第63章

But in the evenings, after dinner, she had her husband to herself.Page was almost invariably occupied by one or more of her young men in the drawing-room, but Laura and Jadwin shut themselves in the library, a lofty panelled room--a place of deep leather chairs, tall bookcases, etchings, and sombre brasses--and there, while Jadwin lay stretched out upon the broad sofa, smoking cigars, one hand behind his head, Laura read aloud to him.

His tastes in fiction were very positive.Laura at first had tried to introduce him to her beloved Meredith.But after three chapters, when he had exclaimed, "What's the fool talking about?" she had given over and begun again from another starting-point.

Left to himself, his wife sorrowfully admitted that he would have gravitated to the "Mysterious Island" and "Michael Strogoff," or even to "Mr.Potter of Texas"and "Mr.Barnes of New York." But she had set herself to accomplish his literary education, so, Meredith failing, she took up "Treasure Island" and "The Wrecker." Much of these he made her skip.

"Oh, let's get on with the 'story,'" he urged.But Pinkerton for long remained for him an ideal, because he was "smart" and "alive.""I'm not long very many of art," he announced."But Ibelieve that any art that don't make the world better and happier is no art at all, and is only fit for the dump heap."But at last Laura found his abiding affinity in Howells.

"Nothing much happens," he said."But I _know_ all those people." He never could rid himself of a surreptitious admiration for Bartley Hubbard.He, too, was "smart" and "alive." He had the "get there" to him.

"Why," he would say, "I know fifty boys just like him down there in La Salle Street." Lapham he loved as a brother.Never a point in the development of his character that he missed or failed to chuckle over.

Bromfield Cory was poohed and boshed quite out of consideration as a "loafer," a "dilletanty," but Lapham had all his sympathy.

"Yes, sir," he would exclaim, interrupting the narrative, "that's just it.That's just what I would have done if I had been in his place.Come, this chap knows what he's writing about--not like that Middleton ass, with his 'Dianas' and 'Amazing Marriages.'"Occasionally the Jadwins entertained.Laura's husband was proud of his house, and never tired of showing his friends about it.Laura gave Page a "coming-out"dance, and nearly every Sunday the Cresslers came to dinner.But Aunt Wess' could, at first, rarely be induced to pay the household a visit.So much grandeur made the little widow uneasy, even a little suspicious.

She would shake her head at Laura, murmuring:

"My word, it's all very fine, but, dear me, Laura, Ihope you do pay for everything on the nail, and don't run up any bills.I don't know what your dear father would say to it all, no, I don't." And she would spend hours in counting the electric bulbs, which she insisted were only devices for some new-fangled gas.

"Thirty-three in this one room alone," she would say.

"I'd like to see your dear husband's face when he gets his gas bill.And a dressmaker that _lives_ in the house....Well,--I don't want to say anything."Thus three years had gone by.The new household settled to a regime.Continually Jadwin grew richer.

His real estate appreciated in value; rents went up.

Every time he speculated in wheat, it was upon a larger scale, and every time he won.He was a Bear always, and on those rare occasions when he referred to his ventures in Laura's hearing, it was invariably to say that prices were going down.Till at last had come that spring when he believed that the bottom had been touched, had had the talk with Gretry, and had, in secret, "turned Bull," with the suddenness of a strategist.

The matter was yet in Gretry's mind while the party remained in the art gallery; and as they were returning to the drawing-room he detained Jadwin an instant.

"If you are set upon breaking your neck," he said, "you might tell me at what figure you want me to buy for you to-morrow.""At the market," returned Jadwin."I want to get into the thing quick."A little later, when they had all reassembled in the drawing-room, and while Mrs.Gretry was telling an interminable story of how Isabel had all but asphyxiated herself the night before, a servant announced Landry Court, and the young man entered, spruce and debonair, a bouquet in one hand and a box of candy in the other.

Some days before this Page had lectured him solemnly on the fact that he was over-absorbed in business, and was starving his soul.He should read more, she told him, and she had said that if he would call upon her on this particular night, she would indicate a course of reading for him.

So it came about that, after a few moments, conversation with the older people in the drawing-room, the two adjourned to the library.

There, by way of a beginning, Page asked him what was his favourite character in fiction.She spoke of the beauty of Ruskin's thoughts, of the gracefulness of Charles Lamb's style.The conversation lagged a little.Landry, not to be behind her, declared for the modern novel, and spoke of the "newest book." But Page never read new books; she was not interested, and their talk, unable to establish itself upon a common ground, halted, and was in a fair way to end, until at last, and by insensible degrees, they began to speak of themselves and of each other.Promptly they were all aroused.They listened to one another's words with studious attention, answered with ever-ready promptness, discussed, argued, agreed, and disagreed over and over again.

Landry had said: