“I’m not going to congratulate you,” continued Cressler. “As far as that’s concerned, I would rather you had lost than won—if it would have kept you out of the Pit for good. You’re cocky now. I know—good Lord, don’t I know. I had my share of it. I know how a man gets drawn into this speculating game.”
“Charlie, this wasn’t speculating,” interrupted Jadwin. “It was a certainty. It was found money. If I had known a certain piece of real estate was going to appreciate in value I would have bought it, wouldn’t I?”
“All the worse, if it made it seem easy and sure to you. Do you know,” he added suddenly. “Do you know that Leaycraft has gone to keep books for a manufacturing concern out in Dubuque?”
Jadwin pulled his mustache. He was looking at Laura Dearborn over the heads of Landry and the Gretry girl.
“I didn’t suppose he’d be getting measured for a private yacht,” he murmured. Then he continued, pulling his mustache vigorously:
“Charlie, upon my word, what a beautiful—what beautiful hair that girl has!”
Laura was wearing it very high that evening, the shining black coils transfixed by a strange hand-cut ivory comb that had been her grandmother’s. She was dressed in black taffeta, with a single great cabbage-rose pinned to her shoulder. She sat very straight in her chair, one hand upon her slender hip, her head a little to one side, listening attentively to Corthell.
By this time the household of the former rectory was running smoothly; everything was in place, the Dearborns were settled, and a routine had begun. Her first month in her new surroundings had been to Laura an unbroken series of little delights. For formal social distractions she had but little taste. She left those to Page, who, as soon as Lent was over, promptly became involved in a bewildering round of teas, “dancing clubs,” dinners, and theatre parties. Mrs. Wessels was her chaperone, and the little middle-aged lady found the satisfaction of a belated youth in conveying her pretty niece to the various functions that occupied her time. Each Friday night saw her in the gallery of a certain smart dancing school of the south side, where she watched Page dance her way from the “first waltz” to the last figure of the german. She counted the couples carefully, and on the way home was always able to say how the attendance of that particular evening compared with that of the former occasion, and also to inform Laura how many times Page had danced with the same young man.
Laura herself was more serious. She had begun a course of reading; no novels, but solemn works full of allusions to “Man” and “Destiny,” which she underlined and annotated. Twice a week—on Mondays and Thursdays—she took a French lesson. Corthell managed to enlist the good services of Mrs. Wessels and escorted her to numerous piano and cello recitals, to lectures, to concerts. He even succeeded in achieving the consecration of a specified afternoon once a week, spent in his studio in the Fine Arts’ Building on the Lake Front, where he read to them “Saint Agnes Eve,” “Sordello,” “The Light of Asia”—poems which, with their inversions, obscurities, and astonishing arabesques of rhetoric, left Aunt Wess’ bewildered, breathless, all but stupefied.
Laura found these readings charming. The studio was beautiful, lofty, the light dim; the sound of Corthell’s voice returned from the thick hangings of velvet and tapestry in a subdued murmur. The air was full of the odor of pastilles.
Laura could not fail to be impressed with the artist’s tact, his delicacy. In words he never referred to their conversation in the foyer of the Auditorium; only by some unexplained subtlety of attitude he managed to convey to her the distinct impression that he loved her always. That he was patient, waiting for some indefinite, unexpressed development.
Landry Court called upon her as often as she would allow. Once he had prevailed upon her and Page to accompany him to the matinee to see a comic opera. He had pronounced it “bully,” unable to see that Laura evinced only a mild interest in the performance. On each propitious occasion he had made love to her extravagantly. He continually protested his profound respect with a volubility and earnestness that was quite uncalled for.
But, meanwhile, the situation had speedily become more complicated by the entrance upon the scene of an unexpected personage. This was Curtis Jadwin. It was impossible to deny the fact that “J.” was in love with Mrs. Cressler’s protégé. The business man had none of Corthell’s talent for significant reticence, none of his tact, and older than she, a man-of-the-world, accustomed to deal with situations with unswerving directness, he, unlike Landry Court, was not in the least afraid of her. From the very first she found herself upon the defensive. Jadwin was aggressive, assertive, and his addresses had all the persistence and vehemence of veritable attack. Landry she could manage with the lifting of a finger, Corthell disturbed her only upon those rare occasions when he made love to her. But Jadwin gave her no time to so much as think of finesse. She was not even allowed to choose her own time and place for fencing, and to parry his invasion upon those intimate personal grounds which she pleased herself to keep secluded called upon her every feminine art of procrastination and strategy.
He contrived to meet her everywhere. He
