At first she did not understand why they came to the city in the wintertime. They lived in one room and she kept house on tiptoe. He would leave each morning shortly before nine and return at three; and if she was lonesome while he was absent, with no one to talk to and so much to be afraid of, it was even worse when he was there, though of course in another way. Their companionship ceased. He was gloomy, preoccupied, often ironic and irritable. She did not know what he did and could not bring herself to ask. She hardly dared, and besides, she dreaded to find out.
Still, one day she followed him to where he suddenly disappeared through a large doorway. She waited a long time and then, as he did not come out and as many people were continually passing both ways through the doorway, she thought perhaps it was some kind of thoroughfare and ventured far enough in to hear the wicked uproar that rises from the wheat pit—from any wheat pit, but especially from the one at the Open Board of Brokers.
She was terrified. Her first impulse was to rush in and find him and beg him to come away with her—back to their beautiful country where nothing like this could ever be. Instead, she ran all the way back to their room and crouched there until he returned. He noticed how strange she was and questioned her anxiously, but she avoided telling him what she had done.
That evening he was much more himself. The next morning he took her with him and left her with the woman at the tobacco stand just inside the door. Every day thereafter he took her with him. That was how it started; and now she went with him because he needed her. She would be afraid to let him go by himself, he was so unseeing, so unpresent among realities. She doubted whether he knew where they lived or could find his way home alone. He had long leaned upon her figuratively; now he was beginning to lean upon her actually, as they walked. That was only here, in the city, and more now than ever before. In the country he walked in his own strength.
And this for all these years had been the design of their lives together. The winters, ah, yes. They were not to be remembered. But always came spring again and with it the delightful wandering, with happiness running in their footsteps. They came to have a regular orbit. And as Weaver grew to be known among the people therein he worked less and less as a harvest hand until he ceased to do so at all, and became as one of the ancient magi, a man full of arts and knowledge, giving shrewd and profitable counsel to the wise, performing offices of sorcery for the superstitious, thus gradually assuming the character in which Dreadwind found him.
In a few years also Cordelia became helpful. She filled her apron in the harvest. Between them they gained a livelihood easily, and came each winter to Chicago with enough money to keep them in the way they were wont to subsist, and the moiety over that Weaver lost in the wheat pit.
“Last times make one a little sad,” she said. “Not that one would wish to go on and on forever. Only because it is the last time. I wonder why.”
“What was for the last time?” he asked.
“All the beautiful part,” she said. “That harvest was our last. Only the winter is left. I can’t see what will happen. Perhaps I don’t wish to see.”
“When did you begin to have this feeling?” he asked. “Suddenly, just now? Or has it been growing?”
“To everything we knew I said good-bye this year,” she answered.
“Places,” he said.
She nodded. “Places. Friendly things. Bits of scenery. Trees we had named and treated as people. A little church with a graveyard we came to one night in a dreadful storm. We saw it far off by the lightning and ran. The door was unlocked. We were there until morning. It was the first summer; and there he christened me Cordelia.”
“That was not the name you started with?”
“No. There in the church, with the thunder splitting itself on the steeple, he read King Lear to me. From memory, I mean. He knew it by heart. The church was dark. His voice filled it and echoed round. By the lightning flashes I could see him walking up and down the aisle. Then I knelt at the altar and he christened me Cordelia. Things like that,” she concluded.
“And a bench,” he wondered. “A certain round bench under an apple tree.”
She blushed; looking at him steadily. “That was not good-bye,” she said, “and Mrs. Purdy ought not to have told you.”
No more than that did they say of the affair of their hearts. I had almost said no nearer than that did they come to it. But it had no external relation. It existed like a third part of them. It was the fact implicit; explicit facts merely pertained to it. And so also with the fulfillment. That was to be long postponed and it did not matter. It was never their way to make words of their love.
