A cat, grey and striped, and wearing a dog collar of nickel and red leather, issued from the coatroom and picked her way across the floor. Evidently she was in a mood of the most ingratiating friendliness, and as one after another of the departing traders spoke to her, raised her tail in the air and arched her back against the legs of the empty chairs. The janitor put in an appearance, lowering the tall colored windows with a long rod. A noise of hammering and the scrape of saws began to issue from a corner where a couple of carpenters tinkered about one of the sample tables.
Then at last even the settlement clerks took themselves off. At once there was a great silence, broken only by the harsh rasp of the carpenters’ saws and the voice of the janitor exchanging jokes with the washerwomen. The sound of footsteps in distant quarters reechoed as if in a church.
The washerwomen invaded the floor, spreading soapy and steaming water before them. Over by the sample tables a negro porter in shirtsleeves swept entire bushels of spilled wheat, crushed, broken, and sodden, into his dust pans.
The day’s campaign was over. It was past two o’clock. On the great dial against the eastern wall the indicator stood—sentinel fashion—at ninety-three. Not till the following morning would the whirlpool, the great central force that spun the Niagara of wheat in its grip, thunder and bellow again.
Later on even the washerwomen, even the porter and janitor, departed. An unbroken silence, the peacefulness of an untroubled calm, settled over the place. The rays of the afternoon sun flooded through the west windows in long parallel shafts full of floating golden motes. There was no sound; nothing stirred. The floor of the Board of Trade was deserted. Alone, on the edge of the abandoned Wheat Pit, in a spot where the sunlight fell warmest—an atom of life, lost in the immensity of the empty floor—the grey cat made her toilet, diligently licking the fur on the inside of her thigh, one leg, as if dislocated, thrust into the air above her head.
IV
In the front parlor of the Cresslers’ house a little company was gathered—Laura Dearborn and Page, Mrs. Wessels, Mrs. Cressler, and young Miss Gretry, an awkward, plain-faced girl of about nineteen, dressed extravagantly in a décolleté gown of blue silk. Curtis Jadwin and Cressler himself stood by the open fireplace smoking. Landry Court fidgeted on the sofa, pretending to listen to the Gretry girl, who told an interminable story of a visit to some wealthy relative who had a country seat in Wisconsin and who raised fancy poultry. She possessed, it appeared, three thousand hens, Brahma, Faverolles, Houdans, Dorkings, even peacocks and tame quails.
Sheldon Corthell, in a dinner coat, an unlighted cigarette between his fingers, discussed the spring exhibit of watercolors with Laura and Mrs. Cressler, Page listening with languid interest. Aunt Wess’ turned the leaves of a family album, counting the number of photographs of Mrs. Cressler which it contained.
Black coffee had just been served. It was the occasion of the third rehearsal for the play which was to be given for the benefit of the hospital ward for Jadwin’s mission children, and Mrs. Cressler had invited the members of the company for dinner. Just now everyone awaited the arrival of the coach, Monsieur Gerardy, who was always late.
“To my notion,” observed Corthell, “the watercolor that pretends to be anything more than a sketch oversteps its intended limits. The elaborated watercolor, I contend, must be judged by the same standards as an oil painting. And if that is so, why not have the oil painting at once?”
“And with all that, if you please, not an egg on the place for breakfast,” declared the Gretry girl in her thin voice. She was constrained, embarrassed. Of all those present she was the only one to mistake the character of the gathering and appear in formal costume. But one forgave Isabel Gretry such lapses as these. Invariably she did the wrong thing; invariably she was out of place in the matter of inadvertent speech, an awkward accident, the wrong toilet. For all her nineteen years, she yet remained the hoyden, young, undeveloped, and clumsy.
“Never an egg, and three thousand hens in the runs,” she continued. “Think of that! The Plymouth Rocks had the pip. And the others, my lands! I don’t know. They just didn’t lay.”
“Ought to tickle the soles of their feet,” declared Landry with profound gravity.
“Tickle their feet!”
“Best thing in the world for hens that don’t lay. It sort of stirs them up. Oh, everyone knows that.”
“Fancy now! I’ll write to Aunt Alice tomorrow.”
Cressler clipped the tip of a fresh cigar, and, turning to Curtis Jadwin, remarked:
“I understand that Leaycraft alone lost nearly fifteen thousand.”
He referred to Jadwin’s deal in May wheat, the consummation of which had been effected the previous week. Squarely in the midst of the morning session, on the day following the short sale of Jadwin’s million of bushels, had exploded the news of the intended action of the French chamber. Amid a tremendous clamour the price fell. The Bulls were panic-stricken. Leaycraft the redoubtable was overwhelmed at the very start. The Porteous trio heroically attempted to shoulder the wheat, but the load was too much. They as well gave ground, and, bereft of their support, May wheat, which had opened at ninety-three and five-eighths to ninety-two and a half, broke with the very first attack to ninety-two, hung there a moment, then dropped again to ninety-one and a half, then to ninety-one. Then, in a prolonged shudder of weakness, sank steadily down by quarters to ninety, to eighty-nine, and at last—a final collapse—touched eighty-eight cents. At that figure Jadwin began to cover. There was danger that the buying of so large a lot might bring about a rally in the price. But Gretry, a consummate master of Pit tactics, kept his orders scattered and bought gradually, taking
