The Pit Part 20

There was a delicious smell of ripening in the air, a smell of sap once more on the move, of humid earths disintegrating from the winter rigidity, of twigs and slender branches stretching themselves under the returning warmth, elastic once more, straining in their bark.

On the North Side, in Washington Square, along the Lake-sh.o.r.e Drive, all up and down the Lincoln Park Boulevard, and all through Erie, Huron, and Superior streets, through North State Street, North Clarke Street, and La Salle Avenue, the minute sparkling of green flashed from tree top to tree top, like the first kindling of dry twigs. One could almost fancy that the click of igniting branch tips was audible as whole beds of yellow-green sparks defined themselves within certain elms and cottonwoods.

Every morning the sun invaded earlier the east windows of Laura Dearborn's bedroom. Every day at noon it stood more nearly overhead above her home. Every afternoon the checkered shadows of the leaves thickened upon the drawn curtains of the library. Within doors the bottle-green flies came out of their lethargy and droned and b.u.mped on the panes. The double windows were removed, screens and awnings took their places; the summer pieces were put into the fireplaces.

All of a sudden vans invaded the streets, piled high with mattresses, rocking-chairs, and bird cages; the inevitable "spring moving" took place. And these furniture vans alternated with great trucks laden with huge elm trees on their way from nursery to lawn. Families and trees alike submitted to the impulse of transplanting, abandoning the winter quarters, migrating with the spring to newer environments, taking root in other soils. Sparrows wrangled on the sidewalks and built ragged nests in the interstices of cornice and coping. In the parks one heard the liquid modulations of robins. The florists' wagons appeared, and from house to house, from lawn to lawn, iron urns and window boxes filled up with pansies, geraniums, fuchsias, and trailing vines. The flower beds, stripped of straw and manure, bloomed again, and at length the great cottonwoods shed their berries, like cl.u.s.ters of tiny grapes, over street and sidewalk.

At length came three days of steady rain, followed by cloudless sunshine and full-bodied, vigorous winds straight from out the south.

Instantly the living embers in tree top and gra.s.s plat were fanned to flame. Like veritable fire, the leaves blazed up. Branch after branch caught and crackled; even the dryest, the deadest, were enfolded in the resistless swirl of green. Tree top ignited tree top; the parks and boulevards were one smother of radiance. From end to end and from side to side of the city, fed by the rains, urged by the south winds, spread billowing and surging the superb conflagration of the coming summer.

Then, abruptly, everything hung poised; the leaves, the flowers, the gra.s.s, all at fullest stretch, stood motionless, arrested, while the heat, distilled, as it were, from all this seething green, rose like a vast pillar over the city, and stood balanced there in the iridescence of the sky, moveless and immeasurable.

From time to time it appeared as if this pillar broke in the guise of summer storms, and came toppling down upon the city in tremendous detonations of thunder and weltering avalanches of rain. But it broke only to reform, and no sooner had the thunder ceased, the rain intermitted, and the sun again come forth, than one received the vague impression of the swift rebuilding of the vast, invisible column that smothered the city under its bases, towering higher and higher into the rain-washed, crystal-clear atmosphere.

Then the aroma of wet dust, of drenched pavements, musty, acute--the unforgettable exhalation of the city's streets after a shower--pervaded all the air, and the little out-door activities resumed again under the dripping elms and upon the steaming sidewalks.

The evenings were delicious. It was yet too early for the exodus northward to the Wisconsin lakes, but to stay indoors after nightfall was not to be thought of. After six o'clock, all through the streets in the neighbourhood of the Dearborns' home, one could see the family groups "sitting out" upon the front "stoop." Chairs were brought forth, carpets and rugs unrolled upon the steps. From within, through the opened windows of drawing-room and parlour, came the brisk gaiety of pianos. The sidewalks were filled with children clamouring at "tag,"

"I-spy," or "run-sheep-run." Girls in shirt-waists and young men in flannel suits promenaded to and fro. Visits were exchanged from "stoop"

to "stoop," lemonade was served, and claret punch. In their armchairs on the top step, elderly men, householders, capitalists, well-to-do, their large stomachs covered with white waistcoats, their straw hats upon their knees, smoked very fragrant cigars in silent enjoyment, digesting their dinners, taking the air after the grime and hurry of the business districts.

