Chapter 23

Jack walked on and Kimberley stood rooted to the ground. He was crushed and overwhelmed beneath the sense of his own humiliation. His fineries had been the one thing on which he had relied to make himself look like a gentleman, and he knew now what they made him look like.

He retreated to a little arboured seat, and a few minutes later would have given anything to escape from it. For he was a witness of the parting of Jack and Ella. He saw the tears streaming from her eyes; he heard Jack tell her that he had never loved another woman and never would. As they clasped each other's hands for the final good-bye, Jack seized her passionately and kissed her. Her head fell back from his shoulder; she had fainted. He laid her down upon the grass, and looked upon her in an agony of fear and self-reproach. Then his mood changed.

"Curse the man that broke her heart and mine!" he cried wildly. "Darling, look up!"

Presently she recovered, and he begged her forgiveness.

"I am better," said Ella feebly. "Leave me now. Good-bye, dear!"

Soon afterwards a little man, with a tear-stained face and enormous bull-dog scarf-pin, arrived at the castle, and asked in a breaking voice to see his lordship.

"Did you know, my lord," he began, "that Lady Ella was breaking her heart because she was to marry me?"

"Really--"

"You didn't know it? I should be glad to think you didn't. Perhaps in spite of all I said, you thought I had bought those papers to have you in my grasp. I am not a gentleman, my lord, but I hope I am above that. I was a fool to think I could ever make Lady Ella happy, and I resign my claim upon her hand, my lord, and I must leave your roof for ever."

"Stop, sir!" cried the earl, in a rage of embarrassment and despair. He seemed face to face with the wreck of all his hopes. "Do you know that this is an insult to my daughter and to me?"

"My lord," returned Kimberley, "I am very sorry, but it was a shame to ask her to marry a man like me. I won't help to break her heart--I can't--not if I break my own a million times over."

The earl beat his foot upon the carpet. It was true enough. It _had_ been a shame; and yet the man was a gentleman when all was said and done.

"By heaven, Kimberley," cried his lordship, in spite of himself, "you are a noble-hearted fellow!"

"Excuse me the trouble I have caused you. Good-bye, my lord." Kimberley bowed and left.

That night Kimberley received a package containing the papers and a note from the earl congratulating him on the magnanimous manner in which he had acted, but declaring that he felt compelled to return the documents. This added another drop to the bitterness of Kimberley's cup. He could well nigh have died for shame; he could well nigh have died for pity of himself.

_V.--Kimberley's Wedding Gift_

"My lord," said Kimberley, as he met the earl of Windgall outside the London hotel where the earl was staying, "can you give me a very few minutes?"

"Certainly," said his lordship. "You are not well?" he added, with solicitude.

He had brought a dispatch-box with him; he put it on the table and slowly unlocked it. The earl's heart beat violently as he looked once more upon the precious documents.

"You sent these back to me," said Kimberley. "Will you take 'em now? My lord, my lord, marry lady Ella to the man she loves, and take these for a wedding gift. I helped to torture her. I have a right to help to make her happy."

Windgall was as wildly agitated as Kimberley himself. He recoiled and waved his hands.

"I--I do not think, Kimberley," he said with quivering lip, "that I have ever known so noble an act before."

"If I die," said Kimberley in a loud voice which quavered suddenly down into a murmur, "everything is to go to Lady Ella, with my dearest love and worship."

Windgall caught only the first three words; he tugged at the bell-pull, and sent for a doctor.

An hour afterwards Kimberley was in bed with brain fever.

On the following morning Jack Clare stood in the rain on the deck of the steamship Patagonia, a travelling-cap pulled moodily over his eyes, watching the bestowal of his belongings in the hold.

"Honourable Captain Clare aboard?" cried a voice from the quay. A messenger came and handed Jack a letter. He saw with amazement that it bore the Windgall crest.

It was a hastily written note from the earl stating that circumstances had occurred which enabled him to withdraw his opposition to the union of Clare with Lady Ella.

