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_ In Chicago the Ormsbys lived in a large stone house in Drexel
Boulevard. The house had a history. It was owned by a banker who was a
large stockholder and one of the directors of the plough trust. Like
all men who knew him well the banker admired and respected the ability
and integrity of David Ormsby. When the ploughmaker came to the city
from a town in Wisconsin to be the master of the plough trust he
offered him the house to use.
The house had come to the banker from his father, a grim determined
old money-making merchant of a past generation who had died hated by
half Chicago after toiling sixteen hours daily for sixty years. In his
old age the merchant had built the house to express the power wealth
had given him. It had floors and woodwork cunningly wrought of
expensive woods by workmen sent to Chicago by a firm in Brussels. In
the long drawing room at the front of the house hung a chandelier that
had cost the merchant ten thousand dollars. The stairway leading to
the floor above was from the palace of a prince in Venice and had been
bought for the merchant and brought over seas to the house in Chicago.
The banker who inherited the house did not want to live in it. Even
before the death of his father and after his own unsuccessful marriage
he lived at a down town club. In his old age the merchant, retired
from business, lived in the house with another old man, an inventor.
He could not rest although he had given up business with that end in
view. Digging a trench in the lawn at the back of the house he with
his friend spent his days trying to reduce the refuse of one of his
factories to something having commercial value. Fires burned in the
trench and at night the grim old man, hands covered with tar, sat in
the house under the chandelier. After the death of the merchant the
house stood empty, staring at passers-by in the street, its walks and
paths overgrown with weeds and rank grass.
David Ormsby fitted into his house. Walking through the long halls or
sitting smoking his cigar in an easy chair on the wide lawn he looked
arrayed and environed. The house became a part of him like a well-made
and intelligently worn suit of clothes. Into the drawing room under
the ten thousand dollar chandelier he moved a billiard table and the
click of ivory balls banished the churchliness of the place.
Up and down the stairway moved American girls, friends of Margaret,
their skirts rustling and their voices running through the huge rooms.
In the evening after dinner David played billiards. The careful
calculation of the angles and the English interested him. Playing in
the evening with Margaret or with a man friend the fatigue of the day
passed and his honest voice and reverberating laugh brought a smile to
the lips of people passing in the street. In the evening David brought
his friends to sit in talk with him on the wide verandas. At times he
went alone to his room at the top of the house and buried himself in
books. On Saturday evenings he had a debauch and with a group of
friends from town sat at a card table in the long parlour playing
poker and drinking highballs.
Laura Ormsby, Margaret's mother, had never seemed a real part of the
life about her. Even as a child the daughter had thought her
hopelessly romantic. Life had treated her too well and from every one
about her she expected qualities and reactions which in her own person
she would not have tried to achieve.
David had already begun to rise when he married her, the slender
brown-haired daughter of a village shoemaker, and even in those days
the little plough company with its ownership scattered among the
merchants and farmers of the vicinity had started under his hand to
make progress in the state. People already spoke of its master as a
coming man and of Laura as the wife of a coming man.
To Laura this was in some way unsatisfactory. Sitting at home and
doing nothing she had still a passionate wish to be known as a
character, an individual, a woman of action. On the street as she
walked beside her husband, she beamed upon people but when the same
people spoke, calling them a handsome couple, a flush rose to her
cheeks and a flash of indignation ran through her brain.
Laura Ormsby lay awake in her bed at night thinking of her life. She
had a world of fancies in which she at such times lived. In her dream
world a thousand stirring adventures came to her. She imagined a
letter received through the mail, telling of an intrigue in which
David's name was coupled with that of another woman and lay abed
quietly hugging the thought. She looked at the face of the sleeping
David tenderly. "Poor hard-pressed boy," she muttered. "I shall be
resigned and cheerful and lead him gently back to his old place in my
heart."
In the morning after a night spent in this dream world Laura looked at
David, so cool and efficient, and was irritated by his efficiency.
When he playfully dropped his hand upon her shoulder she drew away and
sitting opposite him at breakfast watched him reading the morning
paper all unconscious of the rebel thoughts in her mind.
Once after she had moved to Chicago and after Margaret's return from
college Laura had the faint suggestion of an adventure. Although it
turned out tamely it lingered in her mind and in some way sweetened
her thoughts.
She was alone on a sleeping car coming from New York. A young man sat
in a seat opposite her and the two fell into talk. As she talked Laura
imagined herself eloping with the young man and under her lashes
looked sharply at his weak and pleasant face. She kept the talk alive
as others in the car crawled away for the night behind the green
swaying curtains.
With the young man Laura discussed ideas she had got from reading
Ibsen and Shaw. She grew bold and daring in the advancing of opinions
and tried to stir the young man to some overt speech or action that
might arouse her indignation.
The young man did not understand the middle-aged woman who sat beside
him and talked so boldly. He knew of but one prominent man named Shaw
and that man had been governor of Iowa and later a member of the
cabinet of President McKinley. It startled him to think that a
prominent member of the Republican party should have such thoughts or
express such opinions. He talked of fishing in Canada and of a comic
opera he had seen in New York and at eleven o'clock yawned and
disappeared behind the green curtains. As the young man lay in his
berth he muttered to himself, "Now what did that woman want?" A
thought came into his mind and he reached up to where his trousers
swung in a little hammock above the window and looked to see that his
watch and pocket-book were still there.
At home Laura Ormsby nursed the thought of the talk with the strange
man on the train. In her mind he became something romantic and daring,
a streak of light across what she was pleased to think of as her
sombre life.
Sitting at dinner she talked of him describing his charms. "He had a
wonderful mind and we sat late into the night talking," she said,
watching the face of David.
When she had spoken Margaret looked up and said laughingly, "Have a
heart Dad. Here is romance. Do not be blind to it. Mother is trying to
scare you about an alleged love affair." _
Read next: BOOK V: CHAPTER III
Read previous: BOOK V: CHAPTER I
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