William Shakespeare - "The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus"

Richard Brinsley Sheridan - "The Duenna"

George MacDonald - "The Seaboard Parish Volume 1"

Arthur T. Quiller Couch - "The Splendid Spur"

The Pit

F >> Frank Norris >> The Pit




"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 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 trading," answered
Cressler, getting up from the table. "You convince me that your
clique is not a speculative 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," Sweeny 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 clique before we can approach Stires
& Co. We may have to get a pile of money from them, and they're apt
to be scary and cautious. Cressler being in, do you see, gives the
clique a substantial, conservative character. You let Crookes manage
it. He knows his business."

"Say," exclaimed Sweeny, an idea occurring to him, "I thought
Crookes was going to put us wise to-day. He must know by now who the
Big Bull is."

"No doubt he does know," answered the other. "He'll tell us when
he's ready. But I think I could copper the individual. There was a
great big jag of wheat sold to Liverpool a little while ago through
Gretry, Converse & Co., who've been acting for Curtis Jadwin for a
good many years."

"Oh, Jadwin, hey? Hi! we're after big game now, I'm thinking."

"But look here," warned Freye. "Here's a point. Cressler is not to
know by the longest kind of chalk; anyhow not until he's so far in,
he can't pull out. He and Jadwin are good friends, I'm told. Hello,
it's raining a little. Well, I've got to be moving. See you at lunch
to-morrow."

As Cressler turned into La Salle Street the light sprinkle of rain
suddenly swelled to a deluge, and he had barely time to dodge into
the portico of the Illinois Trust to escape a drenching. All the
passers-by close at hand were making for the same shelter, and among
these Cressler was surprised to see Curtis Jadwin, who came running
up the narrow lane from the cafe entrance of the Grand Pacific
Hotel.

"Hello! Hello, J.," he cried, when his friend came panting up the
steps, "as the whale said to Jonah, 'Come in out of the wet.'"

The two friends stood a moment under the portico, their coat collars
turned up, watching the scurrying in the street.

"Well," said Cressler, at last, "I see we got 'dollar wheat' this
morning."

"Yes," answered Jadwin, nodding, "'dollar wheat.'"

"I suppose," went on Cressler, "I suppose you are sorry, now that
you're not in it any more."

"Oh, no," replied Jadwin, nibbling off the end of a cigar. "No,
I'm--I'm just as well out of it."

"And it's for good and all this time, eh?"

"For good and all."

"Well," commented Cressler, "some one else has begun where you left
off, I guess. This Unknown Bull, I mean. All the boys are trying to
find out who he is. Crookes, though, was saying to me--Cal Crookes,
you know--he was saying he didn't care who he was. Crookes is out of
the market, too, I understand--and means to keep out, he says, till
the Big Bull gets tired. Wonder who the Big Bull is."

"Oh, there isn't any Big Bull," blustered Jadwin. "There's simply a
lot of heavy buying, or maybe there might be a ring of New York men
operating through Gretry. I don't know; and I guess I'm like
Crookes, I don't care--now that I'm out of the game. Real estate is
too lively now to think of anything else; keeps me on the keen jump
early and late. I tell you what, Charlie, this city isn't half grown
yet. And do you know, I've noticed another thing--cities grow to the
westward. I've got a building and loan association going, out in the
suburbs on the West Side, that's a dandy. Well, looks as though the
rain had stopped. Remember me to madam. So long, Charlie."

On leaving Cressler Jadwin went on to his offices in The Rookery,
close at hand. But he had no more than settled himself at his desk,
when he was called up on his telephone.

"Hello!" said a small, dry transformation of Gretry's voice. "Hello,
is that you, J.? Well, in the matter of that cash wheat in Duluth,
I've bought that for you."

"All right," answered Jadwin, then he added, "I guess we had better
have a long talk now."

"I was going to propose that," answered the broker. "Meet me this
evening at seven at the Grand Pacific. It's just as well that we're
not seen together nowadays. Don't ask for me. Go right into the
smoking-room. I'll be there. And, by the way, I shall expect a reply
from Minneapolis about half-past five this afternoon. I would like
to be able to get at you at once when that comes in. Can you wait
down for that?"