Dreadwind was of Cordelia’s notion that Absalom Weaver’s orbit was broken. More than this, he had a sense of impending disaster. That was not surprising with the shape of facts in view. People thought Weaver was running on luck. Dreadwind knew better. The old man had got a gambling position in wheat that was fundamentally logical. He would undoubtedly push it to the last extreme. There was no foretelling the sequel. There was only the probability that it would be catastrophic. On reflection this seemed inevitable. There was no way of stopping him. Fear, self-interest, satiety, a sense of consequences to himself and others—such constraining modes of thought and feeling were lacking in him. He had a demonic end in view. He cared nothing for the temple. He denounced it. One could imagine that he wished to destroy it. To what might follow he was utterly indifferent.
The spectacle fascinated Dreadwind. With rapid strokes of imagination he gave it form and projection. It had an unpredictable dimension. In a game itself without limits a fanatic who knew no restraint had got the fatal hand. What if he should play it out? And there was no reason to suppose he would not. Only one of Dreadwind’s prescience would have sensed the possibilities. It is a fact that no one else did. How could the keepers of the great world wheat market have been attending properly to their business and watching at the same time for a mad comet to burst from the door of that mean little place across the street—the Open Board of Brokers—where nothing of primary importance could ever happen?
Afterward for a long time, you may remember, nobody quite believed it as it really was. Many thought Dreadwind was behind Weaver, had invested money in him, and was himself the daring principal. Circumstances gave some fictitious color to this belief, and as it was never denied by anyone who positively knew the truth it still persists in legend.
Dreadwind did of course stand by, for a reason that now comes clear. A romantic reason, you see. He could not avert the catastrophe. It would not have occurred to him to try. Cordelia was his true anxiety.
His way of standing by was literal. He took all the rooms across the hall, furnished them in one day, and moved in.
Weaver apparently was never consciously aware of this astonishing gesture. At least he never spoke of it. A good deal of the time he seemed insensible to his surroundings and what passed therein; or, waking to them suddenly, he either accepted them indifferently or treated them as having been long familiar.
In that way he accepted Dreadwind without question or curiosity. Cordelia got another wooden chair and made a third place at the end of the table. Weaver said nothing. Dreadwind came every evening and ate with them. Weaver sometimes spoke when the guest arrived and sometimes gave him no recognition other than to include him tacitly. Afterward he would sit under the gas jet, in his folding chair, with his dish of coffee on the floor, and read while Cordelia cleared the table, Dreadwind contentedly watching her. He would go on reading while they walked in the hall and sometimes he passed them silently on the way to his room.
Then one evening it pleased him to talk. A fly fell into his bowl of milk. He fished it out, dried its feet, sent it away, and a flood of discourse fell from him, beginning with the fly as a marvelous instance and dwelling at length upon the enigma of becoming and being in all things. He talked for an hour continuously. He was on his feet, looking at them, with a thought half out of his mind, when of a sudden his interest broke. He forgot what h
e had been saying, looked once or twice around, then turned abruptly and went to his room.
Not long after this Dreadwind one evening had dinner sent in from his rooms. Weaver sat perfectly still until the Japanese man had placed it on the table and was gone, under Dreadwind’s instructions not to remain to serve it.
“Would we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt when we sat by the fleshpots,” said Weaver; and asked for his bread and milk. Seeing they did not eat he added gently: “Empty sayings nourish old age. I am too fond of them. But all things are good, so ye eat not of darkness. Partake and mind not the lion who cheweth straw.”
But they never did it again.
There was no fault in his faculties. He became each day a little more unseeing, more indifferent to what went on around him, and his feet grew heavy and reluctant; but when he entered the pit his bodily vigor returned to him as from a draught of magic elixir; he recovered his full stature and with it his aggressive, saturnine manner; his mind was alert, sensitive and unerring. There his strength was. He used it up prodigally, exultingly, wasted it in excessive humors. And his power increased. He made no mistakes. Dreadwind and Cordelia watched him in silent wonder.
One day as they stood together in a corner of the room, looking on, a strange note rose out of the pit. It was nearly time for gambling to cease. Someone had called Weaver by name. Cordelia started. Then others began calling him by name, and presently many were intoning it rhythmically. The sound was boisterous and friendly, and one would have thought they were proud of him.
