboard.
And on this keyboard, full in the reflection, lay his long,
slim hands. They were the only things that moved in
the room, and the chords and bars of Mendelssohn's
"Consolation" seemed, as he played, to flow not from
the instrument, but, like some invisible ether, from his
finger-tips themselves.
  "You hear," he said to Laura," the effect of ques-
tions and answer in this. The questions are passionate
and tumultuous and varied, but the answer is always
the same, always calm and soothing and dignified."
  She answered with a long breath, speaking just above
a whisper:
  "Oh, yes, yes, I understand."
  He finished and turned toward her a moment. "Pos-
sibly not a very high order of art," he said; "a little too
                         237





                    THE PIT
'easy,' perhaps, like the Bougereau, but 'Consolation'
should appeal very simply and directly, after all. Do
you care for Beethoven?"
  "I-I am afraid-     " began Laura, but he had con-
tinued without waiting for her reply.
  "You remember this? The 'Appassionata,' the F
minor sonata-just the second movement."
  But when he had finished Laura begged him to con-
tinue.
  "Please go on," she said. "Play anything. You can't
tell how I love it."
  "Here is something I've always liked," he answered,
turning back to the keyboard. "It is the 'Mephisto
Walzer' of Liszt. He has adapted it himself from his
own orchestral score, very ingeniously. It is difficult
to render on the organ, but I think you can get the idea
of it." As he spoke he began playing, his head very
slightly moving to the rhythm of the piece. At the
beginning of each new theme, and without interrupting
his playing, he offered a word of explanation:
  "Very vivid and arabesque this, don't you think?
... And now this movement; isn't it reckless and capri-
cious, like a woman who hesitates and then takes the
leap? Yet there's a certain nobility there, a feeling for
ideals. You see it, of course.... And all the while this
undercurrent of the sensual, and that feline, eager senti-
ment . . . and here, I think, is the best part of it, the
very essence of passion, the voluptuousness that is a
veritable anguish . . . These long, slow rhythms, tor-
tured, languishing, really dying. It reminds one of
'Phedre'-'Venus toute entiere,' and the rest of it;
and Wagner has the same. You find it again in Isolde's
motif continually."
  Laura was transfixed, all but transported. Here was
something better than Gounod and Verdi, something
above and beyond the obvious one, two, three, one,
                         238





THE PIT


two, three of the opera scores as she knew them and
played them. Music she understood with an intuitive
quickness; and those prolonged chords of Liszt's, heavy
and clogged and cloyed with passion, reached some
hitherto untouched string within her heart, and with
resistless power twanged it so that the vibration of it
shook her entire being, and left her quivering and breath-
less, the tears in her eyes, her hands clasped till the
knuckles whitened.
  She felt all at once as though a whole new world were
opened to her. She stood on Pisgah. And she was
ashamed and confused at her ignorance of those things
which Corthell tactfully assumed that she knew as a
matter of course. What wonderful pleasures she had
ignored! How infinitely removed from her had been
the real world of art and artists of which Corthell was
a part! Ah, but she would make amends now. No more
Verdi and Bougereau. She would get rid of the Bathing
Nymphs. Never, never again would she play the
"Anvil Chorus." Corthell should select her pictures,
and should play to her from Liszt and Beethoven that
music which evoked all the turbulent emotion, all the
impetuosity and fire and exaltation that she felt was
hers.
   She wondered at herself. Surely, surely there were
two Laura Jadwins. One calm and even and steady,
loving the quiet life, loving her home, finding a pleas-
ure in the duties of the housewife. This was the Laura
who liked plain, homely, matter-of-fact Mrs. Cressler,
who adored her husband, who delighted in Mr. How-
ells's novel, who adjured society and the formal con-
ventions, who went to church every Sunday, and who
was afraid of her own elevator.
   But at moments such as this she knew that there was
 another Laura Jadwin-the Laura Jadwin who might
 have been a great actress, who had a "temperament,"
                         239





THE PIT


who was impulsive. This was the Laura of the "grand
manner," who played the r6le of the great lady from
room to room of her vast house, who read Meredith,
who revelled in swift gallops through the park on jet-
black, long-tailed horses, who affected black velvet,
black jet, and black lace in her gowns, who was con-
scious and proud of her pale, stately beauty-the Laura
Jadwin, in fine, who delighted to recline in a long chair
in the dim, beautiful picture gallery and listen with half-
shut eyes to the great golden organ thrilling to the pas-
sion of Beethoven and Liszt.
  The last notes of the organ sank and faded into silence
-a silence that left a sense of darkness like that which
follows upon the flight of a falling star, and after a long
moment Laura sat upright, adjusting the heavy masses
of her black hair with thrusts of her long, white fingers.
She drew a deep breath.
   "Oh," she said, "that was wonderful, wonderful.
It is like a new language-no, it is like new thoughts,
too fine for language."
   "I have always believed so," he answered. "Of all
 the arts, music, to my notion, is the most intimate. At
 the other end of the scale you have architecture, which
 is an expression of and an appeal to the common multi-
 tude, a whole people, the mass. Fiction and painting,
 and even poetry, are affairs of the classes, reaching the
 groups of the educated. But music-ah, that is different,
 it is one soul speaking to another soul. The composer
 meant it for you and himself. No one else has anything
 to do with it. Because his soul was heavy and broken
 with grief, or bursting with passion, or tortured with
 doubt, or searching for some unnamed ideal, he has
 come to you-you of all the people in the world-with
 his message, and he tells you of his yearnings and his
 sadness, knowing that you will sympathize, knowing
 that your soul has, like his, been acquainted with grief,
                          240





                    THE PIT
or with gladness; and in the music his soul speaks to
yours, beats with it, blends with it, yes, is even, spiritu-
ally, married to it."
  And as he spoke the electrics all over the gallery
flashed out in a sudden blaze, and Curtis Jadwin entered
the room, crying out:
  "Are you here, Laura? By George, my girl, we pulled
it off, and I've cleaned up five-hundred-thousand-
dollars."
  Laura and the artist faced quickly about, blinking at
the sudden glare, and Laura put her hand over her eyes.
  "Oh, I didn't mean to blind you," said her husband,
as he came forward. "But I thought it wouldn't be
appropriate to tell you the good news in the dark."
  Corthell rose, and for the first time Jadwin caught
sight of him.
  "This is Mr. Corthell, Curtis," Laura said. "You
remember him, of course?"
  "Why, certainly, certainly," declared Jadwin, shak-
ing Corthell's hand. "Glad to see you again. I hadn't an
idea you were here." He was excited, elated, very talka-
tive. "I guess I came in on you abruptly," he observed.
"They told me Mrs. Jadwin was in here, and I was full
of my good news. By the way, I do remember now.
When I came to look over my mail on the way down
town this morning, I found a note from you to my wife,
saying you would call to-night. Thought it was for me,
and opened it before I found the mistake."
  "I knew you had gone off with it," said Laura.
  "Guess I must have mixed it up with my own mail
this morning. I'd have telephoned you about it, Laura,
but upon my word I've been so busy all day I clean for-
got it. I've let the cat out of the bag already, Mr. Cor-
thell, and I might as well tell the whole thing now.
I've been putting through a little deal with some Liver-
pool fellows to-day, and I had to wait down town to get
                        241





THE PIT


their cables to-night. You got my telephone, did you,
Laura?"
  "Yes, but you said then you'd be up in half an hour."
  "I know-I know. But those Liverpool cables didn't
come till all hours. Well, as I was saying, Mr. Corthell,
I had this deal on hand-it was that wheat, Laura, I was
telling you about this morning-five million bushels of
it, and I found out from my English agent that I could
slam it right into a couple of fellows over there, if we
could come to terms. We came to terms right enough.
Some of that wheat I sold at a profit of fifteen cents on
every bushel. My broker and I figured it out just now
before I started home, and, as I say, I'm a clean half
million to the good. So much for looking ahead a little
further than the next man.", He dropped into a chair
and stretched his arms wide. "Whoo! I'm tired, Laura.
Seems as though I'd been on my feet all day. Do you
suppose Mary, or Martha, or Maggie, or whatever her
name is, could rustle me a good strong cup of tea?"
  "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. Cor-
thell, of Gretry, Converse & Co.-Sam said to me,
Laura, to-night, he said, 'J.,'-they call me 'J.' down
                        242




                    THE PIT
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 hun-
dred 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 someone
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, whimsi-
cally. "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-bye to Corthell,
and when Jadwin was making the rounds of the library,
art gallery, and drawing rooms-a nightly task which
                        243




THE PIT


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 com-
fortably 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
                         244





                    THE PIT
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 after-
noon, 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'Fd
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
                         245






                    THE PIT
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 Argen-
tine 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, eas-
ily. "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."
                         246





                     THE PIT
  "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."
  "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 naster hand, all power-
ful, 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?
                         247





                     THE PIT
  Was this upheaval a revolution that called aloud for
its Napoleon? Would another, not himself, at last, see-
ing 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 fort-
night 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 mar-
ket. In consequence of this the price of wheat was
again mounting.
                         248





                     THE PIT
  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 en-
tire situation. The Bears profess to have no fear of this
mysterious enemy, but it is a matter of fact that a mul-
titude 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. Scalp-
ing 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 wonder-
ful 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 busi-
ness 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."
                        249





                     THE PIT
  "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 to-
gether 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 anyone 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 "Un-
known 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, exe-
cuted with profoundest secrecy, had been to replace
the five million bushels sold to Liverpool by five mil-
                         250





                     THE PIT
lion 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, insist-
ent 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 ele-
vators 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 study-
 ing 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 elec-
 tricity 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
                         251





                     THE PIT
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 raincoats, 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 commis-
sion houses on either side of La Salle Street, contin-
ually, unendingly, moving with the dragging sluggish-
ness of the fatigue of a hard day's work. Under that
grey sky and blurring veil of rain they lost their in-
dividualities, 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 it-
self, 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 revolv-
ing 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 flut-
tered, pecking at the handfuls of wheat that a porter
threw them from the windows of the floor of the Board.
   "Well," repeated Jadwin, shifting with a movement
                          252





THE PIT


of his lips his unlit cigar to the other corner of his
mouth, "well, what do you think of it?"
  The broker, intent upon the figures and statistics, re-
plied only by an indefinite movement of the head.
  "Why, Sam," observed Jadwin, looking up from the
paper, "there's less than a hundred million bushels in
the farmers' hands.... That's awfully small. Sam, that's
awfully small."
  "It ain't, as you might say, colossal," admitted
Gretry.
  There was a long silence while the two men studied
the report still further. Gretry took a pamphlet of statis-
tics from a pigeon-hole of his desk, and compared cer-
tain figures with those mentioned in the report.
  Outside the rain swept against the windows with the
subdued rustle of silk. A newsboy raised a Gregorian
chant as he went down the street.
  " By George, Sam," Jadwin said again, "do you know
that a whole pile of that wheat has got to go to Europe
before July? How have the shipments been?"
  "About five millions a week."
  "Why, think of that, twenty millions a month, and
it's-let's see, April, May, June, July-four months be-
fore a new crop. Eighty million bushels will go out of
the country in the next four months-eighty million
out of less than a hundred millions."
  "Looks that way," answered Gretry.
  "Here," said Jadwin, "let's get some figures. Let's
get a squint on the whole situation. Got a 'Price Cur-
rent' here? Let's find out what the stocks are in Chi-
cago. I don't believe the elevators are exactly burst-
ing, and, say," he called after the broker, who had
started for the front office, "say, find out about the
primary receipts, and the Paris and Liverpool stocks.
Bet you what you like that Paris and Liverpool to-
gether couldn't show ten million to save their necks."
                         253





                     THE PIT
  In a few moments Gretry was back again, his hands
full of pamphlets and "trade" journals.
  By now the offices were quite deserted. The last
clerk had gone home. Without, the neighbourhood
was emptying rapidly. Only a few stragglers hurried
over the glistening sidewalks; only a few lights yet
remained in the fagades of the tall, grey office build-
ings. And in the widening silence the cooing of the
pigeons on the ledges and window-sills of the Board
of Trade Building made itself heard with increasing
distinctness.
  Before Gretry's desk the two men leaned over the
litter of papers. The broker's pencil was in his hand,
and from time to time he figured rapidly on a sheet of
note paper.
  "And," observed Jadwin after a while, "and you see
how the millers up here in the Northwest have been
grinding up all the grain in sight. Do you see that?"
  "Yes," said Gretry, then he added, "navigation will
be open in another month up there in the straits."
  "That's so, too," exclaimed Jadwin, "and what
wheat there is here will be moving out. I'd forgotten
that point. Ain't you glad you aren't short of wheat
these days?"
  "There's plenty of fellows that are, though," returned
Gretry. "I've got a lot of short wheat on my books-
a lot of it."
  All at once as Gretry spoke Jadwin started, and
looked at him with a curious glance.
  "You have, hey?" he said. "There are a lot of fellows
who have sold short?"
  "Oh, yes, some of Crookes' followers-yes, quite a
lot of them."
  Jadwin was silent a moment, tugging at his moustache.
Then suddenly he leaned forward, his finger almost in
Gretry's face.
                         254





THE PIT


  "Why, look here," he cried. "Don't you see? Don't
you see-   "
  "See what?" demanded the broker, puzzled at the
other's vehemence.
  Jadwin loosened his collar with a forefinger.
  "Great Scott! I'll choke in a minute. See what? Why,
I own ten million bushels of this wheat already, and
Europe will take eighty million out of the country. Why,
there ain't going to be any wheat left in Chicago by
May! If I get in now and buy a long line of cash wheat,
where are all these fellows who've sold short going to
get it to deliver to me? Say, where are they going to get
it? Come on now, tell me, where are they going to get
it?"
  Gretry laid down his pencil and stared at Jadwin,
looked long at the papers on his desk, consulted his
pencilled memoranda, then thrust his hands deep into
his pockets, with a long breath. Bewildered, and as if
stupefied, he gazed again into Jadwin's face.
  "My God!" he murmured at last.
  "Well, where are they going to get it?" Jadwin cried
once more, his face suddenly scarlet.
  "J.," faltered the broker, "J., I-I'm damned if I
know."
  And then, all in the same moment, the two men were
on their feet. The event which all those past eleven
months had been preparing was suddenly consum-
mated, suddenly stood revealed, as though a veil had
been ripped asunder, as though an explosion had crashed
through the air upon them, deafening, blinding.
  Jadwin sprang forward, gripping the broker by the
shoulder.
  "Sam," he shouted, "do you know-great God!-do
you know what this means? Sam, we can corner the
market!"


255











                 CHAPTER VIII

ON THAT particular morning in April, the trading
around the Wheat Pit on the floor of the Chicago Board
of Trade began practically a full five minutes ahead of
the stroke of the gong; and the throng of brokers and
clerks that surged in and about the Pit itself was so
great that it overflowed and spread out over the floor
between the wheat and corn pits, ousting the traders in
oats from their traditional ground. The market had
closed the day before with May wheat at ninety-eight
and five-eighths, and the Bulls had prophesied and
promised that the magic legend "Dollar wheat" would
be on the Western Union wires before another twenty-
four hours.
  The indications pointed to a lively morning's work.
Never for an instant during the past six weeks had the
trading sagged or languished. The air of the Pit was
surcharged with a veritable electricity; it had the effer-
vescence of champagne, or of a mountain-top at sun-
rise. It was buoyant, thrilling.
  The "Unknown Bull" was to all appearance still in
control; the whole market hung upon his horns; and
from time to time, one felt the sudden upward thrust,
powerful, tremendous, as he flung the wheat up another
notch. The "tailers"-the little Bulls-were radiant. In
the dark, they hung hard by their unseen and mysteri-
ous friend who daily, weekly, was making them richer.
The Bears were scarcely visible. The Great Bull in a
single superb rush had driven them nearly out of the
Pit. Growling, grumbling they had retreated, and only
                         256





                     THE PIT
at a distance dared so much as to bare a claw. Just the
formidable lowering of the Great Bull's frontlet sufficed,
so it seemed, to check their every move of aggression or
resistance. And all the while, Liverpool, Paris, Odessa,
and Budapest clamoured ever louder and louder for
the grain that meant food to the crowded streets and
barren farms of Europe.
  A few moments before the opening Charles Cressler
was in the public room, in the southeast corner of the
building, where smoking was allowed, finishing his morn-
ing's cigar. But as he heard the distant striking of the
gong, and the roar of the Pit as it began to get under way
with a prolonged rumbling trepidation like the ad-
vancing of a great flood, he threw his cigar away and
stepped out from the public room to the main floor,
going on toward the front windows. At the sample
tables he filled his pockets with wheat, and once at the
windows raised the sash and spread the pigeons' break-
fast on the granite ledge.
  While he was watching the confused fluttering of
flashing wings, that on the instant filled the air in front
of the window, he was all at once surprised to hear a
voice at his elbow, wishing him good morning.
  "Seem to know you, don't they?"
  Cressler turned about.
  "Oh," he said. "Hullo, hullo-yes, they know me
all right. Especially that red and white hen. She's got
a lame wing since yesterday, and if I don't watch, the
others would drive her off. The pouter brute yonder,
for instance. He's a regular pirate. Wants all the wheat
himself. Don't ever seem to get enough."
  "Well," observed the new-comer, laconically, "there
are others."
  The man who spoke was about forty years of age.
His name was Calvin Hardy Crookes. He was very
small and very slim. His hair was yet dark, and his face
                         257





THE PIT


-smooth-shaven and triangulated in shape, like a cat's
-was dark as well. The eyebrows were thin and black,
and the lips, too, were thin and were puckered a little,
like the mouth of a tight-shut sack. The face was secre-
tive, impassive, and cold.
  The man himself was dressed like a dandy. His coat
and trousers were of the very newest fashion. He wore
a white waistcoat, drab gaiters, a gold watch and chain,
a jewelled scarf pin, and a seal ring. From the top
pocket of his coat protruded the finger-tips of a pair
of unworn red gloves.
  "Yes," continued Crookes, unfolding a brand-new
pocket handkerchief as he spoke. "There are others-
who never know when they've got enough wheat."
  "Oh, you mean the 'Unknown Bull.'"
  "I mean the unknown damned fool," returned
Crookes placidly.
  There was not a trace of the snob about Charles Cress-
ler. No one could be more democratic. But at the same
time, as this interview proceeded, he could not fight
down nor altogether ignore a certain qualm of gratified
vanity. Had the matter risen to the realm of his con-
sciousness, he would have hated himself for this. But
it went no further than a vaguely felt increase of self-
esteem. He seemed to feel more important in his own
eyes; he would have liked to have his friends see him
just now talking with this man. "Crookes was saying
to-day -" he would observe when next he met an
acquaintance. For C. H. Crookes was conceded to be
the "biggest man" in La Salle Street. Not even the
growing importance of the new and mysterious Bull
could quite make the market forget the Great Bear.
Inactive during all this trampling and goring in the Pit,
there were yet those who, even as they strove against
the Bull, cast uneasy glances over their shoulders, won-
dering why the Bear did not come to the help of his own.
                         258





THE PIT


  "Well, yes," admitted Cressler, combing his short
beard, "yes, he is a fool."
  The contrast between the two men was extreme.
Each was precisely what the other was not. The one,
long, angular, loose-jointed; the other, tight, trig, small,
and compact. The one osseous, the other sleek; the
one stoop-shouldered, the other erect as a corporal of
infantry.
  But as Cressler was about to continue Crookes put
his chin in the air.
  "Hark!" he said. "What's that?"
  For from the direction of the Wheat Pit had come
a sudden and vehement renewal of tumult. The traders
as one man were roaring in chorus. There were cheers;
hats went up into the air. On the floor by the lowest
step two, brokers, their hands trumpet-wise to their
mouths, shouted at top voice to certain friends at a
distance, while above them, on the topmost step of the
Pit, a half-dozen others, their arms at fullest stretch,
threw the hand signals that interpreted the fluctuations
in the price, to their associates in the various parts
of the building. Again and again the cheers rose, vio-
lent hip-hip-hurrahs and tigers, while from all corners
and parts of the floor men and boys came scurrying
up. Visitors in the gallery leaned eagerly upon the
railing. Over in the provision pit, trading ceased for
the moment, and all heads were turned toward the
commotion of the wheat traders.
  "Ah," commented Crookes, "they did get it there at
last."
  For the hand on the dial had suddenly jumped an-
other degree, and not a messenger boy, not a porter,
not a janitor, none whose work or life brought him in
touch with the Board of Trade, that did not feel the
thrill. The news flashed out to the world on a hundred
telegraph wires; it was called to a hundred offices across
                         259





                     THE PIT
the telephone lines. From every doorway, even, as it
seemed, from every window of the building, spreading
thence all over the city, the State, the Northwest, the
entire nation, sped the magic words, "Dollar wheat."
  Crookes turned to Cressler.
  "Can you lunch with me to-day-at Kinsley's? I'd
like to have a talk with you."
  And as soon as Cressler had accepted the invitation,
Crookes, with a succinct nod, turned upon his heel and
walked away.
  At Kinsley's that day, in a private room on the sec-
ond floor, Cressler met not only Crookes, but his as-
sociate Sweeny, and another gentleman by the name of
Freye, the latter one of his oldest and best-liked friends.
  Sweeny was an Irishman, florid, flamboyant, talka-
tive, who spoke with a faint brogue, and who tagged
every observation, argument, or remark with the phrase,
"Do you understand me, gen'lemen?" Freye, a German-
American, was a quiet fellow, very handsome, with black
side whiskers and a humorous, twinkling eye. The three
were members of the Board of Trade, and were always
associated with the Bear forces. Indeed, they could be
said to be its leaders. Between them, as Cressler after-
ward was accustomed to say, "They could have bought
pretty much all of the West Side."
  And during the course of the luncheon these three,
with a simplicity and a directness that for the moment
left Cressler breathless, announced that they were pre-
paring to drive the Unknown Bull out of the Pit, and
asked him to become one of the clique.
  Crookes, whom Cressler intuitively singled out as the
leader, did not so much as open his mouth till Sweeny
had talked himself breathless, and all the preliminaries
were out of the way. Then he remarked, his eye as
lifeless as the eye of a fish, his voice as expressionless
as the voice of Fate itself:
                         260





THE PIT


  "I don't know who the Big Bull is, and I don't care
a curse. But he don't suit my book. I want him out
of the market. We've let him have his way now for
three or four months. We figured we'd let him run to
the dollar mark. The May option closed this morning
at a dollar and an eighth.... Now we take hold."
  "But," Cressler hastened to object, "you forget-
I'm not a speculator."
  Freye smiled, and tapped his friend on the arm.
  "I guess, Charlie," he said, "that there won't be
much speculating about this."
  "Why, gen'lemen," cried Sweeny, brandishing a fork,
"we're going to sell him right out o' the market, so
we are. Simply flood out the son-of-a-gun-you under-
stand me, gen'lemen?"
  Cressler shook his head.
  "No," he answered. "No, you must count me out.
I quit speculating years ago. And, besides, to sell short
on this kind of market-I don't need to tell you what
you risk."
  "Risk hell!" muttered Crookes.
  "Well, now, I'll explain to you, Charlie," began
Freye.
  The other two withdrew a little from the conversa-
tion. Crookes, as ever monosyllabic, took himself off
in a little while, and Sweeny, his chair tipped back
against the wall, his hands clasped behind his head,
listened to Freye explaining to Cressler the plans of the
proposed clique and the lines of their attack.
  He talked for nearly an hour and a half, at the end
of which time the lunch table was one litter of papers-
letters, contracts, warehouse receipts, tabulated statis-
tics, and the like.
  "Well," said Freye, at length, "well, Charlie, do you
see the game? What do you think of it?"
  "It's about as ingenious a scheme as I ever heard of,
                        261





                    THE PIT
Billy," answered Cressler. "You can't lose, with Crookes
back of it."
  "Well, then, we can count you in, hey?"
  "Count nothing," declared Cressler, stoutly. "I
don't speculate."
  "But have you thought of this?" urged Freye, and
went over the entire proposition, from a fresh point of
view, winding up with the exclamation: "Why, Charlie,
we're going to make our everlasting fortunes."
  "I don't want any everlasting fortune, Billy Freye,"
protested Cressler. "Look here, Billy. You must re-
member I'm a pretty old cock. You boys are all young-
sters. I've got a little money left and a little business,
and I want to grow old quiet-like. I had my fling, you
know, when you boys were in knickerbockers. Now you
let me keep out of all this. You get someone else."
  "No, we'll be jiggered if we do," exclaimed Sweeny.
"Say, are ye scared we can't buy that trade journal?
Why, we have it in our pocket, so we have. D'ye think
Crookes, now, couldn't make Bear sentiment with the
public, with just the lift o' one forefinger? Why, he
owns most of the commercial columns of the dailies
already. D'ye think he couldn't swamp that market
with sellin' orders in the shorter end o' two days? D'ye
think we won't all hold together, now? Is that the bug
in the butter? Sure, now, listen. Let me tell you- "
  "You can't tell me anything about this scheme that
you've not told me before," declared Cressler. "You'll
win, of course. Crookes & Co. are like Rothschild-
earthquakes couldn't budge 'em. But I promised myself
years ago to keep out of the speculative market, and
I mean to stick by it."
  "Oh, get on with you, Charlie," said Freye, good-
humouredly, "you're scared."
   "Of what," asked Cressler, "speculating? You bet
I am, and when you're as old as I am, and have been
                         262





THE PIT


through three panics, and have known what it meant
to have a corner bust under you, you'll be scared of
speculating, too."
  "But suppose we can prove to you," said Sweeny,
all at once, "that we're not speculating-that the other
fellow, this fool Bull, is doing the speculating?"
  "I'll go into anything in the way of legitimate trad-
ing," answered Cressler, getting up from the table.
"You convince me that your clique is not a specula-
tive clique, and I'll come in. But I don't see how your
deal can be anything else."
  "Will you meet us here to-morrow?" asked Sweeny,
as they got into their overcoats.
  "It won't do you any good," persisted Cressler.
  "Well, will you meet us just the same?" the other
insisted. And in the end Cressler accepted.
  On the steps of the restaurant they parted, and the
two leaders watched Cressler's broad, stooped shoulders
disappear down the street.
  "He's as good as in already," Sweeney declared.
"I'll fix him to-morrow. Once a speculator, always a
speculator. He was the cock of the cow-yard in his day,
and the thing is in the blood. He gave himself clean,
clean away when he let out he was afraid o' speculating.
You can't be afraid of anything that ain't got a hold
on you. Y'understand me, now?"
   "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 cliaue before we can approach Stires &
                         263





THE PIT


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, conserva-
tive character. You let Crookes manage it. He knows
his business."
  "Say," exclaimed Sweeney, 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 Cur-
tis 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 rain-
ing 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 caf6
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.
                         264





THE PIT


  "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, "someone else has be-
gun 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 did'nt 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.
r 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
                        265





