The Pit: A Story of Chicago

In the later part of May, the weather being unusually hot, the Jadwins, taking Page with them, went up to Geneva Lake for the summer, and the great house fronting Lincoln Park was deserted.

Laura had hoped that now her husband would be able to spend his entire time with her, but in this she was disappointed. At first Jadwin went down to the city but two days a week, but soon this was increased to alternate days. Gretry was a frequent visitor at the country house, and often he and Jadwin, their rocking-chairs side by side in a remote corner of the porch, talked "business" in low tones till far into the night.

"Dear," said Laura, finally, "I'm seeing less and less of you every day, and I had so looked forward to this summer, when we were to be together all the time."

"I hate it as much as you do, Laura," said her husband. "But I do feel as though I ought to be on the spot just for now. I can't get it out of my head that we're going to have livelier times in a few months."

"But even Mr. Gretry says that you don't need to be right in your office every minute of the time. He says you can manage your Board of Trade business from out here just as well, and that you only go into town because you can't keep away from La Salle Street and the sound of the Wheat Pit."

Was this true? Jadwin himself had found it difficult to answer. There had been a time when Gretry had been obliged to urge and coax to get his friend to so much as notice the swirl of the great maelstrom in the Board of Trade Building. But of late Jadwin's eye and ear were forever turned thitherward, and it was he, and no longer Gretry, who took initiatives.

Meanwhile he was making money. As he had predicted, the price of wheat had advanced. May had been a fair-weather month with easy prices, the monthly Government report showing no loss in the condition of the crop. Wheat had gone up from sixty to sixty-six cents, and at a small profit Jadwin had sold some two hundred and fifty thousand bushels. Then had come the hot weather at the end of May. On the floor of the Board of Trade the Pit traders had begun to peel off their coats. It began to look like a hot June, and when cash wheat touched sixty-eight, Jadwin, now more than ever convinced of a coming Bull market, bought another five hundred thousand bushels.

This line he added to in June. Unfavorable weather—excessive heat, followed by flooding rains—had hurt the spring wheat, and in every direction there were complaints of weevils and chinch bugs. Later on other deluges had discoloured and damaged the winter crop. Jadwin was now, by virtue of his recent purchases, "long" one million bushels, and the market held firm at seventy-two cents—a twelve-cent advance in two months.

"She'll react," warned Gretry, "sure. Crookes and Sweeny haven't taken a hand yet. Look out for a heavy French crop. We'll get reports on it soon now. You're playing with a gun, J., that kicks further than it shoots."

"We've not shot her yet," Jadwin said. "We're only just loading her—for Bears," he added, with a wink.

In July came the harvesting returns from all over the country, proving conclusively that for the first time in six years, the United States crop was to be small and poor. The yield was moderate. Only part of it could be graded as "contract." Good wheat would be valuable from now on. Jadwin bought again, and again it was a "lot" of half a million bushels.

Then came the first manifestation of that marvellous golden luck that was to follow Curtis Jadwin through all the coming months. The French wheat crop was announced as poor. In Germany the yield was to be far below the normal. All through Hungary the potato and rye crops were light.

About the middle of the month Jadwin again called the broker to his country house, and took him for a long evening's trip around the lake, aboard the "Thetis." They were alone. MacKenny was at the wheel, and, seated on camp stools in the stern of the little boat, Jadwin outlined his plans for the next few months.

"Sam," he said, "I thought back in April there that we were to touch top prices about the first of this month, but this French and German news has coloured the cat different. I've been figuring that I would get out of this market around the seventies, but she's going higher. I'm going to hold on yet awhile."

"You do it on your own responsibility, then," said the broker. "I warn you the price is top heavy."

"Not much. Seventy-two cents is too cheap. Now I'm going into this hard; and I want to have my own lines out—to be independent of the trade papers that Crookes could buy up any time he wants to. I want you to get me some good, reliable correspondents in Europe; smart, bright fellows that we can depend on. I want one in Liverpool, one in Paris, and one in Odessa, and I want them to cable us about the situation every day."

Gretry thought a while.