* * * * *

Kimberley recovered. He can speak now to Clare's wife without embarrassment and without pain. Has he forgotten his love? No. He will never love again, never marry; but he is by no means unhappy or solitary or burdened with regrets. And he knows that those for whom he made his great sacrifice have given him their profoundest gratitude and sincerest friendship.

The ways of the world are various and many. And along them travel all sorts of people. Very dark grey, indeed--almost black some of them--middling grey, light grey, and here and there a figure that shines with a pure white radiance.

* * * * *

FRANK NORRIS

The Pit

Frank Norris, one of the most brilliant of contemporary American novelists, was born at Chicago in 1870. He was educated at the University of California and at Harvard, and also spent three years as an art student in Paris. Afterwards he adopted journalism, and served in the capacity of war correspondent for various newspapers. His first novel, "McTeague," a virile, realistic romance, brought him instant recognition. This was followed in 1900 by "Moran of the Lady Betty," a romantic narrative of adventures on the Californian Coast. In 1901 Norris conceived the idea of trilogy of novels dealing with wheat, the object being an arraignment of wheat operations at Chicago, and the consequent gambling with the world's food-supply. The first of the series, "The Octopus," deals with wheat raising and transportation; the second, "The Pit," a vigorous, human story covers wheat-exchange gambling, and appeared in 1903; the third, which was to have been entitled "The Wolf," was cut short by the author's death, which occurred on October 25, 1902.

_I.--Curtis Jadwin and His Wife_

Laura Dearborn's native town was Barrington, in Massachusetts. Both she and her younger sister Page had lived there until the death of their father. The mother had died long before, and of all their relations, Aunt Wess, who lived at Chicago, alone remained. It was at the entreaties of Aunt Wess and of their dearest friends, the Cresslers, that the two girls decided to live with their aunt in Chicago. Both Laura and Page had inherited money, and when they faced the world they had the assurance that, at least, they were independent.

Chicago, the great grey city, interested Laura at every instant and under every condition. The life was tremendous. All around, on every side, in every direction, the vast machinery of commonwealth clashed and thundered from dawn to dark, and from dark to dawn. For thousands of miles beyond its confines the influence of the city was felt. At times Laura felt a little frightened at the city's life, and of the men for whom all the crash of conflict and commerce had no terrors. Those who could subdue this life to their purposes, must they not be themselves terrible, pitiless, brutal? What could women ever know of the life of men, after all?

Her friend, Mr. Cressler, who had been almost a second father to her, was in business, and had once lost a fortune by a gamble in wheat; and there was Mr. Curtis Jadwin, whom she had met at the opera with the Cresslers.

Mrs. Cressler had told Laura, very soon after her arrival in Chicago, that Mr. Jadwin wanted to marry her.

"I've known Curtis Jadwin now for fifteen years--nobody better," said Mrs. Cressler. "He's as old a family friend as Charlie and I have. And I tell you the man is in love with you. He told me you had more sense and intelligence than any girl he had ever known, and that he never remembered to have seen a more beautiful woman. What do you think of him, Laura--of Mr. Jadwin?"

"I don't know," Laura answered. "I thought he was a _strong_ man--mentally, and that he would be kindly and generous. But I saw very little of him."

"Jadwin struck you as being a kindly man, a generous man? He's just that, and charitable. You know, he has a Sunday-school over on the West side--a Sunday-school for mission children--and I do believe he's more interested in that than in his business. He wants to make it the biggest Sunday-school in Chicago. It's an ambition of his. Laura," she exclaimed, "he's a _fine man_. No one knows Curtis Jadwin better than Charlie and I, and we just _love_ him. The kindliest, biggest-hearted fellow. Oh, well, you'll know him for yourself, and then you'll see!"

"I don't know anything about him," Laura had remarked in answer to this. "I never heard of him before the theatre party."