                    THE PIT
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 tele-
phone, 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 a big risk telephoning like
this. I'll see you to-night. Good-bye."
  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   "
                        266





                     THE PIT
  But at this point Jadwin, the warning of Gretry still
fresh in his mind, interrupted quickly:
  "I must hang up now, Laura. Good-bye. I'll see you
to-morrow noon and explain it all to you. Good-bye....
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-bye.
  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 inter-
vened. 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 mil-
lions 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 be-
tween the clique and the great banking house of the
Stires. But meanwhile Jadwin and Gretry, foreseeing
no opposition, realizing 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
                         267





                    THE PIT
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 the 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 mar-
ket; 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
                         268





                     THE PIT
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 un-
ceasingly 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 him-
self, "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-mor-
row morning. Wheat-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-
wheat! Instantly the jaded senses braced again, in-
stantly 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
                         269





                    THE PIT
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 circum-
stances, 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 amus-
ing, he was the only man of the party. At the last mo-
                        270





THE PIT


ment 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 mo-
ment, and his doctor forbade him to stir out of doors.
Mrs. Cressler explained that Charlie had something on
his mind thes'e 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 be-
fore 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 him-
self thus in the library, and toiled on till early dawn.
She enjoyed no companionship with him. Her eve-
nings 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 apart-
ments. All the way he sat motionless in his place, look-
                        271





                     THE PIT
ing out of the window with unseeing eyes. His ciga-
rette 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 bear-
ing eighteenth-century books in seal-brown tree calf-
                         272





THE PIT


Addison, the Spectator, Junius and Racine, Roche-
foucauld and Pascal hung against it here and there.
On every hand the eye rested upon some small master-
piece of art or workmanship. Now it was an antique
portrait bust of the days of decadent Rome, black mar-
ble with a bronze tiara; now a framed page of a four-
teenth-century version of Li  uatres 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 escut-
cheon 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 bestperiod 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 water of the IEgean.
  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 rest-
ing 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. Jad-
win. She was alone, as he usually found her. He had
                        273





                     THE PIT
brought a book of poems with him, and instead of pass-
ing 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.
  Little by little the companionship grew. Corthell shut
his eyes, his ears. The thought of Laura, the recollection
of their last evening together, the anticipation of the
next meeting filled all his waking hours. He refused to
think; he resigned himself to the drift of the current.
Jadwin he rarely saw. But on those few occasions when
he and Laura's husband met, he could detect no lack of
cordiality in the other's greeting. Once even Jadwin had
remarked:
   "I'm very glad you have come to see Mrs. Jadwin,
Corthell. I have to be away so much these days, I'm
afraid she would be lonesome if it wasn't for someone
like you to drop in now and then and talk art to
her."
  By slow degrees the companionship trended toward
intimacy. At the various theatres and concerts he was
her escort. He called upon her two or three times each
week. At his studio entertainments Laura was always
present. How-Corthell asked himself-did she regard
the affair? She gave him no sign; she never intimated
that his presence was otherwise than agreeable. Was
this tacit acquiescence of hers an encouragement? Was
she willing to afficker herself, as a married woman, with
a cavalier? Her married life was intolerable, he was sure
of that; her husband unconigenial. He told himself that
she detested him.
  Once, however, this belief was rather shocked by an
                         274





                    THE PIT
unexpected and (to him) an inconsistent reaction on
Laura's part. She had made an engagement with him
to spend an afternoon in the Art Institute, looking over
certain newly acquired canvases. But upon calling for
her an hour after luncheon he was informed that Mrs.
Jadwin was not at home. When next she saw him she
told him that she had spent the entire day with her
husband. They had taken an early train and had gone
up to Geneva Lake to look over their country house,
and to prepare for its opening, later on in the spring.
They had taken the decision so unexpectedly that she
had no timie to tell him of the change in her plans.
Corthell wondered if she had-as a matter of fact-
forgotten all about her appointment with him. He
never quite understood the incident, and afterward
asked himself whether or no he could be so sure, after
all, of the estrangement between the husband and wife.
He guessed it to be possible that on this occasion Jad-
win had suddenly decided to give himself a holiday, and
that Laura had been quick to take advantage of it.
Was it true, then, that Jadwin had but to speak the
word to have Laura forget all else? Was it true that
the mere nod of his head was enough to call her back
to him? Corthell was puzzled. He would not admit this
to be true. She was, he was persuaded, a woman of
more spirit, of more pride than this would seem to in-
dicate. Corthell ended by believing that Jadwin had, in
some way, coerced her; though he fancied that for the
few days immediately following the excursion Laura
had never been gayer, more alert, more radiant.
  But the days went on, and it was easy to see that his
business kept Jadwin more and more from his wife.
Often now, Corthell knew, he passed the night down
town, and upon those occasions when he managed to
get home after the day's work, he was exhausted, worn
out, and went to bed almost immediately after dinner.
                        275





THE PIT


More than ever now the artist and Mrs. Jadwin were
thrown together.
  On a certain Sunday evening, the first really hot day
of the year, Laura and Page went over to spend an hour
with the Cresslers, and-as they were all wont to do in
the old days before Laura's marriage-the party "sat
out on the front stoop." For a wonder, Jadwin was
able to be present. Laura had prevailed upon him to
give her this evening and the evening of the following
Wednesday-on which latter occasion she had planned
that they were to take a long drive in the park in the
buggy, just the two of them, as it had been in the days
of their courtship.
  Corthell came to the Cresslers quite as a matter of
course. He had dined with the Jadwins at the great
North Avenue house and afterward the three, prefer-
ring to walk, had come down to the Cresslers' on
foot.
  But evidently the artist was to see but little of Laura
Jadwin that evening. She contrived to keep by her
husband continually. She even managed to get him
away from the others, and the two, leaving the rest upon
the steps, sat in the parlour of the Cresslers' house, talk-
ing.
  By and by Laura, full of her projects, exclaimed:
  "Where shall we go? I thought, perhaps, we would
not have dinner at home, but you could come back to
the house just a little-a little bit-early, and you could
drive me out to the restaurant there in the park, and
we could have dinner there, just as though we weren't
married-just as though we were sweethearts again.
Oh, I do hope the weather will be fine."
  "Oh," answered Jadwin, "you mean Wednesday
evening. Dear old girl, honestly, I-I don't believe I
can make it after all. You see, Wednesday   "
  Laura sat suddenly erect.
                        276





                     THE PIT
  "But you said," she began, her voice faltering a little,
"you said     "
  "Honey, I know I did, but you must let me off this
time again."
  She did not answer. It was too dark for him to see
her face; but, uneasy at her silence, he began an elab-
orate explanation. Laura, however, interrupted. Calmly
enough, she said:
  "Oh, that's all right. No, no, I don't mind. Of course,
if you are busy."
  "Well, you see, don't you, old girl ?"
  "Oh, yes, yes, I see," she answered. She rose. "I
think," she said, "we had better be going home. Don't
you?"
  "Yes, I do," he assented. "I'm pretty tired myself.
I've had a hard day's work. I'm thirsty, too," he added,
as he got up. "Would you like to have a drink of water,
too ?"
  She shook her head, and while he disappeared in the
direction of the Cresslers' dining room, she stood alone
a moment in the darkened room looking out into the
street. She felt that her cheeks were hot. Her hands,
hanging at her sides, shut themselves into tight fists.
  "What, you are all alone?" said Corthell's voice, be-
hind her.
  She turned about quickly.
  "I must be going," he said. "I came to say good-
night." He held out his hand.
  "Good-night," she answered, as she gave him hers.
Then all at once she added:
  "Come to see me again-soon, will you? Come Wed-
nesday night."
  And then, his heart leaping to his throat, Corthell felt
her hand, as it lay in his, close for an instant firmly
about his fingers.
  "I shall expect you Wednesday then?" she repeated.
                        2'77





                    THE PIT
  He crushed her hand in his grip, and suddenly bent
and kissed it.
  "Good-night," she said, quietly. Jadwin's step
sounded at the doorway.
  "Good-night," he whispered, and in another moment
was gone.
  During these days Laura no longer knew herself.
At every hour she changed; her moods came and went
with a rapidity that bewildered all those who were
around her, At times her gaiety filled the whole of her
beautiful house; at times she shut herself in her apart-
ments, denying herself to everyone, and her head bowed
upon her folded arms, wept as though her heart was
breaking, without knowing why.
  For a few days a veritable seizure of religious enthu-
siasm held sway over her. She spoke of endowing a
hospital, of doing church work among the "slums" of
the city. But no sooner had her friends readjusted their
points of view to suit this new development than she
was off upon another tangent, and was one afternoon
seen at the races, with Mrs. Gretry, in her showiest vic-
toria, wearing a great flaring hat and a bouquet of crim-
son flowers.
  She never repeated this performance, however, for a
new fad took possession of her the very next day. She
memorized the r6le of Lady Macbeth, built a stage in
the ballroom at the top of the house, and, locking her-
self in, rehearsed the part, for three days uninterrupt-
edly, dressed in elaborate costume, declaiming in chest
tones to the empty room:
  "'The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the en-
trance of Duncan under my battlements.'"
  Then, tiring of Lady Macbeth, she took up Juliet, Por-
tia, and Ophelia; each with appropriate costumes, study-
ing with tireless avidity, and frightening Aunt Wess'
with her declaration that "she might go on the stage,
                        278





                     THE PIT
after all." She even entertained the notion of having
Sheldon Corthell paint her portrait as Lady Macbeth.
  As often as the thought of the artist presented itself
to her she fought to put it from her. Yes, yes, he came
to see her often, very often. Perhaps he loved her yet.
Well, suppose he did? He had always loved her. It
was not wrong to have him love her, to have him with
her. Without his company, great heavens, her life would
be lonely beyond words and beyond endurance. Be-
sides, was it to be thought, for an instant, that she, she,
Laura Jadwin, in her pitch of pride, with all her beauty,
with her quick, keen mind, was to pine, to droop, to
fade in oblivion and neglect? Was she to blame? Let
those who neglected her look to it. Her youth was all
with her yet, and all her power to attract, to compel
admiration.
  When Corthell came to see her on the Wednesday
evening in question, Laura said to him, after a few mo-
ments' conversation in the drawing room:
  "Oh, you remember the picture you taught me to
appreciate-the picture of the little pool in the art gal-
lery, the one you called Despair?" I have hung it in
my own particular room upstairs-my sitting room
-so as to have it where I can see it always. I love it
now. But," she added, "I am not sure about the light. I
think it could be hung to better advantage." She hesi-
tated a moment, then, with a sudden, impulsive move-
ment, she turned to him.
   "Won't you come up with me, and tell me where to
hang it?"
  They took the little elevator to the floor above, and
Laura led the artist to the room in question-her "sit-
ting room," a wide, airy place, the polished floor cov-
ered with deep skins, the walls wainscotted halfway to
the ceiling, in dull woods. Shelves of books were every-
where, together with potted plants and tall brass lamps.
                         279





                    THE PIT
A long "Madeira" chair stood at the window which
overlooked the park and lake, and near to it a great
round table of San Domingo mahogany, with tea things
and almost diaphanous china.
  "What a beautiful room," murmured Cortheh, as she
touched the button in the wall that opened the current,
"and how much you have impressed your individuality
upon it. I should have known that you lived here. If
you were thousands of miles away and I had entered
here, I should have known it was yours-and loved it
for such."
  "Here is the picture," she said, indicating where it
hung. "Doesn't it seem to you that the light is bad?"
  But he explained to her that it was not so, and that
she had but to incline the canvas a little more from
the wall to get a good effect.
  "Of course, of course," she assented, as he held the
picture in place. "Of course. I shall have it hung over
again to-morrow."
  For some moments they remained standing in the
centre of the room, looking at the picture and talking
of it. And then, without remembering just how it had
happened, Laura found herself leaning back in the Ma-
deira chair, Corthell seated near at hand by the round
table.
  "I am glad you like my room," she said. "It is here
that I spend most of my time. Often lately I have had
my dinner here. Page goes out a great deal now, and
so I am left alone occasionally. Last night I sat here
in the dark for a long time. The house was so still, every-
body was out-even some of the servants. It was so
warm, I raised the windows and I sat here for hours
looking out over the lake. I could hear it lapping and
washing against the shore-almost like a sea. And it
was so still, so still; and I was thinking of the time when
I was a little girl back at Barrington, years and years
                        280





                    THE PIT
ago, picking whortle-berries down in the 'water lot,'
and how I got lost once in the corn-the stalks were
away above my head-and how happy I was when
my father would take me up on the hay wagon. Ah, I
was happy in those days-just a freckled, black-haired
slip of a little girl, with my frock torn and my hands all
scratched with the berry bushes."
  She had begun by dramatizing, but by now she was
acting-acting with all her histrionic power at fullest
stretch, acting the part of a woman unhappy amid
luxuries, who looked back with regret and with longing
toward a joyous, simple childhood. She was sincere and
she was not sincere. Part of her-one of those two
Laura Jadwins who at different times, but with equal
right, called themselves "I," knew just what effect
her words, her pose, would have upon a man who
sympathized with her, who loved her. But the other
Laura Jadwin would have resented as petty, as even
wrong, the insinuation that she was not wholly, thor-
oughly sincere. All that she was saying was true. No
one, so she believed, ever was placed before as she was
placed now. No one had ever spoken as now she spoke.
Her chin upon one slender finger, she went on, her eyes
growing wide:
  "If I had only known then that those days were to be
the happiest of my life . . . This great house, all the
beauty of it, and all this wealth, what does it amount
to?" Her voice was the voice of Phedre, and the gesture
of lassitude with which she let her arms fall into her
lap was precisely that which only the day before she had
used to accompany Portia's plaint of

         -my little body is a-weary of this great world.

  Yet, at the same time, Laura knew that her heart
was genuinely aching with real sadness, and that the
                        281





THE PIT


tears which stood in her eyes were as sincere as any
she had ever shed.
  "All this wealth," she continued, her head dropping
back upon the cushion of the chair as she spoke, "what
does it matter; for what does it compensate? Oh, I
would give it all gladly, gladly, to be that little black-
haired girl again, back in Squire Dearborn's water lot;
with my hands stained with the whortle-berries and the
nettles in my fingers-and my little lover, who called me
his beau-heart and bought me a blue hair ribbon, and
kissed me behind the pump house."
  "Ah," said Corthell, quickly and earnestly, "that is
the secret. It was love-even the foolish boy and girl
love-love that after all made your life sweet then."
  She let her hands fall into her lap, and, musing,
turned the rings back and forth upon her fingers.
  "Don't you think so?" he asked, in a low voice.
  She bent her head slowly, without replying. Then
for a long moment neither spoke. Laura played with
her rings. The artist, leaning forward in his chair,
looked with vague eyes across the room. And no interval
of time since his return, no words that had ever passed
between them, had been so fraught with significance,
so potent in drawing them together as this brief, word-
less moment.
  At last Corthell turned toward her.
  "You must not think," he murmured, "that your
life is without love now. I will not have you believe
that."
  But she made no answer.
  "If you would only see," he went on. "If you would
only condescend to look, you would know that there is
a love whichhas enfolded your life for years. You have
shut it out from you always. But it has been yours,
just the same; it has lain at your door, it has looked-
oh, God knows with what longing!-through your win-
                         282





                    THE PIT
dows. You have never stirred abroad that it has not
followed you. Not a footprint of yours that it does not
know and cherish. Do you think that your life is with-
out love? Why, it is all around you-all around you but
voiceless. It has no right to speak, it only has the right
to suffer."
  Still Laura said no word. Her head turned from
him, she looked out of the window, and once more the
seconds passed while neither spoke. The clock on the
table ticked steadily. In the distance, through the open
window, came the incessant, mournful wash of the lake.
All around them the house was still. At length Laura
sat upright in her chair.
  "I think I will have this room done over while we are
away this summer," she said. "Don't you think it would
be effective if the wainscotting went almost to the ceil-
ing?"
  He glanced critically about the room.
  "Very," he answered, briskly. "There is no back-
ground so beautiful as wood."
  "And I might finish it off at the top with a narrow
shelf."
  "Provided you promised not to put brass 'plaques'
or pewter kitchen ware upon it."
  "Do smoke," she urged him. "I know you want to.
You will find matches on the table."
  But Corthell, as he lit his cigarette, produced his own
match box. It was a curious bit of antique silver, which
he had bought in a Viennese pawnshop, heart-shaped
and topped with a small ducal coronet of worn gold. On
one side he had caused his name to be engraved in small
script. Now, as Laura admired it, he held it toward
her.
   "An old pouncet-box, I believe," he informed her,
 "or possibly it held an ointment for her finger nails."
 He spilled the matches into his hand. "You see the
                         283




THE PIT


red stain still on the inside; and-smell," he added, as
she took it from him. "Even the odour of the sulphur
matches cannot smother the quaint old perfume, dis-
tilled perhaps three centuries ago."
  An hour later Corthell left her. She did not follow
him farther than the threshold of the room, but let him
find his way to the front door alone.
  When he had gone she returned to the room, and for
a little while sat in her accustomed place by the window
overlooking the park and the lake. Very soon after
Corthell's departure she heard Page, Landry Court, and
Mrs. Wessels come in; then at length rousing from her
reverie she prepared for bed. But, as she passed the
round mahogany table, on her way to her bedroom, she
was aware of a little object lying upon it, near to where
she had sat.
   "Oh, he forgot it," she murmured, as she picked up
Corthell's heart-shaped match box. She glanced at it
a moment, indifferently; but her mind was full of other
things. She laid it down again upon the table, and going
on to her own room, went to bed.
  Jadwin did not come home that night, and in the
morning Laura presided at breakfast table in his place.
Landry Court, Page, and Aunt Wess' were there; for
occasionally nowadays, when the trio went to one of
their interminable concerts or lectures, Landry stayed
over night at the house.
  "Any message for your husband, Mrs. Jadwin?" in-
quired Landry, as he prepared to go down town after
breakfast. "I always see him in Mr. Gretry's office the
first thing. Any message for him?"
  "No," answered Laura, simply.
  "Oh, by the way," spoke up Aunt Wess', "we met
that Mr. Corthell on the corner last night, just as he
was leaving. I was real sorry not to get home here
before he left. I've never heard him play on that big
                        284





                     THE PIT
organ, and I've been wanting to for ever so long. I
hurried home last night, hoping I might have caught
him before he left. I was regularly disappointed."
  "That's too bad," murmured Laura, and then, for
obscure reasons, she had the stupidity to add: "And we
were in the art gallery the whole evening. He played
beautifully."
  Toward eleven o'clock that morning Laura took her
usual ride, but she had not been away from the house
quite an hour before she turned back.
  All at once she had remembered something. She re-
turned homeward, now urging Crusader to a flying gal-
lop, now curbing him to his slowest ambling walk. That
which had so abruptly presented itself to her mind was
the fact that Corthell's match box-his name engraved
across its front-still lay in plain sight upon the table in
her sitting room-the peculiar and particular place of
her privacy.
  It was so much her own, this room, that she had given
orders that the servants were to ignore it in their day's
routine. She looked after its order herself. Yet, for
all that, the maids or the housekeeper often passed
through it, on their way to the suite beyond, and oc-
casionally Page or Aunt Wess' came there to read, in her
absence. The family spoke of the place sometimes as
the "upstairs sitting room," sometimes simply as
"Laura's room."
  Now, as she cantered homeward, Laura had it vividly
in her mind that she had not so much as glanced at the
room before leaving the house that morning. The
servants would not touch the place. But it was quite
possible that Aunt Wess' or Page
  Laura, the blood mounting to her forehead, struck
the horse sharply with her crop. The pettiness of the
predicament, the small meanness of her situation struck
across her face like the flagellations of tiny whips. That
                        285





THE PIT


she should stoop to this! She who had held her head so
high.
  Abruptly she reined in the horse again. No, she would
not hurry. Exercising all her self-control, she went on
her way with deliberate slowness, so that it was past
twelve o'clock when she dismounted under the carriage
porch.
  Her fingers clutched tightly about her crop, she
mounted to her sitting room and entered, closing the
door behind her.
  She went directly to the table, and then, catching her
breath, with a quick, apprehensive sinking of the heart,
stopped short. The little heart-shaped match box was
gone, and on the couch in the corner of the room Page,
her book fallen to the floor beside her, lay curled up
and asleep.
  A loop of her riding-habit over her arm, the toe of
her boot tapping the floor nervously, Laura stood
motionless in the centre of the room, her lips tight
pressed, the fingers of one gloved hand drumming
rapidly upon her riding-crop. She was bewildered, and
an anxiety cruelly poignant, a dread of something she
could not name, gripped suddenly at her throat.
  Could she have been mistaken? Was it upon the
table that she had seen the match box after all? If it
lay elsewhere about the room, she must find it at once.
Never had she felt so degraded as now, when, moving
with such softness and swiftness as she could in her agi-
tation command, she went here and there about the
room, peering into the corners of her desk, searching
upon the floor, upon the chairs, everywhere, anywhere;
her face crimson, her breath failing her, her hands open-
ing and shutting.
  But the silver heart with its crown of worn gold was
not to be found. Laura, at the end of half an hour, was
obliged to give over searching. She was certain the
                         286






THE PIT


match box lay upon the mahogany table when last she
left the room. It had not been mislaid; of that she was
now persuaded.
  But while she sat at the desk, still in habit and hat,
rummaging for the fourth time among the drawers and
shelves, she was all at once aware, even without turning
around, that Page was awake and watching her. Laura
cleared her throat.
  "Have you seen my blue note-paper, Page?" she
asked. "I want to drop a note to Mrs. Cressler right
away."
  "No," said Page, as she rose from the couch. "No,
I haven't seen it." She came toward her sister across
the room. "I thought, maybe," she added, gravely, as
she drew the heart-shaped match box from her pocket,
"that you might be looking for this. I took it. I knew
you wouldn't care to have Mr. Jadwin find it here."
  Laura struck the little silver heart from Page's hand,
with a violence that sent it spinning across the room,
and sprang to her feet.
  "You took it!" she cried. "You took it! How dare
you! What do you mean? What do I care if Curtis
should find it here? What's it to me that he should
know that Mr. Corthell came up here? Of course he was
here."
  But Page, though very pale, was perfectly calm under
her sister's outburst.
  "If you didn't care whether anyone knew that Mr.
Corthell came up here," she said, quietly, "why did you
tell us this morning at breakfast that you and he were
in the art gallery the whole evening? I thought," she
added, with elaborate blandness, "I thought I would
be doing you a service in hiding the match box."
  "A service! You! What have I to hide?" cried Laura,
almostiinarticulate. "Of course I said we were in the art
gallery the whole evening. So we were. We did-I do
                        287





                    THE PIT
remember now-we did come up here for an instant,
to see how my picture hung. We went downstairs again
at once. We did not so much as sit down. He was not in
the room two minutes."
  "He was here," returned Page, "long enough to
smoke half a dozen times." She pointed to a silver pen
tray on the mahogany table, hidden behind a book rack
and littered with the ashes and charred stumps of some
five or six cigarettes.
  "Really, Laura," Page remarked. "Really, you man-
age very awkwardly, it seems to me."
  Laura caught her riding-crop in her right hand.
  "Don't you-don't you make me forget myself," she
cried, breathlessly.
  "It seems to me," observed Page, quietly, "that
you've done that long since, yourself."
  Laura flung the crop down and folded her arms.
  "Now," she cried, her eyes blazing and riveted upon
Page's. "Now, just what do you mean? Sit down,"
she commanded, flinging a hand toward a chair, "sit
down, and tell me just what you mean by all this."
  But Page remained standing. She met her sister's
gaze without wavering.
  "Do you want me to believe," she answered, "that it
made no difference to you that Mr. Corthell's match
safe was here?"
  "Not the least," exclaimed Laura. "Not the least."
  "Then why did you search for it so when you came
in? I was not asleep all of the time. I saw you."
  "Because,"   answered   Laura,  "because-I-be-
cause     "Then all at once she burst out afresh: "Have
I got to answer to you for what I do? Have I got to
explain? All your life long you've pretended to judge
your sister. Now you've gone too far. Now I forbid it-
from this day on. What I do is my affair; I'll ask no-
body's advice. I'll do as I please, do you understand?"
                        288





                     THE PIT
The tears sprang to her eyes, the sobs strangled in her
throat. "I'll do as I please, as I please," and with the
words she sank down in the chair by her desk and struck
her bare knuckles again and again upon the open lid,
crying out through her tears and her sobs, and from
between her tight-shut teeth: "I'll do as I please, do
you understand? As I please, as I please! I will be
happy. I will, I will, I will!"
  "Oh, darling, dearest    " cried Page, running for-
ward. But Laura, on her feet once more, thrust her
back.
  "Don't touch me," she cried. "I hate you!" She
put her fists to her temples and, her eyes closed, rocked
herself to and fro. "Don't you touch me. Go away
from me; go away from me. I hate you; I hate you all.
I hate this house, I hate this life. You are all killing me.
Oh, my God, if I could only die!"
  She flung herself full length upon the couch, face
downward. Her sobs shook her from head to foot.
  Page knelt at her side, an arm about her shoulder,
but to all her sister's consolations Laura, her voice
muffled in her folded arms, only cried:
  "Let me alone, let me alone. Don't touch me."
  For a time Page tried to make herself heard; then,
after a moment's reflection, she got up and drew out
the pin in Laura's hat. She took off the hat, loosened
the scarf around Laura's neck, and then deftly, silently,
while her sister lay inert and sobbing beneath her hands,
removed the stiff, tight riding-habit. She brought a
towel dipped in cold water from the adjoining room and
bathed Laura's face and hands.
  But her sister would not be comforted, would not
respond to her entreaties or caresses. The better part
of an hour went by; Page, knowing her sister's nature,
in the end held her peace, waiting for the paroxysm to
wear itself out.
                         289





                    THE PIT
  After a while Laura's weeping resolved itself into
long, shuddering breaths, and at length she managed
to say, in a faint, choked voice:
  "Will you bring me the cologne from my dressing-
table, honey? My head aches so."
  And, as Page ran toward the door, she added: "And
my hand mirror, too. Are my eyes all swollen?"
  And that was the last word upon the subject be-
tween the two sisters.
  But the evening of the same day, between eight and
nine o'clock, while Laura was searching the shelves of
the library for a book with which to while away the
long evening that she knew impended, Corthell's card
was brought to her.
  "I am not at home," she told the servant. "Or-
wait," she added. Then, after a moment's thought, she
said: "Very well. Show him in here."
  Laura received the artist, standing very erect and pale
upon the great white rug before the empty fireplace.
Her hands were behind her back when he came in, and
as he crossed the room she did not move.
  "I was not going to see you at first," she said. "I
told the servant I was not at home. But I changed my
mind-I wanted to say something to you."
  He stood at the other end of the fireplace, an elbow
upon an angle of the massive mantel, and as she spoke
the last words he looked at her quickly. As usual, they
were quite alone. The heavy, muffling curtain of the
doorway shut them in effectually.
'"I have something to say to you," continued Laura.
Then, quietly enough, she said:
  "You must not come to see me any more."
  He turned abruptly away from her, and for a moment
did not speak. Then at last, his voice low, he faced her
again and asked:
  "Have I offended?"
                        290