It was on such an evening as this, well on towards the last days of the spring, that Laura Dearborn and Page joined the Cresslers and their party, sitting out like other residents of the neighbourhood on the front steps of their house. Almost every evening nowadays the Dearborn girls came thus to visit with the Cresslers. Sometimes Page brought her mandolin.

Every day of the warm weather seemed only to increase the beauty of the two sisters. Page's brown hair was never more luxuriant, the exquisite colouring of her cheeks never more charming, the boyish outlines of her small, straight figure--immature and a little angular as yet--never more delightful. The seriousness of her straight-browed, grave, grey-blue eyes was still present, but the eyes themselves were, in some indefinable way, deepening, and all the maturity that as yet was withheld from her undeveloped little form looked out from beneath her long lashes.

But Laura was veritably regal. Very slender as yet, no trace of fulness to be seen over hip or breast, the curves all low and flat, she yet carried her extreme height with tranquil confidence, the unperturbed a.s.surance of a chatelaine of the days of feudalism.

Her coal-black hair, high-piled, she wore as if it were a coronet. The warmth of the exuberant spring days had just perceptibly mellowed the even paleness of her face, but to compensate for this all the splendour of coming midsummer nights flashed from her deep-brown eyes.

On this occasion she had put on her coat over her shirt-waist, and a great bunch of violets was tucked into her belt. But no sooner had she exchanged greetings with the others and settled herself in her place than she slipped her coat from her shoulders.

It was while she was doing this that she noted, for the first time, Landry Court standing half in and half out of the shadow of the vestibule behind Mr. Cressler's chair.

"This is the first time he has been here since--since that night," Mrs.

Cressler hastened to whisper in Laura's ear. "He told me about--well, he told me what occurred, you know. He came to dinner to-night, and afterwards the poor boy nearly wept in my arms. You never saw such penitence."

Laura put her chin in the air with a little movement of incredulity.

But her anger had long since been a thing of the past. Good-tempered, she could not cherish resentment very long. But as yet she had greeted Landry only by the briefest of nods.

"Such a warm night!" she murmured, fanning herself with part of Mr.

Cressler's evening paper. "And I never was so thirsty."

"Why, of course," exclaimed Mrs. Cressler. "Isabel," she called, addressing Miss Gretry, who sat on the opposite side of the steps, "isn't the lemonade near you? Fill a couple of gla.s.ses for Laura and Page."

Page murmured her thanks, but Laura declined.

"No; just plain water for me," she said. "Isn't there some inside? Mr.

Court can get it for me, can't he?" Landry brought the pitcher back, running at top speed and spilling half of it in his eagerness. Laura thanked him with a smile, addressing him, however, by his last name.

She somehow managed to convey to him in her manner the information that though his offence was forgotten, their old-time relations were not, for one instant, to be resumed.

Later on, while Page was thrumming her mandolin, Landry whistling a "second," Mrs. Cressler took occasion to remark to Laura:

"I was reading the Paris letter in the 'Inter-Ocean' to-day, and I saw Mr. Corth.e.l.l's name on the list of American arrivals at the Continental. I guess," she added, "he's going to be gone a long time. I wonder sometimes if he will ever come back. A fellow with his talent, I should imagine would find Chicago--well, less congenial, anyhow, than Paris. But, just the same, I do think it was mean of him to break up our play by going. I'll bet a cookie that he wouldn't take part any more just because you wouldn't. He was just crazy to do that love scene in the fourth act with you. And when you wouldn't play, of course he wouldn't; and then everybody seemed to lose interest with you two out.

'J.' took it all very decently though, don't you think?"

Laura made a murmur of mild a.s.sent.

"He was disappointed, too," continued Mrs. Cressler. "I could see that.

He thought the play was going to interest a lot of our church people in his Sunday-school. But he never said a word when it fizzled out. Is he coming to-night?"

