The Pit

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In the box the conversation turned upon stage management, 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 criticised 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 asking:

"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 talking to her. Soon she
was surprised to notice that he was trying hard to be agreeable, and
before they had exchanged 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 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 tremendous 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 concluded, the Helmick
failure, and between the chords and bars of a famous opera men
talked in excited whispers, 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 moment--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, watching quietly
all this posing and attitudinising. 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 mistrustful 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 Corthell's
voice at her shoulder. "I knew you would. There is nothing like
music such as this to appeal to the emotions, 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 realised--any other than
sex-relations. With Jadwin somehow it had been different. She had
felt his manhood more than her womanhood, 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.

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 soprano, 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
arrived. Tempers were lost; women, cloaked to the ears, their heads
protected only by fichus or mantillas, quarrelled 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.

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 gigantic
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 lamplight, 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-by; hastily Laura
expressed to Mrs. Cressler her appreciation 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 murmured.

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.

"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 interested her, and the decollete
gowns had been particularly impressing.

"I never saw such dressing in all my life," she declared. "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 downtown streets,
towards the North Side, where the Dearborns 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 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 exclamation.

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 noontime.
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 in 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 district,' he called it. And these
are the brokers' offices working overtime--that Helmick deal, you
know."

Laura looked, suddenly stupefied. Here it was, then, 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 battle! 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 galvanised 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 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.

II

Laura Dearborn's native town was Barrington, 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 acquired 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 conducting 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 tickets to Chicago and a course
of tuition for her at a seminary.

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 accumulating 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 independent.

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 indicate 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 tragedienne, playing the roles of
Shakespeare's heroines. This idea of hers was more a desire than an
ambition, but it could not be realised in Barrington, Massachusetts.
For a year she temporised, procrastinated, loth to leave the old
home, loth to leave the grave in the 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 memorised 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
disapprobation of the entire village, as if she had sunk into some
decadent and enervating Lower-Empire degeneracy.

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 emulating 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 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-by 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
difficulties. Only the lure of Italian opera, heard from a box,
could have tempted them to have accepted the invitation 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 occupancy. But it had happened that their month
at the hotel was just up, and rather than engage the rooms for
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 another; a
roll of carpet leaned in one corner and a pile of mattresses
occupied another.

As Laura considered the prospect she realised 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' stirring. She turned
to Page, who upon the pillows beside her still slept, her stocking
around her neck as a guarantee 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 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 observes 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?" discussed 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
strenuously in love with Laura, and no one of the new household
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 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.

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