                    THE PIT
  She shook her head.
  "No," he said, quietly. "No, I knew it was not that."
There was a long silence. The artist looked at the floor,
his hand. slowly stroking the back of one of the big
leather chairs.
  "I knew it must come," he answered at length,
"sooner or later. You are right-of course. I should
not have come back to America. I should not have
believed that I was strong enough to trust myself.
Then"- he looked at her steadily. His words came
from his lips one by one, very slowly. His voice was
hardly more than a whisper. "Then, I am-never to
see you-again .... Is that it?"
  " Yes."
  "Do you know what that means for me?" he cried.
"Do you realize     " he drew in his breath sharply.
"Never to see you again! To lose even the little that
is left to me now. I-I    " He turned away quickly
and walked to a window and stood a moment, his back
turned, looking out, his hands clasped behind him.
Then, after a long moment, he faced about. His man-
ner was quiet again, his voice very low.
  "But before I go," he said, "will you answer me, at
least, this-it can do no harm now that I am to leave
you-answer me, and I know you will speak the truth:
Are you happy, Laura?"
   She closed her eyes.
   "You have not the right to know."
   "You are not happy," he declared. "I can see it, I
know it. If you were, you would have told me so....
If I promise you," he went on. "If I promise you to go
away now, and never to try to see you again, may I
come once more-to say good-bye?"
   She shook her head.
   "It is so little for you to grant," he pleaded, "and it
 is so incalculably much for me to look forward to in the
                         291





THE PIT


little time that yet remains. I do not even ask to see
you alone. I will not harass you with any heroics."
  "Oh, what good will it do," she cried, wearily, "for
you to see me again? Why will you make me more un-
happy than I am? Why did you come back?"
  "Because," he answered, steadily, "because I love
you more than"-he partly raised a clenched fist and
let it fall slowly upon the back of the chair, "more than
any other consideration in the world."
  "Don't!" she cried. "You must not. Never, never
say that to me again. Will you go-please?"
  "Oh, if I had not gone from you four years ago!"
he cried. "If I had only stayed then! Not a day of my
life since that I have not regretted it. You could have
loved me then. I know it, I know it, and, God forgive
me, but I know you could love me now   "
   "Will you go?" she cried.
   "I dare you to say you could not," he flashed out.
   Laura shut her eyes and put her hands over her ears.
 "I could not, I could not," she murmured, monoto-
 nously, over and over again. "I could not, I could not."
   She heard him start suddenly, and opened her eyes in
 time to see him come quickly toward her. She threw
 out a defensive hand, but he caught the arm itself to
 him and, before she could resist, had kissed it again and
 again through the interstices of the lace sleeve. Upon
 her bare shoulder she felt the sudden passion of his lips.
   A quick, sharp gasp, a sudden qualm of breathlessness
 wrenched through her, to her very finger-tips, with a
 fierce leap of the blood, a wild bound of the heart.
   She tore back from him with a violence that rent
 away the lace upon her arm, and stood off from him,
 erect and rigid, a fine, delicate, trembling vibrating
 through all her being. On her pale cheeks the colour
 suddenly flamed.
   "Go, go," was all she had voice to utter.
                         292





THE PIT


  "And may I see you once more-only once?"
  "Yes, yes, anything, only go, go-if you love me!"
  He left the room. In another moment she heard the
front door close.
  "Curtis," said Laura, when next she saw her hus-
band, "Curtis, you could not-stay with me, that
last time. Remember? When we were to go for a drive.
Can you spend this evening with me? Just us two, here
at home-or I'll go out with you. I'll do anything you
say." She looked at him steadily an instant. "It is
not-not easy for a woman to ask-for me to ask
favours like this. Each time I tell myself it will be the
last. I am-you must remember this, Curtis, I am-
perhaps I am a little proud. Don't you see?"
  They were at breakfast table again. It was the morn-
ing after Laura had given Corthell his dismissal. As she
spoke Jadwin brought his hand down upon the table
with a bang.
  "You bet I will," he exclaimed; "you bet I'll stay
with you to-night. Business can go to the devil! And
we won't go out, either; we'll stay right here. You get
something to read to me, and we'll have one of our old
evenings again. We-"
  All at once Jadwin paused, laid down his knife and
fork, and looked strangely to and fro about the room.
  "We'll have one of our old evenings again," he re-
peated, slowly.
  "What is it, Curtis?" demanded his wife. "What is
the matter?"
  "Oh-nothing," he answered.
  "Why, yes, there was. Tell me."
  "No, no. I'm all right now," he returned, briskly
enough.
  "No," she insisted. "You must tell me. Are you
sick?"
  He hesitated a moment. Then:
                        293





                    THE PIT
  "Sick?" he queried. "No, indeed. But I'll tell you.
Since a few days I've had," he put his fingers to his fore-
head between his eyes, "I've had a queer sensation
right there. It comes and goes."
  "A headache?"
  "N-no. It's hard to describe. A sort of numbness.
Sometimes it's as though there was a heavy iron cap-
a helmet on my head. And sometimes it-I don't know,
it seems as if there were fog, or something or other, in-
side. I'll take a good long rest this summer, as soon
as we can get away. Another month or six weeks, and
I'll have things ship-shape and so as I can leave them.
Then we'll go up to Geneva, and, by Jingo, I'll loaf."
He was silent for a moment, frowning, passing his hand
across his forehead and winking his eyes. Then, with
a return of his usual alertness, he looked at his watch.
  "Hi!" he exclaimed. "I must be off. I won't be
home to dinner to-night. But you can expect me by
eight o'clock, sure. I promise I'll be here on the minute."
  But, as he kissed his wife good-bye, Laura put her
arms about his neck.
  "Oh, I don't want you to leave me at all, ever, ever!
Curtis, love me, love me always, dear. And be thought-
ful of me and kind to me. And remember that you are
all I have in the world; you are father and mother to
me, and my dear husband as well. I know you do love
me; but there are times- Oh," she cried, suddenly,
"if I thought you did not love me-love me better than
anything, anything-I could not love you; Curtis, I
could not, I could not. No, no," she cried, "don't
interrupt. Hear me out. Maybe it is wrong of me to
feel that way, but I'm only a woman, dear. I love you,
but I love Love, too. Women are like that; right or
wrong, weak or strong, they must be-must be loved
above everything else in the world. Now go, go to your
business; you mustn't be late. Hark, there is Jarvis
                        294





                    THE PIT
with the team. Go now. Good-bye, good-bye, and I'll
expect you at eight."
  True to his word, Jadwin reached his home that eve-
ning promptly at the promised hour. As he came into
the house, however, the door-man met him in the hall,
and, as he took his master's hat and stick, explained that
Mrs. Jadwin was in the art gallery, and that she had
said he was to come there at once.
  Laura had planned a little surprise. The art gallery
was darkened. Here and there behind the dull blue
shades a light burned low. But one of the movable re-
flectors that were used to throw a light upon the
pictures in the topmost rows was burning brilliantly.
It was turned from Jadwin as he entered, and its broad
cone of intense white light was thrown full upon Laura,
who stood over against the organ in the full costume
of " Theodora."
  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 Bern-
hardt-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 her-
self 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 be-
                        295





                     THE PIT
lieve 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, fer-
vently. "But-Lord, what will you do next? What-
ever 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 Testa-
ment, 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,
J6zabel. 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 rembrasser;
        Mais je n'ai plus trouve qu'un horrible melange
        D'os et de chair meurtris et traines dans lafange
        Des lambeaux pleins de sang et des membres affreux
        Que les chiens divorants 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.
                          296





THE PIT


  "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 realized that," returned Laura,
"you've just begun to understand me."
  Never had he seen her gayer. Her vivacity was be-
wildering.
  "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 dariced 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
                        297





                    THE PIT
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 laugh-
ing.
  "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 wonder-
ful. 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 overwrought
-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 some-
thing 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
                        298





                    T HE PIT
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
                        299





THE PIT


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 ex-
claimed 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 some-
thing 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
                         300





THE PIT


costume as Gretry, his hat still on his head, stepped
quickly into the room.
  Jadwin met him halfway, 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
                        301





                    THE PIT
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 im-
pended? 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 mo-
ment she believed she had won him back.
  "Don't go, don't go," she whispered to him, as he
kissed her good-bye. "Oh, dearest, don't go! This was
my evening."
  "I must, I must, Laura. Good-bye, 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-bye, 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
                        302





                     THE PIT
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 illumi-
nated the place. The gold frames of the pictures re-
flected 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!"


303











                  CHAPTER IX

W    ELL, 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 f got enough to bother me?"
  "Oh, say! Say, hold on, hold on, old man," remon-
strated 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
                         304





THE PIT


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 super-
intendents."
  "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 mat-
ter then. I think we've got all the shorts there are."
  "I'm laying particularly for Dave Scannel," re-
marked 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?" de-
manded the other, amazed.
  "Nothing, but I found out the other day that old Har-
gus-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
                        305




THE PIT


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."
  And before the door of the room was closed, Jadwin
was back at the table again. Once more, painfully, toil-
fully, he went over his plans, retesting, altering, recom-
bining, his hands full of lists, of despatches, and of end-
less columns of memoranda. Occasionally he murmured
fragments of sentences to himself. "H'm . . . I must
look out for that.... They can't touch us there.... The
annex of that Nickel Plate elevator will hold-let's
see ... half a million. ... If I buy the grain within five
days after arrival I've got to pay storage, which is, let's
see-three-quarters of a cent times eighty thousand...."
  An hour passed. At length Jadwin pushed back from
the table, drank a glass of ice water, and rose, stretch-
ing.
  "Lord, I must get some sleep," he muttered.
  He threw off his clothes and went to bed, but even as
he composed himself to sleep, the noises of the street in
the awakening city invaded the room through the chink
of the window he had left open. The noises were vague.
They blended easily into a far-off murmur; they came
nearer; they developed into a cadence:
  "Wheat-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-wheat."
  Jadwin roused up. He had just been dropping off to
                        306





                     THE PIT
sleep. He rose and shut the window, and again threw
himself down. He was weary to death; not a nerve of
his body that did not droop and flag. His eyes closed
slowly. Then, all at once, his whole body twitched
sharply in a sudden spasm, a simultaneous recoil of
every muscle. His heart began to beat rapidly, his
breath failed him. Broad awake, he sat up in bed.
   "H'm!" he muttered. "That was a start-must have
been dreaming, surely."
  Then he paused, frowning, his eyes narrowing; he
looked- to and fro about the room, lit by the subdued
glow that came in through the transom from a globe in
the hall outside. Slowly his hand went to his forehead.
  With almost the abruptness of a blow, that strange,
indescribable sensation had returned to his head. It
was as though he were struggling with a fog in the
interior of his brain; or again it was a numbness, a
weight, or sometimes it had more of the feeling of a
heavy, tight-drawn band across his temples.
   "Smoking too much, I guess," murmured Jadwin.
But he knew this was not the reason, and as he spoke,
there smote across his face the first indefinite sensation
of an unnamed fear.
   He gave a quick, short breath, and straightened him-
 self, passing his hands over his face.
   "What the deuce," he muttered, "does this mean?"
   For a long moment he remained sitting upright in
 bed, looking from wall to wall of the room. He felt a
 little calmer. He shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
   "Look here," he said to the opposite wall, "I guess
 I'm not a schoolgirl, to have nerves at this late date.
 High time to get to sleep, if I'm to mix things with
 Crookes to-morrow."
   But he could not sleep. While the city woke to its
 multitudinous life below his windows, while the grey
 light of morning drowned the yellow haze from the gas
                         307




THE PIT


jet that came through the transom, while the "early
call" alarms' rang in neighbouring rooms, Curtis Jadwin
lay awake, staring at the ceiling, now concentrating his
thoughts upon the vast operation in which he found
himself engaged, following out again all its complexities,
its inconceivable ramifications, or now puzzling over
the inexplicable numbness, the queer, dull weight that
descended upon his brain so soon as he allowed its
activity to relax.
  By five o'clock he found it intolerable to remain
longer in bed; he rose, bathed, dressed, ordered his
breakfast, and, descending to the office of the hotel, read
the earliest editions of the morning papers for half an
hour.
  Then, at last, as he sat in the corner of the office deep
in an armchair, the tired shoulders began to droop, the
wearied head to nod. The paper slipped from his fingers,
his chin sank upon his collar.
  To his ears the early clamour of the street, the cries
of newsboys, the rattle of drays came in a dull murmur.
It seemed to him that very far off a great throng was
forming. It was menacing, shouting. It stirred, it
moved, it was advancing. It came galloping down the
street, shouting with insensate fury; now it was at the
corner, now it burst into the entrance of the hotel. Its
clamour was deafening, but intelligible. For a thousand,
a million, forty million voices were shouting in cadence:
  "Wheat-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-wheat."
  Jadwin woke abruptly, half starting from his chair.
The morning sun was coming in through the windows,
the clock above the hotel desk was striking seven, and
a waiter stood at his elbow, saying:
   "Your breakfast is served, Mr. Jadwin."
   He had no appetite. He could eat nothing but a few
 mouthfuls of toast, and long before the appointed hour
 he sat in Gretry's office, waiting for the broker to ap-
                         308





THE PIT


pear, drumming on the arm of his chair, plucking at the
buttons of his coat, and wondering why it was that
every now and then all the objects in his range of vision
seemed to move slowly back and stand upon the same
plane.
  By degrees he lapsed into a sort of lethargy, a
wretched counterfeit of sleep, his eyes half closed, his
breath irregular. But, such as it was, it was infinitely
grateful. The little, over-driven cogs and wheels of the
mind, at least, moved more slowly. Perhaps by and by
this might actually develop into genuine, blessed
oblivion.
  But there was a quick step outside the door. Gretry
came in.
  "Oh, J.! Here already, are you? Well, Crookes
will begin to sell at the very tap of the bell."
  "He will, hey?" Jadwin was on his feet. Instantly
the jaded nerves braced taut again; instantly the tiny
machinery of the brain spun again at its fullest limit.
"He's going to try to sell us out, is he? All right. We'll
sell, too. We'll see who can sell the most-Crookes or
Jadwin."
  "Sell! You mean buy, of course."
  "No, I don't. I've been thinking it over since you
left last night. Wheat is worth exactly what it is selling
for this blessed day. I've not inflated it up one single
eighth yet; Crookes thinks I have. Good Lord, I can
read him like a book! He thinks I've boosted the stuff
above what it's worth, and that a little shove will send
it down. He can send it down to ten cents if he
likes, but it'll jump back like a rubber ball. I'll sell
bushel for bushel with him as long as he wants to keep
it up."
  "Heavens and earth, J.," exclaimed Gretry, with a
long breath, "the risk is about as big as holding up the
Bank of England. You are depreciating the value of
                         309





                     THE PIT
about forty million dollars' worth of your property with
every cent she breaks."
  "You do as I tell you-you'll see I'm right," answered
Jadwin. "Get your boys in here, and we'll give 'em the
day's orders."
  The "Crookes affair"-as among themselves the
group of men who centred about Jadwin spoke of it-
was one of the sharpest fights known on the Board of
Trade for many a long day. It developed with amazing
unexpectedness and was watched with breathless inter-
est from every produce exchange between the oceans.
  It occupied every moment of each morning's session
of the Board of Trade for four furious, never-to-be-
forgotten days. Promptly at half-past nine o'clock on
Tuesday morning Crookes began to sell May wheat
short, and instantly, to the surprise of every Pit trader
on the floor, the price broke with his very first attack.
In twenty minutes it was down half a cent. Then came
the really big surprise of the day. Landry Court, the
known representative of the firm which all along had
fostered and encouraged the rise in the price, appeared
in the Pit, and instead of buying, upset all precedent
and all calculation by selling as freely as the Crookes
men themselves. For three days the battle went on. But
to the outside world-even to the Pit itself-it seemed
less a battle than a rout. The "Unknown Bull" was
down, was beaten at last. He had inflated the price of the
wheat, he had backed a false, an artificial, and unwar-
rantable boom, and now he was being broken. Ah,
Crookes knew when to strike. Here was the great general
-the real leader who so long had held back.
  By the end of the Friday session, Crookes and his
clique had sold five million bushels, "going short,"
promising to deliver wheat that they did not own, but
expected to buy at low prices. The market that day
closed at ninety-five.
                        310





                     THE PIT
  Friday night, in Jadwin's room in the Grand Pacific,
a conference was held between Gretry, Landry Court,
two of Gretry's most trusted lieutenants, and Jadwin
himself. Two results issued from this conference. One
took the form of a cipher cable to Jadwin's Liverpool
agent, which, translated, read: "Buy all wheat that is
offered till market advances one penny." The other
was the general order issued to Landry Court and the
four other Pit traders for the Gretry-Converse house, to
the effect that in the morning they were to go into the
Pit and, making no demonstration, begin to buy back
the wheat they had been selling all the week. Each of
them was to buy one million bushels. Jadwin had, as
Gretry put it, "timed Crookes to a split second," fore-
seeing the exact moment when he would make his su-
preme effort. Sure enough, on that very Saturday,
Crookes was selling more freely than ever, confident
of breaking the Bull ere the closing gong should ring.
  But before the end of the morning wheat was up two
cents. Buying orders had poured in upon the market.
The price had stiffened almost of itself. Above the
indicator upon the great dial there seemed to be an
invisible, inexplicable magnet that lifted it higher and
higher, for all the strenuous efforts of the Bears to drag
it down.
  A feeling of nervousness began to prevail. The
small traders, who had been wild to sell short during
the first days of the movement, began on Monday to
cover a little here and there.
  "Now," declared Jadwin that night, "now's the time
to open up all along the line hard. If we start her with
a rush to-morrow morning, she'll go to a dollar all by
herself."
  Tuesday morning, therefore, the Gretry-Converse
traders bought another five million bushels. The price
under this stimulus went up with the buoyancy of a
                        311





                     THE PIT
feather. The little shorts, more and more uneasy, and
beginning to cover by the scores, forced it up even
higher.
  The nervousness of the "crowd" increased. Per-
haps, after all, Crookes was not so omnipotent. Per-
haps, after all, the Unknown Bull had another fight in
him. Then the "outsiders'.' came into the market.
All in a moment all the traders were talking "higher
prices." Everybody now was eager to buy as, a week
before, they had been eager to sell. The price went up
by convulsive bounds. Crookes dared not buy, dared
not purchase the wheat to make good his promises of
delivery, for fear of putting up the price on himself
higher still. Dismayed, chagrined, and humiliated, he
and his clique sat back inert, watching the tremendous
reaction, hoping against hope that the market would
break again.
  But now it became difficult to get wheat at all. All of
a sudden nobody was selling. The buyers in the Pit
commenced to bid against each other, offering a dollar
and two cents. The wheat did not "come out." They
bid a dollar two and a half, a dollar two and five-
eighths; still no wheat. Frantic, they shook their fingers
in the very faces of Landry Court and the Gretry
traders, shouting: "A dollar, two and seven-eighths!
A dollar, three! Three and an eighth! A quarter!
Three-eighths! A half!" But the others shook their
heads. Except on extraordinary advances of a whole
cent at a time, there was no wheat for sale.
  At the last-named price Crookes acknowledged de-
feat. Somewhere in his big machine a screw had been
loose. Somehow he had miscalculated. So long as he
and his associates sold and sold and sold, the price
would go down. The instant they tried to cover there
was no wheat for sale, and the price leaped up again
with an elasticity that no power could control.
                        312





                     THE PIT
  He saw now that he and his followers had to face a
loss of several cents a bushel on each one of the five
million they had sold. They had not been able to cover
one single sale, and the situation was back again ex-
actly as before his onslaught, the Unknown Bull in
securer control than ever before.
  But Crookes had, at last, begun to suspect the true
condition of affairs, and now that the market was hourly
growing tighter and more congested, his suspicion was
confirmed. Alone, locked in his private office, he thought
it out, and at last remarked to himself:
  "Somebody has a great big line of wheat that is not
on the market at all. Somebody has got all the wheat
there is. I guess I know his name. I guess the visible
supply of May wheat in the Chicago market is cor-
nered."
  This was at a time when the price stood at a dollar
and one cent. Crookes-who from the first had man-
aged and handled the operations of his confederates-
knew very well that if he now bought in all the wheat
his clique had sold short, the price would go up long
before he could complete the deal. He said nothing
to the others, further than that they should "hold on a
little longer, in the hopes of a turn," but very quietly he
began to cover his own personal sales-his share of the
five million sold by his clique. Foreseeing the collapse
of his scheme, he got out of the market; at a loss, it
was true, but still no more than he could stand. If he
"held on a little longer, in the hopes of a turn," there
was no telling how deep the Bull would gore him. This
was no time to think much about "obligations." It
had got to be "every man for himself" by now.
  A few days after this Crookes sat in his office in the
building in La Salle Street that bore his name. It was
about eleven o'clock in the morning. His dry, small,
beardless face creased a little at the corners of the mouth
                         313





                    THE PIT
as he heard the ticker chattering behind him. He knew
how the tape read. There had been another flurry on the
Board that morning, not half an hour since, and wheat
was up again. In the last thirty-six hours it had ad-
vanced three cents, and he knew very well that at that
minute the" boys" on the floor were offering nine cents
over the dollar for the May option-and not getting it.
The market was in a tumult. He fancied he could almost
hear the thunder of the Pit as it swirled. All La Salle
Street was listening and watching, all Chicago, all the
nation, all the world. Not a "factor" on the London
'Change who did not turn an ear down the wind to catch
the echo of this turmoil, not an agent de change in the
peristyle of the Paris Bourse, who did not strain to note
the every modulation of its mighty diapason.
  "Well," 'said the little voice of the man-within-the-
man, who in the person of Calvin Hardy Crookes sat
listening to the ticker in his office, "well, let it roar.
It sure can't hurt C. H. C."
  "Can you see Mr. Cressler?" said the clerk at the
door.
  He came in with a hurried, unsteady step. The long,
stooping figure was unkempt; was, in a sense, un-
jointed, as though some support had been withdrawn.
The eyes were deep-sunk, the bones of the face were
gaunt and bare; and from moment to moment the man
swallowed quickly and moistened his lips.
  Crookes nodded as his ally came up, and one finger
raised, pointed to a chair. He himself was impassive,
calm. He did not move. Taciturn as ever, he waited
for the other to speak.
  "I want to talk with you, Mr. Crookes," began
Cressler, hurriedly. "I--I made up my mind to it day
before yesterday, but I put it off. I had hoped that
things would come our way. But I can't delay now.
... Mr. Crookes, I can't stand this any longer. I must
                        314





                    THE PIT
get out of the clique. I haven't the ready money to stand
this pace."
  There was a silence. Crookes neither moved nor
changed expression. His small eyes fixed upon the
other, he waited for Cressler to go on.
  "I might remind you," Cressler continued, "that
when I joined your party I expressly stipulated that
our operations should not be speculative."
  "You knew      " began Crookes.
  "Oh, I have nothing to say," Cressler interrupted.
"I did know. I knew from the first it was to be specu-
lation. I tried to deceive myself. I-well, this don't
interest you. The point is I must get out of the market.
I don't like to go back on you others"-Cressler's fin-
gers were fiddling with his watch chain-" I don't like
to-I mean to say you must let me out. You must let
me cover-at once. I am-very nearly bankrupt now.
Another half-cent rise, and I'm done for. It will take
as it is-my-my-all my ready money-all my savings
for the last ten years to buy in my wheat."
  "Let's see. How much did I sell for you?" demanded
Crookes. "Five hundred thousand?"
  "Yes, five hundred thousand at ninety-eight-and
we're at a dollar nine now. It's an eleven-cent jump.
I-I can't stand another eighth. I must cover at once."
  Crookes, without answering, drew his desk telephone
to him.
  "Hello!" he said after a moment. "Hello! . . .
Buy five hundred May, at the market, right away."
  He hung up the receiver and leaned back in his chair.
  "They'll report the trade in a minute," he said.
"Better wait and see."
  Cressler stood at the window, his hands clasped be-
hind his back, looking down into the street. He did not
answer. The seconds passed, then the minutes. Crookes
turned to his desk and signed a few letters, the scrape of
                        315





                     THE PIT
his pen the only noise to break the silence of the room.
Then at last he observed:
  "Pretty bum weather for this time of the year."
  Cressler nodded. He took off his hat, and pushed the
hair back from his forehead with a slow, persistent
gesture; then as the ticker began to click again, he
faced around quickly, and crossing the room, ran the
tape through his fingers.
  "God," he muttered, between his teeth, "I hope your
men didn't lose any time. It's up again."
  There was a step at the door, and as Crookes called
to come in, the office messenger entered and put a slip
of paper into his hands. Crookes looked at it, and pushed
it across his desk toward Cressler.
  "There you are," he observed. "That's your trade.
Five hundred May, at a dollar ten. You were lucky to
get it at that-or at any price."
  "Ten!" cried the other, as he took the paper.
  Crookes turned away again, and glanced indifferently
over his letters. Cressler laid the slip carefully down
upon the ledge of the desk, and though Crookes did
not look up, he could almost feel how the man braced
himself, got a grip of himself, put all his resources
to the stretch to meet this blow squarely in the
front.
  "And I said another eighth would bust me," Cressler
remarked, with a short laugh. "Well," he added, grimly,
"it looks as though I were busted. I suppose, though, we
must all expect to get the knife once in a while-
mustn't we? Well, there goes fifty thousand dollars of
my good money."
  "I can tell you who's got it, if you care to know,"
answered Crookes. "It's a pewter quarter to Govern-
ment bonds that Gretry, Converse & Co. sold that
wheat to you. They've got about all the wheat there
is."
                         316






  "I know, of course, they've been heavy buyers-for
this Unknown Bull they talk so much about."
  "Well, he ain't Unknown to me," declared Crookes.
"I know him. It's Curtis Jadwin. He's the man we've
been fighting all along, and all hell's going to break
loose down here in three or four days. He's cornered
the market."
  "Jadwin! You mean J.-Curtis-my friend?"
  Crookes grunted an affirmative.
  "But-why, he told me he was out of the market-
for good."
  Crookes did not seem to consider that the remark
called for any useless words. He put his hands in his
pockets and looked at Cressler.
  "Does he know?" faltered Cressler. "Do you suppose
he could have heard that I was in this clique of yours?"
  "Not unless you told him yourself."
  Cressler stood up, clearing his throat.
  "'I have not told him, Mr. Crookes," he said. "You
would do me an especial favour if you would keep it
from the public, from everybody, from Mr. Jadwin.
that I was a member of this ring."
  Crookes swung his chair around and faced his desk.
  "Hell! You don't suppose I'm going to talk, do
you?"
  "Well . . . Good-morning, Mr. Crookes."
  "Good-morning."
  Left alone, Crookes took a turn the length of the
room. Then he paused in the middle of the floor, look-
ing down thoughtfully at his trim, small feet.
  "Jadwin!" he muttered. "Hm! . . . Think you're
boss of the boat now, don't you? Think I'm done with
you, hey? Oh, yes, you'll run a corner in wheat, will
you? Well, here's a point for your consideration, Mr.
Curtis Jadwin, 'Don't get so big that all the other
fellows can see you-they throw bricks.'"
                        317