"Well," he said, at length, "… yes. I guess I can arrange it. I can get you a good man in Liverpool—Traynard is his name—and there's two or three in Paris we could pick up. Odessa—I don't know. I couldn't say just this minute. But I'll fix it."

These correspondents began to report at the end of July. All over Europe the demand for wheat was active. Grain handlers were not only buying freely, but were contracting for future delivery. In August came the first demands for American wheat, scattered and sporadic at first, then later, a little, a very little more insistent.

Thus the summer wore to its end. The fall "situation" began slowly to define itself, with eastern Europe—densely populated, overcrowded—commencing to show uneasiness as to its supply of food for the winter; and with but a moderate crop in America to meet foreign demands. Russia, the United States, and Argentine would have to feed the world during the next twelve months.

Over the Chicago Wheat Pit the hand of the great indicator stood at seventy-five cents. Jadwin sold out his September wheat at this figure, and then in a single vast clutch bought three million bushels of the December option.

Never before had he ventured so deeply into the Pit. Never before had he committed himself so irrevocably to the send of the current. But something was preparing. Something indefinite and huge. He guessed it, felt it, knew it. On all sides of him he felt a quickening movement. Lethargy, inertia were breaking up. There was buoyancy to the current. In its ever-increasing swiftness there was exhilaration and exuberance.

And he was upon the crest of the wave. Now the forethought, the shrewdness, and the prompt action of those early spring days were beginning to tell. Confident, secure, unassailable, Jadwin plunged in. Every week the swirl of the Pit increased in speed, every week the demands of Europe for American wheat grew more frequent; and at the end of the month the price—which had fluctuated between seventy-five and seventy-eight—in a sudden flurry rushed to seventy-nine, to seventy-nine and a half, and closed, strong, at the even eighty cents.

On the day when the latter figure was reached Jadwin bought a seat upon the Board of Trade.

He was now no longer an "outsider."

VII

One morning in November of the same year Laura joined her husband at breakfast, preoccupied and a little grave, her mind full of a subject about which, she told herself, she could no longer keep from speaking. So soon as an opportunity presented itself, which was when Jadwin laid down his paper and drew his coffee-cup towards him, Laura exclaimed:

"Curtis."

"Well, old girl?"

"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 and that, or talking by the hour to Mr. Gretry in the library—even when you are not doing all that, your mind seems to be away from me—down there in La Salle Street or the Board of Trade Building. Dearest, you don't know. I don't mean to complain, and I don't want to be exacting or selfish, but—sometimes I—I am lonesome. Don't interrupt," she said, hastily. "I want to say it all at once, and then never speak of it again. Last night, when Mr. Gretry was here, you said, just after dinner, that you would be all through your talk in an hour. And I waited.... I waited till eleven, and then I went to bed. Dear I—I—I was lonesome. The evening was so long. I had put on my very prettiest gown, the one you said you liked so much, and you never seemed to notice. You told me Mr. Gretry was going by nine, and I had it all planned how we would spend the evening together."

But she got no further. Her husband had taken her in his arms, and had interrupted her words with blustering exclamations of self-reproach and self-condemnation. He was a brute, he cried, a senseless, selfish ass, who had no right to such a wife, who was not worth a single one of the tears that by now were trembling on Laura's lashes.

"Now we won't speak of it again," she began. "I suppose I am selfish—"

"Selfish, nothing!" he exclaimed. "Don't talk that way. I'm the one—"

"But," Laura persisted, "some time you will—get out of this speculating for good? Oh, I do look forward to it so! And, Curtis, what is the use? We're so rich now we can't spend our money. What do you want to make more for?"

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

"That's just it, the 'excitement.' You don't know, Curtis. It is changing you. You are so nervous sometimes, and sometimes you don't listen to me when I talk to you. I can just see what's in your mind. It's wheat—wheat—wheat, wheat—wheat—wheat, all the time. Oh, if you knew how I hated and feared it!"

"Well, old girl, that settles it. I wouldn't make you unhappy a single minute for all the wheat in the world."

"And you will stop speculating?"

