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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/30736-8.txt b/30736-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..05b0c7a --- /dev/null +++ b/30736-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,12189 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Clark's Field, by Robert Herrick + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Clark's Field + +Author: Robert Herrick + +Release Date: December 22, 2009 [EBook #30736] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLARK'S FIELD *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + CLARK'S FIELD + + BY ROBERT HERRICK + + +BOSTON AND NEW YORK +HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY +The Riverside Press Cambridge +1914 + +COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY ROBERT HERRICK +ALL RIGHTS RESERVED +_Published June 1914_ + + + + +CLARK'S FIELD + + +The other day I happened to be in the town where I was born and not far +from the commonplace house in the humbler quarter of the town where my +parents were living at the time of my birth, half a century and more +ago. I am not fond of my native town, although I lived in the place +until I was seventeen or eighteen years old. It was never a +distinguished spot and seems to have gained nothing as yet from having +been my birthplace. It has some reputation of its own, however, but that +is due to the enduring popularity of a certain cookstove that has long +been manufactured there, the "Stearns and Frost Cooker," known to many +housewives of several generations. In my youth the Stearns and Frost +stove works were reputed to be the largest in the world, and most of the +plain citizens of Alton were concerned in one way or another with them. +I do not happen to be interested in the manufacture or sale, or I may +add the use, of the domestic cookstove. As a boy I always thought the +town a dull, ugly sort of place, and although it has grown marvelously +these last thirty years, having been completely surrounded and absorbed +by the neighboring city of B----, it did not seem to me that day when I +revisited it to have grown perceptibly in grace.... + +Having a couple of spare hours before meeting a dinner engagement, I +descended into a subway and was shot out in less than ten minutes from +the heart of the city to the old "Square" of Alton,--a journey that took +us formerly from half to three quarters of an hour, and in cold or rainy +weather, of which there is a good deal in Alton, seemed truly +interminable. From the "Square," which no longer had the noble amplitude +of my memory, the direct way to Fuller Place lay up the South Road,--a +broad thoroughfare, through the center of which there used to trickle +occasionally a tiny horse-drawn vehicle to and from the great city of +B----. South Road, I found, had changed its name to the more pompous +designation of State Avenue, and it was noisy and busy enough to accord +with my childish imagination of it, but none too large for the mammoth +moving-vans in which the electric railroad now transported the +inhabitants. These shot by me in bewildering numbers. I had chosen to +make the rest of my journey on foot, trying leisurely to revive old +memories and sensations. For a few blocks I succeeded in picking out +here and there a familiar object, but by the time I reached the +cross-street where we used to descend from the street-cars and penetrate +the lane that led to Fuller Place I was completely at sea. The ample +wooden houses fronting the South Road, each surrounded by its green lawn +with appropriate shrubbery, had all given way before the march of brick +business blocks. Even the "Reformed Methodist" church on the corner of +Lamb Street had been replaced by a stone structure that discreetly +concealed its denominational quality from the passer-by. Beyond the +church there had been a half-mile of unoccupied land fronting on the +Road, but now the line of "permanent improvements" ran unbroken as far +as the eye could see. Into this maze of unfamiliar buildings I plunged +and wandered at random for half an hour through blocks of brick stores, +office buildings, factories, tenements,--chiefly tenements it seemed to +me. Off in one corner of the district instead of high tenement buildings +there was something almost worse, rows of mean, little two-story brick +cottages that ranged upwards along a gentle slope that I tried to fancy +was Swan's Hill,--a dangerous descent where my older brothers and I were +once allowed to coast on our "double-runner." I will not weary the +reader with further details of my wandering with its disappointment and +shattered illusions, which can in no way be of interest to any but the +one in search of his past, and of purely sentimental importance to him. +It is, of course, a common form of egotism to chronicle such small-beer +of one's origin, but it happens to have nothing to do with my purpose. + +Enough to say that at last I discovered Fuller Place,--a mean, little +right-angled street that led nowhere; but from one end to the other I +could not find my old home. Its site must now be occupied by one of +those ugly five-story apartment boxes that spring like weeds in old +towns and cities. As I lingered in front of the brick wall that I judged +must very nearly cover the site of my birthplace, I tried to understand +the sensation of utter unfamiliarity with which the whole place filled +me. The answer came to me in a flash as I turned away from Fuller +Place,--Clark's Field no longer existed! Its place was completely filled +by the maze of brick and mortar in which for the better part of an hour +I had lost myself. There was nothing surprising that after a third of a +century a large, vacant field should have been carved up into streets, +alleys, and lots, and be covered with buildings to house the growing +population of a city. It is one of the usual commonplaces in our +American cities and towns. But to me the total disappearance of Clark's +Field seemed momentous. That large, open tract near my old home had more +significance, at least in memory, than the home itself. It was +intricately interwoven with all the imaginative and more personal life +that I had known as a boy. One corner of the irregular open land known +as Clark's Field had abutted my father's small property in Fuller Place, +and I and my older brothers and our friends had taken advantage of this +fact to open an unauthorized entrance into the Field through the board +fence in the rear yard. Over that fence lay freedom from parental +control and family tasks, and there was also, it happened, a certain bed +of luscious strawberries which we regularly looted until the market +gardener, who at the time leased this corner of Clark's Field, resigned +himself to the inevitable and substituted winter cabbages for the +strawberries,--a crop he had never been able to get to market. + +From the gardener's beds and small forcing-houses the land stretched +away unbroken by cultivation or building to that Swan's Hill where we +coasted and farther to the suburban estates of several affluent +citizens,--I presume the homes of Stearns and Frost of stove fame and +others no longer remembered. These places, with their stately trees and +greenhouses and careful lawns, have also been merged into the domain of +brick and mortar and concrete. To the right of the market garden, +between us and the South Road, lay the level, treeless tract, about +fifty acres in extent, which was specifically known as Clark's Field, +although all the unused land in the neighborhood had originally belonged +to the Clark farm. The Field was carefully fenced in with high white +palings,--too high for a small boy to climb safely in a hurry. Certain +large signs, at the different corners, averred that the Field was for +sale and would be divided into suitable lots for building purposes, and +also that trespassers were so little desired that they would be +prosecuted by law. These signs were regularly defaced with stones and +snowballs according to season, and were as regularly rëerected every +spring by the hopeful owner or his agent. For in spite of its difficult +paling and warning signs, Clark's Field remained our favorite ball-field +and recreation spot where in summer we dug caves and skated when the +autumn rains were obliging enough to come before the frost. I suppose +that we destroyed the signs as a point of honor, and preferred Clark's +Field to all the other open land free to us because we could see no +reason for the prohibition. At any rate, we "trespassed" upon it at all +hours of day and night, and many a time have I ripped my clothes on the +sharp points of those palings in my breathless haste to escape some real +or fancied pursuit by one in authority. We had not only the regular +police--the "cops"--to contend with, but we believed that old man Clark +employed private watchmen and even descended to the mean habit of +sneaking about the Field himself, peering through the close palings to +snare us. There must have been some fire in all this smoke of memory, +for I distinctly recall one occasion that resulted disastrously to me +and has left with me such a vivid picture that its origin must have been +real. I was one of the younger and less athletic of our gang and had +been nabbed by the fat policeman on our beat and led ignominiously +through the streets of Alton by the collar of my coat,--not to the +police station in the "Square," nor to my father's house where my older +brothers had often been brought in similar disgrace. This time the +policeman, with the ingenuity of a Persian cadi, took me through the +public streets direct to headquarters,--the home of Mr. Samuel Clark. It +was, I believe, the only occasion on which I ever met the owner of +Clark's Field, certainly the only time I ever had speech with him; not +that there was much speech from me then. As I was reluctantly urged up +the long graveled drive of the respectable wooden house near the Square, +I saw an old, white-haired man getting into his family carriage with +some difficulty. The large, heavy person of the owner of Clark's Field +seemed to me a very formidable object when he turned upon me a pair of +dark, scowling eyes beneath bushy white brows and muttered something +about "bad boys." Those eyes and a curious trembling of the heavy +limbs--due to palsy, I suppose--are the only things I recollect of +Samuel Clark. Nor do I remember what he said to me beyond calling me a +bad boy or what judgment he meted out. All I know is that I returned +home without visiting the "lockup" behind the Square and became the +subject of a protracted and animated family discussion. My mother, +unexpectedly, took my part, inveighing against the "ogre" of a Clark who +deprived "nice" boys of the enjoyment of his useless field, and urged my +father, who had some acquaintance with fact as well as with law, to "do +something about Clark's Field." My father, I think, was at last +persuaded to visit the owner of the field to see what lawful +arrangements could be made so that well-behaved boys might freely and +honorably use the Field for their pleasure, until it should be disposed +of to builders. (Which, of course, would have taken from it every shred +of charm!) Whether in fact he made some such arrangement I cannot +remember, nor whether having been once caught I was sufficiently +intimidated by my visit to old Clark. All I know is that as long as we +remained in Alton, the Field continued its useless, forlorn, unoccupied +existence, jealously surrounded by a dilapidated though constantly +patched fence, with its numerous signs inviting prospective purchasers +to consult with the "owner"--signs that were regularly destroyed by +succeeding generations of boys. Already in my youth the busy town was +growing far beyond Clark's Field, along the South Road towards the new +railroad station; but the Field remained in dreary isolation from all +this new life until long after I had left the town. + +As I have said, this empty field of fifty acres was the most permanent +experience of my youth. Its large, level surface, so persistently +offered to unwilling purchasers of real estate, seized hold of my boyish +imagination. I invented mysterious reasons for its condition, which as +time went on must have been influenced by what I heard at the family +table of the Clarks and their possessions. Now it is all inextricably +woven in my memory into a web of fact and fancy. The Field stood for me +during those fertile years as the physical symbol of the unknown, the +mysterious,--the source of adventure and legend,--long, long after I had +outgrown childish imaginings and had become fully involved in what we +like to call the serious matters of life. To-day I had but to close my +eyes and think of Fuller Place and my boyhood there to see that lonely +field, jealously hedged about by its fence of tall white palings,--see +it in all its former emptiness and mystery. + +Of Clark's Field and the Clarks I mused as I retraced my way through the +maze of living that had been planted upon the old open land. All this +close-packed brick and mortar, these dull streets and high business +buildings, had been crowded man-fashion into the free, wind-swept field +of my fancy. Five thousand people at least must now be living and +largely have their being on our old playground,--a small town in itself. +And the change had come about in the last fifteen years or less. How had +it been brought to pass? Why after all the years of idleness that it had +endured had a use for Clark's Field been found? Something must have +broken that spell which had effectually restrained prospective +purchasers of real estate through all the years when the city was +pressing on beyond this point far away into the country.... The facts +are not all dime-novelish, but very human and significant, and by chance +the main thread of the real story of Clark's Field came to my knowledge +shortly after my visit, correcting and enlarging the impressions I had +formed from family gossip, the talk of playmates, and my own +imagination. And this story--the story of Clark's Field--I deem well +worth setting forth.... + +That same evening, when I entered the city hotel where I was to dine, I +found my friend walking impatiently up and down the lobby, for in my +search for the past I had forgotten my engagement and was late. Scarcely +greeting my guest, I burst out,-- + +"Edsall, do you remember Clark's Field?" (For Edsall had once lived in +Alton, though not in my part of the town.) + +"Yes," he replied, somewhat surprised by my breathless eagerness. "What +about it?" + +"I want to know what happened to it and why?" + +Edsall, being a lawyer with a special interest in real estate, could +tell me many of the known facts about the Clark property over which +there had been some curious litigation. So the story grew that evening +over our dinner, to be filled in later by many details that came to me +unexpectedly,--I suppose because I was interested in the fate of Clark's +Field. + + + + +I + + +The Clarks, as their name implies, were of common English blood, +originally of some clerkly tribe and so possessing no distinctive +patronymic. These Clarks were ordinary Yankee farmers, who had been +settled in one place for upwards of two hundred years. Very likely some +ancestor of my old Samuel Clark had stood at Concord with "the embattled +farmers." I know not. He easily could have done so, for Alton was not +many miles distant from the battle field. But little either spiritual or +militant fervor from these Puritan ancestors seems to have come down to +Samuel, who in 1860 occupied the family farm of one hundred and forty +acres, "more or less," according to the loose description of old deeds. +Samuel, indeed, had not enough patriotism to sympathize with his son, +John Parsons, who finally ran off to the war, as so many boys did, to +escape the monotony of farm life. For Samuel, his father, was a plain, +ordinary, selfish, and not very thrifty New England farmer, who laid +down his fields every year to the same crops of oats and rye and hay, +kept a few sheep and hogs and cows, and in the easy, shiftless way of +his kind drained the soil of his old farm, with the narrow consolation +that it would somehow last his time. + +So little ambition he had that shortly after his son went to the war, +thus depriving him of free labor, he "retired" from his farm,--that is, +he sold what he could of its fields and pastures and bought himself a +house on Church Street near the Square in Alton, probably the same house +where I was taken for my one interview with him. What he did not sell of +the farm he rented to another more energetic farmer, one Everitt Adams, +the old market-gardener whom I remembered. Adams with more thrift and +the great incentive of necessity built hothouses and went in for +market-gardening to supply the wants of the neighboring city, which was +already making itself felt upon the surrounding country. Hence the long +rows of celery, cabbage, lettuce, and peas that I remember across my +father's back fence. All the near-by farmers were doing much the same +thing, turning the better part of their land into gardens. They would +start before dawn in summer time for the city, making their way along +the South Road, which was the main thoroughfare into this part of the +country. Many a time have I seen their covered wagons returning from the +city about the time when I was starting for school, the horses wearily +plodding along at a walk, the farmer or his boy asleep in the wagon on +his empty crates. + +I don't know what sort of an arrangement old Clark made with his tenant, +but Adams, who was a hard-working fellow with a tribe of strong +children, must have found the business profitable, especially after he +built the forcing-houses and began to supply unseasonable luxuries to +the prosperous citizens of B----. Prices ran high in the years of the +great war, and those farmers who stayed at home and cultivated their +gardens industriously made money at every turn. At any rate, it was +common knowledge in the neighborhood of Fuller Place that Everitt Adams +wished to purchase Clark's Field from its owner--the last piece of the +old farm that he had not hitherto disposed of--and had the money to pay +for it in the River Savings Bank. Indeed, gossip said that the price was +agreed upon,--five thousand dollars,--which was considered a fair price +in those days for fifty acres, six or seven miles from the city. And +Samuel Clark, so tradition also says, was anxious to sell his last field +for that price. His son had returned from the war wounded and incapable +of work, and his father wanted to set him up in a small shop in the +Square. The son, in spite of his invalidism, married shortly after his +return from the ranks and this made the need of ready money in the +Church Street house all the more urgent. + +Trouble came when the lawyer employed by the market-gardener discovered +what old Clark must have known all the time, and that is that the Field +had a cloud upon its title, or rather an absolute restriction which +would render worthless any title that Samuel might give alone. To +explain this legal obstacle we must go back before the war and my day +into the previous generation. There had been a family quarrel between +Samuel and his older brother, which had resulted finally in Edward +Stanley--the elder son--going off to seek his fortunes in the new West, +which was attracting young men from the East at that time. This was in +1840 or thereabouts when Edward S. left his father's home in Alton, and +nothing more had been heard of him except the vague report from some +other exile from Alton that he had been seen in Chicago where he had +become a carpenter, and it was said had married. Probably Samuel, who +was then a young man and recently married with two little children, had +no great desire to have his elder brother's existence recalled to his +father. Everything I have learned about Samuel confirms the impression +of him I had as a boy, that he was not the kind of man whose conscience +would be sensitive in such matters. He probably considered that his +brother Ed, having taken his fate in his hands, should expect nothing +from the more timid members of the family who had stuck by the old farm. +But when the elder Clark died, a will was found in which to Samuel's +disgust an undivided half interest in the Field--the best part of the +farm--was left to his eldest son and his heirs. + +There is no evidence that Samuel, at the time of his father's death, +ever took any measures, even of the most casual sort, to hunt up this +elder brother or find out if he had left any children. He made some sort +of deal with a younger brother who could not be ignored and continued to +work the old farm, living in his father's house on Swan's Hill. Probably +a long term of undisturbed possession of the farm convinced him that he +was the sole legitimate owner of the property, that the land was +absolutely and wholly his to do with what he would. And so, as we have +seen, in his old age he tried to dispose of the Field to the +market-gardener for five thousand dollars. But the lawyer raised the +obvious objection that the Field could not be sold without Edward's +consent, and of Edward nothing whatsoever was known. Some attempt was +made at this time by John Clark on behalf of his father to trace the +missing Edward--a feeble attempt. He wrote to an army friend in Chicago, +who found evidence that Edward S. Clark, a carpenter, had lived in the +city for five or six years and had moved thence to St. Louis. No trace +of him could be found in St. Louis, where John also wrote to the +postmaster. At that time, it should be remembered, St. Louis was the +port of departure for the little-known West, and possibly Edward and his +family had taken boat up the Missouri and gone on to the distant gold +fields or had merely drifted out into the neighboring prairie country +and stuck in some nook. It was all speculation. Nothing further of +Edward Stanley Clark was ever known by either Samuel or his son John. He +never announced himself to his Eastern relatives. + +But Samuel could not sell the Field. Old Adams was altogether too shrewd +to spend five thousand dollars upon a property that had such an +uncertainty about its title, and in those days the lawyers whose advice +they were able to get could not suggest a satisfactory way of evading +the difficulty. No such thing as a title guaranty company had ever been +heard of in the old Commonwealth of M----. There was nothing to do but +wait in the hope that either information about Edward S. would be +forthcoming some day or that in time the law could be invoked to gloss +over the title. But Samuel, in hope of inducing some gullible purchaser +to run the risk, had the Field carefully fenced and put signs upon it. +For he needed the money, and needed it more as the years went by and +John's invalidism turned into chronic laziness and incapacity for +earning a livelihood. Everitt Adams moved away after a time and his +successors who leased the Field were never satisfactory. There were +taxes and assessments to be met, which grew all the time with the rising +value of adjacent land, as well as lawyer's fees. The income from the +small part of the Field now under cultivation was hardly adequate to +meet these, and after a time this income ceased altogether and the Field +became an absolute burden. For nobody seemed willing either to rent or +buy the property. + +Of course, the son John, if he had had the energy, might have followed +old Adams's example and worked the Field for a time, until the gas and +sewer mains had corrupted the soil and spoiled it for market gardening. +But he preferred to rely upon his record as an old soldier and secured a +small clerkship in the Alton Gas Company, and some years later obtained +a pension. Of course, all this trouble with the Field supplied both him +and his father with ample cause for grumbling. Samuel had never liked +his brother Edward, who seemed almost spitefully to be turning this +trick against him in his old age, and he handed on his grievance to John +and his wife. The small, wooden house in Church Street contained a +narrow, ungracious family life, it can be seen, of petty economies and +few interests. No wonder that the Field--the one important family +possession remaining--became the favorite topic of discussion and +speculation. The city was growing fast, and Alton was already its most +considerable suburb. The lines of modern life had crept up to within +call of the old Field before the death of Samuel. So the old fellow was +not indulging in much exaggeration when he bragged towards the end that +he wouldn't take twenty-five thousand dollars for his property, although +ten years earlier he had been eager to sell for five thousand dollars! + +That twenty-five thousand dollars, however, was as far away as the five +thousand, and the life in the Church Street house was more penurious and +uncomfortable than it had ever been on the old farm, which had provided +a coarse plenty for many generations. The Clarks were obviously running +out, and when the old man died in 1882 he must have had the bitter +consciousness that the family destiny had dwindled in his hands. From +being prosperous and respected farmers, living on their own land in +their ancestral square wooden house with its one enormous chimney, they +were living in real poverty in a small house on a dusty side street off +the noisy Square, which was not what it had once been as a place of +residence. And they did not even own this Church Street house--merely +clung to it from inertia and bad habit. The only thing they did own was +Clark's Field, and Mrs. John sometimes thought it would be better if +that had gone the way of the rest of the Clark farm, so insidious was +its moral influence upon the men as well as costly in the way of +outgo.... + +If a man's accomplishment in this life is to be reckoned by the +substantial gains he has made on his father's estate and condition, old +Samuel Clark had nothing to be proud of when he was borne to his grave +in the new cemetery a mile south of Clark's Field. He had left nothing +to his children but the Field, encumbered with the undivided and +indivisible half interest belonging to his brother Edward Stanley, were +he alive at this date, and to his heirs if he had any. + + + + +II + + +The possession of property of any kind gives a curious consciousness of +dignity to the human being who is its owner, due very likely to the +traditional estimate of the importance of all possessions, and to the +mystical but generally erroneous belief that property is in some way an +outward and visible proof of the worth or the ability of its +possessor--or his forbears. Even the possession of a possibility such as +Clark's Field--which was of no positive value to the Clarks, and indeed +an increasing source of expense and anxiety to the impoverished family, +as taxes rose in company with the rise of all values--conferred upon the +Clarks some small consideration in Alton and made them feel the dignity +and the tragedy of property ownership. John, who was nothing but a +seedy, middle-aged clerk, none too careful of his appearance and +uneasily aware of his failure, had ample excuse to himself for his +shortcomings and willingness to live on a kind Government, because he +had been hardly used by fate in the matter of his inheritance. As the +property that might have been his was just beyond his reach, he had a +small swagger of superiority in the gas office, and the tradition was +well established there that he belonged to a family "land poor,"--the +most genteel form of poverty if any form of poverty can be genteel. Even +old farmer Samuel had tottered about the Square on his malacca stick and +exchanged the time of day with the small merchants there, with a sense +of his own importance as the owner of "a valuable piece of property" +temporarily under legal disability. + +As for the women of the family this sense of unrealized importance grew +tenfold in their consciousness, because they had few opportunities of +encountering reality in their narrow lives and because as women they +were apt to dream of wealth, even of visionary wealth. It cannot be said +that Clark's Field had much to do with John's marriage which had taken +place in 'sixty-seven, because at that early date it was not considered +a large expectation even by the Clarks. But John had a younger sister, +Ada or "Addie" Clark as she was always known, and over Addie's destiny +Clark's Field had a large and sinister influence as I shall presently +show. At the time when her father finally abandoned his farm in favor of +town life, Addie was a mere child, so young that she could forget the +wholesome pictures of domestic farm industry that she must have shared. +Or, if there lingered in the background of her memory a consciousness of +her mother's butter-making, feeding the pigs, cooking for the occasional +farm hands, washing and mending, and all the other common tasks of this +laborious condition, she conveniently ignored it as women easily +contrive to do. Her life was centered in the Church Street house where +the Clarks had at first indulged in certain pretensions. Addie had gone +to the Alton schools and there associated with the better class of +children,--a doctor's daughter and a retired bank clerk's family being +the more intimate of these. As a young girl she had a transparent +complexion and a thin sort of American prettiness that unfortunately +quickly faded, under the influences of the Church Street house, into a +sallow commonplaceness. But Addie unlike the men of the family never +wholly abandoned her aspirations and ambitions. She was very careful +about the young men whom she "encouraged," and the families into whose +houses she would enter. Thus she sacrificed her slim chances of +matrimony on the altar of a visionary family pride. One of her +high-school mates, the son of the prosperous liveryman in Alton, might +have married her had he been more warmly met, and taken her with him to +Detroit, where in time he became the well-to-do head of a large +automobile manufactory. This was not the single instance of her family +pride. + +It is a fascinating subject to speculate what would have happened to Ada +if she had had the moral vigor to shake herself loose from the hampering +family traditions of riches to be, and struck out for an independent, +wholesome life as women have been known to do under similar +circumstances. But Alton, like most old towns, had strong class +traditions that exercised an iron influence upon feminine destinies. It +was, of course, hopeless for Ada, the daughter of a retired farmer who +could not sell his farm, to come into close social contact with the +local aristocracy, which consisted at this time of the Stearns and Frost +relationship together with a few well-to-do merchants from B---- who had +always lived in Alton and owned those large semi-suburban estates in its +environs. But at least she could jealously guard herself from falling +into the mire of the commoner sort of small shopkeepers who were +pressing into the Square. The end was that Addie fast became what was +then called, without any circumlocution, an "old maid," and an +uninteresting one, whose days were occupied by church and gossip, and +who went over and over the threadbare family tradition. Old Mrs. Clark, +her mother, was a realist and never forgot the farm days. She was enough +of a woman to regret sincerely the fatal mistake that the family had +made in trying to become something other than their destiny had fitted +them to be. She was a thorn in the sentimental flesh of Addie, whose +thoughts preferred to play with the dignities and ease that would be +hers when the Field had been sold. Addie dressed herself as finely as +she could on Sundays and in the afternoons would walk down the South +Road past the abandoned Field and remark to a friend upon the family +property and the misfortune that kept them all down in the depths of +poverty. As the years went on and the price of real estate advanced, her +tale sounded less ridiculous than it might. But it was a bloodless sort +of consolation even for Addie, and all her friends knew the story by +heart and listened to it merely with kind indulgence. "A bird in the +hand," etc., is a proverb peculiarly to the liking of Yankees. They do +not take much interest in Peruvian mines or other forms of +non-negotiable wealth unless they see a chance to work them off on a +more credulous public. As for old Mrs. Clark, when she became tied to +her chair, she was bitter on the topic. "That dratted old Field!" she +would say with the brutal directness of the realist; "your father would +have sold the whole of it for five thousand dollars and been +thankful!"--a fact that seemed to her children of no importance. + +When the old woman was laid away in Woodlawn beside her husband, Addie +could give free rein to her fancies, untroubled by the darts of the +realist. But the family fortunes soon became most desperate. Fortunately +John had no children, his one small son having died as a baby. His wife, +who had perhaps become tired of the family fortune as it never quite +realized itself, tried to prod her shiftless husband into a greater +activity. But except for the getting of the pension, which was put +through in 1885, John added little to the family purse, and before his +mother's death lost his position in the gas office, a new administration +of the company holding that a municipal utility was not an asylum for +old soldiers. The trouble was, as Mrs. John knew, and as Ada always +refused to recognize, John drank. At first it was a convivial weakness +indulged in only at the reunions of old veterans,--John was a most +ardent "Vet,"--but it became a habit that took away his little +usefulness for anything. So now the family for steady income was reduced +to the pension, which was only twenty-two dollars a month. Clearly +something had to be done. Mrs. John took in lodgers in the Church Street +house, a clerk or two from the neighboring shops. And Addie finally +brought herself to learn the manipulation of the typewriter, which was +fast becoming a woman's profession, and found a position in a large +store in the city. + +It would seem that the Clark fortunes had reached their lowest ebb: +family extinction was all that now remained for them. The Church Street +house rested solely, save for the small pension, on the exertions of two +ineffective women. It could just get on as it was, and if the family +life had never been a bright and cheerful one, it was now drearier than +ever. Then Addie married. She was nearly if not quite forty years old, +and neither her brother nor sister-in-law expected such an event. She +was sallow, thin, and rather querulous in temperament. Very likely Addie +felt that marriage could not make her lot worse, and as middle-age +threatened, she accepted the defeat of her ambitions and in the spirit +of better-late-than-never struck out for herself in the race for +personal happiness, throwing over the burden of Clark's Field. + +At any rate, she was married to William Scarp, a fellow-clerk in Minot +Brothers--wholesale wool. Addie represented that Mr. Scarp was of +excellent Southern blood from somewhere in North Carolina. It is +needless to enter into that nebulous question. He was earning thirty +dollars a week with Minot Brothers when they became engaged and was a +few years younger than his bride. The firm gave him a five-dollar +increase of salary on his marriage, old Savage remarking facetiously +that he believed in rewarding courage. The couple went to live in the +city, and for a year or two they moved nomadically from one +boarding-house or cheap hotel to another. It may be presumed that Addie, +without any clear idea of deceiving, had misled William Scarp in the +matter of Clark's Field--her fixed delusion. The Field made this +marriage, and it was not a happy one. The John Clarks, who still hung on +in the Church Street house with an additional roomer, soon began to +suspect that Addie was not wholly happy in her married life. William had +a quick temper and was very plain-spoken about the "job" that Addie had +"put over him" in the matter of the Clark property, though in fact she +had exercised no more mendacity than women of forty in her position are +wont to do. At one time shortly after the marriage Scarp had an +"understanding" with John Clark about the family estate. When he learned +that the Field could not be sold in the present state of its title and +that such leases as had been made of it to meet taxes and other +obligations tied it up until the opening of the next century, he +expressed himself abusively. Later he suggested that a "syndicate" +should be formed to employ lawyers to straighten out the title and +dispose of the property piecemeal as the leases fell in. It seemed a +brilliant plan, quite modern in its sound, but alas! William, no more +than John, could finance the "syndicate." So the suggestion lapsed, and +the Scarps worried along on William's salary for a time, and then moved +to Philadelphia. What Addie's experiences were there, or in Cincinnati +and Indianapolis, to which cities they also wandered, I have no means of +knowing, nor did the John Clarks hear from her, except for a rare +penciled postcard. The Clarks, as may be observed, were no great +letter-writers. + +All is that one day in November of 1889, Addie arrived at the Church +Street house with a forlorn parcel of a little girl and a bedraggled bag +that contained her entire worldly possessions. She was ill and old. She +would say little about her husband, but later it came out in the +newspapers that William Scarp had been convicted of forgery and sent to +prison in Indiana (where he died soon after of consumption contracted in +prison). Addie had come back to the only human refuge she knew. She was +too ill and too beaten by life to work. She sat around in the Church +Street house dumbly for nearly a year, then died, leaving the forlorn, +pale little girl to her brother and sister-in-law as a legacy. This +child she had named Adelle, thus proving the persistence of her fancy +even in her forlornest hours. Ada or Addie was too common for the last +of the Clarks. She should at least have something poetic for name. For +who could say? She might some day become an heiress and shine in that +social firmament so much desired by her mother. In that event she should +not be handicapped by a vulgar name. As Addie had resumed her maiden +name after Scarp had been sent to prison, the little girl was destined +to grow up as Adelle Clark,--the last member of the Alton branch of the +Clarks, ultimate heiress to Clark's Field, should there be anything of +it left to inherit when the law let go. + +The silent little girl, who played about the lodgers' rooms in the dingy +Church Street house, was of course unaware of the weight of expectation +hanging to her. She was almost abnormally silent, perhaps because of her +depressing prenatal experiences as well as the forlorn environment of +the rooming-house,--perhaps because of physical and spiritual anĉmia. +"She's a puny mite of a child," Mrs. John Clark said complainingly, +unpromising like everything Clark; nevertheless, the last of the sturdy +yeoman stock of Clarks. + + + + +III + + +That "weight of expectation" hanging to the little girl was not quite as +fantastic as might seem. It must be remembered that old Samuel before +his death, in pressing need of ready money to finance some foolish +venture of his son, had leased a good part of Clark's Field to some +speculative builders, who had covered that portion of the old pasture +that bordered the South Road with a leprous growth of cheap stores, +which brought in a fair return. The leases ran up to the new century. +Just why this precise term for the gambling venture had been chosen +probably only the lawyers who made the arrangement could say. Possibly +old Samuel had superstitious reasons for not pledging the family +expectation beyond the present century. He may have thought that the +turn of the century would bring about some profound change in the +customs and habits of society that the family could take advantage of. +At any rate, so it was. And it was not many years now to the close of +the century when Clark's Field would be released to its original owners +with all its shabby encumbrances. + +The field had gained enormously in value and importance in men's eyes +these last years. The city of B---- had eaten far into the country, +creating prosperous appendages in the way of modern suburbs for twenty +miles and more from Alton, and there was much talk of its annexing the +old town to itself, which it accomplished not long after. Those were the +days of the "greater" everything, the worship of size. Alton in fact was +now a city itself of no mean size, and the shallow stream of water that +nominally divided it from B---- was a mere boundary line. As men had +multiplied upon this spot of earth, needing land for dwelling and +business, envious eyes had been cast upon the Field, the last large +"undeveloped" tract anywhere near the great city. Men who were skillful +in such real estate "deals," greedy and ingenious in the various ways of +turning civic growth to private profit, were figuring upon the +possibility of getting hold of Clark's Field, when the short leases +expired, and after making the necessary "improvements" cutting it up for +sale. They saw fat profits in the transaction. Men needed it for their +lives; the community needed it for its growing corporate life. And yet +it was "tied up" with a legal disability--left largely useless and +waste. It looked as if when the legal spell was finally broken, as it +must be, and the land so long unprofitable and idle should be +apportioned to these human needs, it would be neither the Clarks nor the +community that would derive benefit from it,--certainly not the people +who would live upon it,--but some gang of skillful speculators, who knew +the precise moment to take advantage of the mechanism of the law and the +more uncertain mechanism of human nature so as to obtain for a small +amount what they could sell to others for much. The crisis in the +history of Clark's Field seemed approaching. + +It was time. The fence of high white palings that Samuel had jealously +maintained about his old field had long since completely disappeared. +Latterly the neighbors crisscrossed the vacant portions of the Field +with short cuts and contractors either dumped refuse upon it or burrowed +into it for gravel. The sod had long since been stripped from every foot +of its surface. In a word, it was treated as no man's land, so low had +the Clark family sunk in the world. And it was covered with a cloud of +invisible disabilities, further than the original difficulty created by +Edward S. in not leaving an address behind him. There were liens against +it by the city for improvements in the way of gas and sewer and water +pipes, and for taxes, as well as first, second, and third mortgages of a +dubious character that John in extremity had been forced to put upon the +Field in order to "carry" his expectation. Under this burden of +invisible lien as well as outward degradation Clark's Field had +struggled until 1898, and the ultimate doom was not far off. John +thought so and struggled less to preserve his inheritance. What he owned +of the Field was a diminishing fraction, long since negligible, were it +not for the marvelous increase in all real-estate values, due to the +growth of population in these parts and the activity of the country. It +was rumored about the Square that Clark's Field would shortly be sold +for taxes, and a tax title, poor as that is, would probably be the best +title that could ever be got for the Field. Capitalists and their +lawyers were already figuring on that basis for the distribution of the +property.... + +But before we concern ourselves in the plot of these greedy exploiters, +it would be well to go back for a time to the dingy Church Street house +and the pale little Adelle, who was now in her twelfth year. Her +ancestors, certainly, had done little for her physical being. She was a +plain, small child, with not enough active blood in her apparently to +make a vivid life under any circumstances. She was meek and +self-effacing,--two excellent virtues for certain spheres, but not for a +poor child in America at the opening of the new century! Her earliest +impressions of life must have been the dusty stairs and torn stair +carpet of her aunt's house, defaced under the dirty feet of many +transient "roomers," and next her aunt herself, a silent, morose woman +over fifty, who accepted life as nearly in the stoic spirit as her +education permitted. Mrs. John Clark had none of Addie's cheap +pretentions, fortunately: she was obviously the poor woman with a +worthless husband, who kept cheap lodgings for a livelihood. She was +kind enough to the little girl as such people have the time and the +energy to be kind. She could not give her much thought, and as soon as +Adelle was old enough to handle a broom or make beds she had to help in +the endless housework. At eight she was sent to school, however, to the +public school close by in the rear of the livery-stable, where she +learned what American children are supposed to learn in the grade +schools. At twelve she was a small, undersized, poorly dressed, +white-faced little girl, so little distinctive in any way that probably +hundreds exactly like her could be picked from the public schools of any +American city. If this story were a mere matter of fiction, we should be +obliged to endow Adelle with some marks of exceptionality of person, or +mind, or soul,--evident to the discerning reader even in her childhood. +She would already possess the rudiments of an individuality under her +Cinderella outside,--some poetic quality of day-dreaming or laughing or +sketching. But this is a plain chronicle of very plain people as they +actually found themselves in life, and it is not necessary to embellish +the truth so that it may please any reader's sensibilities or ideals. +Adelle Clark was a wholly ordinary, dumb little creature, neither +passionate nor spiritual. She laughed less than children of her age +because there was not much in her experience to laugh about. She talked +less--much less--than other little girls, because the Church Street +house was not a place to encourage conversation. She liked her aunt +rather better than her uncle, who was an untidy, not to say smelly, +person, who sat dozing in the kitchen much of the time, a few strands of +long gray hair vainly trying to cover the baldness of a blotchy head. +His principal occupation these latter years was being a "Vet." He was a +faithful attendant at all "post nights," "camp-fires," and veteran +"reunions," and when in funds visited neighboring posts where he had +friends. On his return from these festivities he was smellier and +stupider than ever,--that was all his small niece realized. He never did +any work, so far as she was aware, but as his wife had accepted the fact +and no longer discussed it in public, the little girl did not think much +about his idleness. That might be the man-habit generally. + +Adelle was in her thirteenth year and in the last grade of her school +when she first began to notice the presence of some strangers in the +Church Street house. She was not an observant child, and there was such +a succession of "roomers" in the house that a stranger's face aroused +little curiosity. But these men were better dressed than any roomers and +talked in tones of authority and conscious position. They held long +conversations with her uncle and aunt in the dining-room behind closed +doors, and once she saw a bundle of papers spread out upon the table. +These days her uncle and aunt talked much about titles, mortgages, +deeds, and other matters she did not understand nor ask about. But she +felt that something important was astir in the Church Street house, as a +child realizes vaguely such movements outside its own sphere. Once one +of the men, who was putting on his silk hat in the hall and preparing to +leave the house, inquired, "Is that the girl?" To which question her +uncle and aunt answered briefly, "Yes." The tone of the stranger was +exactly as if he had asked, "Is that the bundle of clothes we were +talking about?" + +Something was afoot of momentous importance to Adelle, as we shall +shortly discover. Fate once more in the person of a feeble Clark was +about to play her an unkind trick. For John, reduced to complete +incompetence by his life and his habit of drink, pestered by the +accumulating claims upon Clark's Field, had consented to an +"arrangement" that certain capitalists had presented to him through +their lawyers. They had urged him to sell to them all the remaining +equity that he held in the property, giving a quitclaim deed for himself +and his wife and for Adelle, whose legal guardian he was. The purchasers +would assume all the liabilities of the encumbered Field, the risk of +title, and for this complete surrender of the family interest in Clark's +Field, John Clark was to receive the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars +all told in cash. It was five times what his father had been anxious to +get for the same property, as the lawyers pointed out, when John in the +beginning talked large about the great possibilities of his Field. It +was true, so they said, that the property had increased in value in the +last twenty years, but so had the encumbrances increased, and there was +always the danger of expensive litigation and loss due to the cloudy +title, even after the lapse of fifty years since the disappearance of +Edward S. They could not see their way to offering another dollar for +the dubious gamble before them, so they said. And for this twenty-five +thousand dollars in ready money, all the family expectations were to be +cashed in, all the hopes of Samuel, the pretensions of Addie, the +desires and needs of John and his wife, not to mention the future of the +small Adelle. John hesitated.... + +In the end he was convinced, or his desire for some ready money overcame +his scruples. His wife, who was perhaps agreeably surprised to find that +the Clark expectations had any cash value, counseled him to accept the +offered terms. No doubt, she admitted, the lawyers were probably doing +them; that was the way of lawyers. But they had no money to spend on +other lawyers to find a better bargain or to engage in the speculation +upon the Field themselves. As for hanging on to Clark's Field, the +family had had enough of that. "A bird in the hand," etc. So the +numerous papers were drawn and John even touched a small advance +payment. Adelle remembered the discussions--not to say quarrels--between +her uncle and aunt over the use to which they should put the Clark +fortune when it should finally be theirs. John was for moving away from +Alton altogether, which was not what it had been once for residence he +said. He talked of going into the country and buying a farm. His wife, +who remembered how he had scorned to work the old Clark farm when it was +a paying possibility, smiled grimly at his talk. She wanted to take a +larger house in the neighborhood, furnish it better, and bid for a +higher class of roomers. Hers was, of course, the more sensible plan. +They were still discussing their plans, and the lawyers were taking +their time about preparing the interminable series of legal papers that +seemed necessary when the great Grand Army Encampment of 1900 came off +in Chicago. John, who had been obliged latterly to forego these annual +sprees, resolved to attend the reunion of his old comrades and "to go in +style." For this purpose he obtained a small sum from the prospective +purchasers of Clark's Field, who were only too ready to get him further +committed to their bargain by a payment down and a receipt on +account,--on condition, of course, that he sign an agreement to sell the +property when the necessary formalities could be satisfied. So he signed +with an easy flourish the simple agreement presented to him, pocketed +two hundred dollars, and bought a new suit of clothes with a black-felt +veteran's hat, the first he had had in many years. When Adelle watched +him strut down Church Street on the way to the train one hot July +morning, splendid in his new uniform with his white gloves and short +sword under his arm, she did not know that she herself had contributed +to this piece of self-indulgence her last right to a share in the Clark +possession,--her one inheritance of any value from her mother. Very +possibly she would not have said anything had she known all the facts, +had she been old enough to realize the significance of that signature +her uncle had given the lawyers a few days before. Probably she would +have accepted this act of fate as meekly as she had all else in her +short life. For it must be clearly understood that the signature was +irrevocable. No change of mind, no sober second thought coming into +John's cloudy mind, would be of any use. A contract of sale is as +binding under such circumstances as the deed itself. + +Adelle felt an unconscious relief in the absence of her uncle from the +house. There was an end to the disputes about the money, and his +unpleasant person no longer occupied the best chair in the kitchen. Her +aunt also seemed to be more cheerful than was her wont. It was the slack +season in the rooming business, and so the two had some spare time on +their hands in the long summer days and could dawdle about, an unusual +luxury. They even went to walk in the afternoons. Her aunt took Adelle +to see Clark's Field,--a forlorn expanse of empty land with a fringe of +flimsy one-story shops along its edge that did not attract the child. +She never remembered, naturally, what her aunt told her about the Field, +but she must have learned something of its story because she always had +in her mind a sense of the importance of this waste and desolate city +field. In her childish way she got a vague notion of some great wrong +that had been done about the land so that her uncle was smelly and +stupid and her aunt had to take in more roomers than she liked. That was +as close to the facts as she could get then--as close, it may be said, +as many people ever get.... Then they went to look at houses, a more +interesting occupation to the child. Her aunt seemed much concerned in +the comparative size and location and number of rooms of different +houses and this Adelle could understand. The family was going to move +sometime from the Church Street house.... In these simple ways the two +passed a quiet vacation of ten days. Then came a telegram, and three +days later arrived the remains of Veteran John Clark, accompanied by +members of the local G. A. R. post who had brought back the body of +their dead comrade. John Clark had kept his boasting word to his wife +that "this time he would show the boys a good time and prove to 'em that +his talk about his property wasn't all hot air!" He had in truth shown +himself such a good time that he could not stand a spell of excessively +hot weather, to which he succumbed like a sapped reed. A very +considerable funeral was arranged and conducted by the members of G. A. +R. Post Number I of Alton, to which John Clark had belonged. There was a +military band and the post colors, and a number of oldish men in blue +uniforms trailed behind the hearse all the way to the cemetery where the +veteran was laid away in the lot with his mother and father. Little +Adelle, riding in the first carriage with her aunt, observed all this +military display over the dead veteran, and concluded that she had done +her uncle an injustice during his life. It seemed that he was really a +much more important person than she had supposed him to be. This burial +was the last benefit poor John Clark received from a grateful country +for that spurt of patriotism or willfulness that had led him to run away +from the Clark farm to the war forty years before. + +And here really concludes the history of the Clarks in the story of +Clark's Field. For Adelle, upon whom the burden of the inheritance was +to fall, was only half a Clark at the most, and had largely escaped the +deadly tradition of family expectations under which Addie had been +blighted; while her aunt, of course, had no Clark blood in her veins and +had been cured of the Clark habit of expecting. + + + + +IV + + +It may easily be imagined that the veteran's untimely death at the Grand +Army Reunion caused more uneasiness in certain other quarters than it +did in the Church Street house, where John's going had its mitigations. +The lawyers who had arranged the purchase of the Clark interest in the +great Field did not really fear that their plans for the cheap capture +of the property would ultimately miscarry. But John's death must cause +further delay, which might possibly be improved by other interested +speculators. And so the legal representatives of the capitalists +concerned in the "deal" constituted themselves at once friends and +advisers of the widow. They assured her that a mere formality must be +satisfied before she could actually touch her husband's estate, and +promised to attend to the legal matters without expense to her, it being +understood, of course, that whenever the law allowed she should carry +out her husband's agreement to sell the Clark interest in the Field. +They even went so far as to offer further small advances to the widow if +she found herself in immediate need. But this the widow resolutely +refused. She was becoming a little suspicious of so much thoughtful +kindliness from these lawyers, whom after the prejudice of her sort she +was wont to regard as human harpies. She had her widow's pension and her +roomers, and her expenses would be considerably lessened by the death of +the incompetent veteran, who would no longer be begging money for his +"reunions." + +There was, of course, Adelle. Her uncle had been her legal guardian and +as such had intended to sell her interest in the Field for a pittance. +The lawyers assumed that her aunt would be appointed by the probate +court to the empty honor of guardianship. Otherwise they regarded her, +as everybody always did, as entirely negligible. And she so regarded +herself. The lawyers were prompt in having the guardianship question +brought up in the probate court for settlement first. It was introduced +there as a motion early in the fall term of court, the papers being +presented to the judge by the junior member of the distinguished firm of +B---- lawyers, Bright, Seagrove, and Bright. Any other judge, probably, +would have scribbled his initials then and there upon the printed +application for guardianship,--the affair being in charge of such +eminent counsel,--and there must have been an end altogether to Adelle's +expectations and of this story. That was what the lawyers naturally +expected. But this judge, after a hasty glance or two at the +application, took the matter under advisement. + +"Of course the old boy had to sleep upon it!" young Bright reported to +the senior members of the firm. The lawyers of B---- were accustomed to +make fun of Judge Orcutt or grumble about his ways of doing things. He +was certainly different from the ordinary run of probate judges or of +all judges for that matter. The smart law firms that had dealings with +him professed to consider him a poor lawyer, but everybody knows that +eminent lawyers usually have a poor opinion of the ability of judges. +They reason that if the judges had their ability, they would not be +poorly paid judges, but holding out their baskets for the fat fruit +falling abundantly from the corporation trees. + +It should be said that the law was not Judge Orcutt's first love: +probably was not his supreme mistress at any time. Perhaps for that very +reason he made a better probate judge--a more human judge--than any of +the smart lawyers could have made. The little gray-haired judge was a +poet, and not an unpublished poet. I will not stop to pass judgment on +those thin volumes of verse, elegantly printed and bound, that from time +to time appeared in the welter of modern literature with the judge's +name. The judge was fonder of them, no doubt, and perhaps prouder of +them than Bright, Seagrove, and Bright are of their large retainers. And +I believe that the published volumes of verse, and the unprinted ones +within his heart and brain, made Judge Orcutt an altogether sounder +judge than if he had mused in his idle hours upon the law or upon +corporation fees. He was one of those rare judges, who even after twenty +years of forms--motions and pleas and precedents--could never wholly +forget the individual human being behind the legal form. + +And so in this trivial matter of appointing a guardian for a poor girl, +the probate judge could not ignore Adelle in the mass of legal verbiage +through which such things are done. Who was this Adelle Clark? and what +sort of person was this aunt who seemed willing and anxious to assume +the legal and moral guardianship of the minor? An aunt by marriage only, +wasn't it? Yes, by marriage he assured himself after consulting again +the stiff paper form that the lawyers had properly filled out; and he +gave one of those funny little quirks to his eye which he did when not +wholly satisfied with a "proposition" presented to him. And here was the +characteristic difference between Judge Orcutt and any other probate +judge. He speculated--maybe for only the better part of ten seconds--but +he speculated upon the entity of the small human being that had fallen +within the bounds of his court. Was it really for this little girl's +best good to let this aunt by marriage take charge of her? Did any +hocus-pocus contriving, with which he had become only too familiar, lie +beneath this innocent application? + +Probably at this point the poet judge would have dismissed the matter +from speculation and signed the papers as he usually did, very much, +after all, like any other judge, with an additional sigh because he +could never really discover all the necessary facts. But another +observation held his pen. The paper had been brought to him by young +Bright, of Bright, Seagrove, and Bright--a notable firm of lawyers, but +not one famous for their charitable practice. Why should Bright, +Seagrove, and Bright interest themselves in procuring the guardianship +of a poor girl? Ah, it is to be feared that this is where the eminent +counsel "fell down" badly, as young Bright said. They should have sent +an office boy with the papers or let the aunt go there alone to see the +judge! For Judge Orcutt, after another moment of frowning meditation, +threw the document into that basket which contained papers for further +consideration. Had the girl expectations of property? He would inquire, +at least have the girl and her aunt into his court and get a good look +at them before performing his routine function of initialing the legal +form. Poet that he was, he prided himself much on his powers of +penetration into human motives, when he had his subject before him.... + +For this reason Adelle and her aunt were notified that they should +appear before His Honor. The lawyers told Mrs. Clark that the visit to +the probate court was a mere formality,--meant nothing at all. But under +their breaths they cursed Judge Orcutt for a meddlesome old nuisance, +which would not have worried him. Adelle and her aunt, got up in their +best mourning, accordingly appeared before the probate judge, who at the +moment was hearing a case of non-support. So they waited in the dim, +empty courtroom, while the judge, ignoring their presence, went on with +the question of whether John Thums could pay his wife three dollars a +week or only two-fifty. At last he settled it at three dollars and +beckoned to Mrs. Clark and the little girl to come forward and +courteously inquired their business. Ignoring the officious young +lawyer, who was there and tried to shuffle the matter through, Judge +Orcutt asked both Adelle and her aunt all sorts of questions that did +not always seem to the point. He appeared to be curious about the family +history. Mr. Bright fumed. However, it was all going well enough until +Mrs. John blurted out something about the girl's share of the money that +was coming to them. At the word "money" the judge pricked up his ears. +In his court certainly money was the root of much evil as well as of +pain. What money? Was the little girl an heiress? From the blundering +lips of honest Mrs. Clark the story tumbled out, under the judge's +expert questioning, exactly as it was. At the conclusion, with one +significant scowl at the uncomfortable Mr. Bright, the judge gathered to +himself all the papers, saying that he should give the matter further +consideration and disappeared into his private chamber. The two Clarks +returned to Alton much mystified. + +Young Mr. Bright remarked to his superiors, on his return to the office, +that he thought "there will be the devil to pay!" And there was. Of this +the little girl and her aunt knew nothing except that another legal +difficulty had been discovered and that the lawyers did not seem as +genial and happy as they had before. Thus a week slipped past, and then +they were again summoned to the probate court and taken into the judge's +private chamber behind the courtroom. + + + + +V + + +A good deal had happened in a quiet way during these seven days that had +much influence upon the fate of Clark's Field and of Adelle Clark. Up to +this time Judge Orcutt had never heard of Clark's Field or of the +Clarks. He lived on the other side of B----, in the country, and was not +much of a gossip. But he had ways of finding out about what was going on +when he wanted to. A word lightly cast forth at the club table where he +always lunched, and he could get a clue to almost anything of current +interest. And that noon, after he had first seen Mrs. Clark and her +niece, my friend Edsall happened to be at the judge's table. Orcutt +asked him what he knew about the Clark property in Alton. Edsall +happened to know almost all of importance that has been told here and +more. He knew of the movement on foot to develop the property, so long +held in idleness, but he did not know who were the persons interested. +He could find out. He did so, and within the week he had given the +probate judge the outline of as pretty a story of cheap knavishness as +the judge had come across for years. + +"No one can say what the property is worth now," Edsall reported, "but +it must be millions." + +"Millions!" the judge growled. "And they're trying to get it from an old +woman and a girl for twenty-five thousand dollars." + +"A plain steal," the real estate man remarked. + +"Sculduggery--I smelt it!" laughed the judge. + +One of the first results of this was that Mr. Osmond Bright, senior +member of Bright, Seagrove, and Bright, was invited to call upon Judge +Orcutt in his chambers, and there received probably the worst lecture +this eminent corporation lawyer ever took from any man. He blustered, of +course, and defended his clients on the ground that they were taking a +great risk with the title, which was unsound, etc., etc. The poet judge +dealt him a savage look and curtly advised him to withdraw at once from +the position of counsel to the men involved in this shady transaction; +at least never to appear in his court in the guardianship case. (It may +be said here that the firm did withdraw from the case, as there was, in +their words, "nothing doing." But not much was accomplished, for another +equally eminent and unscrupulous firm of lawyers was employed the next +day and went to work in a more devious manner to get hold of the Field.) + +Next the judge devoted half an hour to meditation over the fate of +Adelle Clark, more time than any one in her whole career hitherto had +given to consideration of her. It was clear enough to him that Mrs. John +Clark, honest woman though she appeared to be, could not cope with the +situation that must present itself. Nor, of course, could the girl. The +nefarious agreement to sell out all the Clark equity in the Field which +John Clark had executed prior to his departure for the Grand Army +Reunion, and which Judge Orcutt had forced the elder Bright to produce, +was evidence enough that the little girl needed some strong defender if +she were not to be fleeced utterly of her property. For she was heir now +to nearly three fourths of what the Clark estate might bring, and her +aunt to the remaining portion--so said the law. But who could be found, +modern knight, honest and disinterested and able enough to take upon his +shoulders the difficult defense of the girl's rights? + +Judge Orcutt had not been greatly impressed by the appearance of the +girl. She was nearly fourteen now, and seemed to the discriminating +taste of the judge to be a quite ordinary young girl with a rather +common aunt. Nevertheless that must not enter into the question: she had +her rights just as much as if she had been all that his poet's heart +might desire a young girl to be! Rights--a curious term over which the +judge often stumbled. Had she any more real right to the property than +the sharks who were trying to steal it from her? Who had any right to +this abandoned field that for fifty years had been waiting for an absent +heir to announce himself? Did it really belong to the Public? When he +got thus far in his speculation, the judge always pulled himself up with +a start. That wasn't his business. He was bound to administer the +antiquated and curious system of laws concerning the bequest of property +with a serious sense of their sacredness whether he felt it or not. They +seemed to be an essential part of the crazy structure of society that +must not be questioned, least of all by a probate judge! If men had +devised these unreal rules and absurd regulations, probably there was +some divine necessity for them beyond his human insight. Judge Orcutt +never got farther than this point in his speculations. With a sigh he +dropped the Clark case, and the next morning sent for the two women to +appear in his court. + +It did not take him long this time to discover that they were singularly +without good friends or advisers. They had no known relatives, no one +who could be expected to take a friendly interest in their affairs and +trusted to manage the business wisely. In earlier days Judge Orcutt +would have tried to find, in such a case, some able and scrupulous young +lawyer to perform the necessary function, somebody like himself who +would have a chivalrous regard for the defenseless condition of the two +women. Either that breed of lawyers had run out, or the judge was +becoming less confiding. For latterly, since the introduction of trust +companies, he had more than once put such cases in charge of these +impersonal agents. Trust companies were specially designed to meet two +pressing human wants,--permanence and honesty. They might not always be +efficient, for they were under such strict legal supervision that they +must always take the timid course, and they charged highly for their +services. But they could not very well be dishonest, nor die! They would +go on forever, at least as long as there was the institution of private +property and an intricate code of laws to safeguard it. Thus the judge +argued to himself again in considering the plight of these Clarks, and +decided to use the Washington Trust Company of B----, whose officers he +knew.... + +After explaining all this in simple terms to Mrs. Clark, he proposed to +her that her niece's interest in the Clark estate should be placed in +the hands of the trust company rather than hers, if they would accept +such an involved guardianship as Adelle Clark's promised to be. + +"You know, my good woman," he said in conclusion, "you must be careful +in this matter." (The judge's manner towards "ordinary people" was +aristocratically condescending, and he considered the rooming-house +keeper very ordinary.) "Of course, you understand that I--that this +court--has no control whatever over your acts. You can if you like carry +out your husband's intention and convey to these parties all your +interest in his estate. But I cannot permit you to jeopardize the +interests of this minor, who is a ward of my court, by conveying her +share of the estate to them on any such terms as they propose." + +"I'm sure," Mrs. John Clark mumbled in an aggrieved tone, "I had no idea +of doing any harm to the girl." + +"No, of course not, my good woman. But you don't understand. As I have +told you, it looks as if there might be some money, considerable money, +coming to you and to her from this land when the title is straightened +out, and you don't want to do anything foolish now." + +"I s'pose not," Mrs. Clark assented, somewhat dubiously. The "good +woman" had heard of this bonanza to come from Clark's Field when the +title was made right for so many years that she was humanly anxious to +touch a tangible profit at once. But she knew only too well that her +husband was a poor business man and probably the judge was right in +telling her not to sell the Field yet. The probate judge seemed to take +a good deal of interest in them for a gentleman of his importance. So +she listened respectfully to what he went on to say. + +"You can do whatever you like, as I said. But if you should decide to +dispose of your husband's estate as he intended, your niece's +representative might be forced to oppose you, which would add another +bad complication to the legal troubles of Clark's Field, and necessarily +defer the time when either of you could sell the land or derive an +adequate return from it." + +He paused after this polite threat, to let the idea sink in. + +"I'm sure she and me don't want to fight," Mrs. Clark quickly replied +with a touch of humor, and the first expression that the judge had seen +upon the little girl's mute face appeared. A smile touched her lips, +flickered and went out. She sat stiffly beside her aunt in the judge's +great leather chair,--a pale, badly dressed little mouse of a girl, who +did not seem to understand the conversation. + +"Well, then, I take it you will be guided in your actions about your +estate by the advice of your niece's guardian, whom I shall appoint." + +He explained to them what a trust company was, and said that he hoped to +get the Washington Trust Company to undertake the guardianship of the +little girl. Then he dismissed them, appointing another meeting a week +hence when they were to return for final settlement of the matter. So +they left the judge's chambers. The girl neither dropped a curtesy, as +the judge would have thought suitable, nor gave him another smile, nor +even opened her lips. She faded out of his chambers after her black aunt +like a pale winter shadow. + +The judge thought she showed a deplorable lack of breeding. He was +conscious that he had probably saved a fortune for the girl by all the +pains he was taking in this matter and felt that at least common +politeness was his due. But one was never paid for these things except +by a sense of duty generously performed. What was duty? And off the +judge went into another thorny speculation that would have made Bright, +Seagrove, and Bright laugh, and they were not inclined to laugh either +at or with Judge Orcutt these days. For in the words of the junior +member, this old maid of a probate judge had cut them out of the fattest +little piece of graft the office had seen in a twelvemonth! If judges +had been elective in the good old Commonwealth of M----, Judge Orcutt's +chances of reelection would have been slim, for Bright, Seagrove, and +Bright had strange underground connections with the politicians then +governing the city. Perhaps the poet in the judge would have rejoiced at +such a misadventure and profited thereby. As it was, whenever Bright, +Seagrove, and Bright had business in the probate court, which was not +often, they got other lawyers to represent them. Even "eminent counsel" +shrink from appearing before a judge who knows their real character. + + + + +VI + + +Adelle was not really unresponsive to the judge's kindness. She liked +the polite old gentleman,--old to fourteen because of the grizzled +mustache,--and was for her deeply impressed by her visits to the probate +judge's chambers. It was the first real event in her pale life, that and +her uncle's funeral, which seemed closely related. They made the date +from which she could reckon herself a person. What impressed her more +than the austere dignity of the judge's private rooms, with their prints +of famous personages, lined bookcases, and rich furniture, was Judge +Orcutt himself. He was the first gentleman she had ever met in any real +sense of the word. And Judge Orcutt was very much of a gentleman in +almost every sense of the word. He came from an old Puritan family, as +American families are reckoned, which had had its worthies for a young +man to respect, and its traditions, not of wealth but of culture and +breeding, kindly humanity, and an interest in life and letters. +Something of this aristocratic inheritance could be felt in his manners +by the two women who were not of his social class and who were treated +with an even greater consideration than if they had been. Adelle liked +also his sober gray suit with the very white linen and black tie, which +he wore like a man who cares more for the cleanliness and propriety of +his person than for fashion. All this and the modulated tones of his +cultivated voice had made a lively impression upon the dumb little girl. +She would have done anything in the world to please the judge, even +defying her aunt if that had been necessary. And she had always stood in +a healthy awe of her vigorous, outspoken aunt. + +The first occasion when Adelle had an opinion all her own and announced +it publicly and unasked was due to the judge. Of course the question of +guardianship was much discussed in their very limited circle. Joseph +Lovejoy, the manager of Pike's Livery at the corner of Church +Street,--the Pike whose son Addie Clark had disdained,--was the oldest +and most important of the "roomers." Mr. Lovejoy was of the opinion that +trust companies were risky inventions that might some day disappear in +smoke. He advised the perplexed widow to "hire a smart lawyer" to look +out for her business interests. What did an old probate judge know about +real estate? This was the occasion on which Adelle made her one +contribution: she thought that "Judge Orcutt must be wiser than any +lawyer because he was a judge." A silly answer as the liveryman said, +yet surprising to her aunt. And she added--"He's a gentleman, too," +though how the little girl discovered it is inexplicable. + +The news of the prospective importance of Clark's Field had quickly +spread through Church Street and the Square, where the widow's credit +much improved. Something really seemed about to happen of consequence to +the old Field and the modest remnants of the Clark family. Emissaries +from the routed speculators came to see the widow. It dribbled down from +the magnates of the local bank, the River National, by way of the +cashier to the chief clerk, that the widow Clark might easily get +herself into trouble and lose her property if she took everybody's +advice. It should be said that the River National Bank disliked these +rich upstart trust companies; also that the capitalists who had laid +envious eyes on the Field were associated with the local bank, which +expected to derive profit from this deal,-the largest that Alton had +ever known even during the boom years at the turn of the century. + +What wonder, then, that the widow Clark, who was a sensible enough woman +in the matter of roomers and household management and knew a bum from a +modest paying laboring man as well as any one in the profession, was +perplexed in the present situation as to the course of true wisdom? +Incredible as it may seem, it was Adelle who during this time of doubt +gave her aunt strength to resist much bad advice. Her influence was, as +might be expected, merely negative. For after that single deliverance of +opinion she made no comment on all the discussion and advice. She seemed +to consider the question settled already: it was this tacit method of +treating the guardianship as an accomplished fact that really influenced +her troubled aunt. When a certain point of household routine came up +between them, Adelle observed that, as they should not be at home on +Thursday morning, the thing would have to go over till the following +day. Thursday was the day of their appointment with the probate judge. +Mrs. Clark, of course, had not forgotten this important fact, but not +having yet made up her distracted mind she had purposely ignored the +appointment to see what her niece would say. Thus Adelle quietly settled +the point: they were to keep the appointment with the judge. Another +faint occasion of displaying will came to her, so faint that it would +seem hardly worth mentioning except that a faithful historian must +present every possible manifestation of character on the part of this +colorless heroine. + +It occurred when they saw the judge on Thursday. The probate judge, who +was busy with another case on their arrival, did not invite them into +his private room as on former occasions, but merely shoved across his +bench a card on which he had written a name and an address. + +"It's all arranged," he said to Mrs. Clark. "Just go over to the +Washington Trust Company and ask for Mr. Gardiner. He will take care of +you," and he smiled pleasantly in dismissal. + +The widow was much put out by this summary way of dealing, for she had +intended to pour out to the judge her doubts, though she probably knew +that in the end she should follow his advice. She hesitated in the +corridor of the court-house, saying something about not being in any +hurry to go to the Washington Trust Company. She had not fully made up +her mind, etc. But Adelle, as if she had not heard her aunt's +objections, set off down the street in the direction of the trust +company's handsome building. Her aunt followed her. The matter was thus +settled. + +Adelle had also felt disappointed at their brief interview; not bitterly +disappointed because she never felt bitterly about anything, but +consciously sorry to have missed the expected conference in the judge's +private chamber. She might never see him again! As a matter of fact, +although the probate court necessarily had much to do with her fate in +the settlement of the involved estate, it was not for seven years that +she had another chance of seeing the judge in chambers, and that, as we +shall discover, was on a very different occasion. Whether during all +these years Adelle ever thought much about the judge, nobody knows, but +Judge Orcutt often had occasion to recollect the pale, badly dressed +little girl who had no manners, when he signed orders and approved +papers _in re Adelle Clark, minor_. + + + + +VII + + +The Washington Trust Company had grown in power to the envy of its +conservative rivals ever since its organization, and was now one of the +richest reservoirs of capital in the city. Recently it had moved into +its new home in the banking quarter of the city,--the most expensive, +commodious, and richly ornamented bank premises in B----. The Washington +Trust Company was managed by "the younger crowd," and one way in which +the new blood manifested itself was by the erection of this handsome +granite building with its ornate bronze and marble appointments. The +officers felt that theirs was a new kind of business, largely involving +women, invalids, and dependents of rich habits, and for these a display +of magnificence was "good business." + +When Adelle and her aunt paused inside the massive bronze doors of the +Trust Building and looked about them in bewilderment across the immense +surface of polished marble floor, it probably did not occur to either of +them that a new page in the book of destiny had been turned for them. +Yet even in Adelle's small, silent brain there must have penetrated a +consciousness of the place,--the home as it were of her new +guardian,--and such a magnificent home that it inspired at once both +timidity and pride. The two women wandered about the banking floor for +some minutes, peering through the various grilles at the busy clerks, +observing the careless profusion of notes, gold, and documents of value +that seemed piled on every desk, as if to indicate ostentatiously the +immensity of the property interests confided to the company's care. At +last, after they had been rebuffed by several busy clerks, a uniformed +attendant found them and inquired their business. The widow handed to +him the card she had received from the probate judge, and the usher at +once led them to an elegant little private elevator that shot them +upwards through the floors of the bank to the upper story. Here, in a +small, heavily rugged room behind a broad mahogany table, they met Mr. +John Gardiner, then the "trust officer" of the Washington Trust Company. +He was a heavy, serious-minded, bald man of middle age, and Adelle at +once made up her mind that she liked him far less than the judge. The +trust officer did not rise on their entrance as the judge always had +risen; merely nodded to them, motioned to some chairs against the wall, +and continued writing on a memorandum pad. Both the widow and Adelle +felt that they were not of much importance to the Washington Trust +Company, which was precisely what the trust company liked to have its +clients feel. + +"Well," Mr. Gardiner said at last, clearing his voice, "so you are Mrs. +John Clark and Miss Adelle Clark?" + +Of course he knew the fact, but some sort of introduction must be made. +Mrs. Clark, who was sitting hostilely on the edge of her chair, hugging +to herself a little black bag, nodded her head guardedly in response. + +"I presume you have come to see me about the guardianship matter," the +trust officer continued. Then he fussed for some moments among the +papers on his desk as if he were hunting for something, which he at last +found. He seized the paper with relief, and took another furtive look at +his visitors from under his gold glasses as if to make sure that no +mistake had been made and began again:-- + +"At the request of Judge Orcutt,"--he pronounced the probate judge's +name with unction and emphasis,--"we have looked into the matter of the +Clark estate, and we have found, what I suppose you are already aware +of, that your husband's estate is extremely involved and with it this +little girl's interest in the property," For the first time he turned +his big bald head in Adelle's direction, and finding there apparently +nothing to hold his attention, ignored her completely thereafter, and +confined himself exclusively to the widow. + +He paused and cleared his throat as if he expected some defense of the +Clark estate from the widow. But she said nothing. To tell the truth, +she didn't like the trust officer's manner. As she said afterwards to +Mr. Lovejoy, he seemed to be "throwing it into her," trying to impress +her with her own unimportance and the goodness of the Washington Trust +Company in concerning itself with her soiled linen. "As if he were doing +me a big favor," she grumbled. That was in fact exactly the idea that +Mr. Gardiner had of the whole affair. If it had been left to him, as he +had told the president of the trust company, he would not have the +Washington Trust Company mix itself up in such a dubious "proposition" +as the Clark estate was likely to prove. He was of the "old school" of +banking,--a relic of earlier days,--and did not approve of the company's +accepting any but the most solid trusts that involved merely the trouble +of cutting four per cent coupons in their management. But his superior +officers had listened favorably to the request of the probate judge, +wishing always to "keep in close touch" with the judge of the court +where they had so much business, and also having a somewhat farther +vision than the trust officer, as will be seen. A recommendation by the +probate judge was to the Washington Trust Company in the nature of a +royal invitation, not to be considered on purely selfish grounds; and +besides, they already scented rich pickings in the litigious situation +of Clark's Fields. They would be stupid if they had to content +themselves with their usual one per cent commission on income. The +assistant to the president of the trust company, a lively young banker +of the "new school," Mr. Ashly Crane, who had been asked to examine into +the situation of the Clark estate, had recognized its manifold +possibilities and had recommended favorable action. In the event it +proved that the "new school" was right: the Washington Trust Company +lost nothing by its disinterested act. (It never did lose anything by +its acts of charity, and that is why it has prospered so abundantly.) + +"I do not know what the trust company will be able to do with the +property," the cautious Mr. Gardiner continued. "We have not yet +completed our examination: our attorneys are at present considering +certain legal points. But one thing is pretty certain," he hastened to +add with emphasis. "You must look for no income from the estate for the +present,--probably not for a term of years." + +This made little impression upon the women. It meant nothing at all to +Adelle, and the widow had become so accustomed to disappointments about +the Clark property that she did not move a muscle at the announcement, +though she inwardly might regret the twenty-five thousand dollars which +had been promised her husband by the other crowd. That would mean a good +deal more to her business than two or three times the amount after a +"term of years." She was getting on, and the rooming business needed +capital badly. However, she had determined to do nothing detrimental to +the interests of her husband's niece, as the probate judge had told her +she might if she listened to the seduction of immediate cash. And +fortunately the bank officer did not ask for money to pay taxes and +interest on the mortgages, which had been the bugbear of her married +life. This was the next point touched upon by the trust officer. + +"I presume that you are not in a financial position to advance anything +towards the expenses of the estate, which for the present may be heavy?" +He gave the widow another furtive look under his glasses, as if to +detect what money she had on her person. + +Mrs. Clark shook her head vigorously: that she would not do--go on +pouring money into the bottomless pit of Clark's Field! Of course the +trust company had considered this point and made up its mind already to +advance the estate the necessary funds up to a safe amount, which would +become another lien on the little girl's income from her mother's +inheritance, should there be any. + +This matter disposed of, the trust officer asked searching questions +about the Clark genealogy, which the widow answered quite fully, for it +was a subject on which her sister-in-law Addie had educated her so +completely that she knew everything there was to know except the exact +whereabouts of Edward S. or his heirs. Mr. Gardiner was specially +interested in Edward S., who had disappeared fifty years ago, and asked +Mrs. Clark to send him immediately all family letters bearing on Edward. +It was apparent that the trust company meant to go after Edward and his +heirs and either discover them if it were humanly possible or establish +the fact that they could safely be ignored. And they were in a much +better position, with their numerous connections and correspondents, to +prosecute such a search successfully than any one else who had tried it. +Mr. Gardiner, however, expressed himself doubtfully of their success. + +"We shall do our best," he said, "and let you know from time to time of +the progress we are making." + +And after exacting a few more signatures from the widow, who by this +time had become adept in signing "Ellen Trigg Clark," the trust officer +nodded to his visitors in dismissal. + +It would be difficult to say what Adelle was thinking about during this +interview. She sat perfectly still as she always did: one of her minor +virtues as a child was that she could sit for hours without wriggling or +saying a word. She did not even stare about her at the lofty room with +its colored glass windows and shiny mahogany furniture as any other +young person might. She gazed just above the bald crown of the trust +officer's head and seemed more nearly absorbed in Nirvana than a young +American ever becomes. But there is little doubt that the long interview +in the still, high room of the bank building did make an impression upon +the trust company's ward. + +She trailed after her aunt down the marble stairs, for the trust officer +did not trouble himself about their exit from his office as he did with +solid clients who had going estates, and the widow was too timid to +summon the bronze car from its hole in the wall. They passed through the +great banking room on the main floor, where, because of the largeness +and the decorum of this sanctuary of property, a crowd of patrons seemed +to make no disturbance. Adelle sat in reverie all the way out to Alton +in the street-car and did not wake up until they turned from the Square +into the dingy side street. Then she said, apropos of nothing,-- + +"It's a pretty place." + +"What place?" snapped the widow, who realized that a whole working day +had been lost "for nothing," and the roomers' beds were still to make. + +"That trust place," Adelle explained. + +"Um," her aunt responded enigmatically, as one who would say that +"pretty is as pretty does." + +It had not appeared to her as a place of beauty. But to Adelle, who had +seen nothing more ornate than the Everitt Grade School of Alton, the +Second Congregational Church, and the new City Hall, the interior of the +Washington Trust Company, with its bronze and marble and windows that +shed soft violet lights on the white floors, awakened an unknown +appetite for richness and splendor, color and size. That was what she +had been thinking about without realizing it while the trust officer +talked to her aunt. She called this barbaric profusion of rich materials +"pretty," and felt, very faintly, a personal happiness in being +connected with it in some slight manner. + + + + +VIII + + +If the excursions to the probate court and the trust company had roused +expectations of change in their condition, they were to be disappointed. +From that afternoon when they turned into Church Street on their return +from the Washington Trust Company, the monotony and drudgery of their +former life settled down on them with an even greater insistence. The +dusty ROOMS FOR RENT sign was tucked into the front window with its +usual regularity, for do what she could, Mrs. Clark could not attain +that pinnacle of the landlady's aspirations, a houseful of permanent +roomers. The young men were inconstant, the middle-aged liable to +matrimony, the old to death, and all to penury or change of occupation +and residence. So the old fight went on as before during all the +twenty-three years of the widow Clark's married life,--a fight to exist +in a dusty, worn, and shabby fashion, with a file of roomers tramping +out the stair carpet, spotting the furniture, and using up the linen. To +be sure, two great drains upon income no longer troubled her,--Clark's +Field and the Veteran. With these encumbrances removed she could make +ends meet. + +After a few weeks she forgot her doubts about the wisdom of following +Judge Orcutt's advice and placing her interest in the estate together +with her niece's in care of the trust company. The manager of the +livery-stable, who was the nearest thing to permanency the house knew, +shook his head over her folly in trusting a trust company, but the +speculators and their lawyers let her severely alone, knowing that they +had been outwitted and flitting to other schemes. The Square seemed to +accept the fresh eclipse of the Clark estate after its false appearance +of coming to a crisis. And the character of the Square was fast changing +with all else these busy years. It was no longer a neighborhood center +of gossip. There were new faces--and many foreign ones--in the rows of +shops. The neighborhood was deteriorating, or evolving, as you happened +to look at it. + +The Washington Trust Company seemed to have quite forgotten the +existence of the Clark women except for the occasional appearance in the +mail of an oblong letter addressed in type to Mrs. Ellen Trigg Clark, +which bore in its upper left-hand corner a neat vignette of the trust +building. Adelle studied these envelopes carefully, not to say tenderly, +with something of the emotion that the trust company's home had roused +in her the only time she had been within its doors. The vignette, which +represented a considerable Grecian temple, she thought "pretty," and the +neat, substantial-looking envelope suggested a rich importance to the +communication within that also pleased the girl. She knew that it had to +do with her remotely. Yet there was never anything thrilling in these +communications from the trust company. They were signed by Mr. Gardiner +and curtly informed Mrs. Clark of certain meaningless facts or more +often curtly inquired for information,--"Awaiting your kind reply," +etc., or merely requested politely another example of the widow's +signature. They were models of brief, impersonal, business +communications. If Adelle had ever had any experience of personal +relationship she might have resented these perfunctory epistles from her +legal guardian, but for all she knew that was the way all people treated +one another. Evidently her legal guardian had no desire for any closer +personal contact with its ward, and she waited, not so much patiently as +pensively, for it to demonstrate a more lively interest in her +existence.... + +Meanwhile there was debate in the Church Street house about a matter +that more closely touched the young girl. She had graduated from the +Everitt School the preceding June and would naturally be going on now +into the high school with her better conditioned schoolmates. But she +herself, though not averse to school, had suggested that she should stay +at home and help her aunt in the house or find a place in one of the +shops in the Square where she might earn a little money. Mrs. Clark, who +has been described as a realist, might have favored this practical plan, +had it not been that Adelle was a Clark--all that was left of them, in +fact. The widow had lived so long under the shadow of the Clark +expectations that she could not easily escape from their control now +that she was alone. A Trigg, of course, under similar circumstances +would have gone into a shop at once, but a Clark ought to have a better +education in deference to her expectations. The heiress of Clark's Field +must never conclude her education with the grades.... So finally it was +decided that Adelle should enter the high school for a year, at any +rate, and to that end a new school dress of sober blue serge was +provided, made by Adelle with her aunt's assistance. + +These days Adelle rose at an early hour to do the chamber work while her +aunt got breakfast, then changed her dress, looked hurriedly over her +lessons, gobbled her breakfast, and with her books and a tin lunch-box +strapped together set forth to walk the mile and a half to the high +school in order to save car-fare. There she performed her daily tasks in +a perfunctory, dead manner, not uncommon. Once an exasperated teacher +had demanded testily,-- + +"Miss Clark, don't you ever think?" + +The timid child had answered seriously,-- + +"Yes, sometimes I think." + +Whereat the class tittered and Adelle had a mild sensation of dislike +for the irascible teacher, who reported in "teachers' meeting" that +Adelle Clark was as nearly defective as a child of her years could be +and be "all right," and that the grades ought not to permit such pupils +to graduate into the high school. Indeed, algebra, Cĉsar, and Greek +history were as nearly senseless to Adelle Clark as they could be. They +were entirely remote from her life, and nothing of imagination rose from +within to give them meaning. She learned by rote, and she had a poor +memory. It was much the same, however, with English literature or social +science or French, subjects that might be expected to awaken some +response in the mind of a girl. The only subject that she really liked +was dancing, which the gymnasium instructor taught. Adelle danced very +well, as if she were aware of being alive when she danced. But even the +athletic young woman who had the gymnasium classes reported that Adelle +Clark was too dull, too lifeless, to succeed as a dancer or athletic +teacher. These public guardians of youth may or may not have been right +in their judgments, but certainly as yet the girl had not "waked up".... + +Adelle's high-school career was interrupted in January, just as she had +turned fifteen, by her aunt's sickness. For the first time in forty +years, as the widow told the doctor, she had taken to her bed. "Time to +make up for all the good loafing you have missed," the young doctor +joked cheaply in reply, not realizing the hardship of invalidism, with a +houseful of roomers, in a small back bedroom near enough to the center +of activities for the sick woman to know all that happened without +having the strength to interfere. It was only the grippe, the doctor +said, advising rest, care, and food. It would be a matter of a week or +two, and Adelle was doing her best to take her aunt's place in the house +and also nurse her aunt. But Mrs. Clark never left her bed until she was +carried to the cemetery to be laid beside the Veteran in the already +crowded lot. The grippe proved to be a convenient name to conceal a +general breaking-up, due to years of wearing, ceaseless woman's toil +without hope, in the disintegrating Clark atmosphere that ate like an +acid into the consciousness even of plain Ellen Trigg, with her humble +expectations from life. + +Adelle was much moved by the death of her aunt, the last remaining +relative that she knew of, though the few people who saw her at this +time thought she "took it remarkably well." They interpreted her +expressionless passivity to a lack of feeling. As a matter of fact, she +had been much more attached to her aunt than to any one she had ever +known. The plain woman, who had no pretensions and did her work +uncomplainingly because it was useless to complain, had inspired the +girl with respect and given her what little character she had. Ellen +Clark was a stoic, unconsciously, and she had taught Adelle the wisdom +of the stoic's creed. The girl realized fully now that she was alone in +life, alone spiritually as well as physically, and though she did not +drop tears as she came back to the empty Church Street house from the +cemetery,--for that was not the thing to do now: it was to get back as +soon as possible and set the house to rights as her aunt would have done +so that the roomers should not be put out any further,--her heart was +heavy, nevertheless, and she may even have wondered sadly what was to +become of her. + +That was the question that disturbed the few persons who had any +interest in the Clark women,--the manager of the livery-stable among +them. It was plainly not the "proper thing" for the girl to continue +long in a house full of men, and irresponsible men at that. Adelle was +not aware what was the "proper thing," but she felt herself inadequate +to keeping up the establishment unaided by her aunt, although that is +what she would have liked to do, go on sweeping and making beds and +counting out the wash and making up the bills, with or without school. +But the liveryman hinted to her on her return from the funeral that she +ought to go immediately to some friend's house, or have some married +woman stay with her until her future had been determined upon. Adelle +knew of no house where she could make such a visit, nor of any one whom +she could invite to stay with her. It may seem incredible, as it did to +Mr. Lovejoy, that "folks could live all their lives in Alton like the +Clarks" and have no relatives or friends to lean upon in an emergency. +But the truth is that when a family begins to go down in this world, +after having some pretensions, it is likely to shed social relations +very fast instead of acquiring new ones. A family in a settled social +equilibrium (rarely the case in America), or one that is going up in the +human scale, is apt to acquire connections, quite apart from the +accidents of birth and social gifts, because the mental attitude is an +open and optimistic one, attracting to itself humanity instead of +timidly withdrawing into itself. Strength attracts and weakness repels +in the long run here as elsewhere. The Clarks, who had never been +considerable or numerous, had in the course of three generations +gradually lost their hold upon the complex threads of life, shiftlessly +shedding relationships as the Veteran had done, or proudly refusing +inferior connections as Addie had, until the family was left solitary in +the person of this one fifteen-year-old girl, in whom the social habit +seemed utterly atrophied. Of course, Adelle could have appealed to her +aunt's pastor, but it never occurred to her to do that or to make use of +any other social machinery. She went back to the Church Street house, +occupied her old room, and for the next few days continued the catlike +routine of her life as nearly as she could under the changed conditions. + +Mr. Lovejoy, who continued to be the one most concerned in her welfare, +induced her to write a crude little note to the "Washington Trust +Company, Dear Sirs," notifying them of the demise of her aunt. The +livery-stable man, who was a widower and not beyond middle age, which +does not necessarily mean in his class that the wife is dead and buried, +but merely permanently absent for one reason or another, might have +thrown sentimental eyes upon the girl if she had been different, more of +a woman. + +"She'll likely enough be an heiress some of these days," he said to his +employer, old John Pike. + +Pike was an old resident of Alton and had known all the Clarks. He +grunted as if he had heard that song before. "That's what they used to +say of her mother, Addie Clark," he remarked, remembering Addie's +superior air towards his son. + +"Well," his manager continued, "I see that trust company's got its signs +up all over the Field." + +"'T ain't the first time there's been signs there," Pike retorted, +eyeing a succulent cigar he had succeeded in extracting from an inner +pocket, "nor the last either, I expect!" + +"It looks as if they meant business this time." + +"They can't get no title," Pike averred, for he banked with the River +National, which was now quite bearish on Clark's Field. After a pause +the old liveryman asked with a broad smile,--"Why don't you go in for +the heiress, Jim?" + +(Mr. Lovejoy was accounted "gay," a man to please the ladies.) + +"Me! I never thought of it--she's nothing but a girl. The old one +pleased me better--she was a smart woman!" + +"The girl's got all the property, ain't she?" + +"I suppose so." + +"Well, then, you get two bites from the same cherry." + +The manager made no advances to the girl, however, and for that we must +consider Adelle herself as chiefly responsible. For, as a woman, or +rather the hope of a woman, she was uninteresting,--still a pale, +passive, commonplace girl. What womanhood she might expect was slow in +coming to her. Even with the halo of the Clark inheritance she could +arouse slight amorous interest in any man. And thus Adelle's +insignificance again saved her--shall we say?