                     THE PIT
  He sat down in his chair, and passed a thin and deli-
cate hand across his lean mouth.
  "No," he muttered, "I won't try to kill you any
more. You've cornered wheat, have you? All right....
Your own wheat, my smart Aleck, will do all the killing
I want."
  Then at last the news of the great corner, authori-
tative, definite, went out over all the country, and
promptly the figure and name of Curtis Jadwin loomed
suddenly huge and formidable in the eye of the public.
There was no wheat on the Chicago market. He, the
great man, the "Napoleon of La Salle Street," had it
all. He sold it or hoarded it, as suited his pleasure.
He dictated the price to those men who must buy it
of him to fill their contracts. His hand wa4 upon the
indicator of the wheat dial of the Board of Trade, and
he moved it through as many or as few of the degrees
of the circle as he chose.
  The newspapers, not only of Chicago, but of every
city in the Union, exploited him for "stories." The
history of his corner, how he had effected it, its chronol-
ogy, its results, were told and retold, till his name was
familiar in the homes and at the firesides of uncounted
thousands. "Anecdotes" were circulated concerning
him, interviews-concocted for the most part in the
editorial rooms-were printed. His picture appeared.
He was described as a cool, calm man of steel, with a
cold and calculating grey eye, "piercing as an eagle's";
as a desperate gambler, bold as a buccaneer, his eye
black and fiery-a veritable pirate; as a mild, small man
with a weak chin and a deprecatory demeanour; as a
jolly and roistering "high roller," addicted to actresses,
suppers, and to bathing in champagne.
   In the Democratic press he was assailed as little bet-
ter than a thief, vituperated as an oppressor of the
people, who ground the faces of the poor, and battened
                         318





                     THE PIT
in the luxury wrung from the toiling millions. The
Republican papers spoke solemnly of the new era of
prosperity upon which the country was entering, re-
ferred to the stimulating effect of the higher prices
upon capitalized industry, and distorted the situation
to an augury of a sweeping Republican victory in the
next Presidential campaign.
  Day in and day out Gretry's office, where Jadwin
now fixed his headquarters, was besieged. Reporters
waited in the anteroom for whole half days to get but
a nod and a word from the great man. Promoters,
inventors, small financiers, agents, manufacturers, even
"crayon artists" and horse dealers, even tailors and
yacht builders rubbed shoulders with one another out-
side the door marked "Private."
  Farmers from Iowa or Kansas come to town to sell
their little quotas of wheat at the prices they once had
deemed impossible, shook his hand on the street, and
urged him to come out and see "God's own country."
  But once, however, an entire deputation of these
wheat growers found their way into the sanctum. They
came bearing a presentation cup of silver, and their
spokesman, stammering and horribly embarrassed in
unwonted broadcloth and varnished boots, delivered a
short address. He explained that all through the
Middle West, all through the wheat belts, a great wave
of prosperity was rolling because of Jadwin's corner.
Mortgages were being paid off, new and improved farm-
ing implements were being bought, new areas seeded,
new live stock acquired. The men were buying buggies
again, the women parlour melodeons, houses and homes
were going up; in short, the entire farming population
of the Middle West was being daily enriched. In a
letter that Jadwin received about this time from an old
fellow living in "Bates Corners," Kansas, occurred the
words:
                         319





                    THE PIT
  "-and, sir, you must know that not a night passes
that my little girl, now going on seven, sir, and the
brightest of her class in the county seat grammar school,
does not pray to have God bless Mister Jadwin, who
helped papa save the farm."
  If there was another side, if the brilliancy of his tri-
umph yet threw a shadow behind it, Jadwin could
ignore it. It was far from him, he could not see it. Yet for
all this a story came to him about this time that for
long would not be quite forgotten. It came through
Corthell, but very indirectly, passed on by a dozen
mouths before it reached his ears.
  It told of an American, an art student, who at the
moment was on a tramping tour through the north of
Italy. It was an ugly story. Jadwin pished and pshawed,
refusing to believe it, condemning it as ridiculous ex-
aggeration, but somehow it appealed to an uncompro-
mising sense of the probable: it rang true.
  "And I met this boy," the student had said, "on the
high road, about a kilometre outside of Arezzo. He
was a fine fellow of twenty or twenty-two. He knew
nothing of the world. England he supposed to be part
of the mainland of Europe. For him Cavour and
Mazzini were still alive. But when I announced myself
American, he roused at once.
  "'Ah, American,' he said. 'We know of your com-
patriot, then, here in Italy-this Jadwin of Chicago,
who has bought all the wheat. We have no more bread.
The loaf is small as the fist, and costly. We cannot buy
it, we have no money. For myself, I do not care. I am
young. I can eat lentils and cress. But'-and here his
voice was a whisper-'but my mother-my mother!'"
  "It's a lie!" Jadwin cried. "Of course it's a lie.
Good God, if I were to believe every damned story
the papers print about me these days I'd go insane."
   Yet when he put up the price of wheat to a dollar and
                         320





                     THE PIT
twenty cents, the great flour mills of Minnesota and
Wisconsin stopped grinding, and finding a greater
profit in selling the grain than in milling it, threw their
stores upon the market. Though the bakers did not
increase the price of their bread as a consequence of this,
the loaf-even in Chicago, even in the centre of that
great Middle West that weltered in the luxury of pro-
duction-was smaller, and from all the poorer districts
of the city came complaints, protests, and vague
grumblings of discontent.
  On a certain Monday, about the middle of May, Jad-
win sat at Gretry's desk (long since given over to his
use), in the office on the ground floor of the Board of
Trade, swinging nervously back and forth in the swivel
chair, drumming his fingers upon the arms, and glanc-
ing continually at the clock that hung against the op-
posite wall. It was about eleven in the morning. The
Boar4l of Trade vibrated with the vast trepidation of the
Pit, that for two hours had spun and sucked, and gut-
tered and disgorged just overhead. The waiting room
of the office was more than usually crowded. Parasites
of every description polished the walls with shoulder
and elbow. Millionaires and beggars jostled one another
about the doorway. The vice-president of a bank
watched the door of the private office covertly; the
traffic manager of a railroad exchanged yarns with a
group of reporters while awaiting his turn.
  As Gretry, the great man's lieutenant, hurried
through the anteroom, conversation suddenly ceased,
and half a dozen of the more impatient sprang forward.
But the broker pushed his way through the crowd,
shaking his head, excusing himself as best he might,
and entering the office, closed the door behiid him.
  At the clash of the lock Jadwin started halfway from
his chair, then recognizing the broker, sank back with
a quick breath.
                         321





                    THE PIT
  "Why don't you knock, or something, Sam?" he ex-
claimed. "Might as well kill a man as scare him to
death. Well, how goes it?"
  "All right. I've fixed the warehouse crowd-and
we just about 'own' the editorial and news sheets of
these papers." He threw a memorandum down upon
the desk. "I'm off again now. Got an appointment
with the Northwestern crowd in ten minutes. Has
Hargus or Scannel shown up yet?"
  "Hargus is always out in your customers' room,"
answered Jadwin. "I can get him whenever I want
him. But Scannel has not shown up yet. I thought
when we put up the price again Friday we'd bring him
in. I thought you'd figured out that he couldn't stand
that rise."
  "He can't stand it," answered Gretry. "He'll be in
to see you to-morrow or next day."
  "To-morrow or next day won't do," answered Jad-
win. "I want to put the knife into him to-day.
You go up there on the floor and put the price up
another cent. That will bring him, or I'll miss my
guess."
  Gretry nodded. "All right," he said, "it's your game.
Shall I see you at lunch?"
  "Lunch! I can't eat. But I'll drop around and hear
what the Northwestern people had to say to you."
  A few moments after Gretry had gone Jadwin heard
the ticker on the other side of the room begin to chat-
ter furiously; and at the same time he could fancy that
the distant thunder of the Pit grew suddenly more vio-
lent, taking on a sharper, shriller note. He looked at
the tape. The one-cent rise had been effected.
  "You will hold out, will you, you brute?" muttered
Jadwin. "See how you like that now." He took out
his watch. "You'll be running in to me in just about
ten minutes' time."
                        322





                    THE PIT
  He turned about, and calling a clerk, gave orders to
have Hargus found and brought to him.
  When the old fellow appeared Jadwin jumped up and
gave him his hand as he came slowly forward.
  His rusty top hat was in his hand; from the breast
pocket of his faded and dirty frock-coat a bundle of
ancient newspapers protruded. His shoestring tie
straggled over his frayed shirt front, while at his wrist
one of his crumpled cuffs, detached from the sleeve,
showed the bare, thin wrist between cloth and linen,
and encumbered the fingers in which he held the unlit
stump of a fetid cigar.
  Evidentlybewildered as to the cause of this sum-
mons, he looked up perplexed at Jadwin as he came up,
out of his dim, red-lidded eyes.
  "Sit down, Hargus. Glad to see you," called Jadwin.
  "Hey?"
  The voice was faint and a little querulous.
  "I say, sit down. Have a chair. I want to have a
talk with you. You ran a corner in wheat once your-
self."
  "Oh.... Wheat."
  "Yes, your corner. You remember?"
  "Yes. Oh, that was long ago. In 'seventy-eight it
was-the September option. And the Board made
wheat in the cars 'regular.'"
   His voice trailed off into silence, and he looked
vaguely about on the floor of the room, sucking in his
cheeks, and passing the edge of one large, osseous hand
across his lips.
   "Well, you lost all your money that time, I believe.
 Scannel, your partner, sold out on you."
   "Hey? It was in 'seventy-eight. . . . The secretary
 of the Board announced our suspension at ten in the
 morning. If the Board had not voted to make wheat in
 the cars 'regular'  "
                         323





                    THE PIT
  He went on and on, in an impassive monotone, re-
peating, word for word, the same phrases he had used
for so long that they had lost all significance.
  "Well," broke in Jadwin, at last, "it was Scannel,
your partner, did for you. Scannel, I say. You know,
Dave Scannel."
  The old man looked at him confusedly. Then, as the
name forced itself upon the atrophied brain, there
flashed, for one instant, into the pale, blurred eye, a
light, a glint, a brief, quick spark of an old, long-for-
gotten fire. It gleamed there an instant, but the next
sank again.
  Plaintively, querulously he repeated:
  "It was in 'seventy-eight. . . . I lost three hundred
thousand dollars."
  "How's your little niece getting on?" at last de-
manded Jadwin.
  "My little niece-you mean Lizzie? ... Well and
happy, well and happy. I-I got"-he drew a thick
bundle of dirty papers from his pocket, envelopes, news-
papers, circulars, and the like-"I-I-I got, I got
her picture here somewheres."
  "Yes, yes, I know, I know," cried Jadwin. "I've
seen it. You showed it to me yesterday, you remember."
  "I-I got it here somewheres . . . somewheres,"
persisted the old man, fumbling and peering, and as he
spoke the clerk from the doorway announced:
  "Mr. Scannel."
  This latter was a large, thick man, red-faced, with
white, short whiskers of an almost wiry texture. He
had a small, gimlet-like eye, enormous hairy ears, wore
a "sack" suit, a highly polished top hat, and entered
the office with a great flourish of manner and a defiant.
trumpeting "Well, how do, Captain?"
  Jadwin nodded, glancing up under his scowl.
  "Hello!" he said.
                        324





THE PIT


  The other subsided into a chair, and returned scowl
for scowl.
  "Oh, well," he muttered, "if that's your style."
  He had observed Hargus sitting by the other side of
the desk, still fumbling and mumbling in his dirty
memoranda, but he gave no sign of recognition. There
was a moment's silence, then in a voice from which all
the first bluffness was studiously excluded, Scannel
said:
  "Well, you've rung the bell on me. I'm a sucker.
I know it. I'm one of the few hundred other God-
damned fools that you've managed to catch out shoot-
ing snipe. Now what I want to know is, how much is
it going to cost me to get out of your corner? What's
the figure? What do you say?"
  "I got a good deal to say," remarked Jadwin, scowl-
ing again.
  But Hargus had at last thrust a photograph into his
hands.
  "There it is," he said. "That's it. That's Lizzie."
  Jadwin took the picture without looking at it, and
as he continued to speak, held it in his fingers, and
occasionally tapped it upon the desk.
  "I know. I know, Hargus," he answered. "I got a
good deal to say, Mr. David Scannel. Do you see this
old man here?"
  "Oh-h, cut it out!" growled the other.
  "It's Hargus. You know him very well. You used
to know him better. You and he together tried to swing
a great big deal in September wheat once upon a time.
Hargus! I say, Hargus!"
  The old man looked up.
  "Here's the man we were talking about, Scannel,
you remember. Remember Dave Scannel, who was your
partner in 'seventy-eight? Look at him. This is him
now. He's a rich man now. Remember Scannel?"
                        325





THE PIT


  Hargus, his bleared old eyes blinking and watering,
looked across the desk at the other.
  "Oh, what's the game?" exclaimed Scannel. "I ain't
here on exhibition, I guess. I-"
  But he was interrupted by a sharp, quick gasp that
all at once issued from Hargus's trembling lips. The
old man said no word, but he leaned far forward in his
chair, his eyes fixed upon Scannel, his breath coming
short, his fingers dancing against his chin.
  "Yes, that's him, Hargus," said Jadwin. "You and
he had a big deal on your hands a long time ago," he
continued, turning suddenly upon Scannel, a pulse in his
temple beginning to beat. "A big deal, and you sold
him out-"
  "It's a lie!" cried the other.
  Jadwin beat his fist upon the arm of his chair. His
voice was almost a shout as he answered:
  "You-sold-him-out. I know you. I know the
kind of bug you are. You ruined him to save your own
dirty hide, and all his life since poor old Hargus has
been living off the charity of the boys down here,
pinched and hungry and neglected, and getting on, God
knows how; yes, and supporting his little niece, too,
while you, you have been loafing about your clubs, and
sprawling on your steam yachts, and dangling round
after your kept women-on the money you stole from
him."
  Scannel squared himself in his chair, his little eyes
twinkling.
  "Look here," he cried, furiously, "I don't take that
kind of talk from the best man that ever wore shoe-
leather. Cut it out, understand? Cut it out."
  Jadwin's lower jaw set with a menacing click; ag-
gressive, masterful, he leaned forward.
  "You interrupt me again," he declared, "and you'll
go out of that door a bankrupt. You listen to me and
                         326





                    THE PIT
take my orders. That's what you're here to-day for.
If you think you can get your wheat somewheres else,
suppose you try."
  Scannel sullenly settled himself in his place. He did
not answer. Hargus, his eye wandering again, looked
distressfully from one to the other. Then Jadwin, after
shuffling among the papers of his desk, fixed a certain
memorandum with his glance. All at once, whirling
about and facing the other, he said quickly:
  "You are short to our firm two million bushels at a
dollar a bushel."
  "Nothing of the sort," cried the other. "It's a million
and a half."
  Jadwin could not forbear a twinkle of grim humour
as he saw how easily Scannel had fallen into the trap.
  "You're short a million and a half, then," he re-
peated. "I'll let you have six hundred thousand of it
at a dollar and a half a bushel."
  "A dollar and a half! Why, my God, man! Oh,
well"-Scannel spread out his hands nonchalantly-"I
shall simply go into bankruptcy-just as you said."
  "Oh, no, you won't," replied Jadwin, pushing back
and crossing his legs. "I've had your financial standing
computed very carefully, Mr. Scannel. You've got the
ready money. I know what you can stand without
busting, to the fraction of a cent."
  "Why, it's ridiculous. That handful of wheat will
cost me three hundred thousand dollars."
  "Pre-cisely."
  And then all at once Scannel surrendered. Stony,
imperturbable, he drew his check book from his pocket.
  "Make it payable to bearer," said Jadwin.
  The other complied, and Jadwin took the check and
looked it over carefully.
  "Now," he said, "watch here, Dave Scannel. You
see this check? And now," he added, thrusting it into
                        327





                    THE PIT
Hargus's hands, "you see where it goes. There's the
principal of your debt paid off."
  "The principal ?"
  "You haven't forgotten the interest, have you? I
won't compound it, because that might bust you. But
six per cent. interest on three hundred thousand since
1878, comes to-let's see-three hundred and sixty
thousand dollars. And you still owe me nine hundred
thousand bushels of wheat." He ciphered a moment
on a sheet of note-paper. "If I charge you a dollar and
forty a bushel for that wheat, it will come to that sum
exactly. . . . Yes, that's correct. I'll let you have the
balance of that wheat at a dollar forty. Make the check
payable to bearer as before."
  For a second Scannel hesitated, his face purple, his
teeth grinding together, then muttering his rage be-
neath his breath, opened his check book again.
  "Thank you," said Jadwin as he took the check.
  He touched his call bell.
  "Kinzie," he said to the clerk who answered it, "after
the close of the market to-day send delivery slips for a
million and a half wheat to Mr. Scannel. His account
with us has been settled."
  Jadwin turned to the old man, reaching out the second
check to him.
  "Here you are, Hargus. Put it away carefully. You
see what it is, don't you? Buy your Lizzie a little gold
watch with a hundred of it, and tell her it's from Curtis
Jadwin, with his compliments.... What, going, Scan-
nel? Well, good-bye to you, sir, and hey!" he called after
him, "please don't slam the door as you go out."
  But he dodged with a defensive gesture as the pane
of glass almost leaped from its casing, as Scannel
stormed across the threshold.
  Jadwin turned to Hargus, with a solemn wink.
  "He did slam it after all, didn't he?"
                         328





THE PIT


  The old fellow, however, sat fingering the two checks
in silence. Then he looked up at Jadwin, scared and
trembling.
  "I-I don't know," he murmured, feebly. "I am a
very old man. This-this is a great deal of money, sir.
I-I can't say; I-I don't know. I'm an old man... an
old man."
  "You won't lose 'em, now?"
  "No, no. I'll deposit them at once in the Illinois
Trust. I shall ask-I should like-"
  "I'll send a clerk with you."
  "Yes, yes, that is about what-what I-what I was
about to suggest. But I must say, Mr. Jadwin "
  He began to stammer his thanks. But Jadwin cut
him off. Rising, he guided Hargus to the door, one hand
on his shoulder, and at the entrance to the outer office
called a clerk.
  "Take Mr. Hargus over to the Illinois Trust, Kinzie,
and introduce him. He wants to open an account."
  The old man started off with the clerk, but before
Jadwin had reseated himself at his desk was back again.
He was suddenly all excitement, as if a great idea had
abruptly taken possession of him. Stealthy, furtive, he
glanced continually over his shoulder as he spoke, talk-
ing in whispers, a trembling hand shielding his lips.
  "You-you are in-you are in control now," he said.
"You could give-hey? You could give me-just a
little-just one word. A word would be enough, hey?
hey? Just a little tip. My God, I could make fifty
dollars by noon."
  "Why, man, I've just given you about half a million."
  "Half a million? I don't know. But"-he plucked
Jadwin tremulously by the sleeve-"just a word," he
begged. "Hey, just yes or no."
  "Haven't you enough with those two checks?"
  "Those checks? Oh, I know, I know, I know. I'll
                        329





THE PIT


salt 'em down. Yes, in the Illinois Trust. I won't
touch 'em-not those. But just a little tip now, hey?"
  "Not a word. Not a word. Take him along, Kinzie."
  One week after t'his Jadwin sold, through his agents
in Paris, a tremendous line of "cash" wheat at a dollar
and sixty cents the bushel. By now the foreign demand
was a thing almost insensate. There was no question
as to the price. It was, "Give us the wheat, at whatever
cost, at whatever figure, at whatever expense; only that
it be rushed to our markets with all the swiftness of
steam and steel." At home, upon the Chicago Board
of Trade, Jadwin was as completely master of the
market as of his own right hand. Everything stopped
when he raised a finger; everything leaped to life with
the fury of obsession when he nodded his head. His
wealth increased with such stupefying rapidity, that at
no time was he able to even approximate the gains that
accrued to him because of his corner. It was more than
twenty million, and less than fifty million. That was
all he knew. Nor were the everlasting hills more secure
than he from the attack of any human enemy. Out of the
ranks of the conquered there issued not so much as a
whisper of hostility. Within his own sphere no Czar, no
satrap, no Caesar ever wielded power more resistless.
  "Sam," said Curtis Jadwin, at length to the broker,
"Sam, nothing in the world can stop me now. They
think I've been doing something big, don't they, with
this corner. Why, I've only just begun. This is just a
feeler. Now I'm going to let 'em know just how big
a gun C. J. really is. I'm going to swing this deal right
over into July. I'm going to buy in my July shorts."
  The two men were in Gretry's office as usual, and as
Jadwin spoke, the broker glanced up incredulously.
  "Now you are for sure crazy."
  Jadwin jumped to his feet.
  "Crazy!" he vociferated. "Crazy! What do you
                         330





                     THE PIT
mean? Crazy! For God's sake, Sam, what-----Look
here, don't use that word to me. I-it don't suit.
What I've done isn't exactly the work of-of- Takes
brains, let me tell you. And look here, look here, I
say, I'm going to swing this deal right over into July.
Think I'm going to let go now, when I've just begun
to get a real grip on things? A pretty fool I'd look
like to get out now-even if I could. Get out? How
are we going to unload our big line of wheat without
breaking the price on us? No, sir, not much. This mar-
ket is going up to two dollars." He smote a knee with
his clinched fist, his face going abruptly crimson. "I
say two dollars," he cried. "Two dollars, do you hear?
It will go there, you'll see, you'll see."
   "Reports on the new crop will begin to come in in
June." Gretry's warning was almost a cry. "The price
of wheat is so high now, that God knows how many
farmers will plant it this spring. You may have to take
care of a record harvest."
  "I know better," retorted Jadwin. "I'm watching
this thing. You can't tell me anything about it. I've
got it all figured out, your 'new crop.'"
  "Well, then, you're the Lord Almighty himself."
  "I don't like that kind of joke. I don't like that kind
of joke. It's blasphemous," exclaimed Jadwin. "Go,
get it off on Crookes. He'd appreciate it, but I don't.
But this new crop now-look here."
  And for upward of two hours Jadwin argued and
figured, and showed to Gretry endless tables of statis-
tics to prove that he was right.
  But at the end Gretry shook his head. Calmly and
deliberately he spoke his mind.
   "J., listen to me. You've done a big thing. I know
it, and I know, too, that there've been lots of times in
the last year or so when I've been wrong and you've
been right. But now, J., so help me God, we've reached
                         331





THE PIT


our limit. Wheat is worth a dollar and a half to-day,
and not one cent more. Every eighth over that figure
is inflation. If you run it up to two dollars "
  "It will go there of itself, I tell you."
  "-if you run it up to two dollars, it will be that
top-heavy that the littlest kick in the world will knock
it over. Be satisfied now with what you got. J., it's
common sense. Close out your long line of May, and
then stop. Suppose the price does break a little, you'd
still make your pile. But swing this deal over into
July, and it's ruin, ruin. I may have been mistaken
before, but I know I'm right now. And do you realize,
J., that yesterday in the Pit there were some short
sales? There's some of them dared to go short of wheat
against you-even at the very top of your corner-and
there was more selling this morning. You've always got
to buy, you know. If they all began to sell to you at once
they'd bust you. It's only because you've got 'em so
scared-I believe-that keeps 'em from it. But it looks
to me as though this selling proved that they were pick-
ing up heart. They think they can get the wheat from
the farmers when harvesting begins. And I tell you; J.,
you've put the price of wheat so high, that the wheat
areas are extending all over the country."
   "You're scared," cried Jadwin. "That's the trouble
with you, Sam. You've been scared from the start.
Can't you see, man, can't you see that this market is a
regular tornado?"
   "I see that the farmers all over the country are plant-
ing wheat as they've never planted it before. Great
Scott, J., you're fighting against the earth itself."
   "Well, we'll fight it, then. I'll stop those hayseeds.
What do I own all these newspapers and trade journals
for? We'll begin sending out reports to-morrow that'll
discourage any big wheat planting."
   "And then, too," went on Gretry, "here's another
                         332





                    THE PIT
point. Do you know, you ought to be in bed this very
minute. You haven't got any nerves left at all. You
acknowledge yourself that you don't sleep any more.
And, good Lord, the moment any one of us contradicts
you, or opposes you, you go off the handle to beat the
Dutch. I know it's a strain, old man, but you want
to keep yourself in hand if you go on with this thing.
If you should break down now-well, I don't like to
think of what would happen. You ought to see a doc-
tor."
  "Oh-h, fiddlesticks," exclaimed Jadwin, "I'm all
right. I don't need a doctor, haven't time to see
one, anyhow. Don't you bother about me. I'm all
right."
  Was he? That same night, the first he had spent
under his own roof for four days, Jadwin lay awake
till the clocks struck four, asking himself the same ques-
tion. No, he was not all right. Something was very
wrong with him, and whatever it might be, it was grow-
ing worse. The sensation of the iron clamp about his
head was almost permanent by now, and just the walk
betwveen his room at the Grand Pacific and Gretry's
office left him panting and exhausted. Then had come
vertigoes and strange, inexplicable qualms, as if he were
in an elevator that sank under him with terrifying
rapidity.
  Going to and fro in La Salle Street, or sitting in
Gretry's office, where the roar of the Pit dinned forever
in his ears, he could forget these strange symptoms. It
was the night he dreaded-the long hours he must
spend alone. The instant the strain was relaxed, the
gallop of hoofs or the beat of ungovernable torrents
began in his brain. Always the beat dropped to the same
cadence, always the pulse spelled out the same words:
   "Wheat-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-wheat."
   And of late, during the long and still watches of the
                         333





                     THE PIT
night, while he stared at the ceiling, or counted the
hours that must pass before his next dose of bromide
of potassium, a new turn had been given to the
screw.
  This was a sensation the like of which he found it
difficult to describe. But it seemed to be a slow, tense
crisping of every tiniest nerve in his body. It would
begin as he lay in bed-counting interminably to get
himself to sleep-between his knees and ankles, and
thence slowly spread to every part of him, creeping
upward, from loin to shoulder, in a gradual wave of
torture that was not pain, yet infinitely worse. A dry,
pringling aura as of billions of minute electric shocks
crept upward over his flesh, till it reached his head,
where it seemed to culminate in a white flash, which he
felt rather than saw.
  His body felt strange and unfamiliar to him. It
seemed to have no weight, and at times his hands would
appear to swell swiftly to the size of mammoth boxing-
gloves, so that he must rub them together to feel that
they were his own.
  He put off consulting a doctor from day to day, alleg-
ing that he had not the time. But the real reason, though
he never admitted it, was the fear that the doctor
might tell him what he guessed to be the truth.
  Were his wits leaving him? The horror of the question
smote through him like the drive of a javelin. What was
to happen? What nameless calamity impended?
  "Wheat-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-wheat."
  His watch under his pillow took up the refrain. How
to grasp the morrow's business, how control the sluice
gates of that torrent he had unchained, with this un-
speakable crumbling and disintegrating of his faculties
going on?
  Jaded, feeble, he rose to meet another day. He drove
down town, trying not to hear the beat of his horses'
                         334





