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The Pit

F >> Frank Norris >> The Pit




"I haven't a doubt of it, Mr. Jadwin," Laura hastened to exclaim.
"And you must not think that I don't believe 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 willing 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 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 remember 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 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 earnestly. I can give you no idea
how seriously, how earnestly. 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, "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
exhortations of Monsieur Gerardy. Mrs. Cressler and the Gretry girl
watched the progress of the rehearsal attentively from the doorway
of the dining-room. Aunt Wess' and Mr. Cressler were discussing
psychic research 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 understood. 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. 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 some one 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 inexplicable 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 marriage. She hesitated a moment before answering Jadwin, 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 "experiences," of their "premonitions,"
of the unaccountable 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 spiritualism. Laura, have you ever had any
'experiences'?"

She shook her head.

"No, no. I am too material, I am afraid."

"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. Wou'dn'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 hundreds of thousand of poor devils 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 listened 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 send it up too far,
the poor man in Europe suffers, the fellow who eats it. And food to
the peasant on the continent 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 hundreds 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 peasant 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 you 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 hundred, 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 fellow, who has the market in the palm of his hand,
tightens one finger, and our young man is ruined, body and mind.
He's lost the taste, the very capacity for legitimate 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 some one 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 whirlpool.... '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 Page beckoned to Laura from the far end of the parlor, 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 the kitchen table, here the old-fashioned writing-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
Mademoiselle 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 crossings and business. Then at her
cue, Laura, who was to play the role 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 condescending than her poise. She dramatised not only her
role, 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:

"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 parlor 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
suggesting to Cressler the appropriateness of having the coupe
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.

As the good-bys 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 some one else paid.

Page scolded him roundly. What next? The idea. He was not to be so
completely silly. She didn't propose to have the responsibility of
his catching pneumonia 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 Landry 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-by 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:

"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 importance nowadays," he spoke with a studied
carelessness, as though announcing a fact that Laura must know
already, "and that is, to be near you. It is astonishing. 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
enthusiasms. 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 wonderful 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 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 realised that she was sheering towards 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 realised
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 recognised
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?"

"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, drawing 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 moment'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 interests me much--now. But I think I had better
go. At 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-by."

"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 answered.

"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.

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