by Frank Norris
The grounds about her home were beautiful. The stable itself was half again as large as her old home opposite St. James’s, and the conservatory, in which she took the keenest delight, was a wonderful affair — a vast bubble-like structure of green panes, whence, winter and summer, came a multitude of flowers for the house — violets, lilies of the valley, jonquils, hyacinths, tulips, and her own loved roses.
But the interior of the house was, in parts, less satisfactory. Jadwin, so soon as his marriage was a certainty, had bought the house, and had given over its internal furnishings to a firm of decorators. Innocently enough he had intended to surprise his wife, had told himself that she should not be burdened with the responsibility of selection and planning. Fortunately, however, the decorators were men of taste. There was nothing to offend, and much to delight in the results they obtained in the dining-room, breakfast-room, parlors, drawing-rooms, and suites of bedrooms. But Laura, though the beauty of it all enchanted her, could never rid herself of a feeling that it was not hers. It impressed her with its splendour of natural woods and dull “colour effects,” its cunning electrical devices, its mechanical contrivances for comfort, like the ready-made luxury and “convenience” of a Pullman.
However, she had intervened in time to reserve certain of the rooms to herself, and these — the library, her bedroom, and more especially that apartment from whose bay windows she looked out upon the Lake, and which, as if she were still in her old home, she called the “upstairs sitting-room” — she furnished to suit herself.
For very long she found it difficult, even with all her resolution, with all her pleasure in her new-gained wealth, to adapt herself to a manner of living upon so vast a scale. She found herself continually planning the marketing for the next day, forgetting that this now was part of the housekeeper’s duties. For months she persisted in “doing her room” after breakfast, just as she had been taught to do in the old days when she was a little girl at Barrington. She was afraid of the elevator, and never really learned how to use the neat little system of telephones that connected the various parts of the house with the servants’ quarters. For months her chiefest concern in her wonderful surroundings took the form of a dread of burglars.
Her keenest delights were her stable and the great organ in the art gallery; and these alone more than compensated for her uneasiness in other particulars.
Horses Laura adored — black ones with flowing tails and manes, like certain pictures she had seen. Nowadays, except on the rarest occasions, she never set foot out of doors, except to take her carriage, her coupe, her phaeton, or her dog-cart. Best of all she loved her saddle horses. She had learned to ride, and the morning was inclement indeed that she did not take a long and solitary excursion through the Park, followed by the groom and Jadwin’s two spotted coach dogs.
The great organ terrified her at first. But on closer acquaintance she came to regard it as a vast-hearted, sympathetic friend. She already played the piano very well, and she scorned Jadwin’s self-playing “attachment.” A teacher was engaged to instruct her in the intricacies of stops and of pedals, and in the difficulties of the “echo” organ, “great” organ, “choir,” and “swell.” So soon as she had mastered these, Laura entered upon a new world of delight. Her taste in music was as yet a little immature — Gounod and even Verdi were its limitations. But to hear, responsive to the lightest pressures of her finger-tips, the mighty instrument go thundering through the cadences of the “Anvil Chorus” gave her a thrilling sense of power that was superb.
The untrained, unguided instinct of the actress in Laura had fostered in her a curious penchant toward melodrama. She had a taste for the magnificent. She revelled in these great musical “effects” upon her organ, the grandiose easily appealed to her, while as for herself, the role of the “grande dame,” with this wonderful house for background and environment, came to be for her, quite unconsciously, a sort of game in which she delighted.
It was by this means that, in the end, she succeeded in fitting herself to her new surroundings. Innocently enough, and with a harmless, almost childlike, affectation, she posed a little, and by so doing found the solution of the incongruity between herself — the Laura of moderate means and quiet life — and the massive luxury with which she was now surrounded. Without knowing it, she began to act the part of a great lady — and she acted it well. She assumed the existence of her numerous servants as she assumed the fact of the trees in the park; she gave herself into the hands of her maid, not as Laura Jadwin of herself would have done it, clumsily and with the constraint of inexperience, but as she would have done it if she had been acting the part on the stage, with an air, with all the nonchalance of a marquise, with — in fine — all the superb condescension of her “grand manner.”
