Complete Works of Frank Norris

by Frank Norris

  “Why,” said Laura, as she sat down at her place, “why, Pagie, what is in the wind to-day?”

  “Landry is coming,” Page explained, facing about and glancing at the watch pinned to her waist. “He is going to take me down to see the Board of Trade — from the visitor’s gallery, you know. He said this would probably be a great day. Did Mr. Jadwin come home last night?”

  Laura shook her head, without speech. She did not choose to put into words the fact that for three days — with the exception of an hour or two, on the evening after that horrible day of her visit to the Cresslers’ house — she had seen nothing of her husband.

  “Landry says,” continued Page, “that it is awful — down there, these days. He says that it is the greatest fight in the history of La Salle Street. Has Mr. Jadwin, said anything to you? Is he going to win?”

  “I don’t know,” answered Laura, in a low voice; “I don’t know anything about it, Page.”

  She was wondering if even Page had forgotten. When she had come into the room, her first glance had been towards her place at table. But there was nothing there, not even so much as an envelope; and no one had so much as wished her joy of the little anniversary. She had thought Page might have remembered, but her sister’s next words showed that she had more on her mind than birthdays.

  “Laura,” she began, sitting down opposite to her, and unfolding her napkin, with laborious precision. “Laura — Landry and I — Well ... we’re going to be married in the fall.”

  “Why, Pagie,” cried Laura, “I’m just as glad as I can be for you. He’s a fine, clean fellow, and I know he will make you a good husband.”

  Page drew a deep breath.

  “Well,” she said, “I’m glad you think so, too. Before you and Mr. Jadwin were married, I wasn’t sure about having him care for me, because at that time — well—” Page looked up with a queer little smile, “I guess you could have had him — if you had wanted to.”

  “Oh, that,” cried Laura. “Why, Landry never really cared for me. It was all the silliest kind of flirtation. The moment he knew you better, I stood no chance at all.”

  “We’re going to take an apartment on Michigan Avenue, near the Auditorium,” said Page, “and keep house. We’ve talked it all over, and know just how much it will cost to live and keep one servant. I’m going to serve the loveliest little dinners; I’ve learned the kind of cooking he likes already. Oh, I guess there he is now,” she cried, as they heard the front door close.

  Landry came in, carrying a great bunch of cut flowers, and a box of candy. He was as spruce as though he were already the bridegroom, his cheeks pink, his blonde hair radiant. But he was thin and a little worn, a dull feverish glitter came and went in his eyes, and his nervousness, the strain and excitement which beset him were in his every gesture, in every word of his rapid speech.

  “We’ll have to hurry,” he told Page. “I must be down there hours ahead of time this morning.”

  “How is Curtis?” demanded Laura. “Have you seen him lately? How is he getting on with — with his speculating?”

  Landry made a sharp gesture of resignation.

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “I guess nobody knows. We had a fearful day yesterday, but I think we controlled the situation at the end. We ran the price up and up and up till I thought it would never stop. If the Pit thought Mr. Jadwin was beaten, I guess they found out how they were mistaken. For a time there, we were just driving them. But then Mr. Gretry sent word to us in the Pit to sell, and we couldn’t hold them. They came back at us like wolves; they beat the price down five cents, in as many minutes. We had to quit selling, and buy again. But then Mr. Jadwin went at them with a rush. Oh, it was grand! We steadied the price at a dollar and fifteen, stiffened it up to eighteen and a half, and then sent it up again, three cents at a time, till we’d hammered it back to a dollar and a quarter.”

  “But Curtis himself,” inquired Laura, “is he all right, is he well?”

  “I only saw him once,” answered Landry. “He was in Mr. Gretry’s office. Yes, he looked all right. He’s nervous, of course. But Mr. Gretry looks like the sick man. He looks all frazzled out.”

  “I guess, we’d better be going,” said Page, getting up from the table. “Have you had your breakfast, Landry? Won’t you have some coffee?”

  “Oh, I breakfasted hours ago,” he answered. “But you are right. We had better be moving. If you are going to get a seat in the gallery, you must be there half an hour ahead of time, to say the least. Shall I take any word to your husband from you, Mrs. Jadwin?”