--from the mean fate of +becoming the prey of this "roomer." + +"No man will ever take the trouble to marry that girl," Mr. Love joy +remarked to his employer, "unless she gets her fortune in hard cash." In +which prophecy the widower was wrong. + + + + +IX + + +In a few days Mr. Gardiner called at the Church Street house on behalf +of the trust company, to express to its ward its sympathy with her in +her bereavement and to find out what her situation was, and her needs +for the future. Adelle, sitting opposite the portly, bald-headed bank +officer in the little front room, did not feel especially excited. She +could not imagine what this visit might mean to her. She answered all +his questions in a low, colorless voice, promptly enough and +intelligently enough. Yes, her aunt was her only relative so far as she +knew. No, she had made no plans--she would like to stay where she was if +she could. It would be pretty hard to do everything alone, etc. As the +trust officer, puzzled by the situation, continued to ply her with +questions so that he might gain a clearer understanding of the +circumstances, he became more and more perplexed. This was something +quite out of his experience as a trust officer. He had supposed in +making this call that he would have merely a perfunctory duty to +perform, to ratify some obviously "sensible" plan for the future of the +institution's ward. As he happened to have other business in Alton, he +called personally instead of writing a note. + +But now he discovered that this fifteen-year-old girl had absolutely no +relatives, nor "proper friends," nor visible means of support except the +income from "a third-class boarding-house," as he told the president of +the trust company the next day. Clearly the company must do something +for its ward, whose fortune they were now beginning to discuss in seven +figures. + +"She must have a suitable allowance." + +That the good Mr. Gardiner saw at once. For to his thrifty, suburban +soul the situation of a girl of fifteen with large prospects in a +third-class rooming-house was truly deplorable. The dignities and +proprieties of life were being outraged: it might affect the character +of the trust company should it become known.... + +Rising at last from the dusty sofa where he had placed his large person +for this talk, the trust officer said kindly,-- + +"We must consider what is best to be done, my girl. Can you come to the +bank to see me next Monday?" + +Adelle saw no reason why she should not go to see him Monday, as high +school still seemed impossible with the house on her hands. + +"Come in, then, Monday morning!" And the trust officer went homewards to +confide his perplexity to his wife as trust officers sometimes do. It +was a queer business, his. As trust officer he had once gone out to some +awful place in Dakota to take charge of the remains of a client who had +got himself shot in a brawl, and brought the body back and buried it +decently in a New England graveyard with his ancestors. He had advised +young widows how to conduct themselves so that they should not be +exposed to the wiles of rapacious men. Once even he had counseled +matrimony to a client who was difficult to control and had approved, +unofficially, of her selection of a mate. A good many of the social +burdens of humanity came upon his desk in the course of the day's +business, and he was no more inhuman than the next man. He was a father +of a respectable family in the neighboring suburb of Chester. His habit +was naturally to hunt for the proper formula for each situation as it +arose and to apply this formula conscientiously. According to Mr. +Gardiner, the duty of trust companies to society consisted in applying +suitable formulas to the human tangles submitted to them by their +clients. And in the present case Mrs. Gardiner suggested the necessary +formula. + +"Why don't you send the girl to a good boarding-school? You say she's +fifteen and will have money." + +"Yes,--some money, perhaps a good deal," her husband replied. Even in +the bosom of his family, the trust officer was guarded in statement. + +"How much?" Mrs. Gardiner demanded. + +"What difference does it make how much, so long as we can pay her school +bills?" + +"It makes all the difference in the world!" the wife replied, with the +superior tone of wisdom. "It makes the difference whether you send her +to St. Catherine's or Herndon Hall." + +It will be seen that the trust officer's wife believed in that clause of +the catechism that recommends contentment with that state of life to +which Providence hath called one, and also that education should fit one +for the state of life to which he or she was to be called by Providence. +St. Catherine's, as the trust officer very well knew, was a modest +institution for girls under the direction of the Episcopal Church, for +which he served as trustee, where needy girls were cheaply provided with +a "sensible" education, and "the household arts" were not neglected. In +other words, the girls swept their rooms, made their own beds, and +washed the dishes after the austere repasts, and the fee was +correspondingly small. Whereas Herndon Hall--well, every one who has +young daughters to launch upon the troubled sea of social life, and the +ambition to give them the most exclusive companionship and no very high +regard for learning,--at least for women,--knows all about Herndon Hall, +by that name or some other equally euphonious. The fees at Herndon Hall +were fabulous, and it was supposed to be so "careful" in its scrutiny of +applicants that only those parents with the best introductions could +possibly secure admission for their daughters. There were, of course, no +examinations or mental tests of any kind. + +Mrs. Gardiner, who had the ambition to send her Alicia to Herndon Hall +in due course, if the trust officer felt that he could afford the +expense, opened her eyes when her husband replied to her question +promptly,-- + +"I guess we'll figure on Herndon Hall." + +Mrs. Gardiner inferred that the prospects of the trust company's ward +must be quite brilliant, and she was prepared to do her part. + +"Why don't you ask the girl out here over Sunday?" she suggested. + +"Oh, she's a queer little piece," the trust officer replied evasively. +"I don't believe you would find her interesting--it isn't necessary." + + + + +X + + +On her next visit to the splendid home of her guardian, Adelle was +received by no less a person than the president of the trust company +himself. In conference between the officers of the trust company it had +been decided that the president, his assistant, and the trust officer +should meet the girl, explain to her cautiously the nature of her +prospects, and announce to her the arrangement for her education that +they had made. But before recording this interview a word should be said +about the present situation of Clark's Field. + +The search that the bank had started for trace of the missing Edward S. +and his heirs had resulted as futilely as the more feeble measures taken +earlier by Samuel Clark. It is astonishing how completely people can +obliterate themselves, give them a few years! There was absolutely no +clue in all the United States for discovering this lost branch of the +Alton Clarks, nor any reason to believe in their existence except the +established fact that in 1848 Edward S., with a wife and at least three +babies, had left Chicago for St. Louis. Although the Alton branch of the +Clarks had shown no powers of multiplying,--their sole representative +now being one little girl,--nevertheless there might be a whole colony +of Clarks somewhere interested in one half of the valuable Field. But +more than fifty years had now passed since the final disappearance of +Edward S. Clark, and the law was willing to consider means of ignoring +all claims derived from him. It was the young assistant to the +president, Mr. Ashly Crane, who worked out the details of the plan by +which the restless title was to be finally "quieted" and the trust +company enabled to dispose of its ward's valuable estate. Some of the +officers and larger stockholders of the trust company were interested in +an affiliated institution known as the Washington Guaranty and Title +Company, which was prepared to do business in the guaranteeing of +real-estate titles that were from one reason or another defective, which +it is needless to say the majority are. For a reasonable sum this new +company undertook to perfect the title to Clark's Field and then to +insure purchasers and sellers against any inconvenient claims that might +arise in the future, defending the title against all comers or in case +of defeat assuming the losses. A very convenient institution in a +society where the laws of property are so intricate and sacred! As a +first step there was an extensive public advertisement for the missing +heir or heirs, and then in due form a "judicial sale" of the property by +order of court, after which the court pronounced the title to Clark's +Field, so long clouded, to be "quieted." And woe to any one who might +now dare to raise that restless spirit, be he Edward S. or any +descendant of his! + +This legal process of purification for Clark's Field being under way, +the ingenious mind of Mr. Ashly Crane turned to the next problem, which +was to dispose of the property advantageously. Manifestly the Washington +Trust Company could not go into the real estate business on behalf of +its ward and peddle out slices of her Field. That would not be proper, +nor would it be especially profitable to the trust company. Mr. Crane, +therefore, conceived the brilliant idea of forming a "Clark's Field +Associates" corporation to buy the undeveloped tract of land from the +trust company, who as guardian could sell it in whole or in part, and +the new corporation might then proceed at its leisure to "develop" the +old Field advantageously. For the benefit of the ignorant it maybe +bluntly stated here that this was merely a device for buying Adelle's +property cheaply and selling it at a big profit,--not as crude a method +as the other that the Veteran had almost fallen a victim to, because the +Washington Trust Company was a "high-toned" institution and did not do +things crudely; but in effect the device was the same. + +The Clark's Field Associates was, therefore, incorporated and made an +offer to the trust company for Clark's Field,--a fair offer in the +neighborhood of a million dollars for the fifty-acre tract of city land. +An obstacle, however, presented itself at this point, which in the end +forced the Associates to modify their plan materially. The sale had to +be approved by the probate judge, the same Judge Orcutt who had once +before befriended the unknown little girl. This time the judge examined +the scheme carefully, even asked for a list of the Associates, which was +an innocent collection of dummy names, and finally after conference with +the trust officers insisted that the ward should reserve for herself one +half the shares of the Clark's Field Associates, thus obtaining an +interest in the possible benefits to be derived from their transactions. +This was accordingly done, and the subscription to the stock of the new +corporation by some of the capitalists who had been invited to +"participate" in this juicy melon was cut down one half. They were not +pleased by the act of the probate judge, but they accepted half the +melon with good grace, assuring the judge through Mr. Crane that it was +a highly speculative venture anyhow to put Clark's Field on the market, +and the Associates might lose every penny they risked on it. The judge +merely smiled. Poet that he was, he was by no means a fool in the +affairs of this life. + +When Adelle made her second visit to the Washington Trust Company, the +scheme outlined above had not been perfected, but the legal process was +far enough along to show promise of a brilliant fulfillment. The "queer +little piece," as Mr. Gardiner described Adelle to his wife, had thus +grown in importance within a brief year to such dignified persons as +President West of the trust company and the wealthy stockholders who +under various disguises were embarking upon the venture of the Clark's +Field Associates. She was no longer merely the heiress of a legal mess: +she was the means by which a powerful modern banking institution hoped +to make for its inner circle of patrons a very profitable investment. So +these gentlemen examined with curiosity the shy little person who slowly +advanced across the carpeted floor of Mr. Gardiner's private office. The +president himself rose from his chair and extended to Adelle a large, +handsome, white hand with the polite greeting,-- + +"I am very glad to meet you, Miss Clark." + +Adelle was more than ordinarily dumb. She had expected to see the trust +officer alone as she had the other time, and in the presence of these +strangers she took her one means of defense,--silence. The president, +however, did the talking, and he talked more humanly than stuffy Mr. +Gardiner. After expressing a deep sympathy with Adelle for the death of +her aunt (of whose existence he had not been aware before this week), he +easily shifted to the topic of Adelle's future. She must, of course, +continue her education. Adelle replied that she should like to keep on +with school, by which she meant the Alton Girls' High. + +"Of course, of course," the president said easily. "Every girl should +have the proper sort of education, and it is all the more important when +her responsibilities and opportunities in life are likely to be +increased by the possession of property." + +But Adelle did not see how she could continue at the high school, now +that her aunt had died and there was no one but herself to look after +the roomers. + +"Oh, very easily, very easily," the president thought. "How would you +like to go to boarding-school, my dear?" + +Adelle did not know all at once. She had read something about +boarding-schools in story-books, but her conception of them was hazy. +And she ventured to say out loud that they must take a "sight of money." +The president of the trust company smiled for the benefit of his +fellow-officers and proceeded to break the news of the rich expectations +awaiting the timid little girl. + +"I think we shall find enough money somehow to send you to a good +school," he said gayly. "You know we have some money in the bank that +will be yours,--oh, not a great deal at present, but enough to give you +a good education, provided you don't spend too much on clothes, young +lady." + +This was a cruel jest, considering the quality of Adelle's one poor +little serge dress which she had on, and she took it quite literally. +While absorbing the idea that she must make her clothes go as far as +possible, she made no remark. + +"The property that we hold in trust for you until you shall become of +age," the president resumed more seriously, "is not yet in such +condition that we can tell you exactly how much it will amount to. But +it is safe to say that all your reasonable needs will be provided for. +You'll never have to worry about money!" + +He congratulated himself upon the happy phrasing of his announcement. It +was cautiously vague, and yet must relieve the little girl of all +apprehension or worry. Adelle made no response. For a Clark to be told +that there was no need to worry over money was too astounding for +belief. + +"Now," said the president, who felt that he had done everything called +for in the situation, "I will leave Mr. Gardiner to explain all the +details to you. I hope you will enjoy your new school.... Whenever you +are in the city, come in and see us!" + +He shook the little girl's hand and went off with his good-looking young +assistant, whose sharp glances had made Adelle shyer than ever. The two +men smiled as they went out, as though they were saying to +themselves,--"Queer little piece to have all that money!" + +Mr. Gardiner took a great many words to explain to Adelle that her +guardians had thought it best "after due consideration" to send her to +an excellent boarding-school for young ladies--Herndon Hall. He rolled +the name with an unction he had learned from his wife. Herndon Hall, it +seemed, was in a neighboring State, not far from the great city of New +York, and Adelle must prepare herself for her first long railroad +journey. She would not have to take this alone, however, for Miss +Thompson, the head teacher, had telephoned the trust company that she +herself would be in B---- on the following Friday and would escort Miss +Clark to the Hall. Adelle could be ready, of course, by Friday. + +Here Adelle demurred. There were the roomers--what would happen to them? +And the old Church Street house--what was to become of the house? The +banker waved aside these practical woman's considerations with a smile. +Some one would be sent out from the trust company to look after all such +unimportant matters. So, intimidated rather than persuaded, Adelle left +the trust company building to prepare herself for her new life that was +to begin on the following Friday noon. + +They were accustomed to doing large things in the Washington Trust +Company, and of course they did small things in a large way. But the +little orphan's fate had really been the subject of more consideration +than might possibly be inferred from the foregoing. The school matter +had been carefully canvassed among the officers of the company. Mr. +Gardiner had expressed some doubts as to the wisdom of sending Adelle at +once to a large, fashionable school, even if she had the money to pay +for it. Vague glimmerings of reason as to what really might make for the +little girl's happiness in life troubled him, even after his wife's +unhesitating verdict. But President West had no doubts whatever and +easily bore down his scruples. He belonged to a slightly superior class +socially and did not hold Herndon Hall in the same awe in which it was +regarded in the Gardiner household. His daughters had friends who had +got what education they had under Miss Annette Thompson and had married +well afterwards and "taken a good position in society," which was really +the important thing. Miss Thompson herself was of a very good New York +family,--he had known her father who had been something of a figure in +finance until the crash of ninety-three,--and the head of Herndon Hall +was reputed to have an excellent "formative" influence upon her girls. +And certainly that raw little specimen who had presented herself in his +office needed all the "formative influence" she could get! + +"We must give her the best," he pronounced easily, "for she is likely to +be a rich woman some day." + +It may be seen that President West agreed with Mrs. Gardiner's practical +interpretation of the catechism. After his interview with Adelle he said +to the trust officer,--"She needs--everything! Herndon Hall will be the +very thing for her--will teach her what a girl in her position ought to +know." + +These remarks reveal on his part a special philosophy that will become +clearer as we get to know better Miss Annette Thompson and Herndon Hall. +The officers of the trust company felt that in sending their ward to +this fashionable girls' school, they were doing their duty by her not +only safely but handsomely, and thenceforth dismissed her from their +thoughts, except when a subordinate brought them at regular intervals a +voucher to sign before issuing a check on behalf of Adelle.... + +"Terribly crude little piece," the president of the trust company said +of Adelle, thinking of his own vivacious daughters, who at her age had +been complete little women of the world, and of all the other pretty, +confident, voluble girls he met in his social life. "She has seen +nothing of life," he said in extenuation, by which he meant naturally +that Adelle Clark had never known how "nice people live," had never been +to dancing-school or parties, or country clubs or smart dressmakers, and +all the rest of what to him constituted a "suitable education" for a +young girl who was to inherit money. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile the "crude little piece" returned to her old home, somewhat +shaken in mind by what had happened to her. It never entered her little +head to argue with the august officers of the trust company, who stood +to her as the sacred symbol of Authority. She must buy a trunk, pack it, +and be at the Eclair Hotel in B---- by noon on the following Friday. +Those were her orders. She looked wonderingly at the two hundred dollar +check which Mr. Gardiner had given her for the expense of making herself +ready. She had never before seen two hundred dollars. She knew only +abstractly by the way of her arithmetic that such vast sums of money +existed. And now she was expected to spend this fortune in the space of +three days upon herself. She folded up the slip of paper and tucked it +carefully into her purse. When she presented it at one of the shops in +the Square in payment for the cheap trunk she had selected, she started +a local sensation. By the time the check had traveled from the clerk to +the proprietor and thence to the River National Bank, which did not take +long, it was known in that busy neighborhood that Clark's Field had made +good at last! Here was ready money from it as evidence. Adelle Clark was +in fact the heiress that her mother Addie had been in fancy. + +The manager of the livery-stable may have had his regrets for the light +manner in which he had treated old Pike's suggestion. He drove the girl +himself into B---- on Friday with her new trunk strapped behind the +closed carriage and touched his high hat when she dismounted before the +flunky-guarded doors of the hotel. Adelle did not notice the hat +business: she gave her old friend and best "roomer" her hand as she said +good-bye, then slowly mounted the stone steps of the hotel. And that was +the last that Church Street saw of the Clarks. + +The liveryman, slowly retracing his way across the bridge to Alton, +mused upon the picture that the little girl presented in her blue school +suit, going up the steps of the Eclair Hotel. It was all like a stage +story, he felt, and he thought long about the Clarks, whom he had known +for two generations and about human fate generally. He summed up his +reflections in one enigmatic exclamation,--"That blamed old pasture!" + +Adelle was an "heiress." Already she had been whisked away from Church +Street to her new life. And all because of "that blamed old +pasture"--otherwise Clark's Field. + + + + +XI + + +The civilized inhabitants of our twentieth-century world are acquainted +with many more kinds of torture than the ingenious managers of the +Inquisition ever dreamed of in their most lurid nightmares. And of all +these peculiarly modern forms of torture, perhaps the fashionable girls' +school such as Herndon Hall takes first rank. A boys' school of the same +order--conducted under the patronage of some holy saint's name--is often +pretty bad, but it cannot rival the girls' school because women are more +skillful in applying social torture and have a thousand ways of doing it +to a man's or boy's one. Even among the softest and snobbiest of boys +and masters there will always remain a residuum of male self-respect. If +the newcomer, no matter how wrongly classed, proves that he has physical +courage, or an aptitude for sports, or even a sunny, common-sense +disposition, he will quickly escape from his probationary period of +torture and become tolerated; while if a girl appears among her future +schoolmates with an ill-made, unfashionable frock, or has manners that +betray less sophistication than is to be expected, she may never survive +the torture that begins on the instant and follows her relentlessly, in +the schoolroom and out, until she either adapts herself to her +environment, becoming in turn a torturer, or is removed to a more +congenial environment. + +Adelle Clark presented to the little world of Herndon Hall a very +vulnerable appearance when she arrived at the school on that Friday +evening. She was still wearing the blue serge school dress that she and +her aunt had made for her high-school début, also some coarse, faded +brown stockings, and stout cheap shoes, not to mention an unmentionable +hat of no style at all. She had taken that unfortunate joke of the trust +company's president literally: she must not waste her substance upon +clothes. Even without this inhibition she had scarcely the skill and the +courage necessary to spend her two hundred dollars to advantage in three +days. So she had bought herself a trunk, a few suits of much-needed +heavy underwear, some handkerchiefs, and a coat that she had desired all +winter, a thick, clumsy affair that completely enveloped her slight +figure. Then her imagination of wants had given out. + +The young teacher, who had taken Miss Thompson's place because of a +sudden indisposition that attacked the head mistress, had made Adelle +uncomfortably aware that something was wrong, but she put down her +coolness and unsympathetic silence during their brief journey to the +fact that Miss Stevens was a "teacher" and therefore felt "superior," +"Rosy," as the older Hall girls called Miss Stevens, was not at all +"superior" in her attitude to the girls. She dressed quite smartly and +youthfully and was their best confidante. But she had received a shock +when she saw "that little fright" (as she reported to Miss Thompson) +timidly sitting on the edge of her chair in the parlor of the Eclair +Hotel. "Where can she come from?" she had said to herself; and later she +had supplemented this query by thinking, "wherever it was, she had +better go back to it as fast as she can--the little fright!" + +Fortunately Adelle did not understand the glances that the elegant young +women who were chattering in the Hall drawing-room before dinner cast +upon her when she was introduced to her schoolmates. Nor did she +immediately comprehend the intention of the insults and tortures to +which she was submitted during the ensuing year. She felt lonely: she +missed her aunt and even the "roomers" more than she had expected to. +But gradually even into her dumb mind there penetrated a sense of +undeserved ignominy, not clearly localized, because she did not possess +a sufficient knowledge of sophisticated manners to realize the refined +nature of her torture. She had merely an accumulating sense of pain and +outrage. She was not happy in Herndon Hall: she did not know it until +afterwards, but that was the plain truth. Nobody wanted her there, and +she knew enough to understand it. Even a cat or a dog has sufficient +social sense for that! + + * * * * * + +Externally Herndon Hall was all that was charming and gracious--a much +more beautiful and refined home than Adelle had ever seen. It occupied +one of those spacious old manorial houses above the Hudson, where the +river swept in a gracious curve at the foot of the long lawn. An avenue +of old trees led up to the large stone house from the high road half a +mile away. There were all sorts of dependencies,--stables, greenhouses, +and ornamental gardens of the old-fashioned kind,--which were carefully +kept up so that the Hall resembled a large private estate, such as it +was meant to be, rather than a school. It was popularly supposed that +Herndon Hall had once been the country-place of Miss Thompson's people, +which was not true; but that shrewd woman of the world, recognizing all +the advantages of an aristocratic background, kept up the place on a +generous footing, with gardeners, stablemen, and many inside servants, +for which, of course, the pupils paid liberally. The Hall was run less +as a school than as a private estate. Many of the girls had their own +horses in the stable, and rode every pleasant afternoon under the care +of an old English riding-master, who was supposed to have been "Somebody +in England" once. (Later on, when the motor became popular the girls had +their own machines, but that was after Adelle's time.) There was lawn +tennis on the ample lawns, and this with the horseback riding and +occasional strolls was the only concession to the athletic spirit of the +day. + +The schoolrooms were not the feature of the Hall that one might expect. +They were confined to a small wing in the rear, or the basement, and +there were no laboratories or other paraphernalia of modern education. +The long drawing-room, with its recessed windows facing the river, was +hung with "old masters"--a few faded American protraits and some recent +copies of the Italian school. It was also furnished luxuriously and had +books in handsome bindings. But educationally, in any accepted sense of +the word, Herndon Hall was quite negligible, as all such institutions +for the care of the daughters of the rich must be, as long as the chief +concern of its patrons is to see their daughters properly married and +"taking a good position in society." Adelle quickly perceived that, +though she had been reckoned a dull pupil in the Alton Girls' High +School, she had much more than enough book knowledge to hold her own in +the classes of her new school. If it is difficult to say what is a good +education for a boy whose parents can afford to give him "the best," it +is almost impossible to solve the educational riddle for his sister. She +must have good manners, an attractive person, and, less clearly, some +acquaintance with literature, music, and art, and one modern language to +enable her to hold her own in the social circles that it is presumed she +will adorn. At least that was the way Miss Thompson looked at the +profound problem of girls' education. She herself was accounted +"accomplished," a "brilliant conversationalist," and "broadly cultured," +with the confident air that the best society is supposed to give, and +her business was to impart some of this polish to her pupils. +"Conversation," it may be added, was one of the features of Herndon +Hall. + +Art, music, and literature did not seem to awaken Adelle's dormant mind +any more than had the rigorous course of the public schools. She did as +most of the girls did,--nothing,--coming unprepared day after day to her +recitations to be helped through the lessons by the obliging teachers, +who professed to care little for "mere scholarship" and strove rather to +"awaken the intelligence" and "stir the spirit," "educate the taste," +and all the rest of the fluff with which an easy age excuses its +laziness. The girls at Herndon Hall impudently bluffed their teachers or +impertinently replied that they "didn't remember," just like their papas +and future husbands when they were cornered on the witness stand by +inconvenient questions about shady transactions. + +The tone of the school was distinctly fashionable, also idle and +luxurious, which was what its patrons desired. Many of the mothers and +other female relatives of the girls, besides the "old girls" themselves, +ran up to the school from New York, which was not far away, bringing +with them a rich atmosphere of jewels, clothes, and gossip that seemed +to hang about the large drawing-room of the stately stone mansion. The +more fortunate pupils found frequent excuses for getting down to the gay +city for the theater and parties, and there were besides boys from a +neighboring college, with parties to the races, all discreetly +chaperoned, of course. + +Miss Thompson was at great pains to maintain what the "old Hall girls" +called the "tone of Herndon," so that careful mothers and fathers should +have no hesitation in confiding to it their daughters from fear that +they might encounter "undesirable associates." In all the years of its +existence Miss Thompson had never admitted a member of a certain +religious creed. Yet latterly there had been rumors that the Hall was +not what it once had been. There were too many "Western" girls: some +said Herndon was getting "Pittsburghy." There were certain lively +daughters of Western millionaires, two in especial from the great State +of California whom Adelle later on was thrown with, who did not add to +the exclusive atmosphere of the Hall. + +The path of the manager of a fashionable school is by no means an easy +one. It is, in fact, as Miss Thompson had found, more difficult than the +famous eye of the needle. For if she were so scrupulous as to bar out +all the daughters of new wealth, she was in danger of lacking that +material support without which Herndon Hall could not be maintained. And +if she admitted too freely rich "Western girls" whose parents were +"nobodies," but were keenly anxious to have their daughters become +"somebodies," she was in danger of watering her wine to the point where +it would lose all its potency. A constant equilibrium between the +good-family class and the merely rich must be maintained if the school +was to preserve its position. And so it can be understood why the +proprietor and the teachers of Herndon Hall carefully scrutinized Adelle +on her first appearance. Would she merely water their precious wine? If +so she must be very rich, indeed, to compensate for her diluting +presence. Miss Thompson had accepted her on the strength of President +West's personal letter, and it did not take her long to discover that +she had made a grave mistake. Adelle was all water! + +She folded up her napkin at dinner in the thrifty manner of the Church +Street house. She ate her soup from the point of her spoon, and the +wrong spoon, and she wore her one dress from the time she got up in the +morning until she went to bed. If it had not been for the solid social +position of President West and the prestige of the trust company, whose +ward she was, it is probable that Adelle would have been sent packing by +the end of the second day. As it was, the head mistress said to Miss +Stevens, with a sigh of commendable Christian resignation,--"We must do +our best for the poor little thing--send her in to me after dinner." + +When Adelle entered the private sitting-room of the head mistress, she +expected to be given directions about her classes. Not at all. Miss +Thomson, who still seemed to be suffering from the indisposition that +Adelle found frequently attacked her, looked her over coldly as she +sipped her coffee and remarked that she "must have something fit to wear +at once." She put the little girl through a careful examination as to +the contents of her trunk, with the result that in a few days Adelle's +wardrobe was marvelously increased with a supply of suitable frocks for +all occasions, slippers, lingerie, and hats, and the bill was sent to +the trust company, which honored it promptly without question, not +knowing exactly what a girl ought to cost. Having equipped her pupil +"decently," Miss Thompson observed "that she didn't have an idea how to +wear her clothes," but she trusted to the spirit of the school to +correct that deficiency. Next she sent Adelle to the dentist and had her +teeth straightened,--a painful operation that dragged through several +years at great cost of time and money, and resulted finally in a set of +regular teeth that looked much like false ones. Having provided for her +outside, the teachers turned their attention to her manners and "form," +and here lay Adelle's worst mental torture. That young teacher, "Rosy" +Stevens, who had fetched her from B----, had this task. "Rosy," who was +only thirty, was supposed to be having "a desperate affair of the heart" +with an actor, which she discussed with the older girls. She was the +most popular chaperone in the school because she was "dead easy" and +connived at much that might have resulted scandalously. "Rosy" shared +the girls' tastes for sweets, dress, and jewelry, and smuggled into the +Hall, not candy--because that was openly permitted in any quantity--but +forbidden "naughty" novels. + +Miss Stevens had the deadliest weapon at her command that Adelle had +ever encountered--sarcasm. "My dear girl," she would say before a +tableful of girls, in the pityingly sweet tone of an experienced woman +of the world to a vulgar nobody, "how can you speak like that!" (This +when Adelle had emitted the vernacular grunt in answer to some +question.) "You are not a little ape, my dear." Then she would mimic in +her dainty drawl Adelle's habit of speech, which, of course, set all the +girls at the table tittering. Adelle naturally did not love "Rosy," but +she was helpless before her darts. The other teachers generally ignored +her presence, treating her with the perfect politeness of complete +indifference. Once, soon after her arrival, the child was caught talking +with one of the housemaids in the upper corridor, and was severely +reprimanded. She had merely sought for a ray of human sunlight, but she +was told that young women of her station in life were never familiar +with servants. In a word, Adelle was more nearly encased in an airproof +lining at Herndon Hall than ever before, and remained for another two +years the pale, furtive, undeveloped child she was when she first came. +Some cures, it seems, are so radical that they paralyze the nervous +system and develop rather than cure the disease. Such was the case of +Adelle in Herndon Hall. For nearly two years she sneaked about its +comfortable premises, a silent, forlorn, miserable little being, +frightened at what she could not understand, ready for a blow, but not +keen enough to put up a protecting hand. The verdict of the school was +that "the little fright of a Clark girl" was too stupid to learn +anything. As one girl said to "Rosy,"--"The Clark girl must have piles +of money to be here at all." + +And the teacher replied,--"She'll need it all, every cent, she's so +deadly common." + + * * * * * + +Let no reader suppose that Herndon Hall in which Adelle was suffering +her martyrdom is typical of all fashionable girls' boarding-schools. In +a real sense nothing in this life is sufficiently universal to be +considered typical. There are to-day many schools that have some of the +characteristics of Herndon Hall, though fortunately fewer than there +were when Adelle got her education. But even at that time there were +many excellent schools for girls where the teachers made sincere efforts +to teach the girls something, where the girls were human and well-bred, +and the teachers were kind and sympathetic and would not have tolerated +such conduct as went on almost openly in this "exclusive" establishment, +nor such brutal treatment as the girls dealt out to Adelle. + +Herndon Hall, with its utterly false standards of everything that +concerns woman's being, was the fruit of those ideals that have obtained +about women, their position and education, for many centuries. And +Herndon Hall was Adelle's accident--the fate to which the trust officers +in all good will consigned her. There always is and must be, even in our +own enlightened age of feminist movements, a Herndon Hall--perhaps more +than one. Parents who believe that marriage and "a suitable position in +society" are all there is in life for a woman will always create Herndon +Halls. + + + + +XII + + +If the history of Clark's Field and those whom it concerned were an +idealistic or romantic story, striving to present the world as it ought +to be rather than as it often happens to be, our little heroine should +at this crisis awaken from her apathy. Her spark of a soul should be +touched by some sympathetic agent,--one of the teachers who had lived +sadly and deeply, or some generous exception among her school-fellows, +who would extend a protecting wing to the persecuted girl. No doubt even +in Herndon Hall there were such who might have answered at a pinch to +regenerate Adelle and start her forth on a series of physical if not +spiritual adventures that would be exhilarating to the reader. But +nothing of the sort came into her life at this period. She was too +unpromising to arouse the incipient Samaritans. + +There was, of course, the religious or rather the church side of the +school in which Adelle might have taken refuge. This consisted of +attending the small Episcopal Church in the neighboring village, where +the excellent rector, a married man and the father of daughters, often +directed his discourses at the Hall pews. But Adelle was no more +religiously minded than her worldly little associates. There was nothing +in the service of ritualistic beauty to arouse a latent +sensuousness--nothing of color or form or sound. Religion in fact had +even less to do with daily life in Herndon Hall, in spite of weekly +church and morning prayers, than it had in the Church Street house. +There was more or less talk about "the Church" and "the spiritual life," +but, as Adelle soon perceived, the girls lied, cheated in their lessons, +spoke spitefully of one another--did even worse--quite as people acted +in the world outside. Even the teachers, she learned after a time, +failed to connect the religious life with their personal conduct. +"Rosy," the teacher with whom she had most to do the first year, aimed +to be the companion rather than the guide of the girls in their frequent +escapades. Miss Thompson herself, it was whispered among the older +girls, suffered from something worse than "neuralgia" in those frequent +attacks which incapacitated her. As for the general morale of the +school, even more serious things could be said if it were not for fear +that the authorities of Herndon Hall and others of a similar mind might +ban this tale as unfit for "nice girls" to peruse, although they +tolerate the deeds themselves. Of such matters, to be sure, Adelle knew +nothing until later, for at first she was so much an outsider that she +was not allowed to look beneath the decorous surface, and experienced +merely petty attacks of selfishness and snobbery. + +She might never have got completely beneath the surface if she had not +been obliged to spend all her vacations at the Hall. The teachers were +then off duty, when they were not visiting at the homes of their pupils, +and spoke and acted before the silent girl quite freely because they +considered her lacking mentally and harmless. And she was allowed to +converse occasionally with the house servants, who sometimes spoke +openly about Herndon Hall. She knew that the teachers had lively parties +where wine was served freely. Adelle was supposed to be in her room on +the third floor when these festivities were in progress, but she could +not be unaware of them. And once she encountered "Rosy" in a curious +state of exaltation that filled her with fear. At that time she did not +understand the working of wine upon the spirit.... + +She was, of course, often dull and lonely, especially the first summer +in the empty house above the steaming river. It was too hot much of the +time to do more than loll about the porches with a book or some sewing. +She tried to do a little gardening because she liked flowers, and +occasionally took walks alone into the country. It was a lazy, +unwholesome existence, and she was surprised to find herself looking +forward to the day when her tormentors would return and the routine of +school life would begin once more. During this first long vacation Mrs. +Gardiner made a feeble effort "to do something" for the trust company's +ward. She asked Adelle for a week's visit in the mountains, and shy as +she was Adelle longed for that week at the end of August as an escape +from prison. But, alas, the Gardiner children inopportunely contracted +some minor disease and Mrs. Gardiner wrote to recall her invitation. +Providence seemed determined to do nothing more for Adelle at present. + +The only other event of this twelve weeks was the letter she wrote to +Mr. Lovejoy, the manager of the livery-stable in Alton. This was the +result of an acute attack of loneliness when, after a thorough canvass +of her friends, Mr. Lovejoy's name was the only one she could think of. +She told him in her little letter about the school, said she missed the +Church Street house, and asked specifically after certain "roomers." But +she never received a reply. Whether the teachers suppressed Mr. +Lovejoy's letter, or he had never received Adelle's, or, which was more +likely, he was not sufficiently stimulated by the girl's epistle to +answer her, she never knew. After that one attempt Adelle made no effort +to reach back into her past: she accepted the present with that strange +stoicism that young people sometimes exhibit. + +At last when she had laboriously completed "Little Dorrit" and was +beginning heavily upon the "Christmas Stories," the vacation came to an +end and the Herndon girls returned for the fall term. Adelle was now a +familiar figure to them, and therefore less interesting to snub. She was +merely ignored, which did not hurt her. Whatever might have been her +slender expectations of happiness, she must have long since given up any +idea of accomplishing them like other girls. She was becoming a perfect +small realist, content to take the facts of life for what they seemed. +She watched without conscious pain or envy the flurry of greetings and +boastful exchanges of experiences among the girls the first day of their +return to school. She was either ignored or passed by with a polite nod +and a "Hello, Adelle! Did you have a good time with Rosy?"--while the +other girls gathered into knots and resorted to each others' rooms for +deeper confidences. It was an old story now, being an outsider, and the +small, unobtrusive girl of fifteen was fast sinking into a state of +apathy--the most dangerous condition of all. + +The new school year, however, brought her something--the arrival of a +friend. As she was dawdling with a book in a corner of the drawing-room, +watching a circle of "old girls" who were whispering and giggling over +some vacation tale, a small voice came to her ears,-- + +"Is it that you also are strange here?" + +Adelle was so surprised at being addressed, also at the foreign-looking +girl who had spoken, that she did not answer, and the other continued +with a smile on her singularly red lips,-- + +"I speak English ver--ver badly!" + +"What is your name?" Adelle asked bluntly. + +"Diane Merelda," the girl said in a liquid tone. + +"What?" Adelle asked with puckered brows. + +"Di-ane Merel-da," came more slowly in the same soft tone. "See!" She +took with a gracious movement the pencil from Adelle's hand and wrote on +a piece of paper the name, and added beneath in small letters "F. de M." + +"Oh," said Adelle, "what do those mean?" pointing to the letters +beneath. + +"Fille de Marie--a daughter of the Blessed Virgin," the girl translated +sweetly. + +Adelle looked at the stranger in bewilderment. She was a dainty person, +as small as Adelle, but a perfectly formed young woman. Her black hair +was tightly braided over her small head, in a fashion then strange, and +her face was very pale, of a natural pallor emphasized by the line of +carmine lips. Her eyes were black and wide. She smiled gently, +contentedly, upon Adelle. Altogether she was an unusual phenomenon to +the young American. She explained herself volubly if not fluently in +broken English, pausing every now and then with a charming birdlike toss +of her little black head and, "You say so, no?"--waiting for Adelle's +nod to dash on into further intricacies of speech. + +Miss Diane Merelda, as she told Adelle Clark, was the daughter of a +wealthy Mexican whose acquaintance with Americans had so liberalized him +that he preferred to educate his children in the States and in schools +not under Catholic control. Señorita Diane had left her father's home in +Morelos earlier than intended, however, because of the outbreak of an +insurrection in the province, in which her father was concerned. As his +haçienda near Morelos was not safe on account of brigands, Señor Merelda +had sent his wife and daughter abroad to join his sons, and so Diane had +reached Herndon Hall by the way of Madrid, Paris, and New York, after a +summer spent with relatives in Spain. Her mother had learned of Herndon +Hall from a chance traveling companion, and in some way had induced Miss +Thompson to waive her strict requirements for admission. + +From her way of dressing her hair to her pointed slippers and broken +English, the little Mexican was even more markedly different from the +Herndon type than Adelle, and though the older girls knew enough of the +world to recognize a distinction in differences, Diane did not seem to. +She was gracious to all, and Adelle happened to be the first girl she +could speak to while she waited for her mother, who was closeted with +Miss Thompson. Here was Adelle's chance, although she did not recognize +it as such. They talked for an hour, rather Diane talked and Adelle did +her best to understand the rapid, lisping, birdlike notes of the +foreigner. She learned that Diane had a brother in a school near St. +Louis, another in a technical college, and still another now in Germany. +The Merelda family seemed much scattered, but that did not disturb the +little Mexican. + +"We shall all be back in Morelos sometime!" She added sweetly, "Perhaps +you will come to Mexico with me, no?" + +Adelle soon learned all about Madrid, the Spanish relatives, the sight +of the young King of Spain at San Sebastian, the trip to Lourdes which +the family had taken in hope that the holy cure might help her mother's +lame knee, and too much else to relate here. Señorita Diane was +exceedingly loquacious: her little tongue wove in and out of the new +idiom with surprising facility, forever wagging in a low, sweet babble +of nothings. Adelle, as has been sufficiently indicated, absorbed +passively the small and the large facts of life. Diane was like a +twittering bird on a tiny twig that shook with the vehemence of her +expression. She reacted instinctively to every stimulus from a new +toothbrush to the sight of a motor-car, and she preferred not to react +alone. Thus Adelle did more talking of her blunt, bald kind to her new +friend than she had accomplished hitherto all her life. She explained +Herndon Hall literally to the stranger, while Diane exclaimed in three +languages. + +The presence of the little Mexican in the school did much to ameliorate +Adelle's lonely lot this second year. She formed a connecting link of a +sort between her and the rest of her schoolmates, who liked the +foreigner. Diane reported fully to Adelle what the other girls were +doing,--how Betty Langton was in love with an actor and for this reason +went to New York almost every week on one excuse or another; how the two +Californians, Irene and Sadie Paul, had a party in their room the night +before, with wine, much wine. Diane shook her head wonderingly over all +these doings of "the Americans." American girls seemed to her all +"queer," and, though she did not say so, rather vulgar and underbred. +Oddly enough she put Adelle apart in this sweeping judgment, for she was +not able to appreciate Adelle's common accent and primitive manners. +Adelle did not snub nor condescend nor do "naughty" things, and so, from +the Mexican's standard, a simple and somewhat antiquated one, Adelle was +a lady. Diane concluded that she must be poor and for that reason the +other girls treated her badly. To be poor was no disgrace in the eyes of +the Mexican. Many of the best people she had known, including her +Spanish relatives, were dreadfully poor, but none the less to be +considered. Poverty was a matter of God's will in the delightful Latin +sense of the word, not a matter of inherited personal disgrace as in a +free, Anglo-Saxon democracy. + +"I do not like your America," she said gravely to Adelle after she had +been a couple of months in the school. "Not to live in always when I am +married." + +"What's the matter with America?" Adelle asked. + +"It is all money, money," the little Mexican replied. "You come to see +nothing in your heart but dollars, dollars, dollars. It makes the heart +heavy." + +Adelle, who had never looked at the world in this light, thought Diane a +little "queer." Nevertheless they were good friends as school-girl +friendships go and consoled each other for what they lacked in their +common environment. + +Another event of this new year was perhaps even more momentous to Adelle +than the arrival of the little Mexican, and that was the visit paid to +her shortly after her sixteenth birthday by one of the trust company's +officers. It was Mr. Ashly Crane--the new trust officer, in fact--who +rode up the winding avenue from the river road in one of the noisy, +new-fangled motors that announced itself from afar. Mr. Gardiner, it +seemed, had been retired from his position as trust officer and was no +longer to be the human symbol of Adelle's wardship to the trust company. +The new trust officer had not of design chosen the occasion of the +ward's birthday to pay her a visit. Happening to be in the neighboring +city of Albany with a few hours on his hands before he could make +connections for the West, he bethought himself of the trust company's +young charge and ran out to look over the school and incidentally +Adelle. No one from the Washington Trust Company had ever paid its ward +a visit,--Adelle was the only unvisited girl in the school,--but Mr. +Ashly Crane was the kind of vigorous young banker, not yet quite forty, +who could be depended upon to "keep in personal touch" with all his +clients. That is why, probably, he had superseded Mr. Gardiner, who had +a staid habit of relying upon printed forms and the mail. + +Mr. Ashly Crane was a good-looking, keen American banker, who paid +strict attention to his manners, clothes, and habits. He was ambitious, +of course, and had been so busily climbing upwards from his first +clerkship in the trust company that he had not yet married. Very likely +he felt that with his ever-widening horizon of prospects it would not be +wise to anchor himself socially to any woman, who might prove to be a +drag upon his future. He was still well within the marriageable limits +and looked even younger. Nothing so well preserves youth as Success, and +of this tonic Mr. Ashly Crane had had an abundance. Mr. Crane, it should +not be thought, had armed himself with a bunch of enormous red roses +from the leading florist of Albany and set forth upon his expedition +with any formulated plot against the little heiress who was the +company's ward. He recalled her in fact as a most unattractive, gawky +little girl, who must have changed inconceivably for the better if she +were to interest Mr. Ashly Crane personally. But the Clark estate, under +the skillful method of treatment for which he was largely responsible, +was growing all the time, and thanks to the probate judge's precaution, +Adelle would ultimately reap rather more than one half of the earnings +of the Clark's Field Associates. Already her expenses, represented by +the liberal checks to Herndon Hall, were a mere nothing in the total of +the income that went on rolling up in conservative bonds and stocks that +were safely stowed away in the vaults under the Washington Trust +Company. It seemed only proper that the sole representative of so much +tangible property should be accorded every consideration by those +legally constituted her servants and guardians. Single motives are more +rarely found in life than in art, and Mr. Ashly Crane's motives this +fine April morning were quite typically hybrid. + +Whatever incipient anticipations of the girl herself he might have +entertained during his ride were immediately dissipated as soon as +Adelle entered the drawing-room from the class whence she had been +summoned. She was a little larger, perhaps, than he remembered her, but +essentially the same awkward, homely child, and she was now wearing an +ugly harness upon her teeth that further disfigured her. Mr. Ashly Crane +was an observant man, and he became at once merely the business man, +solely intent upon performing his duty and getting back to Albany in +time to catch his train. He presented his roses, which Adelle took from +him clumsily and allowed to lie across her lap, while with legs spread +apart to sustain their burden she listened to what he had to say. Mr. +Crane explained to her briefly Mr. Gardiner's retirement and his own +recent elevation to the post of being her nominal guardian, and then +inquired if everything was satisfactory in the school. When Adelle +replied, yes, she guessed so, he observed that the Hall was prettily +located above the river with a good view and that a girl ought to have a +fine time in such a pleasant country. + +"What do you do with yourself when you are not studying?" he concluded +in a patronizing tone. + +"Oh," Adelle responded vaguely, "I don't know. Nothing much--read some +and take walks." + +The new trust officer was enough of a human being to realize the +emptiness of this reply, and for a few moments was puzzled. This was a +woman's job, rather than a man's, he reflected sagely. However, being a +man he must do the best he could to win the girl's confidence, and after +all Herndon Hall had the highest reputation. + +"They treat you right?" he inquired bluntly. + +The girl murmured something in assent, because she could think of +nothing better to say. It was quite impossible for her to phrase the +sense of misery and indignity that was nearly constant in her mind. + +"The teachers are kind?" the trust officer pursued. + +"I guess so," she said, with a dumb look that made him uncomfortable. + +He rose nervously and walked across the room. As he gazed out of the +open window at the distant prospect across the "Noble River" (so +described in the dainty leaflet sent forth by the school) "from the +ivy-shrouded old stone Hall," he caught sight of a party of girls riding +off on horseback for their daily excursion. That gave him an idea. + +"You ride, too?" he inquired, turning again to the girl. + +"No, I haven't any horse," she replied simply. "You have to have your +own horse." + +"But you can have a horse if you want to ride," the trust officer +hastily remarked. "Riding is a very good exercise, and I should think it +would be fine in this country." + +Here was something tangible that a man could get hold of. The girl +looked pale and probably needed healthful exercise. If other girls had +their own horses, she could have one. It was really ridiculous how +little she was spending of her swelling income. And he proceeded at once +to take up this topic with Miss Thompson, who presently arrived upon the +scene. Mr. Ashly Crane was much more successful in impressing the head +mistress of Herndon Hall with the importance of the ward of the +Washington Trust Company than in probing the heart of the lonely little +girl. He gave the elegant Miss Thompson to understand clearly that Miss +Adelle Clark was to have every advantage that money could buy, not +merely music and art as extras, but horses,--he even put it in the +plural,--a groom, and if she wanted it a private maid, which he was told +was never permitted. Miss Thompson quickly gathered from his tone and +his words that Miss Adelle Clark's expectations were such as to insure +her the most careful consideration in every respect, and if Herndon Hall +could not provide her with all the advantages to which wealth was +entitled, her guardians would quickly remove her from the school. Miss +Thompson accompanied the trust officer to the door out of earshot of +Adelle and assured him haughtily that Herndon Hall which sheltered a +Steigman of Philadelphia, a Dyboy of Baltimore, not to mention a Miss +Saltonsby from his own city, knew quite as well as he what was fitting +under the circumstances. However, they shook hands as two persons from +the same world and parted in complete understanding. Adelle had already +slipped off with her armful of roses. + + + + +XIII + + +From the moment, when she emerged upon the corridor that led to the +schoolrooms with that huge bunch of American Beauty roses in her arms, a +new period of her school life began. The girls, of course, had seen from +their desks the arrival of the motor-car and its single occupant,--a +Man,--and the older girls who had peeked into the drawing-room reported +that Mr. Ashly Crane was a very smart-looking man, indeed. When a woman +first receives flowers from a man, an event of importance in her +existence has happened. Señorita Diane, who was an incorrigible +sentimentalist, went into ecstasies over the roses and at once whispered +about the school that they were the fruit of an admirer, not of a mere +relative. Miss Thompson talked to her teachers, especially to "Rosy," +and it became known throughout the Hall that the ugly duckling was +undoubtedly Somebody, and she was treated thereafter with more +consideration. If the trust company had thought to take notice of its +ward's existence earlier in her school career, Adelle might have been +saved a very disagreeable year of her life. + +In due time there arrived a beautiful saddle-horse and a groom, both +selected with judgment by Mr. Ashly Crane and charged to the ward's +account. The appearance of the blooded mount did more than anything else +to acquaint Adelle with the meaning and the power of money. In many +subtle ways she began to feel a change in the attitude of her world +towards her, and naturally related it immediately to the possession of +this unknown power. A dangerous weapon had thus been suddenly placed in +her hands. She could command respect, attention, even consideration, +thanks to this weapon--money. It was merely human that as the years went +on the silent child, who had absorbed many unhappy impressions of life +before discovering this key to the world, should become rapidly cynical +in her use of her one great weapon of offense and defense. The next few +years of her life was the period when she exercised herself in the use +of this weapon, although she did not become really proficient in its +control until much later. + +A suitable habit was quickly provided, and she set forth each pleasant +day with that little group of older girls who enjoyed this privilege, +accompanied always by her own groom, who was a well-trained servant and +effaced himself as nearly as possible. The California girls rode, and +that Miss Dyboy of Baltimore, but the little Mexican, though she had +ridden all her life, had no horse, and as long as affairs continued +unsettled in Morelos was not likely to have one. When Adelle discovered +this fact, she did not play the part of the unselfish heroine, I am +sorry to say, and allow Diane to use her horse even on those days when +she did not care to ride (as of course she would do in a well-conducted +story). Instead she merely wrote a little letter to Mr. Crane at the +Washington Trust Company, telling him rather peremptorily to send her +another horse. Somewhat to her surprise the second horse arrived in due +season, and now she lent the beast to her little friend, carefully +refraining from giving up her title to him. For a second time she felt +the sweet sense of unlimited power in response to desire. She wrote her +letter as Aladdin rubbed his magic lamp, and straightway her desire +became fact! It was modern magic. This time it happened that her desire +was a generous one and brought her the approval as well as the envy of +the small social world at the Hall. But that was purely accidental: the +next time she should try her lamp, as likely as not the cause might be +purely selfish. As a matter of fact she soon discovered that, by +distributing her favors and lending her extra horse to a number of +schoolmates, she could enlarge her circle of influence and +consideration. So the little Mexican by no means had all the rides. + +Horseback riding was a beneficial pleasure in more than one way. Adelle, +of course, profited from the exercise in the open air: she began to grow +slowly and to promise womanhood at some not distant day. It also brought +her into close relations with some of the leading girls, who had thus +far ignored her existence; among them the breezy California sisters, +"the two Pols," as they were known in school. These girls profited by +Adelle's groom to dispense with the chaperonage of the old +riding-master, and before long Adelle learned why this arrangement was +made. In their long expeditions across country, with the discreet groom +well in the rear, the girls put their heads together in the most +intimate gossip, from which Adelle learned much that completed her +knowledge of life. Most of this was innocent enough, though some was +not, as when one afternoon, when "the Pols" judged that Adelle was a +"good sport," they led the way to a remote road-house where a couple of +men were waiting evidently by appointment. One of them, a fair-haired, +overdressed young man, Adelle was given to understand was Sadie Pol's +"artist" friend. She herself was sent back to entertain the groom while +the two sisters went into the road-house with their "friends." Conduct, +even conduct that came near being vice, was largely meaningless to +Adelle: she silently observed. She had no evil impulses herself, very +few impulses, in fact, of any kind. But she was the last person to tell +tales, and "the two Pols," having tested her and pronounced her "safe," +she was allowed to see more and went more than once to the rendezvous at +the quiet road-house. In this way she raised herself nearly to a plane +of equality with the leaders of the school. Indeed, it was Adelle who +assisted Irene Paul to escape from the Hall one winter night, and stayed +awake far into the morning in order to let the girl in. But that was a +year later.... + +When Adelle discovered the power of her magic lamp, she was generous +with her pocket-money, ordering and buying whatever the older girls +desired. In this way she rapidly attained favor in the Hall, where few +even of the richer girls could procure money so easily as the ward of +the Washington Trust Company. "Get Adelle to do it," or "Adelle will dig +up the money," "Ask Adelle to write her bank," became familiar +expressions, and Adelle never failed to "make good." It is safe to say +that if contact with any sort of human experience gives education, +Adelle was being educated rapidly, although she was completely ignorant +of books and as nearly illiterate as a carefully protected rich girl can +be. Before Nature had completed within her its mission, Adelle was +cognizant of many kinds of knowledge, some of which included depravity. +For in the exclusive, protected, rich world of Herndon Hall she had met +everything she might have encountered in the Alton Girls' High and a +good deal more beside. + +By the end of this second year she was not much happier, perhaps, but +she was perfectly comfortable at the Hall and thoroughly used to her new +environment. The blonde Irene had given her a diploma,-- + +"Dell's all right--she's a good little kid." + + + + +XIV + + +That summer she did not have to mope by herself in the empty Hall. The +little Mexican carried her away for a long visit to her distant home. +The trouble in Morelos had temporarily subsided, so that Señor Merelda +felt that it was safe to gather his large family at the haçienda. The +journey, which the two girls made alone as far as St. Louis, where +Diane's elder brother met them, was the first view of the large world +that Adelle had ever had. They were both filled with the excitements of +their journey so that even Adelle's pale cheeks glowed with a happy +sense of the mystery of living. This ecstasy was somewhat broken by the +presence of Carlos, a gentlemanly enough young man; but Adelle was +afraid of all men. She failed also to assimilate the strange sights that +she encountered south of St. Louis. The journey became a jumble in her +memory of heat and red sunsets and dirty Indians and stuffy dining-cars. +But Morelos itself made a more lasting impression upon her little mind. +There was, first of all, the strange landscape, dominated by the snowy +peak of Popocatepetl, the sugar-fields, and the drowsy languor of the +little town, and then there was the family life of the Mereldas at the +haçienda. That was both delightful and queer to Adelle. Instead of one +"queer" person to whom she had become accustomed, there were half a +dozen odd human beings in the persons of Señor and Señora Merelda and +the older boys and girls. They all spoke all the time as did Diane, +about everything and nothing. They seemed to care warmly for one +another, yet quarreled like children over nothings. Young Carlos, who +was at a technical school, made violent love to Adelle. It was the first +time that a boy had looked at her twice even under compulsion, and it +bewildered and troubled Adelle until she perceived that it was all a +joke, a "queer" way of expressing courtesy to a stranger. + +"It would not be polite," Diane explained demurely, "if Carlos did not +make the bear to my friend." + +So Adelle got over her fright when the youth uttered strange speeches +and tried to take her hand. She even felt a faint pleasure in thus +becoming of a new importance. + +"Of course," Diane remarked sagely, "Carlos cannot marry yet--he is +still in school. But he will marry soon--why not you?... You are so very +rich. I should like Carlos to marry a rich girl and my friend, too ..." +And with a little sigh,--"It must be pleasant to be so rich as you!" +From which it will be seen that the little Mexican had also become +somewhat corrupted by her year at Herndon Hall. + +Adelle had not yet found out fully how nice it was to be rich, but she +was learning fast. To be able to attract the attentions of agreeable +young men like Carlos Merelda was another of the virtues of her magic +lamp that she had never thought of before. Although she had no idea of +taking Carlos's courtship seriously, she thought all the better of +herself for this extra magnetism which her money gave her person. The +kindliness of the Mereldas and their Mexican circle to the little +American was due largely to her being a good friend of their Diane and +also their guest, but it made Adelle grow in her own estimation. At +present life seemed to consist in a gradual unfolding to her of the +meaning of her new power, and a consequent enlargement of her egotism. +That is unfortunately one of the commonest properties of +wealth,--stimulating egotism,--and it takes much experience or an +extraordinary nature to counteract this unhealthy stimulus. For the +ordinary nature it is impossible to live day after day, year in and year +out, under the powerful external stimulus of riches, without confounding +the outer source of power with an innate virtue. + +But with our Adelle, by the time her visit had come to an end, her new +education had got merely to the point where she had the self-interest +and assurance of the ordinary American girl of twelve. That Church +Street experience had chastened her. But if her education was to +continue at the present rate, she was likely to become selfish, +egotistical, and purse-proud in a few years. As yet it had not made her +unpleasant, merely given her a little needed confidence in her own +being. + +She chose to make the long journey homewards by water from Vera Cruz to +New York in charge of the captain of the vessel. For Señor Merelda, +after the harassing activities of political warfare and its pecuniary +drains, did not feel able to send his daughter back to Herndon Hall. So +the two friends kissed and parted at Vera Cruz, Diane shedding all the +tears. They expected to meet again before long, and of course agreed to +write frequently. But life never again brought Adelle in contact with +the warm-hearted little Latin, who had first held out to her the olive +branch of human sympathy. + +Adelle was met at the dock by "Rosy," who had with her "the two Pols" +and Eveline Glynn at whose country home they were staying. "Rosy," as +well as her schoolmates, was agreeably surprised by Adelle's appearance +after her summer in Mexico. Nature was tardily asserting herself; Adelle +was becoming a woman,--a small, delicate, pale little creature, whose +rounding bust under her white dress gave her the dainty atmosphere of an +early spring flower, fragile and frigid, but full of charm for some +connoisseurs of human beauty. She had also acquired in Mexico a note of +her own, which was perhaps due to the clothes she had bought in Mexico +City on her way home, of filmy fabric and prominent colors; and her +usually taciturn speech had taken on a languorous slowness in imitation +of the Mereldas' way of speaking English. In the drawling manner in +which she said,--"Hello, Rosy," and nonchalantly accepted Miss Glynn's +invitation for the intervening days before school opened, the new Adelle +was revealed. The girls exchanged glances. And "Rosy" whispered Irene +Paul,--"Our little Adelle is coming on." To which the California girl +replied with a chuckle,--"Didn't I tell you she was a good old sport?" + +Adelle, overhearing this, felt an almost vivid sense of pride. + +But as yet hers was only a very little air, which was quickly wilted by +the oppressive luxury of the Glynns' country-place--one of those large, +ostentatious establishments that Americans are wont to start before they +know how, and where consequently the elaborate domestic machinery +creaks. There were men-servants of different nationalities, ladies' +maids, and a houseful of guests coming and going as in a private hotel. +Adelle shrank into the obscurest corner and her anemonelike charm, +tentatively putting forth, was quite lost in the scramble. Beechwood was +a much less genial home than the slipshod Mexican haçienda of the +Mereldas and nobody paid any attention to the shy girl. Eveline Glynn, +who expected in another year to be free from school, was too much +occupied with her own flirtations to bother herself about her chance +guest. Adelle, being left to her usual occupation of silent observation, +managed to absorb a good deal at Beechwood in four days, chiefly of the +machinery of modern wealth. There were the elaborate meals, the +drinking, the card-playing, the motors, the innumerable servants, and +the sickening atmosphere of inane sentimentalism between the sexes. +Everybody seemed to be having "an affair," and the talk was redolent of +innuendo. Adelle had occasion to observe the potency of her lamp in this +society. She worked it first upon the waiting-woman assigned to her, to +whom she gave a large fee and who coached her devotedly in the ways of +the house and supplied her with the gossip. It also brought her the +annoying attentions of a middle-aged man, to whom her hostess had +confided that the dumb little Clark girl was "awful rich." + +At the end of the visit the girls went back to New York, under the +chaperonage of "Rosy," to equip themselves for the school term, staying +at a great new hotel, and here Adelle's corruption by her wealth was +continued at an accelerated pace. The four girls flitted up and down the +Avenue, buying and ordering what they would. There were definite limits +to the purse of the Californians, but Adelle, perceiving the distinction +to be had from free spending, ordered with a splendid indifference to +price or amount. She won the admiration of her friends by the ease with +which she gave her name and address. Adelle was in fact a little +frightened by her own extravagance, but persisted with a child's +curiosity to find out the limit of her magic lamp. She did not reach it, +however. Mr. Crane at her request had opened an account for her at the +trust company's correspondent on upper Fifth Avenue, and apparently it +was of a size that produced respect in the heart of the shopkeeper. + +All these purchases, the clothes and the jewelry and the other rubbish +that the girl bought, gave her no special pleasure, gratified no +desires: she did not know what she could do with half the things at +Herndon Hall. What gave her keen pleasure was the prestige of lavish +spending.... After a debauch of theaters and dinners and shopping, the +four girls were again taken in tow by the sophisticated "Rosy" and went +up the river to Herndon Hall for Adelle's third year of boarding-school. + + + + +XV + + +Adelle Clark was thoroughly infected with the corruption of property by +this time, and the coming years merely confirmed the ideas and the +habits that had been started. She was now seventeen and an "old girl" at +the Hall, privileged to torture less sophisticated girls when they +presented themselves, if she had felt the desire to do so. She had not +forgotten her Church Street existence: it had been much too definite to +be easily forgotten. But she had been removed from it long enough to +realize herself thoroughly in her new life and to know that it was not a +dream. She would always remember Church Street, her aunt and uncle, and +the laborious years of poverty with which it was identified; but +gradually that part of her life was becoming the dream, while Herndon +Hall and the Aladdin lamp of her fortune were the reality. By means of +the latter she had won her position among her mates, and naturally she +respected more and more the source of her power. Eveline Glynn "took her +up" this year, and quite replaced the gentler Diane Merelda in her +affections. + +There was if anything less study this year than before. The older girls +scouted the idea of studying anything. Most of them expected to leave +school forever the next spring and under the auspices of their mothers +to enter the marriage game. A few intended as a preliminary to travel in +Europe, "studying art or music," But the minds of all were much more +occupied with love than anything else. Although the sex interest was +still entirely dormant in Adelle, she learned a great deal about it from +her schoolmates. Those good people who believe in a censorship of +literature for the sake of protecting the innocent American girl should +become enrolled at Herndon Hall. There they might be occasionally +horrified, but they would come out wiser mortals. Adelle knew all about +incredible scandals. Divorce, with the reasons for it,--especially the +statutory one,--was freely discussed, and a certain base, pandering +sheet of fashionable gossip was taken in at the Hall and eagerly +devoured each week by the girls, who tried to guess at the thinly +disguised persons therein pilloried. Thus Adelle became fully acquainted +with the facts of sex in their abnormal as well as more normal aspects. +That she got no special personal harm from this irregular education and +from the example of "the two Pols" was due solely to her own unawakened +temperament. Life had no gloss for her, and it had no poetic appeal. She +supposed, when she considered the matter at all, that sometime as a +woman she would be submitted to the coil of passion and sex, like all +the others about whom her friends talked incessantly. They seemed to +regard every man as a possible source of excitement to a woman. But she +resolved for her part to put off the interference of this fateful +influence as long as possible. Sometime, of course, she must marry and +have a child,--that was part of the fate of a girl with money of her +own,--and then she should hope to marry a nice man who would not scold +or ill-treat her or prefer some other woman--that was all. + +"Dell is just a lump of ice!" Irene Paul often said, putting her own +plump arms about Adelle's thin little body; and while Adelle tried to +wriggle out of the embrace she teased her by assuming the man's +aggressive rôle. + + * * * * * + +Thus the last months of her formal education slipped by. Adelle went +through the easy routine of the Hall like the other girls, riding +horseback a good deal during pleasant weather, taking a lively interest +in dancing, upon which great stress was laid by Miss Thompson as an +accomplishment and healthy exercise. She took a mild share in the +escapades of her more lively friends, but for the most part her life was +dull, though she did not feel it. The life of the rich, instead of being +varied and full of deep experience, is actually in most cases +exceedingly monotonous and narrowing. The common belief that wealth is +an open sesame to a life of universal human experience is a stupid +delusion, frequently used as a gloss to their souls by well-intentioned +people. Apart from the strict class limitations imposed by the +possession of large property, the object of protected and luxurious +people is generally merely pleasure. And pleasure is one of the +narrowest fields of human experience conceivable, becoming quickly +monotonous, which accounts for many extravagancies and abnormalities +among the rich. Moreover, the sensual life of the well-fed and idle +deadens imagination to such a degree that even their pleasures are +imitative, not original: they do what their kind have found to be +pleasurable without the incentive of initiative. If Adelle Clark had not +been attached to Clark's Field and had been forced to remain in the +Church Street rooming-house, by this time she would have been at work as +a clerk or in some other business: in any case she must have touched +realities closely and thus been immeasurably ahead of all the Herndon +Hall girls. + +Probably this doctrine would shock not only the managers of Herndon +Hall, but also the officers of the trust company, who felt that they +were giving their ward the best preparation for "a full life," such as +the possession of a large property entitles mortals to expect. And +though it may seem that the Washington Trust Company had been somewhat +perfunctory in its care of its young ward, merely accepting the routine +ideas of the day in regard to her education and preparation for life, +they did nothing more nor worse in this than the majority of well-to-do +parents who may be supposed to have every incentive of love and family +pride in dealing with their young. The trust company in fact was merely +an impersonal and legal means of fulfilling the ideals of the average +member of our society. Indeed, the trust company, in the person of its +president and also of Mr. Ashly Crane, were just now giving some of +their valuable time to consideration of the personal fate of their ward. +She had been the subject of at least one conference between these +officers. She was now on her way towards eighteen, and that was the age, +as President West well knew, when properly conditioned young women +usually left school, unless they were "queer" enough to seek college, +and entered "society" for the unavowed but perfectly understood object +of getting husbands for themselves. The trust company was puzzled as to +how best to provide this necessary function for its ward. They felt that +there existed no suitable machinery for taking this next step. They +could order her clothes, or rather hire some one to buy them for her, +order her a suitable "education" and pay for it, but they could not +"introduce her to society" nor provide her with a good husband. And that +was the situation which now confronted them. + +They had received excellent reports of their ward latterly from Herndon +Hall. Although Miss Thompson admitted that Miss Clark was not +"intellectually brilliant," she had a "good mind," whatever that might +mean, and had developed wonderfully at the Hall in bearing, deportment, +manner--in all the essential matters of woman's education. Miss Thompson +meant that Adelle spoke fairly correct English, drawled her _A_'s, wore +her clothes as if she owned them, had sufficiently good table-manners to +dine in public, and could hold her own in the conversation of girls of +her kind. Miss Thompson recommended warmly that Adelle join Miss +Stevens's "Travel Class," which was going abroad in June to tour the +Continent and study the masterpieces of art upon the spot. The +suggestion came as a relief to the trust company's officers: it put over +their problem with Adelle for another year. But before accepting Miss +Thompson's advice, Mr. Ashly Crane thought it wise to make another visit +to Herndon Hall and talk the matter over with Adelle herself. He +believed always in the "personal touch" method. And so once more he +broke a journey westwards at Albany and rolled up the long drive in a +motor-car. + + * * * * * + +Adelle enjoyed the impression which she was able to make upon the young +banker this time. She had seen his approach in the car on her return +from her ride, and had kept him waiting half an hour while she took a +bath and dressed herself with elaborate care as she had often seen other +girls do. Her teeth had at last been released from their harness and +were nice little regular teeth. Her dull brown hair, thanks to constant +skillful attention, had lately come to a healthy gloss. Her complexion +was clear though pale, and her dress was a dream of revealing +simplicity. Mr. Ashly Crane took in all these details at a glance, and +felt a glow of satisfaction beyond the purely male sense of +appreciation: the trust company which he represented had done its duty +by the little orphan, and what is more had got what it paid for. Their +ward, as she stood before him with a faint smile on her thin lips, was a +creditable creation of modern art. A thoroughly unpromising specimen of +female clay had been moulded into something agreeable and almost pretty, +with a faint, anemonelike bloom and fragrance. Mr. Ashly Crane, who was +rather given to generalization about the might and majesty of American +achievements, felt that the girl was a triumphant example of modern +power,--"what we do when we try to do something,"--like converting the +waste land of Clark's Field into a city of brick and mortar, or making a +hydrangea out of a field shrub. + +"Well, Miss Clark," he began as the two seated themselves where they had +sat the year before, "I needn't ask you how you are--your looks answer +the question." + +It was a banal remark, but Adelle recognized it for a compliment and +smiled prettily. She said nothing. Silence was still the principal +method of her social tactics. + +"You are getting to be a young woman fast," the banker continued quite +bluntly. + +Adelle looked down and possibly blushed. + +"Mr. West and I have been considering what to do"--he caught himself and +tried again;--"that is we have been in consultation with Miss Thompson +about--your future." + +Here Adelle looked the trust officer fully in the eye. On this point she +seemed really interested this time. So Mr. Crane proceeded more easily +to question her about the plan of joining Miss Stevens's "Travel Class." +Adelle listened blankly while Mr. Crane wandered off into generalities +about the advantages of travel and the study of "art" under the guidance +of a mature woman. Suddenly she said quite positively,-- + +"I don't want to go with the 'Travel Class.'" + +This was the first positive expression of any sort that the trust +officer had ever heard from the ward. It was one of the very few that +Adelle Clark had ever made in the eighteen years of her existence. Under +Mr. Crane's inquiries it soon developed that Adelle did not like "Rosy" +Stevens,--as nearly hated her as she was capable of hating any one,--nor +had she any great fondness for the girls who were to compose this year's +"Travel Class." They belonged to the snobbiest element in the school.... +What, then, did she wish to do with herself--remain another year at +Herndon Hall? Here again the ward amazed Mr. Crane, for she had ready a +definite plan of her own--a small plan to be sure and imitative, but a +plan. + +She wished to go with her new friend Eveline Glynn and the California +sisters to Paris. Eveline's parents, it seemed, were spending the next +season in Europe, and after the manner of their kind they did not +propose to be encumbered with a young daughter. So they had arranged to +send her to Miss Catherine Comstock at Neuilly, and "the two Pols" had +decided to do the same thing. It was not a school,--oh, no, not even a +"finishing school,"--but the home of an accomplished and brilliant +American woman, who had long lived abroad and who undertook to chaperone +in the French capital a very few desirable girls. The banker could not +see how Miss Comstock's establishment in Neuilly differed essentially +from the "Travel Class," except that it was more permanent, which shows +how socially blunt Mr. Crane was. But after an interview with Miss +Thompson he satisfied himself that the Glynns were "our very best +people"; anything they thought right for their daughter must be fit for +the Washington Trust Company's ward. So her guardian's assent to the +plan was easily obtained, and the four friends rejoiced in their coming +freedom.... + +Adelle had no clear idea why she preferred Neuilly to the "Travel +Class," except to be with Eveline Glynn and the two Paul girls. Paris +and Rome were hazily mixed geographically in her ill-furnished mind, and +culturally both were blank. Eveline had known girls who had stayed with +Miss Comstock and they had given glowing accounts of their experiences. +The Neuilly establishment, it appeared, was a place of perfect freedom, +where the girls were chaperoned sufficiently to keep them out of serious +mischief, but otherwise were allowed to please themselves in their own +way. And there was Paris, which, according to Eveline, who had informed +herself from many sources, was the best place in the world for a good +time. Friends were always coming there, to buy clothes and to make +excursions. Adelle could have her own car, in which the four would take +motor trips, and there was the opera, etc. And lastly Society--real +Society;--for it seemed that this was one of Miss Comstock's strong +points. She knew people, and had actually put a number of her girls in +the way of marrying titled foreigners. The California girls knew of a +compatriot who had thus acquired a Polish title. In short, there was +nothing of the boarding-school in Miss Comstock's establishment, except +the fees, which were enormous--five thousand dollars to start with. + + * * * * * + +Thus Adelle left Herndon Hall in the beautiful month of June, having +received her last communion in the little ivy-covered stone chapel from +the hands of the bishop himself, smiled upon by Miss Thompson and the +other teachers, who had three years before pronounced her "a perfect +little fright," and kissed by a few of her schoolmates. She felt that +she was coming into her own, thanks to her magic lamp--that life ahead +looked promising. Yet she had changed as little fundamentally during +these three years as a human being well could. She had passed from the +narrowest poverty of the Alton side street to the prodigal ease of +Herndon Hall, from the environment of an inferior "rooming-house" to +companionship with the rich daughters of "our very best people,"--from +an unformed child to the full physical estate of womanhood,--all within +three short years; but she had accommodated herself to these great +transitions with as little inward change as possible. Her soul was the +soul of the Clarks, tricked out with good clothes and the manners and +habits of the rich. Addie, it seemed, had at last arrived at her +paradise in the person of her daughter, but it was a pale and +inexpressive Addie, who made no large drafts upon paradise. + +Adelle departed in the Glynn motor for the Glynn country-place, where +she was to stay until the Glynns sailed for Europe. She was prettily +dressed in écru-colored embroidered linen, with a broad straw hat and +suède gloves and boots, according to the style of the day, and she was +really happy and almost aware of it. Eveline was glum because her +mother--a stern-looking matron who knew exactly what she wanted out of +life and how to get it--had refused peremptorily to let her invite Bobby +Trenow to accompany them. Bobby was Eveline's darling of the hour, as +Adelle knew: Eveline had let him kiss her for the first time the +previous evening, and she was "perfectly crazy" about him. To Adelle, +Bobby was merely a smooth, downy boy like all the rest, who showed bare +brown arms and white flannels in summer, and had as little to say for +himself as she had. She was amused at Nelly's fussed state over the loss +of Bobby; she could not understand Mother Glynn's objection to the +harmless Bobby's occupying the vacant seat in the roomy car;--but then +she did not understand many things in the intricate social world in +which she found herself. She did not know that there is no one of their +possessions that the rich learn more quickly to guard than their women. +The aristocrats of all ages have jealously housed and protected their +women from entangling sexual relations, while permitting the greatest +license to their predatory males. The reasons are obvious enough to the +mature intelligence, but difficult for the young to comprehend. + +Adelle had not yet felt the need of a Bobby Trenow. + + + + +XVI + + +Some years ago Prince Ponitowski had built in Neuilly, near the gate of +the Bois, what contemporary novelists described as a "nest" for his +mistress--a famous Parisian lady. It was a fascinating little villa with +a demure brick and stone façade, a terrace, and a few shady trees in a +tiny, high-walled garden. The prince died, and the lady having made +other arrangements, the smart little villa came into the hands of Miss +Catherine Comstock, who took a long lease of the premises and +established there her family of "select" American girls. It might seem +that the tradition of the Villa Ponitowski (as the place continued to be +called) was hardly suitable for her purposes, but the robust common +sense of our age rarely hesitates over such intangible considerations, +and least of all the sophisticated Miss Comstock. At the Villa +Ponitowski the young women enjoyed the healthful freedom of a suburb +with the open fields of the Bois directly at their door, and yet were +within easy reach of Paris, "with its galleries and many cultural +opportunities"--according to the familiar phrasing of Miss Comstock's +letters to inquiring parents. (She had no circulars.) + +Miss Catherine Comstock herself was, in the last analysis, from Toledo, +Ohio, of an excellent family that had its roots in the soil of +Muskingum. When her father died, there being no immediate prospect of +marriage, she had taken to teaching in a girls' private school. It was +not long before the routine of an American private school became irksome +to her venturous spirit, and she conceived the idea of touring Europe +with rich girls who had nothing else to do. From this developed the +Neuilly scheme, which provided for the needs of that increasing number +of Americans with daughters who for one reason or another do not live in +America, and also for those American girls who could afford to +experiment in the fine arts "carefully shielded from undesirable +associates"--another favorite Comstock phrase. At first the art and +education idea had been much to the fore, and Miss Comstock had +fortified herself with one or two teachers and hired other assistants +occasionally. But the life of Paris had proved so congenial and its +"opportunities" so abundant that Miss Comstock had come to rely more and +more upon the "privilege of European residence" and dispensed altogether +with formal instruction. + +She soon found that that was what the girls who came to her really +wanted, even if their parents had vague thoughts of other things. In +short, the Neuilly school was nothing else than a superior sort of +select _pension_ for eight or ten girls, with facilities for travel and +more or less "society." Miss Comstock herself--affectionately known to +"her girls" as "Pussy" Comstock--had been rather angular and plain in +the Toledo days, but under the congenial air of Paris and good +dressmakers had developed into a smart specimen of the free-lance, +middle-aged woman, with the sophistication of a thorough acquaintance +with the world and much prudence garnered from a varied experience. She +made an excellent impression upon the sort of parents she dealt with as +a "woman who really knows life," and the girls always liked her, found +her "a good chum." They called her "Pussy"! Miss Comstock kept with her +a dumpy little American woman with glasses, who did what educational +work was attempted, and the more tedious chaperonage. The Villa +Ponitowski, in a word, was one of the modern adjustments between the +ignorance and selfishness of parents and the selfishness and folly of +children. The parents handed over their daughters for a season to Miss +Comstock with a sigh of relief, believing that their girls would be +perfectly "safe" in her care and might possibly improve themselves in +language and knowledge of art and the world. And the daughters rejoiced, +knowing from the reports of other girls that they would have "a +perfectly bully time," freed from the annoying prejudices of parents, +and might pick up an adventure or two of a sentimental nature.... + +Into this final varnishing bath our heroine was plunged with her three +friends, in the autumn of 1902, when she was eighteen years old. The +girls arrived at the Villa from a motoring trip across Europe, during +which they had scurried over the surface of five countries and put up in +thirty-eight different hotels as the labels on their bags triumphantly +proclaimed. Miss Comstock received the party in her own little salon in +the rear of the Villa, where, after the elder Glynns had withdrawn, +liqueurs and cigarettes were served. Miss Comstock lit a cigarette, +perched her well-shod feet on a stool, and listened with sympathetic +amusement to the adventures of the trio as vivaciously related by +Eveline Glynn. The California sisters, it developed, had the cigarette +habit, too, and Eveline tried one of "Pussy's" special kind. When the +girls went to their rooms, to which they were conducted by Miss Comstock +with an arm around the waist of Adelle and another about Irene Paul, the +girls agreed that "Pussy" was "all right" and congratulated themselves +upon the perspicacity of their choice. + +At Herndon Hall there had been at least the pretense of discipline and +study, but all such childish notions were laughed at in the Villa +Ponitowski. Eveline Glynn thought she had a voice and a teacher was +engaged for her. Irene Paul devoted herself to the art of whistling, +while her sister "went in for posters." Another girl was supposed to be +studying painting and resorted a few afternoons each week to a studio, +well chaperoned. Miss Comstock promised to find something for Adelle to +do in an art way. But there was nothing pedantic or professional about +the Villa Ponitowski. Miss Comstock prided herself upon her outlook. She +knew that her girls would marry in all likelihood, and she endeavored to +give them something of the horizon of broad boulevards and +watering-places as a preparation. All the girls had their own maids, who +brought them the morning cup of coffee whenever they rang--usually not +before noon. The European day, Adelle learned, began about one o'clock +with a variety of expeditions and errands, and frequently ended well +after midnight at opera or play, or dancing party at the home of some +American resident to whom Miss Comstock introduced her charges. This was +during the season. Then there were, of course, expeditions to Rome and +Vienna and Madrid, tours of cathedral towns, inspection of +watering-places, etc. + +Behold, thus, the sole descendant of the hard-grubbing, bucolic Clarks +waking from her final nap at eleven in the morning, imbibing her coffee +from a delicate china cup, and nibbling at her _brioche_, while her maid +opened the shutters, started a fire in the grate, and laid out her +dresses, chattering all the time in charming French about delectable +nothings. Addie Clark, surely, would have felt that she had not lived in +vain if she could have beheld her only child at this time, and overheard +the serious debate as to which "_robe_" Mademoiselle Adelle would adorn +herself with for the afternoon, and have seen her, finally equipped, +descending to the salon to join Miss Comstock, who was usually engaged +with her correspondence at this hour. + +Adelle, it is perhaps needless to say, had quickly perceived the +enlarged opportunity for the use of her magic lamp. She at once ordered +a very comfortable limousine, which was driven by an experienced +chauffeur, and thus transported herself, Miss Comstock, and any of the +girls she chose to invite to the exhibition at the Georges Petit +Gallery, thence to a concert, or perhaps merely to tea at the new hotel +in the Champs Élysées. If any reader has perhaps considered Adelle +backward or stupid, he must quickly revise that opinion at this point. +For it was truly extraordinary the rapidity with which the pale, passive +young heiress caught the pace of Paris. The note of the world about her +was the spending note, and the drafts she made through her French +bankers upon the Washington Trust Company caused a certain uneasiness +even among those sophisticated officials, used to the expenditures of +the rich. + +Of course, Miss Comstock introduced her charges to the best dressmakers +and dispensers of lingerie and millinery (for which service she obtained +free of charge all her own clothes). Adelle soon found her own way into +the shops of the Rue de la Paix and developed a genuine passion--the +first one of her life--for precious stones. It may be remembered that +when she was taken as a little girl for the first time into the new home +of the trust company, she had been much impressed by the gorgeousness of +colored marble and glass there profusely used. For a long time the great +banking-room with its dim violet light had remained in her memory as a +source of sensuous delight, and as her opportunities had increased she +had turned instinctively to things of color and warmth, especially in +stones and fabrics. In those public and private exhibitions to which she +was constantly conducted as part of her education in art she hung over +the cases that contained specimens of new designs in metal and stone. +Miss Comstock, perceiving her interest in these toys, encouraged Adelle +to try her own hand at the manufacture of jewelry, and engaged a needy +woman worker to give her the necessary lessons in the lapidary art. +Adelle had acquired considerable sloth from her desultory way of living; +nevertheless, when the chance was forced into her hands, she took to the +new work with ardor and produced some bungling imitations of the new +art, which were much admired at the Villa Ponitowski. Eveline, not to be +outdone, took up bookbinding, though she scarcely knew the inside of one +book from another. The art of tooling leather was then cultivated by +women of fashion in New York: it gave them something to talk about and a +chance to play in a studio. + +I should like to record that Adelle developed a latent talent for making +beautiful things in the art she had inadvertently chosen to practice. +But that would be straining the truth. It requires imagination to +produce original and pleasing objects in small jewelry, and of +imagination Adelle had not betrayed a spark. Moreover, it takes +patience, application, and a skillful hand to become a good craftsman in +any art, and these virtues had no encouragement in the life that Adelle +had led since leaving the Church Street house. So in spite of the +admiration aroused by her _bijoux_ when she gave them to the inmates of +the Villa, it must be admitted that they were more like the efforts of a +school child who has prepared its handiwork for presents to admiring +relatives than anything else. But at least it was a real interest, and +it raised Adelle in her own estimation. Some of the happiest days she +had known were spent in the studio of Miss Cornelia Baxter, on the Rue +de l'Université. She would have spent more time there if her other +engagements or distractions had not constantly interrupted her pursuit +of art. Her position of practical independence and unlimited means gave +her a prestige in "Pussy" Comstock's household that exhausted most of +her time and energy. Her car and herself were in constant demand. And in +the Easter holidays "the family" went to Rome for a month, and to London +at the opening of the season there in June. So not much time was left +for the pursuit of art. + +Yet this effort to make jewelry on Adelle's part is important, as the +first sign of promise of individuality. It betrayed the possibility of a +taste. She loved color, richness of substance, and Europe was satisfying +this instinct. Pale and colorless herself, mentally perhaps anaemic or +at least lethargic, she discovered in herself a passion for color and +richness. Certain formless dreams about life began to haunt her +mind--vague desires of warmth and color and emotion. Thus Paris was +developing the latent possibilities of sensuousness in this pale +offshoot of Puritanism. + + + + +XVII + + +The winter had passed agreeably and rapidly for Adelle. But London did +not please her because Miss Comstock insisted upon a rather rigorous +course of museums and churches and show places, which always fatigued +and bored Adelle. She was also taken to garden parties where she was +expected to talk, and that was the last thing Adelle liked doing. +Whatever expressive reaction to life she had could never be put into +words for the casual comer. She would stand helpless before the most +persistent man, seeking a means of escape, and as men are rarely +persistent or patient with a dumb girl she stood alone much of the time +in spite of her reputation for wealth, which Miss Comstock carefully +disseminated to prepare the way for her. + +One morning while her maid was brushing her hair, an operation that +Adelle particularly liked and over which she would dawdle for hours, a +card was brought to her, which bore the name--"Mr. Ashly Crane"--and +underneath this simple and sufficient explanation--"The Washington Trust +Company." Adelle had almost forgotten Mr. Crane's existence. He had +become more a signature than a person to her. Nevertheless, the memory +of her girlish triumph the last time they had met caused her to hasten +her toilet and put in an appearance in the private salon she had at the +hotel in something less than half an hour. There she found the young +banker very spruce in his frock coat and silk hat, which he had +furnished himself with in America and assumed the day of his arrival on +English soil. He was taking a vacation, he promptly explained to Adelle, +in which, of course, he should do several pieces of important business. +But he gave the girl to understand that she was not on this business +list: he had looked her up purely as a pleasure. In fact, the trust +people had become somewhat uneasy over Miss Clark's frequent drafts, +which altogether exceeded the liberal sum that President West felt was +suitable for a young woman to spend, though well within her present +income, and suggested that Mr. Crane should find out what she was doing +and if she were likely to get into mischief. The young banker had had it +in mind to see Adelle in any case--she had left a sufficiently distinct +impression with him for that. There may have revived in his +subconsciousness that earlier dream of capturing for himself the +constantly expanding Clark estate, although as yet nothing had defined +itself positively in his active mind. + +When at last the girl entered the little hotel salon where he had been +cooling his heels for the half-hour, he had a distinct quickening of +this latent purpose. Adelle Clark was not at this period, if she ever +was, what is usually called a pretty girl. She had grown a little, and +now gave the impression of being really tall, which was largely an +effect of her skillful dressmaker. Pale and slender and graceful, +exquisitely draped in a gown subtly made for her, with a profusion of +barbaric jewelry which from this time on she always affected, Adelle was +what is commonly called striking. She had the enviable quality of +attracting attention to herself, even on the jaded streets of Paris, as +suggesting something pleasurably different from the stream of +passers-by. The American man of affairs did not stop to analyze all +this. He was merely conscious that here was a woman whom no man need be +ashamed of, even if he married her for other reasons than her beauty. +And he set himself at once, not to catechize the bank's ward about her +expenditures, but to interest the girl in himself. They went to the +Savoy for luncheon, and the trust officer noted pleasurably the +attention they received as they made their way through the crowded +breakfast-room. And in spite of Adelle's monosyllabic habit of +conversation, they got on very well over their food, about which Adelle +had well-formulated ideas. He suggested taking a cab and attending the +cricket match, and so after luncheon they gayly set forth on the long +ride to Hurlingham in the stream of motors and cabs bound for the match. + +Adelle smiled shyly at Mr. Crane's heavy sarcasm upon British ways, and +replied briefly to his questions about her winter in Paris. The +situation was a novel one to her, and she enjoyed it. The one thing her +money had thus far not done for her was to bring her men--she had, +indeed, done nothing herself to attract them. But now for five hours she +had the constant attention of a good-looking, well-dressed, mature man. +To be sure Mr. Ashly Crane was much older than she. He gave her the +curious sensation of being in some way a relative. Was the Washington +Trust Company not the nearest thing to a relative that she had? And Mr. +Ashly Crane was the personal symbol to her of the trust company--its +voice and lungs and clothes. So she felt a faint emotion over the +incident. As they were returning from the cricket field in the English +twilight, with the scurry of moving vehicles all about them, Mr. Crane +ventured on more personal topics than he had hitherto broached. He felt +that by this time they must be quite good friends. So he began,-- + +Did she like living in Europe? + +Yes, she found it very pleasant and Miss Comstock was the nicest teacher +she had ever had--really not like a teacher at all; and she liked Miss +Baxter and the metal-work. (This was a long and complicated statement +for Adelle.) + +She must show him some of her work. Was that chain (taking it familiarly +in his hands to look at it) her own handiwork? + +Oh, no; that was a Lalique ... the chief artist in this _genre_ in +Paris. (The banker mentally accounted for some of the recent drafts.) +Didn't he think it pretty?