                     THE PIT
hoofs. Dizzy and stupefied, he gained Gretry's office,
and alone with his terrors sat in the chair before his
desk, waiting, waiting.
  Then far away the great gong struck. Just over his
head, penetrating wood and iron, he heard the mighty
throe of the Pit once more beginning, moving. And
the'n, once again, the limp and ravelled fibres of being
grew tight with a wrench. Under the stimulus of the
roar of the maelstrom, the flagging, wavering brain
righted itself once more, and-how, he himself could
not say-the business of the day was despatched, the
battle was once more urged. Often he acted upon what
he knew to be blind, unreasoned instinct. Judgment,
clear reasoning, at times, he felt, forsook him. Decisions
that involved what seemed to be the very stronghold
of his situation, had to be taken without a moment's
warning. He decided for or against without knowing
why. Under his feet fissures opened. He must take the
leap without seeing the other edge. Somehow he always
landed upon his feet; somehow his great, cumbersome
engine, lurching, swaying, in spite of loosened joints,
always kept the track.
  Luck, his golden goddess, the genius of glittering
wings, was with him yet. Sorely tried, flouted even,
she yet remained faithful, lending a helping hand to lost
and wandering judgment.
  So the month of May drew to its close. Between the
twenty-fifth and the thirtieth Jadwin covered his July
shortage, despite Gretry's protests and warnings. To
him they seemed idle enough. He was too rich, too
strong now to fear any issue. Daily the profits of the
corner increased. The unfortunate shorts were wrung
dry and drier. In Gretry's office they heard their sen-
tences, and as time went on, and Jadwin beheld more
and more of these broken speculators, a vast contempt
for human nature grew within him.
                         335





                     THE PIT
  Some few of his beaten enemies were resolute enough,
accepting defeat with grim carelessness, or with sphinx-
like indifference, or even with airy jocularity. But for
the most part their alert, eager deference, their tame
subservience, the abject humility and debasement of
their bent shoulders drove Jadwin to the verge of self-
control. He grew to detest the business; he regretted
even the defiant brutality of'Scannel, a rascal, but none
the less keeping his head high. The more the fellows
cringed to him, the tighter he wrenched the screw. In
a few cases he found a pleasure in relenting entirely,
selling his wheat to the unfortunates at a price that
left them without loss; but in the end the business
hardened his heart to any distress his mercilessness
might entail. He took his profits as a Bourbon took his
taxes, as if by right of birth. Somewhere, in a long-
forgotten history of his brief school days, he had come
across a phrase that he remembered now, by some de-
vious and distant process of association, and when he
heard of the calamities that his campaign had wrought,
of the shipwrecked fortunes and careers that were sucked
down by the Pit, he found it possible to say, with a
short laugh, and a lift of one shoulder:
  " Vae victis."
  His wife he saw but seldom. Occasionally they break-
fasted together; more often they met at dinner. But
that was all. Jadwin's life by now had come to be so
irregular, and his few hours of sleep so precious and so
easily disturbed, that he had long since occupied a
separate apartment.
  What Laura's life was at this time he no longer knew.
She never spoke of it to him; never nowadays com-
plained of loneliness. When he saw her she appeared
to be cheerful. But this very cheerfulness made him
uneasy, and at times, through the murk of the chaff of
wheat, through the bellow of the Pit, and the crash of
            %            336





                     THE PIT
collapsing fortunes there reached him a suspicion that
all was not well with Laura.
  Once he had made an abortive attempt to break from
the turmoil of La Salle Street and the Board of Trade,
and, for a time at least, to get back to the old life they
both had loved-to get back, in a word, to her. But
the consequences had been all but disastrous. Now he
could not keep away.
   "Corner wheat!" he had exclaimed to her, the follow-
ing day. "Corner wheat! It's the wheat that has cor-
nered me. It's like holding a wolf by the ears, bad to hold
on, but worse to let go."
   But absorbed, blinded, deafened by the whirl of
things, Curtis Jadwin could not see how perilously well
grounded had been his faint suspicion as to Laura's
distress.
  On the day after her evening with her husband in the
art gallery, the evening when Gretry had broken in
upon them like a courier from the front, Laura had risen
from her bed to look out upon a world suddenly empty.
  Corthell she had sent from her forever. Jadwin was
once more snatched from her side. Where, now, was
she to turn? Jadwin had urged her to go to the country
-to their place at Geneva Lake-but she refused. She
saw the change that had of late come over her husband,
saw his lean face, the hot, tired eyes, the trembling fin-
gers and nervous gestures. Vaguely she imagined ap-
proaching disaster. If anything happened to Curtis,
her place was at his side.
  During the days that Jadwin and Crookes were at
grapples Laura found means to occupy her mind with
all manner of small activities. She overhauled her ward-
robe, planned her summer gowns, paid daily visits to
her dressmakers, rode and drove in the park, till every
turn of the roads, every tree, every bush was familiar,
to the point of wearisome contempt.
                        337





THE PIT


  Then suddenly she began to indulge in a mania for
old books and first editions. She haunted the stationers
and second-hand bookstores, studied the authorities,
followed the auctions, and bought right and left, with
reckless extravagance. But the taste soon palled upon
her. With so much money at her command there was
none of the spice of the hunt in the affair. She had but
to express a desire for a certain treasure, and forthwith
it was put into her hand.
  She found it so in all other things. Her desires were
gratified with an abruptness that killed the zest of them.
She felt none of the joy of possession; the little personal
relation between her and her belongings vanished away.
Her gowns, beautiful beyond all she had ever imagined,
were of no more interest to her than a drawerful of out-
worn gloves. She bought horses till she could no longer
tell them apart; her carriages crowded three supple-
mentary stables in the neighbourhood. Her flowers,
miracles of laborious cultivation, filled the whole house
with their fragrance. Wherever she went deference
moved before her like a guard; her beauty, her enormous
wealth, her wonderful horses, her exquisite gowns made
of her a cynosure, a veritable queen.
  And hardly a day passed that Laura Jadwin, in the
solitude of her own boudoir, did not fling her arms wide in
a gesture of lassitude and infinite weariness, crying out:
  "Oh, the ennui and stupidity of all this wretched
life!"
  She could look forward to nothing. One day was like
the next. No one came to see her. For all her great
house and all her money, she had made but few friends.
Her "grand manner" had never helped her popularity.
She passed her evenings alone in her "upstairs sitting
room," reading, reading till far into the night; or, the
lights extinguished, sat at her open window listening
to the monotonous lap and wash of the lake.
                         338





                     THE PIT
  At such moments she thought of the men who had
come into her life-of the love she had known almost
from her girlhood. She remembered her first serious
affair. It had been with the impecunious theological
student who was her tutor. He had worn glasses and
little black side whiskers, and had implored her to marry
him and come to China, where he was to be a mission-
ary. Every time that he came he had brought her a
new book to read, and he had taken her for long walks
up toward the hills where the old powder mill stood.
Then it was the young lawyer-the "brightest man in
Worcester County"- who took her driving in a hired
buggy, sent her a multitude of paper novels (which she
never read), with every love passage carefully under-
scored, and wrote very bad verse to her eyes and hair,
whose "velvet blackness was the shadow of a crown."
Or, again, it was the youthful cavalry officer met in a
flying visit to her Boston aunt, who loved her on first
sight, gave her his photograph in uniform and a bead
belt of Apache workmanship. He was forever singing
to her-to a guitar accompaniment-an old love song:

              At midnight hour,
              Beneath the tower,
              He murmured soft,
              "Oh, nothing fearing,
              With thine own true soldier fly."

  Then she had come to Chicago, and Landry Court,
with his bright enthusiasms and fine exaltations, had
loved her. She had never taken him very seriously, but
none the less it had been very sweet to know his whole
universe depended upon the nod of her head, and that
her influence over him had been so potent, had kept him
clean and loyal and honest.
  And after this Corthell and Jadwin had come into her
life, the artist and the man of affairs. She remembered
                        339





                     THE PIT
Corthell's quiet, patient, earnest devotion of those days
before her marriage. He rarely spoke to her of his love,
but by some ingenious subtlety he had filled her whole
life with it. His little attentions, his undemonstrative
solicitudes came precisely when and where they were
most appropriate. He had never failed her. Whenever
she had needed him, or even, when through caprice or
impulse she had turned to him, it always had been to
find that long since he had carefully prepared for that
very contingency. His thoughtfulness of her had been a
thing to wonder at. He remembered for months, years
even, her most trivial fancies, her unexpressed dislikes.
He knew her tastes as if by instinct; he prepared little
surprises for her, and placed them in her way without
ostentation, and quite as matters of course. He never
permitted her to be embarrassed; the little annoying
situations of the day's life he had smoothed away long
before they had ensnared her. He never was off his
guard, never disturbed, never excited.
  And he amused her, he entertained her without seem-
ing to do so. He made her talk; he made her think.
He stimulated and aroused her, so that she herself
talked and thought with a brilliancy that surprised her-
self. In fine, he had so contrived that she associated him
with everything that was agreeable.
  She had sent him away the first time, and he had gone
without a murmur; only to come back loyal as ever,
silent, watchful, sympathetic, his love for her deeper,
stronger than before, and-as always timely-bringing
to her a companionship at the moment of all others
when she was most alone.
  Now she had driven him from her again, and this
time, she very well knew, it was to be forever. She had
shut the door upon this great love.
  Laura stirred abruptly in her place, adjusting her
hair with nervous fingers.
                         340





                     THE PIT
  And, last of all, it had been Jadwin, her husband.
She rose and went to the window, and stood there a
long moment, looking off into the night over the park.
It was warm and very still. A few carriage lamps
glimpsed among the trees like fireflies. Along the walks
and upon the benches she could see the glow of white
dresses and could catch the sound of laughter. Far off,
somewhere in the shrubbery, she thought she heard a
band playing. To the northeast lay the lake, shimmer-
ing under the moon, dotted here and there with the
coloured lights of steamers.
  She turned back into the room. The great house was
still. From all its suites of rooms, its corridors, galleries,
and hallways there came no sound. There was no one
upon the same floor as herself. She had read all her
books. It was too late to go out-and there was no one
to go with. To go to bed was ridiculous. She was never
more wakeful, never more alive, never more ready to
be amused, diverted, entertained.
  She thought of the organ, and descending to the art
gallery, played Bach, Palestrina, and Stainer for an
hour; then suddenly she started from the console with
a sharp, impatient movement of her head.
  "Why do I play this stupid music?" she exclaimed.
She called a servant and asked:
  "Has Mr. Jadwin come in yet?"
  "Mr. Gretry just this minute telephoned that Mr.
Jadwin would not be home to-night."
  When the servant had gone out Laura, her lips com-
pressed, flung up her head. Her hands shut to hard
fists, her eye flashed. Rigid, erect in the middle of the
floor, her arms folded, she uttered a smothered exclama-
tion over and over again under her breath.
  All at once anger mastered her--anger and a certain
defiant recklessness, an abrupt spirit of revolt. She
straightened herself suddenly, as one who takes a deci-
                        341





THE PIT


sion. Then, swiftly, she went out of the art gallery, and,
crossing the hallway, entered the library and opened a
great writing-desk that stood in a recess under a small
stained window.
  She pulled the sheets of note-paper toward her
and wrote a short letter, directing the envelope to
Sheldon Corthell, The Fine Arts Building, Michigan
Avenue.
  "Call a messenger," she said to the servant who an-
swered her ring, "and have him take  Or send him in
here when he comes."
  She rested the letter against the inkstand, and leaned
back in her chair, looking at it, her fingers plucking
swiftly at the lace of her dress. Her head was in a whirl.
A confusion of thoughts, impulses, desires, half-formed
resolves, half-named regrets, swarmed and spun about
her. She felt as though she had all at once taken a leap
-a leap which had landed her in a place whence she
could see a new and terrible country, an unfamiliar
place-terrible, yet beautiful-unexplored, and for that
reason all the more inviting, a place of shadows.
   Laura rose and paced the floor, her hands pressed
together over her heart. She was excited, her cheeks
flushed, a certain breathless exhilaration came and went
within her breast, and in place of the intolerable ennui
of the last days, there came over her a sudden, an almost
wild animation, and from out her black eyes there shot
a kind of furious gaiety.
   But she was aroused by a step at the door. The mes-
senger stood there, a figure ridiculously inadequate for
the intensity of all that was involved in the issue of the
hour -a weazened, stunted boy, in a uniform many
sizes too large.
   Laura, seated at her desk, held the note toward him
resolutely. Now was no time to hesitate, to temporize.
If she did not hold to her resolve now, what was there
                          342





                    THE PIT
to look forward to? Could one's life be emptier than hers
-emptier, more intolerable, more humiliating?
  "Take this note to that address," she said, putting
the envelope and a coin in the boy's hand. "Wait for
an answer."
  The boy shut the letter in his book, which he thrust
into his breast pocket, buttoning his coat over it. He
nodded and turned away.
  Still seated, Laura watched him moving toward the
door. Well, it was over now. She had chosen. She had
taken the leap. What new life was to begin for her
to-morrow? What did it all mean? With an inconceiva-
ble rapidity her thoughts began racing through her
brain.
  She did not move. Her hands, gripped tight together,
rested upon the desk before her. Without turning her
head, she watched the retreating messenger from under
her lashes. He passed out of the door, the curtain fell
behind him.
  And only then, when the irrevocableness of the step
was all but an accomplished fact, came the reaction.
  "Stop!" she cried, springing up. "Stop! Come back
here. Wait a moment."
  What had happened? She could neither understand
nor explain. Somehow an instant of clear vision had
come, and in that instant a power within her that was
herself and not herself, and laid hold upon her will.
No, no, she could not, she could not, after all. She took
the note back.
   "I have changed my mind," she said, abruptly. "You
may keep the money. There is no message to be sent."
  As soon as the boy had gone she opened the envelope
  and read what she had written. But now the words
  seemed the work of another mind than her own. They
  were unfamiliar; they were not the words of the Laura
Jadwin she knew. Why was it that from the very first
                        343





THE PIT


hours of her acquaintance with this man, and in every
circumstance of their intimacy, she had always acted
upon impulse? What was there in him that called into
being all that was reckless in her?
  And for how long was she to be able to control these
impulses? This time she had prevailed once more against
that other impetuous self of hers. Would she prevail the
next time? And in these struggles, was she growing
stronger as she overcame, or weaker? She did not know.
She tore the note into fragments, and making a heap of
them in the pen tray, burned them carefully.
  During the week following upon this, Laura found
her trouble more than ever keen. She was burdened
with a new distress. The incident of the note to Cor-
thell, recalled at the last moment, had opened her eyes
to possibilities of the situation hitherto unguessed.
She saw now what she might be capable of doing in a
moment of headstrong caprice, she saw depths in her
nature she had not plumbed. Whether these hidden
pitfalls were peculiarly hers, or whether they were com-
mon to all women placed as she now found herself, she
did not pause to inquire. She thought only of results,
and she was afraid.
   But for the matter of that, Laura had long since
passed the point of deliberate consideration or reasoned
calculation. The reaction had been as powerful as the
original purpose, and she was even yet struggling
blindly, intuitively.
  For what she was now about to do she could give
no reason, and the motives for this final and supreme
effort to conquer the league of circumstances which
hemmed her in were obscure. She did not even ask what
they were. She knew only that she was in trouble, and
yet it was to the cause of her distress that she addressed
herself. Blindly, she turned to her husband; and all the
woman in her roused itself, girded itself, called up its
                         344





THE PIT


every resource in one last test, in one ultimate trial of
strength between her and the terrible growing power of
that blind, soulless force that roared and guttered and
sucked, down there in the midst of the city.
  She alone, one unaided woman, her only auxiliaries
her beauty, her wit, and the frayed, strained bands of
a sorely tried love, stood forth like a challenger, against
Charybdis, joined battle with the Cloaca, held back with
her slim white hands against the power of the mael-
strom that swung the Nations in its grip.
  In the solitude of her room she took the resolve. Her
troubles were multiplying; she, too, was in the current,
the end of which was a pit-a pit black and without
bottom. Once already its grip had seized her, once al-
ready she had yielded to the insidious drift. Now sud-
denly aware of a danger, she fought back, and her hands
beating the air for help, turned toward the greatest
strength she knew.
  "I want my husband," she cried, aloud, to the empty
darkness of the night. " I want my husband. I will have
him; he is mine, he is mine. There shall nothing take
me from him; there shall nothing take him from me."
  Her first opportunity came upon a Sunday soon after-
ward. Jadwin, wakeful all the Saturday night, slept a
little in the forenoon, and after dinner Laura came to
him in his smoking room, as he lay on the leather
lounge trying to read. His wife seated herself at a
writing-table in a corner of the room, and by and by
began turning the slips of a calendar that stood at her
elbow. At last she tore off one of the slips and held it
up.
  " Curtis."
  "Well, old girl?"
  "Do you see that date?"
  He looked over to her.
  "Do you see that date? Do you know of anything
                         345





                    THE PIT
that makes that day different-a little-from other
days? It's June thirteenth. Do you remember what
June thirteenth is?"
  Puzzled, he shook his head.
  "No-no."
  Laura took up a pen and wrote a few words in the
space above the printed figures reserved for memo-
randa. Then she handed the slip to her husband, who
read aloud what she had written.
  "'Laura Jadwin's birthday.' Why, upon my word,"
he declared, sitting upright. "So it is, so it is. June
thirteenth, of course. And I was beast enough not to
realize it. Honey, I can't remember anything these
days, it seems."
  "But you are going to remember this time?" she
said. "You are not going to forget it now. That evening
is going to mark the beginning of-oh, Curtis, it is going
to be a new beginning of everything. You'll see. I'm
going to manage it. I don't know how, but you are
going to love me so that nothing, no business, no money,
no wheat will ever keep you from me. I will make you.
And that evening, that evening of June thirteenth is
mine. The day your business can have you, but from
six o'clock on you are mine." She crossed the room
quickly and took both his hands in hers and knelt beside
him. "It is mine," she said, "if you love me. Do you
understand, dear? You will come home at six o'clock,
and whatever happens-oh if all La Salle Street should
burn to the ground, and all your millions of bushels of
wheat with it-whatever happens, you-will-not-
leave- me-nor think of anything else but just me, me.
That evening is mine, and you will give it to me, just
as I have said. I won't remind you of it again. I won't
speak of it again. I will leave it to you. But-you will
give me that evening if you love me. Dear, do you see
just what I mean ?... If you love me.... No,-no, don't
                        346





THE PIT


say a word, we won't talk about it at all. No, no, please.
Not another word. I don't want you to promise, or
pledge yourself, or anything like that. You've heard
what I said-and that's all there is about it. We'll talk
of something else. By the way, have you seen Mr. Cress-
ler lately?"
  "No," he said, falling into her mood. "No, I haven't
seen Charlie in over a month. Wonder what's become
of him?"
  "I understand he's been sick," she told him. "I met
Mrs. Cressler the other day, and she said she was both-
ered about him."
  "Well, what's the matter with old Charlie?"
  "She doesn't know, herself. He's not sick enough to
go to bed, but he doesn't or won't go down town to his
business. She says she can see him growing thinner
every day. He keeps telling her he's all right, but for
all that, she says, she's afraid he's going to come down
with some kind of sickness pretty soon."
  "Say," said Jadwin, "suppose we drop around to
see them this afternoon? Wouldn't you like to? I haven't
seen him in over a month, as I say. Or telephone them
to come up and have dinner. Charlie's about as old a
friend as I have. We used to be together about every
hour of the day when we first came to Chicago. Let's
go over to see him this afternoon and cheer him up."
  "No," said Laura, decisively. "Curtis, you must have
one day of rest out of the week. You are going to lie
down all the rest of the afternoon, and sleep if you can.
I'll call on them to-morrow."
   "Well, all right," he assented. "I suppose I ought to
sleep if I can. And then Sam is coming up here, by five.
He's going to bring some railroad men with him. We've
got a lot to do. Yes, I guess, old girl, I'll try to get forty
winks before they get here. And, Laura," he added,
taking her hand as she rose to go, "Laura, this is the
                        347





                    THE PIT
last lap. In just another month now-oh, at the outside,
six weeks-I'll have closed the corner, and then, old
girl, you and I will go somewheres, anywhere you like,
and then we'll have a good time together all the rest of
our lives-all the rest of our lives, honey. Good-bye.
Now I think I can go to sleep."
  She arranged the cushions under his head and drew
the curtains close over the windows, and went out,
softly closing the door behind her. And a half hour later,
when she stole in to look at him, she found him asleep
at last, the tired eyes closed, and the arm, with its
broad, strong hand, resting under his head. She stood
a long moment in the middle of the room, looking down
at him; and then slipped out as noiselessly as she had
come, the tears trembling on her eyelashes.
  Laura Jadwin did not call on the Cresslers the next
day, nor even the next after that. For three days she
kept indoors, held prisoner by a series of petty incidents;
now the delay in the finishing of her new gowns, now by
the excessive heat, now by a spell of rain. By Thursday,
however, at the beginning of the second week of the
month, the storm was gone, and the sun once more
shone. Early in the afternoon Laura telephoned to Mrs.
Cressler.
  "How are you and Mr. Cressler?" she asked. "I'm
coming over to take luncheon with you and your hus-
band, if you will let me."
  "Oh, Charlie is about the same, Laura," answered
Mrs. Cressler's voice. "I guess the dear man has been
working too hard, that's all. Do come over and cheer
him up. If I'm not here when you come, you just make
yourself at home. I've got to go down town to see
about railroad tickets and all. I'm going to pack my old
man right off to Oconomowoc before I'm another day
older. Made up my mind to it last night, and I don't
want him to be bothered with tickets or time cards, or
                         348





                     THE PIT
baggage or anything. I'll run down and do it all myself.
You come right up whenever you're ready and keep
Charlie company. How's your husband, Laura, child?"
  "Oh, Curtis is well," she answered. "He gets very
tired at times."
  "Well, I can understand it. Lands alive, child, what-
ever are you going to do with all your money? They tell
me that J.has made millions in the last three or four
months. A man I was talking to last week said his corner
was the greatest thing ever known on the Chicago
Board of Trade. Well, good-bye, Laura, come up when-
ever you're ready. I'll see you at lunch. Charlie is right
here. He says to give you his love."
  An hour later Laura's victoria stopped in front of the
Cresslers' house, and the little footman descended with
the agility of a monkey, to stand, soldier-like, at the
steps, the lap robe over his arm.
  Laura gave orders to have the victoria call for her
at three, and ran quickly up the front steps. The front
entrance was open, the screen door on the latch, and
she entered without ceremony.
  "Mrs. Cressler!" she called, as she stood in the hall-
way drawing off her gloves. "Mrs. Cressler! Carrie,
have you gone yet?"
  But the maid, Annie, appeared at the head of the
stairs, on the landing of the second floor, a towel bound
about her head, her duster in her hand.
  "Mrs. Cressler has gone out, Mrs. Jadwin," she said.
"She said you was to make yourself at home, and she'd
be back by noon."
  Laura nodded, and standing before the hatrack in
the hall, took off her hat and gloves, and folded her veil
into her purse. The house was old-fashioned, very home-
like and spacious, cool, with broad halls and wide win-
dows. In the "front library," where Laura entered
first, were steel engravings of the style of the 'seventies,
                         349





                     THE PIT
"whatnots" crowded with shells, Chinese coins, lacquer
boxes, and the inevitable sawfish bill. The mantel was
mottled white marble, and its shelf bore the usual bronze
and gilt clock, decorated by a female figure in classic
draperies, reclining against a globe. An oil painting of a
mountain landscape hung against one wall; and on a
table of black walnut, with a red marble slab, that stood
between the front windows, were a stereoscope and a
rosewood music box.
  The piano, an old-style Chickering, stood diagonally
across the far corner of the room, by the closed sliding
doors, and Laura sat down here and began to play the
"Mephisto Walzer," which she had been at pains to
learn since the night Corthell had rendered it on her
great organ in the art gallery.
  But when she had played as much as she could re-
member of the music, she rose and closed the piano,
and pushed back the folding doors between the room
she was in and the "back library," a small room where
Mrs. Cressler kept her books of poetry.
  As Laura entered the room she was surprised to see
Mr. Cressler there, seated in his armchair, his back
turned toward her.
  "Why, I didn't know you were here, Mr. Cressler,"
she said, as she came up to him.
  She laid her hand upon his arm. But Cressler was
dead; and as Laura touched him the head dropped upon
the shoulder and showed the bullet hole in the temple
just in front of the ear.