"Well I declare," said Laura. "How should I know, if you don't?"

Jadwin was an almost regular visitor at the Cresslers' during the first warm evenings. He lived on the South Side, and the distance between his home and that of the Cresslers was very considerable. It was seldom, however, that Jadwin did not drive over. He came in his double-seated buggy, his negro coachman beside him the two coach dogs, "Rex" and "Rox," trotting under the rear axle. His horses were not showy, nor were they made conspicuous by elaborate boots, bandages, and all the other solemn paraphernalia of the stable, yet men upon the sidewalks, amateurs, breeders, and the like--men who understood good stock--never failed to stop to watch the team go by, heads up, the check rein swinging loose, ears all alert, eyes all alight, the breath deep, strong, and slow, and the stride, machine-like, even as the swing of a metronome, thrown out from the shoulder to knee, snapped on from knee to fetlock, from fetlock to pastern, finishing squarely, beautifully, with the thrust of the hoof, planted an instant, then, as it were, flinging the roadway behind it, s.n.a.t.c.hed up again, and again cast forward.

On these occasions Jadwin himself inevitably wore a black "slouch" hat, suggestive of the general of the Civil War, a grey "dust overcoat" with a black velvet collar, and tan gloves, discoloured with the moisture of his palms and all twisted and crumpled with the strain of holding the thoroughbreds to their work.

He always called the time of the trip from the buggy at the Cresslers'

horse block, his stop watch in his hand, and, as he joined the groups upon the steps, he was almost sure to remark: "Tugs were loose all the way from the river. They pulled the whole rig by the reins. My hands are about dislocated."

"Page plays very well," murmured Mrs. Cressler as the young girl laid down her mandolin. "I hope J. does come to-night," she added. "I love to have him 'round. He's so hearty and whole-souled."

Laura did not reply. She seemed a little preoccupied this evening, and conversation in the group died away. The night was very beautiful, serene, quiet; and, at this particular hour of the end of the twilight, no one cared to talk much. Cressler lit another cigar, and the filaments of delicate blue smoke hung suspended about his head in the moveless air. Far off, from the direction of the mouth of the river, a lake steamer whistled a prolonged tenor note. Somewhere from an open window in one of the neighbouring houses a violin, accompanied by a piano, began to elaborate the sustained phrases of "Schubert's Serenade." Theatrical as was the theme, the twilight and the m.u.f.fled hum of the city, lapsing to quiet after the febrile activities of the day, combined to lend it a dignity, a persuasiveness. The children were still playing along the sidewalks, and their staccato gaiety was part of the quiet note to which all sounds of the moment seemed chorded.

After a while Mrs. Cressler began to talk to Laura in a low voice. She and Charlie were going to spend a part of June at Oconomowoc, in Wisconsin. Why could not Laura make up her mind to come with them? She had asked Laura a dozen times already, but couldn't get a yes or no answer from her. What was the reason she could not decide? Didn't she think she would have a good time?

"Page can go," said Laura. "I would like to have you take her. But as for me, I don't know. My plans are so unsettled this summer." She broke off suddenly. "Oh, now, that I think of it, I want to borrow your 'Idylls of the King.' May I take it for a day or two? I'll run in and get it now," she added as she rose. "I know just where to find it. No, please sit still, Mr. Cressler. I'll go."

And with the words she disappeared in doors, leaving Mrs. Cressler to murmur to her husband:

"Strange girl. Sometimes I think I don't know Laura at all. She's so inconsistent. How funny she acts about going to Oconomowoc with us!"

Mr. Cressler permitted himself an amiable grunt of protest.

"Pshaw! Laura's all right. The handsomest girl in Cook County."

"Well, that's not much to do with it, Charlie," sighed Mrs. Cressler.

"Oh, dear," she added vaguely. "I don't know."

"Don't know what?"

"I hope Laura's life will be happy."

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake, Carrie!"

"There's something about that girl," continued Mrs. Cressler, "that makes my heart bleed for her."

Cressler frowned, puzzled and astonished.