--such an unusual arrangement of the stones! + +He should not call it exactly pretty--odd rather;--but it was very +becoming to her.... He should like to see some of her own work, etc. + +Oh, she should never dare to show him anything she had done. She was +nothing but a beginner, etc., etc. + +Later on, as they entered the dark precincts of the city, another step +nearer the personal was taken. + +She would want to spend another year in Europe probably? + +Oh, yes, they had the loveliest plans. Miss Comstock was going to take +her and Eveline Glynn on a visit to some friends who had an estate in +Poland, in the mountains, a real castle, etc. (Mental note by the +banker--"Must look up this Comstock woman--seems to have a good deal of +influence upon the girl.") And then they were all going to Italy again +in the spring and perhaps Greece, though everybody said that was too +hard on account of the poor hotels. And she did want to go up the Nile +and see the Sphynx and all the rest of it, etc., etc. (Pause). + +Had she any idea what she would like to do afterwards, where she wanted +to live? + +When? + +Why, after she had finished her education. + +Oh, she wanted to go on making pretty things--she should have a studio +of her own, of course, like Miss Baxter. + +"Where?" + +"Why in Paris,--perhaps New York," Adelle replied vaguely, +indifferently. + +That gave Mr. Crane an opportunity for an improving homily on the folly +of expatriation, the beauty of living in one's own country among one's +own people, and so forth, which brought them to the door of Adelle's +hotel. Mr. Crane came in and met Miss Comstock and the girls she had +with her. Then he disappeared and returned later in full dress and took +the party to the Carlton for dinner and then to a light opera. The girls +were entranced with Mr. Crane, especially the two Californians, and +redoubled their envy of the fortunate Adelle in having this handsome +substitute for a parent. They called him her "beau," by which +designation Mr. Ashly Crane was henceforth known among Pussy Comstock's +girls during their sojourn in London. + +He had not made quite the same favorable impression upon Miss Comstock, +who was acquainted with all sorts and conditions of men. The two +recognized immediately an antagonism of interests, and spent this first +evening of their acquaintance in reconnoitering each other's position +with Adelle. "Little bounder," Miss Comstock pronounced with the quick +perception of a woman; "he's after the girl's money." While the man said +to himself, with the more ponderous indirectness of the male,--"That +woman is not quite the influence that an unformed girl should have about +her. She's working the girl, too, for motors and things." And yet both +smiled and joked companionably across the shoulders of the unconscious +Adelle. + +As the trust officer returned to his hotel in his hansom, he jingled a +few stray coins in his pocket, the remains of twenty pounds in gold that +the day had cost him. A long education in finance, however, had taught +him to be indifferent to these petty matters of preliminary expense. +Nevertheless, before retiring he entered up the sum to the Clark estate +expense account. Poor Adelle, dreaming of her "beau"! Her first real +spree with a man was charged to her own purse. + + + + +XVIII + + +There were many similar items added to the account during the next +fortnight. It seemed that Mr. Ashly Crane had nothing better to do with +his European vacation than to give Miss Clark and her companions a good +time, or, as he intimated to Miss Comstock, "to get into closer touch +with the company's ward." Naturally he was a godsend to the Comstock +girls, for he could take them to places where without a man they could +not go. There was a mild orgy of motoring, dining, and theater. Pussy +Comstock, experienced campaigner that she was, made no objection to this +junketing. A fixed principle with her was to let any man spend his money +as freely as he was inclined to. Yet she skillfully so contrived that +the young banker had few opportunities of solitary communion with his +ward. At first Mr. Crane did not understand why the Glynn girl or one of +the Paul sisters was always in the way, and then he comprehended the +artful maneuver of the woman and resented it. One afternoon, when he had +taken the party up the river, he announced bluntly after tea that he and +Adelle were going out in a punt together. Leaving Miss Comstock and the +three other girls to amuse themselves as they could, he stoutly pulled +forth from the landing and around a bend in the river. Thereafter his +efforts relaxed, and he had Adelle to himself for two long hours. And +Adelle, reclining on the gaudy cushions under an enormous pink sunshade, +was not unenticing. Her air of indolent taciturnity was almost +provoking. Mr. Ashly Crane quite persuaded himself that he was really in +love with the young heiress. + +Oddly enough he chose this opportunity to discuss with her her business +affairs, which was the excuse he had tossed Miss Comstock for +abstracting the ward from the rest of the party. He found that she knew +almost nothing about the source of her fortune--that lean stretch of +sandy acres known as Clark's Field. He related to her the outline of the +story of the Field as it has been told in these pages. Adelle listened +with a peculiarly blank expression on her pale face. She was in fact +trying hard to recall certain distant images of her early life--memories +that were neither pleasant nor painful, but very odd to her, so strange +that she could not realize herself as having once been the little drudge +in the rooming-house on Church Street, with the manager of the +livery-stable as the star roomer. While the banker was relating the +steps by which she had become an heiress, she was seeing the face of the +liveryman and that of the probate judge, who had first taken an active +part in her destiny and turned it into its present smooth course.... + +"So," Mr. Crane was saying, "the bank was finally able to make an +arrangement by which the long deadlock was broken and Clark's Field +could be sold--put on the market in small lots, you know. Owing to a +very fortunate provision, you are the beneficiary of one half of the +sales made by the Field Associates, as the corporation is +called--whenever they dispose of any of it they pay us for you half the +money!" + +(He neglected to state that this "fortunate provision" was due solely to +the shrewdness and probity of Judge Orcutt; that if he and the trust +company's president had had their way she would have been obliged to +content herself with a much more modest income than she now enjoyed. But +doubtless Mr. Crane felt that was irrelevant.) + +"So you see, little girl," he concluded, in a burst of unguarded +enthusiasm, "we are piling up money for you while you are playing over +here." + +As something seemed to be expected of her, Adelle remarked lamely,-- + +"That is very nice." + +"Yes," Mr. Crane continued with satisfaction. "You can congratulate +yourself on having such good care of your property as we give it.... And +let me tell you it didn't look promising at first. There were no end of +legal snarls that had to be straightened out--in fact, if I hadn't urged +it strongly on the old man I doubt if they would have taken hold of the +thing at all!" + +"Oh," Adelle responded idly, "what was the trouble?" + +"Why, those other heirs--that Edward S. Clark and his children. If +_they_ had turned up we should have been in a pretty mess." + +"Oh!" + +"It would have upset everything." + +"Why?" + +He had just explained all this, but thinking that women never understood +business matters until everything had been explained several times, and +anxious to impress the girl with the benefits that she had derived from +the guardian which the law had given her, also indirectly from himself, +he patiently went all over the point again. + +"Why, your great-grandfather Clark had two sons, and when he died he +left a will in which he gave both of his sons an undivided half interest +in this land. But the elder son had disappeared--they could never find +him." + +"Edward," observed the girl, remembering her uncle's frequent curses at +the obstinate Edward. "Yes, I know. He went to Chicago and got lost." + +"Afterward he went to St. Louis, but beyond that no trace of him or his +family can be found." + +"I suppose some day he will turn up when he hears that there's some +money," Adelle remarked simply. + +The banker scowled. + +"Well, I hope not!... Edward isn't likely to now: he must be a young +thing of eighty-seven by this time." + +"Well, his children, then." + +"They would have difficulty in proving their claim. You see there's been +a judicial sale, ordered by the court, and every precaution taken.... +No, there's no possibility of trouble in that quarter." + +"Then they won't get their money?" Adelle remarked, thinking how +disappointed these hypothetical descendants of Edward Clark must be. + +"No," agreed the trust officer with a laugh. "They're too late for +dinner." + +Adelle, who did not understand the mental jump of a figure of speech, +stared at him blankly. + +"It's too bad," she observed placidly at last. + +"Yes, it is decidedly too bad for them," the banker repeated ironically. +"But it's life." + +After this profound reflection they paddled idly for a few moments, and +then the trust officer resumed, nearer to his theme. + +"So you see, Miss Clark, you're likely to be a pretty rich woman when +you come of age. The old leases on the estate are running out, and as +fast as they can the managers of the Clark's Field Associates sell at a +good price or make a long lease at a high figure and everything helps to +swell the estate, which we are investing safely for you in good stocks +and bonds that are sure to increase in value before you will want to +sell them." + +"How much money is there?" Adelle demanded unexpectedly. This was her +opportunity to discover the size of her magic lamp. + +"I couldn't say off hand," the banker replied cautiously. "But enough to +keep you from want, if you don't spend too much making jewelry." He +added facetiously,--"You don't feel cramped for money, do you?" + +"No-o," the girl admitted dubiously. "But you can't always tell what you +may want." + +"If you don't want much more than you do at present, you're safe," Mr. +Crane stated guardedly. "That is, if nothing goes wrong--a panic, and +that sort of thing." + +After a pause he said,-- + +"But you should have some one look after your property, invest it for +you--a woman can't do that very well." + +"The bank does it, don't it?" + +"I mean after you are of age and have control of your own property." + +"Oh," the girl murmured vaguely, running her hand through the ripples of +river water. "That's a good ways off!... I suppose I shall be married by +that time, and _he_ will look after it for me." + +She said this in a thoroughly matter-of-fact voice, but the banker +almost jumped from his seat at the words. + +"You aren't thinking of getting married yet!" he exclaimed hastily. + +"I suppose I shall some day," she replied. + +"Of course you'll marry sometime," he said with relief; and ran on +glibly,--"That is the natural thing. Every girl should get married +early. But you must take good care, my dear girl, not to make a mistake. +You might be very unhappy, you know. He might not treat you right." And +with a sense of climax he exclaimed,--"He might lose all your +money--ruin you!" + +"Yes, he might," Adelle agreed with composure. "They do that sometimes." + +She looked at him from her open gray eyes undisturbed by the prospect, +as if, womanlike, she was aware of this unpleasant fate in danger of +which she must always be. Mr. Ashly Crane knew that this was the point +when his love-making should begin, but suddenly he felt that Adelle +Clark was a very difficult person to make love to. + +"Perhaps you've been thinking of the man?" he opened clumsily. + +She shook her head thoughtfully. + +"No, I haven't." + +"But you could love some one?" + +"I suppose so," she answered in such a matter-of-fact tone that for the +moment he was baffled. The present situation, he decided, was +unfavorable for love-making, and searched desperately within for his +next words. + +"I wonder what they look like," Adelle mused aloud. + +"Who look like--husbands?" + +"No, Edward's children--the other heirs," she explained. + +"Perhaps there aren't any," he snapped. + +And under his breath Mr. Ashly Crane consigned Edward S. Clark and all +his offspring to perdition. + + + + +XIX + + +Mr. Crane was a persistent person. Otherwise he would hardly have +arrived where he had in the Washington Trust Company. Having failed to +broach the great subject in the afternoon, he immediately made another +opportunity for himself by hustling Adelle, ahead of the others, into +his own cab for the return drive to the city, and then jumping in after +her and giving the driver the order to leave. It was very ill-bred and +he knew it, but he was determined not to bother about Miss Comstock any +longer. His vacation was very nearly at an end, and this would be his +last chance for another year if the ward was to remain in Europe as was +her present determination. He consoled himself with the thought that the +others had Adelle's car at their disposal, and gave the order to take a +roundabout road back to London. The driver needed but the suggestion to +plunge them into a maze of forgotten country roads where there were no +lights and no impeding traffic.... + +There are in general three ways in which to make love to a woman, young +or old: the deliberate, the impulsive, and the inevitable. Of the third +there is no occasion to speak here, as neither Ashly Crane nor Adelle +understood it. Of the remaining two the deliberate method of cautious, +persistent siege was more to the taste and the temperament of the +banker, but he was strictly limited in time. The Kaiser Nonsuch, on +which his passage was reserved, sailed in three days from Southampton, +and he must win within that brief period or put the matter over for a +whole year. And he judged that Adelle, under her present environment +with such an expert manager as Miss Catherine Comstock, would not be +left hanging on the bough within his reach for long. A year's delay +would almost surely be fatal, and it was uncertain whether he could get +away before the next summer from his important responsibilities at the +Washington Trust Company. So haste must be the word. + +That he should reason thus about a delicate matter of sentiment betrays +not merely the man's coarse grain, but the inferiority of the commercial +experience in making an accomplished lover. He had been trained in the +"new school" of rapid finance to complete large transactions on the +moment, never letting small uncertainties or delays interfere with his +purposes. It was really not essential to the working of the financial +system--even for the salvation of the Washington Trust Company--that Mr. +Ashly Crane should turn up at his desk on the morning of the +twenty-sixth instanter. It might just as well have been the thirty-first +or even the middle of the next month--or, if he should have the good +luck to gain the heart and hand of the heiress, never at all! But Mr. +Ashly Crane was neither of the temperament nor of the age to play the +sentimental game thus desperately. He was altogether too much an +American to let his love-making interfere with his business schedule. +(Besides, there was not another swift steamer sailing for New York for +three weeks.) + +So he sighed, and when the cab shot into the umbrageous dimness of old +trees he took the girl's hand in his. She made no attempt to withdraw +her hand. Probably Adelle was more frightened by this first experience +in the eternal situation than the man was, and that is saying a good +deal. She took refuge in her usual defense against life and its many +perplexities, which was silence, permitting the banker to press her +captive hand for several moments while the cab tossed on the uneven road +and Crane was summoning his nerve for the next step. Her heart beat a +little faster, and she wondered what was going to happen. + +That was the man's attempt to encircle her waist with his free arm. In +this maneuver Adelle did not assist him: instead, she pushed herself +back against the cushion so firmly that it made it a difficult +engineering feat to obtain possession of her figure. By this time his +face was close to hers, and he was stammering incoherently such words +as--"Adelle" ... "Dearest" ... "Love" ... etc. But we will spare the +reader Mr. Ashly Crane's crude imitation of ardor. All love-making, even +the most sincere and eloquent, is verbally disappointingly alike and +rather tame. The human animal, ingenious as he is in many ways, is +nevertheless almost as limited as the ape when it comes to the +articulation of the deeper emotions. That is why delicacy and the habit +of _nuances_ give the experienced wooer such an immense advantage, even +with a raw girl like Adelle, over the mere clumsy male. Love, like the +drama, being so rigidly limited in technique, is no field for the +bungler! And Mr. Ashly Crane was far from being an artist in anything. + +By this time Adelle had become aware that she was being made love to. It +filled her with a variety of emotions not clearly defined. First of all, +there was something of the woman's natural complacency in her first +capture, more vivid than when the other girls had dubbed Mr. Crane her +"beau." This was a _bona fide_ illustration of what all the girls talked +about most of the time and the novels were full of from cover to +cover--love-making! And next was a feeling akin to repugnance. Mr. Crane +was not aged--barely forty-two--and he was good-looking enough and quite +the man. But to Adelle he had always been, if not exactly a parent, at +least an older brother or uncle,--in some category of relationship other +than that of young love. That he should thus hastily be professing +ardent sentiments towards her seemed a trifle improper. Beneath these +superficial feelings there were, of course, some deeper ones;--for +instance, a slight sense of humor in his clumsy management and a feeling +of gratification that at last the unknown had arrived. And a something +else not wholly unpleasant in her own small person.... + +Crane was mumbling something about his loneliness and her unprotected +condition. Adelle was not aware that she was to be pitied because of +lack of protection, but she liked to be the object of sympathy. +Gradually she relaxed, and permitted him to insert his arm between her +and the cushion, which he seemed so ridiculously anxious to do. At once +he drew her slight form towards him. He was saying,-- + +"Dearest! Can you--will you--" + +And she demanded point-blank,-- + +"What?" + +"Love me!" the man breathed very close to her. + +"I don't know," she replied, struggling to regain her refuge in the +corner from which his embrace had dragged her. + +And just here Ashly Crane committed an irretrievable blunder, due to +those imperfections of nature and technique which have been described +before. As the cab lurched, throwing the girl nearer him, he grasped her +very firmly and kissed her. The Kaiser Nonsuch sailed on the Thursday, +and it was now Monday.... + +As his mustached lips sought her small mouth and met the cold, hard +little lips, he knew that he had taken a fearful risk. Adelle did not +scream. She did not struggle very much. She took the kiss passively, as +if she had some curiosity to know what a man's kiss was like. After he +had given it with sufficient ardor and was ready to relax his passionate +embrace, she drew back calmly into her corner and looked at him very +coolly out of her gray eyes. After the flurry of the struggle, with her +brown hair slightly awry, her hat tipped back, and her lips still half +open as they had been forced by his kiss, she was almost pretty. But +those gray eyes looked at him as no girl ought to look after her lover's +first kiss, and let us hope as few girls do look. Mr. Ashly Crane read +there that he had lost his chance with the heiress. There was just +enough of spirit even in his common clay to divine this. If only he had +not been so hasty!--not tried to "put the thing through" before sailing, +and do it in the manner of the "whirl-wind campaign".... + +For a moment or two there was silence within the cab while the car +rocked on in its mad race for London. They were well within the +outskirts of the city now, and the banker knew that there would not be +time to work up to another crisis. He must defer the recovery until the +morrow, if he could summon courage to go on with it at all. But the girl +still stared at him out of her wide-open eyes, as if she were saying in +her small head--"So that's what a man's kiss is like." He muttered +uncomfortably a lot of nonsense about forgetting himself, and her +forgiving him,--ignorant that in such a grave matter forgiveness is +always out of the question: either it is not needed, or it cannot +possibly be given. Adelle said nothing, merely looked at him until he +was driven to turn his head away and gaze out of the swiftly moving cab +at the lighted streets to escape the wonder and the surprise and the +contempt in those gray eyes. As they turned into Piccadilly, he remarked +brusquely,--"I shall come to-morrow morning--and get your answer!" That +was to "save his face," as we say, for her answer was written in those +eyes. Again he took her little ungloved hand and tried to bear it to his +lips. But this time Adelle gently, firmly extracted it from his grasp +and placed it behind her back with its mate, safely out of reach, still +looking at him gravely. + +Crane helped her out of the cab, and turned to pay the driver, who was +beaming with expectation of an extra fee for his participation in this +adventure. When he had settled the fare, Adelle had disappeared within +the hotel. Judging that it might be unwise to follow her, Mr. Ashly +Crane walked off to his hotel, scowling along the way, very little +pleased with himself. He was really more mortified at discovering how +poor an artist in the business he was than by his ill success itself. + +"Nothing but a meek, pale-faced, little school-girl, too!" he was saying +to himself. And aloud,--"Oh, damn the women." + + + + +XX + + +Adelle went straight to her own rooms, but before she could close the +door Miss Comstock was on her heels. Having taken the direct route to +London in Adelle's swift car, she had had ample time to change her gown, +and now looked specially groomed and ready for the encounter, with keen, +knowing green eyes. Closing the door carefully, Miss Comstock turned, +looked Adelle over from her hat, which was still slightly tipped, to her +ungloved hands. + +"Well?" she remarked with perceptible irony. + +Adelle did not mean to tell anything. She wanted to keep this, her first +affair, to herself, no matter what she might consider it to be, and she +was not yet sure what she should think of it finally. So she had tried +her best to dodge her companions until she had had time to simulate her +usual appearance. But she had been caught by "Pussy" red-handed. To the +mentor's repeated "Well?" she said nothing, a foolish little smile +starting without her will around the corners of her mouth. + +"So he kissed you?" Miss Comstock continued; and as Adelle's eyes +dropped guiltily, she remarked contemptuously,--"The cad!" + +Adelle was only vaguely acquainted with the meaning of this hateful +word, but if she had realized its full significance she would not have +cared, though she had no desire to defend Mr. Ashly Crane. She was +silent, while Miss Comstock tore a few more shreds from Adelle's poor +little "affair." + +"I knew that was what he was after from the first, my dear. It was +written all over him!... A pretty kind of an officer for a trust company +to have! If the directors of the Washington Trust Company knew of this +there would be trouble for Mr. Ashly Crane!... A ward, too--" + +"He's always been nice to me," Adelle protested lamely, feeling that in +her invective Pussy was reflecting upon her guardians. + +"Of course!... I have no doubt he made up his mind to get you, as soon +as he knew how rich you would be." + +This was too raw even for Adelle. The girl drew herself up haughtily, +and Miss Comstock adroitly covered up her mistake. + +"You know, my dear, that is one of the dangers any woman with money is +exposed to. Luckily this is your first experience with the mere +fortune-hunter, but you will find that there are many men in the world +just like this Mr. Ashly Crane, who are incapable of a genuine passion +for any woman, and are always looking for a rich wife. No girl wants to +think that a man is making love to her because she has money--especially +when she has other attractions.... To think that this man, who ought to +have shielded you from everything, should be the one to humiliate you +so!" + +She proceeded with an admirable mingling of flattery and friendliness to +put Adelle on her guard against the male sex. + +"At least," she concluded, "a man ought to have something to offer a +rich girl,--a name or position. What has that little cad to give you? +Social position? A title? Nothing! If a woman must marry, she should get +something in the bargain." + +She succeeded in thoroughly humiliating Adelle for what she had secretly +been a little proud of, her first "affair," and easily killed with her +contempt any possibility of the girl's yielding to the banker's +persistency. + +"He said he was coming to see me to-morrow," Adelle finally pouted +almost tearfully. + +"He will see _me_ to-morrow instead," Miss Comstock said promptly; "and +I don't think he will trouble you again." + +The encounter on the following morning between the trust officer and +Pussy Comstock is not a part of this story. Enough to say that Mr. Crane +got his steamer at Southampton and was happily so seasick all the way +across that he could not worry over his failure in the gentle art of +love-making. He told his friends that he had spent a dull vacation in +England, and spoke disparagingly of British institutions and of Europe +for Americans generally. When President West inquired about the ward, he +spoke very guardedly of Adelle and of Miss Catherine Comstock. He +intimated that Miss Clark had developed into an uninteresting and +somewhat headstrong young woman, and implied that he had doubts about +the influence which her present mentor had upon her character. However, +the trust company would soon be absolved from all responsibility for its +ward, and it might be as well to let matters rest as they were for the +present, if the drafts from Paris did not become too outrageous, which, +of course, was exactly what Mr. West and the other officers wished to +do--nothing. + +Hereafter Mr. Ashly Crane must honor any draft that Adelle might make, +no matter how "outrageous" it was. (The drafts came fluttering across +the ocean on every steamer for ever-increasing amounts until the young +heiress was living at the rate of nearly forty thousand dollars a year.) +The banker might wonder how a young girl, still nominally in school, +could get away with so much money. He might fear that her extravagance +would become a habit and carry her even beyond the limits of her large +means. But he could not say a word. Miss Comstock, indeed, had put him +in a sorry situation for a full-grown banker. The more he thought about +the unfortunate episode of his love-making, the more he cursed himself. +President West, whose special protégé the young banker had always been, +held very strict notions about honor and the relation of the officers of +the company to its clients. In Adelle's case--that of a minor entrusted +to them by the probate court--the president would feel doubly incensed +if he suspected that any officer had attempted to take advantage of her +unprotected and inexperienced youth. So Mr. Ashly Crane walked softly +these days and promptly honored Adelle's drafts. + + + + +XXI + + +Of course this was precisely what Pussy Comstock had been clever enough +to see when, in the idiom with which Mr. Crane was familiar, she had had +the trust officer "on the carpet" and "called him down" on that +memorable occasion of the day after. He might tell her, as he had +recklessly done, that her own relation to the rich girl depended solely +upon his consent, and hint coarsely that he knew well enough the ground +of her extreme interest in Adelle's fate. Miss Comstock did not take the +trouble to deny either fact. She merely smiled at the blustering banker, +and intimated that the president and directors of the trust company +might have views about the conduct of its trust officer towards their +ward. She had heard much of the prominent social position of President +West, and if she were not mistaken Mr. Nelson Glynn, the father of one +of her girls, was a director in the bank. Mr. Crane wilted under this +fine treatment, and departed as we have seen to do Miss Comstock's will. + +This blunder of Adelle's official guardian also gave Miss Comstock a +great prestige with the girl herself. Pussy had so cleverly unmasked the +designing man that Adelle felt only mortification for the incident and +was grateful for Miss Comstock's friendship and impressed by her +knowledge of the world. Miss Comstock made much of her in the ensuing +weeks, and for this angular and somewhat worn middle-aged woman Adelle +began to have the first real passion of her life. She was putty in her +hands for a time and obeyed her slightest suggestion. Instead of curbing +Adelle's tendency to extravagance, the mistress of the Villa Ponitowski +encouraged it, partly for her own gratification and partly to serve +warning upon the trust officer. Mr. Crane might well wonder where Adelle +put the money she drew; he would have been amazed if he could have known +the ingenious ways which Miss Comstock found for improving her +opportunity. In all the years that she had pursued her parasitic +occupation, she had never had such a free chance, and she began to dream +ambitiously of appropriating Adelle and Clark's Field for life. + +With Pussy's approval Adelle bought another motor, a high-powered +touring-car, and she kept besides several saddle-horses for use in the +Bois. She generously assumed the entire rent of Miss Baxter's expensive +studio when that imprudent artist found herself in difficulties; but +that comes a little later. Adelle defrayed all the expenses of the Nile +trip which Miss Comstock made with her family this winter. These are a +few instances of the spending habit, but the great leak was the constant +wastefulness to which Adelle was becoming accustomed. She spent a lot of +money merely for the sake of spending it, buying nothings of all sorts +to give away or throw away. It seemed as if all the penurious years of +the Clarks were now being revenged in one long prodigal draft by this +last representative of their line. The magic lamp responded admirably +each time Adelle rubbed it by simply writing her name upon a slip of +paper at the banker's. She had a child's curiosity to find out the +limits of its marvelous power, and daringly increased her demands upon +it. Possibly if Miss Comstock's designs had carried, she might have +discovered this limit within a few years: but her fate was shaping +otherwise. + +Meantime her little "affair" with the banker excited the other girls in +the family, who felt that the rich young heiress must encounter many +wonderful adventures in love. Adelle was initiated in the great theme, +and for the first time began to take an interest in men. Perhaps Mr. +Ashly Crane's crude love-making had broken down certain inhibitions in +the girl's passive nature, had overcome an instinctive repugnance to sex +encounters. The path of the next wooer would doubtless be easier. But +that lucky man did not put in an appearance. Miss Comstock jealously +guarded the approaches to her treasure with greater discretion than ever +before. She made no effort to prepare for her an alliance with an +impecunious scion of the minor Continental nobility such as she arranged +later for Sadie Paul. She said that she could think of no one good +enough for her dear Adelle, and anyway the girl was altogether too young +to think of marrying--another year would be ample time. So Adelle was +confined to the younger brothers and friends of her companions, who +turned up in Paris at different times, and upon these she tried timidly +her powers of charm with no great success. Apparently she was content to +remain without "beaux." Luxury had made her indolent, and her days were +full of petty occupations that distract the spirit. Yet at times she +felt a vague emptiness in her life which she soon found means of filling +in an unsuspected manner. + +Adelle's interest in the art of jewelry had not ceased, but she was away +from Paris this second year so much that her work in Miss Baxter's +studio had been sadly interrupted. After her return from the Nile in +March, however, she developed anew her passion for making pins and +chains and rings, and spent long afternoons in the studio on the Rue de +l'Université. Miss Comstock thought nothing of these absences; indeed, +was relieved to have Adelle so harmlessly and elegantly employed. It is +true that Adelle was working in the studio, but she was working under a +new tutelage. A fellow-townsman of Miss Baxter's had turned up in Paris +that autumn and frequented her studio as the only place where he could +be sure of a welcome, warmth, and an occasional cup of tea. This young +Californian, Archie Davis by name, had found his way to Paris as the +traditional home of the arts, and expected to make himself famous as a +painter. A graduate of the State University, he had been engaged by his +father in vine culture on the sunny slopes of Santa Rosa, but the life +of a California wine-grower had not appealed to him. From the slopes of +Santa Rosa he soon drifted to San Francisco, and there conceived of +himself as a painter. He was a large, vigorous, rather common young +Californian, with reddish hair and a slightly freckled face, who was +really at home on horseback in the wilds of his native land, but at a +loss on the streets of Paris where he found himself frequently without +much money. Viticulture was not paying well at this time in California, +and Archie's father, in cutting down expenses all around, chose to begin +with Archie, who had not done anything to assist the family fortunes. +Archie took it good-naturedly and kept usually cheerful, though seedy +and often hungry. He felt that his was the typical story of the artist, +and if he would only persist, in spite of poverty and discouragement, he +must ultimately become a great painter because of his discomfiture. + +"They can't freeze me out!" was a common saying on his lips, given with +a toss of the head and a smiling face which made an impression upon +women. Also his whistling philosophy, phrased as, "You never know your +luck!" + +Miss Baxter, who had no great confidence in his ability, was kind to +Archie Davis for the sake of California, where she had known his people, +and because a single woman, no matter what her kind or condition may be, +likes to have some man within call. Adelle met him, as she met dozens of +other men, in the easy intimacy of the studio. At first she did not +regard him nor he her. Sadie Paul, who happened to be present at the +time, pronounced him a "bounder," which made no great impression upon +Adelle, any more than had Miss Comstock's "cad" for the banker. It was +not until she had settled in Paris for the spring and was a fairly +regular worker in the studio that Archie began to play a part in her +life. + +It is easy to see why they should draw together. Adelle, thanks to all +the accessories that her money provided, presented a radiant and rare +vision to the young Californian, who knew only women like Cornelia +Baxter--mere workers--or the more vulgar intimacies of the streets and +cafes. Adelle Clark did not resemble even the sturdy California lassies +with whom he had been a favorite on the university campus. With her +motors and gowns and jewels she was the exotic, the privileged goddess +of wealth. To her Archie was at first mere Boy, then Youth. His seedy +state did not disturb her. Though dainty in habit, she had not become +delicate in instinct. And Archie's "freshness" amused her, his casual +familiarity of the sort that exclaimed, while he fingered a bit of her +handiwork,--"Say, girlie, but that is a peach of a ring!... Is it for +Some One now?" + +She laughed at his "freshness," and felt perfectly at home with him. It +was not until after several weeks of this acquaintanceship that the +affair developed, unexpectedly, the opportunity being given. + +One rainy April afternoon when Adelle arrived at the studio she found it +empty except for the presence of Archie Davis, who was dozing on the +divan in front of the small stove. Adelle had come briskly up the stairs +from her car, and the ride through the damp air had given her pale +cheeks some color. She threw back her long coat, revealing a +rose-colored bodice that made her quite pretty. Then the two discovered +themselves alone in the big studio. Adelle had a faint consciousness of +the fact, but supposing that Miss Baxter would return, she tossed aside +her wrap and with a mere "Hello, Archie!" went over to the corner where +on a small bench she was wont to pound and chisel and twist. + +"Say, but you look good enough to eat!" the youth remarked +appreciatively. + +Adelle laughed at the compliment. + +"Why are you always thinking of eating?" she asked. + +"I guess because a good meal don't often come my way," he yawned in +reply. + +Adelle wanted to find out why this was so, but could not frame her +question to her satisfaction. Archie happened to be in one of those rare +moments of melancholy introspection when he doubted even his divine +calling to art. He was really hungry and somewhat cold, and life did not +seem inviting. + +"I don't know," he observed after a time, "as this art game is all it +looks to be from a distance--that is," he added, watching Adelle with +appreciative eyes, "unless you happen to have the dough to support it on +the side." + +"Aren't you painting?" Adelle asked after another pause. + +"Nope!" + +"Why not?" + +"I can't paint when I'm feeling bad." + +"What's the matter?..." + +According to the novelists love-making--"the approach of the sexes"--is +an affair of infinite precision and fine intention; but according to +nature, at least in those less self-conscious circles wherein are found +the vast majority, it is one of the casual and apparently aimless forms +of human contact. For a good hour these two played the ancient game, but +the movements, the articulate ones, at least, were of the last degree of +banality and insignificance--too trivial to recite even here. + +That consciousness of being alone with a young man, which had come over +Adelle on her entrance, developed gradually into a pleasant sense of +intimacy with Archie. Miss Baxter did not come back to make the tea, as +she usually did at this hour. Adelle was acutely aware that the young +man had counted on getting this tea and really needed the nourishment. +She wanted to give him food, to be kind to him. At last she ventured to +suggest,--"Don't you know some place around here where we could get +something to eat? I guess Miss Baxter isn't coming back this afternoon." + +Archie instantly rose to the suggestion: he knew all the restaurants +within the radius of two miles. And so, escorted by the young man, +Adelle was soon entering a discreet small café, where, after infinite +conversation with the proprietor, a tepid concoction was served with +some excellent small cakes. Adelle then had one of the purest joys of +her existence in watching the gusto with which the young Californian +dispatched his tea and cakes even to the last crumbs of the _brioche_. +She wanted to ask him to dine with her somewhere, but did not dare. In +time they went back to the studio, which was now dark and still +deserted, and after puttering for another half-hour Adelle departed in +her car for the Villa Ponitowski. Nothing more momentous than what has +been related happened, but both felt profoundly that something had +happened. Archie, less daring or more skillful than his predecessor, did +not press his advantage,--did not even ask to accompany the girl +home,--and Adelle was left with the happy illusion of a mysterious human +interest. + + + + +XXII + + +At last Adelle had a young man! He was not much of a young man in the +eyes of Miss Comstock or Irene Paul, perhaps, but Adelle did not care +for that. Incipient love awoke in the girl all her latent power of +guile. This time she did not "give herself away" to "Pussy" nor to her +companions, knowing instinctively that her toy would be taken away from +her if it was discovered. For two months she managed almost daily +meetings with Archie Davis without arousing the suspicion of any one, +except possibly Miss Baxter, who did not consider the matter seriously. +When late in May Miss Comstock took it into her head to motor to Italy +for a trip to the Lakes and Venice, Adelle tried her best to escape, but +failed. She departed sulkily, and managed to scrawl a letter and post it +privately almost every day. Each mile that bore her farther from Paris +filled her heart with gloom, and she made mad plans of escape. Her +emotions having at last been stirred dominated her exclusively. She +wanted Archie every moment. She wrote him to meet the party, casually, +somewhere. But Archie, alas, was altogether too poor to follow his lady +about Europe. She would have sent him the money for the journey if she +had known how to do it. Instead, she sent him picture postcards of the +monuments of southern France and northern Italy. + +It was in Venice one languid afternoon in early June, as she was coming +out from Cook's, where she had been to get her mail, that she heard her +name,--"Adelle!... Miss Clark,"--and looking around discovered her lover +leaning against a pillar of the piazza. He had somehow found the means +to follow her, arriving that morning by the third-class train, and had +hung around the piazza, confident that the girl must appear in this +center of civic activity. They at once took to a gondola as the safest +method of privacy. And it was in this gondola, behind the little black +curtains of the _felza_, that Adelle received her second kiss from the +lips of a man. But this time due preparation had been made: the kiss was +neither unexpected nor undesired, and on her part, at least, the embrace +had all the fervor of nature. + +As they floated out upon the still waters of the lagoon beyond the +lonely hospital, with the translucent silver haze of the magic city +hanging above them, Adelle felt that heaven had been thrust unexpectedly +into her arms. This was something far beyond the magic touch of her +lamp, and all the sweeter because it came to her as a personal gift, +independent of her fortune. At least she felt so. It is permissible to +doubt if Archie Davis would have been sufficiently stirred by a +penniless girl to have spent his recent remittance in chasing her to +Italy, but such fine discriminations about young love are cruel. +Sufficient for them both, in these gray and golden hours of the June +afternoon in Venice, that they had come together. In time Adelle learned +just how the miracle had been worked. Father Davis's remittance to take +his son back to the ranch had at last arrived with a rather acid letter +of parental instructions from the wine-grower. Archie with the true +recklessness of youth had torn the letter to shreds and cashed the +draft, purchased a third-class ticket for Venice, and put almost all +that was left of the money into a much-needed suit of clothes. And now? + +Adelle, with an unexpected acuteness, felt that Archie even in his +present rehabilitated condition would be an object of suspicion to the +keen eyes of Pussy Comstock, whom she was beginning to find troublesome. +And she felt quite inadequate to explaining Archie plausibly. So it was +decided between the lovers before the gondola returned to the city that +they should meet clandestinely while the party remained in Venice. It +was the family habit to take prolonged siestas after the second +breakfast, when Adelle would be free to slip forth and join Archie in +the cool recesses of a neighboring church. Other opportunity might +arise. Young love is content with little--or thinks it will be. They +parted with a final kiss, and Adelle thoughtfully paid the boatmen when +they landed at the piazzetta. + +There followed for one week the most exciting and the most taxing +episode in Adelle's small existence. She never had time for naps or odd +moments of indolent nothings. In spite of the languorous heat, she +became alert and schemed all her waking moments how best to make time +for Archie. After a few days she bribed her maid so that she could get +out of the hotel to a gondola after the others had gone to their rooms +for the night. It was all a piece of pure recklessness, and Adelle was +hardly adept enough to have carried it on long without detection. +Fortunately, Miss Comstock was much occupied with some important English +people, for whose sake she had really dragged the party down to Venice. +And for seven days Adelle spent rapturous hours behind the black +curtains of a gondola, varied by hardly less exciting hours of planning +to bring her joy once more to her lips. Then Miss Comstock's English +friends departed and the family set out for the North. They went by the +International and Archie followed more slowly by the _omnibus_. He +overtook the party at Lucerne, but Lucerne is not as well adapted as +Venice for the shy retreats of love. They were content to return to +Paris, where they imagined their liberty would be less circumscribed.... + +It was at Lucerne that Adelle's lover demanded rather brusquely why she +was "so mortal scared of the schoolma'am?" Was she not a young woman of +nineteen and of independent means, without the annoying necessity of +consulting her parents in her choice of a lover? This put it into +Adelle's mind that in the last resort she might defy Pussy and have her +precious one all to herself in untrammeled freedom--in other words, +marry Archie. But she was really afraid of Miss Comstock, and also +doubtful of what her guardian, the trust company, might do to her. For +the present she was content, or nearly so, with what she had, and was +not thinking much about marriage. Her lover must be satisfied with +stolen moments and secret meetings in public places, with an occasional +kiss. + +Marriage was really the only solution, and Archie knew it. If Adelle had +not been possessed of such a very large golden spoon, the whole affair +might have resulted differently and more disastrously. But her fortune +both endangered and protected her. For Archie was no worse and no better +than many a young man of his antecedents and condition. It is, perhaps, +to be doubted if he would have contented himself indefinitely with +innocent love-making, if the girl had not been so far removed from him +in estate.... He meant to marry Adelle when he could, which meant as +soon as it would be safe for her to marry. That might not be for another +two years, until she was mistress of herself in law and of her fortune. + +Shortly after their return to Paris, the "home" at Neuilly was closed +for the summer and the family went to Étretat to occupy a villa that +Adelle had leased previous to her infatuation. There seemed no way of +escaping Étretat without betraying her real reasons. She said something +about staying on in Paris through June to work in the studio, but Pussy +firmly closed the house and shipped the servants to Adelle's villa. If +she only had not chosen Étretat, she wailed to Archie, but some nearer +Normandy watering-place from which she might have motored up to Paris on +one excuse or another and thus had glimpses of her lover! He must come +to Étretat. But Archie was again without funds, living on the bounty of +a hospitable fellow-countryman. After a fortnight of loneliness beside +the sea, Adelle invented an elaborate pretext to return to Paris, but +Miss Comstock insisted on accompanying her and stuck so closely to her +side during three hot days that there was no chance for a sight of +Archie. At last Adelle was sulkily dragged back to Étretat. Then she +asked Miss Baxter to visit her and induced that good-natured young woman +to send Archie a sufficient sum of money, as coming from an admirer of +his art, to enable him to take up his residence in the neighborhood. +Miss Baxter demurred over "giving him such a head," but finally was +persuaded. Archie Davis was probably more surprised than ever before in +his life to learn that one of his loose efforts on canvas had so +impressed an American amateur of the arts that the latter had given Miss +Baxter a five-hundred-dollar check for him and an order for a seascape +from the Brittany shore. Behold Archie established at Pluydell in a +picturesque thatched cottage with his easel and paint-box! Pluydell is +on the road from Étretat to Fécamp, and not over ten minutes' ride in a +swift motor-car from the villa that Adelle occupied. + +The young man painted intermittently during August, and Adelle +discovered a mad passion for driving her new runabout alone, which her +friends naturally voted quite "piggy" in her. If she was occasionally +bullied into taking a companion with her, she drove the car so +recklessly around the roughest country lanes that the friend never asked +for another chance to ride with her. And thus she was free many times to +make the dash over the familiar bit of chalk road, leave her car beneath +the yellow rose-vine that covered the cottage, and walk across the sand +to that particular corner of the wide beach where the young American had +established himself with umbrella and painting tools.... + +What did they do with themselves all the hours that Adelle contrived to +snatch for her Archie? First there was a good deal of kissing. Adelle +grew fonder of this emotional expression as she became accustomed to it, +and sometimes rather wearied Archie with her tenderness. Then there was +a good deal of affectionate fondling, rumpling his red hair, pulling his +clothes and tie into place, criticizing his appearance and health. +Adelle when she was at the doll age never had had a chance for these +things, and now all her woman's instincts began to bloom at once. She +wanted to dress and care for her treasure and deluged him with small +trinkets, many of them made by her own somewhat bungling hands. After +these more intimate desires had been gratified, Adelle might take a +critical look at the canvas over which Archie was dawdling and pronounce +it "pretty" or "odd," or ask what it was meant to be. Then throwing +herself down on the sand or turf and pulling her broad straw hat over +her face she prepared for "talk." "Talk" consisted mostly of question +and answer,-- + +"Where did you go last night?" + +"Casino." + +"Whom did you see at the casino?" + +"Same crowd." + +"Did you play?" + +"Just a little." + +"Did you win?" + +"Yep!" + +"Much?" + +"A couple of plunks," etc. + +Or,-- + +"Did Pussy catch you last night?" + +"No! Never said a word." + +"Who was the man you were walking with?" + +"Oh, that little man with the glasses--he's a friend of Pussy's, +English." + +Perhaps as follows,-- + +"Pussy is talking of our all going to India next winter." + +"India;--what for?" + +"She always wants to go some place." + +"You aren't going to India?" (Lover's alarms.) + +"Of course I shan't!" + +One easily might undervalue Adelle's passion, however, if it were judged +solely by its intellectual quality. The beauty and the wonder of passion +is that it cannot be weighed by any mental scales, its terms are not +transferable. Adelle's share of the universal mystery, in spite of the +banality of its expression, may have been as great as any woman's who +ever lived. At least it filled her being and swept her to unexpected +heights of feeling and power. + +She was completely happy at this time, but Archie after the first days +was restless and somewhat bored. There were long periods when he could +neither make love nor paint, and he took to spending his idle evenings +at the Casino, which was not good for his slender purse. As the weeks +passed and their ruses seemed successful, the two grew more reckless and +indulged in flying expeditions about the country roads in Adelle's +little car. One evening, as they were returning in the sunset glow from +a long jaunt down the coast, Adelle at the wheel and Archie's arm +encircling her waist, they came plump upon Irene Paul and Pussy Comstock +in a hired motor. Adelle stiffened and threw on high speed. They dashed +past in a whirl of dust, but the Paul girl's eyes met Adelle's. She felt +sure of Irene, and hoped that Pussy had not recognized them. But they +must be more careful in the future. If Pussy found out--well, they must +"do something." This time she shouldn't be deprived of Archie. Never! + +Adelle dressed slowly, revolving in her mind what she should say to +Irene, who had called Archie a "bounder," and descended to the salon +where the family were waiting for her. Nothing was said until they were +seated at the dinner-table. Irene obstinately kept her eyes away and +Adelle felt troubled. Suddenly Miss Comstock, looking across the table +with her penetrating smile, asked sweetly,--"Don't you find it difficult +to drive as you were this afternoon, Adelle?" + +Like all clumsy persons Adelle lied and lied badly. She had not been on +the road since she took Eveline to the Casino. Pussy must have been +mistaken. Miss Comstock did not press the point, but Irene Paul looked +at Adelle and smiled wickedly. Adelle knew that she had been betrayed +and her heart sank. Presently Miss Comstock began to talk about the +red-haired artist who was living in a picturesque cottage out on the +Pluydell road. A very ordinary young American, she observed cuttingly. +Had the girls seen him sketching? Adelle knew that the blood was +mounting to her pale face, and she bent her head over her food. The end +had come. + +That evening they went to the Casino to hear the music, and by chance +Archie was there, too, and threw self-conscious glances towards their +table. Between the soothing strains of Franz Lehr, Pussy whispered into +Adelle's ear,-- + +"Why don't you bow to your young friend? He looks as if he wanted to +join us." + +Adelle gazed at her tormentor pitifully, but said nothing. The rest of +the evening she sat in cold misery trying to think what might happen, +resolved that in any case the worst should not happen: she would not +lose her Archie. She returned to the villa in dumb pain to await in her +room the expected visit. She did not even undress, preferring to be +ready for instant action. Soon there was a knock and Pussy entered. She +was in her dressing-gown and looked formidable and unlovely to the girl. + +"Adelle," she said with a sneer, sitting down before the fire, "I +thought you knew too much to do this sort of thing." + +Adelle was silent. + +"And such a common bounder, too!" + +It was Irene Paul's opprobrious epithet, which Adelle was beginning to +comprehend. She winced, but made no reply. + +"You might easily get yourself into serious trouble, my dear, with a man +like that." + +Adelle cowered under the stings of her lash and said nothing. + +"I shall write the young man to-morrow that if he wants to see you he +had better pay his visits here," she said tolerantly. "This is your +house--you can see him here, you know. There are ways and ways of doing +such things, my dear." + +With a yawn and a hateful smile Pussy departed. + +It was over, and she was alive. At first Adelle felt relieved until she +pondered what it meant. Archie would be exposed to the keen shafts of +Pussy's contempt and to the girls' titters and snubs. And probably there +would be no chance at all for the kissing and all the rest. It was +Pussy's clever way of effectually disposing of Archie. She understood +that. + +Adelle stayed awake for several hours, a most unusual occurrence, +revolving matters in her confused mind. When she could stand it no +longer she got up, dressed herself carefully in her motoring dress, and +stole downstairs through the silent house, out to the garage which was +at the other end of the garden. Eveline's little Pomeranian squeaked +once, but did not arouse the household. Adelle cranked her car +feverishly and succeeded at last, after much effort, in starting the +engine and in pushing back the garage door. It was by far the most +desperate step in life she had ever taken, and she felt ready to faint. +She clambered into the car and released the clutch, more dead than +alive, as she thought. With a leap and a whir she was down the road to +Archie's cottage. + + + + +XXIII + + +Safely there she felt more composed. Stopping her engine she got out and +walked to the window of the room on the ground floor that she knew the +young Californian occupied. It was open. Leaning through the rose-vine +she called faintly,--"Archie! Archie!" But the young painter slept +solidly, and she was forced to take a stick and poke the bunch of +bed-clothes in the corner before she could arouse the sleeping Archie. +When he came to the window, she exclaimed,-- + +"Some thing awful has happened, Archie!" + +"What's the row?" + +"We're found out. Pussy knows and the girls. Irene told 'em!" + +That apparently did not seem to Archie the ultimate catastrophe that it +did to her. He stood in his pajamas beside the window, ungallantly +yawning and rubbing his eyes. + +"Well," he observed, "what are you going to do about it?" + +Doubtless to his masculine good sense it seemed merely adding folly to +folly thus to run away from the villa at midnight and expose them to +further trouble. + +Adelle did not argue nor explain. + +"Put your clothes on," she said, with considerable decision, "and come +out to the car." + +Thereupon she went back to the car, cranked it afresh, and waited for +him to appear. He came out of the rose-covered window, after a +reasonable time, and climbed in beside the girl. She seemed to expect +it, and there was not anything else to do. Adelle threw in the clutch +and started at a lively pace, turning into the broad highroad which ran +in a straight line southwards towards the French capital. + +"What are you going to do?" Archie asked, now seriously awake and +somewhat disturbed. + +"I'm never going back to that place again," the girl flamed resolutely. +"Never!" + +As if to emphasize a vow she threw one arm around her lover's neck and +drew his face to hers so that she could kiss it,--a maneuver she +executed at some risk to their safety. "Oh, Archie, I love you so--I +can't give you up!" she whispered by way of explanation. + +He returned her kiss with good will, though mentally preoccupied, and +said, "Of course not, dearest!" and continued to hold her while she +steered the car, which was traveling at a lively rate along the empty +_route nationale_ in the direction of Paris. And thus they proceeded for +mile after mile or rather ten kilometres after ten kilometres. Adelle +and the car seemed to be inspired by the same energy and will. Archie +realized that they were going rapidly to Paris and felt rather +frightened at first. It was one thing to make love to an heiress not yet +of age, but another to elope with her across France at night. Archie was +not sure, but he thought there might be legal complications in the way +of immediate matrimony. He might be getting himself in for a +thoroughgoing scrape, which was not much to his liking. But there seemed +no way of stopping Adelle or the car. + +For Adelle had no doubts. It was the greatest night of her life. She +drove the car recklessly, but splendidly. Every now and then she would +turn her pale face to her lover and say peremptorily,--"Kiss me, +Archie!"--and Archie dutifully gave the kiss, which seemed to be all the +stimulant she needed. + +The wild rush through the night beside her lover appeased something +within her. It answered her craving for romance, newly awakened, for +daring and desperation and achievement of bliss. She felt exalted, proud +of herself, as if she were vindicating her claim to character. +To-morrow, when Pussy Comstock and the girls found that she had gone, +they would know that she was no weak fool. And by that time, of course, +it would all be over--irrevocable. + +"You'll marry me as soon as we get there," she remarked once to Archie +in exactly the same tone as she said, "Kiss me, Archie." The young man +falteringly replied,--"Of course, if we can." + +"Of course we can! Why not?" Adelle replied firmly. "Americans can marry +any time." + +She felt sure that speedy marriage was an inalienable right that went +with American citizenship together with the privilege of getting +divorced whenever one cared to. Archie was by no means so sure of this +point, but he thought it well not to discuss it until they both had more +exact information. So the car bowled along through the night at a good +forty miles an hour. + +Long before they reached Paris the sun had come up out of the hot +meadows along the road and they were forced to stop at Chartres for +_petrol_ and breakfast. Adelle wanted to cut the breakfast to a bowl of +hot coffee, but Archie firmly insisted that they must be braced with +food for the ordeal before them. She yielded to Archie and reluctantly +descended from her seat, stiff with fatigue but elated. After breakfast +Archie suggested that they should leave the car at the inn and proceed +to Paris conventionally by train. But Adelle would not give up one +kilometre of her great dash for liberty and Archie. Nor would she +consider his going on by train to make arrangements for the marriage. + +So they resumed their rapid flight, but mishaps with tires began, and it +was noon before they entered the Porte Maillot. As they drove past the +Villa Ponitowski, Adelle looked furtively up at the shutters as if she +expected to see Pussy's severe face lurking there. She guided the +machine to the Rue de l'Université and stopped beneath Miss Baxter's +studio windows. If Archie had proposed it, she would have gone at once +to a hotel with him and registered, but he prudently suggested the +studio, where he hoped to find Cornelia Baxter. But the sculptress had +gone away somewhere, and the big room was empty--also hot and dusty. +They sat down before the fireless stove and looked at each other. + +Adelle was very tired and on the verge of hysterical tears. Archie had +not been very efficient in the tire trouble. She felt that now, at any +rate, he should take hold of their situation and manage. But Archie +seemed helpless, was not at home in the situation. (If Adelle had had +more experience she might have been chilled even now by his conduct and +managed her life differently.) + +"I'm so tired," she moaned, throwing herself down on the divan. "Don't +you love me, Archie?" + +Of course he did, but he did not offer to embrace her, and she was +obliged to go over to where he sat in a wilted attitude and embrace him. + +"You are mine now for always," she said, almost solemnly. + +"Yes," he admitted, as if he did not exactly like the form in which the +sentiment had been expressed. + +"What are we going to do?" + +"Get some food first. I'm starved, aren't you?" + +Adelle, weary as she was, might not consider food as of the first +importance in this crisis, but recognizing Archie's greater feebleness, +she yielded to his desire for refreshment. So they drove to Foyot's and +consumed two hours more in lunching delectably. Archie seemed somewhat +aimless after _dejeuner_, perhaps he did not know just how to attack his +formidable problem. It was Adelle who suggested that they drive to her +banker's and inquire how to get married in American fashion in France. +Adelle felt that bankers knew everything. It was a very elegant and +bewildered young Frenchman whom they found alone in this vacation season +at the bank which Adelle used. After he understood what they wanted he +directed them to their consul. Adelle knew the American consulate +because she had been there to sign papers, and turned the car into the +Avenue de l'Opéra with renewed hope. They stopped before the building +from which the American flag was languidly floating and mounted the +stairs to the offices. In the further room, beyond the assortment of +deadbeats that own allegiance to the great American nation, was a little +Irish clerk, who in the absence of the consul and his chief assistant +held up the dignity of the United States. He was a political appointee +from the great State of Illinois, and after an apprenticeship in the +City Hall of Chicago was much more familiar with hasty matrimony than +either of the two flustered young persons who demanded his advice. To +Adelle's blunt salutation, "We want to get married, please!" and then, +as if not sufficiently impressive,--"Now--right off!" he replied +agreeably, not taking the time to remove the cigarette from his +mouth,--"Sure! That's easy." + +And he made it easy for them. He found the necessary blank forms in an +office desk and filled them out according to the information the couple +gave him. Adelle in deference to Archie's scruples stretched a point and +made herself of age. When the formalities had been completed, the young +Irishman called in from the outer office one of the hangers-on who +happened to be a seedy minister of the gospel and who looked as if he +were in Paris by mistake. + +Thus almost before Archie knew it he had taken to himself Adelle Clark +as wife, the ceremony being witnessed by the consular clerk,--Morris +McBride of Chicago,--and an ex-sailor on his way back to New York of the +name of Harrington. Adelle distributed the remaining pieces of gold in +her purse in the way of _pour-boires_, and then the two found themselves +in the runabout on the Avenue de l'Opéra--married. + +"I didn't know it could be done so easily," Archie observed +breathlessly. + +"Anything can be done when you want to, if you have the money," Adelle +replied, evincing how thoroughly she had mastered the philosophy of the +magic lamp. + +"And what shall we do now?" her husband inquired. + +(They say that in marriage the first trivial events are significant of +what will happen thereafter, like straws upon the stream betraying which +way the current flows. Possibly Archie's question indicates the quality +of this marriage, also the fact that presently Adelle set their course.) + +The consular clerk, judging that his compatriots were affluent, had +hinted at the propriety of a wedding feast at the Café de Paris; but +Adelle, who hated dinners, vetoed the suggestion. Archie was for +returning unsentimentally to the empty studio for their wedding night, +as they were short of cash and it was after banking hours. But Adelle +had not dashed madly across half of France in the night to spend the +first hours of her honeymoon in a dusty, hot studio on the Rue de +l'Université. She turned the car into the great Avenue and swept on past +the Arch, through the Bois, out into the open country. Ultimately the +lack of _petrol_ stopped them at a little wayside _cabaret_ some miles +outside of the fortifications, where, too exhausted to proceed farther, +they decided to spend the night. + + + + +XXIV + + +Fortunately Adelle was not of an imaginative habit of mind. She rarely +envisaged with keenness anything of the future, and thus escaped many of +the perplexities and annoyances of life, with some of its pleasures. +Hers was always a single road,--from desire to the gratification of +desire,--as it had been with Archie. Thus far her nature had developed +few disturbing impulses, which accounts for the simple, not to say dull, +character of her story up to the present. Even the supreme desire of +woman's heart had come to her in a commonplace way and had been +fulfilled precipitately, as the desires of the untutored usually are, +but uncomplexly. As she fondly contemplated her husband the next +morning, she did not realize that in one swift day she had accomplished +the main drama of her existence and henceforth must be content with the +humdrum course of life. Archie was scarcely more concerned with mental +complexities. + +"Won't Pussy Comstock be jarred!" was about the depth of his reaction to +the momentous step they had taken. + +Adelle smiled a wary smile in answer: she distinctly enjoyed having both +outwitted Pussy and escaped the bother of opposition to her desires and +the shafts of ridicule. She stroked her master's bright red hair and +kissed him again. They felt very well content with themselves this +morning. Archie certainly ought to have congratulated himself. He had a +young wife, who loved him to distraction and who was extremely +well-to-do, and, moreover, had no inconvenient relatives to "cut up +ugly" over her imprudent step. There was only a trust company to reckon +with, and what can a trust company do when it feels fussed and +aggrieved?... + +After a leisurely breakfast and more love-making under the plane trees +in the little garden behind the inn, the pair had to reckon with fact. +They must get some money at once: they had only enough loose silver in +their two purses to pay the modest charges at the _cabaret_ and buy a +litre or two of _petrol_ to get them to Paris. Yet they dallied on in +the way of young love and drove up to the bank just before it closed. +When Adelle in her nonchalant manner asked the young man at the window +to give her five thousand francs in notes, she received a great +shock--the worst shock of her life. The young cashier, who had paid out +to her through the little brass _guichet_ many tens of thousands of +pretty white notes and gold-pieces, informed her that he could not give +her any money. It developed, under a storm of exclamation and protest, +that only that noon the bankers had received a cablegram from their +correspondent in America curtly directing them not to cash further +drafts drawn by Miss Clark against the Washington Trust Company. The +magic lamp had gone out most inopportunely! In vain Adelle expostulated, +declared there was a mistake, even introduced to the cashier "my +husband," who looked uncomfortable, but tried to assume authority and +demanded reasons for the bank's treatment of his wife. All the reason +lay in that brief cablegram. The couple at last turned dejectedly into +the street and again got into Adelle's runabout, which obviously was in +need of more _petrol_. + +"It's Pussy," Adelle pronounced with divination. + +"If it is, she's got in her fine work fast." + +The two might reflect sadly that if they had been prudent, they would +not have spent all that morning in love-making, having a lifetime for +that, but would have taken prompt measures to secure funds as soon as +the bank opened. Of course, it had never occurred to either of them that +trouble would fall in just this way. + +And now what was to be done? Adelle felt that they should drive at once +to the Villa Ponitowski, secure her clothes and jewelry, and make Pussy, +who she had no doubt was there, bank them until the embargo on her +drafts was raised. But neither had what Archie called "the nerve" to do +this. So they went for refuge to the only place they knew, Miss Baxter's +studio. + +There they found Miss Comstock. She had come to Paris, of course, by the +first train the day before, arriving at the studio shortly after they +had left in search of food. She had vibrated between the studio and the +Neuilly villa ever since, sure that when Adelle was short of funds she +would go home to roost. And Pussy had taken immediate measures to cut +off funds by cabling to the trust company the exact facts of Adelle's +disappearance in company with the Californian. She received them +amiably. + +"My dear Adelle," she began, "you should not be so eccentric. You gave +us all a shock!... I was coming up to Paris and would have been glad to +motor up with you and--er--Mr. Davis, I believe." There was a deadly +pause while she scrutinized the guilty couple through her glasses, as if +she were determining the exact extent of the mischief already done. She +looked disgustedly over the dusty studio and observed,--"It's not a +sweet place for--er--love-making is it? Why didn't you go to the Villa, +my dear, and let Marie look after you?" + +Archie laughed inanely. Adelle felt that she could not stand more of +this feline fooling. She said bluntly,-- + +"We're married." + +"Married! So soon! How--er--nice!" Pussy commented. + +"Yes, we're married, Miss Comstock," Archie added lamely, mopping his +brow. + +"You don't mean that?" Miss Comstock said quickly, her tone changing. + +Adelle nodded. + +"Then it is really a serious matter." + +Adelle's blood froze. + +"I can't believe you have been such a fool," she said to the girl. "Or +you such a scamp," she turned upon the frightened youth. + +It seemed to Adelle that Pussy would have condoned anything or +everything except that fatal visit to the consulate. Pussy's morals, she +knew, were of the strictly serviceable sort, and she was gladder than +ever that she had prodded Archie into having the ceremony performed at +once. Now Pussy could do nothing but scold. + +But Miss Comstock accepted only the inevitable, and she was not yet +convinced that the visit to the consulate and the ceremony there +constituted an inevitable marriage. She pleaded with Adelle to leave her +so-called husband and come back with her to the Neuilly villa "until the +matter could be straightened out, and an announcement of the marriage +made to the world," as she was wily enough to put it. But Adelle was +adamant. Archie, to whom the woman next appealed, was more yielding. She +succeeded in frightening him, talking about the dangers of French laws +that had to do with minors. Of course they had lied about Adelle's age, +and there were all sorts of complications besides the scandal, which was +perfectly needless in any case. And Miss Comstock assured them that the +trust company would probably take every step to annul the marriage. +There was a very hard road ahead of them if they persisted in their +idiotic course. Finally she even suggested that Archie might return to +the Villa with them until his status could be determined. Adelle, +however, feared Pussy's cleverness and would not stir from the studio. +All through the protracted interview in this crisis, when her heart's +desire was threatened, Adelle displayed surprising courage and +steadfastness of purpose. Her courage naturally was an egotistic +courage: it amounted in sum to this--nobody should take away her toy +from her this time. And finally Miss Comstock retired from the scene +defeated and somewhat venomous. + +"I hope, my dear," she sent as a parting shot, "that Mr. Davis can give +you the comforts you are used to. I think it may be extremely difficult +for you to use your own money for the present." + +Adelle seemed quite indifferent to the comforts she had been used to, +although she well knew that there was not a five-franc piece in the +studio, when Miss Comstock departed to cable the trust company the +results of her interview. The trust company, it may be said in passing, +was much upset over the news, and after consultation decided to send the +third vice-president across the ocean to examine into the matter, Mr. +Ashly Crane having declined to undertake the delicate mission. Meantime +they did not rescind their instructions to their Paris correspondent, +and so for some days to come the young people were reduced to absurd +straits for the want of money. + + * * * * * + +After Pussy had gone, with her threat, Adelle burst into tears and +accused Archie of not supporting her in this battle. Was she not giving +up everything for him?--etc. Archie had his first lesson in being the +husband of an heiress, even a much-petted husband. It was finally +learned, and kisses were exchanged. Then they thought to appease their +hunger, which by this time was acute, and debated how this was to be +done. Adelle was confident that on the morrow she could sell what +jewelry she had with her for enough to support them pleasantly until she +could make it right with the trust company and get hold of her lamp +again. For this evening she borrowed five francs from the suspicious and +unwilling concierge, and with the money Archie went forth to the corner +and brought back a dubious mess of cold food and a bottle of poor wine, +which they consumed in the dark studio, then went to sleep upon the +divan in each other's arms like a couple of romance. Rather late in the +day on the morrow Adelle sallied out in a cab to the Rue de la Paix +confident that she would return with much gold. She found naturally that +her own handiwork was unsalable at any price, and that the fashionable +shops where she had dealt prodigally would not advance her a cent even +upon their own wares. Pussy, she realized, had shut off also this avenue +to ease! They were obliged to induce the concierge's wife to pledge at +the pawnshop the more marketable things Adelle had with her. With the +few francs thus derived they managed to picnic in the studio for the +next week. They became acquainted with busses and the _batteau mouche_ +and other lowly forms of transportation and amusement, but spent most of +their time in the studio, love-making, of which Adelle did not weary. +Archie was used to the devices of a short purse and Adelle thought it +all a great lark for love's sake. Besides, it must end soon, and the +high noon of prosperity return with the possession of her precious lamp. +To hasten that event she wrote a rather peremptory note to the +Washington Trust Company, notifying them of her change of name and +complaining of the mistake they had made in cutting off her drafts. It +would take a fortnight at the most to get a reply, and then all would be +right. Archie did not feel so confident. + + + + +XXV + + +Prosperity did not return as completely as Adelle expected, nor as +easily. Mr. Solomon Smith, the vice-president of the trust company, +arrived in Paris in due course on the seventh day and fell naturally +first into the hands of Miss Comstock. For Pussy, realizing to the full +the consequences of this situation to herself as an exploiter of rich +American girls from the very best families, had moved her family back to +the Villa Ponitowski and had set the stage demurely and convincingly for +the arrival of the trust company's emissary. She impressed Mr. Smith +easily as an intelligent and prudent woman, who was terribly concerned +over Adelle's false step, and quite blameless in the affair. + +"Such an unfortunate accident," she explained to him, "from every point +of view:--think of my dear girls, the example to them!... And such +deceit,--one would not have expected it of the girl, I must say!... I +know nothing whatever about the young man, except that he comes from the +West--from California. One of my girls--a daughter of Hermann Paul, the +rich San Francisco railroad man, you know--tells me that this Davis +fellow is of most ordinary people, what is called a 'bounder,' you know. +Adelle naturally did not meet him here, but at the studio of one of her +friends. I knew nothing whatever about it until just before the +elopement--the very day before, in fact, when I surprised them together +in a motor-car. I spoke to the girl that night, of course, kindly but +severely. I had no idea she could do such a thing! It must have been in +her mind a long time. The girl showed great powers of duplicity, all the +trickiness of a parvenue, to be quite frank. I never had a girl of such +low tastes, I may say;--all my girls are from the very best families, +most carefully selected." + +Thus Miss Comstock skillfully contrived to throw the responsibility for +Adelle's misstep upon her birth and upon the trust company which had +brought her up. In doing this she but confirmed Mr. Smith in his opinion +that the guardianship of minor girls was not a branch of the business +that the Washington Trust Company should undertake. They lacked the +proper facilities, as he would express it, and it was more of a nuisance +than it was worth. He had had a tempestuous September passage across the +ocean and dreaded the return voyage. + +Having won a vantage-point Miss Comstock next proceeded to give a +piquant account of Mr. Ashly Crane's dealings with the girl, who in a +way had been his special charge. + +"Fortunately I nipped that affair in the bud," she said, "although, as +it turned out, I suppose he might have been less objectionable than the +fellow she took. I am afraid that Mr. Crane lowered the girl's ideals of +manhood and thus paved the way for her fall," she added gravely. + +Mr. Smith listened to the tale of Mr. Crane's futile attempt in rising +astonishment and wrath. He was himself a married man with a family of +growing daughters. He made a mental note of Mr. Crane's conduct, which +ultimately terminated that promising young banker's career in finance +with the trust company. + +"Where is the girl?" he asked at the end, sighing. "I must see her, I +suppose, though it seems too late to do anything now." + +Pussy had sagely taken account of Mr. Solomon Smith's character and +concluded that the banker was the sort of middle-class American who +might insist upon the young couple's being married all over again in due +form if he suspected anything irregular, and so to save bother all +around she assured him that she herself had made inquiry at the +consulate and found that the marriage performed there was binding +enough,--"unless the trust company wished to intervene as guardian of +the minor and contest its validity on the ground of misrepresentation of +Adelle's age," which, of course, must involve considerable scandal. + +"It would be very unpleasant, indeed," she said meaningly. + +The banker, who hated all publicity for himself and for his institution, +hastened to say that he had no idea of taking such action; merely wished +to be sure that the girl was really married and that her children, if +any came to her, would be born in lawful wedlock. Miss Comstock hid a +smile and set his mind at rest on that point. + +(One sequel of this affair, by the way, was the prompt conclusion of Mr. +Morris McBride's diplomatic career: he returned presently to a patient +fatherland to renew in Cook County, Illinois, his services to the +Republican Party.) + +After a delectable luncheon at Miss Comstock's, Mr. Smith drove alone +from the Neuilly villa to Miss Baxter's studio, where he found the young +couple somewhat in négligé, recovering from one of the concierge's +indigestible repasts, funds now running too low to permit them to +indulge in restaurant life. The untidy studio and the disheveled couple +themselves made a very bad impression upon the trust company's officer, +who loathed from the depths of his orderly soul all slatternness and +especially "bohemian art." He examined the young husband through his +horn-bowed glasses so sternly that Archie slunk into the darkest corner +of the studio and remained there during the banker's visit, which he +left to Adelle to bear. Mr. Smith could not be harsh with the young +bride, no matter how foolish and wrong-headed he thought her. + +"Mrs.--er--Davis," he began, going straight to the point like a business +man, "I am informed that you are regularly married. It might be possible +to have such a marriage as you have chosen to make set aside on the +ground that you are a minor--still a ward of an American court--and +misrepresented your age to the consular officer." + +Adelle opened her gray eyes in consternation. Were they, after all, +thinking of taking Archie from her? But she was reassured by the trust +officer's next words. + +"Your guardians, however, will in all likelihood not take any such +steps--I shall not recommend it. Although you yet lack eighteen months +of being legally of age, and of course ought not to have married without +our consent, nevertheless you are of an age when many young women assume +the responsibilities of marriage. The facts being what they are,"--he +paused to look around disgustedly at the evidences of the picnicking +_mênage_,--"I see no use in our interfering now in this unfortunate +affair." + +Adelle's pale face brightened. He was a good old sort, she thought, and +wasn't going to make trouble, after all,--merely lecture them a bit, and +she composed her face properly to receive his scolding. It came, but it +was not very bad, at least Adelle did not feel its sting. + +"It is also needless for me to pain you," he began, "by telling you what +I--what every mature person--must think of your rash step. Its +consequences upon your own future life will probably manifest themselves +only too soon. For a young girl like you, carefully brought up under the +best educational influences, and still in the charge of +a--er--companion,--" Adelle smiled demurely at Mr. Smith's difficulty in +finding the right word to describe Pussy Comstock,--"to deceive the kind +watchfulness, the confidence reposed in you, and carry on clandestine +relations"--What's that? thought Adelle--"with the first young fellow +who presents himself, indicates a serious lack on your part of something +that every woman should have to--er--to cope with life successfully," he +concluded, letting her down at the end softly. + +This long sentence, by the way, was an interesting composite of several +"forms" that Mr. Smith used frequently on different occasions. It did +not impress Adelle as it should. She felt, as a matter of fact, that in +deceiving Pussy, she had merely pitted her feeble will and intelligence +against a much stronger one of an experienced woman, who was none too +scrupulous in her own methods. Also that in acting as she had in running +away with Archie, she had displayed the first real gleam of character in +her whole life. But she could not put these things into words. So she +let Mr. Smith continue without protest, which was the best way. + +"As for the husband you have chosen, I know nothing about him of course. +I can only say that men of standing have slight regard for any man who +takes advantage of the weakness and folly of a school-girl, especially +when he has everything to gain financially from her and nothing to +give." + +Archie winced at this truthful statement and nervously dropped a palette +with which he had been fussing. It clattered to the floor and broke, +setting the nerves of all three on edge. + +"Such a man," Mr. Smith proceeded in his most acid tones, glaring at +Archie, "is properly called an adventurer, and rarely if ever proves to +have character enough to retain the respect of the woman he has wheedled +into sacrificing herself." + +This was a bit unfair, for Archie had been wheedled rather than wheedled +Adelle. Moreover, the world is full, as Mr. Smith must surely know, of +young men who have committed matrimony with girls financially to their +advantage and who have retained not only their own self-respect, but won +the admiration of their acquaintances into the bargain for their skill +and good luck. + +And Adelle resented the slur for Archie even more than the young man +did. She felt vaguely that Archie ought to do something to demonstrate +that he was not a worthless character, possibly kick Mr. Smith out of +the studio, at least protest at being called a "cad" and "adventurer." +But Archie took it all meekly and busied himself with recovering the +pieces of the broken palette from the floor. Mr. Smith did not press his +dialectic advantage; in other words, did not specifically hit Archie +again. Perhaps a human compunction, for the sake of the young girl who +had just rashly hazarded her life's happiness with the young man, +restrained him. He turned instead again to Adelle in a gentler tone. + +"I feel sincerely sorry for you, Mrs. Davis. A young woman in your +position, without family or near friends to shield her, is exposed to +all the evil selfishness of the world. You have succumbed, I am afraid, +to a delusion, although the trust company did its best to supply your +lack of natural protectors, to shield you." + +He reflected, perhaps, that the trust company had been, even from the +easy American standard, a rather negligent parent, chiefly concerned +with its ward's fortune, and hastened to say defensively,--"We placed +you with an excellent woman,"--Adelle had placed herself, but it made no +difference,--"one in whom we have every confidence not only as a +teacher, but also as a friend and guide." Even Adelle smiled broadly at +this description of Pussy. "But all our care has been in vain: you have +put us now where we cannot help you further!" + +Adelle lowered her eyes, but felt happier--the sermon was coming to an +end. + +"It is useless for me to continue, however. It rests with you alone, +with you and your husband,"--he pronounced the term with infinite +scorn,--"to prove that your rash choice is not what it seems,--the end +of your career, the end of your happiness. And it rests with you, sir," +he added severely, looking over at Archie, "to prove that you are man +enough to be a kind husband to the girl who has married you under such +circumstances. I sincerely hope that your future will be better than +your act promises!" + +Here was another opening for the kick, but Archie failed to grasp it. He +took his cue from Adelle and maintained a sulky silence. + +"There remains but one more thing for me to speak of, Mrs. Davis, and +that is your property, of which the trust company must continue guardian +for nearly two years more until you become of age and the company is +released from its guardianship by the court." + +The couple pricked up their ears with relief at the mention of property. + +"You have shown yourself to be prodigal in expenditure," Mr. Smith +remarked, pulling from his pocket a card with a list of figures. "This +past year you drew very nearly if not quite thirty-eight thousand +dollars,--altogether too much money, I should say, for a young woman to +spend safely." + +"It was the cars and the Nile trip," Adelle murmured. + +"Fortunately it happens to be well within the income of your estate, and +so I suppose I cannot raise objections except upon moral grounds. It is +too much money for any woman to spend wisely!" + +Mr. Smith apparently had positive convictions on this subject. Adelle +did not seem to care what he thought a woman could spend wisely. + +"And so I propose that for the remainder of the time while you are +nominally under our guardianship the trust company shall allow you--" He +paused as if debating the figure with himself, and Archie unconsciously +walked a couple of steps nearer the others. Alas! It drew Mr. Smith's +attention from Adelle, for whom he was sorry, to the cause, as he +thought, of her misfortune. Whatever had been in his mind he said +curtly, looking at Archie, "Five thousand dollars a year, to be paid in +quarterly installments on your personal order, Mrs. Davis." + +The young people looked at him aghast. As a matter of fact, five +thousand dollars a year was not penury, at least to Archie, who had +rarely seen a clear twelve hundred from January to January. Even Adelle, +after her training in the Church Street house, might at a pinch hold +herself in for eighteen months, all the more as after that period of +probation she could not be prevented by the trust company from indulging +herself to the full extent of her income. Adelle, indeed, who was still +somewhat vague about the limitations and possibilities of money, was not +as much annoyed as Archie. But she knew that she was being punished for +her conduct in running away with Archie by this disagreeable old man, +and she resented punishment as a child might resent it. Mr. Smith, +observing the signs of discontent with his announcement, remarked with +increased decision and satisfaction:-- + +"I am sure that will be best for both of you. Especially for you, Mrs. +Davis! It will give you an opportunity to find out how much you care for +each other, without the luxuries that wealth brings. And it will protect +you, my dear, from--er--the indiscretions of a young husband, who has +not been accustomed to the use of much money, I gather." + +Undoubtedly Mr. Smith thought he was acting wisely towards them,--"Just +as I would if it had been my own daughter," according to his report to +President West. As a matter of fact, he acted precisely as parents are +only too prone to act, with one third desire for the best interests of +the parties concerned and two thirds desire to have them punished for +their folly. The punitive motive was large in Mr. Smith's decision to +put the couple on short rations as long as he had the power to do so. He +would have liked to tie up Adelle's fortune indefinitely, so that the +young scamp who had married her for her money (as he was convinced) +might get as little of it as possible. Unfortunately the trust company +had no control after Adelle's twenty-first birthday, unless by that time +experience should teach her the wisdom of voluntarily putting her +fortune beyond her husband's reach; but, at any rate, for the next few +months it could arbitrarily and tyrannically disappoint his hungry +appetite, and that is what Mr. Smith meant to do. His psychology, +unfortunately, was faulty. It was perhaps the poorest way of securing +Adelle's happiness in the end, as he might have foreseen if he had been +less conscientious and more human.... + +Shortly after delivering his blow, Mr. Smith took his hat and left the +studio without shaking hands with Archie, although he smiled frostily on +the trust company's ward and "hoped all would go well with her in her +new life." All the way back to his hotel he congratulated himself for +his dispatch, finesse, eloquence, and wisdom in handling a deplorable +and difficult situation. Yet it is hard to see just what he had +accomplished by crossing the ocean. He washed his hands of "the Clark +girl" before he left Paris for his return voyage, and, like so many +persons with whom the young heiress had dealings, never again actively +entered her life. + + + + +XXVI + + +When the studio door closed upon the emissary of the trust company, the +young couple looked at each other a little ruefully. Archie kicked over +a chair or two and expressed himself volubly, now that it was safe, upon +the priggishness and meanness of such folks as Mr. Solomon Smith. Adelle +might wish that he had expressed himself in these vigorous terms +earlier, when there could have been discussion and a chance of modifying +Mr. Smith's decision. But she realized how raw he was feeling from the +old gentleman's contempt and sweetly put her arms around her husband's +strong shoulders and kissed him tenderly. + +"It won't be so bad, Archie," she said hopefully. "We'll get on somehow, +I expect, and it isn't forever--not two years." She could recall much +graver crises in life than being compelled to live for eighteen months +with an adored companion on seventy-five hundred dollars, and people +somehow survived them. + +"It isn't just the money," Archie protested, a little shamed, but still +grumpy. "It's his rotten talk. A feller doesn't like being called all +sorts of names." + +"Well, he's gone now and he won't come back," Adelle remarked +soothingly, with another effort to caress her young lord into amiability +and resignation to fate. That proved more difficult than usual: Archie +felt the sting of the older man's taunts, especially the horrid word +"adventurer" rankled in his subconsciousness. He saw himself reflected +in the opinion of other men,--at least of stodgy, middle-aged men like +Mr. Smith, who worked hard for what they got and had families,--and it +ruffled him seriously. He was not in a happy temper otherwise. A +fortnight of conjugal picnicking in the perpetual society of Adelle, +whose conversational powers were limited, had chafed him. So Adelle had +her first experience in that woman's pathetic task of endeavoring to +soothe and harmonize the disturbed soul of her lord, who, she is aware, +has only himself to blame for his state of spiritual discomfiture. But +Adelle, like all her sisters who love, since the world began, rose nobly +to her part. + +Finally, they sallied forth and with some money that Adelle had +contrived to extract, probably from the sale of another piece of real +jewelry, they consoled themselves with an elaborate dinner at a famous +restaurant in the Champs Élysées, and as it was a warm evening drove +afterwards out to the Bois. The next day Adelle ventured forth to the +bankers alone, and secured the first quarterly installment of the funds +left there to her account by the prim Mr. Smith. With the notes and gold +she hastened back to Archie, and the couple began to plan seriously for +the future. + +It is not my purpose to follow the pair in their erratic course during +the next eighteen months, although it had its ludicrous as well as +pathetic steps. That they were not ready for any sort of matrimonial +partnership, is of course obvious, but as they shared their disability +with a goodly proportion of young married people the world over, it does +not count. Adelle, being the woman, learned her lesson more quickly than +Archie, and under conceivable circumstances might have made as much of a +success with her rash choice, in spite of Mr. Smith's prophecies, as +many others make with their more prudently premeditated ones. She wanted +to be married, and on the whole she was content when she got what she +wanted,--at least, in the beginning,--which is the essential condition +of marital comfort. But Archie had not by any means been as anxious to +tie himself up for good as Adelle had been, and was more restive with +what he found marriage to a rich--at least, expectantly rich--wife to +be. + +In a blind effort to find a congenial environment, they moved about over +the map a good deal. First they went to Venice, of which Adelle +especially had rosy memories associated with the dawn of love. They took +a furnished apartment in an old palace over the Canal, and set up four +swarthy, muscled rowers in blue sashes. Venice has been for many +generations the haven of love, especially of irregular or illicit love: +but its attraction evaporates swiftly after the ceremony has taken +place. No spot where the male cannot stretch himself and get away from +domesticity for a few hours is safe except for the diviner, more +ecstatic forms of passion. In a few weeks the couple became deadly bored +with Venice and its picture postcard replica of life. At Archie's +suggestion they next sought Munich, where some of his artist +acquaintance had settled. + +This was an atmosphere of work, more or less, and Adelle amused herself +by thinking that she and her husband were members of that glorious band +of free lances of art. They took a studio apartment and set up their +crafts jointly. If either had had the real stuff of the artist, it might +have gone well; but two idle and rather uninformed persons in the same +studio produce disaster. Munich soon became an affair of beer, skittles, +and music in company with the more careless spirits that gathered there +that winter. Among them happened to be Sadie Paul. + +A good deal had happened to the California sisters, and as the "two +Pols" will come into Adelle's life later on, their story can be briefly +given here. Irene, the sister who had brutally betrayed Adelle in a +spirit of careless mischief, had attracted with her ripe California +charm a young Englishman of family. Mr. Hermann Paul, the "San Francisco +railroad man" referred to by Miss Comstock, meantime had died, and Irene +had gone home to join her mother and younger brothers and ultimately was +married to her Englishman. She divided her time thereafter about equally +between England and the new earthly paradise of the Pacific. Her sister +Sadie had determined to remain in Europe, under other chaperonage than +Pussy Comstock. It was rumored that a young Hungarian nobleman was +hanging somewhere in the horizon, but for the present she played about +with Adelle and Archie. Apparently Sadie Paul did not share her sister's +prejudices about "the red-headed bounder," for she flirted unconcernedly +with Archie as far as he would go, which to do Archie justice was not +dangerously far. Adelle, good-natured and easy-going by disposition, +welcomed the return of her old school friend and was not in the least +disturbed by her flirtatious attempts with Archie. That sort of amorous +pretense was more or less the habit of the world she had known, and +besides, she was aware that Sadie was "having a desperate affair" with +Count Zornec, the Hungarian referred to above, who was temporarily +exiled to his remote estate. Indeed, she became the means of furthering +this passion and speeding it to its destined end in matrimony, which has +to do with a subsequent part of our tale.... + +To return to the wanderings of Adelle and Archie, in the Easter holidays +they left Munich for Switzerland for the winter sports, and in the +spring Archie conceiving the idea that he wanted to do Dutch landscape, +they went to Holland for a few weeks. That summer they rented a small +villa along the Bay of Biscay and had Sadie Paul and her Count as their +guests for a time. The second winter of their marriage they spent in +Paris, and by this time were rather hard-pressed for ready money, as +neither had relaxed in wanting things and Adelle especially still had +the habit of buying whatever attracted her attention,--bright-colored +stuffs, jewels, and useless odds and ends of bric-á-brac, with the idea +that sometime they should want to establish themselves permanently +somewhere and purchases would all come in usefully. It was much as a +bird gathers sticks, straws, and bright-colored threads, but in Adelle +it was an expensive instinct. Towards the end of their period of +probation, they had to get aid from money-lenders, to whom Sadie Paul +introduced them. Adelle did not find it difficult to raise money on her +expectations, at a stiff rate of interest, and thus the object of the +Puritan Mr. Smith was defeated. It would have pained his thrifty +banker's soul had he known that the trust company's ward was gayly +paying ten and fifteen percent for "temporary accommodation," while her +own funds were barely earning five per cent in the careful investments +of the trust company! When Adelle finally got hold of her fortune, a +goodly sum had to be paid over to settle the claims of these obliging +money-lenders.... + +Of the quarrels, big and little, that the young couple had these first +months it is useless to speak. Thus far they were neither excessively +severe nor dangerously frequent--no worse, perhaps, than the average +idle couple must create in love's readjustment to prosaic fact. Adelle +no longer believed that her Archie would be the great painter that she +had once fondly dreamed of helping him to become. He was too lazy and +fond of good things to eat and drink and other sensual rewards of life +to become distinguished in anything, unless perchance he were well +starved into discipline. His present life of comparative ease and +expected wealth was the very worst thing for him as man and as artist. +Like an over-fertilized plant he went to leaf and bore little fruit. And +thus again Clark's Field, with its delayed expectations, had a baleful +influence upon a new generation of human beings. The Davises had just +enough money to wander loose over Europe, disturbed, as Addie had once +been disturbed, by the hope of a more golden future. + +Adelle herself was content not to work hard at the manufacture of +jewelry, although if she had been encouraged, she might have become +almost second-rate in this minor art. She, too, was indolent, if not by +disposition, by training, and Europe offers abundant distraction of a +semi-intellectual sort to fill the days of people like Archie and +Adelle. To loaf herself was not so fatal for Adelle as to acquiesce in +Archie's loafing, to accept the parasitic notion for her man that +obtained in the easy-going circles she knew. "Oh, well," she said to +Sadie, "why should Archie work if he doesn't want to?" + +Sadie saw no reason and suggested,--"There isn't one of those painters +who would stick at it if he didn't have to." + +Like all poor people, they hadn't any luck; that was her idea. And +Adelle cultivated another dangerous conception of marriage. + +"It's enough for me if he's good to me and loves me--I have plenty of +money for us both." + +In other words, she thought that she should be satisfied to keep her +lover always as an appanage of her magic lamp, to maintain a human being +and a male human being as she might maintain a motor-car or an estate or +a stable, as something desirable and pleasurable, contributing to her +happiness,--the privilege of her fortunate position as a woman of means. +There were many rich women who had that idea or cultivated it as a +solace to their defeated souls. + +"Isn't he a dear?" she would say to Sadie Paul in these moments of proud +consciousness of possession; and conversely she would say sternly when +some case of masculine errancy was brought to her notice,--"If Archie +treated me like that, he'd find his bag packed and sitting outside the +door!" + +So she was very fussy about her husband's appearance,--his dress and +manners and appointments; and insisted upon giving him every accessory +of luxury, everything that rich men supposably enjoy. As her nearest and +dearest possession, she was more concerned with his brave appearance +than she was with her own. She "dolled" him up, as Sadie Paul laughingly +called it. "Isn't he cunning?" was one of her common expressions of +marital happiness. Occasionally, in more serious moods, she might talk +largely about Archie's "going into business" when they "got their +money," but as time went on and Archie displayed little aptitude for +managing money, she talked less about this. Adelle would have been +content to buy the Basque villa they had rented and establish herself +and Archie there in complete idleness and luxury, provided he would +always be "good" to her, by which she meant faithful to those +unconsidered marriage vows made in the Paris consulate, and not too +cross. + +And thus Archie and Adelle drifted on towards that great date of their +complete emancipation from control, when all the riches of Clark's +Field, now accumulating in the trust company's pool, should be handed +over to them. That would be, indeed, the ultimate crisis for the old +Field, when, having been finally transmuted into coin of the realm, it +should cease to have an entity or any personal relation with the Clark +race! + +Meantime Archie and Adelle were not vicious, though Archie drank too +much for his digestion and was often peevish in consequence, and Adelle +was almost aimless and lazy enough to be described as vicious. Yet they +were no worse than many, many other well-to-do young persons with no +deep roots, no permanent incentives, no profound passions to give them +significance. Likely enough they might have ended in some charming +English country house, or Roman palace, or pink-and-white villa along +the Mediterranean,--if their fate had not been still involved with +Clark's Field. They would have become perfectly respectable, utterly +negligible modern citizens of the world,--the infertile by-product of a +rich civilization with its perfected machinery for the preservation of +accumulated wealth. There are more Archies and Adelles about us than is +commonly recognized: they are on all our calling-lists, in every +European capital or congregation of expensive country homes. Their names +stud the "blue books" and the "red books" of conventional "society." +They fill the great hotels and the mammoth steamships. They, in sum, +make up a large part of that fine fruit of civilization for which the +immense majority toil, and for whom serious people plan and legislate, +for whom laws are interpreted and trust companies formed in order to +handle the money they themselves are incapable of controlling usefully, +even of safely preserving.... + +Archie and Adelle were hungry at this period for more money and felt +themselves martyrized by the whim of an ill-natured old man who had +arbitrarily made them wait to be wholly happy. They talked perpetually +about what they should do with themselves "after" the great event,--the +sort of touring-car they should buy, the kind of establishment they +should keep, the best place to live in, etc. It must be somewhere in +Europe, of course, for neither was eager to return to America "where +everybody worked and there was nothing fit to eat," according to Archie. +Adelle's ideas of America, never extensive, were growing dimmer every +season, and the occasional friends who returned from the other shore +described their native land in unflattering terms. Adelle thought that +every American who could lived as much of the time as possible somewhere +in Europe, but she did not think much about it at this time. + +They had no children. Adelle had no objections to child-bearing and +expected "sometime" to have "two or three" children. Archie thought +there would be plenty of time for that "later on" when they had their +money. Adelle was still very young, and in the present wandering state +of their life children would be a nuisance. + +Finally they were neither happy nor unhappy. Restless was the adjective +that described them most closely. Their bodies and stomachs and nerves +and minds and souls were always in a state of disequilibrium, and they +were feeling about for equilibrium like blind kittens without forming +any successful plan of extricating themselves from their subconscious +state of dissatisfaction. With another order of gray matter in their +brains either one might have produced out of this disequilibrium some +fine, rare flower of form or color or words. But Archie's gray matter, +like Adelle's, was not expressive. + +Their friends thought them happy as well as fortunate. Sadie Paul +reported to her sister and Eveline Glynn,--"Dell is crazy about her +Archie--she won't let him out of her sight. He's not such a bad sort, +but fearfully stuck on himself, just because Dell pets him so." + +Adelle, as she frequently told Archie, infinitely preferred her choice +to Sadie's "Black-and-Tan," as she called the Count Zornec. + +This was their state after eighteen months of married life. + + + + +XXVII + + +The trust company had left its ward severely alone since Mr. Smith's +visit to Paris. Like punishing parents they seemed resolved to let +Adelle taste the dregs of her folly by herself. Each quarter they +deposited with the Paris bankers twelve hundred and fifty dollars and +notified them not to honor Mrs. Davis's drafts in excess of this amount. +It was automatic. That was the ideal of the trust company, as it is of +many private persons, to reduce life to automatic processes. + +But as the day drew near when the trust company had to give a final +accounting to the probate court of its guardianship, they notified +Adelle by a curt letter that her presence would be desirable. There were +certain matters in connection with her assuming control of her fortune +and terminating their trust that could be transacted more expeditiously +if Mrs. Davis would present herself at their office by the end of May. +"We beg to remain," etc. + +The suggestion came as a welcome incentive to the young couple. Anything +that might expedite matters was to their taste. They had talked of +making a visit to Archie's relatives and introducing Adelle to the +modern paradise of the golden slope and at the same time visiting the +Pauls. And so, about the middle of May, the Davises took ship from Havre +for the New World, occupying, in deference to their coming wealth, an +expensive deck suite in the transatlantic hotel, and thus made their +journey in all possible comfort. + +They arrived in B---- with a great many trunks that contained a small +part of all those purchases which Adelle had made; also with a dog and +Adelle's maid. Their first real experience of their American citizenship +came naturally at the dock. Archie, who had lost some money on the way +across, and was hazy about his duties and rights as a returning citizen, +had put in an absurd declaration for the customs officers. With their +formidable array of trunks the couple presented at once a vulnerable +aspect to the inspectors, and long after the procession of travelers had +scurried away in cabs, Archie and Adelle were left, hot and +uncomfortable, trying to "explain" their false declaration. Adelle, who +was not usually untruthful, lied shamelessly about the prices she had +paid for things. "It cost just nothing at all,--twenty francs," she +declared as the officer held forth some article whose real value he knew +perfectly well. Adelle lost her assurance, shed tears of shame; Archie +lost his temper and swore at the officer for insulting his wife, and in +consequence every article in the fourteen pieces