“What does it mean?” Cordelia asked.
“It’s a send-off,” said Dreadwind.
“Why that?” she asked.
“I’ve been on the point of telling you ever since I came in. I heard it outside and came around at once. This is his last day here. He has bought a membership on the Board of Trade. I suppose that was never heard of before—a man going to the Board of Trade from this place. And they are all a little excited about it.”
“He will go to the big wheat pit across the street—is that what you mean?” said Cordelia.
Dreadwind nodded. The closing gong had just sounded and they were giving the old man a regular hazing. All the reserve with which his manner had inspired them was broken down, now that he was leaving. They dragged him out of the pit, pulled his hat over his ears, tied his muffler in three hard knots, rumpled his garments, beat him, jostled him, and then all with one impulse they picked him up and carried him toward the door, cheering and shouting his name. He took it passively. Cordelia and Dreadwind rescued him at last. He walked off between them and never looked back.
One who had taken no part in the hazing and resembled a huge wading fowl stood in the doorway croaking: “He will be back.... He will be back.” Dreadwind looked at Cordelia to see if she heard. She was shaking her head.
That evening Dreadwind referred to the change. “May I introduce you to the wheat pit?” he asked.
“I washed my steps in butter and the rock poured me forth oil,” Weaver answered. From which Dreadwind understood that he wished to find his way alone.
He made his first appearance the next morning. Cordelia and Dreadwind watched from the gallery. He stood on the edge of the wheat pit and did nothing. Nobody noticed him overtly, and that was a kind of hazing. Generally a new member is tumbled about a bit just to develop the nature of his goat. Everyone knew who he was of course and eyed him surreptitiously. For three days he stood there on the edge of the maelstrom, doing nothing.
And it was a maelstrom really. Wheat was two dollars and fifty cents a bushel, and still rising.
Who dared to buy wheat at this great price?
None of the little gamblers. They were afraid. They sold it rather—sold it because they were afraid.
None of the big gamblers were buying it, either. They, too, were afraid, though for a different reason. The rise in the price of wheat was beginning to have an ominous social aspect. A public cry had been raised against the pit. It was widely believed that the principal Chicago gamblers, having bought the crop at much lower prices from the farmers, were now turning it into gold at the expense of the countries allied against Germany in a war which was about to become our war as well. This was wicked in itself and very repugnant to our sympathies; but at the same time the American bread eater was mulcted in a like manner. So the public believed. And it had been true. But all the big, respectable gamblers were now standing aside, fearful of an experience in the pillory of public opinion if the Government should act suddenly and catch them red-handed in the business of profiteering.
And yet the price of wheat kept rising. Who bought it? Who was the reckless customer that went on buying it, regardless of the price of political consequences. Answer: WAR.
War was that kind of customer. Price was no object. The agents of France and Great Britain added each day millions of bushels to what the wheat pit called “that Eastern account.” The orders originated in New York, where the Allied Buying Commission sat.
But do you remember? This pit stuff is phantom wheat. Armies do not subsist upon imaginary food. Why did they buy that?
For this reason: That to a certain extent and under certain conditions phantom wheat bought in the pit may be converted into actual grain on the railroad track. If the seller of phantom wheat cannot, when called upon, deliver the actual grain he must settle in cash. So the buyer will get either the wheat itself or a profit in money. The Allied Commission was buying both phantom wheat and actual grain at the same time. This is to be remembered. It was running a corner such as had never been dreamed of in the world before—a corner in wheat at Chicago with the Bank of England behind it
There was yet one other heedless buyer.
On the fourth day Weaver went one step down into the pit and began to buy. On the fifth day he went another step down, still buying. On the sixth day he stood in the center and bought heavily. That was his regular place thereafter; and it came to be that he had a clear space around him, at the very core of the swirl, as it had been in the little wheat pit across the street, a figure for the eye to dwell upon. It came also that he was treated with awe and foreboding, like an event with no place in the probability of things.