  “Tell him that I wish him good luck,” she answered, “and — yes, ask him, if he remembers what day of the month this is — or no, don’t ask him that. Say nothing about it. Just tell him I send him my very best love, and that I wish him all the success in the world.”

  It was about nine o’clock, when Landry and Page reached the foot of La Salle Street. The morning was fine and cool. The sky over the Board of Trade sparkled with sunlight, and the air was full of fluttering wings of the multitude of pigeons that lived upon the leakage of grain around the Board of Trade building.

  “Mr. Cressler used to feed them regularly,” said Landry, as they paused on the street corner opposite the Board. “Poor — poor Mr. Cressler — the funeral is to-morrow, you know.”

  Page shut her eyes.

  “Oh,” she murmured, “think, think of Laura finding him there like that. Oh, it would have killed me, it would have killed me.”

  “Somehow,” observed Landry, a puzzled expression in his eyes, “somehow, by George! she don’t seem to mind very much. You’d have thought a shock like that would have made her sick.”

  “Oh! Laura,” cried Page. “I don’t know her any more these days, she is just like stone — just as though she were crowding down every emotion or any feeling she ever had. She seems to be holding herself in with all her strength — for something — and afraid to let go a finger, for fear she would give way altogether. When she told me about that morning at the Cresslers’ house, her voice was just like ice; she said, ‘Mr. Cressler has shot himself. I found him dead in his library.’ She never shed a tear, and she spoke, oh, in such a terrible monotone. Oh! dear,” cried Page, “I wish all this was over, and we could all get away from Chicago, and take Mr. Jadwin with us, and get him back to be as he used to be, always so light-hearted, and thoughtful and kindly. He used to be making jokes from morning till night. Oh, I loved him just as if he were my father.”

  They crossed the street, and Landry, taking her by the arm, ushered her into the corridor on the ground floor of the Board.

  “Now, keep close to me,” he said, “and see if we can get through somewhere here.”

  The stairs leading up to the main floor were already crowded with visitors, some standing in line close to the wall, others aimlessly wandering up and down, looking and listening, their heads in the air. One of these, a gentleman with a tall white hat, shook his head at Landry and Page, as they pressed by him.

  “You can’t get up there,” he said, “even if they let you in. They’re packed in like sardines already.”

  But Landry reassured Page with a knowing nod of his head.

  “I told the guide up in the gallery to reserve a seat for you. I guess we’ll manage.”

  But when they reached the staircase that connected the main floor with the visitors’ gallery, it became a question as to whether or not they could even get to the seat. The crowd was packed solidly upon the stairs, between the wall and the balustrades. There were men in top hats, and women in silks; rough fellows of the poorer streets, and gaudily dressed queens of obscure neighborhoods, while mixed with these one saw the faded and shabby wrecks that perennially drifted about the Board of Trade, the failures who sat on the chairs of the customers’ rooms day in and day out, reading old newspapers, smoking vile cigars. And there were young men of the type of clerks and bookkeepers, young men with drawn, worn faces, and hot, tired eyes, who pressed upward, silent,
their lips compressed, listening intently to the indefinite echoing murmur that was filling the building.

  For on this morning of the thirteenth of June, the Board of Trade, its halls, corridors, offices, and stairways were already thrilling with a vague and terrible sound. It was only a little after nine o’clock. The trading would not begin for another half hour, but, even now, the mutter of the whirlpool, the growl of the Pit was making itself felt. The eddies were gathering; the thousands of subsidiary torrents that fed the cloaca were moving. From all over the immediate neighborhood they came, from the offices of hundreds of commission houses, from brokers’ offices, from banks, from the tall, grey buildings of La Salle Street, from the street itself. And even from greater distances they came; auxiliary currents set in from all the reach of the Great Northwest, from Minneapolis, Duluth, and Milwaukee. From the Southwest, St. Louis, Omaha, and Kansas City contributed to the volume. The Atlantic Seaboard, New York, and Boston and Philadelphia sent out their tributary streams; London, Liverpool, Paris, and Odessa merged their influences with the vast world-wide flowing that bore down upon Chicago, and that now began slowly, slowly to centre and circle about the Wheat Pit of the Board of Trade.