of baggage was dumped +upon the dock while a grinning audience of inspectors, reporters, and +stevedores gathered about the unhappy pair. + +"What a country!" Archie fumed while the inspector was summoning his +superior officer. + +"No wonder Americans prefer to live abroad," he remarked loftily to a +convenient reporter, who was preparing copy with his eager eyes. + +"We won't live here, will we!" Adelle chorused to her husband. + +"Not much!" + +"To treat decent people like this, just because they have a few clothes +and things. What do they take us for--hoboes?" Archie continued. + +He forgot that he had departed from his native land a scant two years +before with a lean dress-suit case and a small trunk. Also that his wife +and indirectly himself were among the beneficiaries of the law they had +tried to evade. The reporter, who had appraised the pair more +expeditiously than the inspector had their goods, hypocritically drew +them out, asking their opinion of America and Americans, which Archie +set forth volubly. + +When the inspectors finally came upon deposits of Adelle's jewelry which +she had skillfully concealed in the toes of her shoes, they declared the +game off and sent all the trunks forthwith to the stores. Their case was +so serious that it must be dealt with specially. The pair finally left +the dock, much chagrined, feeling as nearly like common criminals as +they were ever likely to feel; indeed, somewhat frightened and much less +voluble in protest, whatever their opinion of their fatherland might +still be. It was evidently a serious affair they had got themselves in +for by their perfectly natural desire to save a few dollars at the +expense of the Government. + +The next morning when they awoke in the Eclair Hotel, which still +remained B----'s best hostelry, where they had consoled themselves by +taking an expensive suite and ordering a good dinner, they found that +their arrival in America was not unheralded. The reporter had not been +idle. His description of Archie was unkind, and his satirical report of +the couple's sayings and doings was unfriendly. He had somehow +discovered Adelle's connection with Clark's Field, the story of which in +a much garbled form he gave to the public and incidentally doubled the +size of her fortune,--"drawn from one of the most unblushing pieces of +real estate promotion this State has ever seen." Altogether it was the +kind of article to make the conservative gentlemen of the Washington +Trust Company very unhappy. When they read it they wished again that +they had never seen Adelle. + +Other papers took up the scent of the "Morning Herald," and for a week +Archie and Adelle were thoroughly introduced to the American people as +an idle pair, of immense inherited wealth, who had failed in their +attempt to defraud the custom house of a few thousand dollars. This +affair kept them busy for the better part of a week, and was finally +settled without prosecution when the collector became convinced that no +serious wrong had been plotted by Archie and Adelle. He gave them both a +little lecture, which they received in a humbler frame of mind than they +had shown at the dock. + +Archie rather enjoyed the newspaper notoriety that his marriage to the +heiress of Clark's Field was bringing him. He entertained the reporters +affably at the hotel bar, and established a reputation for not being a +"snob," though so much of a "swell." In fact he was a much less uncouth +specimen than when Adelle had first encountered him in the Paris studio. +A year and a half of ease and petting had served to smooth off those +more obvious roughnesses that had caused Irene Paul to describe him as a +"bounder." He was fashionably dressed according to the Anglo-French +style, and fortunately did not affect soft shirts or flowing ties or +eccentric head-gear, or any other of the traditional marks of the +artist. Lounging in the luxurious hotel corridor, he looked like any +well-to-do young American of twenty-seven or eight. His bright red hair +and small waxed mustache, and his habit of dangling a small cane, +perhaps, were the only distinguishing marks about him. After the customs +case had been disposed of, Archie found time hanging on his hands. +Adelle was occupied with the trust company and all the formalities she +had to go through with before she could actually lay her hands upon her +fortune. Archie read the lighter magazines and loafed about the streets +of B----, peering up through his glasses at the lofty buildings, and +imbibing more cocktails and other varieties of American stimulants than +was good for him. + + + + +XXVIII + + +Adelle was distinctly roused by her return to America and all the +memories awakened at the sight of familiar streets, the home of the +Washington Trust Company, and the probate court whither she was obliged +to go. Judge Orcutt was still sitting on the bench and seemed to her to +be exactly as she remembered him, only grayer and a little more bent +over his high bench. He was still that courteous, slightly distant +gentleman from another age, whose mind behind the dreamy eyes seemed +eternally occupied with larger matters than the administration and +disposal of human property. He remembered Adelle, or professed to, and +gave her a kindly old man's smile when he shook hands with her, in spite +of all the _réclame_ of her indecorous return to her native land. He +said nothing of that, however, but refreshed his memory by consulting a +little book where he entered all sorts of curious items not strictly +legal that occurred to him in connection with important cases. From +these pages he easily revived all the details of Adelle, her aunt, and +the now famous Clark's Field. + +Looking up from his book, he scrutinized with unusual interest the young +woman who had come before him after an absence of seven years. He was +reflecting, perhaps, that, although she was unaware of the fact, he had +played the part to her in an important crisis of a wise and beneficent +Providence. In all likelihood he had preserved for her the chance of +possessing the large fortune which she was about to receive with his +approval from the Washington Trust Company. No wonder that he looked +keenly at the young woman standing before him! What was she now? What +had she done with herself these seven crucial years of her life to +prepare herself for her good fortune and justify his care of her +interests? How had the enjoyment of ease and the expectation of coming +wealth, with all its opening of gates and widening of horizons, affected +little Adelle Clark--the insignificant drudge from the Alton +rooming-house?... + +Judge Orcutt no longer published thin volumes of poetry. The bar said +that he was now devoting himself more seriously to his profession. The +truth was, perhaps, that in face of his accumulating knowledge of life +and human beings, he no longer had the incentive to write lyrics. The +poetry, however, was there ineradicably in his soul, affecting his +judgments,--the lawyers still called him "cranky" or "erratic,"--and +giving even to routine judicial acts a significance and dignity little +suspected by the careless practitioners in his court.... And so this +elderly gentleman, for he had crossed the sixty mark by now, recalled +the timid, pale-faced, undersized girl, with her "common" aunt, who +seven years before had appeared in his court and to whom he had been the +instrument of giving riches. What had she done with the golden spoon he +had thrust into her mouth and what would she do with it now? Ah, that +was always the question with these inheritances which he was called upon +to administer according to the complicated rules of law--and the law +books afforded no answer to such questions!... + +"My dear," he said, with one of his beautiful smiles that seemed to +irradiate the "case" before him with its personal kindliness and +sympathy, "so you have been living in Europe the last few years and are +now married?" + +Adelle said "yes" to both questions, while the trust officer who had +accompanied her to court--not our Mr. Ashly Crane--fussed inwardly +because he saw that Judge Orcutt was in one of his "wandering" and +leisurely moods, and might detain them to discourse upon Europe or +anything that happened into his mind before signing the necessary order. +But after this introduction, the judge was silent, while his smile still +lingered in the gaze he directed to the young woman before him. + +Adelle, as has been amply admitted in these pages, was neither beautiful +nor compelling. But she was very different indeed from the small, shabby +girl of fourteen. She was taller, with a well-trained figure that showed +the efforts of all the deft maids and skillful dressmakers through which +it had passed. She was dressed in the very height of the prevailing +fashions--a high-water mark of eccentricity that Judge Orcutt rarely +encountered in the staid circles of the good city of B----. Her skirt +was slit so as to accentuate all there was of hips, and the bodice did +the same for the bust. And the hat--well, even in New York its long +aigrette and daring folds had caused women to look around in the +streets. She carried in one hand a large bunch of mauve orchids and wore +an abundance of chains and coarse, bizarre jewelry. Her face was still +pale, and the gray eyes were almost as empty of expression as they had +been seven years before. But altogether Adelle was _chic_ and modern, as +she felt with satisfaction, of a type that might find more approval in +Paris than in America, where a pretty face and fresh coloring still win +distinction. She was _new_ all over from head to foot, of a loud, hard +newness that gave the impression of impertinence, even defiance. + +This was accentuated by Adelle's new manner--the one that had grown upon +her ever since her elopement. Then she had taken a great step in +defiance of authority, and to support her self-assertion she had put on +this defiant manner, of conscious indifference to expected criticism. It +was the note of her period, moreover, to flaunt independence, to push +things to extremes. Needless to say that in Adelle's case it had been +further emphasized by the episode with the customs officers. Here again +she had defied recognized authorities and got into trouble over it; +indeed, had become mildly notorious in the newspapers. The only way she +could carry off her mistake and her notoriety was, like a child, by +exaggerating her nonchalance. Thus she had met President West and the +other officers of the trust company. Alone--for as usual Archie had +evaded the disagreeable--she had met them in their temple and felt their +frigid disapprobation of her and all her ways. She had carried it off by +forcing her note, "throwing it into the old boy," as she described it to +Archie, with all the loud clothes, the loud manners she had at her +command, and she knew that she had succeeded in making a very bad +impression upon the trust company's president. She felt that she did not +care--he was nothing to her. + +In the same defiant mood and with the same "war-paint" she had entered +Judge Orcutt's court and answered his preliminary questions. But she +felt ill at ease, rather miserable under his kindly, heart-searching +gaze. She wished that she hadn't: she wanted to blush and drop her eyes. +Instead she returned his look out of her still, gray eyes with a +fascinated stare. + +At last the smile faded from the judge's lips, and he withdrew his gaze +from the bizarre figure before him. He asked in a brisker tone with +several shades less of personal interest,-- + +"Your husband is with you?" + +"No," she stammered uncomfortably, realizing that Archie was again +evading. + +He was outside lolling in the motor that they had hired by the day, +fooling with Adelle's lapdog and getting through the time as best he +could. Adelle so informed the judge, who received the news with a slight +frown and proceeded to the business before them. The trust officer +thought that now matters would be expedited, but the judge disappointed +him. After taking his pen to sign the papers, he kept his hand upon +them, and clearing his throat addressed Adelle. + +"Mrs. Davis," he began in formal tones, "you first came into my court +seven years ago, with your aunt, at the time of your uncle's death--you +remember, doubtless?" + +Adelle said "yes" faintly. + +"As your mother's only heir, and owing to the death of your aunt the +following year who left you her sole heir, you became vested with all +the known interest in certain valuable real estate that had belonged to +your ancestors for many generations--what was known then as 'Clark's +Field.' As you are probably aware, this property, after many years of +disuse and much litigation, has finally been cleared as to title and put +upon the market. It has been sold, or much of it, for large prices. For +in all these years its value has very greatly increased--ten and +twentyfold." + +He paused for a moment, then with an unaccustomed sternness he +resumed,-- + +"Clark's Field is no longer the pasture land of an outlying farm. In the +course of all these years the city has grown up to it and around it. +Generations of men have been born, come into activity, and died, +increasing in numbers all the time, demanding more and more room for +homes and places of business. Thus the value of real estate has greatly +risen, latterly doubling and trebling almost each year." + +He stopped again, and the bored trust officer thought, "The old fellow +is worse than ever to-day--getting positively dotty--likes to hear +himself talk...." + +"For thus," resumed the judge slowly, impressively, "is the nature of +man, of the civilization he has created. Men must have room--land to +grow upon; and that which was of little or no value becomes by the +economic accidents of life of exceedingly great importance because of +its necessity to the race.... Your forefathers, Mrs. Davis, got their +own living from the farm of which this piece of land--Clark's Field--was +a part; a meager living for themselves and their families they got by +tilling the poor soil. They were content with taking a living out of it +for themselves and their families. Indeed, if I am not mistaken, your +own grandfather was anxious to sell this same field, which was all that +was left to him of the ancestral farm, for a comparatively small sum of +ready money--five thousand dollars." + +Adelle had time to reflect that this was the exact sum on which she and +Archie had tried to live for a year, with considerable inconvenience. +But then everybody said times had changed, and you couldn't do now with +a thousand dollars what you could once. + +"Fortunately for you, Mrs. Davis," the judge was saying with a dry +little smile, "your grandfather was unable to carry out his intention of +disposing of Clark's Field for five thousand dollars. Nor were your +mother and her brother--his children--more successful in selling their +ancestral estate, although I believe they made many attempts to do so. +There were legal obstructions in the way, of which doubtless you have +heard. But at the very close of your uncle's life he had entered into an +agreement with some real estate speculators to dispose of his equity in +the property and of yours also--you being his ward--for twenty-five +thousand dollars--I believe that was the sum." + +Judge Orcutt put on his glasses and consulted his little book, laid the +glasses down, and repeated reflectively,-- + +"Yes, for twenty-five thousand dollars! And he had so far carried out +his intention that had he lived but a few weeks longer there would not +have remained a foot of Clark's Field belonging now to any of the Clark +family." + +Poor uncle! Adelle thought. He was very little good in the world. + +"Twenty-five thousand dollars, Mrs. Davis, is a considerable sum of +money, but it is a small mess of pottage compared with what awaits you +in the hands of the Washington Trust Company. Let me see how much the +estate amounts to now!" + +Hereupon the trust officer handed to the judge an inventory of the +estate, which the judge ran over through his glasses, muttering the +items,--"Stocks, bonds, mortgages, interest in the Clark's Field +Associates," etc. + +At last he laid the paper aside, and looking up announced in grave +tones,-- + +"It comes very near being five millions of dollars." + +Adelle had already been told the figures by the trust company, but in +the mouth of the probate judge the sum took on a new solemnity. + +"Five millions of dollars," he repeated slowly. "Even in our day of +large accumulations, that is a very considerable sum of money, Mrs. +Davis. It is just one thousand times more than the amount your +grandfather hoped to derive from the same piece of property." + +The trust officer smiled, and thrusting his hands deep into his +trousers' pockets gazed at the ceiling. Of course five millions was a +lot of cash, but the judge seemed to forget the hour in which they were, +when everyday transactions involved millions. The young woman, who had +expensive tastes, would not find the income of five millions such a huge +fortune to spend. She didn't look as if she would have any trouble in +spending it, nor the red-headed chap she had married. Still a +comfortable little fortune, all in "gilt-edge stuff".... + +"Your estate represents an increment in value of one thousand per cent +in--let me see--a little over forty-five years, less than fifty years, +less than a lifetime, less than my own lifetime!" + +Here the judge seemed to come to a dead stop, forgetting himself in +reverie. But rousing himself suddenly he asked Adelle,-- + +"Have you ever seen Clark's Field?" + +Adelle thought she remembered being taken there as a young girl by her +aunt. + +"I mean have you been there recently, since it has been subdivided and +brought into human use?" + +No, she had not been in Alton since her return to America, in fact not +for seven years. + +"Then, Mrs. Davis," the judge said very earnestly, almost sternly, "I +most strongly advise you to go there at once and see what has happened +to your grandfather's old pasture. Look at the source of your wealth! It +must interest you deeply, I should think! The changes that you will find +in Clark's Field are very great, the spiritual changes even greater than +the physical ones, perhaps. Go to Clark's Field, by all means, before +you leave the city. Go at once! And take your husband with you.... And +now, Mr. Niver," he said to the astonished trust officer, "if you have +all the papers--yes, I have examined the inventory of the estate +sufficiently. Mr. Smith brought it to me some time ago...." + +There followed certain legal exchanges between the court and the trust +officer, while Adelle thought over what the judge had said to her about +Clark's Field and felt rather queer, uncomfortably so, as if the probate +judge had distilled a subtle medicine in her cup of joy, or had clouded +the clear horizon of her young life with a mysterious veil of +unintelligible considerations. Yet he seemed to be, as she had always +thought him, a good old man, and wise. And he was making no trouble +about giving her and Archie the money they so much wanted to have. Even +now he was writing his signature with the old-fashioned steel pen he +used, a clear, beautiful signature, upon several documents. As he +finished the last one, he glanced up at her and with another of his fine +smiles, as if he wished to reassure her after his little sermon, said to +Adelle,-- + +"Now, Mrs. Davis, it is yours,--your own property, to do with as you +will. You are no longer a ward of my court!" + +He rose from his judge's chair and took her hand, which he held a trifle +longer than necessary, smiling down upon the woman-girl, his lips +apparently forming themselves for another little speech, but he did not +utter it. Instead, he dropped Adelle's hand and with a nod of dismissal +turned into his chambers. So Adelle left the probate court, as she +thought for the last time, wondering what the judge wanted to say to +her, but had refrained from speaking. + +It would be interesting to know, also, what were the entries that Judge +Orcutt made in his little note-book upon this, his final official act in +the Clark's Field drama. But that we have no means of discovering. All +legal requirements had been duly fulfilled, and everything else must +remain within the judge's breast for his own spiritual nourishment--and +for Adelle's if she could divine what he meant. + + + + +XXIX + + +When Adelle reached the street she found Archie lolling in the car, +across the way, in the shade of a tall building. At her appearance he +yawned and stretched his cramped legs. + +"It took you an awful time," he grumbled to his wife. "What was the +trouble?" + +"Nothing," Adelle replied. + +As she got into the car she gave the driver an order,--"Go out to +Alton." + +"Where's that?" Archie inquired. + +"A little way out--across the river," Adelle informed him. + +"What do you want to go there for--it's nearly lunch-time," Archie +demurred. + +"I'm going out to see Clark's Field," Adelle replied succinctly. + +Archie knew vaguely that the Field had something to do with his wife's +fortune, but understood that it had been mostly "cashed in" as he would +phrase it. + +"What's your hurry?" Archie objected. "We can go out there some other +time just as well." + +But for once Archie was compelled to bend to a superior purpose and +endure being bumped over the rough pavements of the city out to the old +South Road, which was still cut up badly by heavy teaming as it had been +in the days of the farmers' market carts, and which also swarmed with +huge trolley boxes and motor trucks and pedestrians. For Alton was now +merely a lively industrial quarter of the "greater" city. In addition to +the old stove-works of enduring fame there were also foundries and +factories and mills. The old, leisurely "Square" had become a knot of +squalid arteries radiating into this human hive. Life teemed all over, +swarmed upon the pavements, hung from the high tenement windows, +infested the strange delicatessen and drink shops, many of which bore +foreign names. Most marvelous fact of all was that the thin, pale +American type, of which Adelle herself was an example, had largely +disappeared from the Alton streets, and in its place there were members +from pretty nearly all the races of the earth,--Greeks, Poles, Slavs, +Persians,--especially Italians. Many a sturdy young woman, with bare +brown arms and glossy black hair, strode along, hatless and unashamed, +on her way to shop or mill through the streets where Addie Clark had +sidled with prim consciousness of her "place" in society. Archie +remarked the growing cosmopolitanism of his native land with strong +expressions of disapproval. + +"It looks like a slum," he grumbled. "And nothing but dagoes in it. What +a place!--and what scum!" he commented frankly upon his wife's +birthplace. "Was it like this when you lived here?" he asked pityingly. + +"Not so much," she said quietly, not knowing why she disliked his tone +and his comment upon the present population of Alton. + +"They ought to do something to prevent all this foreign trash from +swarming over here," Archie observed. + +He did not reflect, nor did Adelle, that this "foreign scum" had come to +replace his race because he and his kind refused any longer to do the +hard labor of the world. If he had been of a more serious turn of mind, +he would have joined the anti-Immigration League and raised the +patriotic slogan of "America for Americans!" + +Adelle made no reply to his remarks. She sat silent in her corner of the +car, glancing intently at the old scenes that were so new and +unexpected. From time to time she directed the chauffeur when he was in +doubt, the old turnings of the streets coming back to her with +astonishing sureness. At last, at Shepard Street, she told him to turn +off the South Road, and at once they were in the maze of brick and +mortar that had been Clark's Field,--the old Clark pasture. The bulky +car had to move slowly through the narrow streets, much to the driver's +impatience, and he had frequently to toot his horn or screech his +raucous Claxton to warn the pedestrians to make way for the visitors. +The children crawled off the streets with the instinctive unconcern of +familiarity with traffic; the bareheaded women and dark-faced men +scowlingly gave the chariot of the rich space to proceed. So they +threaded the lanes and the cross-streets that ribbed the old Field, +crossing it twice and completely circling it once, until Archie was in a +state of vocal rebellion at the stench, the squalor, the ugliness of the +place. + +But Adelle looked and looked with unwonted curiosity. In her European +wanderings she had penetrated by necessity or accident similar +industrial neighborhoods, where human beings swarmed and life was ugly, +only to escape as soon as possible. But this time she did not wish to +hurry. Clark's Field seemed different to her from anything else she had +ever seen. + +It was all new, and yet in the way of slums it was immemorially ancient +at the same time, as if the members of old races that had come to fill +it had brought with them all the grime, all the dreariness of +generations of bitter living. And it was this, rather than the marvelous +transformation of the sandy field which Adelle dimly remembered, that +seized hold of her. How could people live so thickly together, swarm +like flies in so many identical doorways, get along with so little air +or sunshine or freedom of movement! + +"Packed like rotting sardines," was Archie's sneering comment. + +Artificially packed, too, scientifically packed in an up-to-date manner, +and all in the space of a few years! Modern magic they said of things +like this, and took a strange blind pride in it. Even Archie observed +with curiosity,--"They must have been a busy little bunch that got this +up so quickly!" + +Indeed, the Washington Trust Company, under the thin disguise of the +Clark's Field Associates, had shown great shrewdness and ingenuity in +"developing" the fifty-acre tract so that the greatest possible sum +could be extracted from its lean soil. They had resisted all temptations +to open it as "a residential section" of the growing city. They knew +that Alton was condemned to the coarser uses of society and must be an +industrial slum. So they had sold a small portion in one corner to a +steel foundry--one of the subsidiaries of a great corporation. And then +they developed the remainder for the use of the operatives gathered +together from all parts of the earth. The choicest lots they reserved +for "future growth." Along the broad South Road they built substantial +brick buildings for stores and offices. In the nest of by-streets that +ribbed the tract they erected lofty tenement warrens, as closely packed +as the law allows,--not the lowest order of tenement, to be sure, +because in the long run such buildings do not make a good investment; +but a slightly higher class of brick, bathroomed, three-and four-room +tenements, from the rear of which flowed out long streamers of clothes +drying in the wind. For the most part Clark's Field had thus received +its "development." That which had agitated a number of generations of +Alton citizens had been accomplished. For a considerable term of years +Clark's Field would not change in character unless a disturbance of +unexpected magnitude should wipe clean the ground for men to plan anew. + +As I have said, Clark's Field was now an industrial slum, but its +character was not as bad as much else in the cities of men. There are +far worse places in London or New York or Chicago--even in such smaller +cities as Pittsburg and Liverpool--for filth, crowding, and gloom. Age +added to cheapness increases misery and squalor, and Clark's Field was +still an infant. Indeed, the promoters of Clark's Field were proud of +their achievement and advertised it as the last and most enlightened +example of wholesale, industrial housing. But as Archie felt about it, +the place was worse really than the more celebrated slums of older +cities in its pretentious cheapness, its dreary monotony and +colorlessness, its very respectability and smug tediousness. A life +dropped into its maze and growing up in it must be lost for good and +all--must become just another human ant crawling over Clark's Field, +with the habits and coloring of all the other human ants striving there +for life and happiness. Archie, perhaps, felt this cramped and deadening +atmosphere more keenly than Adelle, and he prided himself on his greater +sensitiveness. He thanked God that he had come from the broad sunny +vineyards of the Golden State, where life still touches the arcadian +age,--not from _this_, as his wife had! His two years of foreign +rambling had educated him into a prideful sense of American vulgarity +and hideousness of detail. + +Adelle seemed wholly absorbed in the bricks and mortar laid upon old +Clark's Field. She did not speak. It would be impossible to say what she +was thinking of.... At last, as they emerged from another long stretch +of narrow street bordered on either side by high tenements that were +varied according to a machine pattern by different colored bricks, +Archie protested. He growled,--"Well, haven't you seen enough of this +sort of thing to last you awhile?" + +Adelle gave the order to retrace their journey to the hotel. She looked +back into the dreary maze with her wide gray eyes, and now they were not +quite empty eyes as they had been in the probate courtroom. She looked +and looked as if she were seeing the past as well as the present, as if +she were trying to fathom what Judge Orcutt had meant. When the Field +faded into the distance behind the rapid car, she sank back into her +corner with an unconscious sigh. Archie had taken a cigarette from the +little gold case that had been one of Adelle's first presents to him, +and as he lighted it skillfully in face of the wind was doubtless +thinking that never again would he be misled into going to Clark's +Field. + +On the way back Adelle ordered the driver to stop in the Square, and +despite Archie's protest that it was already long past lunch-time she +left him in the car and turned down the side street that led to the old +rooming-house. It was gone! In its place was a five-story flat building +that occupied not only all their yard, but the livery-stable lot as +well. Adelle realized the change with a positive shock. Latterly, since +the little lecture by the probate judge, the images of her early life +had come back to her mind as they had not for years. The transformation +of Clark's Field did not matter so much even: it had not been in the +immediate horizon of her youth,--more an idea than a physical +possession. But Church Street and the rooming-house and the +livery-stable--they had been her very self. She felt strangely as she +had seven years before when she was returning to her aunt's house after +the funeral of the widow. The last of all her landmarks had been swept +away.... + +She returned to the car with a thoughtful face, and all the way into the +city she paid no attention to Archie's chatter, her mind far away, busy +with her forlorn little past. Once or twice she wondered what the judge +had meant by urging her to take her husband to see Clark's Field. But +she was glad that she had gone. She should have visited Alton sometime +or other she supposed to see what the old place was like;--she must +remember to go to the cemetery before they left B---- and look for her +aunt's grave. But this was not all that the judge meant, Adelle +suspected. + +She was not to discover for some years the full, fine meaning of the +judge's intention, perhaps might never recognize all the implications of +his message to her on her twenty-first birthday. + + + + +XXX + + +Archie was pacified by a copious luncheon in the Eclair restaurant, +which is almost as good as a second-class Paris restaurant, and after an +idle afternoon the couple went to a popular musical comedy to end their +day. Adelle's business with the trust company was now finished, and they +must decide upon their next move. Their first impulse after the rout +upon the dock had been to dart back to Europe as expeditiously as +possible, with Adelle's recovered lamp, and never darken again their +native shores. But this pettish mood had been largely forgotten during +the fortnight that ensued, and they remembered their plan of going to +California so that Archie might present himself in his new estate and +his wife to his own people. A cable from Sadie Paul, stating that she +had taken "the B. and T." (which being properly interpreted meant that +she had decided to marry her Hungarian count) and was returning to her +home to celebrate her wedding, determined them. They forthwith made +their arrangements to cross the continent and spend the summer on the +Pacific Coast. + +It may as well be said that before departing Adelle had one quite +serious business talk with President West of the trust company and the +excellent Mr. Smith, whose had been the chastening hand at the time of +her elopement. Possibly the wisdom of his remarks was becoming more +evident to Adelle as marriage wore on, or it might be that she still did +usually as she was told, if she were told with sufficient authority. At +any rate, she agreed to leave in the hands of the Washington Trust +Company the bulk of her estate, not strictly in the form of a +trust,--they could not induce her to surrender the privilege of the lamp +to that extent,--but under an agreement by which she bound herself not +to disturb the principal of her fortune for a term of years. The bankers +represented to her tactfully that neither she nor Mr. Davis had yet had +extensive experience in the investment of money; that the operations of +the Clark's Field Associates were not finally wound up; that they had +had such success in their investments on her account that it would be +well to allow them to carry out their scheme of investment, etc. In +short, she signed the agreement, which was the last thing she did in +B----. + +Archie, when he learned what she had done, was irritated. Naturally he +did not like Mr. Smith and had a grudge against the trust company as a +whole. He said that the arrangement reflected upon him and his dignity +as a husband, although, as Mr. West had pointed out to Adelle, it was +not customary for a husband to be entrusted with the disposal of all his +wife's property. Since the vogue of international marriages, American +fathers had taken refuge in the trust companies. In spite of argument +and sulks, however, Archie could not prevail upon Adelle to undo what +she had done, and he had to content himself with the shrewd reflection +that it was probably not legally binding and could be broken when +opportunity offered. + +In this affair Adelle displayed an unexpected caution by her willingness +to let the trust company remain guardian of her magic lamp for the +present. She had a woman's instinctive confidence in an institution, +especially in one which years of use had made familiar to her. Archie, +she felt justly, must content himself with their income, which would be +more than two hundred thousand a year. That should satisfy their +immediate wants after the eighteen months of bread-and-butter probation. +And after all it was her own money, as the trust officers had said to +her again and again. This, however, she did not repeat to Archie. She +soothed his irritated pride in other ways, and in the end a fairly +contented and harmonious couple were whirled westward in the track of +the setting sun to that more golden shore of our continent, where other +fate awaited them. + + + + +XXXI + + +After a brief visit at the Santa Rosa vineyard, where oddly enough +Adelle seemed to feel more at home than Archie, they went to Bellevue to +attend the famous Paul wedding. Here Irene Paul, now an "Honorable Mrs." +George Pointer, entertained them, both Adelle and Irene apparently +forgetting their old grudges. Arm about waist they went lovingly up the +grand staircase of the old Paul mansion to Adelle's rooms, babbling +about school days, Pussy Comstock, and the other girls of her famous +"family." Irene even looked with favor upon Archie in his developed +condition of a rich woman's husband. Adelle reflected complacently that +he was quite as presentable as a man as the young Englishman Irene had +married. All you had to do to succeed, in marriage as in other things, +was to do what you wanted and make the world accept you and your acts. +And she honestly admired the tall blonde Irene, who had bloomed under +the influences of matrimony into something suggestively +English--high-colored, stately, emphatic. She liked the rambling ugly +mansion built in the eighties after Hermann Paul's success with +railroads, in the best mansard style of the day, and never touched +since. The grounds which had been extensively planted by the railroad +man were now covered with a luxuriant growth of exotic trees that +completely hid the house and afforded only peeps of the distant bay. +California, with its pungent stimulants of odor and color, appealed to +her from the very first. She was quite happy, and Archie seemed to +expand in his native soil and was less peevish than he had grown to be +latterly. + +After the wedding, which according to the local newspapers was a very +grand affair, but which unfortunately does not come into this story, +Archie and Adelle prolonged their visit. They found the easy atmosphere +of this pretty California town so agreeable, with its busy air of +luxurious leisure, that they took a furnished house for the remainder of +the season, and in the autumn they rented a larger place out on the +hills behind the town, having a lovely view of the great valley and the +distant waters of the Bay, with the blue tips of the inland hills rising +through the mists. They still talked confidently of returning to Europe +to live. + +They did not, however, at least for permanent residence. Archie was too +content with life in this land of sunshine, flowers, and informal +living, to leave. He said quite flatly now that he did not think he was +meant to be a painter and there was no point in being an artist if you +did not have to be something. Adelle perceived that according to Archie +there was not much point in doing anything unless one had to. She began +to suspect dimly the existence of a deep human law. "By the sweat of thy +brow," it had been writ in that Puritan Bible she studied at the First +Congregational Church in Alton. Then it had a very definite meaning even +to her child's mind, but during the easy years since, she had forgotten +it altogether. Now something like its stern truth was boring into her +consciousness. It seemed that when the larger incentives of living--the +big universal ones--had been removed for any cause, human beings were +often at a loss what to do with themselves. They sighed for "freedom" +when bound to the common wheel, but when released, as Archie and Adelle +had been, the average man or woman had but the feeblest notion of what +to do with his "freedom." + +With women such as Adelle the tragedy is less apparent than with men, +because woman's life for uncounted ages has consisted in great part of +playing games with herself at the dictates of men, and large wealth +assists her in making these games socially interesting and agreeable. +Adelle, to be sure, had no social ambition of the conventional sort. She +was more content than Archie with merely being married and having plenty +of money to spend in any way she chose. In this respect she was nearer +the primitive than Archie, who often reminded her of the fact somewhat +cruelly. Yet, as we shall see, when the time came she awoke to the full +realization of the situation, which Archie never understood at all. + +Art having finally been thrown out of the window by both, it remained to +determine how best they could dispose of themselves and their riches so +as to "get the most out of life." The first of the game substitutes for +real living happened to be a "ranch." The suggestion came from Irene's +husband, who had been attracted to California by this lure of +"ranching." + +"Why don't you go in for a big ranch?" he said to Archie one evening, +when the four were yawning sleepily over the fire after a day spent +motoring in the wind. "There's the Arivista property in Sonoma County. I +hear they want to sell--ten thousand acres." + +The idea of becoming a large landowner appealed to the Californian in +Archie. They talked the matter over, and it resulted in their all +motoring down the State to the Arivista property. In the end they bought +at considerable expense this ten-thousand-acre tract of mountain, +valley, and plain, and began elaborate improvements. It had been once a +"cattle proposition," but Archie's idea was to turn it into fruit and +nuts, as well as a gentleman's estate of a princely sort, with a large +"mission style" cement mansion. He engaged an architect and a +superintendent, and began building and planting on an elaborate scale. + +Adelle was glad to see her Archie really interested in something and +encouraged him in all his ambitious plans. They motored frequently to +the ranch to inspect operations. It took them two days to go and return, +and there were only rough accommodations at the ranch. But she liked it. +The great untamed spaces of hill and plain, with the broad horizon of +blue mountains, appealed to her. She was less interested in the big +house, the barns, outbuildings, orchards,--all the paraphernalia that +goes with an "estate," which Archie wished impatiently to have created +at once. It took, naturally, a great deal of money. Before the work at +Arivista was finally stopped, it was estimated that close to half a +million dollars of Clark's Field had been poured into this California +"ranch," from which, of course, less than a quarter was ever recovered, +no other rich man being found with similar conceptions of what a "ranch" +should be. All told, the Davises lived upon their ranch less than four +months during the next spring, and before the blossoms had finally +fallen sufficient reasons were found to move them back nearer people and +the ordinary diversions of life. Water, it was discovered, could not be +got in sufficient quantity. The relaxing climate of the south did not +seem to agree with Adelle. And, above all, a child was expected. + +The little boy was born in Bellevue. He had come to them by accident, +for neither felt that it was yet the right time to have children; but +Adelle recognized almost at once that it was likely to be a happy +accident for her and welcomed it with all proper fervor. It served, at +any rate, to settle them in California for the present. They decided to +buy the place they had rented upon the hills and live there for most of +the year. And it also served to strengthen the bond between husband and +wife, which was wearing dangerously thin in places. With the coming of +the child the family was constituted, and another interest was given to +Adelle, which compensated for Archie's pettish moods. The child also +released Archie from the constant attention which Adelle exacted of him, +and permitted him more of that precious "freedom," which he found wealth +did not always bring. + +Thus they definitely started their California life. + + + + +XXXII + + +Bellevue is one of those country towns in the neighborhood of a large +city that have flourished especially since the discovery of the +motor-car. It took quite two hours to reach it from San Francisco by +train and nearly that by fast driving in a car, owing to the poor roads. +Thus it was removed for the present from the contaminating contact of +the "commuter" and all the commonness of suburbanism. Bellevue had, of +course, its country club, with a charming new clubhouse, where polo was +played in season, as well as the humbler forms of sport such as golf and +tennis, and where a good deal of lively entertaining went on at all +seasons. It was an old settlement; that is, it had been the country home +of a few families for almost two generations, the first of the great +places having been developed in the seventies when the railroad fortunes +were being made. Besides these older estates, which were marked by the +luxuriance of their planting and by the ugliness of their houses, there +was a growing number of smaller, more modern estates with attractive +houses, and also a little settlement "across the tracks" of +trades-people and servants. Except for the eternal spring and the wealth +of California foliage, Bellevue was much like any number of towns +outside of Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, or Boston. And the social +life of the place, except for the minor modifications due to climate and +environment, was so exactly typical of what everybody knows that it +needs no description. + +Thanks to Irene's good will as well as to Adelle's fortune the Davises +became immediately acquainted with the "colony" of Bellevue, and were +easily accepted as members of that supposedly exclusive society. Archie +rapidly made a place for himself at the club. Having no regular +occupation he could devote himself to polo with the exclusiveness of a +single passion. For diversion he motored up to the city frequently, +where he became a member of several clubs, and for business there was +always the ranch to worry about. In this way he kept up a current of +movement in his daily life, which for persons like the Davises takes the +place of real activity. + +Adelle was indolent about social life as about much else. She did not +like to take pains over anything and found entertaining a bore. She was +a poor diner-out, and when the coming of her child gave her an excuse +she was quite content to leave the social aspect of their life to +Archie, who was generally thought to be much more agreeable than his +wife. After they finally decided to buy the Bellevue place, Adelle +occupied herself with ambitious schemes for the improvement of the +property. She decided that the old house was uncomfortable and badly +placed, too near the road, and selected a site upon the steep hillside, +which commanded a large view of the valley and the great Bay across the +verdurous growth of the town. Then she engaged a young architect, who +was a member of the Bellevue Country Club and had "done" several houses +in the neighborhood, and at once she was involved in a bewildering maze +of plans for house and grounds. This kept her busy during her +convalescence and gratified the rudimentary creative instinct in her, +which had led her before to making jewelry. In planning a large country +estate there was also a pleasant sense of rivalry with her old friend +Irene, who was forced to content herself for the present with her +father's out-of-date mansion. It took much money, of course, and the +young architect spared his clients no possible expense, but Adelle felt +that the springs of Clark's Field were inexhaustible. + +It was, perhaps, the happiest period of Adelle's existence. Her marriage +had begun to prove uncomfortable in Europe and threatened badly at +Arivista, because there was not enough of anything between her and her +husband to support idleness alone. It was much better at Bellevue, for +here Archie was taken care of, not always in a safe way, but, as far as +Adelle knew, satisfactorily. The rich, sensuous country, with its +peculiar profusion of exotic vegetation and the luxury of perpetual good +weather, made Adelle, pale offspring of an outworn Puritanism, bloom, +especially after the birth of her child. It was as if all the desires of +the old Clarks to escape the hardships of their bleak lives found at +last their fulfillment in her. She expanded under the influence of +warmth and color; for climate is a larger moral factor than is usually +recognized. In California the struggle for life is a meaningless figure +of speech, and Adelle did not like struggling. She loved to putter about +in the overgrown garden and to slumber in the sun beside her little boy, +refusing to descend to the delights of the club and Bellevue hospitality +even after she had no excuse. When Irene took her to task for her +dawdling by herself she gurgled contentedly,-- + +"What's the good of doing those things? Archie likes it--he sees the +crowd at the club--that's enough for him." + +"You've got to take your position," Irene remonstrated with a new pose. +She herself aspired to lead on the score of her family's antiquity in +Bellevue. + +"What's that?" Adelle asked blankly. + +It was difficult as Irene found to explain just what position Adelle +Davis should take in human society, just what it meant to be a "leader." +But she talked much about "the world going by one," and "duties of our +position," and "keeping in touch," with a note of mature tolerance and +responsibility in her voice. To all of which Adelle opposed merely a +lazy stare. In her gray eyes she seemed to mirror the fussy little +social life of this ideal country town, with its spread of motors about +the station on the arrival of the afternoon train from the city, its +properly garbed men and women strenuously amusing themselves at the +country club, its numerous "places," all very much alike, with their +gardens and greenhouses and tennis-courts, and ten masters' and five +servants' rooms, and all the rest of it. + +If Adelle could find no very cogent reason why she should make herself +toilsomely a pillar of this society, shall we blame her? If she found +for the present enough of content in the soft sunshine, the fragrant +flowers, her baby, and her own home, with the intermittent companionship +of the one man she had chosen to spend her life with, shall we consider +her highly culpable, deficient in the moral or social sense? All the +rest was much ado about nothing to Adelle, and, perhaps, as far as +Bellevue went,--and a good deal like it in life elsewhere,--Adelle was +not far wrong in her instinct.... + +"Here's Archie now," she remarked, observing her lord coming up the +drive in his car. + +"Hello, Archie!" Irene called in greeting. Her tone was quite friendly +and intimate. Archie certainly had been "accepted" in this quarter. +"Going to the Carharts?" + +Archie, of course, was going to the Carharts to dine and play cards. + +"Coming, Dell?" he asked his wife casually. + +Adelle shook her head. + +"I've been telling Dell she ought not to be so lazy," Irene commented. +"She never goes off the place if she can help it!" + +"Adelle don't like people," Archie observed gloomily. + +"Yes I do, well enough," his wife protested. + +"It's a queer way you have of showing it, then." + +"Why should I like 'em, anyway, if I don't want to?" she retorted with +some heat, childishly eager to put herself in the right. + +"That's just it," Irene commented. "I tell her some day she will want +people, and she will find it isn't easy to have them then.... Besides, +it's her duty to take her part--everybody must." + +Adelle made a bored gesture and filched a cigarette from Archie's case. + +"Go on, you two, and have a good time," she said amiably. + +And presently Archie departed with Irene, driving her back to Bellevue +in his own car. As Adelle watched them depart from the veranda, very +companionably, in close conversation, she smiled, perhaps because she +knew that they were still talking about her and her social delinquency, +perhaps because it amused her to think how thoroughly Irene had revised +her opinion of the "red-headed bounder." In the still twilight her quiet +mind speculated upon many things--the friendship between Archie and +Irene, the obsession most people seemed to have to get together in one +way or another, Irene's creed of "taking your place in the +world,"--possibly even the purpose and meaning of life in general, +although Adelle would scarcely recognize her meditations under those +terms.... In the end she went up softly to her baby's room and spent a +long time in examining minutely the child's features. Now that she had +discovered all the delights of maternity she wondered at herself for +having been so indifferent to this great power latent in her of creating +life, and determined to have other children as soon as possible. As a +matter of course she thought of Archie as their father, but it was only +in that way that she thought of him at all, if she did happen to think +of him. A husband was the necessary means of fulfilling her new desire +to have her own young. + + + + +XXXIII + + +That summer while the new house was going up they went back to Europe +for a few months, as it was too hot on the ranch and they had nothing +better to do. They also meant to buy furniture, rugs, pictures, and +other material for the new home which they expected would be their +permanent abiding-place.... + +It would be a waste of time to chronicle in minute detail this period of +Adelle's marriage. As the reader must suspect by this time, nothing of +spiritual significance was to come to Adelle through Archie nor to +Archie through Adelle. They did continue for a number of years to be man +and wife, although they frequently had bitter quarrels and felt rather +than clearly recognized that their union had been a mistake, which +neither one seemed able to rectify nor make the best of. It was not so +much principle that prolonged their tie, nor design on Archie's part to +keep possession of the wealth his wife had brought him, as the fact of +the child--and Adelle's hope, which was never realized, of having other +children. + +One of their more serious quarrels was occasioned by Adelle's discovery +at this time of Archie's unfortunate speculations. She had already +yielded to his constant demands for money for the ranch and broken her +arrangement with the Washington Trust Company, converting part of their +excellent investments into cash, which she removed to San Francisco, +where it could be got at more easily. Archie had had charge of this +uninvested portion of the estate; it gave him something to do and to +talk about with men. Until her illness, to be sure, Adelle had kept run +of what was being done with her money, and opposed any considerable +further changes in the investments of the estate, which were of the sort +that a good trust company would make, and which had very greatly +appreciated in value during these last years of national prosperity. But +during her illness and afterwards when she was absorbed in the child, +Archie had taken a freer hand and had changed some of the investments +unknown to his wife. He had put the money into local enterprises, of +which the men he met told him, but about which he could know very +little. There were new water-power companies up in the mountains, and +there was especially the Seaboard Railroad and Development Company--a +daring scheme for opening up a tract of land along the northern coast of +California. Into this last venture Archie had put much more of Adelle's +money than he liked to remember. It was a pet project of the men he knew +best in the Bellevue Club--the polo-playing set. The Honorable George +Pointer was very active in Seaboard, representing an English syndicate +that was supposed to be backing the enterprise with ample funds, and for +this reason the Pointers had prolonged their California sojourn beyond +the usual term. Seaboard, it was said, would prove eventually to be much +more important than a short line of new railroad developing a desolate +stretch of the Pacific: it was to be used as a club upon one of the +older railroads. The best families of the State were heavily interested +in it, the younger generation of bloods expecting by means of it to +rival the railroading exploits of their fathers, whose fortunes, as +everybody knows, were acquired in the golden seventies and eighties in +much the same way. (And when the explosion in Seaboard came off, it left +deep scars all through California society.) + +All this Archie tried to make Adelle understand, when unexpectedly she +gained a knowledge of his operations in Seaboard. She happened to open +some letters from his brokers that came to Archie during his +absence--letters that clamored for more ready money with which to pay +for options that Archie had taken upon the common stock of the new +company. Adelle was disturbed when she discovered that more than a +million of her money had already gone into Seaboard. The couple had some +sharp words about the matter, in which Adelle put the thing rather too +bluntly to Archie,-- + +"What do you know about railroads? You aren't a business man--you never +earned a dollar in business in your life!" + +Adelle was probably remembering how she had given Archie the only order +he had ever received for his painting. Archie naturally resented her +allusion to his penniless and dependent state. He knew, he asserted, +quite as much as other men, whom he instanced, all of whom managed their +wives' money affairs without being scolded for what they did. + +But why, Adelle urged more softly, did he have to speculate--try to make +more money than they already had? And Archie's somewhat incoherent reply +was much the same as Irene Pointer's reasons for going into the society +of one's fellows. To try to make more money when one already had the use +of a great deal was an honorable and sensible ambition--every one would +tell her so. All moneyed men who were worth their salt were always alive +to opportunities of enlarging their possessions. Did she want her +husband to sit around with folded hands and do nothing in the world? +Archie waxed righteous and right-minded, which is the easiest way to +eloquence. + +Adelle was silent, though not convinced by his reasoning any more than +she had been by Irene's about "taking her part." Both seemed to make +life needlessly dangerous and complicated, under the disguise of duty. +But she could not endure sullenness and bad temper in Archie. Having +taken the sort of husband she had, she must make the best of life with +him, even if he hazarded her fortune in doubtful enterprises. She +remembered with comfort that there was a great deal of money, and +ultimately would be even more when Clark's Field was finally liquidated. +Archie could hardly go so wrong in investments as to make away with all +of it. So she agreed to his selling another block of General Electric or +Bell Telephone and taking up his options, and having thus made up their +difference, they drifted on their way. + +They motored across the continent to the remote fastness where the +Countess Zornec was housed upon her husband's estate and spent some +weeks with the couple. It was easy, even for Adelle's unobservant eyes, +to detect signs of trouble in this new marriage. Sadie had a temper. All +the girls at the Hall had known that. Indeed, she had the +characteristics of her mother, who report said had been an Irish girl in +one of the U. P. construction camps when old Paul found her--that was +long before his fortune came, when he was a simple contractor for the +railroad. Sadie had an unfortunate mouth, with coarse teeth, and when +she was crossed, this long mouth wrinkled into a snarl. The Count +apparently had already found out how to cross her. Indeed, he did not +disguise his contempt for his bride's origins, and sometimes decorum was +badly strained at the dinner-table. Sadie was little and lithe and was +something of the _gamine_--her "tricks," as the girls called her daring +maneuvers, had always pleased men. But the Count did not like "tricks." +He wished more dignity in the wife of a Zornec and did not hesitate to +tell Sadie so. Nor did he care to have her _gaminerie_ attract other +men. In short, as Sadie confided to Adelle in a burst shortly after her +arrival, the Count was a "regular brute." It seemed that Europeans made +very good lovers, but dangerous husbands. Adelle was to be congratulated +for having married an American, "who at least knew how to treat a +woman," as if she were more than his horse or his servant. Adelle might +once have been pleased by this admission of envy of her Archie; but now +she had her own troubles. However, she did not confess them to any one. +She said good-naturedly that it was hard being married to most any man, +until you got used to it. Sadie shook her small head and showed her +large teeth. + +"I'll show him," she said, "that he can't wipe his feet on me! An +American woman won't stand what he's used to." + +Adelle suspected dire things, physical violence even, and was silent. + +Sadie continued,--"Some day he'll go too far, and then--" She closed +her lips over the teeth in a hard fashion. + +Adelle wondered what she would do with the Count in such an event. She +could hardly divorce him, for the Pauls were Catholic as well as the +Zornecs, of course. It was very inconvenient being a Catholic, she +reflected, if you were to be married. And it seemed less easy to drop a +husband in Europe than it was in America. There would be trouble about +the children and all that. + +Archie did not find the Count so bad, although he growled sometimes at +his host's thinly veiled contempt for all Americans. Archie felt +superior to the foreign nobleman who had made a rich American marriage. +At least he had taken an heiress from his own people, and there was +distinction in that. But the Count and Archie hunted and rode together, +also drank deeply of the Hungarian wines and excellent French champagne +that the castle contained. He was of the opinion that Sadie Paul had got +"what she deserved." + +"She needed a man to throw her around a bit--she was always too fresh," +he told Adelle. + +Archie believed in the strong hand with women. Adelle wondered whether +Archie would ever attempt to use it upon her and what she would do under +such circumstances. She was sure that she would resent it dreadfully. +That would seem too much for any woman to bear--to marry a poor man and +support him quite handsomely in idleness and then be abused by him. But +fortunately it had not got to that point in their marriage--nothing +worse than sullenness and silence or angry words had happened thus far. + +The Davises terminated their visit sooner than had been expected. The +little boy's ill health was made the excuse, but the fact was that the +tempestuous atmosphere of the Zornec household was far from pleasant to +easy-going people. They engaged the couple for a return visit the next +spring in California and motored off to Paris. The Zornecs had been a +good object lesson to them, and for the rest of their trip they remained +good friends, being almost lover-like in their respect for each other. +They seemed to feel the dangers ahead and restrained their moods. +Finally, gathering together their plunder they sailed home, and this +time did not make any attempt to evade the custom-house ordeal. They +paid nobly for the privilege of being American citizens and did not +demur. Adelle insisted upon that, remembering their former experience. +Archie was in such haste to get back to California where "Seaboard was +acting queer" that he would have paid double for the privilege of +entering his own country. They sped swiftly across the continent to +their new home. + + + + +XXXIV + + +The house was far from finished by the end of September when they +arrived. Their idea of what it should be had developed so fast under the +stimulus of the young architect that they could not recognize the +original conception in the imposing structure that awaited them. It was +meant to be an adaptation of a Spanish villa, in two wings, with a long +elevation upon the ravine connecting the two. There was also to be a +complicated set of terraces and forecourt, formal gardens, pool, and +orangery, which required an immense amount of masonry work that had +scarce been begun. Nevertheless they attempted to install themselves in +spite of the fact that the workmen were cluttered all over the place, +and moved into the wing that was most nearly completed, husband and wife +occupying a ground floor suite that was meant for bachelor guests, the +child and its nurse being housed temporarily upstairs in the main house. +Adelle did not like this separation from the child, but there seemed +nothing else to do for the present. + +That autumn and winter they lived at close quarters with an army of +workmen, who, having three masters,--Adelle, Archie, and the +architect,--took advantage of the resulting confusion to move as slowly +as possible. Adelle was not impatient as Archie had been with the ranch. +She liked directing the work, and discovered that she had her own ideas, +which necessitated extensive changes. She spent almost all her time on +the place, while Archie was often away for days at a time in the city, +attending to business or amusing himself. Adelle scarcely noticed his +absences. With her little boy and the house she had her hands quite +full, and it was easier to do things when Archie was not there to +interfere. + +Theirs was a rare location, even in this lovely land, as all their +neighbors said. Behind the house the land rose rapidly to a steep ridge +of hill that divided the valley from the coast valleys, and thus +protected them with its crown of tall eucalyptus trees from the raw sea +winds. Their hillside had been thickly planted to cedars and eucalyptus, +and the house looked out from its niche in the hill upon the fertile +valley in which Bellevue lies, dotted with rich country estates and +fruit orchards. Farther east shimmered the waters of the Bay, and on +clear days the blue tops of the Santa Clara mountains melted into the +clouds beyond the Bay. Immediately beneath the house was the cañon, +through which in the rainy season a stream of water gushed melodiously. +The steep sides of this cañon were covered with a growth of aromatic +plants and shrubs, the pale blues of the wild lilac touching it here and +there. Like a bit of real California, "Highcourt," as they had called +the place, was a perpetual bower of bloom and fragrance and sunshine, +with a broad panorama of valley, sea, and mountain to gaze upon. Adelle +loved to wander about her new possession, exploring its every corner, +and when she was tired she could come back to the sunny forecourt and +supervise the workmen, making petty decisions, summoning the foreman and +the architect for consultation. She thus planned so many alterations +which entailed delays that Archie grumbled that they would never get to +rights and be able to have people to dinner. Adelle did not seem to +care. She had not profited by Irene's advice, and made no effort to +create a social atmosphere. Irene apparently gave her up as a hopeless +case, and rarely came up the long driveway to Highcourt. The Pointers +were still anchored in California, thanks to Seaboard and the darkening +financial horizon, and Irene was improving her time by "living hard," +which was her philosophy. Adelle knew that she and Archie saw much of +each other, were very good friends, indeed, but the intimacy did not +disturb her. She no longer had that passionate jealousy of Archie's +every movement which had rendered the first years of their marriage so +irksome to Archie. It is doubtful if she would have resented his +intimacy with any woman, but his "affair" with Irene Pointer merely +amused her. Archie was no longer her most precious possession.... + +The winter after their return to California a new specter appeared--the +last that Adelle expected to encounter in her life. Archie hinted that +it would be well to go slow with their "improvements" at Highcourt. The +times were getting bad, he said, and the market looked as if they would +get worse rather than better. Every one was talking of a dark future, +unsettled conditions industrially in the country, and "tightening +money," whatever that might mean. Adelle could not see why it should +affect her solid fortune based upon Clark's Field. To be sure, men +talked business more than usually, the ill treatment that capital was +receiving, the "social unrest," and such matters, which did not interest +her. She thought that Archie had caught the trick of complaining about +business and cursing social conditions in America from the men at his +clubs, most of whom were obliged to earn their living by business. If +the worst came, if America became impossible, as Nelson Carhart was +always predicting, for "decent people to endure," they could go abroad +until things straightened out again. + +Then in midwinter came the Seaboard smash. As a matter of fact, that +crazy enterprise had been tottering upon the brink of failure from its +inception, and Archie was merely one of the stool pigeons on whom the +shrewd promoters had unloaded their "underwriting" in approved style. He +came back from San Francisco one night very glum and announced +peremptorily that they must cut down their expenses and "quit all this +fool building." He wanted to sell the ranch, but it could not be sold in +these depressed times when rich men were hoarding their pennies like +paupers. And there began at Highcourt a régime of retrenchment, bitterly +fought by Adelle--the rich man's poverty where there is no actual want, +but a series of petty curtailments and borrowings and sometimes a real +shortness of cash, almost as squalid as the commoner sort of poverty. +Adelle could not understand the reason for this sudden change, and +refused absolutely to stop all work upon Highcourt and go abroad again +for the sake of economy. Why should she be made uncomfortable, just +because Archie had been foolish about investments and felt hard up? So +they had some words, and Archie went oftener than ever to San Francisco, +frequently staying in the city for days at a time, which was bad for +Adelle's fortune, had she but realized it. But, as has been shown, she +had come now to the time when she felt relieved if Archie was not at +home, glum and sulky, or nagging and fighting her will. With the place +and her boy she had enough to fill her mind, and easily forgot all money +troubles when Archie was not there to remind her of them. Somehow they +raised the money for the workmen, and the building went on, more slowly. + + + + +XXXV + + +The workmen at Highcourt were of the nondescript labor army that America +has recruited. For the rougher outside work there were a number of +Italians, whom Adelle liked to entertain with her tourist Italian. There +were also a few Greeks and Slavs who had got into this kind of work from +other occupations. Inside the house the carpenters, painters, and +plumbers were Swedes, Finns, Germans, one Englishman--no one who might +justly be described as a native American. It was a typical instance of +the way in which all the hard, rough labor of the country was being +done, from building railroads to getting out the timber from the forests +or making shoes and blankets in the factories. Hard physical labor was +no longer performed to any extent by native Americans. Contractors +everywhere recruited their polyglot companies in the great cities and +shipped them out into the country where there was a demand. The men +employed at Highcourt were thus obtained in San Francisco by the head +contractor and merely boarded in the town of Bellevue. They lived +"across the tracks" in the labor settlement, or in lath and tar-paper +shacks about the hills, camping in their eternal campaign of day labor +wherever the job happened to take them. Few were married, and all were +given more or less to drink and riotous living when pay-day came; and of +course they were constantly changing jobs. Adelle often heard the +architect and the head contractor deplore the conditions of the labor +market and the poor quality of work to be got out of the men at ruinous +wages. She had also heard her neighbors, Carter Pound and Nelson +Carhart, speak feelingly about the "foreign riff-raff" they had to +employ on their estates. No workman had a conscience these days, they +said. The women, too, talked of the rowdy character of the town "across +the tracks," and the unsafety of the roads for women. Adelle did not +think much about the matter, accepting it as a necessity, like gnats or +drought or flood. + +The Italians at least stuck to their jobs and were good-natured. Adelle +always said "bon giorno" when she ran across them toiling up the +slippery paths with their loads of stone or cement. She liked the way in +which they showed their teeth and touched their hats politely to "la +signora." They had a feeling for her as the mistress of the house, a +latent sense of feudal loyalty to their employer that had quite +disappeared among the other workmen. Apart from the Italians, the faces +of the men upon the job were not familiar to her and were constantly +changing, a strange one appearing almost every day. So Adelle felt less +at home with them and rarely spoke to them unless she had an order to +give that she could not easily transmit through the foreman. + +One morning in early March--it was while the Seaboard trouble was +acute--Adelle made her customary rounds of the place to see what was +being done. She descended to the cañon and stopped for some time where +the stone masons were laying up the wall that was to support the +terraces. It was a continuation of the massive wall that rose sheer from +the bottom of the little cañon to the front of the house, nearly a +hundred feet in all perpendicularly from the bottom course to the first +floor of the house. (It was the decision to thrust the house out over +the cañon that had necessitated the building of this massive wall and +had delayed matters for months.) Adelle had heard Archie grumble about +the useless expense caused by this great wall, but she liked it. Its +sheer height and strength gave her a pleasant sensation of +accomplishment and endurance. She liked to stare up at it as she liked +to see great trees or massive mountains or tall buildings. It was a +symbol of something humanly important which supplied a secret craving in +her soul. + +So this morning she stood silently watching the masons at their slow +work. One of the men she recognized as having been steadily on the job +ever since her arrival at Highcourt. He was a youngish, slender man with +sandy hair and blue eyes, and had the unmistakable air of being a +native-born American. His sinewy hands were roughened by his work, and +his face was almost a brick red, either from constant exposure to the +sun or from drinking, probably both. He seemed morose, as if he were +consciously ignoring the presence of his "boss," and worked steadily on, +once even failing to answer Adelle when she spoke, apparently +unconscious of her presence behind him. Adelle liked especially to watch +the masons at work. Their clever management of the great stones they had +to handle, the precise yet easy way in which they lined and chipped and +trigged and mortared, fitting all the detail of their rough mosaic, gave +her a pleasant sense of accomplishment such as she had felt in her own +efforts with metal and stone. It stirred an instinct for manual labor +which was not far down in her character, and actually made her own +shapely hands twitch to be at the fascinating work. And the masons' work +grew so surely, course upon course, and when done seemed so solid, so +eternal!... This morning she lingered longer than usual watching the +young mason wield his hammer and trowel. Archie had ruffled her badly +with his talk about money losses, and now she felt soothed, freed from +stupid perplexities. The mason's large hands, she noted, were supple and +dexterous--he made no useless movements. Occasionally he turned his head +to spit tobacco or drew off to look at his wall, but these were the only +interruptions in his rhythmic motions. He paid no attention whatever to +the woman behind him. + +Adelle was prettily dressed in a costume of white linen with a cloud of +chiffon tied about her small hat and a parasol that she had purchased +this summer in Paris, which consisted of an enormous gold lace +butterfly. She was fuller in figure than before her child had come and +in perfect health, though still pale. Fresh and well cared for, she was +if not beautiful very attractive and dainty--all that money could make +of her human person. Adelle was not given to prolonged reflection of any +sort, but probably she could not help comparing her own dainty, cool, +exquisitely clean person with this sweaty, sun-burned, coarse laborer in +his black cotton shirt, frayed khaki trousers, and shoes that the lime +had burned all color from. She must have felt a complacent sense of +physical superiority to the man who was working for her, and perhaps +congratulated herself that her lot in the universe had come out such a +comfortable one. + +The mason rolled up a large stone and prepared to set it home in the +bottom course. Adelle observed that he was about to crush one of the +Japanese shrubs that she had been at such pains to have planted along +the bank of the cañon. + +"Look out--don't hurt that bush!" she ordered peremptorily, as she was +in the habit of speaking to servants. + +The mason tranquilly deposited the rock full upon the shrub and +proceeded to slap mortar around it and tap it home with his mallet. + +"Didn't you hear me?" Adelle demanded, stepping forward and pointing at +the offending rock with her heavily jeweled finger. "Take it out! I +don't want the shrubs killed." + +The mason looked up for the first time. There was a glint in his clear +blue eyes as he said distinctly, without any trace of foreign accent,-- + +"It's got to go there!" + +A smile relaxed his red face, a scornful smile at the impertinence of +this dainty specimen of woman-kind who thought that the foundation +course of his rock wall could be disturbed for such a trivial matter as +a bush. + +"No, it hasn't," Adelle rejoined in her imperious tone. "Fix it some +other way." + +But the mason continued to pat his rock, looking around for the next one +to lay upon it. + +"Do what I say!" Adelle ordered, almost angrily, irritated by the man's +obstinacy. + +Then the mason rose, and with his trowel tapping the rock said slowly +and emphatically,-- + +"I'm laying this wall--and I don't take no orders from you!" + +Whereupon, after another shot from his hard blue eyes, he turned back to +the wall. + +At first Adelle was speechless; then she asked in a less peremptory +tone,-- + +"Don't you know who I am?" + +"Yes," the mason called back over his shoulder. "You're the boss up +there." He indicated the unfinished house with a wave of his trowel, and +went on with his work. He seemed indifferent to the fact that he was +dealing with the mistress of Highcourt, and Adelle helplessly retreated. + +"I will have you discharged!" she said as she walked away. + +The mason did not reply, and his face exhibited no emotion over this +dire threat. + +After considerable search Adelle found the contractor and made her +complaint against the mason. + +"I warned him not to hurt the shrubs and he kept right on. Please +discharge him at once." + +The contractor, who had not been long away from the trowel and mortar +himself, frowned. + +"He's a good worker, ma'am," he protested. "It ain't always you can get +a man like him out on a country job. Happens there is a building strike +in the city, and he needed the work, so he came. And he's been steady, +which is more than most masons." + +"He's impudent," Adelle asserted with an air of finality. + +"Very well, ma'am," the contractor said reluctantly. "I'll fire him +to-night." + +And Adelle thereupon went back to the house, gratified that she had +enforced discipline, not hearing the contractor's profanity about +meddlesome women. Later on the same day after the workmen had +left,--they knocked off from their eight hours while the sun was still +high in the heavens,--Adelle was wandering over the place, idly looking +for a suitable location for a tennis-court. The doctor had told her to +take some active exercise like tennis to prevent becoming unduly stout. +And Archie had picked out a site below the new house on fairly level +ground, but Adelle wanted to have the court cut out of the steep +hillside above the pool. Having found what she considered to be the +right spot, which would necessitate much expensive excavation and +building of retaining walls, she followed a little worn path through the +eucalyptus grove over the brow of the hill, curious to discover where it +led. After a time she emerged on the other side of the hill, and getting +through the barbed wire fence that marked the boundary of her own +estate, she followed the path along the farther side of the slope +through a clearing in the woods to an open field. From this side there +was a wild prospect westwards to the low haze which she knew indicated +the presence of the Pacific. The country on this slope of the hills +seemed wild and uninhabited. Adelle did not remember ever to have been +in the place and wondered if it was accessible by motor. At the farther +end of the field there was one of the tar-paper shacks that the workmen +put up for themselves, and the path evidently led to this hut. Usually +these shacks were huddled together in bunches nearer the town, within +easy reach of shop and saloon, but this one stood all alone on the edge +of the clearing. A man was bending over a tin basin before the door, +apparently washing out some clothes. As Adelle approached, he looked up +from his washing and Adelle recognized the impertinent stone mason. He +looked at her coolly, as if this time she were trespassing on his +domain, and as she came leisurely down the path, trying to ignore his +presence, he calmly threw out the dirty water from his pan on the path +and went into his shack, pulling the door to after him with a bang. +Adelle suspected the smile of contempt upon his face as he recognized +her. She did not like the movement he had made in throwing the dirty +water from his washpan directly in her path, although she was some +distance away. Probably by this time he had learned his fate and took +this means of testifying his resentment. The color rose in her pale +face. She was not a proud woman, had no large amount of that +self-importance which is the almost inevitable result of possessing +wealth. But one of the penalties of property is that it cultivates +whatever egotism and sensitiveness to its prerogative its owner is +capable of. That one of the common laborers employed upon her estate +should thus openly flout her made Adelle angry. + +She thought first to turn back,--her walk was really aimless,--but she +felt that the man would interpret such a retreat as due to his +impertinence, would think that she was afraid of him. So she kept on +past the shack into another open field. This was but the beginning of a +wild treeless descent towards the ocean. The little tar-paper shack was +the only sign of habitation in sight. There was an immense panorama of +tumbled hill and valley bounded westward by the curving coast-line where +the Pacific surges broke into faint lines of white spume, and where, she +might reflect sadly, the ill-fated Seaboard Railroad should now be +running trains to open up all this unoccupied land to civilization. +However, wild and unsettled as it was, it offered an attractive view, +and Adelle at once coveted it. They must buy up this tract over the +hill--they should have looked into it when they had arranged to take +Highcourt. Thus musing, she wandered on into the country until the sun +dipping into the ocean warned her to return for dinner. + +As she came back along the crest of the hill, she thought again of the +discharged stone mason and for her did a large amount of reflection. Why +was he living like this in a lonely shack far away from everybody? Why +had he chosen to isolate himself from his fellow-workmen, who herded +together near the town where they could slip down to the saloons after +their work? He must be by nature a sullen, unsociable fellow. And what +sort of life did he live in there, doing his own washing and probably +also his own cooking? A kind of curiosity about the truculent stone +mason and his way of life thus occupied Adelle's unspeculative mind. He +was a good-looking young fellow, lean and well muscled. If he were +dissipated, as she had been told all the laborers were, his excesses had +not yet shown in his person. What would he do now that he had lost his +job at Highcourt? + +There he was sitting on the doorstep of his shack, smoking his pipe, his +bare arms akimbo, staring out across the sunset void towards the sea. He +seemed also to be meditating with himself upon something of interest. +Upon Adelle's approach this time, he did not take himself off, but +continued to smoke indifferently, totally ignoring her presence. As she +came in front of him, she stopped involuntarily and found herself +speaking to the mason. + +"Good-evening," was all she said. + +The man mumbled some reply, as if against his will. And then again the +unexpected happened to Adelle,--at least the unforeseen. She asked him a +question. It was a simple question, but it was entirely out of Adelle's +character to make even the small advance implied by asking a question, +especially to a servant who had been discharged on her orders. + +"Do you live up here alone?" + +"Have been living here," the man replied grudgingly, "till to-day. Don't +expect to much longer," he added meaningly. + +Adelle knew that he was referring to what had occurred earlier in the +day between them, and throwing the blame for his dislodgment upon her. + +"What are you going to do?" she asked after a pause. + +He looked at her with mild astonishment for her question in his blue +eyes, then said,-- + +"Donno exactly--get drunk, maybe," and he glanced at her truculently. + +Adelle did not know why she went on talking to the man, but her +curiosity was thoroughly aroused and the questions popped unexpectedly +into her mind. + +"Why did you kill that shrub when I asked you not to put the stone upon +it?" she demanded next. + +The man looked at her for a moment with an expression of mingled +surprise, dislike, and amusement. + +"Asked me! You ordered me." + +"Why did you do it?" Adelle repeated, ignoring this subtle distinction. + +"Guess I felt like it," he replied evasively. "I don't take no orders +except from my boss," he grumbled. "Don't like no interference." + +"But it's my place--you were working for me!" Adelle rejoined +convincingly. + +"And," the mason demanded bluntly, "who in hell are you, anyway?" + +Adelle had not heard such direct language from a man for a good many +years, although Archie sometimes hinted the same thing in slightly more +polished language. At first she was staggered and thought she had made a +mistake in giving this man another opportunity to insult her. But +Adelle, thanks to her origin, was not easily insulted. She stayed on--to +hear more. + +"You've got a big pile of money and that place and lots of servants and +motors and all the rest," the mason went on to explain. "But that's no +reason you should go bossing around my job 'bout what you don't know +nothing. I get my orders from the boss, _my_ boss--see? And I know how +to lay a wall as good as any man--and your damned bushes shouldn't been +there." + +"You needn't be insulting," Adelle gasped with an attempt at dignity. + +"Insultin'!" the man blazed. "Who's insultin'? It's you who are +insultin' to God's earth--rich folks like you who've got more money that +ain't yours by rights than you know what to do with. You think because +you pay the bill you own the earth and every man on it. But you +don't--not everybody! And the quicker you and your kind learn that the +easier it will be for all of us." + +This was what Major Pound meant by "anarchy among the working-classes." +She had often heard him and Nelson Carhart deplore this,--using +interchangeably the two dread terms, "socialism" and "anarchy." Both the +gentlemen were of the opinion that "before we see an end to this spirit +in the working-classes, we shall have bloodshed." But it was the first +time Adelle had met the thing face to face, and it gave her a faint +thrill. She tried to think of some of Major Pound's excellent arguments +directed against the "anarchy" of the laboring-classes. + +"You're paid good wages, very high wages," she said after a time, +remembering that that was one of the grievances gentlemen most often +complained of--that laborers were paid altogether too much, thanks to +the unions, so that no profit was left for the men who supplied capital, +and also that they did less work and poorer work than they had once done +when they got only half the wages now paid. + +"You think five dollars a day is big money, don't you? It wouldn't go +far to fit _you_ out!" He nodded at Adelle's rich dress. "It would +hardly get you a dinner--wouldn't pay for the booze your husband will +drink to-night." + +Adelle winced at this shot, because it was only too evident to the +servants and the men about the place that Archie drank too much at +times. How could she complain of the workingman's drinking and wasting +his money, which was the next argument she remembered from her +neighbors' repertory, when her own husband drank more than was good for +him and many of the men they knew socially did the same? + +"It's no thanks to you rich people we get big pay either," the man +continued. "You'd like mighty well to cut it down to nothing if you +could get your work done." + +That was perfectly true. All their crowd at Bellevue were perpetually +complaining of the high wages they had to pay. They gave it as an excuse +for all sorts of petty meanness. Adelle felt that Major Pound would have +the suitable reply to the mason's argument, but she could not remember +it. + +"Five dollars a day for a day's hard work ain't so much either, when you +think how many days in the year there's nothing doing for one reason or +another. Last year I only had four months' work all told on account of +the strikes." + +"Yes," Adelle joined in eagerly, feeling that this ground was familiar +and safe, "but the strikes were your own fault, weren't they? You didn't +have to strike?" + +For reply the mason looked wearily at her, and rising from his seat on +the doorstep with a gesture remarked,-- + +"Well, I can't stay here gassin' all night, lady. I must hike along soon +to get the Frisco train.... What do you care about it anyway, whether +the strikes are our fault or not? You've got plenty of the stuff, and we +little folks ain't got nothin' but what we earn, and that ought to +satisfy you. We must work for you sometimes, and you don't have to do a +damn thing for anybody no times. You've got the luck, and we ain't! See? +And that's about all there is to it." + +Adelle felt that so far as her own case went, the man had come +remarkably near the truth. The mason turned, with an afterthought. + +"And I'm not whinin' 'bout it neither, remember that! I can always earn +enough to keep me goin' and get whiskey when I want it." + +He said it with a touch of pride, his workman's boast that he was +beholden to no one for meat or drink. It was more than Archie could say +now or at any time in his life. + +"Are you married?" Adelle asked, feeling that if there was a woman in +the situation another line of argument might be used. + +"Married! Hell, no! What do I want of being married?" + +Married men, Adelle had heard, were likely to be steadier workers than +the unmarried. Also more what her class called "moral." + +"I should think you would want to have your own home and children in +it," she ventured. + +The mason gave her an ironical look full of meaning. + +"That would sure be nice, if I could always give 'em plenty to eat and +education, the same as you can. But what can a man do with a wife when +he's here to-day and off to the other end of the land to-morrow lookin' +for a job? A steady job in one place where it's fit for a woman to live +ain't to be found every day.... A workingman who marries, unless he's +got money in the bank and a sure payin' job that'll last, is a fool or +worse. What good is it to bring children into the world to be like him +or maybe worse?" + +Adelle had no reply to this blunt logic. Marriage, he seemed to think, +was one of the privileges of the rich class, which she was sure ought +not to be so. + +"The trouble with the workingman, ma'am, is that he has done that too +long,--got families that had to live the best they could, any old way, +and take any old job they could get. That's what's made it easy goin' +for you! But the workingman is learnin' a thing or two. Men like me +won't get married, nor have children to slave for the rich." + +"What do the girls do?" Adelle asked, thinking of her own fate if she +had been left in the Church Street rooming-house. + +The mason shrugged his shoulders and came out with another brutality. + +"Some of 'em go into the houses for your men to use--there's always that +for 'em," he added, with a disagreeable laugh. "No, ma'am, I tell you +until things are made more right in this world, it's better for a poor +man to get along the best he can without draggin' a woman after him and +a lot of helpless children." + +"I didn't know it was as bad as that," Adelle remarked helplessly. + +"I guess, ma'am, there are a good many things about life you don't +know." + +"That's so," Adelle admitted honestly. + +"But I know!" the mason exclaimed with rising excitement. "I've seen it +over and over, everywhere. I've seen it in my own family," he said in a +burst of bitter confidence. "There were eight of us and we were only +middling poor until father died. The old man was a carpenter, up north +in Sacramento County. He had a small place outside of town and we raised +some stuff. But he got sick and died, when he weren't forty, and mother +had the whole eight of us on her hands. I was just twelve and my oldest +brother fifteen,--he was the only one could earn a dollar. We got on +somehow, those that lived. Two of my sisters are married to farmers and +there's another--well, she's the other thing." He stopped to look +belligerently at Adelle as if she had somehow to do with it. "She was +married to a workingman, good enough, I guess, but he got out of work +and heard of something up north and never came back.... We boys +scattered around where we could get work. Two of us is married and got +families. Guess they wish often enough they hadn't, too!" + +Adelle was absorbed by the mason's personal statement. She had forgotten +by this time her first self-consciousness in talking to the discharged +workman, and he, too, seemed less truculent, as if he enjoyed letting +off steam and stating his point of view to his ex-employer. + +"How old are you?" Adelle asked. + +"Twenty-eight," the mason replied. + +That was only a few years older than Adelle herself, but she recognized +that the man's experience of living had been far more than hers, also +deeper, so that he was justified in having opinions on the serious +things of life. Wealth, she might think, was not the only road to "a +full life" so much talked of in her circle. + +"Have you always been a stone mason?" she wanted to know. + +"Pretty much ever since I could lift a stone. An old feller took me from +mother to work for my keep when I was fourteen. He used to do some mason +work, and he knew how to lay stone--none better! He learned his trade +back East where he come from. He was one of the real forty-niners, and +knew my grandfather's folks--they all came to California the same +time.... I've been all over this country, up and down the Coast, to +Alasky and over in Nevada, at Carson City; drilling for oil, too, south. +Oh, I've seen things," he mused complacently, puffing at his pipe and +scratching his bare arms that were as smooth and brown as fine bronze. +"And I tell you there ain't much in it for the laboring-man, no matter +what wages he gets, unless he's got extry luck, which most of 'em ain't. +No wonder he goes after booze when he has the chance. What's there in it +for him anyhow?" + +Adelle, who had not been educated to philanthropy and social service, +did not attempt to answer this difficult question. + +"Not that I booze often," the mason explained with pride. "I reckon not +to make a hog of myself, but when you've been off on a job for months, +working all day long six days in the week in the heat and dust, you +accumulate a thirst and a devilment in you that needs letting out." + +He grinned at Adelle as if he felt that she might be sympathetic with +his simple point of view and added,-- + +"I guess that's what made me sassy to you this morning!" + +It was his sole apology. They both laughed, accepting it as such, and +Adelle, to shift the topic, remarked,-- + +"You've got a nice place up here for your house." + +The mason wrinkled his lips against the suggestion of sentiment. + +"The shack's all right--kind of fur to tote supplies over the hill. But +I can't stand those dagoes and their dirty ways. They have too many +boarders where they live." + +His American ancestry betrayed itself thus in his selection of an +exclusive position for his bunk. The conversation seemed to have come to +a natural conclusion, but Adelle did not start. At last she said what +she had had in mind for some time,-- + +"You'd better stay here--come back to work Monday." + +"I don't know as I want to," the mason replied, with a touch of his +former truculency. "I can get all the work I want most anywheres." + +"I'll speak to Mr. Ferguson about it," Adelle said. "Good-night!" + +She could not do more, she thought, as she hurried along the path, +although she was unreasonably anxious not to have the young stone mason +leave, more anxious than she had been that morning to have him +discharged for his insolence to her. When she was about to enter the +wood, she turned and looked back at the shack. She hoped that he was not +going to start on a spree. The mason, who had been sitting on the step +where she had left him, rose as if he had come to a sudden resolution +and marched into the shack. Adelle felt sure that he had made up his +mind to go to San Francisco and get his "booze." She divined the craving +in him for excitement, some relief from his toilsome hours under the hot +sun. Possibly he had fought against this desire all the summer, +restrained from breaking loose by a prudence which she had defeated by +arbitrarily discharging him from his job and could not so easily restore +with her change of whim. She did not feel any personal blame for his +action, however, nor did she blame him for yielding to this gross +temptation, as her more conservative neighbors might, although they +sometimes yielded themselves both to drink and the stock market to +stimulate their nerves. She merely hoped that he would think better of +his purpose. For the man interested her, and before she dressed for +dinner she sent a servant to the village with a note for the contractor, +asking him to reëngage the discharged stone mason and be sure that he +came back to work on the Monday. + + + + +XXXVI + + +Nevertheless, when Adelle looked for him the next Monday morning his was +not among the faces of the men at work on the lofty retaining wall. She +asked the contractor about him, but the boss merely shrugged his +shoulders and said that somebody had seen the man getting on the late +Saturday night train for the city. + +"It's too bad," he added, to punish Adelle for interfering in his +business. "He was a mighty good worker, and you don't get that kind +often these days. I'd rather have him than any four of these dagoes." + +He waved a disdainful arm at the squad of sons of sunny Italy who were +toiling along the wall. + +Adelle did not forget the young stone mason, but she could do nothing +more for him even had she known just what to do. Then one morning when +she made her usual rounds, she was happily surprised to find him back on +the job, working as was his wont a little to one side of his foreign +mates with his own helper. His face looked as red as ever, and his eyes +were also suspiciously red, but this was the only evidence of his spree +that she could see. As Adelle advanced to the place where he was +working, the mason glanced up and replied gruffly to her greeting,-- + +"Morning, ma'am!" + +She knew that he was not ashamed of himself, merely embarrassed. And she +thought that if he had not felt kindly to her, he would not have come +back to Highcourt to work after his spree--or was it, perhaps, his +pleasant shack on the hill that lured him to his old job? Adelle did not +tell him that she was glad to see him back, but passed on without +stopping. Presently, however, when his helper had disappeared for a load +of mortar she came back to the place and watched him. He worked as +steadily and swiftly as ever, his lithe bronze arm lifting the stones +accurately to their places, his wrist giving a practiced flip to each +trowel full of mortar, which landed it on the right spot. Adelle wanted +to talk to him again, to ask him questions, but did not know how to +begin. Apparently he meant to let her make all the advances. + +"That's fascinating work," she said at length. + +He flipped a fresh dab of mortar to place and replied,-- + +"You might think so lookin' on--but no work is fascinatin' when you've +had too much of it. I've laid enough stone to last me a lifetime." + +"What else had you rather do?" + +"Oh," he said, pausing a moment to wipe the sweat from his face with the +back of his shirt-sleeve, "'Most anything at times! I tried mining once, +but it's worse and uncertain. And lumbering--no pay. When I was a kid I +wanted to be a doctor--that's before I left school. A nice sort of +doctor I'd make, wouldn't I?" + +He laughed at himself, but Adelle felt that in spite of his mirthless +laugh his mind was chafing. He was dissatisfied with himself and the +work he was doing and hungered for some larger demand upon his powers +than laying so many feet of rock wall per day. She herself had so little +of this sort of hunger in her own soul that it made the young mason all +the more interesting to her. + +"You might save up your money and try--" she began. + +"To be a doctor?" he laughed back. "I saved up once--got most five +hundred dollars and a feller came along and persuaded me to put it into +some land. Well, I got the land still.... No, ma'am, there ain't much +chance to change for the workingman when he's once fixed in his creek +bed. He must just roll along with the rest the best he can. And I'm +better off than most because I've got a paying trade. Lots of boys like +me and my brothers don't learn ever to do anything, and just slave on +all their lives at any job comes handy until they are all wore out. Lots +and lots. Their folks can't keep 'em in school and they never know +enough to more'n sign their names. All they are good for is rough work, +same as the dago helper here. He thinks two dollars a day big money. I +guess it is to him." + +He spat disdainfully with all an American's contempt for the inferior. + +"I expect where he come from it was a fortune, two dollars a day, eh?" +He appealed to Adelle to appreciate the joke. "Think of that now! And +he's got a woman and kids, and I bet has saved money, too. But he's only +a dago," he explained tolerantly. + +"Say," he resumed after a pause. "It costs more 'n two dollars to go to +the opery in San Francisco." + +"Did you go to the opera?" Adelle asked, recalling that Archie had said +something about the current engagement of the New York Opera company. +They had a box or something for the season--they always did. "What did +they give?" + +"Oh, it was some German piece. It took place in the woods with a lot of +folks in armor, but the music was fine, and there was one place where +they had a castle upon a big hill, like that where my shack is, way off +towards the clouds, and a river down in front going by with women in it +swimming," and he described with relish the last act of the +"Rheingold-dammerung," which Adelle recognized because she had seen it +many times in Europe and been horribly bored by it. The story of the +opera seemed to interest the young mason especially. He retold it +minutely for Adelle's benefit, offering amusing explanations of its +mythological mysteries. + +"But how did you happen to go to the opera?" Adelle asked. + +"Well," he said in vague diffidence, "I was feeling pretty good by that +time, and I seen the poster. I had the price--why shouldn't I go?" he +demanded brusquely; and with another sardonic laugh the real motive came +out,--"I wanted to see what you folks who go to the opery see--how you +enjoy yourselves. Well, the opery ain't so bad--it ain't one bit bad," +and he attempted to hum the Rheingold music. "I believe I'll go to the +opery again when I'm on the loose and don't know any better way to blow +my money. I like music," he added inconsequentially. "Mother used to +sing sometimes." + +This was as far as they got conversationally that day. Something +interrupted Adelle in the midst of the musical discussion and she did +not have a chance to return to the wall. But she had almost daily +opportunity for talk with the young mason in the succeeding weeks, for +after his return from his spree, he worked steadily on his job every +day. He was one of the very few American-born workmen employed at +Highcourt, and after their misunderstanding and subsequent agreement, +Adelle felt better acquainted with him than with the others. He taught +her to handle the trowel and to lay stone. After a few attempts, she +managed quite well and found a curious pleasure in the manual labor of +fitting stone to stone and properly bedding the whole in cement. She +learned to select the right pieces with a rapid glance and to chip an +obtrusive corner or face a rock with a few taps of the heavy hammer. It +gave her a pleasure akin to her experiments in jewelry, and it must be +said the results were better. She used to show her visitors proudly the +bit of wall she had laid up herself under the young mason's direction +and assert that, instead of bookbinding or jewelry or other ladylike +occupations, she meant to set up stone walls about Highcourt for her +recreation. The Bellevue people considered her whim a harmless bit of +eccentricity in the young mistress of Highcourt, and she was the object +of many a good-humored joke about her new method of "beating the +unions." Little did any of these pleasure-loving rich folk suspect where +Adelle's instinct for manual labor came from, how natural it was for her +to work at coarse tasks with her large, shapely hands. + + * * * * * + +She needed all the distraction she could get, for these were not happy +days for Adelle within her big new house. The inexplicable stringency of +money grew worse, and there were constant quarrels between her and +Archie over her "extravagance" when he was at home. Adelle could not +understand why she should be obliged to curb her prodigal hand in making +"improvements" at Highcourt. Did the trust officers not tell her that +hers was a "large fortune," not far from five millions, enough surely to +permit a woman freedom for every whim? If there was trouble about money, +it must be Archie's fault: she wished she had never consented to take +her property out of the safe keeping of the careful trust company. Her +logic in these discussions, if irrefutable, was bitter, and Archie +resented it, all the more because he knew that he had made a fool of +himself with his wife's ample fortune, and allowed stronger men to bite +him. He had not sufficient character to confess the fact and refrain +altogether from further speculation. He tried instead to make good what +had been lost in Seaboard and was always nagging Adelle to dispose of +certain stocks and bonds that still remained from the investments of the +prudent trust company. But Adelle was obstinate: she would not sell +anything more. So Archie's large debit at his brokers went on rolling +up, and there continued to be "words" at Highcourt whenever he was +there, which was less often then he might have been. + +Proverbially, money is the cause of the bitterest disputes in families. +Abstractly it might seem remarkable that this should be so, but the +peculiar nature of property of all sorts is that it becomes the inmost +shrine of its possessor's being, and when the shrine is robbed or +desecrated, the injured personality resents the outrage with bitterness. +Many a man or woman will submit with Christian fortitude to insults upon +character or positive unjust burdens, but will flame into rebellion at +the least touch upon the purse. In the case of Archie and Adelle it was +all the more remarkable because neither had been born to wealth so that +property could become a part of the nature: they were both "the spoiled +children of fortune" as the story-books say, having had their wealth +thrust upon them unexpectedly, and so might take its loss lightly. Not +at all! Adelle felt as much wronged as if she had been the last of an +ancient line of dukes and duchesses or had accumulated the riches of +Clark's Field by a lifetime of toil and self-denial. Was it not _hers_? +Had the law not made it inalienably a part of her? Such is human nature +in a capitalistic society. + +Bellevue began to gossip about the couple at Highcourt, and divided as +always into two camps with shades of opinion within each camp. The women +were generally for Archie, even if he had been foolish with his wife's +money and was conducting his "affair" with Irene Pointer rather +recklessly. If his wife were less stupid and selfish about not going +about with him in society, she could have "held him." The men liked +Archie well enough, but knew that he was "no good." + + + + +XXXVII + + +It was some time after the young mason's return to his job before Adelle +even learned his name. She had no curiosity about his name, indicating +how little of the personal or sentimental there was in the interest she +felt in him. He was just the "mason," and she always addressed him as +"mason" until one day she heard the foreman call him--"Clark"; and then, +when the foreman had passed on, she said with mild curiosity,-- + +"Is your name Clark?" + +"Yes," the man replied with a touch of pride in the pure English +name,--"Clark without the e. I'm Tom Clark. Father's name was Stanley +Clark, same as grandfather's. Everybody about Sacramento used to know +old Stan Clark!" + +"My name was Clark, too, before I was married," Adelle remarked. + +"Did you spell it with an _e_?" Tom Clark asked. + +"No, the same as yours, without the _e_," she replied. + +"We must be related somewheres," the mason laughed, with a sense of +irony. + +"Where did your family