"Well, I can't pull out all in a moment, but just as soon as a chance comes I'll get out of the market. At any rate, I won't have any business of mine come between us. I don't like it any more than you do. Why, how long is it since we've read any book together, like we used to when you read aloud to me?"

"Not since we came back from the country."

"By George, that's so, that's so." He shook his head. "I've got to taper off. You're right, Laura. But you don't know, you haven't a guess how this trading in wheat gets a hold of you. And, then, what am I to do? What are we fellows, who have made our money, to do? I've got to be busy. I can't sit down and twiddle my thumbs. And I don't believe in lounging around clubs, or playing with race horses, or murdering game birds, or running some poor, helpless fox to death. Speculating seems to be about the only game, or the only business that's left open to me—that appears to be legitimate. I know I've gone too far into it, and I promise you I'll quit. But it's fine fun. When you know how to swing a deal, and can look ahead, a little further than the other fellows, and can take chances they daren't, and plan and manoeuvre, and then see it all come out just as you had known it would all along—I tell you it's absorbing."

"But you never do tell me," she objected. "I never know what you are doing. I hear through Mr. Court or Mr. Gretry, but never through you. Don't you think you could trust me? I want to enter into your life on its every side, Curtis. Tell me," she suddenly demanded, "what are you doing now?"

"Very well, then," he said, "I'll tell you. Of course you mustn't speak about it. It's nothing very secret, but it's always as well to keep quiet about these things."

She gave her word, and leaned her elbows on the table, prepared to listen intently. Jadwin crushed a lump of sugar against the inside of his coffee cup.

"Well," he began, "I've not been doing anything very exciting, except to buy wheat."

"What for?"

"To sell again. You see, I'm one of those who believe that wheat is going up. I was the very first to see it, I guess, way back last April. Now in August this year, while we were up at the lake, I bought three million bushels."

"Three—million—bushels!" she murmured. "Why, what do you do with it? Where do you put it?"

He tried to explain that he had merely bought the right to call for the grain on a certain date, but she could not understand this very clearly.

"Never mind," she told him, "go on."

"Well, then, at the end of August we found out that the wet weather in England would make a short crop there, and along in September came the news that Siberia would not raise enough to supply the southern provinces of Russia. That left only the United States and the Argentine Republic to feed pretty much the whole world. Of course that would make wheat valuable. Seems to be a short-crop year everywhere. I saw that wheat would go higher and higher, so I bought another million bushels in October, and another early in this month. That's all. You see, I figure that pretty soon those people over in England and Italy and Germany—the people that eat wheat—will be willing to pay us in America big prices for it, because it's so hard to get. They've got to have the wheat—it's bread 'n' butter to them."

"Oh, then why not give it to them?" she cried. "Give it to those poor people—your five million bushels. Why, that would be a godsend to them."

Jadwin stared a moment.

"Oh, that isn't exactly how it works out," he said.

Before he could say more, however, the maid came in and handed to Jadwin three despatches.

"Now those," said Laura, when the servant had gone out, "you get those every morning. Are those part of your business? What do they say?"

"I'll read them to you," he told her as he slit the first envelopes. "They are cablegrams from agents of mine in Europe. Gretry arranged to have them sent to me. Here now, this is from Odessa. It's in cipher, but"—he drew a narrow memorandum-book from his breast pocket—"I'll translate it for you."

He turned the pages of the key book a few moments, jotting down the translation on the back of an envelope with the gold pencil at the end of his watch chain.

"Here's how it reads," he said at last. "'Cash wheat advanced one cent bushel on Liverpool buying, stock light. Shipping to interior. European price not attractive to sellers.'"

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"Well, that Russia will not export wheat, that she has no more than enough for herself, so that Western Europe will have to look to us for her wheat."

"And the others? Read those to me."

Again Jadwin translated.

"This is from Paris:

"'Answer on one million bushels wheat in your market—stocks lighter than expected, and being cleared up.'"

"Which is to say?" she queried.

"They want to know how much I would ask for a million bushels. They find it hard to get the stuff over there—just as I said they would."

"Will you sell it to them?"

"Maybe. I'll talk to Sam about it."

"And now the last one."