"Well, I was going home," objected Jadwin. "I wasn't home to dinner
last night, and Mrs. Jadwin--"

"This is pretty important, you know," warned the broker. "And if I
call you up on your residence telephone, there's always the chance
of somebody cutting in and overhearing us."

"Oh, very well, then," assented Jadwin. "I'll call it a day. I'll
get home for luncheon to-morrow. It can't be helped. By the way, I
met Cressler this afternoon, Sam, and he seemed sort of suspicious
of things, to me--as though he had an inkling."

"Better hang up," came back the broker's voice. "Better hang up, J.
There's big risk telephoning like this. I'll see you to-night.
Good-by."

And so it was that about half an hour later Laura was called to the
telephone in the library.

"Oh, not coming home at all to-night?" she cried blankly in response
to Jadwin's message.

"It's just impossible, old girl," he answered.

"But why?" she insisted.

"Oh, business; this building and loan association of mine."

"Oh, I know it can't be that. Why don't you let Mr. Gretry manage
your--"

But at this point Jadwin, the warning of Gretry still fresh in his
mind, interrupted quickly:

"I must hang up now, Laura. Good-by. I'll see you to-morrow noon and
explain it all to you. Good-by.... Laura.... Hello! ... Are you
there yet? ... Hello, hello!"

But Jadwin had heard in the receiver the rattle and click as of a
tiny door closing. The receiver was silent and dead; and he knew
that his wife, disappointed and angry, had "hung up" without saying
good-by.

The days passed. Soon another week had gone by. The wheat market
steadied down after the dollar mark was reached, and for a few days
a calmer period intervened. Down beneath the surface, below the ebb
and flow of the currents, the great forces were silently at work
reshaping the "situation." Millions of dollars were beginning to be
set in motion to govern the millions of bushels of wheat. At the end
of the third week of the month Freye reported to Crookes that
Cressler was "in," and promptly negotiations were opened between the
clique and the great banking house of the Stires. But meanwhile
Jadwin and Gretry, foreseeing no opposition, realising the
incalculable advantage that their knowledge of the possibility of a
"corner" gave them, were, quietly enough, gathering in the grain. As
early as the end of March Jadwin, as incidental to his contemplated
corner of May wheat, had bought up a full half of the small supply
of cash wheat in Duluth, Chicago, Liverpool and Paris--some twenty
million bushels; and against this had sold short an equal amount of
the July option. Having the actual wheat in hand he could not lose.
If wheat went up, his twenty million bushels were all the more
valuable; if it went down, he covered his short sales at a profit.
And all the while, steadily, persistently, he bought May wheat, till
Gretry's book showed him to be possessed of over twenty million
bushels of the grain deliverable for that month.

But all this took not only his every minute of time, but his every
thought, his every consideration. He who had only so short a while
before considered the amount of five million bushels burdensome,
demanding careful attention, was now called upon to watch, govern,
and control the tremendous forces latent in a line of forty million.
At times he remembered the Curtis Jadwin of the spring before his
marriage, the Curtis Jadwin who had sold a pitiful million on the
strength of the news of the French import duty, and had considered
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 market, and the man who could do that might well call himself
"great," without presumption. He knew that he overtopped them
all--Gretry, the Crookes gang, the arrogant, sneering Bears, all the
men of the world of the Board of Trade. He was stronger, bigger,
shrewder than them all. A few days now would show, when they would
all wake to the fact that wheat, which they had promised to deliver
before they had it in hand, was not to be got except from him--and
at whatever price he chose to impose. He could exact from them a
hundred dollars a bushel if he chose, and they must pay him the
price or become bankrupts.