But Mrs. Cressler promptly supplied information. Curtis Jadwin was a man about thirty-five, who had begun life without a _sou_ in his pockets. His people were farmers in Michigan, hardy, honest fellows, who ploughed and sowed for a living. Curtis had only a rudimentary schooling, and had gone into business with a livery-stable keeper. Someone in Chicago owed him money, and, in default of payment, had offered him a couple of lots of ground on Wabash Avenue. That was how he happened to come to Chicago. Naturally enough, as the city grew the Wabash Avenue property increased in value. He sold the lots, and bought other real estate; sold that, and bought somewhere else, and so on till he owned some of the best business sites in the city, and was now one of the largest real-estate owners in Chicago. But he no longer bought and sold. His property had grown so large, that just the management of it alone took up most of his time. As a rule, he deplored speculation. He had no fixed principles about it, and occasionally he hazarded small operations.

It was after this that Laura's first aversion to the great grey city fast disappeared, and she saw it in a kindlier aspect.

Soon it was impossible to deny that Curtis Jadwin--"J" as he was called in business--was in love with her. The business man, accustomed to deal with situations with unswerving directness, was not in the least afraid of Laura. He was aggressive, assertive, and his addresses had all the persistence and vehemence of veritable attack. He contrived to meet her everywhere, and even had the Cresslers and Laura over to his mission Sunday-school for the Easter festival, an occasion of which Laura carried away a confused recollection of enormous canvas mottoes, sheaves of lilies, imitation bells of tinfoil, revival hymns vociferated from seven hundred distended mouths, and through it all the smell of poverty, the odour of uncleanliness, that mingled strangely with the perfume of the lilies.

Somehow Laura found that with Jadwin all the serious, all the sincere, earnest side of her character was apt to come to the front.

Yet for a long time Laura could not make up her mind that she loved him, but "J" refused to be dismissed.

"I told him I did not love him. Only last week I told him so," Laura explained to Mrs. Cressler.

"Well, then, why did you promise to marry him?"

"My goodness! You don't realise what it's been. Do you suppose you can say 'no' to that man?"

"Of course not--of course not!" declared Mrs. Cressler joyfully. "That's 'J' all over. I might have known he'd have you if he set out to do it."

They were married on the last day of June of that summer in the Episcopalian church. Immediately after the wedding the couple took the train for Geneva Lake, where Jadwin had built a house for his bride.

_II.--A Corner in Wheat_

The months passed. Soon three years had gone by since the ceremony in St. James's Church, and all that time the price of wheat had been steadily going down. Heavy crops the world over had helped the decline.

Jadwin had been drawn into the troubled waters of the Pit, and was by now "blooded to the game." It was in April that he decided that better times and higher prices were coming for wheat, and announced his intentions to Sam Gretry, his broker.

"Sam," he said, "the time is come for a great big chance. We've been hammering wheat down and down and down till we've got it below the cost of production, and now she won't go any further with all the hammering in the world. The other fellows, the rest of the bear crowd, don't seem to see it; but I see it. Before fall we're going to have higher prices. Wheat is going up, and when it does I mean to be right there. I'm going to _buy_. I'm going to buy September wheat, and I'm going to buy it to-morrow--500,000 bushels of it; and if the market goes as I think it will later on, I'm going to buy more. I'm going to boost this market right through till the last bell rings, and from now on Curtis Jadwin spells b-u-double l--bull."

"They'll slaughter you," said Gretry; "slaughter you in cold blood. You're just one man against a gang--a gang of cut-throats. Those bears have got millions and millions back of them. 'J,' you are either Napoleonic, or--or a colossal idiot!"

All through the three years that had passed Jadwin had grown continually 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. Hitherto he had been a bear; now, after the talk with Gretry, he had secretly "turned bull" with the suddenness of a strategist.

A marvellous golden luck followed Jadwin all that summer. The crops were poor, the yield moderate.

Jadwin sold out in September, having made a fortune, and then, in a single vast clutch, bought 3,000,000 bushels of the December option.

Never before had he ventured so deeply into the Pit.

One morning in November, at breakfast, Laura said to her husband, "Curtis, dear, when is it all going to end--your speculating? You never used to be this way. It seems as though, nowadays, I never had you to myself. Even when you are not going over papers and reports, or talking by the hour to Mr. Gretry in the library, your mind seems to be away from me. I--I am lonesome, dearest, sometimes. And, Curtis, what is the use? We're so rich now we can't spend our money."