"It's from Liverpool, and Liverpool, you must understand, is the great buyer of wheat. It's a tremendously influential place."

He began once more to consult the key book, one finger following the successive code words of the despatch.

Laura, watching him, saw his eyes suddenly contract. "By George," he muttered, all at once, "by George, what's this?"

"What is it?" she demanded. "Is it important?"

But all-absorbed, Jadwin neither heard nor responded. Three times he verified the same word.

"Oh, please tell me," she begged.

Jadwin shook his head impatiently and held up a warning hand.

"Wait, wait," he said. "Wait a minute."

Word for word he wrote out the translation of the cablegram, and then studied it intently.

"That's it," he said, at last. Then he got to his feet. "I guess I've had enough breakfast," he declared. He looked at his watch, touched the call bell, and when the maid appeared said:

"Tell Jarvis to bring the buggy around right away."

"But, dear, what is it?" repeated Laura. "You said you would tell me. You see," she cried, "it's just as I said. You've forgotten my very existence. When it's a question of wheat I count for nothing. And just now, when you read the despatch to yourself, you were all different; such a look came into your face, so cruelly eager, and triumphant and keen."

"You'd be eager, too," he exclaimed, "if you understood. Look; read it for yourself."

He thrust the cable into her hands. Over each code word he had written its translation, and his wife read:

"Large firms here short and in embarrassing position, owing to curtailment in Argentine shipments. Can negotiate for five million wheat if price satisfactory."

"Well?" she asked.

"Well, don't you see what that means? It's the 'European demand' at last. They must have wheat, and I've got it to give 'em—wheat that I bought, oh! at seventy cents, some of it, and they'll pay the market that is, eighty cents, for it. Oh, they'll pay more. They'll pay eighty-two if I want 'em to. France is after the stuff, too. Remember that cable from Paris I just read. They'd bid against each other. Why, if I pull this off, if this goes through—and, by George," he went on, speaking as much to himself as to her, new phases of the affair presenting themselves to him at every moment, "by George, I don't have to throw this wheat into the Pit and break down the price—and Gretry has understandings with the railroads, through the elevator gang, so we get big rebates. Why, this wheat is worth eighty-two cents to them—and then there's this 'curtailment in Argentine shipments.' That's the first word we've had about small crops there. Holy Moses, if the Argentine crop is off, wheat will knock the roof clean off the Board of Trade!" The maid reappeared in the doorway. "The buggy?" queried Jadwin. "All right. I'm off, Laura, and—until it's over keep quiet about all this, you know. Ask me to read you some more cables some day. It brings good luck."

He gathered up his despatches and the mail and was gone. Laura, left alone, sat looking out of the window a long moment. She heard the front door close, and then the sound of the horses' hoofs on the asphalt by the carriage porch. They died down, ceased, and all at once a great silence seemed to settle over the house.

Laura sat thinking. At last she rose.

"It is the first time," she said to herself, "that Curtis ever forgot to kiss me good-by."

The day, for all that the month was December, was fine. The sun shone; under foot the ground was dry and hard. The snow which had fallen ten days before was practically gone. In fine, it was a perfect day for riding. Laura called her maid and got into her habit. The groom with his own horse and "Crusader" were waiting for her when she descended.

That forenoon Laura rode further and longer than usual. Preoccupied at first, her mind burdened with vague anxieties, she nevertheless could not fail to be aroused and stimulated by the sparkle and effervescence of the perfect morning, and the cold, pure glitter of Lake Michigan, green with an intense mineral hue, dotted with whitecaps, and flashing under the morning sky. Lincoln Park was deserted and still; a blue haze shrouded the distant masses of leafless trees, where the gardeners were burning the heaps of leaves. Under her the thoroughbred moved with an ease and a freedom that were superb, throwing back one sharp ear at her lightest word; his rippling mane caressed her hand and forearm, and as she looked down upon his shoulder she could see the long, slender muscles, working smoothly, beneath the satin sheen of the skin. At the water works she turned into the long, straight road that leads to North Lake, and touched Crusader with the crop, checking him slightly at the same time. With a little toss of his head he broke from a trot into a canter, and then, as she leaned forward in the saddle, into his long, even gallop. There was no one to see; she would not be conspicuous, so Laura gave the horse his head, and in another moment he was carrying her with a swiftness that brought the water to her eyes, and that sent her hair flying from her face. She had him completely under control. A touch upon the bit, she knew, would suffice to bring him to a standstill. She knew him to be without fear and without nerves, knew that his every instinct made for her safety, and that this morning's gallop was as much a pleasure to him as to his rider. Beneath her and around her the roadway and landscape flew; the cold air sang in her ears and whipped a faint colour to her pale cheeks; in her deep brown eyes a frosty sparkle came and went, and throughout all her slender figure the blood raced spanking and careering in a full, strong tide of health and gaiety.