By now his mind was upon this one great fact--May
Wheat--continually. It was with him the instant he woke in the
morning. It kept him company during his hasty breakfast; in the
rhythm of his horses' hoofs, as the team carried him down town he
heard, "Wheat--wheat--wheat, wheat--wheat--wheat." No sooner did he
enter La Salle Street, than the roar of traffic came to his ears as
the roar of the torrent of wheat which drove through Chicago from
the Western farms to the mills and bakeshops of Europe. There at the
foot of the street the torrent swirled once upon itself, forty
million strong, in the eddy which he told himself he mastered. The
afternoon waned, night came on. The day's business was to be gone
over; the morrow's campaign was to be planned; little, unexpected
side issues, a score of them, a hundred of them, cropped out from
hour to hour; new decisions had to be taken each minute. At dinner
time he left the office, and his horses carried him home again,
while again their hoofs upon the asphalt beat out unceasingly the
monotone of the one refrain, "Wheat--wheat--wheat,
wheat--wheat--wheat." At dinner table he could not eat. Between each
course he found himself going over the day's work, testing it,
questioning himself, "Was this rightly done?" "Was that particular
decision sound?" "Is there a loophole here?" "Just what was the
meaning of that despatch?" After the meal the papers, contracts,
statistics and reports which he had brought with him in his
Gladstone bag were to be studied. As often as not Gretry called, and
the two, shut in the library, talked, discussed, and planned till
long after midnight.

Then at last, when he had shut the front door upon his lieutenant
and turned to face the empty, silent house, came the moment's
reaction. The tired brain flagged and drooped; exhaustion, like a
weight of lead, hung upon his heels. But somewhere a hall clock
struck, a single, booming note, like a gong--like the signal that
would unchain the tempest in the Pit to-morrow morning.
Wheat--wheat--wheat, wheat--wheat--wheat! Instantly the jaded senses
braced again, instantly the wearied mind sprang to its post. He
turned out the lights, he locked the front door. Long since the
great house was asleep. In the cold, dim silence of the earliest
dawn Curtis Jadwin went to bed, only to lie awake, staring up into
the darkness, planning, devising new measures, reviewing the day's
doings, while the faint tides of blood behind the eardrums murmured
ceaselessly to the overdriven brain, "Wheat--wheat--wheat,
wheat--wheat--wheat. Forty million bushels, forty million, forty
million."

Whole days now went by when he saw his wife only at breakfast and at
dinner. At times she was angry, hurt, and grieved that he should
leave her so much alone. But there were moments when she was sorry
for him. She seemed to divine that he was not all to blame.

What Laura thought he could only guess. She no longer spoke of his
absorption in business. At times he thought he saw reproach and
appeal in her dark eyes, at times anger and a pride cruelly wounded.
A few months ago this would have touched him. But now he all at once
broke out vehemently:

"You think I am wilfully doing this! You don't know, you haven't a
guess. I corner the wheat! Great heavens, it is the wheat that has
cornered me! The corner made itself. I happened to stand between two
sets of circumstances, and they made me do what I've done. I
couldn't get out of it now, with all the good will in the world. Go
to the theatre to-night with you and the Cresslers? Why, old girl,
you might as well ask me to go to Jericho. Let that Mr. Corthell
take my place."

And very naturally this is what was done. The artist sent a great
bunch of roses to Mrs. Jadwin upon the receipt of her invitation,
and after the play had the party to supper in his apartments, that
overlooked the Lake Front. Supper over, he escorted her, Mrs.
Cressler, and Page back to their respective homes.

By a coincidence that struck them all as very amusing, he was the
only man of the party. At the last moment Page had received a
telegram from Landry. He was, it appeared, sick, and in bed. The
day's work on the Board of Trade had quite used him up for the
moment, and his doctor forbade him to stir out of doors. Mrs.
Cressler explained that Charlie had something on his mind these
days, that was making an old man of him.

"He don't ever talk shop with me," she said. "I'm sure he hasn't
been speculating, but he's worried and fidgety to beat all I ever
saw, this last week; and now this evening he had to take himself off
to meet some customer or other at the Palmer House."

They dropped Mrs. Cressler at the door of her home and then went on
to the Jadwins'.

"I remember," said Laura to Corthell, "that once before the three of
us came home this way. Remember? It was the night of the opera. That
was the night I first met Mr. Jadwin."

"It was the night of the Helmick failure," said Page, seriously,
"and the office buildings were all lit up. See," she added, as they
drove up to the house, "there's a light in the library, and it must
be nearly one o'clock. Mr. Jadwin is up yet."

Laura fell suddenly silent. When was it all going to end, and how?
Night after night her husband shut himself thus in the library, and
toiled on till early dawn. She enjoyed no companionship with him.
Her evenings were long, her time hung with insupportable heaviness
upon her hands.

"Shall you be at home?" inquired Corthell, as he held her hand a
moment at the door. "Shall you be at home to-morrow evening? May I
come and play to you again?"