.350











                   CHAPTER X

THE suicide of Charles Cressler had occurred on the
tenth of June, and the report of it, together with the
wretched story of his friend's final surrender to a temp-
tation he had never outlived, reached Curtis Jadwin
early on the morning of the eleventh.
  He and Gretry were at their accustomed places in the
latter's office, and the news seemed to shut out all the
sunshine that had been flooding in through the broad
plate-glass windows. After their first incoherent horror,
the two sat staring at each other, speechless.
  "My God, my God," groaned Jadwin, as if in the
throes of a deadly sickness. "He was in the Crookes'
ring, and we never knew it. I've killed him, Sam. I
might as well have held that pistol myself." He stamped
his foot, striking his fist across his forehead. Great
God--my best friend-Charlie-Charlie Cressler! Sam,
I shall go mad if this-if this  "
   "Steady, steady does it, J.," warned the broker, his
hand upon his shoulder, "we got to keep a grip on our-
selves to-day. We've got a lot to think of. We'll think
about Charlie later. Just now.., well, it's business now.
Mathewson & Knight have called on us for margins-
twenty thousand dollars."
   He laid the slip down in front of Jadwin, as he sat at
his desk.
   "Oh, this can wait," exclaimed Jadwin. "Let it go
till this afternoon. I can't talk business now. Think of
Carrie-Mrs. Cressler, I     "
   "No," answered Gretry, reflectively and slowly,
                         35'





                    THE PIT
looking anywhere but in Jadwin's face. "N-no, I don't
think we'd better wait. I think we'd better meet these
margin calls promptly. It's always better to keep our
trades margined up."
  Jadwin faced around.
  "Why," he cried, "one would think, to hear you talk,
as though there was danger of me busting here at any
hour."
  Gretry did not answer. There was a moment's silence.
Then the broker caught his principal's eye and held it a
second.
  "Well," he answered, "you saw how freely they sold
to us in the Pit yesterday. We've got to buy, and buy
and buy, to keep our price up; and look here, look at
these reports from our correspondents-everything
points to a banner crop. There's been an increase of
acreage everywhere, because of our high prices. See this
from Travers"-he picked up a despatch and read:
"'Preliminary returns of spring wheat in two Dakotas,
subject to revision, indicate a total area seeded of sixteen
million acres, which added to area in winter wheat
states, makes total of forty-three million, or nearly four
million acres greater than last year.'"
   "Lot of damned sentiment," cried Jadwin, refusing to
be convinced. "Two-thirds of that wheat won't grade,
and Europe will take nearly all of it. What we ought to
do is to send our men into the Pit and buy another
million, buy more than these fools can offer. Buy 'em
to a standstill."
  "That takes a big pile of money then," said the
broker. "More than we can lay our hands on this morn-
ing. The best we can do is to take all the Bears are
offering, and support the market. The moment they
offer us wheat and we don't buy it, that moment-as
you know, yourself-they'll throw wheat at you by
the train load, and the price will break, and we with it."
                         352





                     THE PIT
  "Think we'll get rid of much wheat to-day?" de-
manded Jadwin.
  By now it had become vitally necessary for Jadwin to
sell out his holdings. His "long line" was a fearful ex-
pense, insurance and storage charges were eating rapidly
into the profits. He must get rid of the load he was carry-
ing, little by little. To do this at a profit, he had adopted
the expedient of flooding the Pit with buying orders
just before the close of the session, and then as the price
rose under this stimulus, selling quickly, before it had
time to break. At first this had succeeded. But of late he
must buy more and more to keep the price up, while
the moment that he began to sell, the price began to
drop; so that now, in order to sell one bushel, he must
buy two.
  "Think we can unload much on 'em to-day?" re-
peated Jadwin.
  "I don't know," answered Gretry, slowly and
thoughtfully. "Perhaps-there's a chance     Frankly,
J., I don't think we can. The Pit is taking heart, that's
the truth of it. Those fellows are not so scared of us as
they were awhile ago. It's the new crop, as I've said
over and over again. We've put wheat so high, that all
the farmers have planted it, and are getting ready to
dump it on us. The Pit knows that, of course. Why, just
think, they are harvesting in some places. These fellows
we've caught in the corner will be able to buy all the
wheat they want from the farmers if they can hold out
a little longer. And that Government report yesterday
showed that the growing wheat is in good condition."
  "Nothing of the sort. It was a little over eighty-six."
  "Good enough," declared Gretry, "good enough so
that it broke the price down to a dollar and twenty. Just
think, we were at a dollar and a half a little while ago."
  "And we'll be at two dollars in another ten days, 1
tell you."
                         353





                    THE PIT
  "Do you know how we stand, J.?" said the broker,
gravely. "Do you know how we stand-financially? It's
taken pretty nearly every cent of our ready money to
support this July market. Oh, we can figure out our
paper profits into the millions. We've got thirty, forty,
fifty million bushels of wheat that's worth over a dollar
a bushel, but if we can't sell it, we're none the better off
-and that wheat is costing us six thousand dollars a
day. Hell, old man, where's the money going to come
from? You don't seem to realize that we are in a precar-
ious condition." He raised an arm, and pointed above
him, in the direction of the floor of the Board of Trade.
  "The moment we can't give our boys-Landry Court,
and the rest of 'em-the moment we can't give them
buying orders, that Pit will suck us down like a chip.
The moment we admit that we can't buy all the wheat
that's offered, there's the moment we bust."
  "Well, we'll buy it," cried Jadwin, through his set
teeth. "I'll show those brutes. Look here, is it money we
want? You cable to Paris and offer two million, at-oh,
at eight cents below the market; and to Liverpool, and
let 'em have twopence off on the same amount. They'll
snap it up as quick as look at it. That will bring in one
lot of money, and as for the rest, I guess I've got some
real estate in this town that's pretty good security."
  "What-you going to mortgage part of that?"
  ,No," cried Jadwin, jumping up with a quick im-
patient gesture. "No, I'm going to mortgage all of it, and
I'm going to do it to-day-this morning. If you say we're
in a precarious condition, it's no time for half measures.
I'll have more money than you'll know what to do with
in the Illinois Trust by three o'clock this afternoon, and
when the Board opens to-morrow morning, I'm going
to light into those cattle in the Pit there, so as they'll
think a locomotive has struck 'em. They'd stand me off,
would they? They'd try to sell me down; they won't
                        354





                    THE PIT
cover when I turn the screw! I'll show 'em, Sam Gretry.
I'll run wheat up so high before the next two days, that
the Bank of England can't pull it down, and before the
Pit can catch its breath, I'll sell our long line, and with the
profits of that, by God! I'll run it up again. Two dollars!
Why, it will be two fifty here so quick you won't know
how it's happened. I've just been fooling with this
crowd until now. Now, I'm really going to get down to
business."
  Gretry did not answer. He twirled his pencil between
his fingers, and stared down at the papers on his desk.
Once he started to speak, but checked himself. Then at
last he turned about.
  "All right," he said, briskly. "We'll see what that will
do."
  "I'm going over to the Illinois Trust now," said Jad-
win, putting on his hat. "When your boys come in for
their orders, tell them for to-day just to support the
market. If there's much wheat offered they'd better buy
it. Tell them not to let the market go below a dollar
twenty. When I come back we'll make out those cables."
  That day Jadwin carried out his programme so vehe-
mently announced to his broker. Upon every piece of
real estate that he owned he placed as heavy a mortgage
as the property would stand. Even his old house on
Michigan Avenue, even the "homestead" on North
State Street were encumbered. The time was come, he
felt, for the grand coup, the last huge strategical move,
the concentration of every piece of heavy artillery.
Never in all his multitude of operations on the Chicago
Board of Trade had he failed. He knew he would not
fail now; Luck, the golden goddess, still stayed at his
shoulder. He did more than mortgage his property; he
floated a number of promissory notes. His credit, always
unimpeachable, he taxed to its farthest stretch; from
every source he gathered in the sinews of the war he
                         355





THE PIT


was waging. No sum was too great to daunt him, none
too small to be overlooked. Reserves, van and rear,
battle line and skirmish outposts he summoned together
to form one single vast column of attack.
  It was on this same day while Jadwin, pressed for
money, was leaving no stone unturned to secure ready
cash, that he came across old Hargus in his usual place
in Gretry's customers' room, reading a two-days old
newspaper. Of a sudden an idea occurred to Jadwin.
He took the old man aside. "Hargus," he said, "do
you want a good investment for your money, that
money I turned over to you? I can give you a better
rate than the bank, and pretty good security. Let me
have about a hundred thousand at-oh, ten per cent."
  "Hey-what?" asked the old fellow, querulously.
Jadwin repeated his request.
  But Hargus cast a suspicious glance at him and drew
away.
  "I-I don't lend my money," he observed.
  "Why-you old fool," exclaimed Jadwin. "Here, is
it more interest you want? Why, we'll say fifteen per
cent., if you like."
  "I don't lend my money," exclaimed Hargus, shaking
his head. "I ain't got any to lend," and with the words
took himself off.
  One source of help alone Jadwin left untried. Sorely
tempted, he nevertheless kept himself from involving
his wife's money in the hazard. Laura, in her own name,
was possessed of a little fortune; sure as he was of win-
ning, Jadwin none the less hesitated from seeking an
auxiliary here. He felt it was a matter of pride. He could
not bring himself to make use of a woman's succour.
  But his entire personal fortune now swung in the
balance. It was the last fight, the supreme attempt-the
final consummate assault, and the thrill of a victory
more brilliant, more conclusive, more decisive than any
                         356





                     THE PIT
he had ever known, vibrated in Jadwin's breast, as he
went to and fro in Jackson, Adams, and La Salle streets
all through that day of the eleventh.
  But he knew the danger-knew just how terrible was
to be the grapple. Once that same day a certain detail of
business took him near to the entrance of the floor.
Though he did not so much as look inside the doors, he
could not but hear the thunder of the Pit; and even in
that moment of confidence, his great triumph only a
few hours distant, Jadwin, for the instant, stood
daunted. The roar was appalling, the whirlpool was
again unchained, the maelstrom was again unleashed.
And during the briefest of seconds he could fancy that
the familiar bellow of its swirling had taken on another
pitch. Out of that hideous turmoil, he imagined, there
issued a strange unwonted note; as it were, the first
rasp and grind of a new avalanche just beginning to stir,
a diapason more profound than any he had yet known,
a hollow distant bourdon as of the slipping and sliding
of some almighty and chaotic power.
  It was the Wheat, the Wheat! It was on the move
again. From the farms of Illinois and Iowa, from the
ranches of Kansas and Nebraska, from all the reaches
of the Middle West, the Wheat, like a tidal wave, was
rising, rising. Almighty, blood-brother to the earth-
quake, coeval with the volcano and the whirlwind, that
gigantic world-force, that colossal billow, Nourisher of
the Nations, was swelling and advancing.
  There in the Pit its first premonitory eddies already
swirled and spun. If even the first ripples of the tide
smote terribly upon the heart, what was it to be when
the ocean itself burst through, on its eternal way from
west to east? For an instant came clear vision. What
were these shouting, gesticulating men of the Board of
Trade, these brokers, traders, and speculators? It was
not these he fought, it was that fatal New Harvest;
                         357





                    THE PIT
it was the Wheat; it was-as Gretry had said-the very
Earth itself. What were those scattered hundreds of
farmers of the Middle West, who because he had put the
price so high had planted the grain as never before?
What had they to do with it? Why, the Wheat had
grown itself; demand and supply, these were the two
great laws the Wheat obeyed. Almost blasphemous in
his effrontery, he had tampered with these laws, and
had roused a Titan. He had laid his puny human grasp
upon Creation and the very earth herself, the great
mother, feeling the touch of the cobweb that the human
insect had spun, had stirred at last in her sleep and sent
her omnipotence moving through the grooves of the
world, to find and crush the disturber of her appointed
courses.
  The new harvest was coming in; the new harvest of
wheat, huge beyond possibility of control; so vast that
no money could buy it, so swift that no strategy could
turn it. But Jadwin hurried away from the sound of the
near roaring of the Pit. No, no. Luck was with him; he
had mastered the current of the Pit many times before
-he would master it again. The day passed and the
night, and at nine o'clock the following morning, he
and Gretry once more met in the broker's office.
  Gretry turned a pale face upon his principal.
  "I've just received," he said, "the answers to our ca-
bles to Liverpool and Paris. I offered wheat at both
places, as you know, cheaper than we've ever offered it
there before."
  "Yes-well ?"
  "Well," answered Gretry, looking gravely into Jad-
win's eyes, "well-they won't take it."


  On the morning of her birthday-the thirteenth of the
month-when Laura descended to the breakfast room,
                         358





THE PIT


she found Page already there. Though it was barely half-
past seven, her sister was dressed for the street. She
wore a smart red hat, and as she stood by the French
windows, looking out, she drew her gloves back and forth
between her fingers, with a nervous, impatient gesture.
  "Why," said Laura, as she sat down at her place,
"why, Pagie, what is in the wind to-day?"
  "Landry is coming," Page explained, facing about
and glancing at the watch pinned to her waist. "He is
going to take me down to see the Board of Trade-from
the visitors' gallery, you know. He said this would prob-
ably be a great day. Did Mr. Jadwin come home last
night?"
  Laura shook her head, without speech. She did not
choose to put into words the fact that for three days-
with the exception of an hour or two, on the evening
after that horrible day of her visit to the Cresslers' house
-she had seen nothing of her husband.
  "Landry says," continued Page, "that it is awful-
down there, these days. He says that it is the greatest
fight in the history of La Salle Street. Has Mr. Jadwin
said anything to you? Is he going to win?"
  "I don't know," answered Laura, in a low voice; "I
don't know anything about it, Page."
  She was wondering if even Page had forgotten. When
she had come into the room, her first glance had been
toward her place at table. But there was nothing there,
not even so much as an envelope; and no one had so
much as wished her joy of the little anniversary. She had
thought Page might have remembered, but her sister's
next words showed that she had more on her mind than
birthdays.
  "Laura," she began, sitting down opposite to her, and
unfolding her napkin with laborious precision. "Laura
-Landry and I-      Well....we're going to be married
in the fall."
                        359





                    THE PIT
  "Why, Pagie," cried Laura, "I'm just as glad as I
can be for you. He's a fine, clean fellow, and I know he
will make you a good husband."
  Page drew a deep breath.
  "Well," she said, "I'm glad you think so, too. Before
you and Mr. Jadwin were married, I wasn't sure about
having him care for me, because at that time-well "-
Page looked up with a queer little smile, "I guess you
could have had him-if you had wanted to."
  "Oh, that," cried Laura. "Why, Landry never really
cared for me. It was all the silliest kind of flirtation.
The moment he knew you better, I stood no chance at
all."
  "We're going to take an apartment on Michigan
Avenue, near the Auditorium," said Page, "and keep
house. We've talked it all over, and know just how
much it will cost to live and keep one servant. I'm going
to serve the loveliest little dinners; I've learned the kind
of cooking he likes already. Oh, I guess there he is now,"
she cried, as they heard the front door close.
  Landry came in, carrying a great bunch of cut flowers
and a box of candy. He was as spruce as though he were
already the bridegroom, his cheeks pink, his blond hair
radiant. But he was thin and a little worn, a dull feverish
glitter came and went in his eyes, and his nervousness,
the strain and excitement which beset him were in his
every gesture, in every word of his rapid speech.
  "We'll have to hurry," he told Page. "I must be down
there hours ahead of time this morning."
  "How is Curtis?" demanded Laura. "Have you seen
him lately? How is he getting on with-with his specu-
lating?"
  Landry made a sharp gesture of resignation.
  "I don't know," he answered. "I guess nobody knows.
We had a fearful day yesterday, but I think we con-
trolled the situation at the end. We ran the price up
                         360





                    THE PIT
and up and up till I thought it would never stop. If the
Pit thought Mr. Jadwin was beaten, I guess they found
out how they were mistaken. For a time there, we were
just driving them. But then Mr. Gretry sent word to us
in the Pit to sell, and we couldn't hold them. They came
back at us like wolves; they beat the price down five
cents, in as many minutes. We had to quit selling, and
buy again. But then Mr. Jadwin went at them with a
rush. Oh, it was grand ! We steadied the price at a dollar
and fifteen, stiffened it up to eighteen and a half, and
then sent it up again, three cents at a time, till we'd
hammered it back to a dollar and a quarter."
  "But Curtis himself," inquired Laura, "is he all
right, is he well?"
  "I only saw him once," answered Landry. "He was
in Mr. Gretry's office. Yes, he looked all right. He's
nervous, of course. But Mr. Gretry looks like the sick
man. He looks all frazzled out."
  "I guess we'd better be going," said Page, getting up
from the table. "Have you had your breakfast, Landry?
Won't you have some coffee?"
  "Oh, I breakfasted hours ago," he answered. "But
you are right. We had better be moving. If you
are going to get a seat in the gallery, you must be
there half an hour ahead of time, to say the least. Shall
I take any word to your husband from you, Mrs.
Jadwin?"
  "Tell him that I wish him good luck," she answered,
"and-yes, ask him, if he remembers what day of the
month this is-or no, don't ask him that. Say nothing
about it. Just tell him I send him my very best love, and
that I wish him all the success in the world."
  It was about nine o'clock when Landry and Page
reached the foot of La Salle Street. The morning was
fine and cool. The sky over the Board of Trade sparkled
with sunlight, and the air was full of fluttering wings of
                        361





                    THE PIT
the multitude of pigeons that lived upon the leakage of
grain around the Board of Trade Building.
  "Mr. Cressler used to feed them regularly," said Lan-
dry, as they paused on the street corner opposite the
Board. "Poor-poor Mr. Cressler-the funeral is to-
morrow, you know."
  Page shut her eyes.
  "Oh," she murmured, "think, think of Laura finding
him there like that. Oh, it would have killed me, it
would have killed me."
  "Somehow," observed Landry, a puzzled expression
in his eyes, "somehow, by George! she don't seem to
mind very much. You'd have thought a shock like that
would have made her sick."
  "Oh! Laura," cried Page. "I don't know her any
more these days, she is just like stone-just as though
she were crowding down every emotion or any feeling
she ever had. She seems to be holding herself in with all
her strength-for something-and afraid to let go a
finger, for fear she would give way altogether. When
she told me about that morning at the Cresslers' house,
her voice was just like ice; she said, 'Mr. Cressler has
shot himself. I found him dead in his library.' She never
shed a tear, and she spoke, oh, in such a terrible mono-
tone. Oh! dear," cried Page, "I wish all this was over,
and we could all get away from Chicago, and take
Mr. Jadwin with us, and get him back to be as he
used to be, always so light-hearted, and thoughtful,
and kindly. He used to be making jokes from morn-
ing till night. Oh, I loved him just as if he were my
father."
  They crossed the street, and Landry, taking her by
the arm, ushered her into the corridor on the ground
floor of the Board.
  "Now, keep close to me," he said, "and see if we can
get through somewhere here."
                        362





THE PIT


  The stairs leading up to the main floor were already
crowded with visitors, some standing in line close to the
wall, others aimlessly wandering up and down, looking
and listening, their heads in the air. One of these, a
gentleman with a tall white hat, shook his head at Lan-
dry and Page as they pressed by him.
   "You can't get up there," he said, "even if they let
you in. They're packed in like sardines already."
   But Landry reassured Page with a knowing nod of his
head.
   "I told the guide up in the gallery to reserve a seat
for you. I guess we'll manage."
  But when they reached the staircase that connected
the main floor with the visitors' gallery, it became a
question as to whether or not they could even get to the
seat. The crowd was packed solidly upon the stairs,
between the wall and the balustrades. There were men
in top hats, and women in silks; rough fellows of the
poorer streets, and gaudily dressed queens of obscure
neighbourhoods, while mixed with these one saw the
faded and shabby wrecks that perennially drifted about
the Board of Trade, the failures who sat on the chairs
of the customers' rooms day in and day out, reading
old newspapers, smoking vile cigars. And there were
young men of the type of clerks and bookkeepers, young
men with drawn, worn faces, and hot, tired eyes, who
pressed upward, silent, their lips compressed, listening
intently to the indefinite echoing murmur that was
filling the building.
  For on this morning of the thirteenth of June, the
Board of Trade, its halls, corridors, offices, and stair-
ways were already thrilling with a vague and terrible
sound. It was only a little after nine o'clock. The trading
would not begin for another half hour, but, even now,
the mutter of the whirlpool, the growl of the Pit was
making itself felt. The eddies were gathering; the thou-
                         363





                     THE PIT
 sands of subsidiary torrents that fed the cloaca were
 moving. From all over the immediate neighbourhood
 they came, from the offices of hundreds of commission
 houses, from brokers' offices, from banks, from the tall
 grey buildings of La Salle Street, from the street itself.
 And even from greater distances they came; auxiliary
 currents set in from all the reach of the Great North-
 west, from Minneapolis, Duluth, and Milwaukee. From
 the Southwest, St. Louis, Omaha, and Kansas City con-
 tributed to the volume. The Atlantic Seaboard, New
 York, and Boston and Philadelphia sent out their tribu-
 tary streams; London, Liverpool, Paris, and Odessa
 merged their influences with the vast world-wide flowing
 that bore down upon Chicago, and that now began
 slowly, slowly to centre and circle about the Wheat Pit
 of the Board of Trade.
 Small wonder that the building to Page's ears vi-
 brated to a strange and ominous humming. She heard
 it in the distant clicking of telegraph keys, in the echo
 of hurried whispered conversations held in dark corners,
 in the noise of rapid footsteps, in the trilling of telephone
 bells. These sounds came from all around her; they is-
 sued from the offices of the building below her, above
 her, and on either side. She was surrounded with them,
 and they mingled together to form one prolonged and
 muffled roar, that from moment to moment increased
 in volume.
 The Pit was getting under way; the whirlpool was
 forming, and the sound of its courses was like the sound
 of the ocean in storm, heard at a distance.
 Page and Landry were still halfway up the last stair-
way. Above and below, the throng was packed dense and
immobilized. But, little by little, Landry wormed a way
for them, winning one step at a time. But he was very
anxious; again and again he looked at his watch. At last
he said:
                        364





THE PIT


  "I've got to go. It's just madness for me to stay an-
other minute. I'll give you my card."
  "Well, leave me here," Page urged. "It can't be
helped. I'm all right. Give me your card. I'll tell the
guide in the gallery that you kept the seat for me-if I
ever can get there. You must go. Don't stay another
minute. If you can, come for me here in the gallery,
when it's over. I'll wait for you. But if you can't come,
all right. I can take care of myself."
  He could but assent to this. This was no time to think
of small things. He left her and bore back with all his
might through the crowd, gained the landing at the turn
of the balustrade, waved his hat to her and disappeared.
  A quarter of an hour went by. Page, caught in the
crowd, could neither advance nor retreat. Ahead of her,
some twenty steps away, she could see the back rows of
seats in the gallery. But they were already occupied. It
seemed hopeless to expect to see anything of the floor
that day. But she could no longer extricate herself from
the press; there was nothing to do but stay where she
was.
  On every side of her she caught odds and ends of
dialogues and scraps of discussions, and while she waited
she found an interest in listening to these, as they
reached her from time to time.
  "Well," observed the man in the tall white hat, who
had discouraged Landry from attempting to reach the
gallery, "well, he's shaken 'em up pretty well. Whether
he downs 'em or they down him, he's made a good fight."
  His companion, a young man with eyeglasses, who
wore a wonderful white waistcoat with queer glass but-
tons, assented, and Page heard him add:
  "Big operator, that Jadwin."
  "They're doing for him now, though."
  "I ain't so sure. He's got another fight in him. You'll
see."
                        365





THE PIT


  "Ever see him?"
  "No, no, he don't come into the Pit-these big men
never do."
  Directly in front of Page two women kept up an in-
terminable discourse.
  "Well," said the one, "that's all very well, but Mr.
Jadwin made my sister-in-law-she lives in Dubuque,
you know-a rich woman. She bought some wheat, just
for fun, you know, a long time ago, and held on till Mr.
Jadwin put the price up to four times what she paid for
it. Then she sold out. My, you ought to see the lovely
house she's building, and her son's gone to Europe, to
study art, if you please, and a year ago, my dear, they
didn't have a cent, not a cent, but her husband's salary."
  "There's the other side, too, though," answered her
companion, adding in a hoarse whisper: "If Mr. Jadwin
fails to-day-well, honestly, Julia, I don't know what
Philip will do."
  But, from another group at Page's elbow, a man's bass
voice cut across the subdued chatter of the two women.
  "'Guess we'll pull through, somehow. Burbank &
Co., though-by George! I'm not sure about them.
They are pretty well involved in this thing, and there's
two or three smaller firms that are dependent on them.
If Gretry-Converse & Co. should suspend, Burbank
would go with a crash sure. And there's that bank in
Keokuk; they can't stand much more. Their depositors
would run 'em quick as how-do-you-do, if there was a
smash here in Chicago."
  "Oh, Jadwin will pull through."
  "Well, I hope so-by Jingo! I hope so. Say, by the
way, how did you come out?"
  "Me! Hoh! Say, my boy, the next time I get into a
wheat trade you'll know it. I was one of the merry
paretics who believed that Crookes was the Great Lum-
tum. I tailed on to his clique. Lord love you! Jadwin
                        366





                    THE PIT
put the knife into me to the tune of twelve thousand
dollars. But, say, look here; aren't we ever going to get
up to that blame gallery? We ain't going to see any of
this, and I-hark !-by God ! there goes the gong. They've
begun. Say, say, hear 'em, will you ! Holy Moses! say
-listen to that! Did you ever hear-Lord! I wish we
could see-could get somewhere where we could see
something."
  His friend turned to him and spoke a sentence that
was drowned in the sudden vast volume of sound that
all at once shook the building.
  "Hey-what?"
  The other shouted into his ear. But even then his
friend could not hear. Nor did he listen. The crowd
upon the staircases had surged irresistibly forward and
upward. There was a sudden outburst of cries. Women's
voices were raised in expostulation, and even fear.
   "Oh, oh-don't push so!"
   "My arm! oh!-oh, I shall faint.., please."
   But the men, their escorts, held back furiously; their
faces purple, they shouted imprecations over their
shoulders.
   "Here, here, you damn fools, what you doing?"
   "Don't crowd so!"
   "Get back, back!"
   "There's a lady fainted here. Get back you! We'll all
have a chance to see. Good Lord! ain't there a police-
man anywheres?"
   "Say, say! It's going down-the price. It broke three
 cents, just then, at the opening, they say."
   "This is the worst I ever saw or heard of."
   "My God! if Jadwin can only hold 'em."
   "You bet he'll hold 'em."
   "Hold nothing!-Oh! say, my friend, it don't do you
 any good to crowd like that."
   "It's the people behind; I'm not doing it. Say, do you
                         367





                    THE PIT
know where they're at on the floor? The wheat, I mean,
is it going up or down?"
  "Up, they tell me. There was a rally; I don't know.
How can we tell here? We-Hi! there they go again.
Lord! that must have been a smash. I guess the Board
of Trade won't forget this day in a hurry. Heavens, you
can't hear yourself think!"
  "Glad I ain't down there in the Pit."
  But, at last, a group of policemen appeared. By main
strength they shouldered their way to the top of the
stairs, and then began pushing the crowd back. At every
instant they shouted:
  "Move on now. Clear the stairway. No seats left!"
  But at this Page, who, by the rush of the crowd, had
been carried almost to the top of the stairs, managed to
extricate an arm from the press, and hold Landry's card
in the air. She even hazarded a little deception:
  "I have a pass. Will you let me through, please?"
  Luckily one of the officers heard her. He bore down
heavily with all the mass of his two hundred pounds and
the majesty of the law he represented, to the rescue and
succour of this very pretty girl.
  "Let the lady through," he roared, forcing a passage
with both elbows. "Come right along, Miss. Stand back
you, now. Can't you see the lady has a pass? Now, then,
Miss, and be quick about it, I can't keep 'em back for-
ever."
  Jostled and hustled, her dress crumpled, her hat awry,
Page made her way forward, till the officer caught her
by the arm, and pulled her out of the press. With a long
breath she gained the landing of the gallery.
  The guide, an old fellow in a uniform of blue, with
brass buttons and a visored cap, stood near by, and to
him she presented Landry's card.
   "Oh, yes, oh, yes," he shouted in her ear, after he had
 glanced it over. "You are the party Mr. Court spoke
                         368