She knew very well that if she relaxed this hauteur, that her servants would impose on her, would run over her, and in this matter she found new cause for wonder in her husband.
The servants, from the frigid butler to the under groom, adored Jadwin. A half-expressed wish upon his part produced a more immediate effect than Laura’s most explicit orders. He never descended to familiarity with them, and, as a matter of fact, ignored them to such an extent that he forgot or confused their names. But where Laura was obeyed with precise formality and chilly deference, Jadwin was served with obsequious alacrity, and with a good humour that even livery and “correct form” could not altogether conceal.
Laura’s eyes were first opened to this genuine affection which Jadwin inspired in his servants by an incident which occurred in the first months of their occupancy of the new establishment. One of the gardeners discovered the fact that Jadwin affected gardenias in the lapel of his coat, and thereat was at immense pains to supply him with a fresh bloom from the conservatory each morning. The flower was to be placed at Jadwin’s plate, and it was quite the event of the day for the old fellow when the master appeared on the front steps with the flower in his coat. But a feud promptly developed over this matter between the gardener and the maid who took the butler’s place at breakfast every morning. Sometimes Jadwin did not get the flower, and the gardener charged the maid with remissness in forgetting to place it at his plate after he had given it into her hands. In the end the affair became so clamourous that Jadwin himself had to intervene. The gardener was summoned and found to have been in fault only in his eagerness to please.
“Billy,” said Jadwin, to the old man at the conclusion of the whole matter, “you’re an old fool.”
And the gardener thereupon had bridled and stammered as though Jadwin had conferred a gift.
“Now if I had called him ‘an old fool,’” observed Laura, “he would have sulked the rest of the week.”
The happiest time of the day for Laura was the evening. In the daytime she was variously occupied, but her thoughts continually ran forward to the end of the day, when her husband would be with her. Jadwin breakfasted early, and Laura bore him company no matter how late she had stayed up the night before. By half-past eight he was out of the house, driving down to his office in his buggy behind Nip and Tuck. By nine Laura’s own saddle horse was brought to the carriage porch, and until eleven she rode in the park. At twelve she lunched with Page, and in the afternoon — in the “upstairs sitting-room” read her Browning or her Meredith, the latter one of her newest discoveries, till three or four. Sometimes after that she went out in her carriage. If it was to “shop” she drove to the “Rookery,” in La Salle Street, after her purchases were made, and sent the footman up to her husband’s office to say that she would take him home. Or as often as not she called for Mrs. Cressler or Aunt Wess’ or Mrs. Gretry, and carried them off to some exhibit of painting, or flowers, or more rarely — for she had not the least interest in social affairs — to teas or receptions.
But in the evenings, after dinner, she had her husband to herself. Page was almost invariably occupied by one or more of her young men in the drawing-room, but Laura and Jadwin shut themselves in the library, a lo
fty panelled room — a place of deep leather chairs, tall bookcases, etchings, and sombre brasses — and there, while Jadwin lay stretched out upon the broad sofa, smoking cigars, one hand behind his head, Laura read aloud to him.
His tastes in fiction were very positive. Laura at first had tried to introduce him to her beloved Meredith. But after three chapters, when he had exclaimed, “What’s the fool talking about?” she had given over and begun again from another starting-point. Left to himself, his wife sorrowfully admitted that he would have gravitated to the “Mysterious Island” and “Michael Strogoff,” or even to “Mr. Potter of Texas” and “Mr. Barnes of New York.” But she had set herself to accomplish his literary education, so, Meredith failing, she took up “Treasure Island” and “The Wrecker.” Much of these he made her skip.
“Oh, let’s get on with the ‘story,’” he urged. But Pinkerton for long remained for him an ideal, because he was “smart” and “alive.”