come from?" + +"Somewhere East--Missouri, I think. But that was long ago--before the +gold times. Grandfather Stan came out in forty-nine and settled on the +Sacramento River, and that was where father was raised." + +Adelle felt a slight increase in her interest in the mason from their +having the same name, and she remarked idly,-- + +"So your family lived once in Missouri?" + +"The Clarks came from Missouri--that's all I know. Mother's folks were +Scotch-Irish, and that's where I get my red head, I guess!" + +Like most Americans of his class he knew nothing more of his origin than +the preceding two generations. The family was lost in the vague limbo of +"back East somewheres." Yet he was proud that the Clarks had come from +the East and were among the first Americans to enter the golden land of +opportunity. And he apologized for the failure of his ancestors to +attach to themselves a larger share of prosperity. + +"If we could have hung on to grandfather's old ranch, we'd not one of us +been working for other folks to-day. He had a hundred and sixty acres of +as pretty a bit of land as there is in Sacramento Valley--part of it is +now in the city limits, too. But father was sort of slack in some +ways,--didn't realize what a big future California had,--so he sold off +most of the ranch for almost nothing, and mother had to part with the +rest." + +He flipped a trowelful of mortar and whistled as if to express thus his +sense of fate. + +"Too bad," Adelle replied. "They say you ought never to sell any land. +It's all likely to be more valuable some day." + +"Sure!" the mason rejoined sourly. "That's why most of us work for a few +of you!" + +"What do you mean?" Adelle asked, puzzled by the economic theory implied +in this remark. + +But before Clark could explain, Adelle was summoned to the house. As she +went up the slippery path she thought about what the mason had said, +about his being a Clark, too. She felt herself on much closer terms of +knowledge and sympathy with this workman of her own name than with the +fashionable women who had come for luncheon to Highcourt. + +Hitherto Adelle had met in the journey of life mainly coarse-minded +persons--I do not mean by this, nasty or vulgar people, but simply men +and women who were content to live on the surfaces and let others do for +them what thinking they needed--people upon whom the experience of +living could make little fine impression. In the rooming-house, with her +aunt and uncle and the transient roomers, naturally there had been no +refinement of any sort. Nor, in spite of its luxury and its boast of +educating the daughters of "our best families," had the expensive +boarding-school to which the trust company in their blindness condemned +their ward added much to Adelle's spiritual opportunities. Pussy +Comstock, for all her sophistication, was no better, and as for the "two +Pols" and Archie Davis, the reader can judge what fineness of mind or +soul was to be found in them. Even the officers of the Washington Trust +Company, who were of indubitable respectability and prominence in their +own community,--everything that bankers should be,--had neither mental +nor spiritual elevation, and coarsely pigeonholed their ideas about life +as they had done with Adelle. The thinking of the best spirits in +Bellevue has been exemplified in the utterance upon labor that Adelle +had taken from Major Pound and Nelson Carhart who are doubtless still +enunciating the same trite remarks at the dinner-table and in their +clubs with a profound conviction of thinking seriously upon important +topics. All these diverse human elements, which thus far had been cast +up in Adelle's path, were good people enough--some of them earnest and +serious about living, but all without exception coarse-minded. All the +wealth of Clark's Field had not yet given its owner one simple, +clear-thinking human companion. + +The young stone mason, Tom Clark, outwardly crude and coarse and with a +knowledge of life limited by his personal estate, was nevertheless the +first person Adelle had met who tried to do his own thinking about life. +It was not very important thinking, perhaps, but it had for Adelle the +attraction of freshness and sincerity. The mason stimulated the mistress +of Highcourt intellectually and spiritually, which would have made the +good ladies at luncheon with her that day laugh or do worse. Adelle felt +that he could help her to understand many things that she was beginning +to think about, that were stirring in her dumb soul and troubling her. +And she knew that she could talk to him about them, as she could not +talk to George Pointer nor Major Pound nor even Archie. In her simple +way, when she discovered what she wanted, she went directly after it +until she was satisfied. She meant to talk more with the young stone +mason of the widespread race of Clark. + +The next time Adelle made the ascent of the hill behind Highcourt she +took her little boy with her, and after wandering about the eucalyptus +wood with him in search of flowers sent him back to the house with his +nurse and kept on over the hill to the shack where Clark lived. She +examined the tar-paper structure more carefully, noticing that the mason +had set out some vegetables beside the door and that a little vine was +climbing up the paper façade of the temporary home. She knew that the +mason was still at his work below, and so she ventured to peek into the +shack. Everything within the one small room was clean and orderly. There +was a rough bunk in one corner, which was made into a neat bed, and +beneath this were arranged in pairs the man's extra shoes, one pair +bleached by lime and another newer pair of modern cut for dress use. In +one corner was a small camper's stove with a piece of drain-pipe for +chimney; a board table, one or two boxes, and some automobile oil cans +made up the furniture of the room. There was also a little lime-spotted +canvas trunk that probably contained the mason's better clothes and his +extra tools. On the table was a lamp and a few soiled magazines, with +which Clark probably whiled away free hours when not disposed to descend +to the town for active amusement. + +For a woman in Adelle's position such a workingman's home has the +interest of the unfamiliar. It is always incomprehensible to a woman +nurtured to a high standard of comfort to realize a totally different +and presumably lower standard of living. This may be seen when travelers +peer with exclamations of surprise and pity or disgust into the stuffy +homes of European peasants or the dark mud-floor rooms of Asiatics. The +prejudices of race as well as of social class seem to come to the +surface in this concrete experience of how another kind of human being +sleeps, eats, and amuses himself. With Adelle this sensation of +strangeness was not very keen, because her own acquaintance with the +habits of the rich was less than ten full years old. Clark's one-room +tar-paper shack did not seem so squalid to her as it might to Irene +Pointer, though Adelle had never before had the curiosity to enter a +humble dwelling. She looked about her, indeed, with a certain +appreciation of its coziness and adequacy. All that a single man really +needed for decency and modest comfort was to be found here, at least +under the conditions of the sunny California clime, which Providence +seems to have adapted for poverty. All the wealth of Clark's Field could +have added little valuable luxury to this tar-paper shack on the ridge +of high hills with a prospect of mountain, valley, and ocean before the +front door. Of course, with the assistance of Clark's Field, its +proprietor would have been sitting in the great room of the Pacific +Coast Club, as Archie was at this moment, imbibing foreign wine and +deploring the "agitation among the people," which was making a very bad +stock market. + +After having taken in every item in the single room carefully, Adelle +went on her way full of thought. Her first impression was that the mason +must be a superior sort of workman because he kept his home and his few +possessions neatly and orderly. She did not know that there are many +naturally clean persons in the laboring-classes. However, she made no +fetish of tubbing herself once a day, and thought on to more important +considerations. Evidently the young man was attached to his beautiful +solitary abode--he had planted and watered a vine for the door. She +resolved to tell him that he could help himself to the fruit and flowers +in Highcourt. If he cared to set out a small flower garden, he could get +seeds and slips from her own formal garden. But there was the question +of water: it would not be possible for him to start a garden on this +hilltop without water. She supposed that he must lug what water he used +from Highcourt. Probably that was the use he put those large tin cans +to.... + +Adelle's mind was naturally slow in its operations. Ideas and +impressions seemed to lie in it for months like seed in a dry and cold +ground without any sign of fruitful germination. But they were not +always dead! Sometimes, after days or weeks or even months of apparent +extinction, they came to life and bore fruit,--usually a meager fruit. +To-day, for an inexplicable reason, she began to think again of the +mason's family name. He was a Clark without the e, and his people came +from "back East." It might seem strange that this fact had not at once +roused a train of ideas in Adelle's mind when she first learned of it. +But the lost heir to Clark's Field had never been to her of that vital +importance he had been to her mother and uncle. It must be remembered +that her aunt was the only one of her family who had been at all near to +her, and her aunt had small faith in the Clark tradition and was not of +a reminiscent turn of mind. Of course, the trust officers had explained +carefully to Adelle's aunt in her hearing all about the difficulties +with the title, and at various times after her aunt's death had alluded +to this matter in their brief communications with her. But they had not +gone into the specific measures they had taken to look for the lost +heirs of old Edward Clark, nor the means by which the title at last had +been "quieted," to use the expressive legal term. And finally all such +business details passed through Adelle's mind like a stream of water +through a pipe, leaving little sediment. She had not thought about the +Clarks or Clark's Field for some years.... + +To-day she began wondering whether by chance this young mason of the +name of Clark could be related to any of her mother's people. She must +find out more about his family history. So she prolonged her walk among +the hills until the declining sun told her that the mason would have +returned to his home. Then she came back along the path by the shack. +Clark was inside, whistling loudly, and evidently preparing his evening +meal, for a thin stream of bluish smoke emerged into the still air from +the mouth of the drain-pipe. Adelle called,-- + +"Mr. Clark!" + +The mason came to the open door. He was bareheaded and barearmed, +clothed merely in khaki trousers and red flannel undershirt, but he was +glisteningly clean and shaved. In one hand he carried his frying-pan +into which he had just put some junks of beef. He seemed surprised on +seeing the lady of Highcourt at his door and scowled slightly in the +sunlight. + +"I was going by," she explained without any embarrassment, "and wanted +to ask you about something." + +The mason removed his pipe from his teeth and stood at attention. + +"Do you know where your family came from before they lived in Missouri?" +she asked. "I mean the Clarks, your grandfather's people." + +The mason looked surprised to find this was the important question she +had come all the way to his shack to ask. + +"No, I don't know, Mrs. Davis." + +"Did you ever hear any one of them speak of Alton?" + +He slowly shook his head. + +"Never heard the name of the place before that I know of." + +"Oh," Adelle observed in a disappointed tone, "I thought you might know +where they came from before the Missouri time." + +The mason gave a short, harsh laugh and stuck his pipe back between his +teeth. + +"I don't see as it makes any odds where they came from," he remarked. "I +guess we ain't got any fancy family tree to boast of." + +"Well," Adelle observed; and then, recollecting her other intention, she +said,-- + +"Don't you want some flowers or fruit or stuff from the garden? You +can't raise much up here." + +"No, thanks; I don't want nothin'--much obliged to you." + +In spite of the conventional terms there was a surly burr to his tone +that belied the courtesy. Adelle was surprised at the hardness of his +mood. She felt quite friendly, almost intimate with him, after all their +talks, and now he was as gruff as he had been the first day. She looked +at his face for an explanation. He was scowling slightly, and in the +reddish light of the setting sun his face seemed to burn as with fever, +and his blue eyes glinted dangerously. She could not make out what was +going on in the man's mind. Probably he did not himself rightly know. +The discovery that he bore the same name as his employer had once might +have set off some unpleasant train of subconscious reflection, +accentuating the bitter sense of class distinction and the unreason of +it, which he was only too prone to entertain. He did not want any +"kindness" from rich people. He worked for them because he must, but he +worked in a spirit of armed neutrality at the best, like so many of his +kind, and he spat mentally upon Carnegie libraries and all other +evidences of the philanthropic spirit in those relieved from the toil of +day labor. + +Adelle could not follow this, but she knew that the man was close to an +explosion point of some sort, as he had been that other time when she +had encountered him before his shack. Then he had suddenly jumped up +from the doorstep, the lust for action in his movement, and had +disappeared for the better part of a week. She felt that he might be on +the verge of another such outbreak and tried clumsily to prevent it if +possible. She hesitated, thinking what to say, while the mason glared at +her as if he were controlling himself with an effort. + +"I thought you might like something," she said at last. "There's plenty, +and you are welcome to what you want." + +"I don't want nothin'"; and he added meaningly,--"least of all flowers +and fruits." + +"There are a lot of magazines at the house--you might call for them or +books." + +"I don't do much reading." + +He checked her every move. There was nothing more to say, and so Adelle +turned slowly and went on her way to her home, thinking rather sadly +that the young mason would surely go to "'Frisco" to-night and might +never come back. Meanwhile, the mason had entered his shack and closed +the door, as if he wished to keep out intruders. He was not +whistling.... + +That evening Archie arrived by motor from the city, bringing with him +some friends, and others came up to dinner from Bellevue, so that they +had a party of eight or ten. Dinner was late, and as the night was +pleasant with starlight and a soft breeze, coffee was served on the +unfinished terrace. As Adelle was pointing out to one of the guests the +line of proposed wall, she saw a man's figure coming down the path from +the eucalyptus grove. She watched it draw near to the terrace, then +stop. She was sure that it was the mason's figure. He must be on his way +to town to take the evening train for the city, which passed Bellevue at +nine forty-five. She utterly forgot what she was saying, what was being +said to her, in her intense effort to discover in the darkness what the +figure just above the terrace was doing. She could not tell whether he +had gone back to skirt the house and go on by a more roundabout way or +was waiting for an opportunity to descend unobserved. Some time +afterwards she heard the rolling of a stone on the hill-path and knew +that he must have retraced his steps to the grove. She thought that +there was no path down that way and was unreasonably glad for--she did +not know what. Archie had observed her distraction and remarked,-- + +"Must be one of the workmen sneaking about up there. They are all over +the place, thick as flies. There's one has built himself a shack on the +other side of the hill and worn a path down here across the +terrace--cheeky rascal. I'll tell Ferguson to smoke him out!" + +Adelle said nothing, but she was sure that Ferguson would never execute +that order. + + + + +XXXVIII + + +The next morning Adelle went straight to the terrace wall from her room +where she had her coffee. All she had to do was to step out of the +French window and around the corner of the house, for she had not yet +moved to the rooms designed for her in the other wing. This morning she +wished to know surely whether the mason had gone off on his spree or had +really turned back as she thought he had the night before. And there he +was on the job, sure enough! Upon her approach, he looked up and rumpled +his hat over his head, which was his shamefaced method of saluting a +lady. He still looked somewhat stormy, but there were no traces of +debauch in his eyes, and he was tossing in his mortar with a fine swing, +and handling the heavy stones as if they were loaves of bread. + +"Good-morning, Mr. Clark," was all that Adelle said, and started to go +on. + +But the mason called out,-- + +"Say!" and throwing down his trowel he hunted for something in his hip +pocket. "You was asking me about that town in the East--Alton. Well, I +found this after you had gone." + +He produced a tattered package of what seemed to be old letters, +yellowed with age and torn at the corners, and handed them up to Adelle. + +"They were grandfather's and mother always kep' 'em; I don't know why. +When she died one of my sisters giv' em to me. I been totin' 'em 'round +in my trunk ever since. They're kind of dirty and spotted," he +apologized for their condition. "But they were pretty old, I guess, when +I got 'em, and they ain't had much care since.... Last night after you +were up there I got 'em out of the trunk and tried to read 'em. There's +one there from Alton--it's got the postmark on the outside." + +Clark pointed with his mortar-coated thumb to the faint circle of the +stamp in the corner. Adelle took the letter from him with a sense of +faintness that she could not explain. She had been right in her +conjecture: that seemed to her a very great point. + +"I was bringin' 'em up to the house last night," the mason explained, +"but seen you had company, so kep' 'em until to-day." + +So he had not thought of going to San Francisco on a spree! Adelle's +woman conceit might have been sadly dashed. + +"May I read them?" she asked, looking curiously at the package of faded +letters. + +"Sure! Read 'em over. That's what I brought 'em to you for," the mason +said heartily. "I couldn't make much out of the old writing myself. I +ain't no scholar, you know, and the ink is pretty thin in spots. But I +seed the Alton postmark and thought you would be interested." + +"I'll look them over," Adelle said slowly, "and let you know what I find +in them." + +She carried the letters with her back to her rooms, but she did not open +them at once. She had no desire to do so, now that she had them. It was +not until the afternoon, while she was lounging in her room,--Archie +having gone to play polo at the club,--that she finally took up the +stained packet of old letters, and opened them. They were addressed +variously to "E. S. Clark," or "Edward S. Clark," and one to "E. Stanley +Clark," but that was a later one than the others and had to do with some +land business in California. The mason had spoken of his grandfather as +"Stanley Clark"--"old Stan Clark," he called him. Evidently the elder +Clark had called himself by his middle name after settling in +California, but before that he had been known as "Edward" or "Edward S. +Clark." + +Almost at random Adelle opened a letter--the one that the mason had +pointed out to her as having the Alton postmark. It was written in a +scrawly, heavy hand, which was almost illegibly faint and yellow after +the lapse of more than fifty years, and must have been written by one +little accustomed to the pen, for there was much hard spelling as well +as irregular chirography. Adelle looked for the signature. It was in the +lower inside corner, and the name, in the effort to economize space, was +almost unreadable. It might be "Sam." After considerable puzzlement, she +felt sure that it was "Sam." The S had an indubitable corkscrew effect, +and the straight splotches must have been an _m_, and there was the +faint trace of the _a_. But who was "Sam"? + +It was a few moments before Adelle realized that the "Sam" at the bottom +of the old letter was an abbreviation for her grandfather's name. It was +old Samuel Clark's signature. When she had grasped this fact, she turned +back to look at the date. It was 1847--July 19. She looked at the +envelope. It was addressed to "Mr. Edward S. Clark," at "Mr. Knowlton's, +8 Dearborn St., Chicago." At last Adelle got to the letter itself and +spent much time trying to make out the parts she could read. It was all +about family matters--the letter of one brother to another. There were +references to some family trouble, and "Sam" seemed to be defending +himself from a charge of unfair dealing with his brother, and protested +his good faith many times. Adelle was not greatly interested in the +contents of the letter, with its reference to a musty family row. She +knew too little of the Clark history to appreciate the significance of +Sam's verbose self-defense. + +What she did realize overwhelmingly was the fact that the young mason +was related to her--was her second cousin, the grandson of the elder +brother Clark, while she was the granddaughter, through her mother, of +the younger brother. And that was all she realized for the present. It +was a large enough fact. She was not a familyless woman as she had +always supposed, and this young workman on her estate was her cousin. He +had the same blood that she had in part, was of the same race, and as he +inherited through his father from the elder brother, while she inherited +through the mother from the younger brother, he would be considered in +certain social systems to be her family superior! The Head of the +Family! Adelle had no great class pride, as must have been perceived, +but even to her it was something of a shock to discover that she was +cousin to the stone mason employed in building her wall--an uneducated +young man who chewed tobacco, used poor grammar, and went on sprees, +vulgar sprees, for Archie had taught her that money makes a great +difference in the way men get drunk. And she remembered that Clark had +said, in his bitter indictment of the laboring-man's lot, that one of +his sisters was not all that she should be! Naturally it gave her much +to think about. Not the question whether she should tell him what she +had discovered from his grandfather's letters, but the fact itself of +her relationship with the young mason. That was stunning at first, even +to Adelle! + +But as she lay upon her pretty bed, which had been painted for her in +Paris with a flock of unblushing Amours, and stared at the painted +ceiling, her good sense rapidly came back to her. In her character it +was the substitute for humor. After all, there was nothing so +extraordinary in the fact. There must be many similar cases of poor +relations among all the people she knew, even with the Paysons and the +Carharts, who were the primates of Bellevue society. When families had +been living for a long time on this earth, there must grow up such +inequalities of fortune between the different branches, even among the +different members of the same generation. If people were only aware of +all their relations, there would doubtless be many surprises in life. +What would Archie say to it? In the first place, she probably would not +tell him, and he had no good ground for criticism anyway. The Davises +were not highly distinguished folk: no doubt Archie could find in any +telephone directory plenty of distant cousins of humble station. As for +Tom Clark himself, she did not feel that he would be disagreeable after +he had learned his relationship to his employer. He might whistle and +laugh and get off one of those ironical and contemptuous utterances +about society of which he seemed fond. + +After thinking it all over, Adelle rose and dressed herself; then, +taking the package of letters, of which she had only casually examined +the others, went up the path to the tar-paper shack. It was a hot +afternoon, and the mason had only just come back from his task. He had +not yet washed, and was sitting before his door, all red and sweaty, +smoking his pipe and scratching his arms in a sensuous relaxation of +muscles after the day's work. He looked altogether the workman. He did +not rise at her approach, but removing his pipe, remarked, as if he had +been expecting her visit,-- + +"Well, did you read the stuff?" + +"Yes," Adelle replied, holding out the package; "I read some of them." + +"That's more'n I could do," he said, receiving the letters and staring +at them as if they had been Egyptian hieroglyphs. "What could you make +out of 'em?" + +"One thing!" Adelle exclaimed. "Your grandfather and my grandfather must +have been own brothers." + +"You don't say!" Tom Clark exclaimed, throwing back his head and giving +vent to that robust, ironical laugh that Adelle had expected. "So old +Stan Clark was your great-uncle?" + +Adelle nodded. + +"Just think of that now!" and the mason went off into another peal of +laughter which made Adelle uncomfortable. He did not take seriously his +relationship with the mistress of Highcourt. "I bet old grandfather Stan +would have been mighty surprised if he could see his niece and her swell +house!" + +Suddenly the mason rose, and, fetching out a box from his house, said +with an elaborate flourish of ironical courtesy,-- + +"Sit down, cousin, and we'll talk it over." + +Adelle accepted the seat meekly. + +"So father's folks didn't really come from Missouri--but from way back +East?" he inquired with appreciation of the added aristocracy that this +gave the family. + +"Surely they came from Alton," Adelle replied. "That was where the +Clarks had always lived--ever since before the Revolution." + +"As long as that! Think of it--I'll be damned--beggin' your pardon, +cousin!" the mason exclaimed. + +Except for this familiar use of the term of relationship Tom Clark's +attitude was respectful enough, more humorous than anything else, as if +the news Adelle had given him merely completed his ironic philosophy of +life. He mused,-- + +"So I had to get into a fight in 'Frisco and come here to work on this +job to find out my family connections." + +He seemed impressed with the devious paths of Providence. + +"And I had to go all the way from Alton to Paris to find a Californian +husband, who brought me out here!" laughed Adelle, who was beginning to +comprehend the mason's humor and the situation. + +Neither thought of any money concern in the new-found relationship. They +were still sitting before the shack on boxes in the red light of the +descending sun and Clark was explaining to "cousin" his theory of the +unimportance of family ties, when Archie came up the path. Adelle +perceived him first, and hastily getting up went to meet him. She did +not want him to hear the news, at least not until she had had time to +manage his susceptibilities, for she knew that his first reaction would +be to get rid of her "cousin" as soon as possible, and he would nag her +until the mason had been discharged. Archie, who had been drinking +enough since his game to give free rein to his poor temper, immediately +began the attack within hearing of the stone mason. + +"So this is where you are! I've been looking for you all over the place. +Thought you were too tired to go to the polo," he said accusingly. + +"I only just came up the hill for a little walk," Adelle explained. + +"I've been back an hour myself, and they said you'd gone out before," +her husband retorted suspiciously. + +"Perhaps it was earlier," Adelle replied indifferently. + +She cared less than she had once for Archie's outbursts of temper, and +at present her mind was occupied with other matters than calming him. +Archie looked at her with a peculiar stare in which ugliness and +something more evil were mixed. + +"Been having such an interesting conversation that you didn't know how +fast time was going?" he sneered. + +"Yes," Adelle replied literally. + +"Talkin' with that fellow?" Archie demanded, hitching a shoulder in the +direction of the stone mason, who was still sitting not far off watching +the couple. + +"Yes, I had something important to say to him," Adelle replied, and +started away. + +But Archie did not stir. + +"I have something important to say to him, too," he growled, walking +towards the mason. + +"Archie!" Adelle called. + +But Archie paid no attention. He strode furiously up to the shack, and +even before he reached it he called out,-- + +"Here, you there! What business have you got building your dirty little +roost on my land without permission?" + +The mason merely smiled at the angry man in reply. Adelle, who had run +up to her husband, tried to pull him back, with a hand on his arm. + +"It isn't our land," she said disgustedly. Her foolish husband did not +even know the boundaries of their own property, which stopped at the +edge of the eucalyptus grove on the top of the hill. + +"Well, I won't have him tracking up the place with his paths," Archie +said weakly. "He was prowling around the house last night. I saw him." + +The mason again smiled at him, as if he scorned to answer back a man who +was so evidently "in his booze," as he would put it, and trying to pick +a quarrel. + +"Anyway you are discharged," he said, in a lordly attempt to get back +his dignity. "See Mr. Ferguson in the morning and get your money +and--get out!" + +"I will not," the mason replied imperturbably. + +"What do you say?" + +Clark grinned at Adelle and replied with an intentional drawl,-- + +"I been discharged once on this job and taken back, and this time I mean +to stick until the job's done." + +"No, you won't!" Archie shouted. + +"Oh, so I won't?... Well, I ain't taking my orders from you. She's the +boss on the ranch, I guess." + +He indicated Adelle with a nod. This came altogether too near the truth +to be pleasant for Archie. + +"You damned--" + +With his heavy polo whip raised he sprang at the mason. Adelle dragged +at his arm, and he turned to shake her off, raising his free hand +threateningly. + +"Take care!" the mason called out. "Don't hit a woman!" + +As if in defiance, as if to show that he could hit at least this woman +who belonged to him by law, even though her possessions might not belong +to him entirely, Archie's left hand came down upon Adelle's arm with +sufficient force to be called a blow. Adelle dropped her grip of her +husband's arm with a slight cry of fright and shame rather than of pain. +Archie did not have to step forward to get at the mason, for with one +bound Clark sprang from his seat on the box and dealt Archie such a +smashing blow in the middle of the face that he fell crumpled in a heap +on the ground between Adelle and the mason. He lay there gasping and +groaning for a few moments--long enough for Adelle to realize completely +how she loathed him. Before this she had known that she was not happy in +her marriage, that Archie was far from the lover she had dreamed of, +that he was lacking in certain common virtues very necessary in any +society. Indeed, he had treated her roughly before now, in accesses of +alcoholic irritation, but always there had been in her mind a lingering +affection for the boy she had once loved and spoiled--enough to make her +pardon and forget. But now she saw him beneath the skin with the deadly +clearness of vision that precludes all forgiveness. + +At last Archie crawled giddily to his feet, his nose running with blood +which spattered over his rumpled silk shirt. He looked at his opponent +uncertainly, as if he would like to try conclusions again, but a glance +at the mason's large hard hands and stocky frame was enough. Turning, he +said,--"I'll fix you for this," and started for Highcourt. + +"Oh, go to hell!" the mason called after him, resuming his seat on the +soap-box and relighting his pipe. + +Adelle, before she followed her husband, said to her new-found cousin in +a tone clear enough to reach Archie's ears,-- + +"Of course you are not discharged. I am very sorry for this." + +"That's all right," the mason replied. "I don't worry about him." + +Archie kept on as if he had not heard, and Adelle followed back to +Highcourt at sufficient distance not to be forced to speak to him. They +did not meet or speak that night, which had happened before more than +once. Adelle lay awake far into the night, thinking many surprisingly +new thoughts--about the cousin in his shack, the way in which he had +taken her news of their relationship, and also the calm manner in which +he had stood her husband's outrageous behavior. She as nearly admired +the cold humor with which he received her husband's abuse until Archie +had struck her as she did anything she knew in the way of conduct. The +mason cousin might use bad grammar and chew tobacco and go on sprees +occasionally, but as between him and her husband he was the gentleman of +the two--better still, the man of the two. His patience under insult and +his treating Archie like a child when he saw that the "gentleman" had +been drinking were truly admirable! + +As for Archie it was not a new experience for her latterly to lie awake +cogitating her marriage in unhappy sleeplessness. It had seemed to her +on such occasions that all the old banker's predictions about the +results of her marrying Archie had come true like a curse, and sooner +than might have been thought. But never before had she seen so clearly +how impossible Archie was, never before felt herself without one atom of +regard for him--not even desire. And yet her mind was too little fertile +in expedients to suggest to her any way out of her trouble. She was of +those many women who will not take a step even against the most brutal +of husbands until driven into it. So she quickly dismissed him from her +thoughts. + +It was then that for the first time, in connection with her new cousin, +she thought of the money--the buried treasure of Clark's Field, which +had been discovered for her benefit and which had been of such poor use +to her apparently. Archie, she had said to herself, was less of a man +than this rough stone mason, Tom Clark. He was, after all, nothing more +than a very ordinary American citizen, with the prestige and power of +her wealth. If that other man had happened to have the money--and it was +here that light broke over her. It did belong to him, at least a large +part of it! She recalled now the substance of those legal lectures she +had received at different times from the officers of the trust company. +The trouble about Clark's Field all these years had been the +disappearance of an heir, the elder brother of her grandfather, and the +lack of absolute proof that he had left no heirs behind him when he +died, to claim his undivided half interest in the field. But he had left +heirs, a whole family of them, it seemed! And to them, of course, +belonged at least a half of the property quite as much as it did to her! + +When she had arrived at this illumination she was in a great state of +excitement. She almost waked Archie from his alcoholic slumbers in the +neighboring room to tell him that he was not married to a rich woman--at +least to one as rich as he thought by a half. And the workman whom he +had insulted and discharged in his fury was really his superior, in +money as well as character, and might perhaps drive him out of +Highcourt, instead! But she decided to put off this ironical blow until +a more opportune time, when Archie was nagging her for money. He could +be too disagreeable in his present state. + +Then she thought of breaking the astounding news to the stone mason +himself. She must do that the first thing in the morning. But presently +doubts began to rise in her mind. Of course, knowing nothing of law, she +resolved the problem by the very simple rules of thumb she was capable +of. These California Clarks, of whom the mason was one, undoubtedly +owned a half of Clark's Field,--in other words, of her estate,--for +Clark's Field had been sold for the most part and no longer belonged to +her. If so there would be only one half left for her and her child, and +she had good reason to fear that her half had considerably shrunken by +now, thanks to Archie's investments and their way of living, if it had +not wholly disappeared! What then? She would be poor, as poor as Tom +Clark was now. And it would all go to him--the thought made her smile. +But no, he had brothers and sisters, probably uncles and aunts and +cousins. He would have to share his half with them. And one of his +sisters was the sort of woman she had been taught to despise and abhor. +It was all a horrible tangle, which she felt herself incapable to see +through at once. She was not sure that she could tell Archie or even her +new cousin, anyway not until she had thought it out more clearly and +knew the case in all its bearings. + +The truth was, perhaps, that Adelle's natural fund of egotism, which was +not small, had begun to work as soon as she realized that she might lose +her magic lamp altogether. It may be doubted that, if certain events had +not happened, Adelle ever would have risen to the point where she could +have told any one the truth as she was now convinced she knew it. For +the present she would put it off,--a few days. It was so much easier to +say nothing at all: the mason did not seem to suspect the truth. She +could let things go on as fate had shaped them thus far. + +And there was her little boy, too, who was very precious to her. She +would be disinheriting him, which she had no right to do. It was all +horribly mixed up! Adelle did not get much sleep that night. + + + + +XXXIX + + +Although she had made up her mind not to tell her secret to any one at +present, Adelle could not refrain from looking up the stone mason the +first thing in the morning. She seemed to be attracted to him as the +moth is to the proverbial flame, all the more after her new +understanding of the situation between them. And she was also +apprehensive of what Archie might be up to. If he were violent, and the +two men had another quarrel, she might be forced to declare the truth, +which she didn't want to do this morning. + +Therefore, she felt relieved to find that Tom Clark was not at his post +on the wall. She asked no questions of Mr. Ferguson. And morning after +morning she was both disappointed and relieved when she went to the wall +and found his place still empty. The foreman had not put other masons to +work there, but continued the work at a different point. She asked him +no questions. Perhaps her cousin had left voluntarily in disgust with +Highcourt. She even went up the hill one morning and found his little +shack closed. Peeking through the windows she perceived his trunk and +kitty-bag in their place, with his old shoes and clothes beside them. So +he intended to come back! Again she was both pleased and frightened. The +return would mean complications. She must make up her mind definitely +whether she should tell him the secret. She felt a strong impulse to do +so and take the consequences. And there was Archie, with whom she had +not exchanged a dozen words since the scene on the hill. It was quite +the longest quarrel that they had ever had and wearing to them both. So +it went for nearly a week. + +And then one morning, as she was passing heedlessly along the terrace, +she heard a man's voice which was familiar, and peering over the great +wall, saw Tom Clark below at his accustomed post. He caught sight of the +mistress of Highcourt, and bobbed his head shamefacedly. After a time +she came to him through the cañon, but he pretended not to see her. She +knew that he was ashamed of himself for something he had done--she +wondered what--probably drinking. He looked a trifle paler than usual +and very red-eyed. He acted like a puppy that knows perfectly well it +has been up to mischief and deserves a licking, wishes, indeed, that its +master would go to it and get it over soon so that they could come back +to the old normal friendship. Adelle herself felt cold with excitement +of all sorts, and could hardly control her voice enough to say +unconcernedly,-- + +"Haven't seen you, Mr. Clark, for some time." + +"No!" (Head down.) "Just thought I'd take a little vacation--and rest +up." + +"Did you go up to San Francisco?" + +"Yep!" + +"Did you see another opera?" + +"There weren't no opera this trip," the mason replied, spitting out his +quid. "I--seed--other things." + +"Is that so--what?" + +The mason did not reply, but there was a reckless gleam in his blue +eyes. He worked vigorously, then volunteered evasively,-- + +"I was just celebratin' around." + +"Celebrating what?" + +"Things in general--what you was tellin' me about our bein' cousins," he +said, with a touch of his usual humor. + +"Oh!" Adelle replied, discomposed. He had been thinking about it, then. + +"Thought it deserved some celebratin'," Clark added. + +Adelle's heart beat a little faster. If he only knew the whole +truth!--then there would be something to celebrate, indeed! + +"The strike's off," the mason remarked soon, as if he were anxious to +get away from his own misdeeds. + +"Is it?" + +"Yep! They made a compromise--that's what they call it when the fellers +on top get together and deal it out so the men lose." + +"I suppose, then, you will be going back to the city when you finish the +work here?" Adelle asked. + +"Maybe--I dunno--got some money comin' to me"--Adelle's guilty heart +stood quite still. "I ain't drawed a cent on this job so far," he added +to her relief. "Perhaps I'll blow in what's coming to me in goin' East +to see where my folks used to live in Alton." + +He spoke half in jest, but Adelle replied faintly,-- + +"That might be a good idea." + +"I heard from one of my sisters while I was gone. She's in +Philadelphy--married to a feller there that works in the carpet mills. I +ain't seen her for more 'n ten years--might stop in Philadelphy, too." + +Adelle was curious to know whether this was the sister who "had gone +wrong," but did not know how to phrase the question. After a time, she +felt the temptation to tell the mason what she knew becoming +intolerable. Her mind hovered about her secret as a bird hovers over a +great void; she was irresistibly drawn to the fatal plunge. She moved +off while she yet felt the power to do so without speaking. Her cousin +looked up in some surprise. + +"You goin'?" he asked. + +"Let me know before you start East," she called back to him. "Perhaps I +could do something to help you on your trip." + +"Sure I'll let you know," came up heartily from the bottom of the wall +where the mason had gone for a tool. + + * * * * * + +If Archie realized Tom Clark's return to Highcourt, he was wise enough +to make nothing of it. He was in a poor way nervously at this time, +playing bad polo and drinking altogether too much. He stayed away from +the city, which was a nuisance to Adelle, but he spent most of his time +at the country club. Adelle meanwhile was wrestling with herself; with +what people have the habit of calling the "conscience," but what had +better be called the "consciousness," endeavoring to realize more fully +the position in which she found herself. The idea within, like most +ideas hotly nursed in a troubled brain, was growing all the time, until +it filled all her waking moments and most of her dreams. She had to will +deliberately not to take the little path up the hill to the mason's +shack. Once she yielded, and when she arrived breathless, her heart +thumping, she found the door safely padlocked. The mason had gone to the +town for supplies. She sneaked back to Highcourt by a roundabout course +through the eucalyptus wood, to avoid meeting her cousin on the path. +Thus day by day she lived in an agony of preoccupation, so that even +Archie began to notice how thin and pale she was, and attributed her +distress to all sorts of reasons except the right one, of which he knew +nothing. Her friends said that she was "trying to do too much," needed +distraction, and recommended a trip somewhere, though what she did, +except to dine and lunch out a few times each week or trail about the +unfinished estate and play with her child, would be hard to say. Adelle, +in truth, was thinking, thinking harder than ever before in her life. +Her new secret was the most stimulating influence, next to her child, +that she had known in all her life. Her brain once started led her into +all sorts of mad by-paths, ramifications of perception that she and the +reader, too, might not suspect lay within her powers. She asked herself +what the mason, with his ideas about the injustice of property, would do +with her money? She began even to question the meaning of life! Its +queer treatment of her, in jerking her up to a high plane of privilege +and then throwing her down in this unexpected manner, appeared for the +first time inexplicable. + +But greatest of all triumphs from this thinking was that Adelle began to +look upon life objectively, trying to see what it must mean to +others--to her new cousin, who evidently had had his own ambitions, +which had been thwarted by a fate that he could not surmount alone. +Would he do better with the money than she had? Achieve happiness more +lastingly? She began to doubt the power of money to give happiness. She +was losing faith in magic lamps. Of course, if Adelle had profited by +her Puritan ancestry, she would have known that all this kind of +reasoning was useless; for she had no business to assume the part of +Providence to the stone mason and deprive him of his own choice in the +matter of the inheritance. But fortunately she was not given to the +picking of moral bones. She said to herself positively that Tom Clark, +whatever he might once have become under other conditions, would not +know now what to do with money: he would merely "get into trouble with +it," as Archie had got into trouble. Already he had the habit of going +off on "vacations" like the past week, for which he seemed ashamed. + +And there were other lives than his to be considered--hers and Archie's, +though she did not give much thought to them. But there was her boy's +future. He had been Adelle's other great education. She had studied him +from the hour he was born and noted each tiny, trivial development of +his character. Already she knew that he was gay and pleasure-loving by +nature--had a curling, sensuous lip much like his father's. She felt +that he would need a great deal of guidance and care if he were to +arrive safely at man's estate. Of course, it was often said that the +struggle of poverty was the way of salvation. But she was not convinced +of this heroic creed. All the more if the little fellow should really +develop weakness; for wealth covered up and prevented the more dreadful +aspects of incompetence. No, she could never bring herself to deprive +her boy of his inheritance. She thought that this was the deciding +consideration in her resolve finally to keep her secret to herself. It +was a large reason, no doubt. But the decision came rather from her old +habit of letting fate work with her as it would; that passive acceptance +of whatever happened which had always been her characteristic attitude +towards life. She had an almost superstitious shrinking from interfering +with this outside arrangement of destiny. For where she had +interfered--as in getting Archie--she had brought disaster upon herself. +It was always the safer and wiser part for a woman to do nothing until +she was compelled to act. This conviction of Adelle's may seem to our +modernly strenuous natures to evince the last degree of cowardice and +pusillanimity before life. We like to believe that we are changing our +destiny every day and "making character" through a multitude of petty +decisions. As a matter of cold examination, it would probably be found +that few of us, through all our momentous and character-forming +decisions, affect the stream of life as much as we like to think, or +mould character. The difference between Adelle and the strenuous type of +constantly willing woman lies more in the consciousness of fuss and +effort that the latter has. When it came to the necessary point Adelle, +as we have seen, made her own decisions and abided by them, which is +more than the strenuous always do. + +At one time, in the course of the long debate with herself, Adelle felt +that she must appeal to some one for advice. In such stress and +perplexity a woman usually appeals to priest or doctor, or both. But +Adelle was entirely without any religious connection, and she had no +doctor in whom she trusted. Instead, she thought of the Washington Trust +Company, which had been the nearest thing to parental authority she had +ever known, but rejected the idea of presenting to them this delicate +problem. The thing, she saw, was beyond their scope and jurisdiction. +The only person she instinctively turned towards for advice was the old +probate judge, who had given her such a lecture on Clark's Field for a +benediction when she last appeared before him. She felt that he would +understand, and that he would have the right idea of what ought to be +done.... + +Possibly, as the days passed and her mind grew still more towards +comprehension, she would have consulted Judge Orcutt, although she hated +to write letters. She might even have crossed the continent to talk with +the judge. But again Fate took the matter out of her hands and resolved +it in other ways. + + + + +XL + + +That Saturday night there was a large dinner-party at Highcourt in +celebration of some polo match, where the local team was gloriously +vanquished. Archie was eager to gather people around him, all the more +as his drinking and his mistakes in "investments" had lowered his +prestige in the "colony." Why had they gone to the expense and the +bother of this big establishment, he argued, if they were not to +entertain, and entertain in a large and lavish fashion? This was the +first of a series of dinners he had planned to give. If the invitations +had not been sent long before, Adelle would never have had the party, +for with the strained relations between herself and her husband, social +life was more difficult than ever to her. Adelle was never a brilliant +hostess. She talked little and with effort, and people herded together +in large numbers rendered her quite dumb. This evening she was more +distrait than ever, for her mind clung tenaciously to its one theme as +was the habit of her mind. It would stick to an idea until some solution +presented itself. No mere distraction could shunt it off its course, as +with Archie, who drank and gambled and played polo and shouted and +laughed in order not to think of the many disagreeable things there were +to think about when he allowed himself to lapse into a sober mood. + +Even Major Pound, who sat at his hostess's right, noticed after a time +Adelle's preoccupation, although he could be trusted to monologize +egotistically by the half-hour. He had started zestfully on the building +trades in San Francisco. The settlement of the long strike did not seem +to please him any more than it had Tom Clark. He thought that the +"tyranny of labor" was altogether unsupportable, that this country was +fast sinking into the horrors of "socialism," and capital was already +winging its way in fear to other safer refuges. Adelle had heard all +this many times not only from Major Pound and Nelson Carhart, but from +George Pointer and the other men she saw. It was the only kind of +"serious" conversation they ever indulged in. To-night, although she +heard the familiar prophecies of ruin faintly, through the haze of her +own problem, she had a distinct perception of the stupidity of it. What +right had any man to talk in this bitter, doleful tone of his country +and the life of the day? How could any man tell what the times were +going to bring forth? Perhaps her anarchistic cousin--the stone mason +who had considered these matters as he plied his trade under blistering +heat or chilling winds--had arrived at as sane conclusions as this +sleek, well-dressed, well-fed railroad man by her side. She recognized +that life was mostly a bitter fight, and her sympathies were strangely +not with her own class as represented by this gathering. + +All day long a high north wind had been blowing, one of those shrill +winds from the snow-capped Sierras that bring drought to California and +rasp the nerves like a steel whip. The wind had not gone down at sunset, +as it often did, and even while they dined with a roaring wood fire in +the great chimney-place, the noise of the wind could be heard as it +streamed through the cañon, lashing the tall trees above the house. +Adelle, listening to the uproar outside, wondered whether the tar-paper +shack on the hillside, which must be directly in the path of the gale, +had been able to withstand it. She thought of the mason sitting in his +flimsy beaten room listening to the mouthings of the tempest, alone. He +was not complaining, she felt. The tempest and the strife of life merely +roused the ironic demon within him--to laugh sardonically, to laugh but +fight on.... + +"As I was saying," the major iterated to fix her wandering mind, and she +stared at him. What difference did it make what he was saying! The +polite major shifted his conversation from politics to art, with the +urbanity of the good diner-out. Had she seen the work of the "futurists" +when she was last in Paris. Really it was beyond belief! Another sign of +the general degeneracy of the age--revolt from discipline, etc. But +Adelle had nothing for the "futurists"; and finally Major Pound gave her +up and turned to the lady on his right. Archie, whose restless eyes had +seen the situation opposite him, cast his wife some sour looks. He +himself was more boisterous than usual, as if to cover up the dumbness +of his wife. They were dining to-night the younger "polo" set for the +most part, and the men and women of this set liked to make a great deal +of noise, laughed boisterously at nothing, shouted at each other, sang +at the table, and often drank more than was good for them. Archie +ordered in the victrola, and between courses the couples "trotted," then +a new amusement that had just reached the Coast. + +When at last the company divided for coffee and smoking, Archie +whispered to his wife snarlingly,-- + +"Can't you open your mouth?" + +Adelle was insensible to his little dig, as she called it, and silently, +mechanically went through with her petty task of hostess in the hall +where the women sat, as the drawing-room was still in the hands of the +decorators. All the fictitious gayety of the party died out as soon as +the sexes separated. The women gathered in a little knot around the +fireplaces to smoke and talked about the wind. It got on their nerves, +they asserted querulously. + +"It's the one thing I can't stand in California," a pretty little woman, +who had recently taken up her residence on the Coast, remarked in a tone +of personal grievance. + +"We have had a great deal of north wind this year," another said. + +Adelle made no comment. The weather never interested her. It was one of +the large impersonal facts of life, outside her control, that she +accepted without criticism. The men stayed away a long time in Archie's +"library" in the other wing, probably talking polo or business, and +cosily enjoying their coffee, liqueurs, and cigars. Archie's cigars took +a long time to smoke and the older men usually had two. The women were +bored. Irene Pointer yawned openly in her corner by the fire. She and +her old friend rarely exchanged remarks these days. Irene avoided +Adelle, which Adelle was beginning to perceive. It was understood in the +colony that Irene Pointer did not approve of the way in which Adelle +"managed" her husband, and told her so. Irene herself was very discreet, +and "managed" George Pointer admirably so that she had a great deal of +freedom, and he was perfectly content. + +At last the men drifted back and stood in a row before the blazing fire. +Archie had in the victrola once more and tried to start them dancing, +but the hall was too crowded with furniture and the drawing-room could +not be used. He wanted to have the dining-room cleared, but there was a +spirit of restlessness among the guests. They could not revive the +gayety of the dinner-table. It was not long before the last motor had +rolled down the drive. Archie came back into the hall from the door +after speeding his guests and stood moodily staring at Adelle. He was +vexed. The party had been a failure,--dull. And she knew that he thought +her responsible for it. She expected an outburst, for Archie did not +usually take any pains to control his feelings. She waited. She knew +that if he spoke she should say something this time. She would probably +regret it, but she might even tell him her secret, as the easiest way to +crush him utterly. She looked at him, a dangerous light in her gray +eyes. + +This was the man she had craved so utterly that she had run every risk +to possess him! Irene had called him "a bounder"; and now he was "going +too far" with Irene--not that she especially cared about that, either. +But all his arrogance, his folly, his idleness and futility were built +upon her fortune, which really did not belong to her after all. A cruel +desire to see him crumble entered her heart, and she knew that she +should tell him the truth if he attacked her as she expected. + +But this one time Archie refrained from expressing himself. Even in his +flustered state he recognized a peculiar danger signal in the stare of +his passive wife. With a gesture of disgust he lounged out of the hall +in the direction of his library. Adelle watched him go. Should she +follow him in there and deal her blow? She heard the door of the large +drawing-room open and close behind him. She knew that he would keep on +drinking by himself until he felt properly sleepy. She did not follow +him. Instead, she went upstairs to the rooms occupied by her child and +his nurse, as she did every night before going to bed. The little fellow +was lying at full length on his small bed. His hands were clenched; his +arms stretched out above his head; his face had an expression of effort, +as if in his dreams he were putting forth all his tiny might to +accomplish something. He looked very handsome. Except for that weak +curve to the pleasure-loving lips, he resembled neither Archie nor +Adelle. Nature seemingly had been dissatisfied with them both, and in +drawing new life from them had chosen to return along the line of their +ancestry to select a more promising mould than either of the parents. +The fact that this could be so--that the child from her womb might be +more than herself or Archie--thrilled Adelle. "Boy" as she called him +was mystery and religion to her. He was to become the unfulfilled dream +of her life. This one perfect thing had been given her out of the +accidents of her disordered life, and she must make the utmost of it. + +She covered him up where in his dream he had kicked himself free from +the blanket. She bent and kissed him on the forehead gently not to +awaken him. He rolled over, settled himself into an easier position, and +the tension of his small face relaxed. Instead of the frown of effort a +beautiful smile broke over his face, as if at the touch of his mother's +lips the character of his dreams had changed to something highly +pleasurable. Adelle's eyes filled with unaccustomed tears, and she +lingered there a few moments. Nothing was too much to do for him, to +bear for him, no sacrifice that she might make for his future! It was +settled. She should never speak to any one of what she knew. "Boy" +should have everything she could give him, all that was left of her +magic lamp. Even Archie could never exasperate her again enough to +endanger the child's future. + +She turned down the night-light and tiptoed out of the room. To-morrow +she would move up here, even if she had to put the nurse in some other +place, and henceforth she would never be separated from her child. He +should stand between her and his father. She went to her rooms on the +lower floor, but before undressing she stepped out on the broad terrace, +which was now almost ready for the sod. The great wall was all but +finished--the corner by the orangery to be built up even with the rest. +As she came out from the shelter of the house the blast of wind caught +her thin dress and swept it out before her like a streamer. She had to +hold her hair to prevent the wind from unwinding it. She could see +nothing--the impalpable blackness reached far down into the depths of +the cañon, far out into the space above the land and the sea. Usually +even on dark nights the hill behind the house brooded over the place +like a faint shadow, but to-night it was blotted out. The house was dark +except for the light in Archie's library at the other end of the terrace +and the faint candle gleam of the night-light in the nursery. + +Adelle liked the black storm. It soothed her troubled mind by its sheer +force, passing through her like the will of a stronger being. Adelle was +growing, at last, after all these years of imperceptible change, of +spiritual stagnation. She had begun to grow with the coming of her +child, and these last weeks she had been growing fast. She even realized +that she was changing, was becoming another, unfamiliar person. She felt +it to-night more than at any time in all her life--the strangeness of +being somebody other than her familiar self. She said it was her +"experiences." It was, indeed, familiarity with Archie and his +disgusting weakness. It was her young cousin, the stone mason, and all +that the discovery of him as a person, as well as her relationship to +him and his claim upon her property, had meant. It was, of course, the +influence of creative motherhood upon her. But it was more than all +these combined that had started the belated growth of her soul, now that +she was twenty-five, married, and had a child. It was an unknown power +within her, like this mighty passionate wind, germinating late and +unexpectedly in the thin soil of her mind, irresistibly taking +possession of her and shaping her anew. Many would call it God. Adelle +did not name the power. + +This becoming another person was not especially pleasurable. It was +perplexing and tragic as now. But Adelle was beginning to realize very +dimly that she was not living for her own happiness, not even for the +happiness of her child, wholly. She did not know why she was living. But +she knew that life meant much more than the happiness of any one being +or of many beings. It was like this high wind from the mountains and the +deserts, rushing over the earth with a fierce, compelling +impulse--whither? Ah, that no one could say. One must bend before the +blast, but not yield to it altogether--not be scattered fruitless by its +careless hand. Adelle thus had come a long way from that girl who had +run off with Archie to Paris: she knew it. And having come so far, who +could say where she would finally end?... She pressed her body against +the strong wind and felt it wrap her about like the firm embrace of a +living being. The tempest calmed and strengthened her. + +At last she went back to her room, undressed quickly, and got to bed. +The last conscious thought that came to her was a resolve to look into +her affairs herself at once and put an end to all the folly that she and +Archie had committed with her money--to guard what was left for the use +of her boy. For the rest, she should go on as she had begun, waiting +always for the convincing urge of her destiny, proving her way step by +step. She would not confide in any one what she knew about the lost +heirs of Clark's Field. + + + + +XLI + + +After a time Adelle became confusedly conscious of some disturbance +around her. She thought at first that it must be Archie noisily entering +the neighboring chamber. But soon she heard loud cries and sat upright, +listening. Then she became aware of a thick, suffocating atmosphere and +the acrid taste of smoke in her mouth. The electric light would not +respond to her touch. She knew what it meant--Fire! With one bound she +leaped from her bed and ran, just as she was in nightdress, for the hall +from which the large staircase led up to the upper story--the only +approach to her child's rooms from this end of the house. The staircase +was a bank of roaring flame and the hall itself was vividly streaked +with dashes of eating flame. She rushed chokingly straight for the +blazing staircase and would have died in the fire had not one of the +servants caught her in time and dragged her back outside through the +open door. She quickly slipped through the man's grasp, and without +uttering a cry started around the house for the servants' entrance. +Archie came stumbling into the light, half dressed in his evening +clothes, struggling to put an arm into one of the sleeves of his coat. +She cried,-- + +"The boy--the boy--save him!" + +One glance at Archie's nerveless, vacant face was enough. There was no +help to be had in him! + +"Dell--where is he?" Archie called, still fumbling for the lost sleeve. +But she had disappeared. + +At the servants' door some men were pounding and shouting. The door was +locked and bolted and stood fast. Adelle threw herself against it, +pounding with her fists; then, as if divining its unyielding strength, +she sped on around the corner of the house to the open terrace. There a +number of the servants and helpers on the estate were running to and fro +shouting and calling for help. Already the fire gleamed through the +house from the front and the wind lifted great plumes of flame against +the dark hillside, painting the tall eucalyptus trees fantastically. The +fire, starting evidently in the central part of the house which +contained the drawing-room, had shot first up the broad staircase and +was now eating its way through the second floor and reaching across to +the farther wing that hung directly above the cañon. More and more +persons arrived while Adelle ran up and down the terrace, like a hunted +animal, moaning--"Boy! Boy!" There was talk of ladders, which had been +left by the workmen at the garage half a mile away. Before these could +be got or the hose attached to the fireplugs, the flame had swirled out +from the lonely wing where the child and his nurse slept. Even if the +ladders came, they would be of no use over the deep pit of the cañon, +and the center of the house was now a roaring furnace. Adelle clung to +the rough rock of her great wall--the supporting wall to this part of +her house--the wall she had watched with such interest, such admiration +for its size and strength. It reached away from her slight, white figure +down into the gloom of the cañon, and upon it rested the burning house. +While she clung there dry-eyed, moaning, she was conscious of Archie's +attempt to pull her back. He was the same bewildered figure, collarless, +in evening clothes--the same feeble, useless man, failing her at this +crisis as always. She shook off his touch with repugnance and crouched +close to the wall, as near as she could get to her child. + +Then there passed a few of those terrible moments that are as nothing +and as a lifetime crowded with agony to the human being. The wind poured +noisily through the cañon, bending before its blast the swaying trees, +but even louder than the wind was the roar of the conquering fire that +now illuminated all the hillside like day and revealed the little +figures of impotent men and women, who ran this way and that confusedly, +helplessly, crying and shouting. The center of the great house was a +solid pillar of flame, and the fire was eating its way on either side +into the wings. The wing where the child slept rose from the cañon like +a walled castle, impregnable--Adelle might remember that "Boy" had +chosen these rooms in the remote corner of the house, fascinated by +their lofty perch over the deep cañon. And there, at the bottom of the +wall that she had built, the mother clung, helpless, beyond reach of her +child. + +A man ran out on the parapet of the terrace past Adelle. He stopped +where the parapet touched the sheer wall of the building, looked up at +the burning house which cast out great waves of heat, knocked off his +shoes, threw down his coat, and dove as it seemed into space. She knew +it was Clark, the stone mason. People crowded around Adelle and leaned +over the parapet to see what had become of him. They shouted--"See him! +There! There!"--pointing, as the wreaths of smoke rose and revealed the +man's dark figure clinging to the wall, creeping forward, walking, as it +were, on nothing in space. With fingers and toes he stuck himself like a +leech to the broken surfaces of the rock wall, feeling for the cracks +and crannies, the stone edgings, the little pockets in the masonry that +he himself had laid. He climbed upwards in a zigzag, slowly, steadily, +groping above his head for the next clutch, clinging, crawling like a +spider over the surface of sheer rock. As he rose foot by foot he became +clearly visible in the red light of the flames, a dark shadow stretched +against the blank surface above the gulf. The Scotch foreman said,-- + +"He's crazy--he can't skin that wall!" + +Adelle knew that he was speaking of the stone mason; she knew that Clark +was daring the impossible to get at her child, to save her "Boy." She +felt in every fiber of her body the strain of that feat--the clinging, +creeping progress up the perpendicular wall over the cañon. Those around +groaned as they watched, expecting each moment to see the man's body +fall backwards sickeningly into space. + +But he stuck to the wall as if part of it, his arms widespread, his +fingers feeling every inch for hold, and now he was mounting faster as +if sure of himself, confident that he could cling. If he could keep hold +until his hand touched the first row of window-sills, he had a chance. A +long red arm reached up; groped painfully; the finger-tips touched the +end of a blind. There was dead silence except for the roar of the +wind-driven fire while the mason pawed along the window-sill for safe +lodgment; then--"He's caught it!" + +A shout went up, and while her breath seemed to choke her, Adelle saw +the man in the glare of the flame pull himself up, inch by inch, until +his head was level with the glass, butt his head against the heavy pane, +and with a final heave disappear within while a black smudge of smoke +poured from the vent he had made. + +A long, silent, agonizing emptiness while he was gone, and he was back +at the window, standing large and bloody in the light, his arms about +the figure of the nurse, who had evidently fainted. Adelle felt one +sharp pang of agony;--"Why had he taken her, not the child?" But her +soul rejected this selfish thought;--"He knows," she said, "he knows--he +must save her first!" + +Clark had tied the sheets under the woman's shoulders, and holding the +weight of the body with one hand, he crept lightly from one window ledge +to the next until he came within reach of the terrace, then swung the +woman and cast her loose. She fell in a heap beside Adelle. They said +she was living. + +Already the mason had groped his way back along the sills to the open +window and disappeared. When he reappeared he had the small boy in his +arms, evidently asleep or unconscious, for he lay a crumpled little +bundle against the mason's breast. This time Clark continued his course +along the sills until he reached a gutter, clinging with one hand, +holding his burden tight with the other. It was a feat almost harder +than the skinning of the naked wall. When he dropped the last ten feet +to the ground cries rose from the little group below. It was the +unconscious recognition of an achievement that not one man in ten +thousand was capable of, a combination of courage, skill, and perfect +nerve which let him walk safely above the abyss across the perpendicular +wall. It was more than human,--the projection of man's will in reckless +daring that defies the physical world. + +Adelle always remembered receiving the child, who was still sleeping, +she thought, from the mason's arms. Clark was breathing hard, and his +face was slit across by a splinter from the window-pane. He was a +terrible, ghastly figure. The blood ran down his bare arms and dripped +on the white bundle he gave her.... Then she remembered no more until +she was in a bare, cold room--the place that was to have been the +orangery, where they kept the garden tools. She was kneeling, still +holding in her arms her precious bundle, calling coaxingly,--"Boy, wake +up! Boy, it's mother! Boy, how can you sleep like that!" calling softly, +piteously, moaningly, until she knew that her child could never answer +her. He had been smothered by the smoke before the mason reached him. +Then Adelle knew nothing more of that night and its horrors. + + + + +XLII + + +There is always the awakening, the coming back once more to +consciousness, to the world that has been, and must endure, but will +never again be as it was. Adelle woke to consciousness in the orangery, +where they had laid mattresses for her and the dead child. Through the +open door she might see the blackened walls of what had been Highcourt. +The fire had swept clear through the three parts, scorching even the +eucalyptus trees above on the hillside, and had died out at last for +lack of food. The débris was now smouldering sullenly in the cloudless, +windless day that had succeeded the storm. All the beauty of an early +spring morning in California rioted outside, insulting the bereaved +woman with its refreshment and joy. It was on mornings like this after a +storm that Adelle loved the place most. She would take "Boy" and ramble +through the fragrant paths. For then Nature, like a human being, having +thrown off its evil mood, tries by caresses and sweet smiles to win +favor again.... + +Adelle lay there this golden morning, one arm around the little figure +of her dead child, staring at the pool outside which was dappled with +sunshine, at the ghastly wreck of her great house--not thinking, perhaps +not even feeling acutely--aware merely of living in a void, the +shattered fragments of her old being all around her. How long she might +have lain there one cannot tell: she felt that she should be like this +always, numbed in the presence of life and light. They brought her food +and clothes, and said things to her. Archie came in and sat down on one +of the upturned flower-pots. He was fully dressed now, but still looked +shaken, bewildered, a little cowed, as if he could not understand. At +sight of him Adelle remembered the night, remembered the shaking, feeble +figure of her husband, trying to get his arm into the sleeve of his +dress-coat, useless before the tragedy, useless in the face of life. +"What can I do!" he had whined then. Adelle could not then realize that +she had made him as he was and should be merciful. She was filled with a +physical loathing, a spiritual weariness of him, and turned her face to +the wall so that she might not even see him. + +"Adelle," he said. There was no reply. "Dell, dear," he began again, and +put his hand coaxingly upon her shoulder. + +She sat up, looking like a fierce animal, her hair tumbled about her +neck and breasts, her pale face drawn and haggard. "Don't touch +me--don't speak to me!" she whispered hoarsely. "Never again!" + +She threw into those last words an intensity, a weight of meaning that +startled even Archie, who whimpered out,--"It wasn't my fault!" + +Adelle neither knew nor cared then what had caused the fire. It was +stupid of Archie to understand her so badly--she was not blaming him for +the fire. She turned her face again to the wall, but suddenly, as if a +light had struck through her blurred and blunted consciousness of the +world, she called,-- + +"I want to see him--Clark, the mason;--tell him to come here to see me!" + +Archie, crestfallen, sneaked out of the orangery on her errand. After a +time he returned with the young mason, who stumbled into the dark room. +Clark was washed and his cut had been bandaged, but he showed the +terrible strain of those few minutes on the wall. His face twitched and +his large hands opened and closed nervously. He looked pityingly at +Adelle and mumbled,-- + +"Sorry I was too late!" + +That was all. Adelle made a gesture as if to say that it was useless to +use words over it. She did not thank him. She looked at him out of her +gray eyes, now miserable with pain. She felt a great relief at seeing +him, a curious return of her old interest in his simple, native strength +and nerve, his personality. It made her feel more like herself to have +him there and to know that he was sorry for her. After one or two +attempts to find her voice she said clearly,-- + +"I must tell you something.... I thought of telling you about it before, +but I couldn't. I thought there were reasons not to. But now I must tell +you before you go." + +"Don't trouble yourself now, ma'am," the mason said gently. "I guess +it'll keep until you're feelin' stronger." + +"No, no, I can't wait. I must tell you now!" She raised herself with +effort and leaned her thin face upon her hands. "I want him"--she +pointed to Archie--"to hear it, too." + +Then she tried again to collect her mind, to phrase what she had to say +in the clearest possible way. + +"Half of my money belongs to you, Mr. Clark." + +The two men must have thought that her reason had left her after the +terrible night, but she soon made her meaning clear. + +"I didn't know it until a little while ago when I found out from those +letters who you were. Not even then, just afterwards. Clark's Field was +left to your grandfather and mine together, and somehow I got the whole +of it--I mean I did from my mother and uncle. The lawyers can tell you +all about it. Only it's really half yours--half of all there was!" + +Archie now began to comprehend that his wife referred to the old legal +difficulty over the title to Clark's Field, and interposed. + +"You'd better wait, dear, until you are stronger before you try to think +about business." + +But Adelle utterly ignored him, as she was to do henceforth, and +addressed herself singly to her cousin. + +"I always thought it was all mine--they said it was. And when I knew +about you, I didn't want to give it up; there isn't as much as there was +because he has lost a good deal. But that makes no difference. Half of +the whole belongs to you and your brothers and sisters. I'll see that +you get it. That's all!" + +She lay back exhausted. + +The mason remarked,-- + +"It's rather surprising. But I guess it can wait. It's waited a good +many years." + +And after standing by her side and looking down on her dumb, colorless +face a while longer, he left the room. + +Archie, who was clearly mystified by his wife's brief statement, +concluded to regard it all as an aberration, an effort on her part to +express fantastically her sense of obligation to the stone mason who had +risked his life to save the child. He was concerned to have Adelle moved +to a more comfortable place and told her that friends were coming to +take her to their home. She made a dissenting gesture without opening +her eyes. She wished to be left alone, entirely alone, here in the +orangery whither she had taken her dead child the night before. Archie, +seeing that he could not persuade her immediately to leave the cheerless +spot, spoke of other things. He was voluble about the cause of the fire, +hinting at a dire "anarchistic" plot of some discharged workingmen. +There was much talk in their neighborhood at this time of the efforts of +"anarchists" to destroy rich people's property by incendiary fires. +Adelle, with her face turned to the wall, moaned,-- + +"Go away!" + +And at last Archie went. + + + + +XLIII + + +Archie was voluble about this non-essential in face of the personal +tragedy, anxious to state his theory of the disaster, because he had +more than an uncomfortable consciousness of what the servants and the +men on the place were saying about it. And that was that the master +himself had set the house on fire. It had started in the large, empty +drawing-room, in which the decorators had been still working with +paints, oils, and inflammable stuff. The workmen, however, had not been +in the room for hours before the fire started. The only person who had +entered it during the evening was Archie himself, for it was on his way +from his library to his suite of rooms in the other wing. He had sat up +late as usual after the guests had gone, smoking and drinking by +himself, then had stumbled drowsily through the house to his bedroom, +and on the way doubtless had dropped a match or lighted cigar in the +drawing-room, and in his fuddled condition had failed to notice what he +had done. + +The first person to discover the fire had happened to be Tom Clark, who +had been returning late from the village to his shack on the hill, and +had seen an unnatural glow through the long French windows of the +drawing-room. By the time he had roused the house servants in their +remote quarters and set off for the garage to summon help, the +drawing-room and the adjoining hall were a mass of flame. When he +returned with the new hose-cart and helpers the servants had already +opened the large front door, admitting the wind, which blew the fire +through the stairway like a bellows and completed the destruction of the +house. Clark knew as well as Ferguson, the superintendent, and a +half-dozen others, that when Archie emerged from his rooms on the ground +floor, he was not fully undressed: though it was past one in the +morning, he had not yet gone to bed. And although no one said anything, +habitually cautious as such people usually are when indiscretion may +involve them with their masters, they had easily made the correct +deductions about the cause of the fire.... + +When Archie came from the orangery, he saw Clark standing on the terrace +beside the ruins, examining the scene of his already famous exploit of +the night before. He may well have been wondering how he had ever +succeeded in keeping his balance and in crawling like a fly over the +surface of the wall he had helped to put up. There were a number of +other people loitering about the ruins, some of them from neighboring +estates, who had motored over to offer help and lingered to discuss the +disaster. Archie joined a group of these, among whom was the stone +mason. He was feeling unhappy about many things, especially about his +responsibility for the fire. He began to talk out his theory, turning +first to Clark. + +"You didn't happen to see any of the men hanging about the place when +you came up last night?" he asked. + +"No," the mason replied shortly. + +"I thought maybe those Italians might have been sneaking about here. +They're ugly fellows," Archie remarked. + +"I didn't see nobody around." + +"Some of those fellows are regular anarchists," Archie persisted. "They +wouldn't stop at firing a house to get even with a man they're down on." + +The mason stared at him out of his steely blue eyes, but said nothing. +He began to understand what Archie was driving at, and a deep disgust +for the man before him, who was trying to "put over" this cheap +falsehood to "save his face," filled the mason's soul. The others had +instinctively drawn away from them, and Clark himself looked as if he +wanted to turn on his heel. But he listened. + +"I shouldn't be surprised if the house had been set on fire," Archie +continued confidentially. "I'm going to have detectives look into it. It +must have been either that or spontaneous combustion in the +drawing-room." + +The mason's lips twitched ominously. + +"But I think it was set on purpose!" Archie asserted. + +"Oh, go to hell!" the mason groaned, his emotions getting the better of +him. "Set, nothing!... Spontaneous combustion! You know how it got on +fire better than anybody." + +"What do you mean?" Archie demanded. + +But the mason strode away from him around the corner of the wall and +disappeared. Archie followed him with his eyes, dazed and scowling. He +had never liked the fellow, and resented the fact that he had been the +hero of the disaster, while he himself, as he was well enough aware, had +presented a sorry figure. Now this common workman had insulted him a +second time, treated him as though he were dirt, dared even to make +dastardly insinuations. Across Archie's miserable mind came Adelle's +confused words about her property belonging to the stone mason--a half +of it. He had explained this at the time as due to the shock and a +woman's sentimental feeling of gratitude, but now he began to give it +another and more sinister interpretation. What had she been doing up at +this fellow's shack that afternoon? It hardly seemed possible, but +unfortunately in Archie's set, even among the very best people socially +of Bellevue, almost anything in the way of sex aberration was possible. +He started back for the orangery, but before he got there he realized +that it would be just as well not to approach his wife at this time with +what he had in mind. Lying there with her dead child in her arms she had +the air of a wounded wild animal that might be aroused to a dangerous +fury. He had the sense to see that even if his worst suspicions were +justified, it was hardly the moment to exact his social rights. + +So he wandered back to the ruin of Highcourt, where he found condoling +friends, who took him off to the country club and kept him there, and it +is to be feared provided him with his usual consolation for the manifold +contrarieties of life, even for the very rich. + + + + +XLIV + + +In due time Adelle roused herself and took direction of affairs. She +went down to the manager's cottage near the gate of Highcourt and +thither brought the body of her child. From this cottage the little boy +was buried on the next day. Adelle directed that the grave should be +prepared among the tall eucalyptus trees on the hillside behind the +ruins--there where she had often played with the little fellow. She +herself carried the body to its small grave and laid it tenderly away in +the earth, being the only one to touch it since the mason had first put +it lifeless in her arms. Then she scattered the first dirt upon the +still figure and turned away only when the flowers had been heaped high +over the little grave. Archie was there and a few of their friends from +Bellevue, as well as a group of servants, by whom Adelle had always been +liked; and among the latter was the stone mason. Adelle did not seem to +notice any one, and when all was over she walked off alone to the +manager's cottage. + +Observing his wife's tragic calm, her bloodless face, Archie might well +have forgotten his suspicions and refrained from attacking her, as he +had meant to. But he never had the opportunity to attack her. In some +way Adelle conveyed to him that all was at an end between them, and made +it so plain that even Archie was forced to accept it as a fact for the +time being. He never saw Adelle again after the brief service at the +hillside grave. + +Such a conclusion was inevitable: it came to Adelle without debate or +struggle of any sort. A tragedy such as theirs, common to man and woman, +either knits the two indissolubly together as nothing else can, or marks +the complete cessation of all relationship. In their case they had +nothing now, absolutely, to cement together. And Adelle was dimly +conscious that she had before her pressing duties to perform in which +Archie would be a mere drag. + +For the present Archie went to the club to live, crestfallen, but +unbelieving that his little gilded world had come to an end for good in +this summary fashion. After a few attempts to get an interview with his +wife, and learning finally that she had left the neighborhood, he +drifted up to the city, for he found Bellevue less congenial than it had +been, with all the talk about the Davises' affairs that was rife. His +true performances the night of the fire had leaked out in a somewhat +exaggerated form and even his pleasure-loving associates found him "too +yellow." Oddly enough, Adelle, who had been thought generally "cold" and +"stupid," "no addition to the colony," came in for a good deal of +belated praise for her "strong character," and there was much sympathy +expressed for her tragedy. Thus the world revises its hasty judgments +with other equally hasty ones, remaining always helplessly in error +whether it thinks well or ill of its neighbors! + + * * * * * + +For a number of days after the burial of her child, Adelle remained at +the manager's cottage in a state of complete passivity, scarcely making +even a physical exertion. She did not cry. She did not talk. She neither +writhed nor moaned in her pain. She was making no effort to control her +feelings: she did not play the stoic or the Christian. Actually she did +not feel: she was numb in body and soul. This hebetude of all faculty +was the merciful, protecting method that Nature took with her, dimming +the lamp of consciousness until the wounded creature could gain +sufficient resiliency to bear a full realization of life. The pain would +come, months and years hence, bitter, aching pain; but then she would be +able to bear it. + +Each day she went to the grave on the hillside, and carefully ordered +the planting of the place so that it should be surrounded with flowers +that she liked. Also she laid out a little shrub-bordered path to be +made from the pool beside the orangery to the hillside. In these ways +she displayed her concrete habit of thought. For the rest she sat or lay +upon her bed, seeing nothing, probably thinking very little. It was a +form of torpor, and after it had continued for a week or ten days, her +maid was for sending for a doctor. That functionary merely talked +platitudes that Adelle neither understood nor heeded. The maid would +have tried a priest, but feared to suggest it to her mistress. + +The truth was that Adelle was recovering very slowly from her shock. She +was only twenty-five and strong. Her body held many years of activity, +possibly other children, and her mind still awaited its full +development. How that would come was the really vital matter. The +ordinary result would be that, after the full period of lethargy and +physical and mental recuperation, Adelle should drift back into +something like the same life she had previously led. She would go abroad +and establish herself in a new environment, gradually acquiring new +associations that in time would efface the more poignant surfaces of her +tragedy at Highcourt. She would probably marry again, for she was still +a young woman and had a considerable remnant of her fortune. She might +reasonably expect more children to come to her, and thus, with certain +modifications due to her experiences with Archie, live out an average +life of ease and personal interests in the manner of that class that the +probate court and the laws of our civilization had made it possible for +her to join. + +But all that conventional resolution of her destiny was not to be +because of ideas already at work within her--the sole vital remains from +her previous life. Even in her dullest moments of physical and mental +hebetude she felt something pressing upon her from within for +accomplishment, like a piece of unfinished business that she must +presently rouse herself to put through. She scarcely knew what it was +until she made an effort to think it out, and for days she did not make +this effort. + +Gradually she focussed more concretely this unconscious weight upon her +soul. It had to do with the stone mason and his rights to his +grandfather's inheritance. She must see him before he left the country +and come to a final understanding about it all. She wanted, anyway, to +see him more than anybody else. He seemed to her in her dark hour the +healthiest and most natural person she knew--most nearly on her own +level of understanding, the one who really knew all about her and what +her boy's death meant to her. But she was still too utterly will-less to +bring about an interview between herself and her cousin either by +sending for him or going up to the shack to find him. + +Finally, after ten days of this semi-conscious existence, she awoke one +morning with a definite purpose stirring at the roots of her being, and +instead of returning from her child's grave as before she kept on up +over the brow of the hill to the open field. The sight of the large +sweep of earth and ocean and sky on this clear April morning was the +first sensation of returning life that came to her. She stood for some +time contemplating the scene, which glowed with that peculiar intense +light, like vivid illumination, that is characteristic of California. +The world seemed to her this morning a very big place and +lonely--largely untried, unexplored by her, for all her moving about in +it and tasting its sweets. In this mood she proceeded to the little +tar-paper shack. She feared to find it empty, to discover that the mason +had gone to the city, in which case she should have to follow him and go +to the trouble of hunting him up. + +But he had not yet left, although his belongings were neatly packed in +his trunk and kitty-bag. He was fussing about the stove, whistling to +himself as he prepared a bird which he had shot that morning for his +dinner. He had on his town clothes, which made him slightly unfamiliar +in appearance. She knew him in khaki and flannel shirt, with bare arms +and neck. He looked rougher in conventional dress than in his +workingman's clothes. + +At sight of Adelle standing in the doorway, the mason laid down his +frying-pan and stopped whistling. Without greeting he hastily took up +the only chair he had and placed it in the shade of the pepper tree in +front of the shack. Adelle sat down with a wan little smile of thanks. + +"I'm glad you hadn't gone," she said. + +"I ain't been in any particular hurry," her cousin answered. "Been +huntin' some down in the woods," he added, nodding westward. He sat on +the doorsill and picked up a twig to chew. + +"I've been wanting to talk to you about that matter I told you of the +morning after the fire." + +The mason nodded quickly. + +"I don't know yet what should be done about the property," she went on +directly. "I must see some lawyer, I suppose. But it's just what I told +you, I'm sure. Half of Clark's Field belonged to your grandfather and +half to mine, and I have had the whole of it because they couldn't find +your family." + +The mason listened gravely, his bright blue eyes unfathomable. He had +had ample time, naturally, to think over the astounding communication +Adelle had made to him, though he had come to no clear comprehension of +it. A poor man, who for years has longed with all the force of his being +for some of the privilege and freedom of wealth, could not be told that +a large fortune was rightfully his without rousing scintillating lights +in his hungry soul. + +"There isn't all the money there was when I got it," Adelle continued. +"We have spent a lot of money--I don't know just how much there is left. +But there must be at least a half of it--what belongs to you!" + +"Are you sure about this?" the mason demanded, frowning, a slight tremor +in his voice; "about its belonging to father's folks? I never heard any +one say there was money in the family." + +"There wasn't anything but the land--Clark's Field," Adelle explained. +"It was just a farm in grandfather's time, and nothing was done with it +for a long time. It was like that when I was a girl and living in Alton. +It's only recently it has become so valuable." + +"You didn't say nothin' about any property the first time we talked +about our being related," the mason observed. + +"I know," Adelle replied, with a sad little smile. Then she blurted out +the truth,--"I knew it--not then, but afterwards. But I didn't tell +you--I wanted to--but I meant never to tell. I meant to keep it all for +myself and for him--my boy." + +The mason nodded understandingly, while Adelle tried to explain her +ruthless decision. + +"You'd never had money and didn't know about the Field. And it seemed +wrong to take it all away from him--it wasn't his fault, and I didn't +want him to grow up poor and have to fight for a living," she explained +bravely, displaying all the petty consideration she had given to her +problem. Then she added with a sob--"Now it's all different! He was +taken away," she said slowly, using the fatalistic formula which +generations of religious superstition have engraved in human hearts. "He +will not need it!" + +There was silence. Then unconsciously, as if uttered by another person, +came from her the awful judgment,--"Perhaps that was why he was +taken--because I wouldn't tell about the money." + +"It ain't so!" the mason retorted hastily, with a healthy reaction +against this terrible creed of his ancestors. "It had nothin' to do with +your actions, with you, his being smothered in the fire--don't you go +worryin' 'bout that!" + +In his dislike of the doctrine and his desire to deal generously with +the woman, the mason was not wholly right, and later Adelle was to +perceive this. For if she had not been such as she was she would not +have willfully taken to herself such a disastrous person as Archie and +thus planted the seed of tragedy in her life as in her womb. If human +beings are responsible for anything in their lives, she was responsible +for Archie, which sometime she must recognize. + +"You don't think so?" Adelle mused, somewhat relieved. After a little +time she came safely back to sound earth as was her wont,--"Anyway, it's +all different now. I don't want to keep the money. It isn't mine--it +never was; never really belonged to me. Perhaps that was why I spent it +so badly.... I want you to have your share as soon as possible." + +The fire had done its work, she might have said, if not in one way, at +least in another. The result was that she no longer desired to thwart +the workings of law and justice, of right as she knew it. She wished to +divest herself as quickly as possible of that which properly belonged to +another. After all, her money had not brought her much! Why should she +cling to it? + +The mason was still doubtful and observed frowningly,-- + +"It's a mighty long time since grandfather left Alton--more'n fifty +years." + +"Clark's Field has only been put on the market for a little over ten +years," Adelle remarked. "They couldn't do it before, as I told you." + +"But it's been settled now," the mason demurred. "I don't know the law, +but it must be queer if the property could hang fire all these years and +be growing richer all the time." + +"Alton is a big city now where the old Clark farm was," Adelle +explained. + +"I suppose it's growed considerable." + +Then both were silent. The mason's mind was turbulent with feelings and +thoughts. Across the glorious reach of land and sky before his eyes +there opened a vision of radiant palaces and possessions, all that money +could buy to appease the desires of a starved life. + +"My folks will be some surprised," he remarked at last, with his +ironical laugh. + +"I suppose so," Adelle replied seriously. "You'll have to explain it to +them. How many brothers and sisters have you?" + +"There are five of us left," Clark said. "I'm sorry mother has gone. She +would have liked mighty well having a bit of ready money for herself. +She never had much of a time in her life," he added, thinking of the +hard-working wife and mother who had died in poverty after struggling +against odds for fifty years. "It'll mean a good deal, too, to Will and +Stan, I guess;--they've got families, you know." + +Adelle listened with a curious detachment to the happiness that her +magic lamp might bestow when handed over to the other branch of the +family. + +"Money doesn't always mean so much," she remarked, with a deep +realization of the platitude which so many people repeat hypocritically. + +The mason looked at her skeptically out of his blue eyes. That was the +sort of silly pretense the rich or well-to-do often got off for the +benefit of their poorer neighbors--he read stories like that in the +newspapers and magazines. But he knew that the rich usually clung to all +their possessions, in spite of their expressed conviction, at times, of +the inadequacy of material things to provide them with happiness. He was +quite ready for his part, having experienced the other side, to run the +risks of property! + +"I'd like to try having all the money I want for a time!" he laughed +hardily. + +"I almost believe it would have been better for me if I had never heard +of Clark's Field!" Adelle exclaimed, with a bitter sense of the futility +of her own living. And then she told her cousin very briefly what had +happened to her since she first entered the probate court and had been +made a ward of the trust company. + +The mason listened with interest and tried to make out, as well as he +could with his meager equipment of experience in such matters and +Adelle's bare statement, what had been the trouble with her life. At the +end he stated his conclusion,-- + +"I guess it depends on what sort of stuff you've got in you whether +money agrees with you or don't. To some folks it does seem poison, like +drink; but the trouble ain't with the money, perhaps, it's with them." + +"I suppose so," Adelle admitted meekly. "I had no one to show me, and, +anyway, I am not the right kind, I suppose. It takes a good deal of a +person to spend money right and get the best out of it there is." + +"Sure!" the mason replied freely; and added with a frank laugh,--"But we +all want our chance to try!" + +"What will you do with your money?" Adelle asked. + +The young man threw back his head and drew in a long breath as if he +were trying to focus in one desire all the aspirations of his thirsty +soul, which now he could satisfy. + +"I'll take a suite at the Palace and have the best booze money can buy!" +he said with a careless laugh. + +"No, don't do that!" Adelle protested earnestly, thinking of Archie. +"You won't get much out of your money that way." + +"I was joking," the young man laughed. "No, I don't mean to be any booze +fighter. There's too much else to do." + +He confessed to his new cousin some of the aspirations that had been +thwarted by his present condition,--all his longing for education, +experience, and, above all, the desire to be "as good as the next man, +bar none, no matter where I be," an aspiration inexplicable to Adelle, a +curiously aristocratic sensitiveness to caste distinction that might not +be expected in a healthy-minded laboring-man. It was the most American +note in his character, and like a true American he felt sure that money +would enable him to attain "equality" with the land's best. + +"When I see some folks swelling around in motor-cars and spending their +money in big hotels like it was dirt, and doing nothin' to earn it, and +I know those who are starving or slaving every day just to live in a +mean, dirty little way--why, it makes me hot in the collar. It makes me +'most an anarchist. The world's wrong the way things are divided up!" he +exclaimed, forgetting that he was about to take his seat with the +privileged. + +"Well," Adelle mused dubiously, "now you'll have a chance to do what you +want and be 'on top' as you call it." + +"Mos' likely then," the mason turned on himself with an ironic laugh, "I +shan't want to do one thing I think I do now!" + +"I hope it won't change you," Adelle remarked quite frankly. + +The quality that had first attracted her to the young man was his manly +independence and ability to do good, honest, powerful work. If he should +lose this vital expression of himself and his zest for action, the half +of Clark's Field would scarcely pay him for the loss. + +"Don't you worry about me, cousin!" he laughed back confidently. "But +here we are gassin' away as if I were already a millionaire. And most +likely it's nothin' more than a pipe-dream, all told." + +"No, it's true!" Adelle protested. + +"I'll wait to see it in the bank before I chuck my tools. I guess the +lawyers will have to talk before they upset all their fine work for me," +he suggested shrewdly. + +"You must go to Alton right away and see the trust company. I will meet +you there whenever you like--there's nothing to keep me here much +longer." + +"When you are feeling ready for the trip, let me know," the mason said +with good feeling. "Say," he added with some confusion, "you're a good +one to be sittin' there calmly talkin' to me about what I am goin' to do +with your money." + +"It isn't mine any longer--you must get over that idea." + +"What you've always considered to be yours, anyway, and that amounts to +the same thing in this world." + +"I like to talk about it with you," Adelle replied simply, and with +perfect sincerity, as every important statement of Adelle's was sincere. +"I want you to have the money really.... I'm glad it is you, too." + +"Thank you." + +"I'll do everything I can to make it easy for you to get it soon, and +that is why I will go to Alton." + +The mason rose from the doorstep and walked nervously to and fro in +front of the shack. At last he muttered,-- + +"Guess I won't say nothin' to the folks about the money until it is all +settled--it might make 'em kind of anxious." + +"No, that would be better," Adelle agreed. + +"I'm goin' to pull out of here to-night!" + +He turned as he spoke and shoved one foot through the paper wall of his +home, as if he were thus symbolically shedding himself of his toilsome +past. Adelle did not like this impulsive expression, she did not know +why. She rose. + +"Let me know your San Francisco address," she said, "and I will write +you when to meet me in Alton." + +"All right!" + +The mason walked back with her down the hill to the grave of her little +boy. He would have turned back here, but she gently encouraged him to +come with her and stand beside the flower-laden grave. It seemed to her, +after what he had done in risking his life to rescue the child, he had +more right to be there than any one else except herself--far more than +her child's own father. They stood there silently at the foot of the +little mound for some minutes, until Adelle spoke in a perfectly natural +voice. + +"I'd have wanted him to do some real work, if he had grown up--I mean +like yours, and become a strong man." + +"He was a mighty nice little kid," the mason observed, remembering well +the child, who had often that summer played about his staging and talked +to him. + +Adelle explained her scheme of treatment for the grave and the grounds +about it, and they walked slowly down the path to the orangery. + +"Would you like me to fix it all up as you want it?" the mason asked. + +"Would you?" + +"All right--I'll start in to-day and you can watch me and see if it's +done right." + +"But you wanted to go up to the city," Adelle suggested. + +"That don't matter much--there's plenty of time," Clark replied hastily. + +And in a few minutes he remarked gruffly, "Say, I don't want you to +think I was goin' up to 'Frisco on a tear." + +"I didn't think so!" + +She realized then that Clark had not left the place all these ten days +since the fire. + +"I'm goin' to cut out the booze, now there's something else for +excitement," he added. + +"That's good!" + + + + +XLV + + +Adelle registered at the Eclair Hotel in B---- with her maid. It was the +only hotel that she knew in the city, although when she first crossed +the ornate lobby she remembered with a sick sensation that other visit +with Archie on their scandalously notorious arrival from Europe to take +possession of her fortune. However, Adelle was not one to allow +sentimental impressions to upset her, and signed the register +carefully--"Mrs. Adelle Clark and maid, Bellevue, California." She had +resolved to signify her new life by renouncing her married name here in +the country where she had begun life as Adelle Clark, although her +divorce was not yet even started. + +She expected her cousin Tom Clark in a few days. She had thought it best +to precede him and pave the way for him at the Washington Trust Company +by announcing her news to the officers first. A little reflection and +the memory of certain expressions from the trust officers of complacency +in their success in "quieting" the Clark title had convinced her that +this would be the wiser course to pursue. The trust company might find +some objections to undoing all the fine legal work that they had +accomplished in the settlement of the estate. + +Adelle was received by the new president, that same Mr. Solomon Smith +who had delivered the trust company's ultimatum to her after her +marriage. Mr. Smith, it seemed, had recently succeeded to the dignity of +President West, who had retired as chairman of the company's board, fat +with honor and profit. President Solomon Smith received Adelle with all +the consideration due to such an old and rich client, whose business +interests were still presumably considerable, although latterly she had +seen fit to remove them from the cautious guardianship of the trust +company. She was in mourning, he noticed, and looked much older and more +of a person in every way than when it had been his official duty to +deliver his solemn wigging in the Paris studio to the trust company's +erring ward. Mr. Smith probably realized with satisfaction the success +of his prophecies on the consequences of her rash act, which he had so +eloquently pointed out. Adelle made no reference, however, to her own +troubles, nor explained why she had announced herself by her maiden +name. She had come on more important business. + +It took her some time to make clear to the banker what the real purpose +of her visit was, and when Mr. Smith realized