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"Only, to tell the truth, my head ached a little." She was ashamed that she did not altogether delight in her remembrance of Jadwin on that afternoon. He had "addressed" the school, with earnestness it was true, but in a strain decidedly conventional.
This was the Laura of the "grand manner," who played the role of the great lady from room to room of her vast house, who read Meredith, who revelled in swift gallops through the park on jet-black, long-tailed horses, who affected black velvet, black jet, and black lace in her gowns, who was conscious and proud of her pale, stately beauty the Laura Jadwin, in fine, who delighted to recline in a long chair in the dim, beautiful picture gallery and listen with half-shut eyes to the great golden organ thrilling to the passion of Beethoven and Liszt.
Monsieur Gerardy stormed and fretted and insisted upon repeating certain scenes over and over again. By ten o'clock the actors were quite worn out. A little supper was served, and very soon afterward Laura made a move toward departing. She was wondering who would see her home, Landry, Jadwin, or Sheldon Corthell.
"I never heard of him before the theatre party." But Mrs. Cressler promptly supplied information. Curtis Jadwin was a man about thirty-five, who had begun life without a sou in his pockets. His people were farmers in Michigan, hardy, honest fellows, who ploughed and sowed for a living. Curtis had only a rudimentary schooling, and had gone into business with a livery-stable keeper.
The little micks aren't so dreadful when you get to know them." "I!" exclaimed Laura, rather blankly. She shook her head. "Oh, no, Mr. Jadwin. I should be only an encumbrance. Don't misunderstand me. I approve of the work with all my heart, but I am not fitted I feel no call. I should be so inapt that I know I should do no good. My training has been so different, you know," she said, smiling.
Buy your Lizzie a little gold watch with a hundred of it, and tell her it's from Curtis Jadwin, with his compliments.... What, going, Scannel? Well, good-by to you, sir, and hey!" he called after him, "please don't slam the door as you go out." But he dodged with a defensive gesture as the pane of glass almost leaped from its casing, as Scannel stormed across the threshold.
In the middle of summer each stole a fortnight from his business, and went fishing at Geneva Lake in Wisconsin. "I say," Jadwin observed, "I saw an old fellow outside in your customers' room just now that put me in mind of Hargus. You remember that deal of his, the one he tried to swing before he died. Oh how long ago was that? Bless my soul, that must have been fifteen, yes twenty years ago."
She stood a long moment in the middle of the room, looking down at him; and then slipped out as noiselessly as she had come, the tears trembling on her eyelashes. Laura Jadwin did not call on the Cresslers the next day, nor even the next after that.
"The 'sentiment," said the market reports, "was bearish"; and the traders, speculators, eighth-chasers, scalpers, brokers, bucket-shop men, and the like all the world of La Salle Street had become so accustomed to these "Bear conditions," that it was hard to believe that they would not continue indefinitely. Jadwin, inevitably, had been again drawn into the troubled waters of the Pit.
He had dined with the Jadwins at the great North Avenue house and afterwards the three, preferring to walk, had come down to the Cresslers on foot. But evidently the artist was to see but little of Laura Jadwin that evening. She contrived to keep by her husband continually.
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