“I’m not long very many of art,” he announced. “But I believe that any art that don’t make the world better and happier is no art at all, and is only fit for the dump heap.”
But at last Laura found his abiding affinity in Howells.
“Nothing much happens,” he said. “But I know all those people.” He never could rid himself of a surreptitious admiration for Bartley Hubbard. He, too, was “smart” and “alive.” He had the “get there” to him. “Why,” he would say, “I know fifty boys just like him down there in La Salle Street.” Lapham he loved as a brother. Never a point in the development of his character that he missed or failed to chuckle over. Bromfield Cory was poohed and boshed quite out of consideration as a “loafer,” a “dilletanty,” but Lapham had all his sympathy.
“Yes, sir,” he would exclaim, interrupting the narrative, “that’s just it. That’s just what I would have done if I had been in his place. Come, this chap knows what he’s writing about — not like that Middleton ass, with his ‘Dianas’ and ‘Amazing Marriages.’”
Occasionally the Jadwins entertained. Laura’s husband was proud of his house, and never tired of showing his friends about it. Laura gave Page a “coming-out” dance, and nearly every Sunday the Cresslers came to dinner. But Aunt Wess’ could, at first, rarely be induced to pay the household a visit. So much grandeur made the little widow uneasy, even a little suspicious. She would shake her head at Laura, murmuring:
“My word, it’s all very fine, but, dear me, Laura, I hope you do pay for everything on the nail, and don’t run up any bills. I don’t know what your dear father would say to it all, no, I don’t.” And she would spend hours in counting the electric bulbs, which she insisted were only devices for some new-fangled gas.
“Thirty-three in this one room alone,” she would say. “I’d like to see your dear husband’s face when he gets his gas bill. And a dressmaker that lives in the house.... Well, — I don’t want to say anything.”
Thus three years had gone by. The new household settled to a regime. Continually Jadwin grew richer. His real estate appreciated in value; rents went up. Every time he speculated in wheat, it was upon a larger scale, and every time he won. He was a Bear always, and on those rare occasions when he referred to his ventures in Laura’s hearing, it was invariably to say that prices were going down. Till at last had come that spring when he believed that the bottom had been touched, had had the talk with Gretry, and had, in secret, “turned Bull,” with the suddenness of a strategist.
The matter was yet in Gretry’s mind while the party remained in the art gallery; and as they were returning to the drawing-room he detained Jadwin an instant.
“If you are set upon breaking your neck,” he said, “you might tell me at what figure you want me to buy for you to-morrow.”
“At the market,” returned Jadwin. “I want to get into the thing quick.”
A little later, when they had all reassembled in the drawing-room, and while Mrs. Gretry was telling an interminable story of how Isabel had all but asphyxiated herself the night before, a servant announced Landry Court, and the young man entered, spruce and debonair, a bouquet in one hand and a box of candy in the other.
Some days before this Page had lectured him solemnly on the fact that he was over-absorbed in business, and was starving his soul. He should read more, she told him, and she had said that if he would call upon her on this particular night, she would indicate a course of reading for him.
So it came about that, after a few moments, conversation with the older people in the drawing-room, the two adjourned to the library.
There, by way of a beginning, Page asked him what was his favourite character in fiction. She spoke of the beauty of Ruskin’s thoughts, of the gracefulness of Charles Lamb’s style. The conversation lagged a little. Landry, not to be behind her, declared for the modern novel, and spoke of the “newest book.” But Page never read new books; she was not interested, and their talk, unable to establish itself upon a common ground, halted, and was in a fair way to end, until at last, and by insensible degrees, they began to speak of themselves and of each other. Promptly they were all aroused. They listened to one another’s words with studious attention, answered with ever-ready promptness, discussed, argued, agreed, and disagreed over and over again.
