Complete Works of Frank Norris

by Frank Norris

  Grossmann still uttered his plaint from time to time, but no one so much as pretended to listen. The Porteous trio and Leaycraft kept the price steady at ninety-four and an eighth, but showed no inclination to force it higher. For a full five minutes not a trade was recorded. The Pit waited for the Report on the Visible Supply.

  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 advance. It seemed to be understood that either Leaycraft 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 opening invaded the remaining groups. Leaycraft, the formidable, as well as Paterson of the Porteous gang, and even the solemn Winston, found an apparently inexhaustible 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. 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. Grossman, indignant 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 expect that morning, and so began to “work off” his selling 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 vociferations, 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 question, 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, Leaycraft, 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 “visible,” 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 towards 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. Desperate, he grabbed Paterson by the shoulder.

  “‘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 expectant attitudes, looking into one another’s faces, waiting 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 shouldering towards the door the groups wherein the bidding 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, thousands 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. Washerwomen appeared with steaming pails, porters pushing 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 during the trading — and their calls of “Wheat sold to Teller and West,” “May wheat sold to Burbank & Co.,” “May oats sold to Matthewson and 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 appearance, lowering the tall colored 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 themselves 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 washerwomen. 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 bushels of spilled wheat, crushed, broken, and sodden, into his dust pans.

  The day’s campaign was over. It was past two o’clock. 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.

  IV

  In the front parlor 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 decollete gown of blue silk. Curtis Jadwin and Cressler himself stood by the open fireplace smoking. Landry Court fidgeted on the sofa, pretending 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 cigarette between his fingers, discussed the spring exhibit of water-colors with Laura and Mrs. Cressler, Page listening 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 occasion 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 everyone awaited the arrival of the “coach,” Monsieur Gerardy, who was always late.

  “To my notion,” observed Corthell, “the water-color that pretends to be anything more than a sketch over-steps its intended limits. The elaborated water-color, I 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. Invariably 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, every one 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 consummation 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 million of bushels, had exploded the news of the intended action of the French chamber. Amid a tremendous clamour the price fell. The Bulls were panic-stricken. Leaycraft the redoubtable was overwhelmed at the very start. The Porteous trio heroically attempted to shoulder 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 eighty-nine, and at last — a final collapse — touched eighty-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 gradually, 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 immediate 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 set-back to the Porteous gang. Exactly the amount of his friend’s profits Jadwin did not know. As for himself, he had received 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 ou
t 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 Jadwin. “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 you. Do you know,” he added suddenly. “Do you know that Leaycraft has gone to keep books for a manufacturing concern out in Dubuque?”

  Jadwin pulled his mustache. 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, pulling his mustache vigorously:

  “Charlie, upon my word, what a beautiful — what beautiful hair that girl has!”

  Laura was wearing it very high that evening, the shining 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 Dearborns 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 chaperone, 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 Laura how many times Page had danced with the same young man.