第67章

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."Iwant 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."Isuppose 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 Italk 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 Ipromise 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."