Chapter 18

"Oh, no," Laura answered. "His real estate, he says, runs itself, and, as a rule, Mr. Gretry manages most of his Board of Trade business. It is only occasionally that anything keeps him down town late. I scolded him this morning, however, about his speculating, and made him promise not to do so much of it. I hate speculation. It seems to absorb some men so; and I don't believe it's right for a man to allow himself to become absorbed altogether in business."

"Oh, why limit one's absorption to business?" replied Corthell, sipping his wine. "Is it right for one to be absorbed 'altogether' in anything--even in art, even in religion?"

"Oh, religion, I don't know," she protested.

"Isn't that certain contribution," he hazarded, "which we make to the general welfare, over and above our own individual work, isn't that the essential? I suppose, of course, that we must hoe, each of us, his own little row, but it's the stroke or two we give to our neighbour's row--don't you think?--that helps most to cultivate the field."

"But doesn't religion mean more than a stroke or two?" she ventured to reply.

"I'm not so sure," he answered, thoughtfully. "If the stroke or two is taken from one's own work instead of being given in excess of it. One must do one's own hoeing first. That's the foundation of things. A religion that would mean to be 'altogether absorbed' in my neighbour's hoeing would be genuinely pernicious, surely. My row, meanwhile, would lie open to weeds."

"But if your neighbour's row grew flowers?"

"Unfortunately weeds grow faster than the flowers, and the weeds of my row would spread until they choked and killed my neighbour's flowers, I am sure."

"That seems selfish though," she persisted. "Suppose my neighbour were maimed or halt or blind? His poor little row would never be finished. My stroke or two would not help very much."

"Yes, but every row lies between two others, you know. The hoer on the far side of the cripple's row would contribute a stroke or two as well as you. No," he went on, "I am sure one's first duty is to do one's own work. It seems to me that a work accomplished benefits the whole world--the people--pro rata. If we help another at the expense of our work instead of in excess of it, we benefit only the individual, and, pro rata again, rob the people. A little good contributed by everybody to the race is of more, infinitely more, importance than a great deal of good contributed by one individual to another."

"Yes," she admitted, beginning at last to be convinced, "I see what you mean. But one must think very large to see that. It never occurred to me before. The individual--I, Laura Jadwin--counts for nothing. It is the type to which I belong that's important, the mould, the form, the sort of composite photograph of hundreds of thousands of Laura Jadwins. Yes," she continued, her brows bent, her mind hard at work, "what I am, the little things that distinguish me from everybody else, those pass away very quickly, are very ephemeral. But the type Laura Jadwin, that always remains, doesn't it? One must help building up only the permanent things. Then, let's see, the individual may deteriorate, but the type always grows better.... Yes, I think one can say that."

"At least the type never recedes," he prompted.

"Oh, it began good," she cried, as though at a discovery, "and can never go back of that original good. Something keeps it from going below a certain point, and it is left to us to lift it higher and higher. No, the type can't be bad. Of course the type is more important than the individual. And that something that keeps it from going below a certain point is God."

"Or nature."

"So that God and nature," she cried again, "work together? No, no, they are one and the same thing."

"There, don't you see," he remarked, smiling back at her, "how simple it is?"

"Oh-h," exclaimed Laura, with a deep breath, "isn't it beautiful?" She put her hand to her forehead with a little laugh of deprecation. "My," she said, "but those things make you think."

Dinner was over before she was aware of it, and they were still talking animatedly as they rose from the table.

"We will have our coffee in the art gallery," Laura said, "and please smoke."

He lit a cigarette, and the two passed into the great glass-roofed rotunda.

"Here is the one I like best," said Laura, standing before the Bougereau.

"Yes?" he queried, observing the picture thoughtfully. "I suppose," he remarked, "it is because it demands less of you than some others. I see what you mean. It pleases you because it satisfies you so easily. You can grasp it without any effort."

"Oh, I don't know," she ventured.

"Bougereau 'fills a place.' I know it," he answered. "But I cannot persuade myself to admire his art."

"But," she faltered, "I thought that Bougereau was considered the greatest--one of the greatest--his wonderful flesh tints, the drawing, and colouring."