  Small wonder that the building to Page’s ears vibrated to a strange and ominous humming. She heard it in the distant clicking of telegraph keys, in the echo of hurried whispered conversations held in dark corners, in the noise of rapid footsteps, in the trilling of telephone bells. These sounds came from all around her; they issued from the offices of the building below her, above her and on either side. She was surrounded with them, and they mingled together to form one prolonged and muffled roar, that from moment to moment increased in volume.

  The Pit was getting under way; the whirlpool was forming, and the sound of its courses was like the sound of the ocean in storm, heard at a distance.

  Page and Landry were still halfway up the last stairway. Above and below, the throng was packed dense and immobilised. But, little by little, Landry wormed a way for them, winning one step at a time. But he was very anxious; again and again he looked at his watch. At last he said:

  “I’ve got to go. It’s just madness for me to stay another minute. I’ll give you my card.”

  “Well, leave me here,” Page urged. “It can’t be helped. I’m all right. Give me your card. I’ll tell the guide in the gallery that you kept the seat for me — if I ever can get there. You must go. Don’t stay another minute. If you can, come for me here in the gallery, when it’s over. I’ll wait for you. But if you can’t come, all right. I can take care of myself.”

  He could but assent to this. This was no time to think of small things. He left her and bore back with all his might through the crowd, gained the landing at the turn of the balustrade, waved his hat to her and disappeared.

  A quarter of an hour went by. Page, caught in the crowd, could neither advance nor retreat. Ahead of her, some twenty steps away, she could see the back rows of seats in the gallery. But they were already occupied. It seemed hopeless to expect to see anything of the floor that day. But she could no longer extricate herself from the press; there was nothing to do but stay where she was.

  On every side of her she caught odds and ends of dialogues and scraps of discussions, and while she waited she found an interest in listening to these, as they reached her from time to time.

  “Well,” observed the man in the tall white hat, who had discouraged Landry from attempting to reach the gallery, “well, he’s shaken ’em up pretty well. Whether he downs ’em or they down him, he’s made a good fight.”

  His companion, a young man with eyeglasses, who wore a wonderful white waistcoat with queer glass buttons, assented, and Page heard him add:

  “Big operator, that Jadwin.”

  “They’re doing for him now, though.”

  “I ain’t so sure. He’s got another fight in him. You’ll see.”

  “Ever see him?”

  “No, no, he don’t come into the Pit — these big men never do.”

  Directly in front of Page two women kept up an interminable discourse.

  “Well,” said the one, “that’s all very well, but Mr. Jadwin made my sister-in-law — she lives in Dubuque, you know — a rich woman. She bought some wheat, just for fun, you know, a long time ago, and held on till Mr. Jadwin put the price up to four times what she paid for it. Then she sold out. My, you ought to see the lovely house she’s building, and her son’s gone to Europe, to study art, if you please, and a year ago, my dear, they didn’t have a cent, not a cent, but her husband’s salary.”

  “There’s the other side, too, though,” answered her companion, adding in a hoarse whisper: “If Mr. Jadwin fails to-day — well, honestly, Julia, I don’t know what Philip will do.”

  But, from another group at Page’s elbow, a man’s bass voice cut across the subdued chatter of the two women.

  “‘Guess we’ll pull through, somehow. Burbank & Co., though — by George! I’m not sure about them. They are pretty well involved in this thing, and there’s two or three smaller firms that are dependent on them. If Gretry-Converse & Co. should suspend, Burbank would go with a crash sure. And there’s that bank in Keokuk; they can’t stand much more. Their depositors would run ’em quick as how-do-you-do, if there was a smash here in Chicago.”

  “Oh, Jadwin will pull through.”

  “Well, I hope so — by Jingo! I hope so. Say, by the way, how did you come out?”