Never here, as in that other pit, did he taunt the sellers or appear exulting. Why this was nobody knew. He was grim and silent. He would stand for sometimes an hour, motionless, gazing at the floor, at a distant object, or at Cordelia sitting always in the gallery with her regard upon him. Then of a sudden, with a sweeping look at the faces in the howling ring above him, he would lift his hands in signal and take all of that weighless, impalpable wheat they were willing to hurl down at him. No one ever saw him make a selling gesture. He never sold. And his profits were running wild, for the price knew not how to fall. Always he bought. Always it rose.
A few weeks after Weaver’s advent on the Board of Trade America put her fist in the war.
The price of wheat was then approaching three dollars a bushel. The public cry against the pit increased, and not without reason in morals, for of course if gamblers were manipulating the price of wheat for private greed that now was both unpatriotic and abominable. Dreadwind spoke to Weaver. How could he reconcile what he was doing with any sense of common duty? The old man took thought and answered slowly:
“The pit cannot grow one blade of grass. Neither can it destroy one grain of wheat. There is so much wheat. No more, no less. It is only the price.”
“But what of profiteering?” Dreadwind asked.
“So,” said Weaver. “What of it? Tell me of it. I have seen war before. I know what it’s lined and stuffed with. For once... you shall see... this time, I say... the spoils of war shall gild the wheat and nothing else. This is justice and I am its instrument. Its path shall be as a shining light.”
Came now the month of May. All the gambling was in May wheat. And on the eleventh day, which was Friday, the price touched three dollars and a quarter a bushel!
Minds were tense wit
h dread. Men could not say what it was they dreaded; but something was about to happen. It was written in the air. The emeritus honorable J. P., guardian elephant of the wheat pit, walked round and round it saying, exhortively: “Boys, don’t touch it. For everybody’s sake let that May wheat alone.”
And there in the center stood Weaver, from time to time lifting his hands and taking all the wheat above him. Almost no gambler would touch wheat to buy it. Many were still willing to sell it.
That was the day the two British members of the Allied Buying Commission who had been buying wheat with the Bank of England behind them arrived in Chicago to look things over.
I happened myself to know the illuminating particulars. Dreadwind did not. He knew only the outcome; I told him what is here to be set down.
This is what happened: When J. P. with his head wagging returned to his desk from walking round and round the wheat pit his telephone was ringing. The two British members of the Allied Buying Commission were invited to lunch at the Union League Club. Would J. P. come? Yes, he would come, he said, on two conditions. One was that the Federal District Attorney should be asked; the other was that he himself should be permitted to speak. Both conditions were accepted.
At the lunch, besides the two English wheat buyers, the Federal District Attorney and J. P., were seated all the great men of La Salle Street and all the lords of speculation in meat products and breadstuffs, including the bankers who kept unlimited credit at the disposal of Moberly’s Dearborn Grain Corporation, who owned it in fact, but who would not suffer themselves to be called speculators. Anything else.
When the amenities were amiably exhausted J. P. rose.
“I want the Federal District Attorney to listen to this,” he said. “Wheat is three dollars and a quarter a bushel and going up. For this we are damned. The Board of Trade is damned. I am damned. Most of the eminent gentlemen sitting here are damned. Now I want to ask a few questions. You”—he pointed to the financier who was chairman of Moberly’s Dearborn Grain Corporation, calling his name—“have you got any May wheat?” The answer was no. One by one he called them, each in his name, and asked the same question, exhorting the Federal District Attorney to listen. The answer was invariably no. None of the great men of La Salle Street, none of the lords of speculation in meat products and breadstuffs, had any May wheat. They could not produce among them one kernel of it. “Now I ask myself,” said J. P., “I ask myself the same question. ‘Have you got any May wheat, J. P.?’ On my word I answer, ‘No, not a bushel.’ Now wait. I’m not through. I ask our English visitors, ‘Are you buying May wheat in the Chicago pit at this price?’ “
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