"But I think you will see," he told her, "if you think about it, that for all there is in his picture--back of it--a fine hanging, a beautiful vase would have exactly the same value upon your wall. Now, on the other hand, take this picture." He indicated a small canvas to the right of the bathing nymphs, representing a twilight landscape.

"Oh, that one," said Laura. "We bought that here in America, in New York. It's by a Western artist. I never noticed it much, I'm afraid."

"But now look at it," said Corthell. "Don't you know that the artist saw something more than trees and a pool and afterglow? He had that feeling of night coming on, as he sat there before his sketching easel on the edge of that little pool. He heard the frogs beginning to pipe, I'm sure, and the touch of the night mist was on his hands. And he was very lonely and even a little sad. In those deep shadows under the trees he put something of himself, the gloom and the sadness that he felt at the moment. And that little pool, still and black and sombre--why, the whole thing is the tragedy of a life full of dark, hidden secrets. And the little pool is a heart. No one can say how deep it is, or what dreadful thing one would find at the bottom, or what drowned hopes or what sunken ambitions. That little pool says one word as plain as if it were whispered in the ear--despair. Oh, yes, I prefer it to the nymphs."

"I am very much ashamed," returned Laura, "that I could not see it all before for myself. But I see it now. It is better, of course. I shall come in here often now and study it. Of all the rooms in our house this is the one I like best. But, I am afraid, it has been more because of the organ than of the pictures."

Corthell turned about.

"Oh, the grand, noble organ," he murmured. "I envy you this of all your treasures. May I play for you? Something to compensate for the dreadful, despairing little tarn of the picture."

"I should love to have you," she told him.

He asked permission to lower the lights, and stepping outside the door an instant, pressed the buttons that extinguished all but a very few of them. After he had done this he came back to the organ and detached the self-playing "arrangement" without comment, and seated himself at the console.

Laura lay back in a long chair close at hand. The moment was propitious. The artist's profile silhouetted itself against the shade of a light that burned at the side of the organ, and that gave light to the keyboard. And on this keyboard, full in the reflection, lay his long, slim hands. They were the only things that moved in the room, and the chords and bars of Mendelssohn's "Consolation" seemed, as he played, to flow, not from the instrument, but, like some invisible ether, from his finger-tips themselves.

"You hear," he said to Laura, "the effect of questions and answer in this. The questions are passionate and tumultuous and varied, but the answer is always the same, always calm and soothing and dignified."

She answered with a long breath, speaking just above a whisper:

"Oh, yes, yes, I understand."

He finished and turned towards her a moment. "Possibly not a very high order of art," he said; "a little too 'easy,' perhaps, like the Bougereau, but 'Consolation' should appeal very simply and directly, after all. Do you care for Beethoven?"

"I--I am afraid--" began Laura, but he had continued without waiting for her reply.

"You remember this? The 'Appassionata,' the F minor sonata just the second movement."

But when he had finished Laura begged him to continue.

"Please go on," she said. "Play anything. You can't tell how I love it."

"Here is something I've always liked," he answered, turning back to the keyboard. "It is the 'Mephisto Walzer' of Liszt. He has adapted it himself from his own orchestral score, very ingeniously. It is difficult to render on the organ, but I think you can get the idea of it." As he spoke he began playing, his head very slightly moving to the rhythm of the piece. At the beginning of each new theme, and without interrupting his playing, he offered a word, of explanation:

"Very vivid and arabesque this, don't you think? ... And now this movement; isn't it reckless and capricious, like a woman who hesitates and then takes the leap? Yet there's a certain nobility there, a feeling for ideals. You see it, of course.... And all the while this undercurrent of the sensual, and that feline, eager sentiment ... and here, I think, is the best part of it, the very essence of passion, the voluptuousness that is a veritable anguish.... These long, slow rhythms, tortured, languishing, really dying. It reminds one of 'Phedre'--'Venus toute entiere,' and the rest of it; and Wagner has the same. You find it again in Isolde's motif continually."