She made a circle around North Lake, and came back by way of the Linne monument and the Palm House, Crusader ambling quietly by now, the groom trotting stolidly in the rear. Throughout all her ride she had seen no one but the park gardeners and the single grey-coated, mounted policeman whom she met each time she rode, and who always touched his helmet to her as she cantered past. Possibly she had grown a little careless in looking out for pedestrians at the crossings, for as she turned eastward at the La Salle statue, she all but collided with a gentleman who was traversing the road at the same time.

She brought her horse to a standstill with a little start of apprehension, and started again as she saw that the gentleman was Sheldon Corthell.

"Well," she cried, taken all aback, unable to think of formalities, and relapsing all at once into the young girl of Barrington, Massachusetts, "well, I never—of all the people."

But, no doubt, she had been more in his mind than he in hers, and a meeting with her was for him an eventuality not at all remote. There was more of pleasure than of embarrassment in that first look in which he recognised the wife of Curtis Jadwin.

The artist had changed no whit in the four years since last she had seen him. He seemed as young as ever; there was the same "elegance" to his figure; his hands were just as long and slim as ever; his black beard was no less finely pointed, and the mustaches were brushed away from his lips in the same French style that she remembered he used to affect. He was, as always, carefully dressed. He wore a suit of tweeds of a foreign cut, but no overcoat, a cloth cap of greenish plaid was upon his head, his hands were gloved in dogskin, and under his arm he carried a slender cane of varnished brown bamboo. The only unconventionality in his dress was the cravat, a great bow of black silk that overflowed the lapels of his coat.

But she had no more than time to register a swift impression of the details, when he came quickly forward, one hand extended, the other holding his cap.

"I cannot tell you how glad I am," he exclaimed.

It was the old Corthell beyond doubting or denial. Not a single inflection of his low-pitched, gently modulated voice was wanting; not a single infinitesimal mannerism was changed, even to the little tilting of the chin when he spoke, or the quick winking of the eyelids, or the smile that narrowed the corners of the eyes themselves, or the trick of perfect repose of his whole body. Even his handkerchief, as always, since first she had known him, was tucked into his sleeve at the wrist.

"And so you are back again," she cried. "And when, and how?"

"And so—yes—so I am back again," he repeated, as they shook hands. "Only day before yesterday, and quite surreptitiously. No one knows yet that I am here. I crept in—or my train did—under the cover of night. I have come straight from Tuscany."

"From Tuscany?"

"—and gardens and marble pergolas."

"Now why any one should leave Tuscan gardens and—and all that kind of thing for a winter in Chicago, I cannot see," she said.

"It is a little puzzling," he answered. "But I fancy that my gardens and pergolas and all the rest had come to seem to me a little—as the French would put it—malle. I began to long for a touch of our hard, harsh city again. Harshness has its place, I think, if it is only to cut one's teeth on."

Laura looked down at him, smiling.

"I should have thought you had cut yours long ago," she said.

"Not my wisdom teeth," he urged. "I feel now that I have come to that time of life when it is expedient to have wisdom."

"I have never known that feeling," she confessed, "and I live in the 'hard, harsh' city."

"Oh, that is because you have never known what it meant not to have wisdom," he retorted. "Tell me about everybody," he went on. "Your husband, he is well, of course, and distressfully rich. I heard of him in New York. And Page, our little, solemn Minerva of Dresden china?"