it he summoned to the +conference two other officers of the institution, who were better +acquainted with the detail of the Clark estate than he was. After the +thing had been put before them, the temperature in the president's +office leaped upwards with astonishing rapidity on this chilly day in +early May. Three more horrified gentlemen it would have been hard to +find in the entire city, whose citizens are easily horrified. For this +woman, whom Fate and the Washington Trust Company had endowed with a +large fortune, to try to raise the ghost of that troublesome Edward S. +Clark, whom they had been at so much pains and expense to lay, seemed +merely mad. When Adelle reiterated her conviction that she herself had +discovered at last the heirs of the lost Edward S., President Smith +demanded with some asperity whether Mrs. Davis--Mrs. Clark--understood +what this meant. Adelle replied very simply that she supposed it meant +the California Clarks getting at last their half of Clark's Field, which +certainly belonged to them more than to her. + +"Not at all!" all three gentlemen roared at her exasperatedly. + +"They'd have a hard time making good their title now!" one of them +remarked, with a cynical laugh. + +"It would mean a lot of expensive litigation for one thing," another +injected. + +"Which would fall upon you," the trust president pointed out. + +"But why?" Adelle asked quietly. "I shouldn't fight their claims." + +The three gentlemen gasped, and then let forth a flood of discordant +protest, which was summed up by the president's flat assertion,-- + +"You'd have to!" + +Patiently, while his colleagues waited, he tried to make clear to Adelle +in words of two syllables that the Clark's Field Associates would be +obliged to defend the titles they had given to the land, and she as +majority partner in this lucrative enterprise would have to stand her +share of the risk and the legal expense involved. Adelle saw that the +affair was more complex than she had thought and said so, with no +indication, however, of giving up her purpose. + +"It is not a simple matter at all to consider the claims of these +California Clarks. The land has passed out of our--your control: it has +probably passed through several hands in many instances, each owner +pledging his faith in the validity of his title. You can see that any +action taken now by these heirs of Edward S. Clark against the present +owners of Clark's Field would injure numberless innocent people. It is +not to be thought of for one moment!" Having reached a moral ground for +not upsetting things as they were, the president of the trust company +felt more at ease and expatiated at length on "the good faith of the +Washington Trust Company and all others" who had been parties to the +transaction. Adelle sighed as she listened to the torrent of eloquence +and realized what an upheaval her simple act of restitution would cause. +It seemed to her that the law was a very peculiar institution, indeed, +which prevented people from using their property for many years in order +not to injure some possible heirs, and then just as stoutly prevented +those heirs when they had been discovered from getting their own! + +"It is simply preposterous, the whole thing," one of the younger +officers observed, rising to go about more important business. + +"It's not likely to come to anything--they are poor people, these other +Clarks, you said?" inquired Mr. Smith. + +"I know only one of them," Adelle replied. "He was a stone mason working +on my place in California. It was by accident that I learned of his +relationship to me. He has some brothers and sisters living, four of +them I think he said. They are all poor people. I don't know whether he +has any cousins. I didn't ask him. But I think he said something once +about an uncle or aunt, so it's likely there are other heirs, too." + +The trust president asked testily,-- + +"You didn't by any chance mention to this stone mason your belief that +he was entitled to a share in his grandfather's property?" + +"Yes, I did!" Adelle promptly replied. "We talked it over several +times." + +The three gentlemen murmured something. + +"And he is coming on to see about it. I arranged to meet him here on the +sixteenth, day after to-morrow." + +"Here!" + +Adelle nodded. + +"We thought that would be the quickest way to settle it, as you know all +about the property." + +"The young man will have his journey for nothing," the president said +grimly. + +Then he took Adelle to task in the same patronizing, moral tone he had +used to her on the occasion of her marriage. + +"My dear young woman, you have acted in this matter very inadvisedly, +very rashly!" + +That was her unfortunate habit, he seemed to say, to act rashly. The +irony of it all was that Adelle, who acted so rarely of her own +initiative, should be exposed to this charge in the two most important +instances when she had acted of her own volition and acted promptly! + +"You see now how disastrous any such course as you proposed would be for +you and for many others." (He was thinking chiefly of his board of +directors and the gentlemen who had profited through the Clark's Field +Associates, but he put it in the altruistic way.) "Fortunately, you can +do no great harm to these innocent persons. The titles to Clark's Field +we firmly believe are unassailable, impregnable. No court in this State +would void those titles after they have once been quieted. You have +merely aroused false hopes, I am afraid, and the spirit of greed in a +lot of ignorant poor people,--who unless they are well advised will +waste their savings in a vain attempt to get property that doesn't +belong to them." + +His tone was both moral and reproving. He wanted her to feel that, +whereas she had thought she was doing a generous and high-minded thing +by communicating to this lost tribe of Clarks her knowledge of their +outlawed opportunity for riches, she had in reality merely made trouble +for every one including herself. + +"You are a woman," Mr. Solomon Smith continued severely, "and naturally +ignorant of business and law. It is a pity that you did not consult some +one, some strong, sensible person whose judgment you could rely on, and +not fly off at a tangent on a foolish ideal!... By the way, where is +your husband?" + +"In California," Adelle replied sulkily. + +She did not like Mr. Smith's tone. He knew very well that Archie was not +the strong, sensible person upon whose judgment she might rely. + +"Are you divorced?" the president asked, remembering that she had +announced herself by her maiden name. + +"No," Adelle admitted, wondering what this had to do with the business. + +"Well, your husband is concerned--what does he think of it?" + +"I don't know. It makes no difference what he thinks of it," Adelle +replied. + +"You will find that it does make a great difference," the trust officer +quickly rejoined, seizing upon Archie as a convenient weapon. He +thereupon discoursed upon the legal and moral rights of a husband in his +wife's property and warned Adelle solemnly that she was taking a +dangerous course in acting without Archie's consent. Archie doubtless +would have been much pleased. It seemed trying to Adelle, who had not +the least idea of ever again waiting upon Archie's consent about +anything, to have her marriage used against her in this fashion by the +trust company. They had done everything they could to keep Archie's +hands off the property, and now they gravely told her that it belonged +to Archie as well as to herself! + +Mr. Smith continued to talk for some time longer, but Adelle was calmly +oblivious to what he was saying. She was thinking. It was clear to her +that there were objections to the simple method by which she had +expected to transfer a part of Clark's Field to its rightful owners, but +she had by no means abandoned her purpose, as the trust company +president thought. Like many forceful men whom President Smith very much +admired, she was no great respecter of law as such. What couldn't be +done in one way might in another, and she must now find out that other +way, which obviously she would not discover from the officers of the +Washington Trust Company. So she rose and pulled on her long gloves. + +"I must think it over," she remarked thoughtfully, "and see what my +cousin, Mr. Clark, thinks about it. I will come in again in a few days." +And with a slight nod to the assembled gentlemen she passed out of the +president's private office. + +Three disgusted gentlemen looked at each other after her departure. One +of them said the trite and stupid and untrue thing,--"Just like a +woman!" + +Another reacted equally conventionally,--"She must be a little queer." + +And the third--the president--vouchsafed,--"What she needs is a strong +hand to keep her straight." + +All of which Adelle, like any self-respecting woman, might have +resented. + + + + +XLVI + + +Adelle passed through the marble banking-room of the trust company, +which once had been for her the acme of splendor, out upon the narrow +city street in considerable puzzlement. She did not know which way to +turn next, literally. She might consult some lawyer; that in fact was +what the trust people had advised--that she should see their lawyers. +But Adelle shrewdly concluded that it would be useless to see the +Washington Trust Company's lawyers, who would doubtless tell her again +in less intelligible language precisely what the trust officers had +said. And she knew of no other lawyers in the city whom she might +consult independently. Besides, she thought it better to see her cousin +before going to the lawyers, feeling that this self-reliant, if socially +inexperienced, young workman might have pertinent suggestions to offer. +In the mean time, not having anything else to do immediately, she turned +in the direction of her hotel. + +Any of the preoccupied citizens of B---- who might have encountered this +black-dressed, pale young woman sauntering up their crowded street this +morning, could scarcely have divined what was going on behind those +still, gray eyes. She was not thinking of the goods displayed in the +shop windows, though her eyes mechanically flitted over them, nor was +she musing upon a lover, though Tom Clark often crossed her mind, nor +was she considering the weather, which was puritanically raw and +ruffling, nor of any other thing than how she might divest herself of a +large part of that fortune which the Washington Trust Company had so +meritoriously preserved for her! There was a very simple way out of her +dilemma, of course, but it had never occurred to her; and if it had +occurred to the trust officers, they had thought best not to suggest it +to their scatter-brained client. So she knitted her brows and thought, +without heeding where she was. + +When she came to a certain small square, she turned off the main street +unconsciously and walked up a quiet block towards the court-house. It +was the path she had trod eleven years before, only in the reverse +direction when she had led her aunt from Judge Orcutt's courtroom to the +home of the Washington Trust Company. Her mind took charge of her +without calling upon her will, as it did so often, and presently she +entered the great granite court-house with no clear purpose in her mind, +other than a hidden desire, perhaps, to see the probate judge once more. +Judge Orcutt was not in the room on the second floor which she +remembered. Instead, there was a stranger holding court there, a +dull-eyed, fat gentleman with drooping black mustache and a snappy +voice, who did not attract Adelle. She thought she had made a mistake in +the room and looked up and down the corridor for a room labeled with +Judge Orcutt's name, but found none. Then she asked a court attendant, +who told her that the judge had been retired for the last two years! +Adelle was turning away, with a sense of disappointment, when it came +into her mind like an inspiration--"He might still be living in the +city!" She inquired, and the court attendant, who did not know, was +polite enough to consult a directory and found that sure enough Judge +Orcutt was living on Mountcourt Street, which happened to be not far +away--in fact just over the hill from the court-house. + +Thereupon, Adelle went on her way more swiftly, with a conscious purpose +guiding her feet, and found Mountcourt Street--a little, quiet, by-path +of a street such as exists in no other city of our famous land. It was +not a rifle-shot from the court-house and the busiest centers of the +city, yet it was as retired and as reposeful as if it had been forgotten +ever since the previous century, when its houses were built. And in the +middle of the first block, a sober, little brick house with an old white +painted door and window lights, was Judge Orcutt's number. Adelle was +shown to a small room in the front of the house and sat down, her heart +strangely beating as if she were waiting an appointment with a lover. +The house was so still! An old French clock ticked silently on the +mantelpiece beneath a glass case. All the chairs and tables, even the +rug, in the small room seemed like the house and the street, relics of +an orderly, peaceful past. Adelle knew something about furniture and +house decoration: it was one of the minor arts patronized by her class, +and she had learned enough to talk knowingly about "periods" and +"styles." Judge Orcutt's house was of no particular "period" or "style," +but it was remarkably harmonious--the garment carefully chosen by a +person with traditions.... Presently the servant came back and invited +Adelle to go upstairs to the judge's library, as Judge Orcutt was not +feeling well to-day, she explained. + +The study was like the room below, only larger, lighter, and well filled +with books. The judge was sitting near the grate, in which was burning a +soft-coal fire. He smiled on Adelle's entrance and apologized for not +rising. + +"It's the east wind," he explained. "I've known it all my life, but it +gets us old fellows, you know, on days like these!" + +Adelle took his thin hand and sat down in the seat he pointed out near +the fire. The judge appeared to her to be no older than he had the first +time she had seen him when she went to the probate court with her aunt. +Then he had seemed to her child's eyes an old man, and now he was +indubitably old and rather frail, with a clean-shaven, delicately +moulded chin beneath his white mustache. Adelle was in no hurry to begin +on her errand. She glanced about at the cheerful room with its rows of +old books, presumably the works of those poet friends to whom the judge +could now devote an uninterrupted leisure in communion. She looked at +the old chairs and lounge and mahogany secretary, handed down, no doubt, +from the judge's ancestors, for they antedated even the old judge. And +then, through the little square panes in the windows, out to the +chimney-pots on the slope of the hill, and across the harbor, with its +tangle of wharves and masts, to the bay, through which the ships passed +on into the ocean. She felt that it was exactly the right location for +an old gentleman, who was done with the battles of life and yet wanted +to remain within sight and sound of the battle-field. + +The judge, noticing her roving eyes, remarked genially,--"I like to look +out over the place where I have been working so many years!" + +"It's nice here," Adelle replied. + +There was much more in the room and the house that Adelle vaguely +felt--an air of peace, of gentle and serene contemplation, that came +from the man himself, who had taken what life had offered him and turned +it to good in the alembic of his peculiar nature. It had been a sound +and sweet life, on the whole, and this was a sweet retreat, smelling of +old books and old meetings, fragrant with memories of another world, +another people! This fruit of the spirit, which is all that is left from +living, Adelle could now feel acutely, if she could not express it fitly +in words. And she was grateful for it. She knew that at last she had +come to the right place for the solution of her problem, and she did not +hasten. Neither did the judge hurry her to her errand. Evidently he +recalled who she was, and his keen eyes probably read more of the +secrets of those years since her last appearance in his +court--extravagantly dressed, almost insolent, to listen indifferently +to his severe homily upon Clark's Field--than she suspected. So they +chatted for a few minutes about the view, the city, the old house, and +then, as Adele still seemed tongue-tied, the judge remarked,-- + +"My servant gave your name as Mrs. Clark--did she not make a mistake?" + +"No," Adelle said, "That is what I shall call myself now--Mrs. Adelle +Clark." + +The judge murmured something behind his hand. Hers was another of these +modern mishaps, it seemed, falsely called marriages. Each case of +divorce gave his old heart a little stab, wounding a loyalty to a +beautiful ideal that he had kept intact. But he was old enough and wise +enough, having judged men and women all his life, not to pronounce +judgment on the most intimate and secret of all human affairs. He waited +for Adelle to tell her story, and presently she began. + +"Judge Orcutt," she said, "I want to tell you something and ask your +advice because I feel that you will know what to do." + +With this introduction she proceeded to retell her story, the one she +had told that morning to the officers of the trust company. But having +been over it once she told it much better to the judge, more coherently, +more fully, with many small, intimate, revealing touches that she had +omitted before. It was easier for her to talk to the old man, who +listened with warm, understanding eyes, and nodded his white head when +she cut to the quick of things as if he understood why without being +told everything precisely. She felt that she could tell him everything, +all her own life, all that she was but now beginning to comprehend and +see as a whole. He had for her the lure of the confessor, and Adelle +needed a confessor. + +So she described to him briefly the course of her married life up to the +time when she first began to notice the mason at work upon the terrace +wall. Without accusing Archie, she made the judge nevertheless +comprehend why she no longer could bear his name. From her first meeting +with her cousin she was much more detailed in her story, giving +everything chronologically, anxious to omit nothing which might be of +importance. She told all the circumstances of her slow comprehension of +the truth, that this stone mason was her second cousin and should have +inherited equally with herself the riches of Clark's Field. She told +squarely of her weeks of hesitation and final decision not to reveal to +the mason or to any one her knowledge of the truth. Then came the night +of the fire and her personal tragedy in the ruin of Highcourt. And all +this she told, dry-eyed, without passion, quite baldly, as if that was +the only way in which she could face it. Lastly she told of sending for +the mason the next morning and before her husband confessing her useless +secret, and then briefly she spoke of the subsequent steps that had +brought her to the city to see the Washington Trust Company. + +"And they told you?" queried the judge, leaning forward to poke the coal +fire into flame. + +"They said that nothing could be done now for these California Clarks, +because it would make a lot of trouble and harm innocent people to go +back of the new titles to the property," Adelle replied. + +"And they were perfectly right," Judge Orcutt said, with a long sigh, +after a moment of consideration. "It was the only thing they could say +to you!" + +He went into the law of it and explained to Adelle, more clearly than it +had ever been done, just how the uncertain title had finally been +"quieted," all the legal steps which had been duly taken to notify the +unknown heirs, and the judicial sale ordered by the court, with the +meaning of the process. + +"So you can see that the law took great pains to find these people, and +make sure that no wrong should be done to any rightful claimants, and +because it failed to find the lost heirs there is no reason why people +who bought the land in good faith should be made to suffer. You see?" + +Adelle saw, but she was disappointed. It was the same thing the trust +company had said to her, only now she felt sure of it. What could she +say to her young cousin? That troubled her a great deal. She hated to +disappoint his expectations, which she had ignorantly aroused. + +"And the law is right," the old judge mused aloud, "whatever hardship it +may seem to work to these unknown heirs like your California cousins. +For you must see that human life could not go on unless we cleaned the +slate sometimes arbitrarily, and began all over. It is better for +everybody to accept certain inexact or unjust conditions rather than to +disturb the whole fabric of human society by attempting to do exact +justice, which, after all, is in itself a human impossibility. That is +what our good people, reformers and anarchists alike, often fail to +understand!... So these Clarks, I am afraid, will have to suffer for the +carelessness of their ancestor in not leaving his address behind him +when he left for the West. No court would open up the old tangle about +Clark's Field now that it has been finally adjudicated according to due +process of law. No court would order the case reopened--it is _res +judicata_, fixed unalterably!" + +He smiled indulgently upon Adelle with his little tag of legal Latin. He +might be a poet, but he knew the laws of inheritance, and moreover, now +in his old age, he had come out from his valleys of indecision and knew +that there must be many wrongs both legal and extra-legal in our human +system, and that it was not always accomplishing the most good to try to +do exact justice. As he had said to Adelle, ours is a world of chance +and mistake, and the most wholesome thing for every generation is to +wipe the slate clean as far as possible and go ahead hopefully, +courageously to create a new and sounder life upon a substructure +possibly of fraud and injustice and cruelty. Thus man climbed always +upwards. To rend and tear and fight, to try to eradicate every wrong was +also human, but it was largely futile. + +So when Adelle ventured to say,-- + +"But people often do try to upset titles, don't they? I have seen +stories in the newspapers about heirs getting together to recover +possession of valuable lands that have been out of the family longer +than Clark's Field." + +The judge nodded, and added,-- + +"Too true! But do you know how few of these attempts ever succeed--even +get to a trial of the case? Almost none. Usually they are fraudulent +schemes of rascals who collect money from gullible persons and then put +the money into their own pockets and nothing whatever is done. It would +be very foolish of these cousins of yours to try anything of the sort. +It would make them miserable for years and eat up what little money they +have. You must make this all clear to the young man who is to meet you +here. Send him to me if he has any doubts!" + +"What can I do about it, then?" Adelle demanded. "It belongs to them, +and I want them to have it. There must be some way!" + +The judge looked at the young woman with a curious, indulgent smile. He +had gathered from her story that her own experience with Clark's Field +had not been a successful one by any means. Was that why she was so +anxious to shoulder off upon these unknown members of her family the +burden of riches which had proved too much for her? Just what was her +motive? A conscience newly aroused by her terrible tragedy and +hypersensitive? An interest womanwise in this young stone mason, who was +the only one of the California Clarks she had yet seen?... The judge +leaned forward and took Adelle's hand. + +"Tell me, my dear," he said, "just why you want them to have your money. +For of course it would be _your_ money that they would get in the end, +if by any possibility they could win their case." + +Adelle looked into the old man's kind eyes, but did not reply. It was +not easy for her to explain the persistent purpose that moved her. + +"Has wealth meant so much to you? or so little?" the judge asked, +thinking of his own part in providing Adelle's fortune for her. + +Adelle slowly shook her head. + +"Do you think that these other Clarks would use it more wisely?" And as +Adelle did not reply at once he repeated,--"Have you any reason to +believe that they would be happier than you have been or better?" + +"Money doesn't make happiness," Adelle said with a pathetic conviction +of the truth of the truism. The energy of her life, it seemed, as in the +case of so many others, had been given to proving the truth of axioms +one after another! + +The judge smiled and released her hand. He sat back in his deep chair +watching Adelle with kindly eyes. He seemed to see the woman's awakening +mind slowly at work before him, struggling patiently to grasp what was +still just beyond her comprehension. + +"What shall I do?" she appealed finally. "Tell me!" + +"There is something you can do--a very simple thing! I wonder it has not +occurred to you before." + +"What is it?" Adelle asked eagerly. + +"You can give part of your own fortune--an exact half of it if you +like--to these new cousins of yours, and so accomplish what you want +without hurting any one but yourself." + +"I don't think they would take the money that way--I don't believe _he_ +would!" Adelle said doubtfully. + +"There are few persons," the judge observed indulgently, "who cannot be +induced to take money in one way or another!" + +"It isn't quite the same thing," Adelle said, in a disappointed tone. "I +don't think he would like it that way." + +"It amounts to the same thing in the end, doesn't it?" + +"Perhaps." + +She did not tell the judge that if she should give these California +Clarks one half of the fortune she had received from Clark's Field, she +should be poor, perhaps destitute. + +"But before you decide to do anything, you must make up your mind very +carefully, for it cannot be undone. Are you quite sure that you are +doing the wisest thing in turning over such a large fortune to persons +you know almost nothing about?" + +"I know _him_--the mason, and I think it would be safer with him than +with me." + +The judge smiled enigmatically. + +"If he would take it from me like that--perhaps he need not know?" she +asked. + +"I think that he had better know!... Bring him to see me when he comes +and we can talk it over together, all three of us," the judge suggested. + +"I will do that!" + +"And now I want you to give me the pleasure of lunching with me, a very +simple old man's lunch, when we can talk about other things than money!" +And with another gentle smile the judge took Adelle's arm and hobbled +out to the next room. + +A cheerful bar of sunlight fell across the small table between the two +napkins and made the old silver gleam. Adelle felt more at peace, more +calmly content with life, than she had since the death of her child. She +was sure that somehow it was all coming out right, not only the money +from Clark's Field, but also her own troubled life, although she could +not see the precise steps to be taken. As usual her destiny, after +leading her by many devious routes, brought her to the one door where +she might obtain light.... + +"Tell me," said her host in his courteous tones, "about your +California--I have always wanted to go there some day." + + + + +XLVII + + +When Adelle descended from her room to the hotel parlor to meet her +cousin on his arrival, she was conscious of trepidation. However the +matter might turn out in the end, she must now give the young mason a +first disappointment, and she was keenly aware of what that might be to +him after dreaming his dream all these weeks of freedom and power that +was unexpectedly to be his. She did not like to disappoint him, even +temporarily, and she also felt somewhat foolish because she had so +confidently assumed that it would be a simple matter to set the Clark +inheritance right. + +The stone mason was sitting cornerwise on his chair in the hotel room, +twirling on his thumb a new "Stetson" hat that he had purchased as part +of his holiday equipment. There was nothing especially bizarre in the +costume that Tom Clark had chosen. Democracy has eradicated almost +everything individual or picturesque in man's attire. The standard +equipment may be had in every town in the land. There remains merely the +fine distinction of being well dressed against being badly dressed, and +Clark was badly dressed, as any experienced eye such as Adelle's could +see at a glance. Nothing he had on fitted him or became him. A very red +neck and face emerged from a high white collar, and those muscular arms +that Adelle had always admired for their color of copper bronze and +their free, graceful action, now merely prodded out the stiff folds of +his readymade suit. His muscles seemed to resent their confinement in +good clothes and played tricks like a naughty boy. + +Adelle, perceiving him in his corner as soon as she entered the room, +realized at once that he was out of place. It seemed that there were +people, men as well as women, who were born to wear fine clothes and to +acquire all the habits that went with them. For the past ten years these +were the people she had associated with almost exclusively, people who +could be known by their clothes. The stone mason belonged to that large +fringe of the social world who must be known by something else. Adelle +had recently perceived that there was another, small class of people +like Judge Orcutt who could be known both by their clothes and by +something finer than the clothes which they wore. Tom Clark could never +become one of these. + +But as soon as Adelle was seated near her cousin and talking to him, she +forgot his defects of appearance--his red neck and great paws and clumsy +posture. She felt once more the man--the man she had come to respect and +like, who had an individuality quite independent of clothes and culture. +After the first greetings Adelle was silent, and it was the mason +himself who asked her bluntly,-- + +"Well, what did the bank say? I guess it surprised 'em some, didn't it?" + +Then Adelle was obliged to tell him of her fruitless expedition to the +Washington Trust Company. + +"So they turned us down hard!" Clark commented, with a slight +contraction of his eyebrows. "The stiffs!" + +Already a sardonic grin was loosening the corners of his compressed +lips. Life had in fact jested with him too often and too bitterly for +him to trust its promises completely. He had no real confidence in +Fortune's smiles. + +"It doesn't seem right," Adelle hastened to say. "But I am afraid what +they said must be so, for Judge Orcutt told me it was the law." + +"And who is your Judge Orcutt?" the mason demanded suspiciously. + +For an instant he seemed to doubt Adelle's good faith, believed that she +was trying to "double-cross" him as he would express it, having had time +since they parted to realize that it was not for her own interest to +admit the claims of the senior branch of the Clarks. But he could not +have kept his suspicion long, for Adelle's honest, troubled eyes were +plain proof of her concern for him. + +"Judge Orcutt," she explained, "was the probate judge who had charge of +the estate when my uncle died. He made the trust company my guardian +then. I went to see him yesterday, and had a long talk with him about it +all. I want you to see him, too;--can't you go to his house with me this +morning?" + +"Why should I see the judge?" the mason demanded. + +"He can make you understand better than I can the reasons why all the +titles can't be disturbed. And there may be a way, another way of doing +what we want," Adelle added hesitantly, with some confusion. + +The mason looked at her closely, but he seemed to have no more suspicion +than Adelle herself had had at first of what this way was. He said,-- + +"Well, I've got no particular objection to seeing the judge. There's +plenty of time--ain't much else for me to do in these parts, now I'm +here." + +With another sardonic laugh for his dashed hopes, he rose jerkily, as if +he was ready to go anywhere at once. + +"It's rather early yet," Adelle remarked, consulting her watch. "We had +better wait a little while before going to the judge." + +The young man reseated himself and looked about idly at the rich +ornamentation of the hotel room. + +"Some class this," he observed, concerning the Eclair Hotel, which was +precisely what the hotel management wanted its patrons to feel. + +"Did you see your sister in Philadelphia?" Adelle asked. + +"Yep," he replied non-committally. Evidently his tour of the family had +not begun favorably, and Adelle refrained from pressing the questions +she had in mind. + +"You have some first cousins, too, haven't you?" Adelle asked, +remembering the judge's inquiry. + +"A whole bunch of 'em!" the mason laughed. "Father had two brothers and +one sister, and all of 'em had big families, and my mother had a lot of +nephews and nieces, but they don't count for the inheritance." + +In contrast with the Alton Clarks, of whom Adelle was the sole survivor, +the California branch of the family had been prolific. Adelle realized +that as the judge had pointed out to her, it was not simply a question +of endowing one intelligent, interesting young man with a half of +Clark's Field, but of parceling it out in small lots to a numerous +family connection--a much less pleasant deed. + +"Do you know these Clark cousins?" she asked. + +"Some of 'em," the mason said. "They don't amount to much, the lot of +'em. There's only one made any stir in the world, that's Stan Clark, my +uncle Samuel's son. He's in the California Legislature," he said with a +certain pride. "And they tell me he's as much of a crook as they make +'em! Then there's a brother of Stan--Sol Clark. He runs a newspaper up +in Fresno County, and I guess he's another little crook. There's a bunch +of Clarks down in Los Angeles, in the fruit commission business--I don't +know nothing about them. Oh, there's Clarks enough of our sort!" he +concluded grimly. + +Adelle could see that the stone mason had very slight intercourse with +any of his cousins. Like most working-people he was necessarily limited +in his social relations to his immediate neighbors, the relatives he +could get at easily in his free hours--holidays and Sundays and after +his eight hours of work was done. The mason's hands were not formed for +much penmanship! Adelle also realized that the stone mason, like more +prosperous people, did not love the members of his family just because +they were Clarks. There was no close family bond of any sort. The mason +knew less about his immediate relatives than he did about many other +people in the world, and felt less close to them; and of course she knew +them not even by name. She felt no great incentive to bequeath small +portions of Clark's Field to these unknown little people who happened to +bear the name of Clark--now that the law no longer demanded a +distribution of the estate, in fact prohibited it! + +Thus Adelle realized the absurdity of the family inheritance scheme by +which property is preserved for the use of blood descendants of its +owner, irrespective of their fitness to use it. She saw that inheritance +was a mere survival of an archaic system of tribal bond, which society, +through its customary inertia and timidity and general dislike for +change, had preserved,--indeed, had made infinitely complex and precise +by a code of property laws. She sat back in her chair, silent, puzzled +and baffled by the situation. The only way, it seemed, in which she +could give the stone mason his share of his grandfather's property was +by stripping herself of all her possessions for the tribe of California +Clarks, which she felt no inclination to do. + +Her cousin, apparently, had been following the same course of reflection +in part. He observed dispassionately,-- + +"I don't know much about 'em, and you don't know anything at all, of +course. Mos' likely they 're no better and no worse than any average +bunch of human beings. It's curious to think that if grandfather had +kept his folks back East informed of his post-office address, all these +Clarks big and little would have come in for a slice of the pie!" + +"It might not have been such a big pie, then," Adelle remarked. + +She remembered quite well what the judge had said about the accumulation +of her fortune. It was just because these California Clarks had been +lost to sight that there was any "pie" at all. If Edward S. had left his +post-office address, there was no doubt that long before this Clark's +Field would have been eaten up: there would have been no Adelle +Clark--and no book about her and Clark's Field! + +The mason tossed his hat in the air and caught it dexterously on the +point of his thumb. He mused,-- + +"All the same they'd open their eyes some, I guess, if they knew what we +know. My, wouldn't it make 'em mad to think how near they'd come to some +easy money!" + +He laughed with relish at the ironical humor of the situation--the +picture of the California Clarks running hungrily with outstretched +hands to grab their piece of Clark's Field. And he laughed with a bitter +perception of the underlying farce of human society. It was his ironic +sense of the accidental element in life, especially in relation to +property ownership and class distinctions, based on property possession, +that made him an incipient anarchist, such as he had described himself +to Adelle. He was far too intelligent to believe what the Sunday School +taught, and the average American thinks he believes, that property and +position in this world are apportioned by desert of one sort or another. +He knew in the radius of his own circumscribed life too many instances +where privilege was based on nothing more real than Adelle's claim to +Clark's Field. In the hasty fashion of his nature he concluded +intolerantly that all personal privilege was rotten, and hated--or +thought he did--all those "grafters" who enjoyed what Fate had not been +kind enough to give him. Adelle disliked his ironical laughter, for +without knowing it she was groping towards a sounder belief about life +than the anarchist's, and she felt sorry for her mistake in arousing +false expectations in her cousin, because in the end it might make him +all the harder, confirm him in his revolt against life. No, she must +find some way out, so that a part of her unearned fortune could be of +real benefit to him. + +"Tell me again," Clark demanded moodily, "just what those banker stiffs +said about the title? When was it finally fixed up so as to shut us +out?" + +"I don't know just when, but I suppose some time before I came of age. +It must have been between the time my aunt and I first went to see them +and my twenty-first birthday." + +Clark made a rapid calculation. + +"That was about the time father died and mother and we kids were tryin' +to live on nothin'. The money would have come in mighty handy then, let +me tell you!... Well, I suppose the lawyers know what they're about." + +"I suppose they do," Adelle admitted reluctantly. + +"I guess they don't want no more fuss with Clark's Field--after they've +got the thing all troweled out fine and smooth." + +Adelle felt the cynicism in his voice, and keenly realized that it was +for her benefit that the "troweling" had been skillfully performed. + +"That's gone into the discard!" the mason exclaimed finally, jumping up +and whistling softly. + +He had that look in his blue eyes that Adelle recognized--the dangerous +glint. If she were not there or if she had been a man, he would have +found the shortest path to a drink, then taken another, and probably +many others. Very likely that was what he meant to do to-night, but at +least she would keep him for dinner and make him take her to the theater +for which she had already procured seats. Adelle did not censure him for +drinking, not as she had censured Archie, because she felt that he drank +in a different spirit, as an outlet for his realization of the sardonic +inadequacy of life, not as a mere sensual indulgence. If the keen spirit +of the man were satisfied with work, he would never drink at all, she +was sure. + +"I think we can go over to the judge's now," she said, observing his +restlessness. + +The two crossed the few blocks of city streets to the quiet corner on +the hill behind the court-house where Judge Orcutt lived. The east wind +had blown itself out the night before, and a beautiful May morning +filled even the city with the spirit of spring. + +They found the old judge up and about his study, quite lively and full +of cordial welcome. He glanced keenly at the young mason, who lingered +awkwardly, scowling, beside the door. + +"Come in, do!... It's too fine a day for indoors, isn't it? I've ordered +a carriage," he said almost at once, "and I want you both to take a +drive with me." + + + + +XLVIII + + +Since Adelle's visit Judge Orcutt had given some hours of profound +reflection to Clark's Field, for the second time in his life. Not to the +legal problem suggested by the young woman's desire to upset the +disposition of her property. That he had answered in the only way he +could, firmly and decisively. Unscrupulous lawyers might hold out +delusive hopes to these newly found heirs if they should fall into their +clutches; but the probate judge knew the law of the land and the temper +of the courts on this familiar topic. No, his attention had been given +to Adelle herself and to her request for his advice upon what she should +do with the property that had been given her in the due process of the +law. He realized that he was called upon to advise again crucially in +regard to Clark's Field. For he recognized Adelle's earnestness of +purpose and her pathetically groping desire for light upon life. + +He had already reversed that decision about her, given when Adelle upon +her majority appeared in his court and he had had occasion to lecture +her about the nature of the fortune he was handing over to her. Then his +harsh tone had been due to a sense of futility in having been at great +pains to preserve for this foolishly dressed and apparently empty-headed +young woman a very great property. To him had come then acutely the +disheartening realization of the underlying irony of life, when such +power and privilege could be put into such futile hands. And he--the +conscientious judge--had been the instrument of the law in perpetrating +this bitter jest upon justice. But now he felt that Adelle might justify +her good fortune. For it seemed that her riches after poisoning her had +already begun to work their own cure. She wanted to rid herself of them. +That was a good sign. + +Not that he sympathized in her crude plan of endowing these unknown +Clark cousins with a lot of her money. He was glad that, at any rate, +the law put a stop to further litigation over Clark's Field. If she +wanted to distribute her estate to them she could, of course. But in all +probability it would do them little good; and it might do a great deal +of harm. He was interested in Adelle, in her development and her being, +much more than in the Clark money. What would be best for her +ultimately? If he had been a conventionally minded old gentleman, he +would have urged her to bestow her money prudently upon safe +charities--perhaps create a special philanthropic trust for the +distribution of Clark's Field, after her death, of course, for the good +of education, or hospitals, or art--the ordinary channels chosen by +those rich persons who cared to alienate from themselves and their heirs +a portion of their property. But the judge, fortunately, was not +conventionally minded, although he had sat upon the bench for upwards of +forty years. He knew that philanthropy was a very wasteful and +mechanical method of attaining an end, and often did great harm to +everybody, because such a little charity made such an immense amount of +social salve. He did not believe that "philanthropy" would appeal in its +common forms to Adelle, certainly not deathbed giving. + +She had been through some terrible experiences, that was evident, and +was still more shaken by them than she knew. But she was young, with a +long life presumably to lead, and other children and loves and interests +to blossom in it. Would it not be wise for her to retain her property, +now that she had learned something of the nature of money, and endeavor +by herself to use Clark's Field wisely? It was here that the judge's +musings brought up. He was inclined to have faith in Adelle as a person +for the first time. + +We can see how far from the anarchist his philosophy of life led him. +The accidents of life--yes, but mysterious, not merely ironic and +meaningless, accidents! Adelle Clark, the unpromising little girl, the +loud, silly young married woman, was the instrument chosen by Fate--only +the judge said God-sharpened by pain and sorrow to become the +intelligent destiny of Clark's Field. Could the law with all its hedging +and guarding beat that? Could the stone mason or the judge himself or +any human mind select a better executor for Clark's Field than the +unlikely instrument which Fate had chosen? The judge thought not, and +with his own little plan in mind serenely awaited the arrival of the +Clark cousins on this joyous May morning, having previously ordered the +horses and carriage that he commonly used for his outings. + + * * * * * + +Adelle sat beside the judge in the old-fashioned brougham, and the stone +mason opposite to them, his great brown hands bedded on his knees, his +face critically examining the city landscape. The judge talked chiefly +to the young man, in his humorous and rather garrulous manner, +describing for his benefit the glories of the old city. They plunged +almost at once off the hill into a slum, where in the tall brick +tenements women were hanging out of the windows enjoying the spring day. +The sunshine and the blue sky made the narrow, dirty streets, and the +evil-looking buildings even more out of place than usual. The young +Californian wrinkled his mouth scornfully over it. But soon they drove +out upon a new bridge that bound the two parts of the city together +where the breeze came in across the water gayly. The mason was specially +pleased with the tunnel through which the surface cars disappeared into +the bowels of the city. That was some good, he said, and added that they +did not have it in California. "But we don't need it yet--we aren't so +crowded out there," he explained. He did not think much of the tall +buildings they encountered on their route. They had better ones in +"'Frisco," and had he not seen New York? His attitude towards this home +of his forefathers was mildly tolerant. If the issue had been put to him +squarely, he would never have exchanged his free California inheritance +for his share of Clark's Field! He seemed to think better of his +grandfather for having shaken the dust of Alton from his scornful feet. +That was exactly what he himself would have done if it had been his +misfortune to belong to the younger branch of the family. But in that +case, perhaps, he would not have had the courage to brave the unknown! + +Adelle from her corner of the carriage silently followed this in her +cousin's expressive face. She saw that it all seemed small to him, +petty, planned on a little scale. + +"Give me the Coast!" he said when at last they reached the famous Square +of Alton, which was now little more than the intersection of three noisy +streets, and turned up the old South Road. That simple expression meant +volumes as she knew. It expressed the love of freedom, vigor, +simplicity, natural manhood, the longing for the large, fresh face of +Nature, where the hopeful soul of man is ready to meet his destiny by +himself, unpropped by his ancestors and relatives. There was an echo in +her own soul to this primitive lyric cry,--"Give me the Coast!" + +(Need we explain that to the true son of California there is but one +"Coast" in all the world?) + +The old judge smiled sympathetically in response to the cry. Evidently +he liked the young man, for he was at great pains to point out to him +everything of interest and to explain certain historic monuments that +they passed. + +Alton had never been notable as a place of residence even in Adelle's +childhood, but now it was almost completely converted to industrial +uses. The stove factory had grown like a tropic plant, and had spawned +about itself a number of parasitic industries, such as tack-mills, +paper-box factories, and other occupations that use the labor of women +and children. It was one long, smoky, grimy thoroughfare, where in a +small, congested area the coarser labors of humanity were performed +wholesale by a race of imported gnomes, such as might be found in any of +the larger centers of the country. Alton was not one of the "show +places," and it may be wondered why the judge had chosen to drive his +guests thither instead of to the famous parks of the city. + +But Adelle suspected something of his purpose, and more when they turned +into that brick maze of small streets that had once been Clark's Field. +At this the Californian's mobile face expressed frank contempt, not to +say disgust. Even on this beautiful May morning, Clark's Field, with its +close-packed rows of lofty tenements, its narrow, dirty alleys, and +monotonous blocks of ugly brick facades, was dreary, depressing, a +needless monstrosity of civilization. And all this had come about in a +little over ten years, as the judge carefully explained to the mason. It +had taken less than a generation to cover Clark's Field with its load of +brick and mortar, to make it into a swarming hive of mean human lives--a +triumph of our day, so often boastfully celebrated in newspaper and +magazine, the triumph of efficient property exploitation by the +Washington Trust Company under the thin disguise of the "Clark's Field +Associates"! + +The judge was indefatigable in his determination to penetrate to every +dreary corner, every noisome alley of the place, although the young +stranger seemed to think that he had had enough at the first glance. It +is not necessary for us to make the rounds of the Field for the third +time with the little party. Adelle, who had a greater interest than her +cousin because of her dim understanding of the judge's purpose, gazed +searchingly at everything, and was able to see it differently, to +comprehend it all as she had not been able to the time before when she +had forced Archie to make the expedition with her. She realized now, at +least in part, what Clark's Field really meant, what the magic lamp she +had so carelessly rubbed for years to gratify her desires was made of. +And it made her thoughtful. + +About noon, when the little streets were flooded from curb to curb by a +motley army of pale-faced foreign workers from the high lofts and the +noisy factories, the judge's carriage drew up beside a vacant corner, +the one large undeveloped bit of land still left, nearly in the center +of the whole tract. This was plastered with the signs of the realty +company, seductively offering to lease it for a term of years or improve +it with a building to suit tenant, etc. + +"About all the open space and blue sky there is left!" the judge +remarked, pointing out the figures of a few dirty children who were +exploring a puddle and a pit of rubbish in the vacant lot. (These, I +suppose, were the descendants of that brave body of little hoodlums of +which I and my brothers were members years ago, and the puddle and pit +were all that was left of our mysterious playground!) + +"There's a heap of cheap foreign rubbish all around here," the mason +growled, spitting contemptuously into the roadbed, as if he resented +that human beings could be found forlorn enough, low enough, to labor +under such conditions. "Not one of 'em looks as if he had had enough to +eat or knew what a good wash was or what the earth smells like!" + +No, the Coast for him, and the sooner the better, too! + +The judge smiled tolerantly, observing,-- + +"I don't suppose they have much chance to bathe here. The city cannot +afford to put up public baths and employers rarely think of those +things." + +"Look at the rotten stuff they eat!" The mason pointed disdainfully to +the tipcarts drawn up along the curb, where men and women were +chaffering over dried fish and forlorn vegetables that would have soured +the soul of old Adams, who once raised celery on this very spot. "Don't +the folks in these parts eat better than that?" + +"Not generally," the judge replied. "We have no public market in this +city, and it is very difficult for the poorer sort to get fresh food." + +"You'd oughter see the California markets!" the young man bragged. + +"Tell me about them," the judge said. + +And while the young mason expatiated on his land of plenty where the +poor man could still enjoy his own bit of God's sunlight and fresh fruit +and flowers from the earth, Adelle watched the thick stream of workers +in Clark's Field, pushing and dawdling along the narrow street. There +were girls with bare arms and soiled shirt-waists and black skirts, +there were lean, pale boys, and women old before their time, hurrying +from tenement to shop, their hearts divided between the two cares of +home and livelihood. Adelle recalled one of her first talks with the +stone mason, in which he had crudely told her that her yearly income +represented the total wages of four or five hundred able-bodied men and +women, such as these, who worked from ten to sixteen hours a day for +three hundred days each year, when they could, and all told earned +hardly what she drew by signing her name to slips of paper as income +from her property during the same space of time. He said to her,--"You +can think that you are worth about four hundred human lives! Who talks +about slavery being abolished? Hell!" She had thought then that his way +of putting it was quite wrong, unjust: she was sure that Major Pound +could easily have disposed of his contention. Indeed, she had heard the +major and men like him maintain that capitalists like herself were the +only true benefactors of humanity, that without them the working-people +could never be fed! But to-day she was not sure that her cousin had been +wrong. She saw a concrete proof of his statement in this stream of +poorly nourished, hard-worked men, women, boys, and girls, all toiling +to maintain themselves and pay her the interest upon the crowded land of +Clark's Field. In a very definite sense they were all working for her; +they were her slaves! + +The younger women and girls looked into the judge's brougham curiously +or impudently, attracted by the spectacle of leisure and quiet richness +that Adelle presented, a sight not commonly afforded them in the streets +of Clark's Field and always fascinating to women of any class wherever +it may be. Adelle's dress was plain black, and she had shed much of her +jewelry; but beneath her simple gown and fine linen and carefully +cherished skin she began to feel a new sensation, not exactly pity for +these less lucky sisters, rather wonder that it should all be so, that +she should be sitting there in idleness and comfort and they should be +tramping the pavement of Clark's Field to the factory.... + +When she saw the boys playing in the mud puddle in the one vacant lot, +she thought of her own little boy, on whom she had lavished every care, +every luxury. So with these working-girls, she thought how easily she +might have been one of them going from the rooming-house in Church +Street to shop or factory, as many women of better Puritan families than +hers had done. It was pure accident, she could see, why she and her +child had been saved from such a lot--due neither to her own ability nor +that of any of her Clark forbears! It was a humbling perception. + +"Hell!" her cousin was saying explosively, "these people are no better +'n cattle. At least they ought to give 'em a trough to wash in and a +place where they could buy decent food." + +"A few other things, too, perhaps," the judge added with his gentle +smile. "But who will do it? The city is already badly debt-ridden. The +owners of the land pay so much in taxes and interest, due to the high +price of the land here, that they probably make a bare eight per cent +net on their investment." + +He looked inquiringly at the young man. + +"It's all wrong," the mason retorted heatedly, forgetting that he had +hoped to become one of these "owners of the land," and returning to his +incipient rebellion at the state of society in which he lived. "Somebody +ought to be made to do such things." + +The judge smiled finely, merely remarking in a casual tone,-- + +"It is a very perplexing question, all that, my young friend!" + +"But you don't think it's right so," the mason persisted belligerently, +thinking to challenge a supporter of things as they are. + +"There's very little that is quite right in this world, my boy," the +judge replied simply. + +"Well, we'd better set out now to make it nearer right," the young man +grumbled. + +"Oh, yes, that is perfectly sound doctrine.... And shall we begin with +Clark's Field?" he asked, turning to Adelle with one of his playful, +kindly smiles. + +"It needs it," she said simply. + +"Yes, I think it needs it!" + +"Sure!" the mason asserted resoundingly. + +A little while afterwards the judge said to the driver,-- + +"I think that we will go home now, John." + + + + +XLIX + + +In these last moments something had happened to Adelle. While the judge +and her cousin had been talking, she had been watching the stream of +humanity flow past her, not hearing what the two were saying, listening +to the voice of her own soul. It is difficult to describe in exact words +the nature of Adelle's mental life. Ideas never came to her in orderly +succession. They were not evolved out of other ideas, nor gathered up +from obvious sources and repeated by her brain, parrotlike, as with so +many of us. They came to her slowly from some reservoir of her being, +came painfully, strugglingly, and often were accompanied to their birth +by an inner glow of emotional illumination like the present when she saw +herself and her child living the life of Clark's Field. But after they +had struggled into birth, they became eternal possessions of her +consciousness, never to be forgotten, or debated, or denied. She had +thus slowly and painfully achieved whatever personality she had since +she came for the first time a pale child into Judge Orcutt's court. If +any one had talked to her about the "obligations of wealth," "social +service," or "love of humanity," she would have listened with a vacant +stare and replied like a child of ten. The judge seemed to know that. + +It was only by idleness and Archie and unhappiness and the fire and the +tragic death of her child that she had come to realize that there were +other people in the world besides herself and the few who were a +necessary part of herself, and that these other lives were of importance +to themselves and might be almost as important to her as her own. It had +taken Adelle a good many years of foolish living and reckless use of her +magic lamp to get this simple understanding of life. But she was not yet +twenty-six, really at the start of life. If already she had come so far +along the road, what might she not reach by fifty? In such matters it is +the destination alone that counts.... + +Just now, as has been said, a greater illumination had come over her +spirit than was ever there before, although for the life of her Adelle +could not have expressed in words what she felt, or at this time put her +new thought into concrete acts. But with Adelle acts had never been +wanting when the time for them came, and her slow mind had absorbed all +the necessary ideas. The judge recognized the illumination in the young +woman at his side. For the first time in her life, perhaps, at least for +one of the rare moments of it, her face was in no sense vacant. The wide +gray eyes that looked forth upon the sordid world of Clark's Field were +seeing eyes, though they did not see merely physical facts. Instead of +their usual blankness or passive intelligence, they had a quality in +them now of dream. And this gave Adelle's pale face a certain rare +loveliness that in human faces does not depend upon color or line or +emotional vivacity. It is rather the still radiance of the inner spirit, +penetrating in some inexplicable manner the physical envelope and +creating a beauty far more enduring, more compelling to those who +perceive it, than any other form of beauty intelligible to human eyes. +The judge perceived it. As the carriage slowly retraced its way through +the crowded streets of Clark's Field, he silently took the young woman's +hand and held it within his own, smiling gently before him as one who +understood what was too complex to put in words. He was an old man now, +and it was permitted him to express thus the compulsion of Adelle's rare +loveliness, thus to confide to her the sympathy of his own dreaming +heart. The little ungloved hand lay within his old hand, warm and +passive, not clinging, content to rest there in peace. + +Thus they jogged back to the city, all three silent, occupied with +personal thoughts suggested by their expedition this fine May morning +into Clark's Field, which the judge for one felt had been thoroughly +successful. + + * * * * * + +Judge Orcutt kept the two cousins to luncheon, and when Adelle had gone +with his housekeeper to lay aside her hat and wraps, he was left alone +with the young stone mason. After long years of watching human beings +from the bench, the judge formed his opinions of people rapidly and was +rarely mistaken upon the essential quality of any one. He liked Tom +Clark. He did not mind, as much as Adelle did, his spitting habit, for +he remembered the time not more than a generation or two ago when the +best American gentlemen chewed tobacco or took snuff, and he could see +quality in a person who spat upon the ground, but did not conceal ugly +and vile thoughts, or who abused the language of books in favor of that +more enduring vernacular of the street, or who confused the table +implements, or did the hundred and one other little things that are +supposedly the indelible marks of an inferior culture. A most fastidious +person himself, as was obvious, he looked in others for a fastidiousness +of spirit rather than for a correct performance of the whims of +refinement. For the one, as everybody knows but forgets, is eternal, and +the other is merely transitory--the most transitory aspect of human +beings, their manners. He was pleased with Tom Clark's vigorous reaction +against the East in favor of his own freer land, his disgust with the +incipient squalor of Clark's Field, and his honest scorn for a +civilization that would permit human beings to live as they lived there +and generally in the more crowded industrial centers of the world. What +the stone mason had recklessly vaunted to Adelle as "anarchism," the +judge recognized as a healthy reaction against unworthy human +institutions,--the idiom in him of youth and hope and will. And he could +understand, now that he was face to face with the vigorous young man, +the reason why Adelle had been drawn to the stone mason from that first +time when she had discharged him from her employ. For he had those +qualities of vitality, expression, initiative that the younger branch of +the Clarks had exhausted. The Edward S. Clarks, transplanted fifty years +and more ago to new soil, may not have risen far in the human scale in +their new environment, but they had renewed there, at least in the +person of this young stone mason, their capacity for health and vigor. +Once more they had strong desires, will, and the courage to revolt +against the settled, the safe, the formal, and the proper. Of course, +this Clark was an anarchist! All strong blood must create some such +anarchists, if there is to be progress in this world. + +It did not seem so preposterous to the judge, after these few hours of +contact with the mason, that Adelle should want to endow her cousin with +a part of that fortune which but for accident and legal formality would +have been his. There were, however, many other of these California +Clarks, in whom Adelle could not possibly be interested and who might +not be equally promising, but who would have to share her liberality +with the mason. It was a delicate tangle, as the judge realized when he +attempted to untie the knot. + +"Mr. Clark," he began, sinking into the deep wing chair before his +fireplace, "I suppose your cousin has informed you of the results of her +interview with the Washington Trust Company?" + +"Yes!" the young man emitted shortly, with an inquiring grin. "She said +there was nothing doing about our claim." + +"The officers of the trust company were right so far as the law is +concerned, as I had to tell Mrs. Clark. The law is doubtless often slow +and bungling in its processes, but when it has once fully decided an +issue it is very loath to open it up again, especially when, as in this +case, litigation would involve hardship and injustice to a great many +innocent people." + +"Well, I somehow thought it might be too late," the young mason +remarked, throwing himself loosely into the chair opposite the judge. +After a moment of reflection he added feelingly,--"The law is an +infernal contraption anyhow--it's always rigged so's the little feller +gets left." + +"The law rigged it so that your cousin, who was a penniless girl, got a +thousand times more than her grandfather asked for his property," the +judge observed with a twinkle. + +"She had the luck, that's all--and we other Clarks didn't!" the young +man replied. + +"You can call it luck, if you like," the judge mused. + +"That's what most folks would call it, I guess." + +"I suppose that is what she feels, because she was anxious when she came +to see me yesterday to divide her fortune with you other Clarks." + +It was a daring move, and as he spoke the judge looked keenly into the +young man's face. + +"Did she?" Tom Clark inquired unconcernedly. "I know she's always on the +square--there aren't many like her!" + +"You may not know that if she should carry out her intention, she would +strip herself of almost every dollar she possesses." + +"What do you mean by that?" + +"Her husband, I understand, conducted her affairs so badly that very +nearly if not quite half the great fortune she received five years ago +from her guardians has wasted away. I don't know what ultimately may be +recovered from these California investments, but judging from what Mrs. +Clark tells me I should say almost nothing. So that there can be left of +the original estate only a little over two millions of dollars." + +"Well, that's enough for any woman to worry along on," the mason grinned +lightly. + +"But not enough for her to pay out of it two and a half millions, which +would have been the share of your grandfather's heirs." + +"Hell! She ain't thinkin' of doin' that!" + +"She certainly was. She would have made the proposal to you already, if +I had not asked her to wait until I could advise with her again." + +The young man's blue eyes opened wide in astonishment. + +"What good would that do her?" + +"It would give all of you California Clarks your slice of Clark's +Field--how many of you are there?" + +"I dunno exactly--maybe twenty or twenty-five--I haven't kep' count." + +"Say there are twenty-five heirs of old Edward S. living. Each of them +would have a hundred thousand dollars apiece roughly. That sum of money +is not to be despised even to-day." + +"You bet it ain't," murmured the mason feelingly. His face settled into +a scowl; and leaning forward he demanded,--"What are you drivin' at +anyway, Judge?" + +The judge did not answer. + +"You ain't goin' to let that woman hand over all her money to a lot of +little no-'count people she's never laid eyes on, just because they are +called 'Clark' instead of 'Smith' or some other name?" + +"You happen to be one of them," the judge observed with a laugh. + +"I know that,--and I guess I'm a pretty fair sample of the whole +bunch,--but I ain't takin' charity from any woman!" + +The judge settled back into his chair, a satisfied little smile on his +lips. The mason's reaction was better than he had dared expect. + +"It ought not to be called charity, exactly," he mused. + +"What is it, then? It ain't law!" + +"No, it wouldn't be legal either," the judge admitted. "But there are +things that are neither legal nor charitable. There are," he suggested, +"justice and wisdom and mercy!" + +The mason could not follow such abstract thought. He looked blankly at +the judge. His mind had done its best when it had rejected without +hesitation the gift of Adelle's fortune because he happened to be a +grandson of Edward S. Clark. + +"Tell me," said the judge after a time, as if his mind had wandered to +other considerations, "about these California Clarks--what do you know +of them?" + +The mason related for the judge's edification the scraps of family +history and biography that he could recollect. Adelle, who had come into +the room, listened to his story. Tom Clark might be limited in knowledge +of his family as he was in education, but he was certainly literal and +picturesque. He spared neither himself nor his brothers and sisters, nor +his remoter cousins. The one whose career seemed to interest him most +was that Stan Clark, the politician, who now represented Fresno County +in the State Legislature. There was a curious mixture of pride and +contempt in his feeling for this cousin, who had risen above the dead +level of local obscurity. + +"He thinks almighty well of himself," he concluded his portrait; "but +there ain't a rottener peanut politician in the State of California, and +that's sayin' some. He got into the legislater by stringin' labor, and +now, of course, the S. P. owns him hide and clothes and toothpick. I +hear he's bought a block of stores in Fresno and is puttin' the dough +away thick. He don't need no Clark's Field! He's got the whole people of +California for his pickings." + +The judge turned to Adelle laughingly. + +"Your cousin doesn't seem to see any good reason why the California +Clarks should be chosen for Fortune's favor." + +"Ain't one of 'em," the young man asserted emphatically, "so far as I +know, would know what to do with a hundred dollars, would be any better +off after a couple of years if he had it. That's gospel truth--and I +ain't exceptin' myself!" he added after a moment of sober reflection. + +Adelle made no comment. She did not seem to be thinking along the same +line as the judge and the young mason. Since the yesterday her +conception of her problem had changed and grown. Adelle was living fast +these days, not in the sense in which she and Archie had lived fast +according to their kind, but psychologically and spiritually she was +living fast. Her state of yesterday had already given place to another +broader, loftier one: she was fast escaping from the purely personal out +into the freedom of the impersonal. + +"Allowing for Mr. Clark's natural vivacity of statement," the judge +observed with an appreciative chuckle, "these California relatives of +yours, so far as I can see, are pretty much like everybody else in the +world, struggling along the best they can with the limitations of +environment and character which they have inherited.... And I am rather +inclined to agree with Mr. Clark that it might be unwise to give them, +most of them, any special privilege which they hadn't earned for +themselves over their neighbors." + +"What right have they got to it anyway?" the mason demanded. + +"Oh, when you go into rights, Mr. Clark," the judge retorted, "the whole +thing is a hopeless muddle. None of us in a very real sense has any +rights--extremely few rights, at any rate." + +"Well, then, they've no good reason for havin' the money." + +"I agree with you. There is no good reason why these twenty-five Clarks, +more or less, should arbitrarily be selected for the favors of Clark's +Field. And yet they might prove to be as good material to work upon as +any other twenty-five taken at random." + +Adelle looked up expectantly to the judge. She understood that his mind +was thinking forward to wider reaches than his words indicated. + +"But you would want to know much more about them than you do now, to +study each case carefully in all its bearings, and then doubtless you +would make your mistakes, with the best of judgment!" + +"I don't see what you mean," the mason said. + +"Nor I," said Adelle. + +"Let us have some lunch first," the judge replied. "We have done a good +deal this morning and need food. Perhaps later we shall all arrive at a +complete understanding." + + * * * * * + +At the close of their luncheon the judge remarked to Adelle,-- + +"Your cousin and I, Mrs. Clark, have talked over your idea of giving to +him and his relatives what the law will not compel you to distribute of +Clark's Field. He doesn't seem to think well of the idea." + +"It's foolish," the mason growled. + +Adelle looked at him swiftly, with a little smile that was sad. + +"I was afraid he would say that, Judge," she said softly. + +"You know any man would!... I ain't never begged from a woman yet." + +"The woman, it seems to me, has nothing to do with the question," the +judge put in. + +"And it isn't begging," Adelle protested. "It's really yours, a part of +it, as much as mine,--more, perhaps." + +"It's nobody's by rights, so far as I can see!" the mason retorted with +his dry laugh. + +"Exactly!" the judge exclaimed. "Young man, you have pronounced the one +final word of wisdom on the whole situation. With that for a premise we +can start safely towards a conclusion. Clark's Field doesn't belong to +you or to your cousin or to any of the Clarks living or dead. It belongs +to itself--to the people who live upon it, who use it, who need it to +get from it their daily bread and shelter." + +"But," jeered the mason, "you can't call 'em out into the street and +hand each of 'em a thousand-dollar bill." + +"No, and you would make a lot of trouble for everybody if you +did--especially for the Alton police courts, I am afraid! But you can +act as trustees for Clark's Field--" He turned to Adelle and continued +whimsically,--"That's what the old Field did for you, my dear, with my +assistance. Its wealth was tied up for fifty years to be let loose in +your lap! You found it not such a great gift, after all, so why not pour +it back upon the Field?... Why not make a splendid public market on that +vacant lot that's still left? And put some public baths in, and a public +hall for everybody's use, and a few other really permanent +improvements?--which I fear the city will never feel able to do! In that +way you would be giving back to Clark's Field and its real owners what +properly belongs to it and to them." + +So the judge's thought was out at last. It did not take Adelle long to +understand it now. + +"I'll do it," she said simply, as if the judge had merely voiced the +struggling ideas of her own brain. "But how shall I go to work?" + +"I think your cousin can show you," the judge laughed. "He has many more +ideas than I should dare call my own about what society should do for +its disinherited. Suppose you talk it over with him and get his +suggestions." + +"My God!" the stone mason groaned enigmatically. + +The sardonic smile spread over his lean face as he further explained +himself,-- + +"It ain't exactly what I took this trip from California for." + +"You didn't understand then," the judge remarked. + +"And I didn't understand either," Adelle added. + +"I guess I could keep you from getting into trouble with your money as +well as the next man. I'd keep you out of the hands of the charity +grafters anyhow!" + +"I think," the judge summed up whimsically, "that you are one of the +best persons in the world to advise on how to distribute the Clark +millions. That is what should be done with every young anarchist--set +him to work spending money on others. He would end up either in prison +or among the conservatives." + +"But," Adelle demurred finally, "that leaves the others--all the +California Clarks--out of it for good." + +"Where they belong," put in the mason. + +"I'm not so sure of that," the judge added cautiously. And after further +reflection he suggested, "Why shouldn't you two make yourselves into a +little private and extra-legal Providence for these members of your +family? Once, my dear," he said to Adelle, "I did the same for you! At +considerable risk to your welfare I intervened and prevented certain +greedy rascals from doing your aunt and you out of Clark's Field, you +remember?" + +He paused to relate for Tom Clark's benefit the story of the transaction +with which we are fully familiar. + +"Of course, if then I had known of the existence of our young friend and +his family, I should have been obliged to include him in the beneficence +of my Providence. But I didn't. It was left for you, my dear, to +discover him!... There was a time when I felt that I had played the part +of Providence rashly,"--he smiled upon Adelle, who recalled quite +vividly the stern lecture that the court had given her when she was +about to receive her fortune. "But now I feel that I did very well, +indeed. In fact I am rather proud of my success as Providence to this +young woman.... So I recommend the same rôle to you and Mr. Clark. Look +up these California Clarks, study them, make up your minds what they +need most, then act as wisely as you can, not merely in their behalf, +but in behalf of us all, of all the people who find themselves upon this +earth in the long struggle out of ignorance and misery upwards to +light.... It will keep you busy," he concluded with his fine +smile,--"busy, I think, for the better part of your two lives. But I can +think of no more interesting occupation than to try to be a just and +wise Providence!" + +"It's some job," the mason remarked. "I don't feel sure we'd succeed in +it much better than Fate." + +"You will become a part of Fate," the judge said earnestly, "as we all +are! Don't you see?" + +"We'd better begin with Cousin Stan first," the mason shouted. "I'd like +to be his fate, you bet!" + +"What would you do with the Honorable Stanley Clark?" the judge asked. + +"Boot him clear out of the State of California--show him up for what he +is--a mean little cuss of a grafter; no friend of labor or anything else +but his own pocket." + +"Good! But it will take money to do that these days, a good deal of +money! You will have to pay for publicity and court expenses and all the +rest of it." + +"Hoorah! I'd like to soak him one with his share of Clark's Field!" + +"Providence blesses as well as curses," warned the old judge. "And it's +chief work, I take it, is educational--to develop all that is possible +from within. Remember that, sir, when you are 'soaking' Cousin Stan." + +"The educational can wait until we've done some correctin'!" + +They all laughed. And presently they parted. As they stood in the little +front room waiting for Adelle's car to fetch her, the judge remarked +with a certain solemnity,-- + +"Now at last I believe the fate of Clark's Field is settled. In that +good old legal term, the title to the Field, so long restless and +unsettled, at last is 'quieted,' I think for good and all, humanly +speaking!" + +"I think so," Adelle assented, with the same dreamy look in her gray +eyes that had moved the judge to take her hand that morning. "At least I +see quite clearly what I must do with my share of it." + +"Come and see me again before you go away, as often as you can, both of +you!" the judge said as they left. "Remember that I am an old man, and +my best amusement is watching Providence working out its ways with us +all. And you two are part of Providence:--come and tell me what you +find!" + +"We will!" they said. + +After the door had swung to behind his visitors, the judge stood +thoughtfully beside the window watching the cousins depart. As the young +mason hopped into the car in response to Adelle's invitation, and +clumsily swung the door after him with a bang, the judge smiled +tenderly, murmuring to himself,-- + +"It's all education, and they'll educate each other!" + + + + +L + + +And here we must abandon Adelle Clark and Clark's Field, not that +another volume might not be written concerning her further adventures +with the old Field. But that would be an altogether different story. She +went back to see Judge Orcutt, not only at this time, but many times +later, as long as the judge lived. So he was able to watch the idea that +had sprung into being, helped by his wise sympathy, grow and bear its +slow fruit to his satisfaction. In starting this chance couple upon the +quest of their scattered relatives, to play the part of Providence to +all the little, unknown California Clarks, and also to restore to +Clark's Field its own riches, which for two generations had been +unjustly hoarded for the use of one human being, the judge was doubtless +doing a dangerous and revolutionary thing, according to the belief of +many good people, something certainly ill befitting a retired judge of +the probate courts of his staid Commonwealth! Had he not been employed +for forty years of his life in expounding and upholding that absurd code +of inheritance and property rights that the Anglo-Saxon peoples have +preserved from their ancient tribal days in the gloomy forests of the +lower Rhine? Nay, worse, was he not guilty of disrespect to the most +sacred object of worship that the race has--the holy institution of +private property, aiding and abetting an anarchist in his loose views +upon this subject? I will not try to defend the judge. He seemed +tranquil that first day as he hobbled up his old stairs to his study, as +if he felt that he had done a good day's business and was enjoying the +approval of a good conscience; also, the satisfaction of insight into +human nature, which is one of the rare rewards of becoming old. Nor did +he worry for one moment about our heroine Adelle. He thought Adelle one +of the safest persons in the universe, because she could derive good +from her mistakes, and any one who can get good out of evil is the +safest sort of human being to raise in this garden plot of human souls. +The judge may have been more doubtful about the stone mason, but in the +young man's own phrase he considered him, too, a good bet in the human +lottery. + +As to what they might do to each other in the course of their mutual +education, the judge left that wisely to that other Providence of his +fathers, sure that Adelle this time would not take such a long and +painful road to wisdom as she had done in marrying Archie. But we must +not mistake the judge's last foolish remark,--interpret it, at least in +a merely sentimental sense, too literally. Like a poet the judge spoke +in symbols of matters that cannot be phrased in any tongue precisely. He +did not think of their marrying each other, because they were deeply +concerned together, although I am aware that my readers are speculating +on this point already. The judge left that to Adelle and Tom Clark and +Providence, and we can safely do the same thing. He set them forth on +their jaunt after the stray members of the Clark tribe and other deeds +with a favorable expectation that they would commit along the road only +the necessary minimum of folly, and above all, sure of Adelle's +destination. For at twenty-six she had passed through crude desire, +through passion and pain and sorrow, and had discovered for herself the +last commonplace of human thinking--that the end of life is not the +"pursuit of happiness," as our materialistic forefathers put it in the +Constitution they made for us, and cannot be "guaranteed" to any mortal. +With that bedrock axiom of human wisdom embedded in her steadfast +nature, to what heights might not the dumb Adelle, the pale, passive, +inarticulate woman creature, ultimately rise? + +There were many stations on her road. And first of all her husband, +Archie. Adelle began to think again about Archie in the new light she +had. She had not thought about him at all since she had dropped him so +summarily from her life after the fire at Highcourt. She wrote him +finally a considerable letter, in which she made plain the results of +her thinking. It was a surprising letter, as Archie felt, not only in +length, but in its point of view and its kindly tone. She seemed to see +the great wrong she had ignorantly done to him. The youth she had +blindly taken to gratify her green passion and to become the father of +her only child! She had ruined him, as far as any one human being can +ruin another, and now she knew it. She had been the stupid means of +providing him with a feast of folly, and then had abandoned him when he +behaved badly. So she wrote him gently, as one who at last comprehended +that mercy and forgiveness are due all those whom we harm upon our road +either consciously or ignorantly, giving them evil to eat. Yet she saw +the crude folly of attempting to resume their marriage in any way, and +did not for once consider it. They had sinned gravely against each other +and must face life anew, separately, recognizing that theirs was an +irreparable mistake. So she wrote unpassionately of the legal divorce +which must come. And she gave him money, promising him more as he might +need it, within reason. Archie straightway put a good part of it into +oil wells because every one in California was talking oil, and of course +lost it all. Then Adelle sent him money to buy a nut ranch, in one of +the interior valleys, and there we may leave Archie growing English +walnuts fitfully. At times he felt aggrieved with Adelle, complained +that he had been abused as a man who had married a rich woman and then +been thrown aside when he considered himself placed for life. But also +at times he had a fleeting conception of Adelle's character, realized +that she was not now the girl who had married him out of hand after a +mad night ride across France. She was bigger and better than he now, and +he was not really worthy of her. But these rare moments of insight +usually came only when Adelle had answered favorably his pleas for more +money. + + * * * * * + +One memory of her early years came back to Adelle at this time--a +picture that had been dark to her then. It was when she first met her +little Mexican friend at the fashionable boarding-school. She could not +understand the girl's foreign name, and so the little Mexican had +written it out in pencil,--"Diane Merelda," and underneath she wrote in +tiny letters,--"F. de M." + +"What do those mean?" Adelle had demanded, pointing to the mysterious +letters. + +"Fille de Marie," the little Catholic lisped, and translated,--"Daughter +of the Blessed Virgin; you understand?" + +Adelle had not understood then, nor had she thought of it all these +years. But now the incident came back to her from its deep resting-place +in her consciousness, and she understood its full meaning. She, too, was +a child of God! albeit she had lived many years and done folly and +suffered sorrow before she could recognize it. + +And so Clark's Field had taught its last great lesson,--Clark's Field, +that fifty acres of lean, level land with its crop of bricks and mortar, +its heavy burden of human lives, the sacrificial altar of our economic +system and our race prejudices,--Clark's Field! We pass it night and +morning of all the days of our lives, but rarely see it--see, that is, +more than its bricks and mortar and empty faces. It should be called, in +the quaint phrase of the judge's people, "God's Acre!" One might say +that the beauty, the supreme fruit of this Clark's Field, which never +blossomed into flower and fruit all these years we have been concerned +with its fate, was Adelle. Just Adelle! The judge thought that was +enough. Adelle would go on, he believed, growing into new wisdom, slowly +acquired according to her nature, and also into tranquillity, +friendship, love, and motherhood-all the eternal rewards of right +living. Would she accomplish this best through that other Clark--the +workman--whom she had discovered for herself? The sentimental reader +probably has this already settled to his satisfaction. + +But I wonder! + + +THE END + + + + +By ARTHUR STANWOOD PIER + +THE WOMEN WE MARRY + + +"Keen and incisive in character study, logical and life-like in plot +invention and development, 'The Women We Marry,' is a novel that stands +sturdily on its own merits. It is vigorous, frank and emotional in the +best sense of that much-abused word, and there is little in it that is +not faithfully representative of life." _Boston Transcript._ + +"The author of this realistic novel has not been afraid to endow his +people richly with the ordinary faults and foibles of human nature.... +Both his men and women are very real, human people." _New York Times._ + +"As a study of types, 'The Women We Marry' is one of the best things +that American fiction has recently produced." _Springfield Republican._ + + + + +By WILLA SIBERT CATHER + +O PIONEERS! + + +"A great romantic novel, written with striking brilliancy and power, in +which one sees emerge a new country and a new people.... Throughout the +story one has the sense of great spaces; of the soil dominating +everything, even the human drama that takes place upon it; renewing +itself while the generations come and pass away."--_McClure's Magazine._ + + +"The book is big in its conception and strikes many great live topics of +the day--the feminist movement and the back-to-the-soil doctrines being +two of the most conspicuous. There is a spirit of the open spaces about +this story--a bigness that suggests that Miss Cather has taken more than +her title from Whitman's hymn to progress, 'Pioneers, O +Pioneers.'"--_San Francisco Chronicle._ + + + + +By ELIA W. PEATTIE + +THE PRECIPICE + + +"A frank and fearless study of the New Womanhood which we now see all +around us ... done upon a broad canvas."--_The Bookman._ + +"No stronger novel pleading the cause of woman has yet been written than +'The Precipice.'"--_Los Angeles Times._ + +"The author knows life and human nature thoroughly, and she has written +out of ripened perceptions and a full heart ... a book which men and +women alike will be better for reading, of which any true hearted author +might be proud."--_Chicago Record Herald._ + +"So absolutely true to life that it is hard to consider it +fiction."--_Boston Post._ + + + + +By HENRY SYDNOR HARRISON + +V. V.'S EYES + + +"'V. V.'s Eyes' is a novel of so elevated a spirit, yet of such strong +interest, unartificial, and uncritical, that it is obviously a +fulfillment of Mr. Harrison's intention to 'create real +literature.'"--_Baltimore News._ + +"In our judgment it is one of the strongest and at the same time most +delicately wrought American novels of recent years."--_The Outlook._ + +"'V. V.'s Eyes' is an almost perfect example of idealistic realism. It +has the soft heart, the clear vision and the boundless faith in humanity +that are typical of our American outlook on life."--_Chicago +Record-Herald._ + +"A delicate and artistic study of striking power and literary quality +which may well remain the high-water mark in American fiction for the +year.... Mr. Harrison definitely takes his place as the one among our +younger American novelists of whom the most enduring work may be hoped +for."--_Springfield Republican._ + + + + +By Mrs. Romilly Fedden + +THE SPARE ROOM + + +"A bride and groom, a villa in Capri, a spare room and seven guests +(assorted varieties) are the ingredients which go to make this +thoroughly amusing book."--_Chicago Evening Post._ + +"Bubbling over with laughter ... distinctly a book to read and chuckle +over."--_Yorkshire Observer._ + +"Mrs. Fedden has succeeded in arranging for her readers a constant fund +of natural yet wildly amusing complications."--_Springfield Republican._ + +"A clever bit of comedy that goes with spirit and sparkle, Mrs. Fedden's +little story shows her to be a genuine humorist.... She deserves to be +welcomed cordially to the ranks of those who can make us laugh."--_New +York Times._ + +"Brimful of rich humor."--_Grand Rapids Herald._ + + + + +By Meredith Nicholson + +OTHERWISE PHYLLIS + + +"The most delightful novel-heroine you've met in a long time. You like +it all, but you love Phyllis."--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._ + +"A true-blue, genuine American girl of the 20th century."--_Boston +Globe._ + +"Phyllis is a fine creature.... 'Otherwise Phyllis' is a 'comfortable, +folksy, neighborly tale' which is genuinely and unaffectedly American in +its atmosphere and point of view."--_Hamilton Wright Mabie, in the +Outlook._ + +"'Phil' Kirkwood--'Otherwise Phyllis'--is a creature to welcome to our +hearth, not to our shelf, for she does not belong among the things that +are doomed to become musty."--_Boston Herald._ + +"Phyllis is a healthy, hearty, vivacious young woman of prankish +disposition and inquiring mind.... About the best example between book +covers of the American girl whose general attitude toward mankind is one +of friendliness."--_Boston Advertiser._ + + + + +By Grant Richards + +VALENTINE + + +"A far better novel than its predecessor, 'Caviare.'"--_London +Athenĉum._ + +"Cheeriness, youth, high spirits and the joy of life--these are the +principal ingredients of this novel."--_London Telegraph._ + +"In 'Valentine' the action is laid almost wholly in London, with +occasional week ends at Paris.... 'Valentine' is a good story about +enjoyably human people, told with the rich personal charm of the +accomplished raconteur."--_Boston Transcript._ + +"Its details and all the actions of all connected with its details are +worked out with a realistic thoroughness that makes the story seem a +piece of recorded history.... Distinctly light reading, clever, +engaging, skillfully wrought."--_Churchman._ + + + + +By Sarah Morgan Dawson + +A CONFEDERATE GIRL'S DIARY + + +"A living voice from the past of the Civil War comes to us from the +pages of 'A Confederate Girl's Diary.'... It is fascinatingly +interesting, a volume of real life.... A very human document, and one +remarkably mature and just, to have been written by so young a girl in +times so trying."--_Chicago Tribune._ + +"No such intimate diary of the war from a woman's point of view has yet +been given to the world, and certainly no diary of such unusual literary +merit."--_San Francisco Argonaut._ + +"We can but wonder that this maiden of the sixties could have created +and left to posterity such an adequate, convincing and psychologically +perfect portrayal of a woman of the South in the era that closed with +the surrender at Appomattox.... Not a page of the story could be spared. +No one can wonder at the intense courage and bravery of the Southern +soldiers after reading with what passionate faith and devotion these +fiery-hearted Southern women sent them into battle."--_Boston +Transcript._ + + + + +By Mary Johnston + +HAGAR + + +"Hagar will stand out as one of the splendid woman characters of modern +fiction--serene and strong, an ideal feminist and a thorough +American."--_Portland (Me.) Telegram._ + +"A splendid story ... not the least part of its charm is that delightful +atmosphere of Virginia family life with which Miss Johnston's readers +are familiar."--_Baltimore Evening Sun._ + +"A powerful plea for woman suffrage in the guise of gripping +fiction."--_Springfield Republican._ + +"Feminism has never had a more human exposition. It is a book notable +for sane methods as well as a delightful plot."--_Literary Digest._ + +"Hagar is one of the most admirable of Miss Johnston's creations and the +novel is a worthy addition to Miss Johnston's works."--_Philadelphia +Record._ + + + + +By KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN + +The Story of Waitstill Baxter + + +"It cannot fail to prove a delight of delights to 'Rebecca of Sunnybrook +Farm' enthusiasts."--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._ + +"All admirers of Jane Austen will enjoy Waitstill Baxter.... The +solution the reader must find out for himself. It is a triumph of +ingenuity. The characters are happy in their background of Puritan +village life. The drudgery, the flowers, the strictness in morals and +the narrowness of outlook all combine to form a harmonious +picture."--_The London Times._ + +"Always generously giving of her best, and delightful as that best +always is, Mrs. Wiggin has provided us with something even better in +'Waitstill Baxter.'"--_Montreal Star._ + +"In the strength of its sympathy, in the vivid reality of the lives it +portrays, this story will be accepted as the very best of all the +popular books that Mrs. Wiggin has written for an admiring +constituency."--_Wilmington Every Evening._ + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Clark's Field, by Robert Herrick + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLARK'S FIELD *** + +***** This file should be named 30736-8.txt or 30736-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/0/7/3/30736/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Clark's Field + +Author: Robert Herrick + +Release Date: December 22, 2009 [EBook #30736] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLARK'S FIELD *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + + +<h1>CLARK'S FIELD</h1> + +<h2>BY ROBERT HERRICK</h2> + + +<h4>BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br /> +HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY<br /> +The Riverside Press Cambridge<br /> +1914</h4> + +<h4>COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY ROBERT HERRICK<br /> +ALL RIGHTS RESERVED<br /> +<i>Published June 1914</i></h4> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> +<p> +<a href="#I">I</a><br /> +<a href="#II">II</a><br /> +<a href="#III">III</a><br /> +<a href="#IV">IV</a><br /> +<a href="#V">V</a><br /> +<a href="#VI">VI</a><br /> +<a href="#VII">VII</a><br /> +<a href="#VIII">VIII</a><br /> +<a href="#IX">IX</a><br /> +<a href="#X">X</a><br /> +<a href="#XI">XI</a><br /> +<a href="#XII">XII</a><br /> +<a href="#XIII">XIII</a><br /> +<a href="#XIV">XIV</a><br /> +<a href="#XV">XV</a><br /> +<a href="#XVI">XVI</a><br /> +<a href="#XVII">XVII</a><br /> +<a href="#XVIII">XVIII</a><br /> +<a href="#XIX">XIX</a><br /> +<a href="#XX">XX</a><br /> +<a href="#XXI">XXI</a><br /> +<a href="#XXII">XXII</a><br /> +<a href="#XXIII">XXIII</a><br /> +<a href="#XXIV">XXIV</a><br /> +<a href="#XXV">XXV</a><br /> +<a href="#XXVI">XXVI</a><br /> +<a href="#XXVII">XXVII</a><br /> +<a href="#XXVIII">XXVIII</a><br /> +<a href="#XXIX">XXIX</a><br /> +<a href="#XXX">XXX</a><br /> +<a href="#XXXI">XXXI</a><br /> +<a href="#XXXII">XXXII</a><br /> +<a href="#XXXIII">XXXIII</a><br /> +<a href="#XXXIV">XXXIV</a><br /> +<a href="#XXXV">XXXV</a><br /> +<a href="#XXXVI">XXXVI</a><br /> +<a href="#XXXVII">XXXVII</a><br /> +<a href="#XXXVIII">XXXVIII</a><br /> +<a href="#XXXIX">XXXIX</a><br /> +<a href="#XL">XL</a><br /> +<a href="#XLI">XLI</a><br /> +<a href="#XLII">XLII</a><br /> +<a href="#XLIII">XLIII</a><br /> +<a href="#XLIV">XLIV</a><br /> +<a href="#XLV">XLV</a><br /> +<a href="#XLVI">XLVI</a><br /> +<a href="#XLVII">XLVII</a><br /> +<a href="#XLVIII">XLVIII</a><br /> +<a href="#XLIX">XLIX</a><br /> +<a href="#L">L</a><br /><br /> +<a href="#By_ARTHUR_STANWOOD_PIER">By ARTHUR STANWOOD PIER</a><br /> +<a href="#By_WILLA_SIBERT_CATHER">By WILLA SIBERT CATHER</a><br /> +<a href="#By_ELIA_W_PEATTIE">By ELIA W. PEATTIE</a><br /> +<a href="#By_HENRY_SYDNOR_HARRISON">By HENRY SYDNOR HARRISON</a><br /> +<a href="#By_Mrs_Romilly_Fedden">By Mrs. Romilly Fedden</a><br /> +<a href="#By_Meredith_Nicholson">By Meredith Nicholson</a><br /> +<a href="#By_Grant_Richards">By Grant Richards</a><br /> +<a href="#By_Sarah_Morgan_Dawson">By Sarah Morgan Dawson</a><br /> +<a href="#By_Mary_Johnston">By Mary Johnston</a><br /> +<a href="#By_KATE_DOUGLAS_WIGGIN">By KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN</a><br /> +</p> +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CLARK'S FIELD</h2> + + +<p>The other day I happened to be in the town where I was born and not far +from the commonplace house in the humbler quarter of the town where my +parents were living at the time of my birth, half a century and more +ago. I am not fond of my native town, although I lived in the place +until I was seventeen or eighteen years old. It was never a +distinguished spot and seems to have gained nothing as yet from having +been my birthplace. It has some reputation of its own, however, but that +is due to the enduring popularity of a certain cookstove that has long +been manufactured there, the "Stearns and Frost Cooker," known to many +housewives of several generations. In my youth the Stearns and Frost +stove works were reputed to be the largest in the world, and most of the +plain citizens of Alton were concerned in one way or another with them. +I do not happen to be interested in the manufacture or sale, or I may +add the use, of the domestic cookstove. As a boy I always thought the +town a dull, ugly sort of place, and although it has grown marvelously +these last thirty years, having been completely surrounded and absorbed +by the neighboring city of B——, it did not seem to me that day when I +revisited it to have grown perceptibly in grace....</p> + +<p>Having a couple of spare hours before meeting a dinner engagement, I +descended into a subway and was shot out in less than ten minutes from +the heart of the city to the old "Square" of Alton,—a journey that took +us formerly from half to three quarters of an hour, and in cold or rainy +weather, of which there is a good deal in Alton, seemed truly +interminable. From the "Square," which no longer had the noble amplitude +of my memory, the direct way to Fuller Place lay up the South Road,—a +broad thoroughfare, through the center of which there used to trickle +occasionally a tiny horse-drawn vehicle to and from the great city of +B——. South Road, I found, had changed its name to the more pompous +designation of State Avenue, and it was noisy and busy enough to accord +with my childish imagination of it, but none too large for the mammoth +moving-vans in which the electric railroad now transported the +inhabitants. These shot by me in bewildering numbers. I had chosen to +make the rest of my journey on foot, trying leisurely to revive old +memories and sensations. For a few blocks I succeeded in picking out +here and there a familiar object, but by the time I reached the +cross-street where we used to descend from the street-cars and penetrate +the lane that led to Fuller Place I was completely at sea. The ample +wooden houses fronting the South Road, each surrounded by its green lawn +with appropriate shrubbery, had all given way before the march of brick +business blocks. Even the "Reformed Methodist" church on the corner of +Lamb Street had been replaced by a stone structure that discreetly +concealed its denominational quality from the passer-by. Beyond the +church there had been a half-mile of unoccupied land fronting on the +Road, but now the line of "permanent improvements" ran unbroken as far +as the eye could see. Into this maze of unfamiliar buildings I plunged +and wandered at random for half an hour through blocks of brick stores, +office buildings, factories, tenements,—chiefly tenements it seemed to +me. Off in one corner of the district instead of high tenement buildings +there was something almost worse, rows of mean, little two-story brick +cottages that ranged upwards along a gentle slope that I tried to fancy +was Swan's Hill,—a dangerous descent where my older brothers and I were +once allowed to coast on our "double-runner." I will not weary the +reader with further details of my wandering with its disappointment and +shattered illusions, which can in no way be of interest to any but the +one in search of his past, and of purely sentimental importance to him. +It is, of course, a common form of egotism to chronicle such small-beer +of one's origin, but it happens to have nothing to do with my purpose.</p> + +<p>Enough to say that at last I discovered Fuller Place,—a mean, little +right-angled street that led nowhere; but from one end to the other I +could not find my old home. Its site must now be occupied by one of +those ugly five-story apartment boxes that spring like weeds in old +towns and cities. As I lingered in front of the brick wall that I judged +must very nearly cover the site of my birthplace, I tried to understand +the sensation of utter unfamiliarity with which the whole place filled +me. The answer came to me in a flash as I turned away from Fuller +Place,—Clark's Field no longer existed! Its place was completely filled +by the maze of brick and mortar in which for the better part of an hour +I had lost myself. There was nothing surprising that after a third of a +century a large, vacant field should have been carved up into streets, +alleys, and lots, and be covered with buildings to house the growing +population of a city. It is one of the usual commonplaces in our +American cities and towns. But to me the total disappearance of Clark's +Field seemed momentous. That large, open tract near my old home had more +significance, at least in memory, than the home itself. It was +intricately interwoven with all the imaginative and more personal life +that I had known as a boy. One corner of the irregular open land known +as Clark's Field had abutted my father's small property in Fuller Place, +and I and my older brothers and our friends had taken advantage of this +fact to open an unauthorized entrance into the Field through the board +fence in the rear yard. Over that fence lay freedom from parental +control and family tasks, and there was also, it happened, a certain bed +of luscious strawberries which we regularly looted until the market +gardener, who at the time leased this corner of Clark's Field, resigned +himself to the inevitable and substituted winter cabbages for the +strawberries,—a crop he had never been able to get to market.</p> + +<p>From the gardener's beds and small forcing-houses the land stretched +away unbroken by cultivation or building to that Swan's Hill where we +coasted and farther to the suburban estates of several affluent +citizens,—I presume the homes of Stearns and Frost of stove fame and +others no longer remembered. These places, with their stately trees and +greenhouses and careful lawns, have also been merged into the domain of +brick and mortar and concrete. To the right of the market garden, +between us and the South Road, lay the level, treeless tract, about +fifty acres in extent, which was specifically known as Clark's Field, +although all the unused land in the neighborhood had originally belonged +to the Clark farm. The Field was carefully fenced in with high white +palings,—too high for a small boy to climb safely in a hurry. Certain +large signs, at the different corners, averred that the Field was for +sale and would be divided into suitable lots for building purposes, and +also that trespassers were so little desired that they would be +prosecuted by law. These signs were regularly defaced with stones and +snowballs according to season, and were as regularly rëerected every +spring by the hopeful owner or his agent. For in spite of its difficult +paling and warning signs, Clark's Field remained our favorite ball-field +and recreation spot where in summer we dug caves and skated when the +autumn rains were obliging enough to come before the frost. I suppose +that we destroyed the signs as a point of honor, and preferred Clark's +Field to all the other open land free to us because we could see no +reason for the prohibition. At any rate, we "trespassed" upon it at all +hours of day and night, and many a time have I ripped my clothes on the +sharp points of those palings in my breathless haste to escape some real +or fancied pursuit by one in authority. We had not only the regular +police—the "cops"—to contend with, but we believed that old man Clark +employed private watchmen and even descended to the mean habit of +sneaking about the Field himself, peering through the close palings to +snare us. There must have been some fire in all this smoke of memory, +for I distinctly recall one occasion that resulted disastrously to me +and has left with me such a vivid picture that its origin must have been +real. I was one of the younger and less athletic of our gang and had +been nabbed by the fat policeman on our beat and led ignominiously +through the streets of Alton by the collar of my coat,—not to the +police station in the "Square," nor to my father's house where my older +brothers had often been brought in similar disgrace. This time the +policeman, with the ingenuity of a Persian cadi, took me through the +public streets direct to headquarters,—the home of Mr. Samuel Clark. It +was, I believe, the only occasion on which I ever met the owner of +Clark's Field, certainly the only time I ever had speech with him; not +that there was much speech from me then. As I was reluctantly urged up +the long graveled drive of the respectable wooden house near the Square, +I saw an old, white-haired man getting into his family carriage with +some difficulty. The large, heavy person of the owner of Clark's Field +seemed to me a very formidable object when he turned upon me a pair of +dark, scowling eyes beneath bushy white brows and muttered something +about "bad boys." Those eyes and a curious trembling of the heavy +limbs—due to palsy, I suppose—are the only things I recollect of +Samuel Clark. Nor do I remember what he said to me beyond calling me a +bad boy or what judgment he meted out. All I know is that I returned +home without visiting the "lockup" behind the Square and became the +subject of a protracted and animated family discussion. My mother, +unexpectedly, took my part, inveighing against the "ogre" of a Clark who +deprived "nice" boys of the enjoyment of his useless field, and urged my +father, who had some acquaintance with fact as well as with law, to "do +something about Clark's Field." My father, I think, was at last +persuaded to visit the owner of the field to see what lawful +arrangements could be made so that well-behaved boys might freely and +honorably use the Field for their pleasure, until it should be disposed +of to builders. (Which, of course, would have taken from it every shred +of charm!) Whether in fact he made some such arrangement I cannot +remember, nor whether having been once caught I was sufficiently +intimidated by my visit to old Clark. All I know is that as long as we +remained in Alton, the Field continued its useless, forlorn, unoccupied +existence, jealously surrounded by a dilapidated though constantly +patched fence, with its numerous signs inviting prospective purchasers +to consult with the "owner"—signs that were regularly destroyed by +succeeding generations of boys. Already in my youth the busy town was +growing far beyond Clark's Field, along the South Road towards the new +railroad station; but the Field remained in dreary isolation from all +this new life until long after I had left the town.