THE PIT


about. You just came in time. I wouldn't 'a' dared hold
your seat a minute longer."
  He led her down the crowded aisle between rows of
theatre chairs, all of which were occupied, to one vacant
seat in the very front row.
  "You can see everything now," he cried, making a
trumpet of his palm. "You're Mister Jadwin's niece. I
know, I know. Ah, it's a wild day, Miss. They ain't
done much yet, and Mr. Jadwin's holding his own, just
now. But I thought for a moment they had him on the
run. You see that-my, my, there was a sharp rally.
But he's holding on strong yet."
  Page took her seat, and leaning forward looked down
into the Wheat Pit.
  Once free of the crowd after leaving Page, Landry ran
with all the swiftness of his long legs down the stair,
and through the corridors till, all out of breath, he
gained Gretry's private office. The other Pit traders for
the house, some eight or ten men, were already assem-
bled, and just as Landry entered by one door, the broker
himself came in from the customers' room. Jadwin was
nowhere to be seen.
  "What are the orders for to-day, sir?"
  Gretry was very pale. Despite his long experience on
the Board of Trade, Landry could see anxiety in every
change of his expression, in every motion of his hands.
The broker before answering the question crossed the
room to the water cooler and drank a brief swallow.
Then emptying the glass he refilled it, moistened his lips
again, and again emptied and filled the goblet. He put
it down, caught it up once more, filled it, emptied it,
drinking now in long draughts, now in little sips. He was
quite unconscious of his actions, and Landry, as he
watched, felt his heart sink. Things must, indeed, be
at a desperate pass when Gretry, the calm, the clear-
headed, the placid, was thus upset.
                         369




                     THE PIT
  "Your orders?" said the broker, at last. "The same as
yesterday; keep the market up-that's all. It must not
go below a dollar fifteen. But act on the defensive.
Don't be aggressive, unless I send word. There will
probably be very heavy selling the first few moments.
You can buy, each of you, up to half a million bushels
apiece. If that don't keep the price up, if they still are
selling, after that ... well"; Gretry paused a moment,
irresolutely, "well," he added, suddenly, "if they are
still selling freely after you've each bought half a million,
I'll let you know what to do. And, look here," he con-
tinued, facing the group, "look here-keep your heads
cool ... I guess to-day will decide things. Watch the
Crookes crowd pretty closely. I understand they're
up to something again. That's all, I guess."
  Landry and the other Gretry traders hurried from the
office up to the floor. Landry's heart was beating thick
and slow and hard, his teeth were shut tight. Every
nerve, every fibre of him braced itself with the rigidity
of drawn wire, to meet the issue of the impending hours.
Now was to come the last grapple. He had never lived
through a crisis such as this before. Would he prevail,
would he keep his head? Would he avoid or balk the
thousand and one little subterfuges, tricks, and traps
that the hostile traders would prepare for him-prepare
with a quickness, a suddenness that all but defied the
sharpest, keenest watchfulness?
  Was the gong never going to strike? He found him-
self, all at once, on the edge of the Wheat Pit. It was
jammed tight with the crowd of traders, and the excite-
ment that disengaged itself from that tense, vehement
crowd of white faces and glittering eyes was veritably
sickening, veritably weakening. Men on either side of
him were shouting mere incoherencies, to which nobody,
not even themselves, was listening. Others, silent,
gnawed their nails to the quick, breathing rapidly, aud-
                         370





THE PIT


ibly even, their nostrils expanding and contracting.
All around roared the vague thunder that since early
morning had shaken the building. In the Pit the bids
leaped to and fro, though the time of opening had not
yet come; the very planks under foot seemed spinning
about in the first huge warning swirl of the Pit's centrip-
etal convulsion. There was dizziness in the air. Some-
thing, some infinite immeasurable power, onrushing in
its eternal courses, shook the Pit in its grasp. Something
deafened the ears, blinded the eyes, dulled and numbed
the mind, with its roar, with the chaff and dust of its
whirlwind passage, with the stupefying sense of its
power, coeval with the earthquake and glacier, merci-
less, all-powerful, a primal basic throe of creation itself,
unassailable, inviolate, and untamed.
  Had the trading begun? Had the gong struck? Landry
never knew, never so much as heard the clang of the
great bell. All at once he was fighting; all at once he was
caught, as it were, from off the stable earth, and flung
headlong into the heart and centre of the Pit. What he
did, he could not say; what went on about him, he could
not distinguish. He only knew that roar was succeeding
roar, that there was crashing through his ears, through
his very brain, the combined bellow of a hundred Nia-
garas. Hands clutched and tore at him, his own tore and
clutched in turn. The Pit was mad, was drunk and fren-
zied; not a man of all those who fought and scrambled
and shouted who knew what he or his neighbour did.
They only knew that a support long thought to be se-
cure was giving way, not gradually, not evenly, but by
horrible collapses, and equally horrible upward leaps.
Now it held, now it broke, now it reformed again, rose
again, then again in hideous cataclysms fell from be-
neath their feet to lower depths than before. The official
reporter leaned back in his place, helpless. On the wall
overhead, the indicator on the dial was rocking back
                         37'




                     THE PIT
and forth, like the mast of a ship caught in a monsoon.
The price of July wheat no man could so much as ap-
proximate. The fluctuations were no longer by fractions
of a cent, but by ten cents, fifteen cents, twenty-five
cents at a time. On one side of the Pit wheat sold at
ninety cents, on the other at a dollar and a quarter.
  And all the while above the din upon the floor, above
the tramplings and the shoutings in the Pit, there seemed
to thrill and swell that appalling roar of the Wheat itself
coming in, coming on like a tidal wave, bursting through,
dashing barriers aside, rolling like a measureless, al-
mighty river, from the farms of Iowa and the ranches of
California, on to the East-to the bakeshops and hungry
mouths of Europe.
  Landry caught one of the Gretry traders by the arm.
  "What shall we do?" he shouted. "I've bought up to
my limit. No more orders have come in. The market has
gone from under us. What's to be done?"
  "I don't know," the other shouted back. "I don't
know. We're all gone to hell; looks like the last smash.
There are no more supporting orders-something's
gone wrong. Gretry hasn't sent any word."
  Then, Landry, beside himself with excitement and
with actual terror, hardly knowing even yet what he did,
turned sharply about. He fought his way out of the Pit;
he ran hatless and panting across the floor, in and out
between the groups of spectators, down the stairs to the
corridor below, and into the Gretry-Converse offices.
  In the outer office a group of reporters and the repre-
sentatives of a great commercial agency were besieging
one of the heads of the firm. They assaulted him with
questions.
  "Just tell us where you are at-that's all we want to
know."
   "Just what is the price of July wheat?"
   "Is Jadwin winning or losing?"
                         372





THE PIT


   But the other threw out an arm in a wild gesture of
helplessness.
  "We don't know, ourselves," he cried. "The market
has run clean away from everybody. You know as much
about it as I do. It's simply hell broken loose, that's all.
We can't tell where we are at for days to come."
  Landry rushed on. He swung open the door of the
private office and entered, slamming it behind him and
crying out:
  "Mr. Gretry, what are we to do? We've had no
orders."
  But no one listened to him. Of the group that gathered
around Gretry's desk, no one so much as turned a head.
  Jadwin stood there in the centre of the others, hatless,
his face pale, his eyes congested with blood. Gretry
fronted him, one hand upon his arm. In the remainder
of the group Landry recognized the senior clerk of the
office, one of the heads of a great banking house, and a
couple of other men-confidential agents, who had
helped to manipulate the great corner.
   " But you can't," Gretry was exclaiming. "You
can't; don't you see we can't meet our margin calls?
It's the end of the game. You've got no more money."
   "It's a lie!" Never so long as he lived did Landry for-
get the voice in which Jadwin cried the words: "It's a
lie! Keep on buying, I tell you. Take all they'll offer.
I tell you we'll touch the two-dollar mark before noon."
   "Not another order goes up to that floor," retorted
Gretry. "Why, J., ask any of these gentlemen here.
They'll tell you."
   "It's useless, Mr. Jadwin," said the banker, quietly.
"You were practically beaten two days ago."
   "Mr. Jadwin," pleaded the senior clerk, "for God's
sake listen to reason. Our firm  "
   But Jadwin was beyond all appeal. He threw off
Gretry's hand.
                         373





THE PIT


  "Your firm, your firm-you've been cowards from
the start. I know you, I know you. You have sold me
out. Crookes has bought you. Get out of my way!"
he shouted. " Get out of my way! Do you hear? I'll play
my hand alone from now on."
  "J., old man-why-see here, man," Gretry implored,
still holding him by the arm; "here, where are you
going?"
  Jadwin's voice rang like a trumpet call:
  "Into the Pit."
  "Look here-wait-here. Hold him back, gentlemen.
He don't know what he's about."
  "If you won't execute my orders, I'll act myself. I'm
going into the Pit, I tell you."
  "J., you're mad, old fellow. You're ruined-don't you
understand ?-you're ruined."
  "Then God curse you, Sam Gretry, for the man who
failed me in a crisis." And as he spoke Curtis Jadwin
struck the broker full in the face.
  Gretry staggered back from the blow, catching at the
edge of his desk. His pale face flashed to crimson for an
instant, his fists clinched; then his hands fell to his sides.
  "No," he said, "let him go, let him go. The man is
merely mad."
  But Jadwin, struggling for a second in the midst of
the group that tried to hold him, suddenly flung off the
restraining clasps, thrust the men to one side, and rushed
from the room.
  Gretry dropped into his chair before his desk.
  "It's the end," he said, simply.
  He drew a sheet of note-paper to him, and in a shaking
hand wrote a couple of lines.
  "Take that," he said, handing the note to the senior
clerk, "take that to the secretary of the Board at once."
  And straight into the turmoil and confusion of the Pit,
to the scene of so many of his victories, the battle ground
                         374





                     THE PIT
whereon again and again, his enemies routed, he had
remained the victor undisputed, undismayed came the
"Great Bull." No sooner had he set foot within the en-
trance to the floor, than the news went flashing and
flying from lip to lip. The galleries knew it, the public
room and the Western Union knew it, the telephone
booths knew it, and lastly even the Wheat Pit, torn and
tossed and rent asunder by the force this man himself
had unchained, knew it, and knowing, stood dismayed.
  For even then, so great had been his power, so com-
plete his dominion, and so well-rooted the fear which he
had inspired, that this last move in the great game he
had been playing, this unexpected, direct, personal as-
sumption of control struck a sense of consternation into
the heart of the hardiest of his enemies.
  Jadwin himself, the great man, the "Great Bull," in
the Pit! What was about to happen? Had they been too
premature in their hope of his defeat? Had he been pre-
paring some secret, unexpected manceuvre? For a sec-
ond they hesitated, then moved by a common impulse,
feeling the push of the wonderful new harvest behind
them, they gathered themselves together for the final
assault, and again offered the wheat for sale; offered it
by thousands upon thousands of bushels; poured, as it
were, the reapings of entire principalities out upon the
floor of the Board of Trade.
   Jadwin was in the thick of the confusion by now. And
 the avalanche, the undiked Ocean of the Wheat, leap-
 ing to the lash of the hurricane, struck him fairly in the
 face.
   He heard it now, he heard nothing else. The Wheat
 had broken from his control. For months, he had, by the
 might of his single arm, held it back; but now it rose like
 the upbuilding of a colossal billow. It towered, towered,
 hung poised for an instant, and then, with a thunder
 as of thegrind and crash of chaotic worlds, broke upon
                         375





THE PIT


him, burst through the Pit and raced past him, on and
on to the eastward and to the hungry nations.
  And then, under the stress and violence of the hour,
something snapped in his brain. The murk behind his
eyes had been suddenly pierced by a white flash. The
strange qualms and tiny nervous paroxysms of the last
few months all at once culminated in some indefinite, in-
definable crisis, and the wheels and cogs of all activities
save one lapsed away and ceased. Only one function
of the complicated machine persisted; but it moved
with a rapidity of vibration that seemed to be tearing
the tissues of being to shreds, while its rhythm beat out
the old and terrible cadence:
  " What-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-wheat."
  Blind and insensate, Jadwin strove against the torrent
of the Wheat. There in the middle of the Pit, surrounded
and assaulted by herd after herd of wolves yelping for his
destruction, he stood braced, rigid, upon his feet, his
head up, his hand, the great bony hand that once
had held the whole Pit in its grip, flung high in the
air in a gesture of defiance, while his voice like the
clangour of bugles sounding to the charge of the forlorn
hope, rang out again and again, over the din of his
enemies:
   "Give a dollar for July-give a dollar for July!"
   With one accord they leaped upon him. The little
group of his traders was swept aside. Landry alone,
Landry who had never left his side since his rush from
out Gretry's office, Landry Court, loyal to the last, his
one remaining soldier, white, shaking, the sobs stran-
gling in his throat, clung to him desperately. Another bil-
low of wheat was preparing. They two-the beaten
general and his young armour bearer-heard it coming;
hissing, raging, bellowing, it swept down upon them.
Landry uttered a cry. Flesh and blood could not stand
this strain. He cowered at his chief's side, his shoulders
                         376





                     THE PIT
bent, one arm above his head, as if to ward off an actual
physical force.
  But Jadwin, iron to the end, stood erect. All unknow-
ing what he did, he had taken Landry's hand in his and
the boy felt the grip on his fingers like the contracting
of a vise of steel. The other hand, as though holding
up a standard, was still in the air, and his great deep-
toned voice went out across the tumult, proclaiming to
the end his battle cry:
  "Give a dollar for July-give a dollar for July!"
  But, little by little, Landry became aware that the
tumult of the Pit was intermitting. There were sudden
lapses in the shouting, and in these lapses he could hear
from somewhere out upon the floor voices that were cry-
ing: "Order-order, order, gentlemen."
  But again and again the clamour broke out. It would
die down for an instant, in response to these appeals,
only to burst out afresh as certain groups of traders
started the pandemonium again, by the wild outcrying
of their offers. At last, however, the older men in the Pit,
regaining some measure of self-control, took up the
word, going to and fro in the press, repeating "Order,
order."
  And then, all at once, the Pit, the entire floor of the
Board of Trade was struck dumb. All at once the tension
was relaxed, the furious struggling and stamping was
stilled. Landry, bewildered, still holding his chief by the
hand, looked about him. On the floor, near at hand,
stood the President of the Board of Trade himself, and
with him the vice-president and a group of the directors.
Evidently it had been these who had called the traders
to order. But it was not toward them now that the
hundreds of men in the Pit and on the floor were looking.
  In the little balcony on the south wall opposite the vis-
itors' gallery a figure had appeared, a tall grave man, in
a long black coat-the secretary of the Board of Trade.
                         377





                     THE PIT
Landry with the others saw him, saw him advance to
the edge of the railing, and fix his glance upon the Wheat
Pit. In his hand he carried a slip of paper.
  And then in the midst of that profound silence the
secretary announced:
  "All trades with Gretry, Converse & Co. must be
closed at once."
  The words had not ceased to echo in the high vault-
ings of the roof before they were greeted with a wild,
shrill yell of exultation and triumph, that burst from
the crowding masses in the Wheat Pit.
  Beaten; beaten at last, the Great Bull! Smashed! The
great corner smashed! Jadwin busted! They themselves
saved, saved, saved! Cheer followed upon cheer, yell
after yell. Hats went into the air. In a frenzy of delight
men danced and leaped and capered upon the edge of
the Pit, clasping their arms about each other, shaking
each others' hands, cheering and hurrahing till their
strained voices became hoarse and faint.
  Some few of the older men protested. There were cries
of:
  "Shame, shame!"
  "Order-let him alone."
  "Let him be; he's down now. Shame, shame!"
  But the jubilee was irrepressible, they had been too
cruelly pressed, these others; they had felt the weight of
the Bull's hoof, the rip of his horn. Now they had
beaten him, had pulled him down.
  "Yah-h-h, whoop, yi, yi, yi. Busted, busted, busted.
Hip, hip, hip, and a tiger!"
  "Come away, sir. For God's sake, Mr. Jadwin, come
away."
  Landry was pleading with Jadwin, clutching his arm
in both his hands, his lips to his chief's ear to make him-
self heard above the yelping of the mob.
  Jadwin was silent now. He seemed no longer to see or
                         378




                     THE PIT
hear; heavily, painfully he leaned upon the young man's
shoulder.
  "Come away, sir-for God's sake!"
  The group of traders parted before them, cheering
even while they gave place, cheering with eyes averted,
unwilling to see the ruin that meant for them salvation.
  "Yah-h-h. Yah-h-h, busted, busted!"
  Landry had put his arm about Jadwin, and gripped
him close as he led him from the Pit. The sobs were
in his throat again, and tears of excitement, of grief,
of anger and impotence were       running down his
face.
  "Yah-h-h. Yah-h-h, he's done for, busted, busted!"
  "Damn you all," cried Landry, throwing out a furious
fist, "damn you all; you brutes, you beasts! If he'd so
much as raised a finger a week ago, you'd have run for
your lives."
  But the cheering drowned his voice; and as the two
passed out of the Pit upon the floor, the gong that closed
the trading struck and, as it seemed, put a period, defi-
nite and final, to the conclusion of Curtis Jadwin's career
as speculator.
   Across the floor toward the doorway Landry led his
defeated captain. Jadwin was in a daze, he saw nothing,
heard nothing. Quietly he submitted to Landry's guid-
ing arm. The visitors in the galleries bent far over to see
him pass, and from all over the floor, spectators, hangers-
on, corn-and-provision traders, messenger boys, clerks
and reporters came hurrying to watch the final exit of
the Great Bull, from the scene of his many victories
and his one overwhelming defeat.
  In silence they watched him go by. Only in the dis-
tance from the direction of the Pit itself came the sound
of dying cheers. But at the doorway stood a figure that
Landry recognized at once-a small man, lean-faced,
trimly dressed, his clean-shaven lips pursed like the
                         379




                    THE PIT
mouth of a shut money bag, imperturbable as ever, cold,
unexcited-Calvin Crookes himself.
  And as Jadwin passed, Landry heard the Bear leader
say:
  "They can cheer now, all they want. They didn't do
it. It was the wheat itself that beat him; no combina-
tion of men could have done it-go on, cheer, you damn
fools! He was a bigger man than the best of us."
  With the striking of the gong, and the general move-
ment of the crowd in the galleries toward the exits, Page
rose, drawing a long breath, pressing her hands an in-
stant to ber burning cheek. She had seen all that had
happened, but she had not understood. The whole morn-
ing had been a whirl and a blur. She had looked down
upon a jam of men, who for three hours had done noth-
ing but shout and struggle. She had seen Jadwin come
into the Pit, and almost at once the shouts had turned
to cheers. That must have meant, she thought, that
Jadwin had done something to please those excited men.
They were all his friends, no doubt. They were cheering
him-cheering his success. He had won then! And yet
that announcement from the opposite balcony, to the
effect that business with Mr. Gretry must be stopped,
immediately! That had an ominous ring. Or, perhaps,
that meant only a momentary check.
  As she descended the stairways, with the departing
spectators, she distinctly heard a man's voice behind her
exclaim:
  "Well, that does for him!"
  Possibly, after all, Mr. Jadwin had lost some money
that morning. She was desperately anxious to find Lan-
dry, and to learn the truth of what had happened, and
for a long moment after the last visitors had disappeared
she remained at the foot of the gallery stairway, hoping
that he would come for her. But she saw nothing of him,
and soon remembered she had told him to come for her,
                        380






only in case he was able to get away. No doubt he was
too busy now. Even if Mr. Jadwin had won, the morn-
ing's work had evidently been of tremendous import-
ance. This had been a great day for the wheat specula-
tors. It was not surprising that Landry should be de-
tained. She would wait till she saw him the next day to
find out all that had taken place.
  Page returned home. It was long past the hour for
luncheon when she came into the dining room of the
North Avenue house.
  "Where is my sister?" she asked of the maid, as she
sat down to the table; "has she lunched yet?"
  But it appeared that Mrs. Jadwin had sent down
word to say that she wanted no lunch, that she had a
headache and would remain in her room.
  Page hurried through with her chocolate and salad,
and ordering a cup of strong tea, carried it up to Laura's
"sitting room" herself.
  Laura, in a long tea-gown, lay back in the Madeira
chair, her hands clasped behind her head, doing nothing
apparently but looking out of the window. She was paler
even than usual, and to Page's mind seemed preoccupied
and in a certain indefinite way tense and hard. Page, as
she had told Landry that morning, had remarked this
tenseness, this rigidity on the part of her sister, of late.
But to-day it was more pronounced than ever. Some-
thing surely was the matter with Laura. She seemed like
one who had staked everything upon a hazard and,
blind to all else, was keeping back emotion with all her
strength while she watched and waited for the issue.
Page guessed that her sister's trouble had to do with
Jadwin's complete absorption in business, but she pre-
ferred to hold her peace. By nature the young girl
"minded her own business," and Laura was not a
woman who confided her troubles to anybody. Only
once had Page presumed to meddle in her sister's affairs,
                         381


Tit Pt- I 'P




                    THE PIT
and the result had not encouraged a repetition of the
intervention. Since the affair of the silver match box
she had kept her distance.
  Laura on this occasion declined to drink the tea Page
had brought. She wanted nothing, she said; her head
ached a little, she only wished to lie down and be quiet.
  "I've been down to the Board of Trade all the morn-
ing," Page remarked.
  Laura fixed her with a swift glance; she demanded
quickly:
  "Did you see Curtis?"
  "No-or, yes, once; he came out on the floor. Oh,
Laura, it was so exciting there this morning. Something
important happened, I know. I can't believe it's that
way all the time. I'm afraid Mr. Jadwin lost a great deal
of money. I heard someone behind me say so, but I
couldn't understand what was going on. For months
I've been trying to get a clear idea of wheat trading, just
because it was Landry's business, but to-day I couldn't
make anything of it at all."
  "Did Curtis say he was coming home this evening?"
  "No. Don't you understand, I didn't see him to talk
to."
  "Well, why didn't you, Page?"
  "Why, Laura, honey, don't be cross. You don't know
how rushed everything was. I didn't even try to see
Landry."
  "Did he seem very busy?"
  "Who, Landry? I      "
  "No, no, no, Curtis."
  "Oh, I should say so. Why, Laura, I think, honestly,
I think wheat went down to-oh, way down. They say
that means so much to Mr. Jadwin, and it went down,
down, down. It looked that way to me. Don't that mean
that he'll lose a great deal of money? And Landry
seemed so brave and courageous through it all. Oh, I
                        382





THE PIT


felt for him so; I just wanted to go right into the Pit
with him and stand by his shoulder."
   Laura started up with a sharp gesture of impatience
 and exasperation, crying:
   "Oh, what do I care about wheat-about this
 wretched scrambling for money. Curtis was busy, you
 say? He looked that way?"
   Page nodded: "Everybody was," she said. Then she
 hazarded:
   "I wouldn't worry, Laura. Of course, a man must give
 a great deal of time to his business. I didn't mind when
 Landry couldn't come home with me."
   "Oh-Landry," murmured Laura.
   On the instant Page bridled, her eyes snapping.
   "I think that was very uncalled for," she exclaimed,
 sitting bolt upright, "and I can tell you this, Laura Jad-
 win, if you did care a little more about wheat-about
 your husband's business-if you had taken more of an
 interest in his work, if you had tried to enter more into
 his life, and be a help to him-and-and sympathize-
 and-" Page caught her breath, a little bewildered at
 her own vehemence and audacity. But she had com-
.mitted herself now; recklessly she plunged on: "Just
think; he may be fighting the battle of his life down
there in La Salle Street, and you don't know anything
about it-no, nor want to know. 'What do you care
about wheat,' that's what you said. Well, I don't care
either, just for the wheat itself, but it's Landry's busi-
ness, his work; and right or wrong"- Page jumped
to her feet, her fists tight shut, her face scarlet, her
head upraised-"right or wrong, good or bad, I'd put
my two hands into the fire to help him."
   "What business-" began Laura; but Page was not
 to be interrupted. "And if he did leave me alone some-
 times," she said; "do you think I would draw a long
 face, and think only of my own troubles? I guess he's
                         383






got his own troubles, too. If my husband had a battle
to fight, do you think I'd mope and pine because he
left me at home? No, I wouldn't. I'd help him buckle
his sword on, and when he came back to me I wouldn't
tell him how lonesome I'd been, but I'd take care of
him and cry over his wounds, and tell him to be brave-
and-and-and I'd help him."
  And with the words, Page, the tears in her eyes and
the sobs in her throat, flung out of the room, shutting
the door violently behind her.
  Laura's first sensation was one of anger only. As
always, her younger sister had presumed again to judge
her, had chosen this day of all others to annoy her.
She gazed an instant at the closed door, then rose and
put her chin in the air. She was right, and Page, her
husband, everybody, were wrong. She had been flouted,
ignored. She paced the length of the room a couple of
times, then threw herself down upon the couch, her
chin supported on her palm.
  As she crossed the room, however, her eye had been
caught by an opened note from Mrs. Cressler, received
the day before, and apprising her of the date of the fu-
neral. At the sight, all the tragedy leaped up again in
her mind and recollection, and in fancy she stood again
in the back parlour of the Cressler home; her fingers
pressed over her mouth to shut back the cries, horror
and the terror of sudden death rending her heart, shak-
ing the brain itself. Again and again since that dread-
ful moment had the fear come back, mingled with grief,
with compassion, and the bitter sorrow of a kind friend
gone forever from her side. And then, her resolution
girding itself, her will power at fullest stretch, she had
put the tragedy from her. Other and-for her more
momentous events impended. Everything in life, even
death itself, must stand aside while her love was put
to the test. Life and death were little things. Love
                         384





THE PIT


only existed; let her husband's career fail; what did it
import so only love stood the strain and issued from the
struggle triumphant? And now, as she lay upon her
couch, she crushed down all compunction for the pitiful
calamity whose last scene she had discovered, her
thoughts once more upon her husband and herself.
Had the shock of that spectacle in the Cresslers' house,
and the wearing suspense in which she had lived of late,
so torn and disordered the delicate feminine nerves
that a kind of hysteria animated and directed her im-
pulses, her words, and actions? Laura did not know.
She only knew that the day was going and that her hus-
band neither came near her nor sent her word.
  Even if he had been very busy, this was her birth-
day,-though he had lost millions! Could he not have
sent even the foolishest little present to her, even a line
-three words on a scrap of paper? But she checked
herself. The day was not over yet; perhaps, perhaps
he would remember her, after all, before the afternoon
was over. He was managing a little surprise for her,
no doubt. He knew what day this was. After their
talk that Sunday in his smoking room he would not for-
get. And, besides, it was the evening that he had prom-
ised should be hers. "If he loved her," she had said,
he would give that evening to her. Never, never would
Curtis fail her when conjured by that spell.
  Laura had planned a little dinner for that night. It
was to be served at eight. Page would have dined ear-
lier; only herself and her husband were to be present.
It was to be her birthday dinner. All the noisy, clamour-
ous world should be excluded; no faintest rumble of the
Pit would intrude. She would have him all to herself.
He would, so she determined, forget everything else in
his love for her. She would be beautiful as never be-
fore-brilliant, resistless, and dazzling. She would have
him at her feet, her own, her own again, as much her
                         385