"Yes, yes," she answered. "Yes, I shall be home. Yes, do come."

Laura's carriage drove the artist back to his apartments. All the
way he sat motionless in his place, looking out of the window with
unseeing eyes. His cigarette went out. He drew another from his
case, but forgot to light it.

Thoughtful and abstracted he slowly mounted the stairway--the
elevator having stopped for the night--to his studio, let himself
in, and, throwing aside his hat and coat, sat down without lighting
the gas in front of the fireplace, where (the weather being even yet
sharp) an armful of logs smouldered on the flagstones.

His man, Evans, came from out an inner room to ask if he wanted
anything. Corthell got out of his evening coat, and Evans brought
him his smoking-jacket and set the little table with its long tin
box of cigarettes and ash trays at his elbow. Then he lit the tall
lamp of corroded bronze, with its heavy silk shade, that stood on a
table in the angle of the room, drew the curtains, put a fresh log
upon the fire, held the tiny silver alcohol burner to Corthell while
the latter lighted a fresh cigarette, and then with a murmured
"Good-night, sir," went out, closing the door with the precaution of
a depredator.

This suite of rooms, facing the Lake Front, was what Corthell called
"home," Whenever he went away, he left it exactly as it was, in the
charge of the faithful Evans; and no mater how long he was absent,
he never returned thither without a sense of welcome and relief.
Even now, perplexed as he was, he was conscious of a feeling of
comfort and pleasure as he settled himself in his chair.

The lamp threw a dull illumination about the room. It was a
picturesque apartment, carefully planned. Not an object that had not
been chosen with care and the utmost discrimination. The walls had
been treated with copper leaf till they produced a sombre,
iridescent effect of green and faint gold, that suggested the depth
of a forest glade shot through with the sunset. Shelves bearing
eighteenth-century books in seal brown tree calf--Addison, the
"Spectator," Junius and Racine, Rochefoucauld and Pascal hung
against it here and there. On every hand the eye rested upon some
small masterpiece of art or workmanship. Now it was an antique
portrait bust of the days of decadent Rome, black marble with a
bronze tiara; now a framed page of a fourteenth-century version of
"Li Quatres Filz d'Aymon," with an illuminated letter of miraculous
workmanship; or a Renaissance gonfalon of silk once white but now
brown with age, yet in the centre blazing with the escutcheon and
quarterings of a dead queen. Between the windows stood an ivory
statuette of the "Venus of the Heel," done in the days of the
magnificent Lorenzo. An original Cazin, and a chalk drawing by
Baudry hung against the wall close by together with a bronze tablet
by Saint Gaudens; while across the entire end of the room opposite
the fireplace, worked in the tapestry of the best period of the
northern French school, Halcyone, her arms already blossoming into
wings, hovered over the dead body of Ceyx, his long hair streaming
like seaweed in the blue waters of the AEgean.

For a long time Corthell sat motionless, looking into the fire. In
an adjoining room a clock chimed the half hour of one, and the
artist stirred, passing his long fingers across his eyes.

After a long while he rose, and going to the fireplace, leaned an
arm against the overhanging shelf, and resting his forehead against
it, remained in that position, looking down at the smouldering logs.

"She is unhappy," he murmured at length. "It is not difficult to see
that.... Unhappy and lonely. Oh, fool, fool to have left her when
you might have stayed! Oh, fool, fool, not to find the strength to
leave her now when you should not remain!"

The following evening Corthell called upon Mrs. Jadwin. She was
alone, as he usually found her. He had brought a book of poems with
him, and instead of passing the evening in the art gallery, as they
had planned, he read aloud to her from Rossetti. Nothing could have
been more conventional than their conversation, nothing more
impersonal. But on his way home one feature of their talk suddenly
occurred to him. It struck him as significant; but of what he did
not care to put into words. Neither he nor Laura had once spoken of
Jadwin throughout the entire evening.

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 some one 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 afficher herself, as a married
woman, with a cavalier? Her married life was intolerable, he was
sure of that; her husband uncongenial. He told himself that she
detested him.

Once, however, this belief was rather shocked by an 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 time 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 afterwards 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
Jadwin 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 indicate. 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. 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
afterwards the three, preferring 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,
talking.

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."

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