  “Me! Hoh! Say my boy, the next time I get into a wheat trade you’ll know it. I was one of the merry paretics who believed that Crookes was the Great Lum-tum. I tailed on to his clique. Lord love you! Jadwin put the knife into me to the tune of twelve thousand dollars. But, say, look here; aren’t we ever going to get up to that blame gallery? We ain’t going to see any of this, and I — hark! — by God! there goes the gong. They’ve begun. Say, say, hear ‘em, will you! Holy Moses! say — listen to that! Did you ever hear — Lord! I wish we could see — could get somewhere where we could see something.”

  His friend turned to him and spoke a sentence that was drowned in the sudden vast volume of sound that all at once shook the building.

  “Hey — what?”

  The other shouted into his ear. But even then his friend could not hear. Nor did he listen. The crowd upon the staircases had surged irresistibly forward and upward. There was a sudden outburst of cries. Women’s voices were raised in expostulation, and even fear.

  “Oh, oh — don’t push so!”

  “My arm! oh! — oh, I shall faint ... please.”

  But the men, their escorts, held back furiously; their faces purple, they shouted imprecations over their shoulders.

  “Here, here, you damn fools, what you doing?”

  “Don’t crowd so!”

  “Get back, back!”

  “There’s a lady fainted here. Get back you! We’ll all have a chance to see. Good Lord! ain’t there a policeman anywheres?”

  “Say, say! It’s going down — the price. It broke three cents, just then, at the opening, they say.”

  “This is the worst I ever saw or heard of.”

  “My God! if Jadwin can only hold ‘em.

  “You bet he’ll hold ‘em.”

  “Hold nothing! — Oh! say my friend, it don’t do you any good to crowd like that.”

  “It’s the people behind: I’m not doing it. Say, do you know where they’re at on the floor? The wheat, I mean, is it going up or down?”

  “Up, they tell me. There was a rally; I don’t know. How can we tell here? We — Hi! there they go again. Lord! that must have been a smash. I guess the Board of Trade won’t forget this day in a hurry. Heavens, you can’t hear yourself think!

  “Glad I ain’t down there in the Pit.”

  But, at last, a group of policemen appeared. By main strength they shouldered their way to the top of the stairs, and then began pushing the crowd back. At every instant they shouted:

  “Move on now, clear the stairway. No seats left!�
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  But at this Page, who, by the rush of the crowd had been carried almost to the top of the stairs, managed to extricate an arm from the press, and hold Landry’s card in the air. She even hazarded a little deception:

  “I have a pass. Will you let me through, please?”

  Luckily one of the officers heard her. He bore down heavily with all the mass of his two hundred pounds and the majesty of the law he represented, to the rescue and succour of this very pretty girl.

  “Let the lady through,” he roared, forcing a passage with both elbows. “Come right along, Miss. Stand back you, now. Can’t you see the lady has a pass? Now then, Miss, and be quick about it, I can’t keep ’em back forever.”

  Jostled and hustled, her dress crumpled, her hat awry, Page made her way forward, till the officer caught her by the arm, and pulled her out of the press. With a long breath she gained the landing of the gallery.

  The guide, an old fellow in a uniform of blue, with brass buttons and a visored cap, stood near by, and to him she presented Landry’s card.

  “Oh, yes, oh, yes,” he shouted in her ear, after he had glanced it over. “You were the party Mr. Court spoke about. You just came in time. I wouldn’t ‘a dared hold your seat a minute longer.”

  He led her down the crowded aisle between rows of theatre chairs, all of which were occupied, to one vacant seat in the very front row.

  “You can see everything, now,” he cried, making a trumpet of his palm. “You’re Mister Jadwin’s niece. I know, I know. Ah, it’s a wild day, Miss. They ain’t done much yet, and Mr. Jadwin’s holding his own, just now. But I thought for a moment they had him on the run. You see that — my, my, there was a sharp rally. But he’s holding on strong yet.”

  Page took her seat, and leaning forward looked down into the Wheat Pit.

  Once free of the crowd after leaving Page, Landry ran with all the swiftness of his long legs down the stair, and through the corridors till, all out of breath, he gained Gretry’s private office. The other Pit traders for the house, some eight or ten men, were already assembled, and just as Landry entered by one door, the broker himself came in from the customers’ room. Jadwin was nowhere to be seen.