                    THE PIT
own as her very hands. And before she would let him
go he would forever and forever have abjured the Battle
of the Street that had so often caught him from her.
The Pit should not have him; the sweep of that great
whirlpool should never again prevail against the power
of love.
  Yes, she had suffered, she had known the humiliation
of a woman neglected. But it was to end now; her pride
would never again be lowered, her love never again be
ignored.
  But the afternoon passed and evening drew on with-
out any word from him. In spite of her anxiety, she
yet murmured over and over again as she paced the
floor of her room, listening for the ringing of the door
bell:
  "He will send word, he will send word. I know he
will."
  By four o'clock she had begun to dress. Never had
she made a toilet more superb, more careful. She dis-
dained a "costume" on this great evening. It was not
to be "Theodora" now, nor "Juliet," nor "Carmen."
It was to be only Laura Jadwin-just herself, unaided
by theatricals, unadorned by tinsel. But it seemed con-
sistent none the less to choose her most beautiful gown
for the occasion, to panoply herself in every charm that
was her own. Her dress, that closely sheathed the low,
flat curves of her body and that left her slender arms
and neck bare, was one shimmer of black scales, iri-
descent, undulating with light to her every movement.
In the coils and masses of her black hair she fixed her
two great cabochons of pearls, and clasped about her
neck her palm-broad collaret of pearls and diamonds.
Against one shoulder nodded a bunch of Jacqueminots,
royal red, imperial.
  It was hard upon six o'clock when at last she dis-
missed her maid. Left alone, she stood for a moment
                        386





THE PIT


in front of her long mirror that reflected her image from
head to foot, and at the sight she could not forbear a
smile and a sudden proud lifting of her head. All the
woman in her preened and plumed herself in the con-
sciousness of the power of her beauty. Let the Battle of
the Street clamour never so loudly now, let the suction
of the Pit be never so strong, Eve triumphed. Vnus
toute entiere s'attachait d sa proie.
  These women of America, these others who allowed
business to draw their husbands from them more and
more, who submitted to those cruel conditions that
forced them to be content with the wreckage left after
the storm and stress of the day's work-the jaded mind,
the exhausted body, the faculties dulled by overwork
she was sorry for them. They, less radiant than herself,
less potent to charm, could not call their husbands back.
But she, Laura, was beautiful; she knew it; she gloried
in her beauty. It was her strength. She felt the same
pride in it as the warrior in a finely tempered weapon.
  And to-night her beauty was brighter than ever. It
was a veritable aureole that crowned her. She knew
herself to be invincible. So only that he saw her thus,
she knew that she would conquer. And he would come.
"If he loved her," she had said. By his love for her he
had promised; by his love she knew she would prevail.
  And then at last, somewhere out of the twilight,
somewhere out of those lowest, unplumbed depths of
her own heart, came the first tremor of doubt, came the
tardy vibration of the silver cord which Page had struck
so sharply. Was it-after all-Love, that she cherished
and strove for-love, or self-love? Ever since Page
had spoken she seemed to have fought against the in-
trusion of this idea. But, little by little, it rose to the
surface. At last, for an instant, it seemed to confront
her.
  Was this, after all, the right way to win her husband
                         387





THE PIT


back to her-this display of her beauty, this parade of
dress, this exploitation of self?
  Self, self. Had she been selfish from the very first?
What real interest had she taken in her husband's
work? "Right or wrong, good or bad, I would put
my two hands into the fire to help him." Was this
the way? Was not this the only way? Win him back
to her? What if there were more need for her to win
back to him? Oh, once she had been able to say that
love, the supreme triumph of a woman's life, was less
a victory than a capitulation. Had she ordered her life
upon that ideal? Did she even believe in the ideal at
this day? Whither had this cruel cult of self led her?
  Dimly Laura Jadwin began to see and to understand
a whole new conception of her little world. The birth
of a new being within her was not for that night. It
was conception only-the sensation of a new element,
a new force that was not herself, somewhere in the
inner chambers of her being.
  The woman in her was too complex, the fibres of
character too intricate and mature to be wrenched into
new shapes by any sudden revolution. But just so surely
as the day was going, just so surely as the New Day
would follow upon the night, conception had taken place
within her. Whatever she did that evening, whatever
came to her, through whatever crises she should hurry,
she would not now be quite the same. She had been
accustomed to tell herself that there were two Lauras.
Now suddenly, behold, she seemed to recognize a third
-a third that rose above and forgot the other two,
that in some beautiful, mysterious way was identity
ignoring self.
  But the change was not to be abrupt. Very, very
vaguely the thoughts came to her. The change would
be slow, slow-would be evolution, not revolution. The
consummation was to be achieved in the coming years.
                         388




THE PIT


For to-night she was-what was she? Only a woman,
weak, torn by emotion, driven by impulse, and entering
upon what she imagined was a great crisis in her life.
  But meanwhile the time was passing. Laura de-
scended to the library and, picking up a book, composed
herself to read. When six o'clock struck, she made
haste to assure herself that of course she could not ex-
pect him exactly on the hour. No, she must make al-
lowances; the day-as Page had suspected-had prob-
ably been an important one. He would be a little late,
but he would come soon. "If you love me, you will
come," she had said.
  But an hour later Laura paced the room with tight-
shut lips and burning cheeks. She was still alone; her
day, her hour, was passing, and he had not so much as
sent word. For a moment the thought occurred to her
that he might perhaps be in great trouble, in great
straits, that there was an excuse. But instantly she
repudiated the notion.
  "No, no," she cried, beneath her breath. "He should
come, no matter what has happened. Or even, at the
very least, he could send word."
  The minutes dragged by. No roll of wheels echoed
under the carriage porch; no step sounded at the outer
door. The house was still, the street without was still,
the silence of the midsummer evening widened, un-
broken, around her, like a vast calm pool. Only the
musical Gregorians of the newsboys chanting the eve-
ning's extras from corner to corner of the streets rose
into the air from time to time. She was once more alone.
Was she to fail again? Was she to be set aside once more,
as so often heretofore-set aside, flouted, ignored, for-
gotten? "If you love me," she had said.
  And this was to be the supreme test. This evening was
to decide which was the great influence of his life-was
to prove whether or not love was paramount. This was
                        389




THE PIT


the crucial hour. "And he knows it," cried Laura. "He
knows it. He did not forget, could not have forgotten."
  The half hour passed, then the hour, and as eight
o'clock chimed from the clock over the mantelshelf
Laura stopped, suddenly rigid, in the midst of the
floor.
  Her anger leaped like fire within her. All the pas-
sion of the woman scorned shook her from head to foot.
At the very moment of her triumph she had been flouted
in the pitch of her pride! And this was not the only
time. All at once the past disappointments, slights, and
humiliations came again to her memory. She had
pleaded, and had been rebuffed again and again; she
had given all and had received neglect-she, Laura,
beautiful beyond other women, who had known love,
devoted service, and the most thoughtful consideration
from her earliest girlhood, had been cast aside.
  Suddenlyshe bent her head quickly, listening intently.
Then she drew a deep breath, murmuring, "At last, at
last!"
  For the sound of a footstep in the vestibule was un-
mistakable. He had come, after all. But so late, so late!
No, she could not be gracious at once; he must be made
to feel how deeply he had offended; he must sue humbly,
very humbly, for pardon. The servant's step sounded
in the hall on the way toward the front door.
  "I am in here, Matthew," she called. "In the library.
Tell him I am in here."
  She cast a quick glance at herself in the mirror close
at hand, touched her hair with rapid fingers, smoothed
the agitation from her forehead, and sat down in a deep
chair near the fireplace, opening a book, turning her
back toward the door.
  She heard him come in, but did not move. Even as
he crossed the floor she kept her head turned away.
The footsteps paused near at hand. There was a mo-
                         390




                    THE PIT
ment's silence. Then slowly Laura, laying down her
book, turned and faced him.
  "With many very, very happy returns of the day,"
said Sheldon Corthell, as he held toward her a cluster
of deep-blue violets.
  Laura sprang to her feet, a hand upon her cheek,
her eyes wide and flashing.
  "You?" was all she had breath to utter. "You?"
  The artist smiled as he laid the flowers upon the table.
  "I am going away again to-morrow," he said, "for
always, I think. Have I startled you? I only came to
say good-bye-and to wish you a happy birthday."
  "Oh, you remembered!" she cried." You remembered!
I might have known you would."
  But the revulsion had been too great. She had been
wrong, after all. Jadwin had forgotten. Emotions to
which she could put no name swelled in her heart and
rose in a quick, gasping sob to her throat. The tears
sprang to her eyes. Old impulses, forgotten impetuosi-
ties whipped her on.
  "Oh, you remembered, you remembered!" she cried
again, holding out both her hands.
  He caught them in his own.
  "Remembered!" he echoed." I have never forgotten."
  "No, no," she replied, shaking her head, winking
back the tears. "You don't understand. I spoke before
I thought. You don't understand."
  "I do, believe me, I do," he exclaimed. "I understand
you better than you understand yourself."
  Laura's answer was a cry.
  "Oh, then, why did you ever leave me-you who did
understand me? Why did you leave me only because
I told you to go? Why didn't you make me love you
then? Why didn't you make me understand myself?"
She clasped her hands tight together upon her breast;
her words, torn by her sobs, came all but incoherent
                        391





                    THE PIT
from behind her shut teeth. "No, no!" she exclaimed,
as he made toward her. "Don't touch me, don't touch
me! It is too late."
  "It is not too late. Listen-listen to me."
  "Oh, why weren't you a man, strong enough to know
a woman's weakness? You can only torture me now.
Ah, I hate you! I hate you!"
  "You love me! I tell you, you love me!" he cried,
passionately, and before she was aware of it she was in
his arms, his lips were against her lips, were on her
shoulders, her neck.
  "You love me!" he cried. "You love me! I defy you
to say you do not."
  "Oh, make me love you, then," she answered. "Make
me believe that you do love me."
  "Don't you know," he cried, "don't you know how
I have loved you? Oh, from the very first? My love has
been my life, has been my death, my one joy, and my
one bitterness. It has always been you, dearest, year
after year, hour after hour. And now I've found you
again. And now I shall never, never let you go."
  "No, no! Ah, don't, don't!" she begged. "I implore
you. I am weak, weak. Just a word, and I would forget
everything."
  "And I do speak that word, and your own heart an-
swers me in spite of you, and you will forget-forget
everything of unhappiness in your life "
  "Please, please," she entreated, breathlessly. Then,
taking the leap: "Ah, I love you, I love you!"
  "-Forget all your unhappiness," he went on, hold-
ing her close to him. "Forget the one great mistake
we both made. Forget everything, everything, every-
thing but that we love each other."
  "Don't let me think, then," she cried. "Don't let me
think. Make me forget everything, every little hour,
every little moment that has passed before this day. Oh,
                        392





                    THE PIT
if I remembered once, I would kill you, kill you with
my hands! I don't know what I am saying," she moaned,
"I don't know what I am saying. I am mad, I think.
Yes-I-it must be that." She pulled back from him,
looking into his face with wide-opened eyes.
  "What have I said, what have we done, what are you
here for?"
  "To take you away," he answered, gently, holding
her in his arms, looking down into her eyes. "To take
you far away with me. To give my whole life to mak-
ing you forget that you were ever unhappy."
  "And you will never leave me alone-never once?"
  "Never, never once."
  She drew back from him, looking about the room with
unseeing eyes, her fingers plucking and tearing at the
lace of her dress; her voice was faint and small, like the
voice of a little child.
  "I -I am afraid to be alone. Oh, I must never be
alone again so long as I shall live. I think I should
die."
  "And you never shall be, never again. Ah, this is my
birthday, too, sweetheart. I am born again to-night."
  Laura clung to his arm; it was as though she were
in the dark, surrounded by the vague terrors of her girl-
hood. "And you will always love me, love me, love
me?" she whispered. "Sheldon, Sheldon, love me al-
ways, always, with all your heart and soul and strength."
  Tears stood in Corthell's eyes as he answered:
  "God forgive whoever-whatever has brought you to
this pass," he said.
  And, as if it were a realization of his thought, there
suddenly came to the ears of both the roll of wheels
upon the asphalt under the carriage porch and the
trampling of iron-shod hoofs.
  "Is that your husband?" Corthell's quick eye took
in Laura's disarranged coiffure, one black lock low upon
                        393





                    THE PIT
her neck, the roses at her shoulder crushed and broken,
and the bright spot on either cheek.
  "Is that your husband?"
  "My husband-I don't know." She looked up at him
with unseeing eyes. "Where is my husband? I have no
husband. You are letting me remember," she cried in
terror. "You are letting me remember. Ah, no, no,,you
don't love me! I hate you!"
  Quickly he bent and kissed her.
  "I will come for you to-morrow evening," he said.
"You will be ready then to go with me?"
  "Ready then? Yes, yes, to go with you anywhere."
  He stood still a moment, listening. Somewhere a door
closed. He heard the hoofs upon the asphalt again.
  "Good-bye," he whispered. "God bless you! Good-
bye till to-morrow night." And with the words he was
gone. The front door of the house closed quietly.
  Had he come back again? Laura turned in her place
on the long divan at the sound of a heavy tread by the
door of the library.
  Then an uncertain hand drew the heavy curtain aside.
Jadwin, her husband, stood before her, his eyes sunken
deep in his head, his face dead white, his hand shaking.
He stood for a long instant in the middle of the room,
looking at her. Then at last his lips moved:
  "Old girl .... Honey."
  Laura rose, and all but groped her way toward him,
her heart beating, the tears streaming down her face.
  "My husband, my husband!"
  Together they made their way to the divan, and sank
down upon it side by side, holding to each other, trem-
bling and fearful, like children in the night.
  "Honey," whispered Jadwin, after a while. "Honey,
it's dark, it's dark. Something happened.... I don't
remember," he put his hand uncertainly to his head,
"I can't remember very well; but it's dark-a little."
                        394





                     THE PIT
  "It's dark," she repeated, in a low whisper. "It's
dark, dark. Something happened. Yes. I must not re-
member."
  They spoke no further. A long time passed. Pressed
close together, Curtis Jadwin and his wife sat there in
the vast, gorgeous room, silent and trembling, ridden
with unnamed fears, groping in the darkness.
  And while they remained thus, holding close by one
another, a prolonged and wailing cry rose suddenly
from the street, and passed on through the city under
the stars and the wide canopy of the darkness.
  "Extra, oh-h-h, extra,! All about the Smash of the
Great Wheat Corner! All about the Failure of Curtis
Jadwin!"


395











                  CONCLUSION

THE evening had closed in wet and misty. All day
long a chill wind had blown across the city from off the
lake, and by eight o'clock, when Laura and Jadwin came
down to the dismantled library, a heavy rain was falling.
  Laura gave Jadwin her arm as they made their way
across the room-their footsteps echoing strangely from
the uncarpeted boards.
  "There, dear," she said. "Give me the valise. Now
sit down on the packing box there. Are you tired? You
had better put your hat on. It is full of draughts here,
now that all the furniture and curtains are out."
  "No, no. I'm all right, old girl. Is the hack there yet?"
  "Not yet. You're sure you're not tired?" she insisted.
"You had a pretty bad siege of it, you know, and this
is only the first week you've been up. You remember
how the doctor     "
  "I've had too good a nurse," he answered, stroking
her hand, "not to be fine as a fiddle by now. You must
be tired yourself, Laura. Why, for whole days there-
and nights, too, they tell me-you never left the room."
  She shook her head, as though dismissing the subject.
  "I wonder," she said, sitting down upon a smaller
packing box and clasping a knee in her hands, "I won-
der what the West will be like. Do you know I think
I am going to like it, Curtis?"
  "It will be starting in all over again, old girl," he said,
with a warning shake of his head. "Pretty hard at first,
I'm afraid."
  She laughed an almost contemptuous note.
                         396





THE PIT


  "Hard! Now?" She took his hand and laid it to her
cheek.
  "By all the rules you ought to hate me," he began.
"What have I done for you but hurt you and, at last,
bring you to-"
  But she shut her gloved hand over his mouth.
  "Stop!" she cried. "Hush, dear. You have brought
me the greatest happiness of my life."
  Then under her breath, her eyes wide and thoughtful,
she murmured:
  "A capitulation and not a triumph, and I have won
a victory by surrendering."
  "Hey-what?" demanded Jadwin. "I didn't hear."
  "Never mind," she answered. "It was nothing. The
world is all before us where to choose,' now, isn't it?
And this big house and all the life we have led in it was
just an incident in our lives-an incident that is closed."
  "Looks like it, to look around this room," he said,
grimly. "Nothing left but the wall paper. What do you
suppose are in these boxes?"
  "They're labelled 'books and portieres."'
  "Who bought 'em, I wonder ? I'd have thought the
party who bought the house would have taken them.
Well, it was a wrench to see the place and all go so
dirt cheap, and the Thetis, too, by George! But I'm
glad now. It's as though we had lightened ship." He
looked at his watch. "That hack ought to be here pretty
soon. I'm glad we checked the trunks from the house;
gives us more time."
  "Oh, by the way," exclaimed Laura, all at once open-
ing her satchel. "I had a long letter from Page this
morning, from New York. Do you want to hear what
she has to say? I've only had time to read part of it
myself. It's the first one I've had from her since their
marriage."
  He lit a cigar.
                        397





                    THE PIT
  "Go ahead," he said, settling himself on the box.
"What does Mrs. Court have to say?"
  "'My dearest sister,'" began Laura. "'Here we are,
Landry and I, in New York at last. Very tired and
mussed after the ride on the cars, but in a darling little
hotel where the proprietor is head cook and everybody
speaks French. I know my accent is improving, and
Landry has learned any quantity of phrases already.
We are reading George Sand out loud, and are making
up the longest vocabulary. To-night we are going to a
concert, and I've found out that there's a really fine
course of lectures to be given soon on "Literary Ten-
dencies," or something like that. Quel chance. Landry
is intensely interested. You've no idea what a deep mind
he has, Laura-a real thinker.
  "'But here's really a big piece of news. We may not
have to give up our old home where we lived when we
first came to Chicago. Aunt Wess' wrote the other day
to say that, if you were willing, she would rent it, and
then sublet all the lower floor to Landry and me, so
we could have a real house over our heads and not the
under side of the floor of the flat overhead. And she is
such an old dear, I know we could all get along beauti-
fully. Write me about this as soon as you can. I know
you'll be willing, and Aunt Wess' said she'd agree to
whatever rent you suggested.
  "'We went to call on Mrs. Cressler day before yes-
terday. She's been here nearly a fortnight by now, and
is living with a maiden sister of hers in a very beautiful
house fronting Central Park (not so beautiful as our
palace on North Avenue. Never, never will I forget
that house). She will probably stay here now always.
She says the very sight of the old neighbourhoods in
Chicago would be more than she could bear. Poor Mrs.
Cressler! How fortunate for her that her sister'-and
so on, and so on," broke in Laura, hastily.
                        398





                    THE PIT
  "Read it, read it," said Jadwin, turning sharply
away. "Don't skip a line. I want to hear every word."
  "That's all there is to it," Laura returned. "'We'll
be back,'" she went on, turning a page of the letter,
"'in about three weeks, and Landry will take up his
work in that railroad office. No more speculating for
him, he says. He talks of Mr. Jadwin continually. You
never saw or heard of such devotion. He says that Mr.
Jadwin is a genius, the greatest financier in the country,
and that he knows he could have won if they all hadn't
turned against him that day. He never gets tired telling
me that Mr. Jadwin has been a father to him-the
kindest, biggest-hearted man he ever knew  '"
  Jadwin pulled his moustache rapidly.
  "Pshaw, pish, nonsense-little fool!" he blustered.
  "He simply worshipped you from the first, Curtis,"
commented Laura. "Even after he knew I was to marry
you. He never once was jealous, never once would listen
to a word against you from anyone."
  "Well-well, what else does Mrs. Court say?"
  "'I am glad to hear,"'" read Laura, "'that Mr. Gretry
did not fail though Landry tells me he must have lost
a great deal of money. Landry tells me that eighteen
brokers' houses failed in Chicago the day after Mr.
Gretry suspended. Isabel sent us a wedding present-
a lovely medicine chest full of homeoeopathic medicines,
little pills and things, you know. But, as Landry and I
are never sick and both laugh at homoeopathy, I declare
I don't know just what we will do with it. Landry is as
careful of me as though I were a wax doll. But I do wish
he would think more of his own health. He never will
wear his mackintosh in rainy weather. I've been study-
ing his tastes so carefully. He likes French light opera
better than English, and bright colours in his cravats,
and he simply adores stuffed tomatoes.
  "'We both send our love, and Landry especially
                        399





                     THE PIT
wants to be remembered to Mr. Jadwin. I hope this
letter will come in time for us to wish you both bon
voyage and bon succes. How splendid of Mr. Jadwin to
have started his new business even while he was con-
valescent! Landry says he knows he will make two or
three more fortunes in the next few years.
  "'Good-bye, Laura, dear. Ever your loving sister,
                                   "'PAGE COURT.
  "'P. S.-I open this letter again to tell you that we
met Mr. Corthell on the street yesterday. He sails for
Europe to-day."'
  "Oh," said Jadwin, as Laura put the letter quickly
down, "Corthell-that artist chap. By theway, what-
ever became of him?"
  Laura settled a comb in the back of her hair.
  "He went away," she said."You remember -I told
you-told you all about it."
  She would have turned away her head, but he laid
a hand upon her shoulder.
  "I remember," he answered, looking squarely into
her eyes, "I remember nothing-only that I have been
to blame for everything. I told you once-long ago
that I understood. And I understand now, old girl, under
stand as I never did before. I fancy we both have been
living according to a wrong notion of things. We started
right when we were first married, but I worked away
from it somehow and pulled you along with me. But
we've both been through a great big change, honey, a
great big change, and we're starting all over again...
Well, there's the carriage, I guess."
  They rose, gathering up their valises.
  "Hoh!" said Jadwin. "No servants now, Laura,
to carry our things down for us and open the door, and
it's a hack, old girl, instead of the victoria or coupe."
  "What if it is?" she cried. "What do 'things,' serv-
ants, money, and all amount to now?"
                        400





                     THE PIT
  As Jadwin laid his hand upon the knob of the front
door, he all at once put down his valise and put his arm
about his wife. She caught him about the neck and
looked deep into his eyes a long moment. And then,
without speaking, they kissed each other.
  In the outer vestibule, he raised the umbrella and held
it over her head.
  "Hold it a minute, will you, Laura?" he said.
  He gave it into her hand and swung the door of the
house shut behind him. The noise woke a hollow echo
throughout all the series of empty, denuded rooms.
Jadwin slipped the key in his pocket.
  "Come," he said.
  They stepped out from the ves'tibule. It was already
dark. The rain was falling in gentle slants through the
odorous, cool air. Across the street in the park the first
leaves were beginning to fall; the lake lapped and
washed quietly against the stone embankments and a
belated bicyclist stole past across the asphalt, with the
silent flitting of a bat, his lamp throwing a fan of orange-
coloured haze into the mist of rain.
  In the street in front of the house the driver, descend-
ing from the box, held open the door of the hack. Jad-
win handed Laura in, gave an address to the driver, and
got in himself, slamming the door after. They heard
the driver mount to his seat and speak to his horses.
  "Well," said Jadwin, rubbing the fog from the
window pane of the door, "look your last at the old
place, Laura. You'll never see it again."
  But she would not look.
  "No, no," she said. "I'll look at you, dearest, at
you, and our future, which is to be happier than any
years we have ever known."
  Jadwin did not answer other than by taking her hand
in his, and in silence they drove through the city toward
the train that was to carry them to the new life. A phase
                         401




THE PIT


of the existence of each was closed definitely. The great
corner was a thing of the past; the great corner with the
long train of disasters its collapse had started. The great
failure had precipitated smaller failures, and the aggre-
gate of smaller failures had pulled down one business
house after another. For weeks afterward, the successive
crashes were like the shock and reverberation of under-
mined buildings toppling to their ruin. An important
bank had suspended payment, and hundreds of deposi-
tors had found their little fortunes swept away. The
ramifications of the catastrophe were unbelievable. The
whole tone of financial affairs seemed changed. Money
was "tight" again, credit was withdrawn. The business
world began to speak of hard times once more.
  But Laura would not admit her husband was in any
way to blame. He had suffered, too. She repeated to her-
self his words, again and again:
  "The wheat cornered itself. I simply stood between
two sets of circumstances. The wheat cornered me, not
I the wheat."
  And all those millions and millions of bushels of
Wheat are gone now. The Wheat that had killed Cressler,
that had ingulfed Jadwin's fortune and all but unseated
reason itself; the Wheat that had intervened like a great
torrent to drag her husband from her side and drown
him in the roaring vortices of the Pit, had passed on,
resistless, along its ordered and predetermined courses
from West to East, like a vast Titanic flood, had passed,
leaving Death and Ruin in its wake, but bearing Life
and Prosperity to the crowded cities and centres of
Europe.
  For a moment, vague, dark perplexities assailed her,
questionings as to the elemental forces, the forces of de-
mand and supply that ruled the world. This huge resist-
less Nourisher of the Nations-why was it that it could
not reach the People, could not fulfil its destiny, un-
                         402




THE PIT


marred by all this suffering, unattended by all this mis-
ery?
  She did not know. But as she searched, troubled and
disturbed for an answer, she was aware of a certain fa-
miliarity in the neighbourhood the carriage was travers-
ing. The strange sense of having lived through this scene,
these circumstances, once before, took hold upon her.
  She looked out quickly, on either hand, through the
blurred glasses of the carriage doors. Surely, surely, this
locality had once before impressed itself upon her im-
agination. She turned to her husband, an exclamation
upon her lips; but Jadwin, by the dim light of the car-
riage lanterns, was studying a railroad folder.
  All at once, intuitively, Laura turned in her place, and
raising the flap that covered the little window at the
back of the carriage, looked behind. On either side of the
vista in converging lines stretched the tall office build-
ings, lights burning in a few of their windows, even yet.
Over the end of the street the lead-coloured sky was
broken by a pale faint haze of light, and silhouetted
against this rose a sombre mass, unbroken by any glim-
mer, rearing a black and formidable facade against the
blur of the sky behind it.
  And this was the last impression of the part of her
life that that day brought to a close; the tall grey office
buildings, the murk of rain, the haze of light in the
heavens, and raised against it, the pile of the Board of
Trade Building, black, monolithic, crouching on its foun-
dations like a monstrous sphinx with blind eyes, silent,
grave-crouching there without a sound, without sign
of life, under the night and the drifting veil of rain.


                      THE END


403
















This book is a preservation facsimile produced for
  the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
  It is made in compliance with copyright law
       and produced on acid-free archival
             60# book weight paper
        which meets the requirements of
ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (permanence of paper).

   Preservation facsimile printing and binding
                      by
            Northern Micrographics
            Brookhaven Bindery
            La Crosse, Wisconsin
                     2009