"Oh, it's not the money!" he answered. "It's the fun of the thing--the excitement."

That very week Jadwin made 500,000 dollars.

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

But try as he would, the echoes of the rumbling of the Pit reached Jadwin at every hour of the day and night. He stayed at home over Christmas. Inactive, he sat there idle, while the clamour of the Pit swelled daily louder, and the price of wheat went up.

Jadwin chafed and fretted at his inaction and his impatience harried him like a gadfly. Would no one step into the place of high command.

Very soon the papers began to speak of an unknown "bull" clique who were rapidly coming into control of the market, and it was no longer a secret to Laura that her husband had gone back to the market, and that, too, with such an impetuosity that his rush had carried him to the very heart of the turmoil.

He was now deeply involved; his influence began to be felt. Not an important move on the part of the "unknown bull," the nameless, mysterious stranger, that was not noted and discussed.

It was very late in the afternoon of a lugubrious March day when Jadwin and Gretry, in the broker's private room, sat studying the latest Government reports as to the supply of wheat, and Jadwin observed, "Why, Sam, there's less than 100,000,000 bushels in the farmers' hands. That's awfully small."

"It ain't, as you might say, colossal," admitted Gretry.

"Sam," said Jadwin again, "the shipments have been about 5,000,000 a week; 20,000,000 a month, and it's four months before a new crop. Europe will take 80,000,000 out of the country. I own 10,000,000 now. Why, there ain't going to be any wheat left in Chicago by May! If I get in now, and buy a long line of cash wheat, where are all these fellows going to get it to deliver to me? Say, where are they going to get it? Come on, now, tell me, where are they going to get it?"

Gretry laid down his pencil, and stared at Jadwin.

"'J,'" he faltered, "'J,' I'm blest if I know."

And then, all in the same moment, the two men were on their feet.

Jadwin sprang forward, gripping the broker by the shoulder.

"Sam," he shouted, "do you know----Great God! Do you know what this means? Sam, we can corner the market!"

_III.--The Corner Breaks_

The high prices meant a great increase of wheat acreage. In June the preliminary returns showed 4,000,000 more acres under wheat in the two states of Dakota alone, and in spite of all Gretry's remonstrances, Jadwin still held on, determined to keep up prices to July.

But now it had become vitally necessary for Jadwin to sell out his holdings. His "long line" was a fearful expense; insurance and storage charges were eating rapidly into the profits. He _must_ get rid of the load he was carrying little by little.

A month ago, and the foreign demand was a thing almost insensate. There was no question as to the price. It was, "Give us the wheat, at whatever figure, at whatever expense."

At home in Chicago Jadwin was completely master of the market. His wealth increased with such rapidity that at no time was he able even to approximate the gains that accrued to him because of his corner. It was more than twenty million, and less than fifty million. That was all he knew.

It was then that he told Gretry he was going to buy in the July crops.

"' J,' listen to me," said Gretry. "Wheat is worth a dollar and a half to-day, and not one cent more. If you run it up to two dollars--"

"It will go there of itself, I tell you."

"If you run it up to two dollars it will be that top-heavy that the littlest kick in the world will knock it over. Be satisfied now with what you've, got. Suppose the price does break a little, you'd still make your pile. But swing this deal over into July, and it's ruin. The farmers all over the country are planting wheat as they've never planted it before. Great Scott, 'J,' you're fighting against the earth itself."

"Well, we'll fight it then."

"Here's another point," went on Gretry. "You ought to be in bed this very minute. You haven't got any nerves left at all. You acknowledge you don't sleep. You ought to see a doctor."

"Fiddlesticks!" exclaimed Jadwin. "I'm all right. Haven't time to see a doctor."

So the month of May drew to its close, and as Jadwin beheld more and more the broken speculators, with their abject humility, a vast contempt for human nature grew within him. The business hardened his heart, and he took his profits as if by right of birth.