</p> + +<p>As I have said, this empty field of fifty acres was the most permanent +experience of my youth. Its large, level surface, so persistently +offered to unwilling purchasers of real estate, seized hold of my boyish +imagination. I invented mysterious reasons for its condition, which as +time went on must have been influenced by what I heard at the family +table of the Clarks and their possessions. Now it is all inextricably +woven in my memory into a web of fact and fancy. The Field stood for me +during those fertile years as the physical symbol of the unknown, the +mysterious,—the source of adventure and legend,—long, long after I had +outgrown childish imaginings and had become fully involved in what we +like to call the serious matters of life. To-day I had but to close my +eyes and think of Fuller Place and my boyhood there to see that lonely +field, jealously hedged about by its fence of tall white palings,—see +it in all its former emptiness and mystery.</p> + +<p>Of Clark's Field and the Clarks I mused as I retraced my way through the +maze of living that had been planted upon the old open land. All this +close-packed brick and mortar, these dull streets and high business +buildings, had been crowded man-fashion into the free, wind-swept field +of my fancy. Five thousand people at least must now be living and +largely have their being on our old playground,—a small town in itself. +And the change had come about in the last fifteen years or less. How had +it been brought to pass? Why after all the years of idleness that it had +endured had a use for Clark's Field been found? Something must have +broken that spell which had effectually restrained prospective +purchasers of real estate through all the years when the city was +pressing on beyond this point far away into the country.... The facts +are not all dime-novelish, but very human and significant, and by chance +the main thread of the real story of Clark's Field came to my knowledge +shortly after my visit, correcting and enlarging the impressions I had +formed from family gossip, the talk of playmates, and my own +imagination. And this story—the story of Clark's Field—I deem well +worth setting forth....</p> + +<p>That same evening, when I entered the city hotel where I was to dine, I +found my friend walking impatiently up and down the lobby, for in my +search for the past I had forgotten my engagement and was late. Scarcely +greeting my guest, I burst out,—</p> + +<p>"Edsall, do you remember Clark's Field?" (For Edsall had once lived in +Alton, though not in my part of the town.)</p> + +<p>"Yes," he replied, somewhat surprised by my breathless eagerness. "What +about it?"</p> + +<p>"I want to know what happened to it and why?"</p> + +<p>Edsall, being a lawyer with a special interest in real estate, could +tell me many of the known facts about the Clark property over which +there had been some curious litigation. So the story grew that evening +over our dinner, to be filled in later by many details that came to me +unexpectedly,—I suppose because I was interested in the fate of Clark's +Field.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2> + + +<p>The Clarks, as their name implies, were of common English blood, +originally of some clerkly tribe and so possessing no distinctive +patronymic. These Clarks were ordinary Yankee farmers, who had been +settled in one place for upwards of two hundred years. Very likely some +ancestor of my old Samuel Clark had stood at Concord with "the embattled +farmers." I know not. He easily could have done so, for Alton was not +many miles distant from the battle field. But little either spiritual or +militant fervor from these Puritan ancestors seems to have come down to +Samuel, who in 1860 occupied the family farm of one hundred and forty +acres, "more or less," according to the loose description of old deeds. +Samuel, indeed, had not enough patriotism to sympathize with his son, +John Parsons, who finally ran off to the war, as so many boys did, to +escape the monotony of farm life. For Samuel, his father, was a plain, +ordinary, selfish, and not very thrifty New England farmer, who laid +down his fields every year to the same crops of oats and rye and hay, +kept a few sheep and hogs and cows, and in the easy, shiftless way of +his kind drained the soil of his old farm, with the narrow consolation +that it would somehow last his time.</p> + +<p>So little ambition he had that shortly after his son went to the war, +thus depriving him of free labor, he "retired" from his farm,—that is, +he sold what he could of its fields and pastures and bought himself a +house on Church Street near the Square in Alton, probably the same house +where I was taken for my one interview with him. What he did not sell of +the farm he rented to another more energetic farmer, one Everitt Adams, +the old market-gardener whom I remembered. Adams with more thrift and +the great incentive of necessity built hothouses and went in for +market-gardening to supply the wants of the neighboring city, which was +already making itself felt upon the surrounding country. Hence the long +rows of celery, cabbage, lettuce, and peas that I remember across my +father's back fence. All the near-by farmers were doing much the same +thing, turning the better part of their land into gardens. They would +start before dawn in summer time for the city, making their way along +the South Road, which was the main thoroughfare into this part of the +country. Many a time have I seen their covered wagons returning from the +city about the time when I was starting for school, the horses wearily +plodding along at a walk, the farmer or his boy asleep in the wagon on +his empty crates.</p> + +<p>I don't know what sort of an arrangement old Clark made with his tenant, +but Adams, who was a hard-working fellow with a tribe of strong +children, must have found the business profitable, especially after he +built the forcing-houses and began to supply unseasonable luxuries to +the prosperous citizens of B——. Prices ran high in the years of the +great war, and those farmers who stayed at home and cultivated their +gardens industriously made money at every turn. At any rate, it was +common knowledge in the neighborhood of Fuller Place that Everitt Adams +wished to purchase Clark's Field from its owner—the last piece of the +old farm that he had not hitherto disposed of—and had the money to pay +for it in the River Savings Bank. Indeed, gossip said that the price was +agreed upon,—five thousand dollars,—which was considered a fair price +in those days for fifty acres, six or seven miles from the city. And +Samuel Clark, so tradition also says, was anxious to sell his last field +for that price. His son had returned from the war wounded and incapable +of work, and his father wanted to set him up in a small shop in the +Square. The son, in spite of his invalidism, married shortly after his +return from the ranks and this made the need of ready money in the +Church Street house all the more urgent.</p> + +<p>Trouble came when the lawyer employed by the market-gardener discovered +what old Clark must have known all the time, and that is that the Field +had a cloud upon its title, or rather an absolute restriction which +would render worthless any title that Samuel might give alone. To +explain this legal obstacle we must go back before the war and my day +into the previous generation. There had been a family quarrel between +Samuel and his older brother, which had resulted finally in Edward +Stanley—the elder son—going off to seek his fortunes in the new West, +which was attracting young men from the East at that time. This was in +1840 or thereabouts when Edward S. left his father's home in Alton, and +nothing more had been heard of him except the vague report from some +other exile from Alton that he had been seen in Chicago where he had +become a carpenter, and it was said had married. Probably Samuel, who +was then a young man and recently married with two little children, had +no great desire to have his elder brother's existence recalled to his +father. Everything I have learned about Samuel confirms the impression +of him I had as a boy, that he was not the kind of man whose conscience +would be sensitive in such matters. He probably considered that his +brother Ed, having taken his fate in his hands, should expect nothing +from the more timid members of the family who had stuck by the old farm. +But when the elder Clark died, a will was found in which to Samuel's +disgust an undivided half interest in the Field—the best part of the +farm—was left to his eldest son and his heirs.</p> + +<p>There is no evidence that Samuel, at the time of his father's death, +ever took any measures, even of the most casual sort, to hunt up this +elder brother or find out if he had left any children. He made some sort +of deal with a younger brother who could not be ignored and continued to +work the old farm, living in his father's house on Swan's Hill. Probably +a long term of undisturbed possession of the farm convinced him that he +was the sole legitimate owner of the property, that the land was +absolutely and wholly his to do with what he would. And so, as we have +seen, in his old age he tried to dispose of the Field to the +market-gardener for five thousand dollars. But the lawyer raised the +obvious objection that the Field could not be sold without Edward's +consent, and of Edward nothing whatsoever was known. Some attempt was +made at this time by John Clark on behalf of his father to trace the +missing Edward—a feeble attempt. He wrote to an army friend in Chicago, +who found evidence that Edward S. Clark, a carpenter, had lived in the +city for five or six years and had moved thence to St. Louis. No trace +of him could be found in St. Louis, where John also wrote to the +postmaster. At that time, it should be remembered, St. Louis was the +port of departure for the little-known West, and possibly Edward and his +family had taken boat up the Missouri and gone on to the distant gold +fields or had merely drifted out into the neighboring prairie country +and stuck in some nook. It was all speculation. Nothing further of +Edward Stanley Clark was ever known by either Samuel or his son John. He +never announced himself to his Eastern relatives.</p> + +<p>But Samuel could not sell the Field. Old Adams was altogether too shrewd +to spend five thousand dollars upon a property that had such an +uncertainty about its title, and in those days the lawyers whose advice +they were able to get could not suggest a satisfactory way of evading +the difficulty. No such thing as a title guaranty company had ever been +heard of in the old Commonwealth of M——. There was nothing to do but +wait in the hope that either information about Edward S. would be +forthcoming some day or that in time the law could be invoked to gloss +over the title. But Samuel, in hope of inducing some gullible purchaser +to run the risk, had the Field carefully fenced and put signs upon it. +For he needed the money, and needed it more as the years went by and +John's invalidism turned into chronic laziness and incapacity for +earning a livelihood. Everitt Adams moved away after a time and his +successors who leased the Field were never satisfactory. There were +taxes and assessments to be met, which grew all the time with the rising +value of adjacent land, as well as lawyer's fees. The income from the +small part of the Field now under cultivation was hardly adequate to +meet these, and after a time this income ceased altogether and the Field +became an absolute burden. For nobody seemed willing either to rent or +buy the property.</p> + +<p>Of course, the son John, if he had had the energy, might have followed +old Adams's example and worked the Field for a time, until the gas and +sewer mains had corrupted the soil and spoiled it for market gardening. +But he preferred to rely upon his record as an old soldier and secured a +small clerkship in the Alton Gas Company, and some years later obtained +a pension. Of course, all this trouble with the Field supplied both him +and his father with ample cause for grumbling. Samuel had never liked +his brother Edward, who seemed almost spitefully to be turning this +trick against him in his old age, and he handed on his grievance to John +and his wife. The small, wooden house in Church Street contained a +narrow, ungracious family life, it can be seen, of petty economies and +few interests. No wonder that the Field—the one important family +possession remaining—became the favorite topic of discussion and +speculation. The city was growing fast, and Alton was already its most +considerable suburb. The lines of modern life had crept up to within +call of the old Field before the death of Samuel. So the old fellow was +not indulging in much exaggeration when he bragged towards the end that +he wouldn't take twenty-five thousand dollars for his property, although +ten years earlier he had been eager to sell for five thousand dollars!</p> + +<p>That twenty-five thousand dollars, however, was as far away as the five +thousand, and the life in the Church Street house was more penurious and +uncomfortable than it had ever been on the old farm, which had provided +a coarse plenty for many generations. The Clarks were obviously running +out, and when the old man died in 1882 he must have had the bitter +consciousness that the family destiny had dwindled in his hands. From +being prosperous and respected farmers, living on their own land in +their ancestral square wooden house with its one enormous chimney, they +were living in real poverty in a small house on a dusty side street off +the noisy Square, which was not what it had once been as a place of +residence. And they did not even own this Church Street house—merely +clung to it from inertia and bad habit. The only thing they did own was +Clark's Field, and Mrs. John sometimes thought it would be better if +that had gone the way of the rest of the Clark farm, so insidious was +its moral influence upon the men as well as costly in the way of +outgo....</p> + +<p>If a man's accomplishment in this life is to be reckoned by the +substantial gains he has made on his father's estate and condition, old +Samuel Clark had nothing to be proud of when he was borne to his grave +in the new cemetery a mile south of Clark's Field. He had left nothing +to his children but the Field, encumbered with the undivided and +indivisible half interest belonging to his brother Edward Stanley, were +he alive at this date, and to his heirs if he had any.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2> + + +<p>The possession of property of any kind gives a curious consciousness of +dignity to the human being who is its owner, due very likely to the +traditional estimate of the importance of all possessions, and to the +mystical but generally erroneous belief that property is in some way an +outward and visible proof of the worth or the ability of its +possessor—or his forbears. Even the possession of a possibility such as +Clark's Field—which was of no positive value to the Clarks, and indeed +an increasing source of expense and anxiety to the impoverished family, +as taxes rose in company with the rise of all values—conferred upon the +Clarks some small consideration in Alton and made them feel the dignity +and the tragedy of property ownership. John, who was nothing but a +seedy, middle-aged clerk, none too careful of his appearance and +uneasily aware of his failure, had ample excuse to himself for his +shortcomings and willingness to live on a kind Government, because he +had been hardly used by fate in the matter of his inheritance. As the +property that might have been his was just beyond his reach, he had a +small swagger of superiority in the gas office, and the tradition was +well established there that he belonged to a family "land poor,"—the +most genteel form of poverty if any form of poverty can be genteel. Even +old farmer Samuel had tottered about the Square on his malacca stick and +exchanged the time of day with the small merchants there, with a sense +of his own importance as the owner of "a valuable piece of property" +temporarily under legal disability.</p> + +<p>As for the women of the family this sense of unrealized importance grew +tenfold in their consciousness, because they had few opportunities of +encountering reality in their narrow lives and because as women they +were apt to dream of wealth, even of visionary wealth. It cannot be said +that Clark's Field had much to do with John's marriage which had taken +place in 'sixty-seven, because at that early date it was not considered +a large expectation even by the Clarks. But John had a younger sister, +Ada or "Addie" Clark as she was always known, and over Addie's destiny +Clark's Field had a large and sinister influence as I shall presently +show. At the time when her father finally abandoned his farm in favor of +town life, Addie was a mere child, so young that she could forget the +wholesome pictures of domestic farm industry that she must have shared. +Or, if there lingered in the background of her memory a consciousness of +her mother's butter-making, feeding the pigs, cooking for the occasional +farm hands, washing and mending, and all the other common tasks of this +laborious condition, she conveniently ignored it as women easily +contrive to do. Her life was centered in the Church Street house where +the Clarks had at first indulged in certain pretensions. Addie had gone +to the Alton schools and there associated with the better class of +children,—a doctor's daughter and a retired bank clerk's family being +the more intimate of these. As a young girl she had a transparent +complexion and a thin sort of American prettiness that unfortunately +quickly faded, under the influences of the Church Street house, into a +sallow commonplaceness. But Addie unlike the men of the family never +wholly abandoned her aspirations and ambitions. She was very careful +about the young men whom she "encouraged," and the families into whose +houses she would enter. Thus she sacrificed her slim chances of +matrimony on the altar of a visionary family pride. One of her +high-school mates, the son of the prosperous liveryman in Alton, might +have married her had he been more warmly met, and taken her with him to +Detroit, where in time he became the well-to-do head of a large +automobile manufactory. This was not the single instance of her family +pride.</p> + +<p>It is a fascinating subject to speculate what would have happened to Ada +if she had had the moral vigor to shake herself loose from the hampering +family traditions of riches to be, and struck out for an independent, +wholesome life as women have been known to do under similar +circumstances. But Alton, like most old towns, had strong class +traditions that exercised an iron influence upon feminine destinies. It +was, of course, hopeless for Ada, the daughter of a retired farmer who +could not sell his farm, to come into close social contact with the +local aristocracy, which consisted at this time of the Stearns and Frost +relationship together with a few well-to-do merchants from B—— who had +always lived in Alton and owned those large semi-suburban estates in its +environs. But at least she could jealously guard herself from falling +into the mire of the commoner sort of small shopkeepers who were +pressing into the Square. The end was that Addie fast became what was +then called, without any circumlocution, an "old maid," and an +uninteresting one, whose days were occupied by church and gossip, and +who went over and over the threadbare family tradition. Old Mrs. Clark, +her mother, was a realist and never forgot the farm days. She was enough +of a woman to regret sincerely the fatal mistake that the family had +made in trying to become something other than their destiny had fitted +them to be. She was a thorn in the sentimental flesh of Addie, whose +thoughts preferred to play with the dignities and ease that would be +hers when the Field had been sold. Addie dressed herself as finely as +she could on Sundays and in the afternoons would walk down the South +Road past the abandoned Field and remark to a friend upon the family +property and the misfortune that kept them all down in the depths of +poverty. As the years went on and the price of real estate advanced, her +tale sounded less ridiculous than it might. But it was a bloodless sort +of consolation even for Addie, and all her friends knew the story by +heart and listened to it merely with kind indulgence. "A bird in the +hand," etc., is a proverb peculiarly to the liking of Yankees. They do +not take much interest in Peruvian mines or other forms of +non-negotiable wealth unless they see a chance to work them off on a +more credulous public. As for old Mrs. Clark, when she became tied to +her chair, she was bitter on the topic. "That dratted old Field!" she +would say with the brutal directness of the realist; "your father would +have sold the whole of it for five thousand dollars and been +thankful!"—a fact that seemed to her children of no importance.</p> + +<p>When the old woman was laid away in Woodlawn beside her husband, Addie +could give free rein to her fancies, untroubled by the darts of the +realist. But the family fortunes soon became most desperate. Fortunately +John had no children, his one small son having died as a baby. His wife, +who had perhaps become tired of the family fortune as it never quite +realized itself, tried to prod her shiftless husband into a greater +activity. But except for the getting of the pension, which was put +through in 1885, John added little to the family purse, and before his +mother's death lost his position in the gas office, a new administration +of the company holding that a municipal utility was not an asylum for +old soldiers. The trouble was, as Mrs. John knew, and as Ada always +refused to recognize, John drank. At first it was a convivial weakness +indulged in only at the reunions of old veterans,—John was a most +ardent "Vet,"—but it became a habit that took away his little +usefulness for anything. So now the family for steady income was reduced +to the pension, which was only twenty-two dollars a month. Clearly +something had to be done. Mrs. John took in lodgers in the Church Street +house, a clerk or two from the neighboring shops. And Addie finally +brought herself to learn the manipulation of the typewriter, which was +fast becoming a woman's profession, and found a position in a large +store in the city.</p> + +<p>It would seem that the Clark fortunes had reached their lowest ebb: +family extinction was all that now remained for them. The Church Street +house rested solely, save for the small pension, on the exertions of two +ineffective women. It could just get on as it was, and if the family +life had never been a bright and cheerful one, it was now drearier than +ever. Then Addie married. She was nearly if not quite forty years old, +and neither her brother nor sister-in-law expected such an event. She +was sallow, thin, and rather querulous in temperament. Very likely Addie +felt that marriage could not make her lot worse, and as middle-age +threatened, she accepted the defeat of her ambitions and in the spirit +of better-late-than-never struck out for herself in the race for +personal happiness, throwing over the burden of Clark's Field.</p> + +<p>At any rate, she was married to William Scarp, a fellow-clerk in Minot +Brothers—wholesale wool. Addie represented that Mr. Scarp was of +excellent Southern blood from somewhere in North Carolina. It is +needless to enter into that nebulous question. He was earning thirty +dollars a week with Minot Brothers when they became engaged and was a +few years younger than his bride. The firm gave him a five-dollar +increase of salary on his marriage, old Savage remarking facetiously +that he believed in rewarding courage. The couple went to live in the +city, and for a year or two they moved nomadically from one +boarding-house or cheap hotel to another. It may be presumed that Addie, +without any clear idea of deceiving, had misled William Scarp in the +matter of Clark's Field—her fixed delusion. The Field made this +marriage, and it was not a happy one. The John Clarks, who still hung on +in the Church Street house with an additional roomer, soon began to +suspect that Addie was not wholly happy in her married life. William had +a quick temper and was very plain-spoken about the "job" that Addie had +"put over him" in the matter of the Clark property, though in fact she +had exercised no more mendacity than women of forty in her position are +wont to do. At one time shortly after the marriage Scarp had an +"understanding" with John Clark about the family estate. When he learned +that the Field could not be sold in the present state of its title and +that such leases as had been made of it to meet taxes and other +obligations tied it up until the opening of the next century, he +expressed himself abusively. Later he suggested that a "syndicate" +should be formed to employ lawyers to straighten out the title and +dispose of the property piecemeal as the leases fell in. It seemed a +brilliant plan, quite modern in its sound, but alas! William, no more +than John, could finance the "syndicate." So the suggestion lapsed, and +the Scarps worried along on William's salary for a time, and then moved +to Philadelphia. What Addie's experiences were there, or in Cincinnati +and Indianapolis, to which cities they also wandered, I have no means of +knowing, nor did the John Clarks hear from her, except for a rare +penciled postcard. The Clarks, as may be observed, were no great +letter-writers.</p> + +<p>All is that one day in November of 1889, Addie arrived at the Church +Street house with a forlorn parcel of a little girl and a bedraggled bag +that contained her entire worldly possessions. She was ill and old. She +would say little about her husband, but later it came out in the +newspapers that William Scarp had been convicted of forgery and sent to +prison in Indiana (where he died soon after of consumption contracted in +prison). Addie had come back to the only human refuge she knew. She was +too ill and too beaten by life to work. She sat around in the Church +Street house dumbly for nearly a year, then died, leaving the forlorn, +pale little girl to her brother and sister-in-law as a legacy. This +child she had named Adelle, thus proving the persistence of her fancy +even in her forlornest hours. Ada or Addie was too common for the last +of the Clarks. She should at least have something poetic for name. For +who could say? She might some day become an heiress and shine in that +social firmament so much desired by her mother. In that event she should +not be handicapped by a vulgar name. As Addie had resumed her maiden +name after Scarp had been sent to prison, the little girl was destined +to grow up as Adelle Clark,—the last member of the Alton branch of the +Clarks, ultimate heiress to Clark's Field, should there be anything of +it left to inherit when the law let go.</p> + +<p>The silent little girl, who played about the lodgers' rooms in the dingy +Church Street house, was of course unaware of the weight of expectation +hanging to her. She was almost abnormally silent, perhaps because of her +depressing prenatal experiences as well as the forlorn environment of +the rooming-house,—perhaps because of physical and spiritual anæmia. +"She's a puny mite of a child," Mrs. John Clark said complainingly, +unpromising like everything Clark; nevertheless, the last of the sturdy +yeoman stock of Clarks.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2> + + +<p>That "weight of expectation" hanging to the little girl was not quite as +fantastic as might seem. It must be remembered that old Samuel before +his death, in pressing need of ready money to finance some foolish +venture of his son, had leased a good part of Clark's Field to some +speculative builders, who had covered that portion of the old pasture +that bordered the South Road with a leprous growth of cheap stores, +which brought in a fair return. The leases ran up to the new century. +Just why this precise term for the gambling venture had been chosen +probably only the lawyers who made the arrangement could say. Possibly +old Samuel had superstitious reasons for not pledging the family +expectation beyond the present century. He may have thought that the +turn of the century would bring about some profound change in the +customs and habits of society that the family could take advantage of. +At any rate, so it was. And it was not many years now to the close of +the century when Clark's Field would be released to its original owners +with all its shabby encumbrances.</p> + +<p>The field had gained enormously in value and importance in men's eyes +these last years. The city of B—— had eaten far into the country, +creating prosperous appendages in the way of modern suburbs for twenty +miles and more from Alton, and there was much talk of its annexing the +old town to itself, which it accomplished not long after. Those were the +days of the "greater" everything, the worship of size. Alton in fact was +now a city itself of no mean size, and the shallow stream of water that +nominally divided it from B—— was a mere boundary line. As men had +multiplied upon this spot of earth, needing land for dwelling and +business, envious eyes had been cast upon the Field, the last large +"undeveloped" tract anywhere near the great city. Men who were skillful +in such real estate "deals," greedy and ingenious in the various ways of +turning civic growth to private profit, were figuring upon the +possibility of getting hold of Clark's Field, when the short leases +expired, and after making the necessary "improvements" cutting it up for +sale. They saw fat profits in the transaction. Men needed it for their +lives; the community needed it for its growing corporate life. And yet +it was "tied up" with a legal disability—left largely useless and +waste. It looked as if when the legal spell was finally broken, as it +must be, and the land so long unprofitable and idle should be +apportioned to these human needs, it would be neither the Clarks nor the +community that would derive benefit from it,—certainly not the people +who would live upon it,—but some gang of skillful speculators, who knew +the precise moment to take advantage of the mechanism of the law and the +more uncertain mechanism of human nature so as to obtain for a small +amount what they could sell to others for much. The crisis in the +history of Clark's Field seemed approaching.</p> + +<p>It was time. The fence of high white palings that Samuel had jealously +maintained about his old field had long since completely disappeared. +Latterly the neighbors crisscrossed the vacant portions of the Field +with short cuts and contractors either dumped refuse upon it or burrowed +into it for gravel. The sod had long since been stripped from every foot +of its surface. In a word, it was treated as no man's land, so low had +the Clark family sunk in the world. And it was covered with a cloud of +invisible disabilities, further than the original difficulty created by +Edward S. in not leaving an address behind him. There were liens against +it by the city for improvements in the way of gas and sewer and water +pipes, and for taxes, as well as first, second, and third mortgages of a +dubious character that John in extremity had been forced to put upon the +Field in order to "carry" his expectation. Under this burden of +invisible lien as well as outward degradation Clark's Field had +struggled until 1898, and the ultimate doom was not far off. John +thought so and struggled less to preserve his inheritance. What he owned +of the Field was a diminishing fraction, long since negligible, were it +not for the marvelous increase in all real-estate values, due to the +growth of population in these parts and the activity of the country. It +was rumored about the Square that Clark's Field would shortly be sold +for taxes, and a tax title, poor as that is, would probably be the best +title that could ever be got for the Field. Capitalists and their +lawyers were already figuring on that basis for the distribution of the +property....</p> + +<p>But before we concern ourselves in the plot of these greedy exploiters, +it would be well to go back for a time to the dingy Church Street house +and the pale little Adelle, who was now in her twelfth year. Her +ancestors, certainly, had done little for her physical being. She was a +plain, small child, with not enough active blood in her apparently to +make a vivid life under any circumstances. She was meek and +self-effacing,—two excellent virtues for certain spheres, but not for a +poor child in America at the opening of the new century! Her earliest +impressions of life must have been the dusty stairs and torn stair +carpet of her aunt's house, defaced under the dirty feet of many +transient "roomers," and next her aunt herself, a silent, morose woman +over fifty, who accepted life as nearly in the stoic spirit as her +education permitted. Mrs. John Clark had none of Addie's cheap +pretentions, fortunately: she was obviously the poor woman with a +worthless husband, who kept cheap lodgings for a livelihood. She was +kind enough to the little girl as such people have the time and the +energy to be kind. She could not give her much thought, and as soon as +Adelle was old enough to handle a broom or make beds she had to help in +the endless housework. At eight she was sent to school, however, to the +public school close by in the rear of the livery-stable, where she +learned what American children are supposed to learn in the grade +schools. At twelve she was a small, undersized, poorly dressed, +white-faced little girl, so little distinctive in any way that probably +hundreds exactly like her could be picked from the public schools of any +American city. If this story were a mere matter of fiction, we should be +obliged to endow Adelle with some marks of exceptionality of person, or +mind, or soul,—evident to the discerning reader even in her childhood. +She would already possess the rudiments of an individuality under her +Cinderella outside,—some poetic quality of day-dreaming or laughing or +sketching. But this is a plain chronicle of very plain people as they +actually found themselves in life, and it is not necessary to embellish +the truth so that it may please any reader's sensibilities or ideals. +Adelle Clark was a wholly ordinary, dumb little creature, neither +passionate nor spiritual. She laughed less than children of her age +because there was not much in her experience to laugh about. She talked +less—much less—than other little girls, because the Church Street +house was not a place to encourage conversation. She liked her aunt +rather better than her uncle, who was an untidy, not to say smelly, +person, who sat dozing in the kitchen much of the time, a few strands of +long gray hair vainly trying to cover the baldness of a blotchy head. +His principal occupation these latter years was being a "Vet." He was a +faithful attendant at all "post nights," "camp-fires," and veteran +"reunions," and when in funds visited neighboring posts where he had +friends. On his return from these festivities he was smellier and +stupider than ever,—that was all his small niece realized. He never did +any work, so far as she was aware, but as his wife had accepted the fact +and no longer discussed it in public, the little girl did not think much +about his idleness. That might be the man-habit generally.</p> + +<p>Adelle was in her thirteenth year and in the last grade of her school +when she first began to notice the presence of some strangers in the +Church Street house. She was not an observant child, and there was such +a succession of "roomers" in the house that a stranger's face aroused +little curiosity. But these men were better dressed than any roomers and +talked in tones of authority and conscious position. They held long +conversations with her uncle and aunt in the dining-room behind closed +doors, and once she saw a bundle of papers spread out upon the table. +These days her uncle and aunt talked much about titles, mortgages, +deeds, and other matters she did not understand nor ask about. But she +felt that something important was astir in the Church Street house, as a +child realizes vaguely such movements outside its own sphere. Once one +of the men, who was putting on his silk hat in the hall and preparing to +leave the house, inquired, "Is that the girl?" To which question her +uncle and aunt answered briefly, "Yes." The tone of the stranger was +exactly as if he had asked, "Is that the bundle of clothes we were +talking about?"</p> + +<p>Something was afoot of momentous importance to Adelle, as we shall +shortly discover. Fate once more in the person of a feeble Clark was +about to play her an unkind trick. For John, reduced to complete +incompetence by his life and his habit of drink, pestered by the +accumulating claims upon Clark's Field, had consented to an +"arrangement" that certain capitalists had presented to him through +their lawyers. They had urged him to sell to them all the remaining +equity that he held in the property, giving a quitclaim deed for himself +and his wife and for Adelle, whose legal guardian he was. The purchasers +would assume all the liabilities of the encumbered Field, the risk of +title, and for this complete surrender of the family interest in Clark's +Field, John Clark was to receive the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars +all told in cash. It was five times what his father had been anxious to +get for the same property, as the lawyers pointed out, when John in the +beginning talked large about the great possibilities of his Field. It +was true, so they said, that the property had increased in value in the +last twenty years, but so had the encumbrances increased, and there was +always the danger of expensive litigation and loss due to the cloudy +title, even after the lapse of fifty years since the disappearance of +Edward S. They could not see their way to offering another dollar for +the dubious gamble before them, so they said. And for this twenty-five +thousand dollars in ready money, all the family expectations were to be +cashed in, all the hopes of Samuel, the pretensions of Addie, the +desires and needs of John and his wife, not to mention the future of the +small Adelle. John hesitated....</p> + +<p>In the end he was convinced, or his desire for some ready money overcame +his scruples. His wife, who was perhaps agreeably surprised to find that +the Clark expectations had any cash value, counseled him to accept the +offered terms. No doubt, she admitted, the lawyers were probably doing +them; that was the way of lawyers. But they had no money to spend on +other lawyers to find a better bargain or to engage in the speculation +upon the Field themselves. As for hanging on to Clark's Field, the +family had had enough of that. "A bird in the hand," etc. So the +numerous papers were drawn and John even touched a small advance +payment. Adelle remembered the discussions—not to say quarrels—between +her uncle and aunt over the use to which they should put the Clark +fortune when it should finally be theirs. John was for moving away from +Alton altogether, which was not what it had been once for residence he +said. He talked of going into the country and buying a farm. His wife, +who remembered how he had scorned to work the old Clark farm when it was +a paying possibility, smiled grimly at his talk. She wanted to take a +larger house in the neighborhood, furnish it better, and bid for a +higher class of roomers. Hers was, of course, the more sensible plan. +They were still discussing their plans, and the lawyers were taking +their time about preparing the interminable series of legal papers that +seemed necessary when the great Grand Army Encampment of 1900 came off +in Chicago. John, who had been obliged latterly to forego these annual +sprees, resolved to attend the reunion of his old comrades and "to go in +style." For this purpose he obtained a small sum from the prospective +purchasers of Clark's Field, who were only too ready to get him further +committed to their bargain by a payment down and a receipt on +account,—on condition, of course, that he sign an agreement to sell the +property when the necessary formalities could be satisfied. So he signed +with an easy flourish the simple agreement presented to him, pocketed +two hundred dollars, and bought a new suit of clothes with a black-felt +veteran's hat, the first he had had in many years. When Adelle watched +him strut down Church Street on the way to the train one hot July +morning, splendid in his new uniform with his white gloves and short +sword under his arm, she did not know that she herself had contributed +to this piece of self-indulgence her last right to a share in the Clark +possession,—her one inheritance of any value from her mother. Very +possibly she would not have said anything had she known all the facts, +had she been old enough to realize the significance of that signature +her uncle had given the lawyers a few days before. Probably she would +have accepted this act of fate as meekly as she had all else in her +short life. For it must be clearly understood that the signature was +irrevocable. No change of mind, no sober second thought coming into +John's cloudy mind, would be of any use. A contract of sale is as +binding under such circumstances as the deed itself.</p> + +<p>Adelle felt an unconscious relief in the absence of her uncle from the +house. There was an end to the disputes about the money, and his +unpleasant person no longer occupied the best chair in the kitchen. Her +aunt also seemed to be more cheerful than was her wont. It was the slack +season in the rooming business, and so the two had some spare time on +their hands in the long summer days and could dawdle about, an unusual +luxury. They even went to walk in the afternoons. Her aunt took Adelle +to see Clark's Field,—a forlorn expanse of empty land with a fringe of +flimsy one-story shops along its edge that did not attract the child. +She never remembered, naturally, what her aunt told her about the Field, +but she must have learned something of its story because she always had +in her mind a sense of the importance of this waste and desolate city +field. In her childish way she got a vague notion of some great wrong +that had been done about the land so that her uncle was smelly and +stupid and her aunt had to take in more roomers than she liked. That was +as close to the facts as she could get then—as close, it may be said, +as many people ever get.... Then they went to look at houses, a more +interesting occupation to the child. Her aunt seemed much concerned in +the comparative size and location and number of rooms of different +houses and this Adelle could understand. The family was going to move +sometime from the Church Street house.... In these simple ways the two +passed a quiet vacation of ten days. Then came a telegram, and three +days later arrived the remains of Veteran John Clark, accompanied by +members of the local G. A. R. post who had brought back the body of +their dead comrade. John Clark had kept his boasting word to his wife +that "this time he would show the boys a good time and prove to 'em that +his talk about his property wasn't all hot air!" He had in truth shown +himself such a good time that he could not stand a spell of excessively +hot weather, to which he succumbed like a sapped reed. A very +considerable funeral was arranged and conducted by the members of G. A. +R. Post Number I of Alton, to which John Clark had belonged. There was a +military band and the post colors, and a number of oldish men in blue +uniforms trailed behind the hearse all the way to the cemetery where the +veteran was laid away in the lot with his mother and father. Little +Adelle, riding in the first carriage with her aunt, observed all this +military display over the dead veteran, and concluded that she had done +her uncle an injustice during his life. It seemed that he was really a +much more important person than she had supposed him to be. This burial +was the last benefit poor John Clark received from a grateful country +for that spurt of patriotism or willfulness that had led him to run away +from the Clark farm to the war forty years before.</p> + +<p>And here really concludes the history of the Clarks in the story of +Clark's Field. For Adelle, upon whom the burden of the inheritance was +to fall, was only half a Clark at the most, and had largely escaped the +deadly tradition of family expectations under which Addie had been +blighted; while her aunt, of course, had no Clark blood in her veins and +had been cured of the Clark habit of expecting.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2> + + +<p>It may easily be imagined that the veteran's untimely death at the Grand +Army Reunion caused more uneasiness in certain other quarters than it +did in the Church Street house, where John's going had its mitigations. +The lawyers who had arranged the purchase of the Clark interest in the +great Field did not really fear that their plans for the cheap capture +of the property would ultimately miscarry. But John's death must cause +further delay, which might possibly be improved by other interested +speculators. And so the legal representatives of the capitalists +concerned in the "deal" constituted themselves at once friends and +advisers of the widow. They assured her that a mere formality must be +satisfied before she could actually touch her husband's estate, and +promised to attend to the legal matters without expense to her, it being +understood, of course, that whenever the law allowed she should carry +out her husband's agreement to sell the Clark interest in the Field. +They even went so far as to offer further small advances to the widow if +she found herself in immediate need. But this the widow resolutely +refused. She was becoming a little suspicious of so much thoughtful +kindliness from these lawyers, whom after the prejudice of her sort she +was wont to regard as human harpies. She had her widow's pension and her +roomers, and her expenses would be considerably lessened by the death of +the incompetent veteran, who would no longer be begging money for his +"reunions."</p> + +<p>There was, of course, Adelle. Her uncle had been her legal guardian and +as such had intended to sell her interest in the Field for a pittance. +The lawyers assumed that her aunt would be appointed by the probate +court to the empty honor of guardianship. Otherwise they regarded her, +as everybody always did, as entirely negligible. And she so regarded +herself. The lawyers were prompt in having the guardianship question +brought up in the probate court for settlement first. It was introduced +there as a motion early in the fall term of court, the papers being +presented to the judge by the junior member of the distinguished firm of +B—— lawyers, Bright, Seagrove, and Bright. Any other judge, probably, +would have scribbled his initials then and there upon the printed +application for guardianship,—the affair being in charge of such +eminent counsel,—and there must have been an end altogether to Adelle's +expectations and of this story. That was what the lawyers naturally +expected. But this judge, after a hasty glance or two at the +application, took the matter under advisement.</p> + +<p>"Of course the old boy had to sleep upon it!" young Bright reported to +the senior members of the firm. The lawyers of B—— were accustomed to +make fun of Judge Orcutt or grumble about his ways of doing things. He +was certainly different from the ordinary run of probate judges or of +all judges for that matter. The smart law firms that had dealings with +him professed to consider him a poor lawyer, but everybody knows that +eminent lawyers usually have a poor opinion of the ability of judges. +They reason that if the judges had their ability, they would not be +poorly paid judges, but holding out their baskets for the fat fruit +falling abundantly from the corporation trees.</p> + +<p>It should be said that the law was not Judge Orcutt's first love: +probably was not his supreme mistress at any time. Perhaps for that very +reason he made a better probate judge—a more human judge—than any of +the smart lawyers could have made. The little gray-haired judge was a +poet, and not an unpublished poet. I will not stop to pass judgment on +those thin volumes of verse, elegantly printed and bound, that from time +to time appeared in the welter of modern literature with the judge's +name. The judge was fonder of them, no doubt, and perhaps prouder of +them than Bright, Seagrove, and Bright are of their large retainers. And +I believe that the published volumes of verse, and the unprinted ones +within his heart and brain, made Judge Orcutt an altogether sounder +judge than if he had mused in his idle hours upon the law or upon +corporation fees. He was one of those rare judges, who even after twenty +years of forms—motions and pleas and precedents—could never wholly +forget the individual human being behind the legal form.</p> + +<p>And so in this trivial matter of appointing a guardian for a poor girl, +the probate judge could not ignore Adelle in the mass of legal verbiage +through which such things are done. Who was this Adelle Clark? and what +sort of person was this aunt who seemed willing and anxious to assume +the legal and moral guardianship of the minor? An aunt by marriage only, +wasn't it? Yes, by marriage he assured himself after consulting again +the stiff paper form that the lawyers had properly filled out; and he +gave one of those funny little quirks to his eye which he did when not +wholly satisfied with a "proposition" presented to him. And here was the +characteristic difference between Judge Orcutt and any other probate +judge. He speculated—maybe for only the better part of ten seconds—but +he speculated upon the entity of the small human being that had fallen +within the bounds of his court. Was it really for this little girl's +best good to let this aunt by marriage take charge of her? Did any +hocus-pocus contriving, with which he had become only too familiar, lie +beneath this innocent application?</p> + +<p>Probably at this point the poet judge would have dismissed the matter +from speculation and signed the papers as he usually did, very much, +after all, like any other judge, with an additional sigh because he +could never really discover all the necessary facts. But another +observation held his pen. The paper had been brought to him by young +Bright, of Bright, Seagrove, and Bright—a notable firm of lawyers, but +not one famous for their charitable practice. Why should Bright, +Seagrove, and Bright interest themselves in procuring the guardianship +of a poor girl? Ah, it is to be feared that this is where the eminent +counsel "fell down" badly, as young Bright said. They should have sent +an office boy with the papers or let the aunt go there alone to see the +judge! For Judge Orcutt, after another moment of frowning meditation, +threw the document into that basket which contained papers for further +consideration. Had the girl expectations of property? He would inquire, +at least have the girl and her aunt into his court and get a good look +at them before performing his routine function of initialing the legal +form. Poet that he was, he prided himself much on his powers of +penetration into human motives, when he had his subject before him....</p> + +<p>For this reason Adelle and her aunt were notified that they should +appear before His Honor. The lawyers told Mrs. Clark that the visit to +the probate court was a mere formality,—meant nothing at all. But under +their breaths they cursed Judge Orcutt for a meddlesome old nuisance, +which would not have worried him. Adelle and her aunt, got up in their +best mourning, accordingly appeared before the probate judge, who at the +moment was hearing a case of non-support. So they waited in the dim, +empty courtroom, while the judge, ignoring their presence, went on with +the question of whether John Thums could pay his wife three dollars a +week or only two-fifty. At last he settled it at three dollars and +beckoned to Mrs. Clark and the little girl to come forward and +courteously inquired their business. Ignoring the officious young +lawyer, who was there and tried to shuffle the matter through, Judge +Orcutt asked both Adelle and her aunt all sorts of questions that did +not always seem to the point. He appeared to be curious about the family +history. Mr. Bright fumed. However, it was all going well enough until +Mrs. John blurted out something about the girl's share of the money that +was coming to them. At the word "money" the judge pricked up his ears. +In his court certainly money was the root of much evil as well as of +pain. What money? Was the little girl an heiress? From the blundering +lips of honest Mrs. Clark the story tumbled out, under the judge's +expert questioning, exactly as it was. At the conclusion, with one +significant scowl at the uncomfortable Mr. Bright, the judge gathered to +himself all the papers, saying that he should give the matter further +consideration and disappeared into his private chamber. The two Clarks +returned to Alton much mystified.</p> + +<p>Young Mr. Bright remarked to his superiors, on his return to the office, +that he thought "there will be the devil to pay!" And there was. Of this +the little girl and her aunt knew nothing except that another legal +difficulty had been discovered and that the lawyers did not seem as +genial and happy as they had before. Thus a week slipped past, and then +they were again summoned to the probate court and taken into the judge's +private chamber behind the courtroom.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2> + + +<p>A good deal had happened in a quiet way during these seven days that had +much influence upon the fate of Clark's Field and of Adelle Clark. Up to +this time Judge Orcutt had never heard of Clark's Field or of the +Clarks. He lived on the other side of B——, in the country, and was not +much of a gossip. But he had ways of finding out about what was going on +when he wanted to. A word lightly cast forth at the club table where he +always lunched, and he could get a clue to almost anything of current +interest. And that noon, after he had first seen Mrs. Clark and her +niece, my friend Edsall happened to be at the judge's table. Orcutt +asked him what he knew about the Clark property in Alton. Edsall +happened to know almost all of importance that has been told here and +more. He knew of the movement on foot to develop the property, so long +held in idleness, but he did not know who were the persons interested. +He could find out. He did so, and within the week he had given the +probate judge the outline of as pretty a story of cheap knavishness as +the judge had come across for years.</p> + +<p>"No one can say what the property is worth now," Edsall reported, "but +it must be millions."</p> + +<p>"Millions!" the judge growled. "And they're trying to get it from an old +woman and a girl for twenty-five thousand dollars."</p> + +<p>"A plain steal," the real estate man remarked.</p> + +<p>"Sculduggery—I smelt it!" laughed the judge.</p> + +<p>One of the first results of this was that Mr. Osmond Bright, senior +member of Bright, Seagrove, and Bright, was invited to call upon Judge +Orcutt in his chambers, and there received probably the worst lecture +this eminent corporation lawyer ever took from any man. He blustered, of +course, and defended his clients on the ground that they were taking a +great risk with the title, which was unsound, etc., etc. The poet judge +dealt him a savage look and curtly advised him to withdraw at once from +the position of counsel to the men involved in this shady transaction; +at least never to appear in his court in the guardianship case. (It may +be said here that the firm did withdraw from the case, as there was, in +their words, "nothing doing." But not much was accomplished, for another +equally eminent and unscrupulous firm of lawyers was employed the next +day and went to work in a more devious manner to get hold of the Field.)</p> + +<p>Next the judge devoted half an hour to meditation over the fate of +Adelle Clark, more time than any one in her whole career hitherto had +given to consideration of her. It was clear enough to him that Mrs. John +Clark, honest woman though she appeared to be, could not cope with the +situation that must present itself. Nor, of course, could the girl. The +nefarious agreement to sell out all the Clark equity in the Field which +John Clark had executed prior to his departure for the Grand Army +Reunion, and which Judge Orcutt had forced the elder Bright to produce, +was evidence enough that the little girl needed some strong defender if +she were not to be fleeced utterly of her property. For she was heir now +to nearly three fourths of what the Clark estate might bring, and her +aunt to the remaining portion—so said the law. But who could be found, +modern knight, honest and disinterested and able enough to take upon his +shoulders the difficult defense of the girl's rights?</p> + +<p>Judge Orcutt had not been greatly impressed by the appearance of the +girl. She was nearly fourteen now, and seemed to the discriminating +taste of the judge to be a quite ordinary young girl with a rather +common aunt. Nevertheless that must not enter into the question: she had +her rights just as much as if she had been all that his poet's heart +might desire a young girl to be! Rights—a curious term over which the +judge often stumbled. Had she any more real right to the property than +the sharks who were trying to steal it from her? Who had any right to +this abandoned field that for fifty years had been waiting for an absent +heir to announce himself? Did it really belong to the Public? When he +got thus far in his speculation, the judge always pulled himself up with +a start. That wasn't his business. He was bound to administer the +antiquated and curious system of laws concerning the bequest of property +with a serious sense of their sacredness whether he felt it or not. They +seemed to be an essential part of the crazy structure of society that +must not be questioned, least of all by a probate judge! If men had +devised these unreal rules and absurd regulations, probably there was +some divine necessity for them beyond his human insight. Judge Orcutt +never got farther than this point in his speculations. With a sigh he +dropped the Clark case, and the next morning sent for the two women to +appear in his court.</p> + +<p>It did not take him long this time to discover that they were singularly +without good friends or advisers. They had no known relatives, no one +who could be expected to take a friendly interest in their affairs and +trusted to manage the business wisely. In earlier days Judge Orcutt +would have tried to find, in such a case, some able and scrupulous young +lawyer to perform the necessary function, somebody like himself who +would have a chivalrous regard for the defenseless condition of the two +women. Either that breed of lawyers had run out, or the judge was +becoming less confiding. For latterly, since the introduction of trust +companies, he had more than once put such cases in charge of these +impersonal agents. Trust companies were specially designed to meet two +pressing human wants,—permanence and honesty. They might not always be +efficient, for they were under such strict legal supervision that they +must always take the timid course, and they charged highly for their +services. But they could not very well be dishonest, nor die! They would +go on forever, at least as long as there was the institution of private +property and an intricate code of laws to safeguard it. Thus the judge +argued to himself again in considering the plight of these Clarks, and +decided to use the Washington Trust Company of B——, whose officers he +knew....</p> + +<p>After explaining all this in simple terms to Mrs. Clark, he proposed to +her that her niece's interest in the Clark estate should be placed in +the hands of the trust company rather than hers, if they would accept +such an involved guardianship as Adelle Clark's promised to be.</p> + +<p>"You know, my good woman," he said in conclusion, "you must be careful +in this matter." (The judge's manner towards "ordinary people" was +aristocratically condescending, and he considered the rooming-house +keeper very ordinary.) "Of course, you understand that I—that this +court—has no control whatever over your acts. You can if you like carry +out your husband's intention and convey to these parties all your +interest in his estate. But I cannot permit you to jeopardize the +interests of this minor, who is a ward of my court, by conveying her +share of the estate to them on any such terms as they propose."</p> + +<p>"I'm sure," Mrs. John Clark mumbled in an aggrieved tone, "I had no idea +of doing any harm to the girl."</p> + +<p>"No, of course not, my good woman. But you don't understand. As I have +told you, it looks as if there might be some money, considerable money, +coming to you and to her from this land when the title is straightened +out, and you don't want to do anything foolish now."</p> + +<p>"I s'pose not," Mrs. Clark assented, somewhat dubiously. The "good +woman" had heard of this bonanza to come from Clark's Field when the +title was made right for so many years that she was humanly anxious to +touch a tangible profit at once. But she knew only too well that her +husband was a poor business man and probably the judge was right in +telling her not to sell the Field yet. The probate judge seemed to take +a good deal of interest in them for a gentleman of his importance. So +she listened respectfully to what he went on to say.</p> + +<p>"You can do whatever you like, as I said. But if you should decide to +dispose of your husband's estate as he intended, your niece's +representative might be forced to oppose you, which would add another +bad complication to the legal troubles of Clark's Field, and necessarily +defer the time when either of you could sell the land or derive an +adequate return from it."</p> + +<p>He paused after this polite threat, to let the idea sink in.</p> + +<p>"I'm sure she and me don't want to fight," Mrs. Clark quickly replied +with a touch of humor, and the first expression that the judge had seen +upon the little girl's mute face appeared. A smile touched her lips, +flickered and went out. She sat stiffly beside her aunt in the judge's +great leather chair,—a pale, badly dressed little mouse of a girl, who +did not seem to understand the conversation.</p> + +<p>"Well, then, I take it you will be guided in your actions about your +estate by the advice of your niece's guardian, whom I shall appoint."</p> + +<p>He explained to them what a trust company was, and said that he hoped to +get the Washington Trust Company to undertake the guardianship of the +little girl. Then he dismissed them, appointing another meeting a week +hence when they were to return for final settlement of the matter. So +they left the judge's chambers. The girl neither dropped a curtesy, as +the judge would have thought suitable, nor gave him another smile, nor +even opened her lips. She faded out of his chambers after her black aunt +like a pale winter shadow.</p> + +<p>The judge thought she showed a deplorable lack of breeding. He was +conscious that he had probably saved a fortune for the girl by all the +pains he was taking in this matter and felt that at least common +politeness was his due. But one was never paid for these things except +by a sense of duty generously performed. What was duty? And off the +judge went into another thorny speculation that would have made Bright, +Seagrove, and Bright laugh, and they were not inclined to laugh either +at or with Judge Orcutt these days. For in the words of the junior +member, this old maid of a probate judge had cut them out of the fattest +little piece of graft the office had seen in a twelvemonth! If judges +had been elective in the good old Commonwealth of M——, Judge Orcutt's +chances of reelection would have been slim, for Bright, Seagrove, and +Bright had strange underground connections with the politicians then +governing the city. Perhaps the poet in the judge would have rejoiced at +such a misadventure and profited thereby. As it was, whenever Bright, +Seagrove, and Bright had business in the probate court, which was not +often, they got other lawyers to represent them. Even "eminent counsel" +shrink from appearing before a judge who knows their real character.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2> + + +<p>Adelle was not really unresponsive to the judge's kindness. She liked +the polite old gentleman,—old to fourteen because of the grizzled +mustache,—and was for her deeply impressed by her visits to the probate +judge's chambers. It was the first real event in her pale life, that and +her uncle's funeral, which seemed closely related. They made the date +from which she could reckon herself a person. What impressed her more +than the austere dignity of the judge's private rooms, with their prints +of famous personages, lined bookcases, and rich furniture, was Judge +Orcutt himself. He was the first gentleman she had ever met in any real +sense of the word. And Judge Orcutt was very much of a gentleman in +almost every sense of the word. He came from an old Puritan family, as +American families are reckoned, which had had its worthies for a young +man to respect, and its traditions, not of wealth but of culture and +breeding, kindly humanity, and an interest in life and letters. +Something of this aristocratic inheritance could be felt in his manners +by the two women who were not of his social class and who were treated +with an even greater consideration than if they had been. Adelle liked +also his sober gray suit with the very white linen and black tie, which +he wore like a man who cares more for the cleanliness and propriety of +his person than for fashion. All this and the modulated tones of his +cultivated voice had made a lively impression upon the dumb little girl. +She would have done anything in the world to please the judge, even +defying her aunt if that had been necessary. And she had always stood in +a healthy awe of her vigorous, outspoken aunt.</p> + +<p>The first occasion when Adelle had an opinion all her own and announced +it publicly and unasked was due to the judge. Of course the question of +guardianship was much discussed in their very limited circle. Joseph +Lovejoy, the manager of Pike's Livery at the corner of Church +Street,—the Pike whose son Addie Clark had disdained,—was the oldest +and most important of the "roomers." Mr. Lovejoy was of the opinion that +trust companies were risky inventions that might some day disappear in +smoke. He advised the perplexed widow to "hire a smart lawyer" to look +out for her business interests. What did an old probate judge know about +real estate? This was the occasion on which Adelle made her one +contribution: she thought that "Judge Orcutt must be wiser than any +lawyer because he was a judge." A silly answer as the liveryman said, +yet surprising to her aunt. And she added—"He's a gentleman, too," +though how the little girl discovered it is inexplicable.</p> + +<p>The news of the prospective importance of Clark's Field had quickly +spread through Church Street and the Square, where the widow's credit +much improved. Something really seemed about to happen of consequence to +the old Field and the modest remnants of the Clark family. Emissaries +from the routed speculators came to see the widow. It dribbled down from +the magnates of the local bank, the River National, by way of the +cashier to the chief clerk, that the widow Clark might easily get +herself into trouble and lose her property if she took everybody's +advice. It should be said that the River National Bank disliked these +rich upstart trust companies; also that the capitalists who had laid +envious eyes on the Field were associated with the local bank, which +expected to derive profit from this deal,-the largest that Alton had +ever known even during the boom years at the turn of the century.</p> + +<p>What wonder, then, that the widow Clark, who was a sensible enough woman +in the matter of roomers and household management and knew a bum from a +modest paying laboring man as well as any one in the profession, was +perplexed in the present situation as to the course of true wisdom? +Incredible as it may seem, it was Adelle who during this time of doubt +gave her aunt strength to resist much bad advice. Her influence was, as +might be expected, merely negative. For after that single deliverance of +opinion she made no comment on all the discussion and advice. She seemed +to consider the question settled already: it was this tacit method of +treating the guardianship as an accomplished fact that really influenced +her troubled aunt. When a certain point of household routine came up +between them, Adelle observed that, as they should not be at home on +Thursday morning, the thing would have to go over till the following +day. Thursday was the day of their appointment with the probate judge. +Mrs. Clark, of course, had not forgotten this important fact, but not +having yet made up her distracted mind she had purposely ignored the +appointment to see what her niece would say. Thus Adelle quietly settled +the point: they were to keep the appointment with the judge. Another +faint occasion of displaying will came to her, so faint that it would +seem hardly worth mentioning except that a faithful historian must +present every possible manifestation of character on the part of this +colorless heroine.</p> + +<p>It occurred when they saw the judge on Thursday. The probate judge, who +was busy with another case on their arrival, did not invite them into +his private room as on former occasions, but merely shoved across his +bench a card on which he had written a name and an address.</p> + +<p>"It's all arranged," he said to Mrs. Clark. "Just go over to the +Washington Trust Company and ask for Mr. Gardiner. He will take care of +you," and he smiled pleasantly in dismissal.</p> + +<p>The widow was much put out by this summary way of dealing, for she had +intended to pour out to the judge her doubts, though she probably knew +that in the end she should follow his advice. She hesitated in the +corridor of the court-house, saying something about not being in any +hurry to go to the Washington Trust Company. She had not fully made up +her mind, etc. But Adelle, as if she had not heard her aunt's +objections, set off down the street in the direction of the trust +company's handsome building. Her aunt followed her. The matter was thus +settled.</p> + +<p>Adelle had also felt disappointed at their brief interview; not bitterly +disappointed because she never felt bitterly about anything, but +consciously sorry to have missed the expected conference in the judge's +private chamber. She might never see him again! As a matter of fact, +although the probate court necessarily had much to do with her fate in +the settlement of the involved estate, it was not for seven years that +she had another chance of seeing the judge in chambers, and that, as we +shall discover, was on a very different occasion. Whether during all +these years Adelle ever thought much about the judge, nobody knows, but +Judge Orcutt often had occasion to recollect the pale, badly dressed +little girl who had no manners, when he signed orders and approved +papers <i>in re Adelle Clark, minor</i>.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2> + + +<p>The Washington Trust Company had grown in power to the envy of its +conservative rivals ever since its organization, and was now one of the +richest reservoirs of capital in the city. Recently it had moved into +its new home in the banking quarter of the city,—the most expensive, +commodious, and richly ornamented bank premises in B——. The Washington +Trust Company was managed by "the younger crowd," and one way in which +the new blood manifested itself was by the erection of this handsome +granite building with its ornate bronze and marble appointments. The +officers felt that theirs was a new kind of business, largely involving +women, invalids, and dependents of rich habits, and for these a display +of magnificence was "good business."</p> + +<p>When Adelle and her aunt paused inside the massive bronze doors of the +Trust Building and looked about them in bewilderment across the immense +surface of polished marble floor, it probably did not occur to either of +them that a new page in the book of destiny had been turned for them. +Yet even in Adelle's small, silent brain there must have penetrated a +consciousness of the place,—the home as it were of her new +guardian,—and such a magnificent home that it inspired at once both +timidity and pride. The two women wandered about the banking floor for +some minutes, peering through the various grilles at the busy clerks, +observing the careless profusion of notes, gold, and documents of value +that seemed piled on every desk, as if to indicate ostentatiously the +immensity of the property interests confided to the company's care. At +last, after they had been rebuffed by several busy clerks, a uniformed +attendant found them and inquired their business. The widow handed to +him the card she had received from the probate judge, and the usher at +once led them to an elegant little private elevator that shot them +upwards through the floors of the bank to the upper story. Here, in a +small, heavily rugged room behind a broad mahogany table, they met Mr. +John Gardiner, then the "trust officer" of the Washington Trust Company. +He was a heavy, serious-minded, bald man of middle age, and Adelle at +once made up her mind that she liked him far less than the judge. The +trust officer did not rise on their entrance as the judge always had +risen; merely nodded to them, motioned to some chairs against the wall, +and continued writing on a memorandum pad. Both the widow and Adelle +felt that they were not of much importance to the Washington Trust +Company, which was precisely what the trust company liked to have its +clients feel.</p> + +<p>"Well," Mr. Gardiner said at last, clearing his voice, "so you are Mrs. +John Clark and Miss Adelle Clark?"</p> + +<p>Of course he knew the fact, but some sort of introduction must be made. +Mrs. Clark, who was sitting hostilely on the edge of her chair, hugging +to herself a little black bag, nodded her head guardedly in response.</p> + +<p>"I presume you have come to see me about the guardianship matter," the +trust officer continued. Then he fussed for some moments among the +papers on his desk as if he were hunting for something, which he at last +found. He seized the paper with relief, and took another furtive look at +his visitors from under his gold glasses as if to make sure that no +mistake had been made and began again:—</p> + +<p>"At the request of Judge Orcutt,"—he pronounced the probate judge's +name with unction and emphasis,—"we have looked into the matter of the +Clark estate, and we have found, what I suppose you are already aware +of, that your husband's estate is extremely involved and with it this +little girl's interest in the property," For the first time he turned +his big bald head in Adelle's direction, and finding there apparently +nothing to hold his attention, ignored her completely thereafter, and +confined himself exclusively to the widow.</p> + +<p>He paused and cleared his throat as if he expected some defense of the +Clark estate from the widow. But she said nothing. To tell the truth, +she didn't like the trust officer's manner. As she said afterwards to +Mr. Lovejoy, he seemed to be "throwing it into her," trying to impress +her with her own unimportance and the goodness of the Washington Trust +Company in concerning itself with her soiled linen. "As if he were doing +me a big favor," she grumbled. That was in fact exactly the idea that +Mr. Gardiner had of the whole affair. If it had been left to him, as he +had told the president of the trust company, he would not have the +Washington Trust Company mix itself up in such a dubious "proposition" +as the Clark estate was likely to prove. He was of the "old school" of +banking,—a relic of earlier days,—and did not approve of the company's +accepting any but the most solid trusts that involved merely the trouble +of cutting four per cent coupons in their management. But his superior +officers had listened favorably to the request of the probate judge, +wishing always to "keep in close touch" with the judge of the court +where they had so much business, and also having a somewhat farther +vision than the trust officer, as will be seen. A recommendation by the +probate judge was to the Washington Trust Company in the nature of a +royal invitation, not to be considered on purely selfish grounds; and +besides, they already scented rich pickings in the litigious situation +of Clark's Fields. They would be stupid if they had to content +themselves with their usual one per cent commission on income. The +assistant to the president of the trust company, a lively young banker +of the "new school," Mr. Ashly Crane, who had been asked to examine into +the situation of the Clark estate, had recognized its manifold +possibilities and had recommended favorable action. In the event it +proved that the "new school" was right: the Washington Trust Company +lost nothing by its disinterested act. (It never did lose anything by +its acts of charity, and that is why it has prospered so abundantly.)</p> + +<p>"I do not know what the trust company will be able to do with the +property," the cautious Mr. Gardiner continued. "We have not yet +completed our examination: our attorneys are at present considering +certain legal points. But one thing is pretty certain," he hastened to +add with emphasis. "You must look for no income from the estate for the +present,—probably not for a term of years."</p> + +<p>This made little impression upon the women. It meant nothing at all to +Adelle, and the widow had become so accustomed to disappointments about +the Clark property that she did not move a muscle at the announcement, +though she inwardly might regret the twenty-five thousand dollars which +had been promised her husband by the other crowd. That would mean a good +deal more to her business than two or three times the amount after a +"term of years." She was getting on, and the rooming business needed +capital badly. However, she had determined to do nothing detrimental to +the interests of her husband's niece, as the probate judge had told her +she might if she listened to the seduction of immediate cash. And +fortunately the bank officer did not ask for money to pay taxes and +interest on the mortgages, which had been the bugbear of her married +life. This was the next point touched upon by the trust officer.</p> + +<p>"I presume that you are not in a financial position to advance anything +towards the expenses of the estate, which for the present may be heavy?" +He gave the widow another furtive look under his glasses, as if to +detect what money she had on her person.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Clark shook her head vigorously: that she would not do—go on +pouring money into the bottomless pit of Clark's Field! Of course the +trust company had considered this point and made up its mind already to +advance the estate the necessary funds up to a safe amount, which would +become another lien on the little girl's income from her mother's +inheritance, should there be any.</p> + +<p>This matter disposed of, the trust officer asked searching questions +about the Clark genealogy, which the widow answered quite fully, for it +was a subject on which her sister-in-law Addie had educated her so +completely that she knew everything there was to know except the exact +whereabouts of Edward S. or his heirs. Mr. Gardiner was specially +interested in Edward S., who had disappeared fifty years ago, and asked +Mrs. Clark to send him immediately all family letters bearing on Edward. +It was apparent that the trust company meant to go after Edward and his +heirs and either discover them if it were humanly possible or establish +the fact that they could safely be ignored. And they were in a much +better position, with their numerous connections and correspondents, to +prosecute such a search successfully than any one else who had tried it. +Mr. Gardiner, however, expressed himself doubtfully of their success.</p> + +<p>"We shall do our best," he said, "and let you know from time to time of +the progress we are making."</p> + +<p>And after exacting a few more signatures from the widow, who by this +time had become adept in signing "Ellen Trigg Clark," the trust officer +nodded to his visitors in dismissal.</p> + +<p>It would be difficult to say what Adelle was thinking about during this +interview. She sat perfectly still as she always did: one of her minor +virtues as a child was that she could sit for hours without wriggling or +saying a word. She did not even stare about her at the lofty room with +its colored glass windows and shiny mahogany furniture as any other +young person might. She gazed just above the bald crown of the trust +officer's head and seemed more nearly absorbed in Nirvana than a young +American ever becomes. But there is little doubt that the long interview +in the still, high room of the bank building did make an impression upon +the trust company's ward.</p> + +<p>She trailed after her aunt down the marble stairs, for the trust officer +did not trouble himself about their exit from his office as he did with +solid clients who had going estates, and the widow was too timid to +summon the bronze car from its hole in the wall. They passed through the +great banking room on the main floor, where, because of the largeness +and the decorum of this sanctuary of property, a crowd of patrons seemed +to make no disturbance. Adelle sat in reverie all the way out to Alton +in the street-car and did not wake up until they turned from the Square +into the dingy side street. Then she said, apropos of nothing,—</p> + +<p>"It's a pretty place."</p> + +<p>"What place?" snapped the widow, who realized that a whole working day +had been lost "for nothing," and the roomers' beds were still to make.</p> + +<p>"That trust place," Adelle explained.</p> + +<p>"Um," her aunt responded enigmatically, as one who would say that +"pretty is as pretty does."</p> + +<p>It had not appeared to her as a place of beauty. But to Adelle, who had +seen nothing more ornate than the Everitt Grade School of Alton, the +Second Congregational Church, and the new City Hall, the interior of the +Washington Trust Company, with its bronze and marble and windows that +shed soft violet lights on the white floors, awakened an unknown +appetite for richness and splendor, color and size. That was what she +had been thinking about without realizing it while the trust officer +talked to her aunt. She called this barbaric profusion of rich materials +"pretty," and felt, very faintly, a personal happiness in being +connected with it in some slight manner.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2> + + +<p>If the excursions to the probate court and the trust company had roused +expectations of change in their condition, they were to be disappointed. +From that afternoon when they turned into Church Street on their return +from the Washington Trust Company, the monotony and drudgery of their +former life settled down on them with an even greater insistence. The +dusty ROOMS FOR RENT sign was tucked into the front window with its +usual regularity, for do what she could, Mrs. Clark could not attain +that pinnacle of the landlady's aspirations, a houseful of permanent +roomers. The young men were inconstant, the middle-aged liable to +matrimony, the old to death, and all to penury or change of occupation +and residence. So the old fight went on as before during all the +twenty-three years of the widow Clark's married life,—a fight to exist +in a dusty, worn, and shabby fashion, with a file of roomers tramping +out the stair carpet, spotting the furniture, and using up the linen. To +be sure, two great drains upon income no longer troubled her,—Clark's +Field and the Veteran. With these encumbrances removed she could make +ends meet.</p> + +<p>After a few weeks she forgot her doubts about the wisdom of following +Judge Orcutt's advice and placing her interest in the estate together +with her niece's in care of the trust company. The manager of the +livery-stable, who was the nearest thing to permanency the house knew, +shook his head over her folly in trusting a trust company, but the +speculators and their lawyers let her severely alone, knowing that they +had been outwitted and flitting to other schemes. The Square seemed to +accept the fresh eclipse of the Clark estate after its false appearance +of coming to a crisis. And the character of the Square was fast changing +with all else these busy years. It was no longer a neighborhood center +of gossip. There were new faces—and many foreign ones—in the rows of +shops. The neighborhood was deteriorating, or evolving, as you happened +to look at it.</p> + +<p>The Washington Trust Company seemed to have quite forgotten the +existence of the Clark women except for the occasional appearance in the +mail of an oblong letter addressed in type to Mrs. Ellen Trigg Clark, +which bore in its upper left-hand corner a neat vignette of the trust +building. Adelle studied these envelopes carefully, not to say tenderly, +with something of the emotion that the trust company's home had roused +in her the only time she had been within its doors. The vignette, which +represented a considerable Grecian temple, she thought "pretty," and the +neat, substantial-looking envelope suggested a rich importance to the +communication within that also pleased the girl. She knew that it had to +do with her remotely. Yet there was never anything thrilling in these +communications from the trust company. They were signed by Mr. Gardiner +and curtly informed Mrs. Clark of certain meaningless facts or more +often curtly inquired for information,—"Awaiting your kind reply," +etc., or merely requested politely another example of the widow's +signature. They were models of brief, impersonal, business +communications. If Adelle had ever had any experience of personal +relationship she might have resented these perfunctory epistles from her +legal guardian, but for all she knew that was the way all people treated +one another. Evidently her legal guardian had no desire for any closer +personal contact with its ward, and she waited, not so much patiently as +pensively, for it to demonstrate a more lively interest in her +existence....</p> + +<p>Meanwhile there was debate in the Church Street house about a matter +that more closely touched the young girl. She had graduated from the +Everitt School the preceding June and would naturally be going on now +into the high school with her better conditioned schoolmates. But she +herself, though not averse to school, had suggested that she should stay +at home and help her aunt in the house or find a place in one of the +shops in the Square where she might earn a little money. Mrs. Clark, who +has been described as a realist, might have favored this practical plan, +had it not been that Adelle was a Clark—all that was left of them, in +fact. The widow had lived so long under the shadow of the Clark +expectations that she could not easily escape from their control now +that she was alone. A Trigg, of course, under similar circumstances +would have gone into a shop at once, but a Clark ought to have a better +education in deference to her expectations. The heiress of Clark's Field +must never conclude her education with the grades.... So finally it was +decided that Adelle should enter the high school for a year, at any +rate, and to that end a new school dress of sober blue serge was +provided, made by Adelle with her aunt's assistance.</p> + +<p>These days Adelle rose at an early hour to do the chamber work while her +aunt got breakfast, then changed her dress, looked hurriedly over her +lessons, gobbled her breakfast, and with her books and a tin lunch-box +strapped together set forth to walk the mile and a half to the high +school in order to save car-fare. There she performed her daily tasks in +a perfunctory, dead manner, not uncommon. Once an exasperated teacher +had demanded testily,—</p> + +<p>"Miss Clark, don't you ever think?"</p> + +<p>The timid child had answered seriously,—</p> + +<p>"Yes, sometimes I think."</p> + +<p>Whereat the class tittered and Adelle had a mild sensation of dislike +for the irascible teacher, who reported in "teachers' meeting" that +Adelle Clark was as nearly defective as a child of her years could be +and be "all right," and that the grades ought not to permit such pupils +to graduate into the high school. Indeed, algebra, Cæsar, and Greek +history were as nearly senseless to Adelle Clark as they could be. They +were entirely remote from her life, and nothing of imagination rose from +within to give them meaning. She learned by rote, and she had a poor +memory. It was much the same, however, with English literature or social +science or French, subjects that might be expected to awaken some +response in the mind of a girl. The only subject that she really liked +was dancing, which the gymnasium instructor taught. Adelle danced very +well, as if she were aware of being alive when she danced. But even the +athletic young woman who had the gymnasium classes reported that Adelle +Clark was too dull, too lifeless, to succeed as a dancer or athletic +teacher. These public guardians of youth may or may not have been right +in their judgments, but certainly as yet the girl had not "waked up"....</p> + +<p>Adelle's high-school career was interrupted in January, just as she had +turned fifteen, by her aunt's sickness. For the first time in forty +years, as the widow told the doctor, she had taken to her bed. "Time to +make up for all the good loafing you have missed," the young doctor +joked cheaply in reply, not realizing the hardship of invalidism, with a +houseful of roomers, in a small back bedroom near enough to the center +of activities for the sick woman to know all that happened without +having the strength to interfere. It was only the grippe, the doctor +said, advising rest, care, and food. It would be a matter of a week or +two, and Adelle was doing her best to take her aunt's place in the house +and also nurse her aunt. But Mrs. Clark never left her bed until she was +carried to the cemetery to be laid beside the Veteran in the already +crowded lot. The grippe proved to be a convenient name to conceal a +general breaking-up, due to years of wearing, ceaseless woman's toil +without hope, in the disintegrating Clark atmosphere that ate like an +acid into the consciousness even of plain Ellen Trigg, with her humble +expectations from life.</p> + +<p>Adelle was much moved by the death of her aunt, the last remaining +relative that she knew of, though the few people who saw her at this +time thought she "took it remarkably well." They interpreted her +expressionless passivity to a lack of feeling. As a matter of fact, she +had been much more attached to her aunt than to any one she had ever +known. The plain woman, who had no pretensions and did her work +uncomplainingly because it was useless to complain, had inspired the +girl with respect and given her what little character she had. Ellen +Clark was a stoic, unconsciously, and she had taught Adelle the wisdom +of the stoic's creed. The girl realized fully now that she was alone in +life, alone spiritually as well as physically, and though she did not +drop tears as she came back to the empty Church Street house from the +cemetery,—for that was not the thing to do now: it was to get back as +soon as possible and set the house to rights as her aunt would have done +so that the roomers should not be put out any further,—her heart was +heavy, nevertheless, and she may even have wondered sadly what was to +become of her.</p> + +<p>That was the question that disturbed the few persons who had any +interest in the Clark women,—the manager of the livery-stable among +them. It was plainly not the "proper thing" for the girl to continue +long in a house full of men, and irresponsible men at that. Adelle was +not aware what was the "proper thing," but she felt herself inadequate +to keeping up the establishment unaided by her aunt, although that is +what she would have liked to do, go on sweeping and making beds and +counting out the wash and making up the bills, with or without school. +But the liveryman hinted to her on her return from the funeral that she +ought to go immediately to some friend's house, or have some married +woman stay with her until her future had been determined upon. Adelle +knew of no house where she could make such a visit, nor of any one whom +she could invite to stay with her. It may seem incredible, as it did to +Mr. Lovejoy, that "folks could live all their lives in Alton like the +Clarks" and have no relatives or friends to lean upon in an emergency. +But the truth is that when a family begins to go down in this world, +after having some pretensions, it is likely to shed social relations +very fast instead of acquiring new ones. A family in a settled social +equilibrium (rarely the case in America), or one that is going up in the +human scale, is apt to acquire connections, quite apart from the +accidents of birth and social gifts, because the mental attitude is an +open and optimistic one, attracting to itself humanity instead of +timidly withdrawing into itself. Strength attracts and weakness repels +in the long run here as elsewhere. The Clarks, who had never been +considerable or numerous, had in the course of three generations +gradually lost their hold upon the complex threads of life, shiftlessly +shedding relationships as the Veteran had done, or proudly refusing +inferior connections as Addie had, until the family was left solitary in +the person of this one fifteen-year-old girl, in whom the social habit +seemed utterly atrophied. Of course, Adelle could have appealed to her +aunt's pastor, but it never occurred to her to do that or to make use of +any other social machinery. She went back to the Church Street house, +occupied her old room, and for the next few days continued the catlike +routine of her life as nearly as she could under the changed conditions.</p> + +<p>Mr. Lovejoy, who continued to be the one most concerned in her welfare, +induced her to write a crude little note to the "Washington Trust +Company, Dear Sirs," notifying them of the demise of her aunt. The +livery-stable man, who was a widower and not beyond middle age, which +does not necessarily mean in his class that the wife is dead and buried, +but merely permanently absent for one reason or another, might have +thrown sentimental eyes upon the girl if she had been different, more of +a woman.</p> + +<p>"She'll likely enough be an heiress some of these days," he said to his +employer, old John Pike.</p> + +<p>Pike was an old resident of Alton and had known all the Clarks. He +grunted as if he had heard that song before. "That's what they used to +say of her mother, Addie Clark," he remarked, remembering Addie's +superior air towards his son.</p> + +<p>"Well," his manager continued, "I see that trust company's got its signs +up all over the Field."</p> + +<p>"'T ain't the first time there's been signs there," Pike retorted, +eyeing a succulent cigar he had succeeded in extracting from an inner +pocket, "nor the last either, I expect!"</p> + +<p>"It looks as if they meant business this time."</p> + +<p>"They can't get no title," Pike averred, for he banked with the River +National, which was now quite bearish on Clark's Field. After a pause +the old liveryman asked with a broad smile,—"Why don't you go in for +the heiress, Jim?"</p> + +<p>(Mr. Lovejoy was accounted "gay," a man to please the ladies.)</p> + +<p>"Me! I never thought of it—she's nothing but a girl. The old one +pleased me better—she was a smart woman!"</p> + +<p>"The girl's got all the property, ain't she?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose so."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, you get two bites from the same cherry."</p> + +<p>The manager made no advances to the girl, however, and for that we must +consider Adelle herself as chiefly responsible. For, as a woman, or +rather the hope of a woman, she was uninteresting,—still a pale, +passive, commonplace girl. What womanhood she might expect was slow in +coming to her. Even with the halo of the Clark inheritance she could +arouse slight amorous interest in any man. And thus Adelle's +insignificance again saved her—shall we say?—from the mean fate of +becoming the prey of this "roomer."</p> + +<p>"No man will ever take the trouble to marry that girl," Mr. Love joy +remarked to his employer, "unless she gets her fortune in hard cash." In +which prophecy the widower was wrong.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2> + + +<p>In a few days Mr. Gardiner called at the Church Street house on behalf +of the trust company, to express to its ward its sympathy with her in +her bereavement and to find out what her situation was, and her needs +for the future. Adelle, sitting opposite the portly, bald-headed bank +officer in the little front room, did not feel especially excited. She +could not imagine what this visit might mean to her. She answered all +his questions in a low, colorless voice, promptly enough and +intelligently enough. Yes, her aunt was her only relative so far as she +knew. No, she had made no plans—she would like to stay where she was if +she could. It would be pretty hard to do everything alone, etc. As the +trust officer, puzzled by the situation, continued to ply her with +questions so that he might gain a clearer understanding of the +circumstances, he became more and more perplexed. This was something +quite out of his experience as a trust officer. He had supposed in +making this call that he would have merely a perfunctory duty to +perform, to ratify some obviously "sensible" plan for the future of the +institution's ward. As he happened to have other business in Alton, he +called personally instead of writing a note.</p> + +<p>But now he discovered that this fifteen-year-old girl had absolutely no +relatives, nor "proper friends," nor visible means of support except the +income from "a third-class boarding-house," as he told the president of +the trust company the next day. Clearly the company must do something +for its ward, whose fortune they were now beginning to discuss in seven +figures.</p> + +<p>"She must have a suitable allowance."</p> + +<p>That the good Mr. Gardiner saw at once. For to his thrifty, suburban +soul the situation of a girl of fifteen with large prospects in a +third-class rooming-house was truly deplorable. The dignities and +proprieties of life were being outraged: it might affect the character +of the trust company should it become known....</p> + +<p>Rising at last from the dusty sofa where he had placed his large person +for this talk, the trust officer said kindly,—</p> + +<p>"We must consider what is best to be done, my girl. Can you come to the +bank to see me next Monday?"</p> + +<p>Adelle saw no reason why she should not go to see him Monday, as high +school still seemed impossible with the house on her hands.</p> + +<p>"Come in, then, Monday morning!" And the trust officer went homewards to +confide his perplexity to his wife as trust officers sometimes do. It +was a queer business, his. As trust officer he had once gone out to some +awful place in Dakota to take charge of the remains of a client who had +got himself shot in a brawl, and brought the body back and buried it +decently in a New England graveyard with his ancestors. He had advised +young widows how to conduct themselves so that they should not be +exposed to the wiles of rapacious men. Once even he had counseled +matrimony to a client who was difficult to control and had approved, +unofficially, of her selection of a mate. A good many of the social +burdens of humanity came upon his desk in the course of the day's +business, and he was no more inhuman than the next man. He was a father +of a respectable family in the neighboring suburb of Chester. His habit +was naturally to hunt for the proper formula for each situation as it +arose and to apply this formula conscientiously. According to Mr. +Gardiner, the duty of trust companies to society consisted in applying +suitable formulas to the human tangles submitted to them by their +clients. And in the present case Mrs. Gardiner suggested the necessary +formula.</p> + +<p>"Why don't you send the girl to a good boarding-school? You say she's +fifteen and will have money."</p> + +<p>"Yes,—some money, perhaps a good deal," her husband replied. Even in +the bosom of his family, the trust officer was guarded in statement.</p> + +<p>"How much?" Mrs. Gardiner demanded.</p> + +<p>"What difference does it make how much, so long as we can pay her school +bills?"</p> + +<p>"It makes all the difference in the world!" the wife replied, with the +superior tone of wisdom. "It makes the difference whether you send her +to St. Catherine's or Herndon Hall."</p> + +<p>It will be seen that the trust officer's wife believed in that clause of +the catechism that recommends contentment with that state of life to +which Providence hath called one, and also that education should fit one +for the state of life to which he or she was to be called by Providence. +St. Catherine's, as the trust officer very well knew, was a modest +institution for girls under the direction of the Episcopal Church, for +which he served as trustee, where needy girls were cheaply provided with +a "sensible" education, and "the household arts" were not neglected. In +other words, the girls swept their rooms, made their own beds, and +washed the dishes after the austere repasts, and the fee was +correspondingly small. Whereas Herndon Hall—well, every one who has +young daughters to launch upon the troubled sea of social life, and the +ambition to give them the most exclusive companionship and no very high +regard for learning,—at least for women,—knows all about Herndon Hall, +by that name or some other equally euphonious. The fees at Herndon Hall +were fabulous, and it was supposed to be so "careful" in its scrutiny of +applicants that only those parents with the best introductions could +possibly secure admission for their daughters. There were, of course, no +examinations or mental tests of any kind.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Gardiner, who had the ambition to send her Alicia to Herndon Hall +in due course, if the trust officer felt that he could afford the +expense, opened her eyes when her husband replied to her question +promptly,—</p> + +<p>"I guess we'll figure on Herndon Hall."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Gardiner inferred that the prospects of the trust company's ward +must be quite brilliant, and she was prepared to do her part.</p> + +<p>"Why don't you ask the girl out here over Sunday?" she suggested.</p> + +<p>"Oh, she's a queer little piece," the trust officer replied evasively. +"I don't believe you would find her interesting—it isn't necessary."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h2> + + +<p>On her next visit to the splendid home of her guardian, Adelle was +received by no less a person than the president of the trust company +himself. In conference between the officers of the trust company it had +been decided that the president, his assistant, and the trust officer +should meet the girl, explain to her cautiously the nature of her +prospects, and announce to her the arrangement for her education that +they had made. But before recording this interview a word should be said +about the present situation of Clark's Field.</p> + +<p>The search that the bank had started for trace of the missing Edward S. +and his heirs had resulted as futilely as the more feeble measures taken +earlier by Samuel Clark. It is astonishing how completely people can +obliterate themselves, give them a few years! There was absolutely no +clue in all the United States for discovering this lost branch of the +Alton Clarks, nor any reason to believe in their existence except the +established fact that in 1848 Edward S., with a wife and at least three +babies, had left Chicago for St. Louis. Although the Alton branch of the +Clarks had shown no powers of multiplying,—their sole representative +now being one little girl,—nevertheless there might be a whole colony +of Clarks somewhere interested in one half of the valuable Field. But +more than fifty years had now passed since the final disappearance of +Edward S. Clark, and the law was willing to consider means of ignoring +all claims derived from him. It was the young assistant to the +president, Mr. Ashly Crane, who worked out the details of the plan by +which the restless title was to be finally "quieted" and the trust +company enabled to dispose of its ward's valuable estate. Some of the +officers and larger stockholders of the trust company were interested in +an affiliated institution known as the Washington Guaranty and Title +Company, which was prepared to do business in the guaranteeing of +real-estate titles that were from one reason or another defective, which +it is needless to say the majority are. For a reasonable sum this new +company undertook to perfect the title to Clark's Field and then to +insure purchasers and sellers against any inconvenient claims that might +arise in the future, defending the title against all comers or in case +of defeat assuming the losses. A very convenient institution in a +society where the laws of property are so intricate and sacred! As a +first step there was an extensive public advertisement for the missing +heir or heirs, and then in due form a "judicial sale" of the property by +order of court, after which the court pronounced the title to Clark's +Field, so long clouded, to be "quieted." And woe to any one who might +now dare to raise that restless spirit, be he Edward S. or any +descendant of his!</p> + +<p>This legal process of purification for Clark's Field being under way, +the ingenious mind of Mr. Ashly Crane turned to the next problem, which +was to dispose of the property advantageously. Manifestly the Washington +Trust Company could not go into the real estate business on behalf of +its ward and peddle out slices of her Field. That would not be proper, +nor would it be especially profitable to the trust company. Mr. Crane, +therefore, conceived the brilliant idea of forming a "Clark's Field +Associates" corporation to buy the undeveloped tract of land from the +trust company, who as guardian could sell it in whole or in part, and +the new corporation might then proceed at its leisure to "develop" the +old Field advantageously. For the benefit of the ignorant it maybe +bluntly stated here that this was merely a device for buying Adelle's +property cheaply and selling it at a big profit,—not as crude a method +as the other that the Veteran had almost fallen a victim to, because the +Washington Trust Company was a "high-toned" institution and did not do +things crudely; but in effect the device was the same.</p> + +<p>The Clark's Field Associates was, therefore, incorporated and made an +offer to the trust company for Clark's Field,—a fair offer in the +neighborhood of a million dollars for the fifty-acre tract of city land. +An obstacle, however, presented itself at this point, which in the end +forced the Associates to modify their plan materially. The sale had to +be approved by the probate judge, the same Judge Orcutt who had once +before befriended the unknown little girl. This time the judge examined +the scheme carefully, even asked for a list of the Associates, which was +an innocent collection of dummy names, and finally after conference with +the trust officers insisted that the ward should reserve for herself one +half the shares of the Clark's Field Associates, thus obtaining an +interest in the possible benefits to be derived from their transactions. +This was accordingly done, and the subscription to the stock of the new +corporation by some of the capitalists who had been invited to +"participate" in this juicy melon was cut down one half. They were not +pleased by the act of the probate judge, but they accepted half the +melon with good grace, assuring the judge through Mr. Crane that it was +a highly speculative venture anyhow to put Clark's Field on the market, +and the Associates might lose every penny they risked on it. The judge +merely smiled. Poet that he was, he was by no means a fool in the +affairs of this life.