Laura was transfixed, all but transported. Here was something better than Gounod and Verdi, something above and beyond the obvious one, two, three, one, two, three of the opera scores as she knew them and played them. Music she understood with an intuitive quickness; and those prolonged chords of Liszt's, heavy and clogged and cloyed with passion, reached some hitherto untouched string within her heart, and with resistless power twanged it so that the vibration of it shook her entire being, and left her quivering and breathless, the tears in her eyes, her hands clasped till the knuckles whitened.

She felt all at once as though a whole new world were opened to her. She stood on Pisgah. And she was ashamed and confused at her ignorance of those things which Corthell tactfully assumed that she knew as a matter of course. What wonderful pleasures she had ignored! How infinitely removed from her had been the real world of art and artists of which Corthell was a part! Ah, but she would make amends now. No more Verdi and Bougereau. She would get rid of the "Bathing Nymphs." Never, never again would she play the "Anvil Chorus." Corthell should select her pictures, and should play to her from Liszt and Beethoven that music which evoked all the turbulent emotion, all the impetuosity and fire and exaltation that she felt was hers.

She wondered at herself. Surely, surely there were two Laura Jadwins. One calm and even and steady, loving the quiet life, loving her home, finding a pleasure in the duties of the housewife. This was the Laura who liked plain, homely, matter-of-fact Mrs. Cressler, who adored her husband, who delighted in Mr. Howells's novels, who abjured society and the formal conventions, who went to church every Sunday, and who was afraid of her own elevator.

But at moments such as this she knew that there was another Laura Jadwin--the Laura Jadwin who might have been a great actress, who had a "temperament," who was impulsive. This was the Laura of the "grand manner," who played the role of the great lady from room to room of her vast house, who read Meredith, who revelled in swift gallops through the park on jet-black, long-tailed horses, who affected black velvet, black jet, and black lace in her gowns, who was conscious and proud of her pale, stately beauty--the Laura Jadwin, in fine, who delighted to recline in a long chair in the dim, beautiful picture gallery and listen with half-shut eyes to the great golden organ thrilling to the passion of Beethoven and Liszt.

The last notes of the organ sank and faded into silence--a silence that left a sense of darkness like that which follows upon the flight of a falling star, and after a long moment Laura sat upright, adjusting the heavy masses of her black hair with thrusts of her long, white fingers. She drew a deep breath.

"Oh," she said, "that was wonderful, wonderful. It is like a new language--no, it is like new thoughts, too fine for language."

"I have always believed so," he answered. "Of all the arts, music, to my notion, is the most intimate. At the other end of the scale you have architecture, which is an expression of and an appeal to the common multitude, a whole people, the mass. Fiction and painting, and even poetry, are affairs of the classes, reaching the groups of the educated. But music--ah, that is different, it is one soul speaking to another soul. The composer meant it for you and himself. No one else has anything to do with it. Because his soul was heavy and broken with grief, or bursting with passion, or tortured with doubt, or searching for some unnamed ideal, he has come to you--you of all the people in the world--with his message, and he tells you of his yearnings and his sadness, knowing that you will sympathise, knowing that your soul has, like his, been acquainted with grief, or with gladness; and in the music his soul speaks to yours, beats with it, blends with it, yes, is even, spiritually, married to it."

And as he spoke the electrics all over the gallery flashed out in a sudden blaze, and Curtis Jadwin entered the room, crying out:

"Are you here, Laura? By George, my girl, we pulled it off, and I've cleaned up five--hundred--thousand--dollars."

Laura and the artist faced quickly about, blinking at the sudden glare, and Laura put her hand over her eyes.

"Oh, I didn't mean to blind you," said her husband, as he came forward. "But I thought it wouldn't be appropriate to tell you the good news in the dark."

Corthell rose, and for the first time Jadwin caught sight of him.

"This is Mr. Corthell, Curtis," Laura said. "You remember him, of course?"

"Why, certainly, certainly," declared Jadwin, shaking Corthell's hand. "Glad to see you again. I hadn't an idea you were here." He was excited, elated, very talkative. "I guess I came in on you abruptly," he observed. "They told me Mrs. Jadwin was in here, and I was full of my good news. By the way, I do remember now. When I came to look over my mail on the way down town this morning, I found a note from you to my wife, saying you would call to-night. Thought it was for me, and opened it before I found the mistake."