His wife he saw but seldom. Occasionally they breakfasted together; more often they met at dinner. But that was all.

And now by June 11 the position was critical.

"The price broke to a dollar and twenty yesterday," said Gretry. "Just think, we were at a dollar and a half a little while ago."

"And we'll be at two dollars in another ten days, I tell you."

"Do you know how we stand, 'J'?" said the broker gravely. "Do you know how we stand financially? It's taken pretty nearly every cent of our ready money to support this July market. Oh, we can figure out our paper profits into the millions. We've got thirty, forty, fifty million bushels of wheat that's worth over a dollar a bushel; but if we can't sell it we're none the better off--and that wheat is costing us six thousand dollars a day. Where's the money going to come from, old man? You don't seem to realise that we are in a precarious condition. The moment we can't give our boys buying orders, the moment we admit that we can't buy all the wheat that's offered, there's the moment we bust."

"Well, we'll buy it," cried Jadwin. "I'll show those brutes. I'll mortgage all my real estate, and I'll run up wheat so high before the next two days that the Bank of England can't pull it down; then I'll sell our long line, and with the profits of that I'll run it up again. Two dollars! Why, it will be two-fifty before you know how it happened."

That day Jadwin placed as heavy a mortgage as the place would stand upon every piece of real estate that he owned. He floated a number of promissory notes, and taxed his credit to its farthest stretch. But sure as he was of winning, Jadwin could, not bring himself to involve his wife's money in the hazard, though his entire personal fortune swung in the balance.

Jadwin knew the danger. The new harvest was coming in--the new harvest of wheat--huge beyond all possibility of control; so vast that no money could buy it. And from Liverpool and Paris cables had come in to Gretry declining to buy wheat, though he had offered it cheaper than he had ever done before.

* * * * *

On the morning of June 13, Gretry gave his orders to young Landry Court and his other agents in the Pit, to do their best to keep the market up. "You can buy each of you up to half a million bushels apiece. If that don't keep the price up--well, I'll let you know what to do. Look here, keep your heads cool. I guess to-day will decide things."

In the Pit roar succeeded roar. It seemed that a support long thought to be secure was giving way. Not a man knew what he or his neighbour was doing. The bids leaped to and fro, and the price of July wheat could not so much as be approximated.

Landry caught one of the Gretry traders by the arm.

"What shall we do?" he shouted. "I've bought up to my limit. No more orders have come in. What's to be done?"

"I don't know," the other shouted back--"I don't know! Looks like a smash; something's gone wrong."

In Gretry's office Jadwin stood hatless and pale. Around him were one of the heads of a great banking house and a couple of other men, confidential agents, who had helped to manipulate the great corner.

"It's the end of the game," Gretry exclaimed, "you've got no more money! Not another order goes up to that floor."

"It's a lie!" Jadwin cried, "keep on buying, I tell you! Take all they'll offer. I tell you we'll touch the two dollar mark before noon."

"It's useless, Mr. Jadwin," said the banker quietly, "You were practically beaten two days ago."

But Jadwin was beyond all appeal. He threw off Gretry's hand.

"Get out of my way!" he shouted. "Do you hear? I'll play my hand alone from now on."

"'J,' old man--why, see here!" Gretry implored, still holding him by the arm. "Here, where are you going?"

Jadwin's voice rang like a trumpet-call:

"_Into the Pit!_ If you won't execute my orders I'll act myself. I'm going into the Pit, I tell you!"

"'J,' you're mad, old fellow! You're ruined--don't you understand?--you're ruined!"

"Then God curse you, Sam Gretry, for the man who failed me in a crisis!" And, as he spoke, Curtis Jadwin struck the broker full in the face.

Gretry staggered back from the blow. His pale face flashed to crimson for an instant, his fists clenched; then his hands fell to his sides.

"No," he said; "let him go--let him go. The man is merely mad!"

Jadwin thrust the men who tried to hold him to one side, and rushed from the room.

"It's the end," Gretry said simply. He wrote a couple of lines, and handed the note to the senior clerk. "Take that to the secretary of the board at once."