The Pit Part 55

"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 rea.s.sured 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 bal.u.s.trades. 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 m.u.f.fled 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 a.s.sent 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 bal.u.s.trade, 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 sc.r.a.ps 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 eyegla.s.ses, who wore a wonderful white waistcoat with queer gla.s.s b.u.t.tons, a.s.sented, 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 ba.s.s 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 G.o.d! 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 d.a.m.n 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."