"I knew you had gone off with it," said Laura.

"Guess I must have mixed it up with my own mail this morning. I'd have telephoned you about it, Laura, but upon my word I've been so busy all day I clean forgot it. I've let the cat out of the bag already, Mr. Corthell, and I might as well tell the whole thing now. I've been putting through a little deal with some Liverpool fellows to-day, and I had to wait down town to get their cables to-night. You got my telephone, did you, Laura?"

"Yes, but you said then you'd be up in half an hour."

"I know--I know. But those Liverpool cables didn't come till all hours. Well, as I was saying, Mr. Corthell, I had this deal on hand--it was that wheat, Laura, I was telling you about this morning--five million bushels of it, and I found out from my English agent that I could slam it right into a couple of fellows over there, if we could come to terms. We came to terms right enough. Some of that wheat I sold at a profit of fifteen cents on every bushel. My broker and I figured it out just now before I started home, and, as I say, I'm a clean half million to the good. So much for looking ahead a little further than the next man." He dropped into a chair and stretched his arms wide. "Whoo! I'm tired Laura. Seems as though I'd been on my feet all day. Do you suppose Mary, or Martha, or Maggie, or whatever her name is, could rustle me a good strong cup of tea.

"Haven't you dined, Curtis?" cried Laura.

"Oh, I had a stand-up lunch somewhere with Sam. But we were both so excited we might as well have eaten sawdust. Heigho, I sure am tired. It takes it out of you, Mr. Corthell, to make five hundred thousand in about ten hours."

"Indeed I imagine so," assented the artist. Jadwin turned to his wife, and held her glance in his a moment. He was full of triumph, full of the grim humour of the suddenly successful American.

"Hey?" he said. "What do you think of that, Laura," he clapped down his big hand upon his chair arm, "a whole half million--at one grab? Maybe they'll say down there in La Salle Street now that I don't know wheat. Why, Sam--that's Gretry my broker, Mr. Corthell, of Gretry, Converse & Co.--Sam said to me Laura, to-night, he said, 'J.,'--they call me 'J.' down there, Mr. Corthell--'J., I take off my hat to you. I thought you were wrong from the very first, but I guess you know this game better than I do.' Yes, sir, that's what he said, and Sam Gretry has been trading in wheat for pretty nearly thirty years. Oh, I knew it," he cried, with a quick gesture; "I knew wheat was going to go up. I knew it from the first, when all the rest of em laughed at me. I knew this European demand would hit us hard about this time. I knew it was a good thing to buy wheat; I knew it was a good thing to have special agents over in Europe. Oh, they'll all buy now--when I've showed 'em the way. Upon my word, I haven't talked so much in a month of Sundays. You must pardon me, Mr. Corthell. I don't make five hundred thousand every day."

"But this is the last--isn't it?" said Laura.

"Yes," admitted Jadwin, with a quick, deep breath. "I'm done now. No more speculating. Let some one else have a try now. See if they can hold five million bushels till it's wanted. My, my, I am tired--as I've said before. D'that tea come, Laura?"

"What's that in your hand?" she answered, smiling.

Jadwin stared at the cup and saucer he held, whimsically. "Well, well," he exclaimed, "I must be flustered. Corthell," he declared between swallows, "take my advice. Buy May wheat. It'll beat art all hollow."

"Oh, dear, no," returned the artist. "I should lose my senses if I won, and my money if I didn't.

"That's so. Keep out of it. It's a rich man's game. And at that, there's no fun in it unless you risk more than you can afford to lose. Well, let's not talk shop. You're an artist, Mr. Corthell. What do you think of our house?"

Later on when they had said good-by to Corthell, and when Jadwin was making the rounds of the library, art gallery, and drawing-rooms--a nightly task which he never would intrust to the servants--turning down the lights and testing the window fastenings, his wife said:

"And now you are out of it--for good."

"I don't own a grain of wheat," he assured her. "I've got to be out of it."