Landry had said:
“When I was a boy, I always had an ambition to excel all the other boys. I wanted to be the best baseball player on the block — and I was, too. I could pitch three curves when I was fifteen, and I find I am the same now that I am a man grown. When I do a thing, I want to do it better than any one else. From the very first I have always been ambitious. It is my strongest trait. Now,” he went on, turning to Page, “your strongest trait is your thoughtfulness. You are what they call introspective.”
“Yes, yes,” she answered. “Yes, I think so, too.”
“You don’t need the stimulation of competition. You are at your best when you are with just one person. A crowd doesn’t interest you.”
“I hate it,” she exclaimed.
“Now with me, with a man of my temperament, a crowd is a real inspiration. When every one is talking and shouting around me, or to me, even, my mind works at its best. But,” he added, solemnly, “it must be a crowd of men. I can’t abide a crowd of women.”
“They chatter so,” she assented. “I can’t either.”
“But I find that the companionship of one intelligent, sympathetic woman is as much of a stimulus as a lot of men. It’s funny, isn’t it, that I should be like that?”
“Yes,” she said, “it is funny — strange. But I believe in companionship. I believe that between man and woman that is the great thing — companionship. Love,” she added, abruptly, and then broke off with a deep sigh. “Oh, I don’t know,” she murmured. “Do you remember those lines:
“Man’s love is of his life a thing apart,
’Tis woman’s whole existence.
Do you believe that?”
“Well,” he asserted, gravely, choosing his words with deliberation, “it might be so, but all depends upon the man and woman. Love,” he added, with tremendous gravity, “is the greatest power in the universe.”
“I have never been in love,” said Page. “Yes, love is a wonderful power.”
“I’ve never been in love, either.”
“Never, never been in love?”
“Oh, I’ve thought I was in love,” he said, with a wave of his hand.
“I’ve never even thought I was,” she answered, musing.
“Do you believe in early marriages?” demanded Landry.
“A man should never marry,” she said, deliberately, “till he can give his wife a good home, and good clothes and — and that sort of thing. I do not think I shall ever marry.”
“You! Why, of course you will. Why not?”
“No, no. It is my disposition. I am morose and taciturn. Laura says so.”
Landry protested with vehemence.
“And,” she went on, “I have long, brooding fits of melancholy.
”
“Well, so have I,” he threw out recklessly. “At night, sometimes — when I wake up. Then I’m all down in the mouth, and I say, ‘What’s the use, by jingo?’”
“Do you believe in pessimism? I do. They say Carlyle was a terrible pessimist.”
“Well — talking about love. I understand that you can’t believe in pessimism and love at the same time. Wouldn’t you feel unhappy if you lost your faith in love?”
“Oh, yes, terribly.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then Landry remarked:
“Now you are the kind of woman that would only love once, but love for that once mighty deep and strong.”
Page’s eyes grew wide. She murmured:
“’Tis a woman’s whole existence — whole existence.’ Yes, I think I am like that.”
“Do you think Enoch Arden did right in going away after he found them married?”
“Oh, have you read that? Oh, isn’t that a beautiful poem? Wasn’t he noble? Wasn’t he grand? Oh, yes, yes, he did right.”
“By George, I wouldn’t have gone away. I’d have gone right into that house, and I would have made things hum. I’d have thrown the other fellow out, lock, stock, and barrel.”
“That’s just like a man, so selfish, only thinking of himself. You don’t know the meaning of love — great, true, unselfish love.”
“I know the meaning of what’s mine. Think I’d give up the woman I loved to another man?”
“Even if she loved the other man best?”
“I’d have my girl first, and find out how she felt about the other man afterwards.”
“Oh, but think if you gave her up, how noble it would be. You would have sacrificed all that you held the dearest to an ideal. Oh, if I were in Enoch Arden’s place, and my husband thought I was dead, and I knew he was happy with another woman, it would just be a joy to deny myself, sacrifice myself to spare him unhappiness. That would be my idea of love. Then I’d go into a convent.”