The next day he went down town for only two or three hours in the afternoon. But he did not go near the Board of Trade building. He talked over a few business matters with the manager of his real estate office, wrote an unimportant letter or two, signed a few orders, was back at home by five o'clock, and in the evening took Laura, Page, and Landry Court to the theatre.

After breakfast the next morning, when he had read his paper, he got up, and, thrusting his hands in his pockets, looked across the table at his wife.

"Well," he said. "Now what'll we do?"

She put down at once the letter she was reading.

"Would you like to drive in the park?" she suggested. "It is a beautiful morning."

"M--m--yes," he answered slowly. "All right. Let's drive in the park."

But she could see that the prospect was not alluring to him.

"No," she said, "no. I don't think you want to do that."

"I don't think I do, either," he admitted. "The fact is, Laura, I just about know that park by heart. Is there anything good in the magazines this month?"

She got them for him, and he installed himself comfortably in the library, with a box of cigars near at hand.

"Ah," he said, fetching a long breath as he settled back in the deep-seated leather chair. "Now this is what I call solid comfort. Better than stewing and fussing about La Salle Street with your mind loaded down with responsibilities and all. This is my idea of life."

But an hour later, when Laura--who had omitted her ride that morning--looked into the room, he was not there. The magazines were helter-skeltered upon the floor and table, where he had tossed each one after turning the leaves. A servant told her that Mr. Jadwin was out in the stables.

She saw him through the window, in a cap and great-coat, talking with the coachman and looking over one of the horses. But he came back to the house in a little while, and she found him in his smoking-room with a novel in his hand.

"Oh, I read that last week," she said, as she caught a glimpse of the title. "Isn't it interesting? Don't you think it is good?"

"Oh--yes--pretty good," he admitted. "Isn't it about time for lunch? Let's go to the matinee this afternoon, Laura. Oh, that's so, it's Thursday; I forgot."

"Let me read that aloud to you," she said, reaching for the book. "I know you'll be interested when you get farther along."

"Honestly, I don't think I would be," he declared. "I've looked ahead in it. It seems terribly dry. Do you know," he said, abruptly, "if the law was off I'd go up to Geneva Lake and fish through the ice. Laura, how would you like to go to Florida?"

"Oh, I tell you," she exclaimed. "Let's go up to Geneva Lake over Christmas. We'll open up the house and take some of the servants along and have a house party."

Eventually this was done. The Cresslers and the Gretrys were invited, together with Sheldon Corthell and Landry Court. Page and Aunt Wess' came as a matter of course. Jadwin brought up some of the horses and a couple of sleighs. On Christmas night they had a great tree, and Corthell composed the words and music for a carol which had a great success.

About a week later, two days after New Year's day, when Landry came down from Chicago on the afternoon train, he was full of the tales of a great day on the Board of Trade. Laura, descending to the sitting-room, just before dinner, found a group in front of the fireplace, where the huge logs were hissing and crackling. Her husband and Cressler were there, and Gretry, who had come down on an earlier train. Page sat near at hand, her chin on her palm, listening intently to Landry, who held the centre of the stage for the moment. In a far corner of the room Sheldon Corthell, in a dinner coat and patent-leather pumps, a cigarette between his fingers, read a volume of Italian verse.

"It was the confirmation of the failure of the Argentine crop that did it," Landry was saying; "that and the tremendous foreign demand. She opened steady enough at eighty-three, but just as soon as the gong tapped we began to get it. Buy, buy, buy. Everybody is in it now. The public are speculating. For one fellow who wants to sell there are a dozen buyers. We had one of the hottest times I ever remember in the Pit this morning."

Laura saw Jadwin's eyes snap.

"I told you we'd get this, Sam," he said, nodding to the broker.

"Oh, there's plenty of wheat," answered Gretry, easily. "Wait till we get dollar wheat--if we do--and see it come out. The farmers haven't sold it all yet. There's always an army of ancient hayseeds who have the stuff tucked away--in old stockings, I guess--and who'll dump it on you all right if you pay enough. There's plenty of wheat. I've seen it happen before. Work the price high enough, and, Lord, how they'll scrape the bins to throw it at you! You'd never guess from what out-of-the-way places it would come."