</p> + +<p>When Adelle made her second visit to the Washington Trust Company, the +scheme outlined above had not been perfected, but the legal process was +far enough along to show promise of a brilliant fulfillment. The "queer +little piece," as Mr. Gardiner described Adelle to his wife, had thus +grown in importance within a brief year to such dignified persons as +President West of the trust company and the wealthy stockholders who +under various disguises were embarking upon the venture of the Clark's +Field Associates. She was no longer merely the heiress of a legal mess: +she was the means by which a powerful modern banking institution hoped +to make for its inner circle of patrons a very profitable investment. So +these gentlemen examined with curiosity the shy little person who slowly +advanced across the carpeted floor of Mr. Gardiner's private office. The +president himself rose from his chair and extended to Adelle a large, +handsome, white hand with the polite greeting,—</p> + +<p>"I am very glad to meet you, Miss Clark."</p> + +<p>Adelle was more than ordinarily dumb. She had expected to see the trust +officer alone as she had the other time, and in the presence of these +strangers she took her one means of defense,—silence. The president, +however, did the talking, and he talked more humanly than stuffy Mr. +Gardiner. After expressing a deep sympathy with Adelle for the death of +her aunt (of whose existence he had not been aware before this week), he +easily shifted to the topic of Adelle's future. She must, of course, +continue her education. Adelle replied that she should like to keep on +with school, by which she meant the Alton Girls' High.</p> + +<p>"Of course, of course," the president said easily. "Every girl should +have the proper sort of education, and it is all the more important when +her responsibilities and opportunities in life are likely to be +increased by the possession of property."</p> + +<p>But Adelle did not see how she could continue at the high school, now +that her aunt had died and there was no one but herself to look after +the roomers.</p> + +<p>"Oh, very easily, very easily," the president thought. "How would you +like to go to boarding-school, my dear?"</p> + +<p>Adelle did not know all at once. She had read something about +boarding-schools in story-books, but her conception of them was hazy. +And she ventured to say out loud that they must take a "sight of money." +The president of the trust company smiled for the benefit of his +fellow-officers and proceeded to break the news of the rich expectations +awaiting the timid little girl.</p> + +<p>"I think we shall find enough money somehow to send you to a good +school," he said gayly. "You know we have some money in the bank that +will be yours,—oh, not a great deal at present, but enough to give you +a good education, provided you don't spend too much on clothes, young +lady."</p> + +<p>This was a cruel jest, considering the quality of Adelle's one poor +little serge dress which she had on, and she took it quite literally. +While absorbing the idea that she must make her clothes go as far as +possible, she made no remark.</p> + +<p>"The property that we hold in trust for you until you shall become of +age," the president resumed more seriously, "is not yet in such +condition that we can tell you exactly how much it will amount to. But +it is safe to say that all your reasonable needs will be provided for. +You'll never have to worry about money!"</p> + +<p>He congratulated himself upon the happy phrasing of his announcement. It +was cautiously vague, and yet must relieve the little girl of all +apprehension or worry. Adelle made no response. For a Clark to be told +that there was no need to worry over money was too astounding for +belief.</p> + +<p>"Now," said the president, who felt that he had done everything called +for in the situation, "I will leave Mr. Gardiner to explain all the +details to you. I hope you will enjoy your new school.... Whenever you +are in the city, come in and see us!"</p> + +<p>He shook the little girl's hand and went off with his good-looking young +assistant, whose sharp glances had made Adelle shyer than ever. The two +men smiled as they went out, as though they were saying to +themselves,—"Queer little piece to have all that money!"</p> + +<p>Mr. Gardiner took a great many words to explain to Adelle that her +guardians had thought it best "after due consideration" to send her to +an excellent boarding-school for young ladies—Herndon Hall. He rolled +the name with an unction he had learned from his wife. Herndon Hall, it +seemed, was in a neighboring State, not far from the great city of New +York, and Adelle must prepare herself for her first long railroad +journey. She would not have to take this alone, however, for Miss +Thompson, the head teacher, had telephoned the trust company that she +herself would be in B—— on the following Friday and would escort Miss +Clark to the Hall. Adelle could be ready, of course, by Friday.</p> + +<p>Here Adelle demurred. There were the roomers—what would happen to them? +And the old Church Street house—what was to become of the house? The +banker waved aside these practical woman's considerations with a smile. +Some one would be sent out from the trust company to look after all such +unimportant matters. So, intimidated rather than persuaded, Adelle left +the trust company building to prepare herself for her new life that was +to begin on the following Friday noon.</p> + +<p>They were accustomed to doing large things in the Washington Trust +Company, and of course they did small things in a large way. But the +little orphan's fate had really been the subject of more consideration +than might possibly be inferred from the foregoing. The school matter +had been carefully canvassed among the officers of the company. Mr. +Gardiner had expressed some doubts as to the wisdom of sending Adelle at +once to a large, fashionable school, even if she had the money to pay +for it. Vague glimmerings of reason as to what really might make for the +little girl's happiness in life troubled him, even after his wife's +unhesitating verdict. But President West had no doubts whatever and +easily bore down his scruples. He belonged to a slightly superior class +socially and did not hold Herndon Hall in the same awe in which it was +regarded in the Gardiner household. His daughters had friends who had +got what education they had under Miss Annette Thompson and had married +well afterwards and "taken a good position in society," which was really +the important thing. Miss Thompson herself was of a very good New York +family,—he had known her father who had been something of a figure in +finance until the crash of ninety-three,—and the head of Herndon Hall +was reputed to have an excellent "formative" influence upon her girls. +And certainly that raw little specimen who had presented herself in his +office needed all the "formative influence" she could get!</p> + +<p>"We must give her the best," he pronounced easily, "for she is likely to +be a rich woman some day."</p> + +<p>It may be seen that President West agreed with Mrs. Gardiner's practical +interpretation of the catechism. After his interview with Adelle he said +to the trust officer,—"She needs—everything! Herndon Hall will be the +very thing for her—will teach her what a girl in her position ought to +know."</p> + +<p>These remarks reveal on his part a special philosophy that will become +clearer as we get to know better Miss Annette Thompson and Herndon Hall. +The officers of the trust company felt that in sending their ward to +this fashionable girls' school, they were doing their duty by her not +only safely but handsomely, and thenceforth dismissed her from their +thoughts, except when a subordinate brought them at regular intervals a +voucher to sign before issuing a check on behalf of Adelle....</p> + +<p>"Terribly crude little piece," the president of the trust company said +of Adelle, thinking of his own vivacious daughters, who at her age had +been complete little women of the world, and of all the other pretty, +confident, voluble girls he met in his social life. "She has seen +nothing of life," he said in extenuation, by which he meant naturally +that Adelle Clark had never known how "nice people live," had never been +to dancing-school or parties, or country clubs or smart dressmakers, and +all the rest of what to him constituted a "suitable education" for a +young girl who was to inherit money.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Meanwhile the "crude little piece" returned to her old home, somewhat +shaken in mind by what had happened to her. It never entered her little +head to argue with the august officers of the trust company, who stood +to her as the sacred symbol of Authority. She must buy a trunk, pack it, +and be at the Eclair Hotel in B—— by noon on the following Friday. +Those were her orders. She looked wonderingly at the two hundred dollar +check which Mr. Gardiner had given her for the expense of making herself +ready. She had never before seen two hundred dollars. She knew only +abstractly by the way of her arithmetic that such vast sums of money +existed. And now she was expected to spend this fortune in the space of +three days upon herself. She folded up the slip of paper and tucked it +carefully into her purse. When she presented it at one of the shops in +the Square in payment for the cheap trunk she had selected, she started +a local sensation. By the time the check had traveled from the clerk to +the proprietor and thence to the River National Bank, which did not take +long, it was known in that busy neighborhood that Clark's Field had made +good at last! Here was ready money from it as evidence. Adelle Clark was +in fact the heiress that her mother Addie had been in fancy.</p> + +<p>The manager of the livery-stable may have had his regrets for the light +manner in which he had treated old Pike's suggestion. He drove the girl +himself into B—— on Friday with her new trunk strapped behind the +closed carriage and touched his high hat when she dismounted before the +flunky-guarded doors of the hotel. Adelle did not notice the hat +business: she gave her old friend and best "roomer" her hand as she said +good-bye, then slowly mounted the stone steps of the hotel. And that was +the last that Church Street saw of the Clarks.</p> + +<p>The liveryman, slowly retracing his way across the bridge to Alton, +mused upon the picture that the little girl presented in her blue school +suit, going up the steps of the Eclair Hotel. It was all like a stage +story, he felt, and he thought long about the Clarks, whom he had known +for two generations and about human fate generally. He summed up his +reflections in one enigmatic exclamation,—"That blamed old pasture!"</p> + +<p>Adelle was an "heiress." Already she had been whisked away from Church +Street to her new life. And all because of "that blamed old +pasture"—otherwise Clark's Field.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h2> + + +<p>The civilized inhabitants of our twentieth-century world are acquainted +with many more kinds of torture than the ingenious managers of the +Inquisition ever dreamed of in their most lurid nightmares. And of all +these peculiarly modern forms of torture, perhaps the fashionable girls' +school such as Herndon Hall takes first rank. A boys' school of the same +order—conducted under the patronage of some holy saint's name—is often +pretty bad, but it cannot rival the girls' school because women are more +skillful in applying social torture and have a thousand ways of doing it +to a man's or boy's one. Even among the softest and snobbiest of boys +and masters there will always remain a residuum of male self-respect. If +the newcomer, no matter how wrongly classed, proves that he has physical +courage, or an aptitude for sports, or even a sunny, common-sense +disposition, he will quickly escape from his probationary period of +torture and become tolerated; while if a girl appears among her future +schoolmates with an ill-made, unfashionable frock, or has manners that +betray less sophistication than is to be expected, she may never survive +the torture that begins on the instant and follows her relentlessly, in +the schoolroom and out, until she either adapts herself to her +environment, becoming in turn a torturer, or is removed to a more +congenial environment.</p> + +<p>Adelle Clark presented to the little world of Herndon Hall a very +vulnerable appearance when she arrived at the school on that Friday +evening. She was still wearing the blue serge school dress that she and +her aunt had made for her high-school début, also some coarse, faded +brown stockings, and stout cheap shoes, not to mention an unmentionable +hat of no style at all. She had taken that unfortunate joke of the trust +company's president literally: she must not waste her substance upon +clothes. Even without this inhibition she had scarcely the skill and the +courage necessary to spend her two hundred dollars to advantage in three +days. So she had bought herself a trunk, a few suits of much-needed +heavy underwear, some handkerchiefs, and a coat that she had desired all +winter, a thick, clumsy affair that completely enveloped her slight +figure. Then her imagination of wants had given out.</p> + +<p>The young teacher, who had taken Miss Thompson's place because of a +sudden indisposition that attacked the head mistress, had made Adelle +uncomfortably aware that something was wrong, but she put down her +coolness and unsympathetic silence during their brief journey to the +fact that Miss Stevens was a "teacher" and therefore felt "superior," +"Rosy," as the older Hall girls called Miss Stevens, was not at all +"superior" in her attitude to the girls. She dressed quite smartly and +youthfully and was their best confidante. But she had received a shock +when she saw "that little fright" (as she reported to Miss Thompson) +timidly sitting on the edge of her chair in the parlor of the Eclair +Hotel. "Where can she come from?" she had said to herself; and later she +had supplemented this query by thinking, "wherever it was, she had +better go back to it as fast as she can—the little fright!"</p> + +<p>Fortunately Adelle did not understand the glances that the elegant young +women who were chattering in the Hall drawing-room before dinner cast +upon her when she was introduced to her schoolmates. Nor did she +immediately comprehend the intention of the insults and tortures to +which she was submitted during the ensuing year. She felt lonely: she +missed her aunt and even the "roomers" more than she had expected to. +But gradually even into her dumb mind there penetrated a sense of +undeserved ignominy, not clearly localized, because she did not possess +a sufficient knowledge of sophisticated manners to realize the refined +nature of her torture. She had merely an accumulating sense of pain and +outrage. She was not happy in Herndon Hall: she did not know it until +afterwards, but that was the plain truth. Nobody wanted her there, and +she knew enough to understand it. Even a cat or a dog has sufficient +social sense for that!</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Externally Herndon Hall was all that was charming and gracious—a much +more beautiful and refined home than Adelle had ever seen. It occupied +one of those spacious old manorial houses above the Hudson, where the +river swept in a gracious curve at the foot of the long lawn. An avenue +of old trees led up to the large stone house from the high road half a +mile away. There were all sorts of dependencies,—stables, greenhouses, +and ornamental gardens of the old-fashioned kind,—which were carefully +kept up so that the Hall resembled a large private estate, such as it +was meant to be, rather than a school. It was popularly supposed that +Herndon Hall had once been the country-place of Miss Thompson's people, +which was not true; but that shrewd woman of the world, recognizing all +the advantages of an aristocratic background, kept up the place on a +generous footing, with gardeners, stablemen, and many inside servants, +for which, of course, the pupils paid liberally. The Hall was run less +as a school than as a private estate. Many of the girls had their own +horses in the stable, and rode every pleasant afternoon under the care +of an old English riding-master, who was supposed to have been "Somebody +in England" once. (Later on, when the motor became popular the girls had +their own machines, but that was after Adelle's time.) There was lawn +tennis on the ample lawns, and this with the horseback riding and +occasional strolls was the only concession to the athletic spirit of the +day.</p> + +<p>The schoolrooms were not the feature of the Hall that one might expect. +They were confined to a small wing in the rear, or the basement, and +there were no laboratories or other paraphernalia of modern education. +The long drawing-room, with its recessed windows facing the river, was +hung with "old masters"—a few faded American protraits and some recent +copies of the Italian school. It was also furnished luxuriously and had +books in handsome bindings. But educationally, in any accepted sense of +the word, Herndon Hall was quite negligible, as all such institutions +for the care of the daughters of the rich must be, as long as the chief +concern of its patrons is to see their daughters properly married and +"taking a good position in society." Adelle quickly perceived that, +though she had been reckoned a dull pupil in the Alton Girls' High +School, she had much more than enough book knowledge to hold her own in +the classes of her new school. If it is difficult to say what is a good +education for a boy whose parents can afford to give him "the best," it +is almost impossible to solve the educational riddle for his sister. She +must have good manners, an attractive person, and, less clearly, some +acquaintance with literature, music, and art, and one modern language to +enable her to hold her own in the social circles that it is presumed she +will adorn. At least that was the way Miss Thompson looked at the +profound problem of girls' education. She herself was accounted +"accomplished," a "brilliant conversationalist," and "broadly cultured," +with the confident air that the best society is supposed to give, and +her business was to impart some of this polish to her pupils. +"Conversation," it may be added, was one of the features of Herndon +Hall.</p> + +<p>Art, music, and literature did not seem to awaken Adelle's dormant mind +any more than had the rigorous course of the public schools. She did as +most of the girls did,—nothing,—coming unprepared day after day to her +recitations to be helped through the lessons by the obliging teachers, +who professed to care little for "mere scholarship" and strove rather to +"awaken the intelligence" and "stir the spirit," "educate the taste," +and all the rest of the fluff with which an easy age excuses its +laziness. The girls at Herndon Hall impudently bluffed their teachers or +impertinently replied that they "didn't remember," just like their papas +and future husbands when they were cornered on the witness stand by +inconvenient questions about shady transactions.</p> + +<p>The tone of the school was distinctly fashionable, also idle and +luxurious, which was what its patrons desired. Many of the mothers and +other female relatives of the girls, besides the "old girls" themselves, +ran up to the school from New York, which was not far away, bringing +with them a rich atmosphere of jewels, clothes, and gossip that seemed +to hang about the large drawing-room of the stately stone mansion. The +more fortunate pupils found frequent excuses for getting down to the gay +city for the theater and parties, and there were besides boys from a +neighboring college, with parties to the races, all discreetly +chaperoned, of course.</p> + +<p>Miss Thompson was at great pains to maintain what the "old Hall girls" +called the "tone of Herndon," so that careful mothers and fathers should +have no hesitation in confiding to it their daughters from fear that +they might encounter "undesirable associates." In all the years of its +existence Miss Thompson had never admitted a member of a certain +religious creed. Yet latterly there had been rumors that the Hall was +not what it once had been. There were too many "Western" girls: some +said Herndon was getting "Pittsburghy." There were certain lively +daughters of Western millionaires, two in especial from the great State +of California whom Adelle later on was thrown with, who did not add to +the exclusive atmosphere of the Hall.</p> + +<p>The path of the manager of a fashionable school is by no means an easy +one. It is, in fact, as Miss Thompson had found, more difficult than the +famous eye of the needle. For if she were so scrupulous as to bar out +all the daughters of new wealth, she was in danger of lacking that +material support without which Herndon Hall could not be maintained. And +if she admitted too freely rich "Western girls" whose parents were +"nobodies," but were keenly anxious to have their daughters become +"somebodies," she was in danger of watering her wine to the point where +it would lose all its potency. A constant equilibrium between the +good-family class and the merely rich must be maintained if the school +was to preserve its position. And so it can be understood why the +proprietor and the teachers of Herndon Hall carefully scrutinized Adelle +on her first appearance. Would she merely water their precious wine? If +so she must be very rich, indeed, to compensate for her diluting +presence. Miss Thompson had accepted her on the strength of President +West's personal letter, and it did not take her long to discover that +she had made a grave mistake. Adelle was all water!</p> + +<p>She folded up her napkin at dinner in the thrifty manner of the Church +Street house. She ate her soup from the point of her spoon, and the +wrong spoon, and she wore her one dress from the time she got up in the +morning until she went to bed. If it had not been for the solid social +position of President West and the prestige of the trust company, whose +ward she was, it is probable that Adelle would have been sent packing by +the end of the second day. As it was, the head mistress said to Miss +Stevens, with a sigh of commendable Christian resignation,—"We must do +our best for the poor little thing—send her in to me after dinner."</p> + +<p>When Adelle entered the private sitting-room of the head mistress, she +expected to be given directions about her classes. Not at all. Miss +Thomson, who still seemed to be suffering from the indisposition that +Adelle found frequently attacked her, looked her over coldly as she +sipped her coffee and remarked that she "must have something fit to wear +at once." She put the little girl through a careful examination as to +the contents of her trunk, with the result that in a few days Adelle's +wardrobe was marvelously increased with a supply of suitable frocks for +all occasions, slippers, lingerie, and hats, and the bill was sent to +the trust company, which honored it promptly without question, not +knowing exactly what a girl ought to cost. Having equipped her pupil +"decently," Miss Thompson observed "that she didn't have an idea how to +wear her clothes," but she trusted to the spirit of the school to +correct that deficiency. Next she sent Adelle to the dentist and had her +teeth straightened,—a painful operation that dragged through several +years at great cost of time and money, and resulted finally in a set of +regular teeth that looked much like false ones. Having provided for her +outside, the teachers turned their attention to her manners and "form," +and here lay Adelle's worst mental torture. That young teacher, "Rosy" +Stevens, who had fetched her from B——, had this task. "Rosy," who was +only thirty, was supposed to be having "a desperate affair of the heart" +with an actor, which she discussed with the older girls. She was the +most popular chaperone in the school because she was "dead easy" and +connived at much that might have resulted scandalously. "Rosy" shared +the girls' tastes for sweets, dress, and jewelry, and smuggled into the +Hall, not candy—because that was openly permitted in any quantity—but +forbidden "naughty" novels.</p> + +<p>Miss Stevens had the deadliest weapon at her command that Adelle had +ever encountered—sarcasm. "My dear girl," she would say before a +tableful of girls, in the pityingly sweet tone of an experienced woman +of the world to a vulgar nobody, "how can you speak like that!" (This +when Adelle had emitted the vernacular grunt in answer to some +question.) "You are not a little ape, my dear." Then she would mimic in +her dainty drawl Adelle's habit of speech, which, of course, set all the +girls at the table tittering. Adelle naturally did not love "Rosy," but +she was helpless before her darts. The other teachers generally ignored +her presence, treating her with the perfect politeness of complete +indifference. Once, soon after her arrival, the child was caught talking +with one of the housemaids in the upper corridor, and was severely +reprimanded. She had merely sought for a ray of human sunlight, but she +was told that young women of her station in life were never familiar +with servants. In a word, Adelle was more nearly encased in an airproof +lining at Herndon Hall than ever before, and remained for another two +years the pale, furtive, undeveloped child she was when she first came. +Some cures, it seems, are so radical that they paralyze the nervous +system and develop rather than cure the disease. Such was the case of +Adelle in Herndon Hall. For nearly two years she sneaked about its +comfortable premises, a silent, forlorn, miserable little being, +frightened at what she could not understand, ready for a blow, but not +keen enough to put up a protecting hand. The verdict of the school was +that "the little fright of a Clark girl" was too stupid to learn +anything. As one girl said to "Rosy,"—"The Clark girl must have piles +of money to be here at all."</p> + +<p>And the teacher replied,—"She'll need it all, every cent, she's so +deadly common."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Let no reader suppose that Herndon Hall in which Adelle was suffering +her martyrdom is typical of all fashionable girls' boarding-schools. In +a real sense nothing in this life is sufficiently universal to be +considered typical. There are to-day many schools that have some of the +characteristics of Herndon Hall, though fortunately fewer than there +were when Adelle got her education. But even at that time there were +many excellent schools for girls where the teachers made sincere efforts +to teach the girls something, where the girls were human and well-bred, +and the teachers were kind and sympathetic and would not have tolerated +such conduct as went on almost openly in this "exclusive" establishment, +nor such brutal treatment as the girls dealt out to Adelle.</p> + +<p>Herndon Hall, with its utterly false standards of everything that +concerns woman's being, was the fruit of those ideals that have obtained +about women, their position and education, for many centuries. And +Herndon Hall was Adelle's accident—the fate to which the trust officers +in all good will consigned her. There always is and must be, even in our +own enlightened age of feminist movements, a Herndon Hall—perhaps more +than one. Parents who believe that marriage and "a suitable position in +society" are all there is in life for a woman will always create Herndon +Halls.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h2> + + +<p>If the history of Clark's Field and those whom it concerned were an +idealistic or romantic story, striving to present the world as it ought +to be rather than as it often happens to be, our little heroine should +at this crisis awaken from her apathy. Her spark of a soul should be +touched by some sympathetic agent,—one of the teachers who had lived +sadly and deeply, or some generous exception among her school-fellows, +who would extend a protecting wing to the persecuted girl. No doubt even +in Herndon Hall there were such who might have answered at a pinch to +regenerate Adelle and start her forth on a series of physical if not +spiritual adventures that would be exhilarating to the reader. But +nothing of the sort came into her life at this period. She was too +unpromising to arouse the incipient Samaritans.</p> + +<p>There was, of course, the religious or rather the church side of the +school in which Adelle might have taken refuge. This consisted of +attending the small Episcopal Church in the neighboring village, where +the excellent rector, a married man and the father of daughters, often +directed his discourses at the Hall pews. But Adelle was no more +religiously minded than her worldly little associates. There was nothing +in the service of ritualistic beauty to arouse a latent +sensuousness—nothing of color or form or sound. Religion in fact had +even less to do with daily life in Herndon Hall, in spite of weekly +church and morning prayers, than it had in the Church Street house. +There was more or less talk about "the Church" and "the spiritual life," +but, as Adelle soon perceived, the girls lied, cheated in their lessons, +spoke spitefully of one another—did even worse—quite as people acted +in the world outside. Even the teachers, she learned after a time, +failed to connect the religious life with their personal conduct. +"Rosy," the teacher with whom she had most to do the first year, aimed +to be the companion rather than the guide of the girls in their frequent +escapades. Miss Thompson herself, it was whispered among the older +girls, suffered from something worse than "neuralgia" in those frequent +attacks which incapacitated her. As for the general morale of the +school, even more serious things could be said if it were not for fear +that the authorities of Herndon Hall and others of a similar mind might +ban this tale as unfit for "nice girls" to peruse, although they +tolerate the deeds themselves. Of such matters, to be sure, Adelle knew +nothing until later, for at first she was so much an outsider that she +was not allowed to look beneath the decorous surface, and experienced +merely petty attacks of selfishness and snobbery.</p> + +<p>She might never have got completely beneath the surface if she had not +been obliged to spend all her vacations at the Hall. The teachers were +then off duty, when they were not visiting at the homes of their pupils, +and spoke and acted before the silent girl quite freely because they +considered her lacking mentally and harmless. And she was allowed to +converse occasionally with the house servants, who sometimes spoke +openly about Herndon Hall. She knew that the teachers had lively parties +where wine was served freely. Adelle was supposed to be in her room on +the third floor when these festivities were in progress, but she could +not be unaware of them. And once she encountered "Rosy" in a curious +state of exaltation that filled her with fear. At that time she did not +understand the working of wine upon the spirit....</p> + +<p>She was, of course, often dull and lonely, especially the first summer +in the empty house above the steaming river. It was too hot much of the +time to do more than loll about the porches with a book or some sewing. +She tried to do a little gardening because she liked flowers, and +occasionally took walks alone into the country. It was a lazy, +unwholesome existence, and she was surprised to find herself looking +forward to the day when her tormentors would return and the routine of +school life would begin once more. During this first long vacation Mrs. +Gardiner made a feeble effort "to do something" for the trust company's +ward. She asked Adelle for a week's visit in the mountains, and shy as +she was Adelle longed for that week at the end of August as an escape +from prison. But, alas, the Gardiner children inopportunely contracted +some minor disease and Mrs. Gardiner wrote to recall her invitation. +Providence seemed determined to do nothing more for Adelle at present.</p> + +<p>The only other event of this twelve weeks was the letter she wrote to +Mr. Lovejoy, the manager of the livery-stable in Alton. This was the +result of an acute attack of loneliness when, after a thorough canvass +of her friends, Mr. Lovejoy's name was the only one she could think of. +She told him in her little letter about the school, said she missed the +Church Street house, and asked specifically after certain "roomers." But +she never received a reply. Whether the teachers suppressed Mr. +Lovejoy's letter, or he had never received Adelle's, or, which was more +likely, he was not sufficiently stimulated by the girl's epistle to +answer her, she never knew. After that one attempt Adelle made no effort +to reach back into her past: she accepted the present with that strange +stoicism that young people sometimes exhibit.</p> + +<p>At last when she had laboriously completed "Little Dorrit" and was +beginning heavily upon the "Christmas Stories," the vacation came to an +end and the Herndon girls returned for the fall term. Adelle was now a +familiar figure to them, and therefore less interesting to snub. She was +merely ignored, which did not hurt her. Whatever might have been her +slender expectations of happiness, she must have long since given up any +idea of accomplishing them like other girls. She was becoming a perfect +small realist, content to take the facts of life for what they seemed. +She watched without conscious pain or envy the flurry of greetings and +boastful exchanges of experiences among the girls the first day of their +return to school. She was either ignored or passed by with a polite nod +and a "Hello, Adelle! Did you have a good time with Rosy?"—while the +other girls gathered into knots and resorted to each others' rooms for +deeper confidences. It was an old story now, being an outsider, and the +small, unobtrusive girl of fifteen was fast sinking into a state of +apathy—the most dangerous condition of all.</p> + +<p>The new school year, however, brought her something—the arrival of a +friend. As she was dawdling with a book in a corner of the drawing-room, +watching a circle of "old girls" who were whispering and giggling over +some vacation tale, a small voice came to her ears,—</p> + +<p>"Is it that you also are strange here?"</p> + +<p>Adelle was so surprised at being addressed, also at the foreign-looking +girl who had spoken, that she did not answer, and the other continued +with a smile on her singularly red lips,—</p> + +<p>"I speak English ver—ver badly!"</p> + +<p>"What is your name?" Adelle asked bluntly.</p> + +<p>"Diane Merelda," the girl said in a liquid tone.</p> + +<p>"What?" Adelle asked with puckered brows.</p> + +<p>"Di-ane Merel-da," came more slowly in the same soft tone. "See!" She +took with a gracious movement the pencil from Adelle's hand and wrote on +a piece of paper the name, and added beneath in small letters "F. de M."</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Adelle, "what do those mean?" pointing to the letters +beneath.</p> + +<p>"Fille de Marie—a daughter of the Blessed Virgin," the girl translated +sweetly.</p> + +<p>Adelle looked at the stranger in bewilderment. She was a dainty person, +as small as Adelle, but a perfectly formed young woman. Her black hair +was tightly braided over her small head, in a fashion then strange, and +her face was very pale, of a natural pallor emphasized by the line of +carmine lips. Her eyes were black and wide. She smiled gently, +contentedly, upon Adelle. Altogether she was an unusual phenomenon to +the young American. She explained herself volubly if not fluently in +broken English, pausing every now and then with a charming birdlike toss +of her little black head and, "You say so, no?"—waiting for Adelle's +nod to dash on into further intricacies of speech.</p> + +<p>Miss Diane Merelda, as she told Adelle Clark, was the daughter of a +wealthy Mexican whose acquaintance with Americans had so liberalized him +that he preferred to educate his children in the States and in schools +not under Catholic control. Señorita Diane had left her father's home in +Morelos earlier than intended, however, because of the outbreak of an +insurrection in the province, in which her father was concerned. As his +haçienda near Morelos was not safe on account of brigands, Señor Merelda +had sent his wife and daughter abroad to join his sons, and so Diane had +reached Herndon Hall by the way of Madrid, Paris, and New York, after a +summer spent with relatives in Spain. Her mother had learned of Herndon +Hall from a chance traveling companion, and in some way had induced Miss +Thompson to waive her strict requirements for admission.</p> + +<p>From her way of dressing her hair to her pointed slippers and broken +English, the little Mexican was even more markedly different from the +Herndon type than Adelle, and though the older girls knew enough of the +world to recognize a distinction in differences, Diane did not seem to. +She was gracious to all, and Adelle happened to be the first girl she +could speak to while she waited for her mother, who was closeted with +Miss Thompson. Here was Adelle's chance, although she did not recognize +it as such. They talked for an hour, rather Diane talked and Adelle did +her best to understand the rapid, lisping, birdlike notes of the +foreigner. She learned that Diane had a brother in a school near St. +Louis, another in a technical college, and still another now in Germany. +The Merelda family seemed much scattered, but that did not disturb the +little Mexican.</p> + +<p>"We shall all be back in Morelos sometime!" She added sweetly, "Perhaps +you will come to Mexico with me, no?"</p> + +<p>Adelle soon learned all about Madrid, the Spanish relatives, the sight +of the young King of Spain at San Sebastian, the trip to Lourdes which +the family had taken in hope that the holy cure might help her mother's +lame knee, and too much else to relate here. Señorita Diane was +exceedingly loquacious: her little tongue wove in and out of the new +idiom with surprising facility, forever wagging in a low, sweet babble +of nothings. Adelle, as has been sufficiently indicated, absorbed +passively the small and the large facts of life. Diane was like a +twittering bird on a tiny twig that shook with the vehemence of her +expression. She reacted instinctively to every stimulus from a new +toothbrush to the sight of a motor-car, and she preferred not to react +alone. Thus Adelle did more talking of her blunt, bald kind to her new +friend than she had accomplished hitherto all her life. She explained +Herndon Hall literally to the stranger, while Diane exclaimed in three +languages.</p> + +<p>The presence of the little Mexican in the school did much to ameliorate +Adelle's lonely lot this second year. She formed a connecting link of a +sort between her and the rest of her schoolmates, who liked the +foreigner. Diane reported fully to Adelle what the other girls were +doing,—how Betty Langton was in love with an actor and for this reason +went to New York almost every week on one excuse or another; how the two +Californians, Irene and Sadie Paul, had a party in their room the night +before, with wine, much wine. Diane shook her head wonderingly over all +these doings of "the Americans." American girls seemed to her all +"queer," and, though she did not say so, rather vulgar and underbred. +Oddly enough she put Adelle apart in this sweeping judgment, for she was +not able to appreciate Adelle's common accent and primitive manners. +Adelle did not snub nor condescend nor do "naughty" things, and so, from +the Mexican's standard, a simple and somewhat antiquated one, Adelle was +a lady. Diane concluded that she must be poor and for that reason the +other girls treated her badly. To be poor was no disgrace in the eyes of +the Mexican. Many of the best people she had known, including her +Spanish relatives, were dreadfully poor, but none the less to be +considered. Poverty was a matter of God's will in the delightful Latin +sense of the word, not a matter of inherited personal disgrace as in a +free, Anglo-Saxon democracy.</p> + +<p>"I do not like your America," she said gravely to Adelle after she had +been a couple of months in the school. "Not to live in always when I am +married."</p> + +<p>"What's the matter with America?" Adelle asked.</p> + +<p>"It is all money, money," the little Mexican replied. "You come to see +nothing in your heart but dollars, dollars, dollars. It makes the heart +heavy."</p> + +<p>Adelle, who had never looked at the world in this light, thought Diane a +little "queer." Nevertheless they were good friends as school-girl +friendships go and consoled each other for what they lacked in their +common environment.</p> + +<p>Another event of this new year was perhaps even more momentous to Adelle +than the arrival of the little Mexican, and that was the visit paid to +her shortly after her sixteenth birthday by one of the trust company's +officers. It was Mr. Ashly Crane—the new trust officer, in fact—who +rode up the winding avenue from the river road in one of the noisy, +new-fangled motors that announced itself from afar. Mr. Gardiner, it +seemed, had been retired from his position as trust officer and was no +longer to be the human symbol of Adelle's wardship to the trust company. +The new trust officer had not of design chosen the occasion of the +ward's birthday to pay her a visit. Happening to be in the neighboring +city of Albany with a few hours on his hands before he could make +connections for the West, he bethought himself of the trust company's +young charge and ran out to look over the school and incidentally +Adelle. No one from the Washington Trust Company had ever paid its ward +a visit,—Adelle was the only unvisited girl in the school,—but Mr. +Ashly Crane was the kind of vigorous young banker, not yet quite forty, +who could be depended upon to "keep in personal touch" with all his +clients. That is why, probably, he had superseded Mr. Gardiner, who had +a staid habit of relying upon printed forms and the mail.</p> + +<p>Mr. Ashly Crane was a good-looking, keen American banker, who paid +strict attention to his manners, clothes, and habits. He was ambitious, +of course, and had been so busily climbing upwards from his first +clerkship in the trust company that he had not yet married. Very likely +he felt that with his ever-widening horizon of prospects it would not be +wise to anchor himself socially to any woman, who might prove to be a +drag upon his future. He was still well within the marriageable limits +and looked even younger. Nothing so well preserves youth as Success, and +of this tonic Mr. Ashly Crane had had an abundance. Mr. Crane, it should +not be thought, had armed himself with a bunch of enormous red roses +from the leading florist of Albany and set forth upon his expedition +with any formulated plot against the little heiress who was the +company's ward. He recalled her in fact as a most unattractive, gawky +little girl, who must have changed inconceivably for the better if she +were to interest Mr. Ashly Crane personally. But the Clark estate, under +the skillful method of treatment for which he was largely responsible, +was growing all the time, and thanks to the probate judge's precaution, +Adelle would ultimately reap rather more than one half of the earnings +of the Clark's Field Associates. Already her expenses, represented by +the liberal checks to Herndon Hall, were a mere nothing in the total of +the income that went on rolling up in conservative bonds and stocks that +were safely stowed away in the vaults under the Washington Trust +Company. It seemed only proper that the sole representative of so much +tangible property should be accorded every consideration by those +legally constituted her servants and guardians. Single motives are more +rarely found in life than in art, and Mr. Ashly Crane's motives this +fine April morning were quite typically hybrid.</p> + +<p>Whatever incipient anticipations of the girl herself he might have +entertained during his ride were immediately dissipated as soon as +Adelle entered the drawing-room from the class whence she had been +summoned. She was a little larger, perhaps, than he remembered her, but +essentially the same awkward, homely child, and she was now wearing an +ugly harness upon her teeth that further disfigured her. Mr. Ashly Crane +was an observant man, and he became at once merely the business man, +solely intent upon performing his duty and getting back to Albany in +time to catch his train. He presented his roses, which Adelle took from +him clumsily and allowed to lie across her lap, while with legs spread +apart to sustain their burden she listened to what he had to say. Mr. +Crane explained to her briefly Mr. Gardiner's retirement and his own +recent elevation to the post of being her nominal guardian, and then +inquired if everything was satisfactory in the school. When Adelle +replied, yes, she guessed so, he observed that the Hall was prettily +located above the river with a good view and that a girl ought to have a +fine time in such a pleasant country.</p> + +<p>"What do you do with yourself when you are not studying?" he concluded +in a patronizing tone.</p> + +<p>"Oh," Adelle responded vaguely, "I don't know. Nothing much—read some +and take walks."</p> + +<p>The new trust officer was enough of a human being to realize the +emptiness of this reply, and for a few moments was puzzled. This was a +woman's job, rather than a man's, he reflected sagely. However, being a +man he must do the best he could to win the girl's confidence, and after +all Herndon Hall had the highest reputation.</p> + +<p>"They treat you right?" he inquired bluntly.</p> + +<p>The girl murmured something in assent, because she could think of +nothing better to say. It was quite impossible for her to phrase the +sense of misery and indignity that was nearly constant in her mind.</p> + +<p>"The teachers are kind?" the trust officer pursued.</p> + +<p>"I guess so," she said, with a dumb look that made him uncomfortable.</p> + +<p>He rose nervously and walked across the room. As he gazed out of the +open window at the distant prospect across the "Noble River" (so +described in the dainty leaflet sent forth by the school) "from the +ivy-shrouded old stone Hall," he caught sight of a party of girls riding +off on horseback for their daily excursion. That gave him an idea.</p> + +<p>"You ride, too?" he inquired, turning again to the girl.</p> + +<p>"No, I haven't any horse," she replied simply. "You have to have your +own horse."</p> + +<p>"But you can have a horse if you want to ride," the trust officer +hastily remarked. "Riding is a very good exercise, and I should think it +would be fine in this country."</p> + +<p>Here was something tangible that a man could get hold of. The girl +looked pale and probably needed healthful exercise. If other girls had +their own horses, she could have one. It was really ridiculous how +little she was spending of her swelling income. And he proceeded at once +to take up this topic with Miss Thompson, who presently arrived upon the +scene. Mr. Ashly Crane was much more successful in impressing the head +mistress of Herndon Hall with the importance of the ward of the +Washington Trust Company than in probing the heart of the lonely little +girl. He gave the elegant Miss Thompson to understand clearly that Miss +Adelle Clark was to have every advantage that money could buy, not +merely music and art as extras, but horses,—he even put it in the +plural,—a groom, and if she wanted it a private maid, which he was told +was never permitted. Miss Thompson quickly gathered from his tone and +his words that Miss Adelle Clark's expectations were such as to insure +her the most careful consideration in every respect, and if Herndon Hall +could not provide her with all the advantages to which wealth was +entitled, her guardians would quickly remove her from the school. Miss +Thompson accompanied the trust officer to the door out of earshot of +Adelle and assured him haughtily that Herndon Hall which sheltered a +Steigman of Philadelphia, a Dyboy of Baltimore, not to mention a Miss +Saltonsby from his own city, knew quite as well as he what was fitting +under the circumstances. However, they shook hands as two persons from +the same world and parted in complete understanding. Adelle had already +slipped off with her armful of roses.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII</h2> + + +<p>From the moment, when she emerged upon the corridor that led to the +schoolrooms with that huge bunch of American Beauty roses in her arms, a +new period of her school life began. The girls, of course, had seen from +their desks the arrival of the motor-car and its single occupant,—a +Man,—and the older girls who had peeked into the drawing-room reported +that Mr. Ashly Crane was a very smart-looking man, indeed. When a woman +first receives flowers from a man, an event of importance in her +existence has happened. Señorita Diane, who was an incorrigible +sentimentalist, went into ecstasies over the roses and at once whispered +about the school that they were the fruit of an admirer, not of a mere +relative. Miss Thompson talked to her teachers, especially to "Rosy," +and it became known throughout the Hall that the ugly duckling was +undoubtedly Somebody, and she was treated thereafter with more +consideration. If the trust company had thought to take notice of its +ward's existence earlier in her school career, Adelle might have been +saved a very disagreeable year of her life.</p> + +<p>In due time there arrived a beautiful saddle-horse and a groom, both +selected with judgment by Mr. Ashly Crane and charged to the ward's +account. The appearance of the blooded mount did more than anything else +to acquaint Adelle with the meaning and the power of money. In many +subtle ways she began to feel a change in the attitude of her world +towards her, and naturally related it immediately to the possession of +this unknown power. A dangerous weapon had thus been suddenly placed in +her hands. She could command respect, attention, even consideration, +thanks to this weapon—money. It was merely human that as the years went +on the silent child, who had absorbed many unhappy impressions of life +before discovering this key to the world, should become rapidly cynical +in her use of her one great weapon of offense and defense. The next few +years of her life was the period when she exercised herself in the use +of this weapon, although she did not become really proficient in its +control until much later.</p> + +<p>A suitable habit was quickly provided, and she set forth each pleasant +day with that little group of older girls who enjoyed this privilege, +accompanied always by her own groom, who was a well-trained servant and +effaced himself as nearly as possible. The California girls rode, and +that Miss Dyboy of Baltimore, but the little Mexican, though she had +ridden all her life, had no horse, and as long as affairs continued +unsettled in Morelos was not likely to have one. When Adelle discovered +this fact, she did not play the part of the unselfish heroine, I am +sorry to say, and allow Diane to use her horse even on those days when +she did not care to ride (as of course she would do in a well-conducted +story). Instead she merely wrote a little letter to Mr. Crane at the +Washington Trust Company, telling him rather peremptorily to send her +another horse. Somewhat to her surprise the second horse arrived in due +season, and now she lent the beast to her little friend, carefully +refraining from giving up her title to him. For a second time she felt +the sweet sense of unlimited power in response to desire. She wrote her +letter as Aladdin rubbed his magic lamp, and straightway her desire +became fact! It was modern magic. This time it happened that her desire +was a generous one and brought her the approval as well as the envy of +the small social world at the Hall. But that was purely accidental: the +next time she should try her lamp, as likely as not the cause might be +purely selfish. As a matter of fact she soon discovered that, by +distributing her favors and lending her extra horse to a number of +schoolmates, she could enlarge her circle of influence and +consideration. So the little Mexican by no means had all the rides.</p> + +<p>Horseback riding was a beneficial pleasure in more than one way. Adelle, +of course, profited from the exercise in the open air: she began to grow +slowly and to promise womanhood at some not distant day. It also brought +her into close relations with some of the leading girls, who had thus +far ignored her existence; among them the breezy California sisters, +"the two Pols," as they were known in school. These girls profited by +Adelle's groom to dispense with the chaperonage of the old +riding-master, and before long Adelle learned why this arrangement was +made. In their long expeditions across country, with the discreet groom +well in the rear, the girls put their heads together in the most +intimate gossip, from which Adelle learned much that completed her +knowledge of life. Most of this was innocent enough, though some was +not, as when one afternoon, when "the Pols" judged that Adelle was a +"good sport," they led the way to a remote road-house where a couple of +men were waiting evidently by appointment. One of them, a fair-haired, +overdressed young man, Adelle was given to understand was Sadie Pol's +"artist" friend. She herself was sent back to entertain the groom while +the two sisters went into the road-house with their "friends." Conduct, +even conduct that came near being vice, was largely meaningless to +Adelle: she silently observed. She had no evil impulses herself, very +few impulses, in fact, of any kind. But she was the last person to tell +tales, and "the two Pols," having tested her and pronounced her "safe," +she was allowed to see more and went more than once to the rendezvous at +the quiet road-house. In this way she raised herself nearly to a plane +of equality with the leaders of the school. Indeed, it was Adelle who +assisted Irene Paul to escape from the Hall one winter night, and stayed +awake far into the morning in order to let the girl in. But that was a +year later....</p> + +<p>When Adelle discovered the power of her magic lamp, she was generous +with her pocket-money, ordering and buying whatever the older girls +desired. In this way she rapidly attained favor in the Hall, where few +even of the richer girls could procure money so easily as the ward of +the Washington Trust Company. "Get Adelle to do it," or "Adelle will dig +up the money," "Ask Adelle to write her bank," became familiar +expressions, and Adelle never failed to "make good." It is safe to say +that if contact with any sort of human experience gives education, +Adelle was being educated rapidly, although she was completely ignorant +of books and as nearly illiterate as a carefully protected rich girl can +be. Before Nature had completed within her its mission, Adelle was +cognizant of many kinds of knowledge, some of which included depravity. +For in the exclusive, protected, rich world of Herndon Hall she had met +everything she might have encountered in the Alton Girls' High and a +good deal more beside.</p> + +<p>By the end of this second year she was not much happier, perhaps, but +she was perfectly comfortable at the Hall and thoroughly used to her new +environment. The blonde Irene had given her a diploma,—</p> + +<p>"Dell's all right—she's a good little kid."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV</h2> + + +<p>That summer she did not have to mope by herself in the empty Hall. The +little Mexican carried her away for a long visit to her distant home. +The trouble in Morelos had temporarily subsided, so that Señor Merelda +felt that it was safe to gather his large family at the haçienda. The +journey, which the two girls made alone as far as St. Louis, where +Diane's elder brother met them, was the first view of the large world +that Adelle had ever had. They were both filled with the excitements of +their journey so that even Adelle's pale cheeks glowed with a happy +sense of the mystery of living. This ecstasy was somewhat broken by the +presence of Carlos, a gentlemanly enough young man; but Adelle was +afraid of all men. She failed also to assimilate the strange sights that +she encountered south of St. Louis. The journey became a jumble in her +memory of heat and red sunsets and dirty Indians and stuffy dining-cars. +But Morelos itself made a more lasting impression upon her little mind. +There was, first of all, the strange landscape, dominated by the snowy +peak of Popocatepetl, the sugar-fields, and the drowsy languor of the +little town, and then there was the family life of the Mereldas at the +haçienda. That was both delightful and queer to Adelle. Instead of one +"queer" person to whom she had become accustomed, there were half a +dozen odd human beings in the persons of Señor and Señora Merelda and +the older boys and girls. They all spoke all the time as did Diane, +about everything and nothing. They seemed to care warmly for one +another, yet quarreled like children over nothings. Young Carlos, who +was at a technical school, made violent love to Adelle. It was the first +time that a boy had looked at her twice even under compulsion, and it +bewildered and troubled Adelle until she perceived that it was all a +joke, a "queer" way of expressing courtesy to a stranger.</p> + +<p>"It would not be polite," Diane explained demurely, "if Carlos did not +make the bear to my friend."</p> + +<p>So Adelle got over her fright when the youth uttered strange speeches +and tried to take her hand. She even felt a faint pleasure in thus +becoming of a new importance.</p> + +<p>"Of course," Diane remarked sagely, "Carlos cannot marry yet—he is +still in school. But he will marry soon—why not you?... You are so very +rich. I should like Carlos to marry a rich girl and my friend, too ..." +And with a little sigh,—"It must be pleasant to be so rich as you!" +From which it will be seen that the little Mexican had also become +somewhat corrupted by her year at Herndon Hall.</p> + +<p>Adelle had not yet found out fully how nice it was to be rich, but she +was learning fast. To be able to attract the attentions of agreeable +young men like Carlos Merelda was another of the virtues of her magic +lamp that she had never thought of before. Although she had no idea of +taking Carlos's courtship seriously, she thought all the better of +herself for this extra magnetism which her money gave her person. The +kindliness of the Mereldas and their Mexican circle to the little +American was due largely to her being a good friend of their Diane and +also their guest, but it made Adelle grow in her own estimation. At +present life seemed to consist in a gradual unfolding to her of the +meaning of her new power, and a consequent enlargement of her egotism. +That is unfortunately one of the commonest properties of +wealth,—stimulating egotism,—and it takes much experience or an +extraordinary nature to counteract this unhealthy stimulus. For the +ordinary nature it is impossible to live day after day, year in and year +out, under the powerful external stimulus of riches, without confounding +the outer source of power with an innate virtue.</p> + +<p>But with our Adelle, by the time her visit had come to an end, her new +education had got merely to the point where she had the self-interest +and assurance of the ordinary American girl of twelve. That Church +Street experience had chastened her. But if her education was to +continue at the present rate, she was likely to become selfish, +egotistical, and purse-proud in a few years. As yet it had not made her +unpleasant, merely given her a little needed confidence in her own +being.</p> + +<p>She chose to make the long journey homewards by water from Vera Cruz to +New York in charge of the captain of the vessel. For Señor Merelda, +after the harassing activities of political warfare and its pecuniary +drains, did not feel able to send his daughter back to Herndon Hall. So +the two friends kissed and parted at Vera Cruz, Diane shedding all the +tears. They expected to meet again before long, and of course agreed to +write frequently. But life never again brought Adelle in contact with +the warm-hearted little Latin, who had first held out to her the olive +branch of human sympathy.</p> + +<p>Adelle was met at the dock by "Rosy," who had with her "the two Pols" +and Eveline Glynn at whose country home they were staying. "Rosy," as +well as her schoolmates, was agreeably surprised by Adelle's appearance +after her summer in Mexico. Nature was tardily asserting herself; Adelle +was becoming a woman,—a small, delicate, pale little creature, whose +rounding bust under her white dress gave her the dainty atmosphere of an +early spring flower, fragile and frigid, but full of charm for some +connoisseurs of human beauty. She had also acquired in Mexico a note of +her own, which was perhaps due to the clothes she had bought in Mexico +City on her way home, of filmy fabric and prominent colors; and her +usually taciturn speech had taken on a languorous slowness in imitation +of the Mereldas' way of speaking English. In the drawling manner in +which she said,—"Hello, Rosy," and nonchalantly accepted Miss Glynn's +invitation for the intervening days before school opened, the new Adelle +was revealed. The girls exchanged glances. And "Rosy" whispered Irene +Paul,—"Our little Adelle is coming on." To which the California girl +replied with a chuckle,—"Didn't I tell you she was a good old sport?"</p> + +<p>Adelle, overhearing this, felt an almost vivid sense of pride.</p> + +<p>But as yet hers was only a very little air, which was quickly wilted by +the oppressive luxury of the Glynns' country-place—one of those large, +ostentatious establishments that Americans are wont to start before they +know how, and where consequently the elaborate domestic machinery +creaks. There were men-servants of different nationalities, ladies' +maids, and a houseful of guests coming and going as in a private hotel. +Adelle shrank into the obscurest corner and her anemonelike charm, +tentatively putting forth, was quite lost in the scramble. Beechwood was +a much less genial home than the slipshod Mexican haçienda of the +Mereldas and nobody paid any attention to the shy girl. Eveline Glynn, +who expected in another year to be free from school, was too much +occupied with her own flirtations to bother herself about her chance +guest. Adelle, being left to her usual occupation of silent observation, +managed to absorb a good deal at Beechwood in four days, chiefly of the +machinery of modern wealth. There were the elaborate meals, the +drinking, the card-playing, the motors, the innumerable servants, and +the sickening atmosphere of inane sentimentalism between the sexes. +Everybody seemed to be having "an affair," and the talk was redolent of +innuendo. Adelle had occasion to observe the potency of her lamp in this +society. She worked it first upon the waiting-woman assigned to her, to +whom she gave a large fee and who coached her devotedly in the ways of +the house and supplied her with the gossip. It also brought her the +annoying attentions of a middle-aged man, to whom her hostess had +confided that the dumb little Clark girl was "awful rich."</p> + +<p>At the end of the visit the girls went back to New York, under the +chaperonage of "Rosy," to equip themselves for the school term, staying +at a great new hotel, and here Adelle's corruption by her wealth was +continued at an accelerated pace. The four girls flitted up and down the +Avenue, buying and ordering what they would. There were definite limits +to the purse of the Californians, but Adelle, perceiving the distinction +to be had from free spending, ordered with a splendid indifference to +price or amount. She won the admiration of her friends by the ease with +which she gave her name and address. Adelle was in fact a little +frightened by her own extravagance, but persisted with a child's +curiosity to find out the limit of her magic lamp. She did not reach it, +however. Mr. Crane at her request had opened an account for her at the +trust company's correspondent on upper Fifth Avenue, and apparently it +was of a size that produced respect in the heart of the shopkeeper.</p> + +<p>All these purchases, the clothes and the jewelry and the other rubbish +that the girl bought, gave her no special pleasure, gratified no +desires: she did not know what she could do with half the things at +Herndon Hall. What gave her keen pleasure was the prestige of lavish +spending.... After a debauch of theaters and dinners and shopping, the +four girls were again taken in tow by the sophisticated "Rosy" and went +up the river to Herndon Hall for Adelle's third year of boarding-school.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV</h2> + + +<p>Adelle Clark was thoroughly infected with the corruption of property by +this time, and the coming years merely confirmed the ideas and the +habits that had been started. She was now seventeen and an "old girl" at +the Hall, privileged to torture less sophisticated girls when they +presented themselves, if she had felt the desire to do so. She had not +forgotten her Church Street existence: it had been much too definite to +be easily forgotten. But she had been removed from it long enough to +realize herself thoroughly in her new life and to know that it was not a +dream. She would always remember Church Street, her aunt and uncle, and +the laborious years of poverty with which it was identified; but +gradually that part of her life was becoming the dream, while Herndon +Hall and the Aladdin lamp of her fortune were the reality. By means of +the latter she had won her position among her mates, and naturally she +respected more and more the source of her power. Eveline Glynn "took her +up" this year, and quite replaced the gentler Diane Merelda in her +affections.</p> + +<p>There was if anything less study this year than before. The older girls +scouted the idea of studying anything. Most of them expected to leave +school forever the next spring and under the auspices of their mothers +to enter the marriage game. A few intended as a preliminary to travel in +Europe, "studying art or music," But the minds of all were much more +occupied with love than anything else. Although the sex interest was +still entirely dormant in Adelle, she learned a great deal about it from +her schoolmates. Those good people who believe in a censorship of +literature for the sake of protecting the innocent American girl should +become enrolled at Herndon Hall. There they might be occasionally +horrified, but they would come out wiser mortals. Adelle knew all about +incredible scandals. Divorce, with the reasons for it,—especially the +statutory one,—was freely discussed, and a certain base, pandering +sheet of fashionable gossip was taken in at the Hall and eagerly +devoured each week by the girls, who tried to guess at the thinly +disguised persons therein pilloried. Thus Adelle became fully acquainted +with the facts of sex in their abnormal as well as more normal aspects. +That she got no special personal harm from this irregular education and +from the example of "the two Pols" was due solely to her own unawakened +temperament. Life had no gloss for her, and it had no poetic appeal. She +supposed, when she considered the matter at all, that sometime as a +woman she would be submitted to the coil of passion and sex, like all +the others about whom her friends talked incessantly. They seemed to +regard every man as a possible source of excitement to a woman. But she +resolved for her part to put off the interference of this fateful +influence as long as possible. Sometime, of course, she must marry and +have a child,—that was part of the fate of a girl with money of her +own,—and then she should hope to marry a nice man who would not scold +or ill-treat her or prefer some other woman—that was all.</p> + +<p>"Dell is just a lump of ice!" Irene Paul often said, putting her own +plump arms about Adelle's thin little body; and while Adelle tried to +wriggle out of the embrace she teased her by assuming the man's +aggressive rôle.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Thus the last months of her formal education slipped by. Adelle went +through the easy routine of the Hall like the other girls, riding +horseback a good deal during pleasant weather, taking a lively interest +in dancing, upon which great stress was laid by Miss Thompson as an +accomplishment and healthy exercise. She took a mild share in the +escapades of her more lively friends, but for the most part her life was +dull, though she did not feel it. The life of the rich, instead of being +varied and full of deep experience, is actually in most cases +exceedingly monotonous and narrowing. The common belief that wealth is +an open sesame to a life of universal human experience is a stupid +delusion, frequently used as a gloss to their souls by well-intentioned +people. Apart from the strict class limitations imposed by the +possession of large property, the object of protected and luxurious +people is generally merely pleasure. And pleasure is one of the +narrowest fields of human experience conceivable, becoming quickly +monotonous, which accounts for many extravagancies and abnormalities +among the rich. Moreover, the sensual life of the well-fed and idle +deadens imagination to such a degree that even their pleasures are +imitative, not original: they do what their kind have found to be +pleasurable without the incentive of initiative. If Adelle Clark had not +been attached to Clark's Field and had been forced to remain in the +Church Street rooming-house, by this time she would have been at work as +a clerk or in some other business: in any case she must have touched +realities closely and thus been immeasurably ahead of all the Herndon +Hall girls.</p> + +<p>Probably this doctrine would shock not only the managers of Herndon +Hall, but also the officers of the trust company, who felt that they +were giving their ward the best preparation for "a full life," such as +the possession of a large property entitles mortals to expect. And +though it may seem that the Washington Trust Company had been somewhat +perfunctory in its care of its young ward, merely accepting the routine +ideas of the day in regard to her education and preparation for life, +they did nothing more nor worse in this than the majority of well-to-do +parents who may be supposed to have every incentive of love and family +pride in dealing with their young. The trust company in fact was merely +an impersonal and legal means of fulfilling the ideals of the average +member of our society. Indeed, the trust company, in the person of its +president and also of Mr. Ashly Crane, were just now giving some of +their valuable time to consideration of the personal fate of their ward. +She had been the subject of at least one conference between these +officers. She was now on her way towards eighteen, and that was the age, +as President West well knew, when properly conditioned young women +usually left school, unless they were "queer" enough to seek college, +and entered "society" for the unavowed but perfectly understood object +of getting husbands for themselves. The trust company was puzzled as to +how best to provide this necessary function for its ward. They felt that +there existed no suitable machinery for taking this next step. They +could order her clothes, or rather hire some one to buy them for her, +order her a suitable "education" and pay for it, but they could not +"introduce her to society" nor provide her with a good husband. And that +was the situation which now confronted them.</p> + +<p>They had received excellent reports of their ward latterly from Herndon +Hall. Although Miss Thompson admitted that Miss Clark was not +"intellectually brilliant," she had a "good mind," whatever that might +mean, and had developed wonderfully at the Hall in bearing, deportment, +manner—in all the essential matters of woman's education. Miss Thompson +meant that Adelle spoke fairly correct English, drawled her <i>A</i>'s, wore +her clothes as if she owned them, had sufficiently good table-manners to +dine in public, and could hold her own in the conversation of girls of +her kind. Miss Thompson recommended warmly that Adelle join Miss +Stevens's "Travel Class," which was going abroad in June to tour the +Continent and study the masterpieces of art upon the spot. The +suggestion came as a relief to the trust company's officers: it put over +their problem with Adelle for another year. But before accepting Miss +Thompson's advice, Mr. Ashly Crane thought it wise to make another visit +to Herndon Hall and talk the matter over with Adelle herself. He +believed always in the "personal touch" method. And so once more he +broke a journey westwards at Albany and rolled up the long drive in a +motor-car.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Adelle enjoyed the impression which she was able to make upon the young +banker this time. She had seen his approach in the car on her return +from her ride, and had kept him waiting half an hour while she took a +bath and dressed herself with elaborate care as she had often seen other +girls do. Her teeth had at last been released from their harness and +were nice little regular teeth. Her dull brown hair, thanks to constant +skillful attention, had lately come to a healthy gloss. Her complexion +was clear though pale, and her dress was a dream of revealing +simplicity. Mr. Ashly Crane took in all these details at a glance, and +felt a glow of satisfaction beyond the purely male sense of +appreciation: the trust company which he represented had done its duty +by the little orphan, and what is more had got what it paid for. Their +ward, as she stood before him with a faint smile on her thin lips, was a +creditable creation of modern art. A thoroughly unpromising specimen of +female clay had been moulded into something agreeable and almost pretty, +with a faint, anemonelike bloom and fragrance. Mr. Ashly Crane, who was +rather given to generalization about the might and majesty of American +achievements, felt that the girl was a triumphant example of modern +power,—"what we do when we try to do something,"—like converting the +waste land of Clark's Field into a city of brick and mortar, or making a +hydrangea out of a field shrub.</p> + +<p>"Well, Miss Clark," he began as the two seated themselves where they had +sat the year before, "I needn't ask you how you are—your looks answer +the question."</p> + +<p>It was a banal remark, but Adelle recognized it for a compliment and +smiled prettily. She said nothing. Silence was still the principal +method of her social tactics.</p> + +<p>"You are getting to be a young woman fast," the banker continued quite +bluntly.</p> + +<p>Adelle looked down and possibly blushed.</p> + +<p>"Mr. West and I have been considering what to do"—he caught himself and +tried again;—"that is we have been in consultation with Miss Thompson +about—your future."</p> + +<p>Here Adelle looked the trust officer fully in the eye. On this point she +seemed really interested this time. So Mr. Crane proceeded more easily +to question her about the plan of joining Miss Stevens's "Travel Class." +Adelle listened blankly while Mr. Crane wandered off into generalities +about the advantages of travel and the study of "art" under the guidance +of a mature woman. Suddenly she said quite positively,—</p> + +<p>"I don't want to go with the 'Travel Class.'"</p> + +<p>This was the first positive expression of any sort that the trust +officer had ever heard from the ward. It was one of the very few that +Adelle Clark had ever made in the eighteen years of her existence. Under +Mr. Crane's inquiries it soon developed that Adelle did not like "Rosy" +Stevens,—as nearly hated her as she was capable of hating any one,—nor +had she any great fondness for the girls who were to compose this year's +"Travel Class." They belonged to the snobbiest element in the school.... +What, then, did she wish to do with herself—remain another year at +Herndon Hall? Here again the ward amazed Mr. Crane, for she had ready a +definite plan of her own—a small plan to be sure and imitative, but a +plan.</p> + +<p>She wished to go with her new friend Eveline Glynn and the California +sisters to Paris. Eveline's parents, it seemed, were spending the next +season in Europe, and after the manner of their kind they did not +propose to be encumbered with a young daughter. So they had arranged to +send her to Miss Catherine Comstock at Neuilly, and "the two Pols" had +decided to do the same thing. It was not a school,—oh, no, not even a +"finishing school,"—but the home of an accomplished and brilliant +American woman, who had long lived abroad and who undertook to chaperone +in the French capital a very few desirable girls. The banker could not +see how Miss Comstock's establishment in Neuilly differed essentially +from the "Travel Class," except that it was more permanent, which shows +how socially blunt Mr. Crane was. But after an interview with Miss +Thompson he satisfied himself that the Glynns were "our very best +people"; anything they thought right for their daughter must be fit for +the Washington Trust Company's ward. So her guardian's assent to the +plan was easily obtained, and the four friends rejoiced in their coming +freedom....</p> + +<p>Adelle had no clear idea why she preferred Neuilly to the "Travel +Class," except to be with Eveline Glynn and the two Paul girls. Paris +and Rome were hazily mixed geographically in her ill-furnished mind, and +culturally both were blank. Eveline had known girls who had stayed with +Miss Comstock and they had given glowing accounts of their experiences. +The Neuilly establishment, it appeared, was a place of perfect freedom, +where the girls were chaperoned sufficiently to keep them out of serious +mischief, but otherwise were allowed to please themselves in their own +way. And there was Paris, which, according to Eveline, who had informed +herself from many sources, was the best place in the world for a good +time. Friends were always coming there, to buy clothes and to make +excursions. Adelle could have her own car, in which the four would take +motor trips, and there was the opera, etc. And lastly Society—real +Society;—for it seemed that this was one of Miss Comstock's strong +points. She knew people, and had actually put a number of her girls in +the way of marrying titled foreigners. The California girls knew of a +compatriot who had thus acquired a Polish title. In short, there was +nothing of the boarding-school in Miss Comstock's establishment, except +the fees, which were enormous—five thousand dollars to start with.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Thus Adelle left Herndon Hall in the beautiful month of June, having +received her last communion in the little ivy-covered stone chapel from +the hands of the bishop himself, smiled upon by Miss Thompson and the +other teachers, who had three years before pronounced her "a perfect +little fright," and kissed by a few of her schoolmates. She felt that +she was coming into her own, thanks to her magic lamp—that life ahead +looked promising. Yet she had changed as little fundamentally during +these three years as a human being well could. She had passed from the +narrowest poverty of the Alton side street to the prodigal ease of +Herndon Hall, from the environment of an inferior "rooming-house" to +companionship with the rich daughters of "our very best people,"—from +an unformed child to the full physical estate of womanhood,—all within +three short years; but she had accommodated herself to these great +transitions with as little inward change as possible. Her soul was the +soul of the Clarks, tricked out with good clothes and the manners and +habits of the rich. Addie, it seemed, had at last arrived at her +paradise in the person of her daughter, but it was a pale and +inexpressive Addie, who made no large drafts upon paradise.</p> + +<p>Adelle departed in the Glynn motor for the Glynn country-place, where +she was to stay until the Glynns sailed for Europe. She was prettily +dressed in écru-colored embroidered linen, with a broad straw hat and +suède gloves and boots, according to the style of the day, and she was +really happy and almost aware of it. Eveline was glum because her +mother—a stern-looking matron who knew exactly what she wanted out of +life and how to get it—had refused peremptorily to let her invite Bobby +Trenow to accompany them. Bobby was Eveline's darling of the hour, as +Adelle knew: Eveline had let him kiss her for the first time the +previous evening, and she was "perfectly crazy" about him. To Adelle, +Bobby was merely a smooth, downy boy like all the rest, who showed bare +brown arms and white flannels in summer, and had as little to say for +himself as she had. She was amused at Nelly's fussed state over the loss +of Bobby; she could not understand Mother Glynn's objection to the +harmless Bobby's occupying the vacant seat in the roomy car;—but then +she did not understand many things in the intricate social world in +which she found herself. She did not know that there is no one of their +possessions that the rich learn more quickly to guard than their women. +The aristocrats of all ages have jealously housed and protected their +women from entangling sexual relations, while permitting the greatest +license to their predatory males. The reasons are obvious enough to the +mature intelligence, but difficult for the young to comprehend.</p> + +<p>Adelle had not yet felt the need of a Bobby Trenow.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI</h2> + + +<p>Some years ago Prince Ponitowski had built in Neuilly, near the gate of +the Bois, what contemporary novelists described as a "nest" for his +mistress—a famous Parisian lady. It was a fascinating little villa with +a demure brick and stone façade, a terrace, and a few shady trees in a +tiny, high-walled garden. The prince died, and the lady having made +other arrangements, the smart little villa came into the hands of Miss +Catherine Comstock, who took a long lease of the premises and +established there her family of "select" American girls. It might seem +that the tradition of the Villa Ponitowski (as the place continued to be +called) was hardly suitable for her purposes, but the robust common +sense of our age rarely hesitates over such intangible considerations, +and least of all the sophisticated Miss Comstock. At the Villa +Ponitowski the young women enjoyed the healthful freedom of a suburb +with the open fields of the Bois directly at their door, and yet were +within easy reach of Paris, "with its galleries and many cultural +opportunities"—according to the familiar phrasing of Miss Comstock's +letters to inquiring parents. (She had no circulars.)</p> + +<p>Miss Catherine Comstock herself was, in the last analysis, from Toledo, +Ohio, of an excellent family that had its roots in the soil of +Muskingum. When her father died, there being no immediate prospect of +marriage, she had taken to teaching in a girls' private school. It was +not long before the routine of an American private school became irksome +to her venturous spirit, and she conceived the idea of touring Europe +with rich girls who had nothing else to do. From this developed the +Neuilly scheme, which provided for the needs of that increasing number +of Americans with daughters who for one reason or another do not live in +America, and also for those American girls who could afford to +experiment in the fine arts "carefully shielded from undesirable +associates"—another favorite Comstock phrase. At first the art and +education idea had been much to the fore, and Miss Comstock had +fortified herself with one or two teachers and hired other assistants +occasionally. But the life of Paris had proved so congenial and its +"opportunities" so abundant that Miss Comstock had come to rely more and +more upon the "privilege of European residence" and dispensed altogether +with formal instruction.</p> + +<p>She soon found that that was what the girls who came to her really +wanted, even if their parents had vague thoughts of other things. In +short, the Neuilly school was nothing else than a superior sort of +select <i>pension</i> for eight or ten girls, with facilities for travel and +more or less "society." Miss Comstock herself—affectionately known to +"her girls" as "Pussy" Comstock—had been rather angular and plain in +the Toledo days, but under the congenial air of Paris and good +dressmakers had developed into a smart specimen of the free-lance, +middle-aged woman, with the sophistication of a thorough acquaintance +with the world and much prudence garnered from a varied experience. She +made an excellent impression upon the sort of parents she dealt with as +a "woman who really knows life," and the girls always liked her, found +her "a good chum." They called her "Pussy"! Miss Comstock kept with her +a dumpy little American woman with glasses, who did what educational +work was attempted, and the more tedious chaperonage. The Villa +Ponitowski, in a word, was one of the modern adjustments between the +ignorance and selfishness of parents and the selfishness and folly of +children. The parents handed over their daughters for a season to Miss +Comstock with a sigh of relief, believing that their girls would be +perfectly "safe" in her care and might possibly improve themselves in +language and knowledge of art and the world. And the daughters rejoiced, +knowing from the reports of other girls that they would have "a +perfectly bully time," freed from the annoying prejudices of parents, +and might pick up an adventure or two of a sentimental nature....</p> + +<p>Into this final varnishing bath our heroine was plunged with her three +friends, in the autumn of 1902, when she was eighteen years old. The +girls arrived at the Villa from a motoring trip across Europe, during +which they had scurried over the surface of five countries and put up in +thirty-eight different hotels as the labels on their bags triumphantly +proclaimed. Miss Comstock received the party in her own little salon in +the rear of the Villa, where, after the elder Glynns had withdrawn, +liqueurs and cigarettes were served. Miss Comstock lit a cigarette, +perched her well-shod feet on a stool, and listened with sympathetic +amusement to the adventures of the trio as vivaciously related by +Eveline Glynn. The California sisters, it developed, had the cigarette +habit, too, and Eveline tried one of "Pussy's" special kind. When the +girls went to their rooms, to which they were conducted by Miss Comstock +with an arm around the waist of Adelle and another about Irene Paul, the +girls agreed that "Pussy" was "all right" and congratulated themselves +upon the perspicacity of their choice.</p> + +<p>At Herndon Hall there had been at least the pretense of discipline and +study, but all such childish notions were laughed at in the Villa +Ponitowski. Eveline Glynn thought she had a voice and a teacher was +engaged for her. Irene Paul devoted herself to the art of whistling, +while her sister "went in for posters." Another girl was supposed to be +studying painting and resorted a few afternoons each week to a studio, +well chaperoned. Miss Comstock promised to find something for Adelle to +do in an art way. But there was nothing pedantic or professional about +the Villa Ponitowski. Miss Comstock prided herself upon her outlook. She +knew that her girls would marry in all likelihood, and she endeavored to +give them something of the horizon of broad boulevards and +watering-places as a preparation. All the girls had their own maids, who +brought them the morning cup of coffee whenever they rang—usually not +before noon. The European day, Adelle learned, began about one o'clock +with a variety of expeditions and errands, and frequently ended well +after midnight at opera or play, or dancing party at the home of some +American resident to whom Miss Comstock introduced her charges. This was +during the season. Then there were, of course, expeditions to Rome and +Vienna and Madrid, tours of cathedral towns, inspection of +watering-places, etc.</p> + +<p>Behold, thus, the sole descendant of the hard-grubbing, bucolic Clarks +waking from her final nap at eleven in the morning, imbibing her coffee +from a delicate china cup, and nibbling at her <i>brioche</i>, while her maid +opened the shutters, started a fire in the grate, and laid out her +dresses, chattering all the time in charming French about delectable +nothings. Addie Clark, surely, would have felt that she had not lived in +vain if she could have beheld her only child at this time, and overheard +the serious debate as to which "<i>robe</i>" Mademoiselle Adelle would adorn +herself with for the afternoon, and have seen her, finally equipped, +descending to the salon to join Miss Comstock, who was usually engaged +with her correspondence at this hour.</p> + +<p>Adelle, it is perhaps needless to say, had quickly perceived the +enlarged opportunity for the use of her magic lamp. She at once ordered +a very comfortable limousine, which was driven by an experienced +chauffeur, and thus transported herself, Miss Comstock, and any of the +girls she chose to invite to the exhibition at the Georges Petit +Gallery, thence to a concert, or perhaps merely to tea at the new hotel +in the Champs Élysées. If any reader has perhaps considered Adelle +backward or stupid, he must quickly revise that opinion at this point. +For it was truly extraordinary the rapidity with which the pale, passive +young heiress caught the pace of Paris. The note of the world about her +was the spending note, and the drafts she made through her French +bankers upon the Washington Trust Company caused a certain uneasiness +even among those sophisticated officials, used to the expenditures of +the rich.</p> + +<p>Of course, Miss Comstock introduced her charges to the best dressmakers +and dispensers of lingerie and millinery (for which service she obtained +free of charge all her own clothes). Adelle soon found her own way into +the shops of the Rue de la Paix and developed a genuine passion—the +first one of her life—for precious stones. It may be remembered that +when she was taken as a little girl for the first time into the new home +of the trust company, she had been much impressed by the gorgeousness of +colored marble and glass there profusely used. For a long time the great +banking-room with its dim violet light had remained in her memory as a +source of sensuous delight, and as her opportunities had increased she +had turned instinctively to things of color and warmth, especially in +stones and fabrics. In those public and private exhibitions to which she +was constantly conducted as part of her education in art she hung over +the cases that contained specimens of new designs in metal and stone. +Miss Comstock, perceiving her interest in these toys, encouraged Adelle +to try her own hand at the manufacture of jewelry, and engaged a needy +woman worker to give her the necessary lessons in the lapidary art. +Adelle had acquired considerable sloth from her desultory way of living; +nevertheless, when the chance was forced into her hands, she took to the +new work with ardor and produced some bungling imitations of the new +art, which were much admired at the Villa Ponitowski. Eveline, not to be +outdone, took up bookbinding, though she scarcely knew the inside of one +book from another. The art of tooling leather was then cultivated by +women of fashion in New York: it gave them something to talk about and a +chance to play in a studio.</p> + +<p>I should like to record that Adelle developed a latent talent for making +beautiful things in the art she had inadvertently chosen to practice. +But that would be straining the truth. It requires imagination to +produce original and pleasing objects in small jewelry, and of +imagination Adelle had not betrayed a spark. Moreover, it takes +patience, application, and a skillful hand to become a good craftsman in +any art, and these virtues had no encouragement in the life that Adelle +had led since leaving the Church Street house. So in spite of the +admiration aroused by her <i>bijoux</i> when she gave them to the inmates of +the Villa, it must be admitted that they were more like the efforts of a +school child who has prepared its handiwork for presents to admiring +relatives than anything else. But at least it was a real interest, and +it raised Adelle in her own estimation. Some of the happiest days she +had known were spent in the studio of Miss Cornelia Baxter, on the Rue +de l'Université. She would have spent more time there if her other +engagements or distractions had not constantly interrupted her pursuit +of art. Her position of practical independence and unlimited means gave +her a prestige in "Pussy" Comstock's household that exhausted most of +her time and energy. Her car and herself were in constant demand. And in +the Easter holidays "the family" went to Rome for a month, and to London +at the opening of the season there in June. So not much time was left +for the pursuit of art.</p> + +<p>Yet this effort to make jewelry on Adelle's part is important, as the +first sign of promise of individuality. It betrayed the possibility of a +taste. She loved color, richness of substance, and Europe was satisfying +this instinct. Pale and colorless herself, mentally perhaps anaemic or +at least lethargic, she discovered in herself a passion for color and +richness. Certain formless dreams about life began to haunt her +mind—vague desires of warmth and color and emotion. Thus Paris was +developing the latent possibilities of sensuousness in this pale +offshoot of Puritanism.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII</h2> + + +<p>The winter had passed agreeably and rapidly for Adelle. But London did +not please her because Miss Comstock insisted upon a rather rigorous +course of museums and churches and show places, which always fatigued +and bored Adelle. She was also taken to garden parties where she was +expected to talk, and that was the last thing Adelle liked doing. +Whatever expressive reaction to life she had could never be put into +words for the casual comer. She would stand helpless before the most +persistent man, seeking a means of escape, and as men are rarely +persistent or patient with a dumb girl she stood alone much of the time +in spite of her reputation for wealth, which Miss Comstock carefully +disseminated to prepare the way for her.</p> + +<p>One morning while her maid was brushing her hair, an operation that +Adelle particularly liked and over which she would dawdle for hours, a +card was brought to her, which bore the name—"Mr. Ashly Crane"—and +underneath this simple and sufficient explanation—"The Washington Trust +Company." Adelle had almost forgotten Mr. Crane's existence. He had +become more a signature than a person to her. Nevertheless, the memory +of her girlish triumph the last time they had met caused her to hasten +her toilet and put in an appearance in the private salon she had at the +hotel in something less than half an hour. There she found the young +banker very spruce in his frock coat and silk hat, which he had +furnished himself with in America and assumed the day of his arrival on +English soil. He was taking a vacation, he promptly explained to Adelle, +in which, of course, he should do several pieces of important business. +But he gave the girl to understand that she was not on this business +list: he had looked her up purely as a pleasure. In fact, the trust +people had become somewhat uneasy over Miss Clark's frequent drafts, +which altogether exceeded the liberal sum that President West felt was +suitable for a young woman to spend, though well within her present +income, and suggested that Mr. Crane should find out what she was doing +and if she were likely to get into mischief. The young banker had had it +in mind to see Adelle in any case—she had left a sufficiently distinct +impression with him for that. There may have revived in his +subconsciousness that earlier dream of capturing for himself the +constantly expanding Clark estate, although as yet nothing had defined +itself positively in his active mind.</p> + +<p>When at last the girl entered the little hotel salon where he had been +cooling his heels for the half-hour, he had a distinct quickening of +this latent purpose. Adelle Clark was not at this period, if she ever +was, what is usually called a pretty girl. She had grown a little, and +now gave the impression of being really tall, which was largely an +effect of her skillful dressmaker. Pale and slender and graceful, +exquisitely draped in a gown subtly made for her, with a profusion of +barbaric jewelry which from this time on she always affected, Adelle was +what is commonly called striking. She had the enviable quality of +attracting attention to herself, even on the jaded streets of Paris, as +suggesting something pleasurably different from the stream of +passers-by. The American man of affairs did not stop to analyze all +this. He was merely conscious that here was a woman whom no man need be +ashamed of, even if he married her for other reasons than her beauty. +And he set himself at once, not to catechize the bank's ward about her +expenditures, but to interest the girl in himself. They went to the +Savoy for luncheon, and the trust officer noted pleasurably the +attention they received as they made their way through the crowded +breakfast-room. And in spite of Adelle's monosyllabic habit of +conversation, they got on very well over their food, about which Adelle +had well-formulated ideas. He suggested taking a cab and attending the +cricket match, and so after luncheon they gayly set forth on the long +ride to Hurlingham in the stream of motors and cabs bound for the match.</p> + +<p>Adelle smiled shyly at Mr. Crane's heavy sarcasm upon British ways, and +replied briefly to his questions about her winter in Paris. The +situation was a novel one to her, and she enjoyed it. The one thing her +money had thus far not done for her was to bring her men—she had, +indeed, done nothing herself to attract them. But now for five hours she +had the constant attention of a good-looking, well-dressed, mature man. +To be sure Mr. Ashly Crane was much older than she. He gave her the +curious sensation of being in some way a relative. Was the Washington +Trust Company not the nearest thing to a relative that she had? And Mr. +Ashly Crane was the personal symbol to her of the trust company—its +voice and lungs and clothes. So she felt a faint emotion over the +incident. As they were returning from the cricket field in the English +twilight, with the scurry of moving vehicles all about them, Mr. Crane +ventured on more personal topics than he had hitherto broached. He felt +that by this time they must be quite good friends. So he began,—</p> + +<p>Did she like living in Europe?</p> + +<p>Yes, she found it very pleasant and Miss Comstock was the nicest teacher +she had ever had—really not like a teacher at all; and she liked Miss +Baxter and the metal-work. (This was a long and complicated statement +for Adelle.)</p> + +<p>She must show him some of her work. Was that chain (taking it familiarly +in his hands to look at it) her own handiwork?</p> + +<p>Oh, no; that was a Lalique ... the chief artist in this <i>genre</i> in +Paris. (The banker mentally accounted for some of the recent drafts.) +Didn't he think it pretty?—such an unusual arrangement of the stones!</p> + +<p>He should not call it exactly pretty—odd rather;—but it was very +becoming to her.... He should like to see some of her own work, etc.</p> + +<p>Oh, she should never dare to show him anything she had done. She was +nothing but a beginner, etc., etc.</p> + +<p>Later on, as they entered the dark precincts of the city, another step +nearer the personal was taken.</p> + +<p>She would want to spend another year in Europe probably?</p> + +<p>Oh, yes, they had the loveliest plans. Miss Comstock was going to take +her and Eveline Glynn on a visit to some friends who had an estate in +Poland, in the mountains, a real castle, etc. (Mental note by the +banker—"Must look up this Comstock woman—seems to have a good deal of +influence upon the girl.") And then they were all going to Italy again +in the spring and perhaps Greece, though everybody said that was too +hard on account of the poor hotels. And she did want to go up the Nile +and see the Sphynx and all the rest of it, etc., etc. (Pause).</p> + +<p>Had she any idea what she would like to do afterwards, where she wanted +to live?</p> + +<p>When?</p> + +<p>Why, after she had finished her education.</p> + +<p>Oh, she wanted to go on making pretty things—she should have a studio +of her own, of course, like Miss Baxter.</p> + +<p>"Where?"</p> + +<p>"Why in Paris,—perhaps New York," Adelle replied vaguely, +indifferently.</p> + +<p>That gave Mr. Crane an opportunity for an improving homily on the folly +of expatriation, the beauty of living in one's own country among one's +own people, and so forth, which brought them to the door of Adelle's +hotel. Mr. Crane came in and met Miss Comstock and the girls she had +with her. Then he disappeared and returned later in full dress and took +the party to the Carlton for dinner and then to a light opera. The girls +were entranced with Mr. Crane, especially the two Californians, and +redoubled their envy of the fortunate Adelle in having this handsome +substitute for a parent. They called him her "beau," by which +designation Mr. Ashly Crane was henceforth known among Pussy Comstock's +girls during their sojourn in London.</p> + +<p>He had not made quite the same favorable impression upon Miss Comstock, +who was acquainted with all sorts and conditions of men. The two +recognized immediately an antagonism of interests, and spent this first +evening of their acquaintance in reconnoitering each other's position +with Adelle. "Little bounder," Miss Comstock pronounced with the quick +perception of a woman; "he's after the girl's money." While the man said +to himself, with the more ponderous indirectness of the male,—"That +woman is not quite the influence that an unformed girl should have about +her. She's working the girl, too, for motors and things." And yet both +smiled and joked companionably across the shoulders of the unconscious +Adelle.</p> + +<p>As the trust officer returned to his hotel in his hansom, he jingled a +few stray coins in his pocket, the remains of twenty pounds in gold that +the day had cost him. A long education in finance, however, had taught +him to be indifferent to these petty matters of preliminary expense. +Nevertheless, before retiring he entered up the sum to the Clark estate +expense account. Poor Adelle, dreaming of her "beau"! Her first real +spree with a man was charged to her own purse.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII</h2> + + +<p>There were many similar items added to the account during the next +fortnight. It seemed that Mr. Ashly Crane had nothing better to do with +his European vacation than to give Miss Clark and her companions a good +time, or, as he intimated to Miss Comstock, "to get into closer touch +with the company's ward." Naturally he was a godsend to the Comstock +girls, for he could take them to places where without a man they could +not go. There was a mild orgy of motoring, dining, and theater. Pussy +Comstock, experienced campaigner that she was, made no objection to this +junketing. A fixed principle with her was to let any man spend his money +as freely as he was inclined to. Yet she skillfully so contrived that +the young banker had few opportunities of solitary communion with his +ward. At first Mr. Crane did not understand why the Glynn girl or one of +the Paul sisters was always in the way, and then he comprehended the +artful maneuver of the woman and resented it. One afternoon, when he had +taken the party up the river, he announced bluntly after tea that he and +Adelle were going out in a punt together. Leaving Miss Comstock and the +three other girls to amuse themselves as they could, he stoutly pulled +forth from the landing and around a bend in the river. Thereafter his +efforts relaxed, and he had Adelle to himself for two long hours. And +Adelle, reclining on the gaudy cushions under an enormous pink sunshade, +was not unenticing. Her air of indolent taciturnity was almost +provoking. Mr. Ashly Crane quite persuaded himself that he was really in +love with the young heiress.</p> + +<p>Oddly enough he chose this opportunity to discuss with her her business +affairs, which was the excuse he had tossed Miss Comstock for +abstracting the ward from the rest of the party. He found that she knew +almost nothing about the source of her fortune—that lean stretch of +sandy acres known as Clark's Field. He related to her the outline of the +story of the Field as it has been told in these pages. Adelle listened +with a peculiarly blank expression on her pale face. She was in fact +trying hard to recall certain distant images of her early life—memories +that were neither pleasant nor painful, but very odd to her, so strange +that she could not realize herself as having once been the little drudge +in the rooming-house on Church Street, with the manager of the +livery-stable as the star roomer. While the banker was relating the +steps by which she had become an heiress, she was seeing the face of the +liveryman and that of the probate judge, who had first taken an active +part in her destiny and turned it into its present smooth course....</p> + +<p>"So," Mr. Crane was saying, "the bank was finally able to make an +arrangement by which the long deadlock was broken and Clark's Field +could be sold—put on the market in small lots, you know. Owing to a +very fortunate provision, you are the beneficiary of one half of the +sales made by the Field Associates, as the corporation is +called—whenever they dispose of any of it they pay us for you half the +money!"</p> + +<p>(He neglected to state that this "fortunate provision" was due solely to +the shrewdness and probity of Judge Orcutt; that if he and the trust +company's president had had their way she would have been obliged to +content herself with a much more modest income than she now enjoyed. But +doubtless Mr. Crane felt that was irrelevant.)</p> + +<p>"So you see, little girl," he concluded, in a burst of unguarded +enthusiasm, "we are piling up money for you while you are playing over +here."</p> + +<p>As something seemed to be expected of her, Adelle remarked lamely,—</p> + +<p>"That is very nice."</p> + +<p>"Yes," Mr. Crane continued with satisfaction. "You can congratulate +yourself on having such good care of your property as we give it.... And +let me tell you it didn't look promising at first. There were no end of +legal snarls that had to be straightened out—in fact, if I hadn't urged +it strongly on the old man I doubt if they would have taken hold of the +thing at all!"</p> + +<p>"Oh," Adelle responded idly, "what was the trouble?"</p> + +<p>"Why, those other heirs—that Edward S. Clark and his children. If +<i>they</i> had turned up we should have been in a pretty mess."</p> + +<p>"Oh!"</p> + +<p>"It would have upset everything."</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>He had just explained all this, but thinking that women never understood +business matters until everything had been explained several times, and +anxious to impress the girl with the benefits that she had derived from +the guardian which the law had given her, also indirectly from himself, +he patiently went all over the point again.</p> + +<p>"Why, your great-grandfather Clark had two sons, and when he died he +left a will in which he gave both of his sons an undivided half interest +in this land. But the elder son had disappeared—they could never find +him."</p> + +<p>"Edward," observed the girl, remembering her uncle's frequent curses at +the obstinate Edward. "Yes, I know. He went to Chicago and got lost."</p> + +<p>"Afterward he went to St. Louis, but beyond that no trace of him or his +family can be found."</p> + +<p>"I suppose some day he will turn up when he hears that there's some +money," Adelle remarked simply.</p> + +<p>The banker scowled.</p> + +<p>"Well, I hope not!... Edward isn't likely to now: he must be a young +thing of eighty-seven by this time."</p> + +<p>"Well, his children, then."</p> + +<p>"They would have difficulty in proving their claim. You see there's been +a judicial sale, ordered by the court, and every precaution taken.... +No, there's no possibility of trouble in that quarter."</p> + +<p>"Then they won't get their money?" Adelle remarked, thinking how +disappointed these hypothetical descendants of Edward Clark must be.</p> + +<p>"No," agreed the trust officer with a laugh. "They're too late for +dinner."</p> + +<p>Adelle, who did not understand the mental jump of a figure of speech, +stared at him blankly.</p> + +<p>"It's too bad," she observed placidly at last.</p> + +<p>"Yes, it is decidedly too bad for them," the banker repeated ironically. +"But it's life."</p> + +<p>After this profound reflection they paddled idly for a few moments, and +then the trust officer resumed, nearer to his theme.</p> + +<p>"So you see, Miss Clark, you're likely to be a pretty rich woman when +you come of age. The old leases on the estate are running out, and as +fast as they can the managers of the Clark's Field Associates sell at a +good price or make a long lease at a high figure and everything helps to +swell the estate, which we are investing safely for you in good stocks +and bonds that are sure to increase in value before you will want to +sell them."</p> + +<p>"How much money is there?" Adelle demanded unexpectedly. This was her +opportunity to discover the size of her magic lamp.</p> + +<p>"I couldn't say off hand," the banker replied cautiously. "But enough to +keep you from want, if you don't spend too much making jewelry." He +added facetiously,—"You don't feel cramped for money, do you?"</p> + +<p>"No-o," the girl admitted dubiously. "But you can't always tell what you +may want."</p> + +<p>"If you don't want much more than you do at present, you're safe," Mr. +Crane stated guardedly. "That is, if nothing goes wrong—a panic, and +that sort of thing."</p> + +<p>After a pause he said,—</p> + +<p>"But you should have some one look after your property, invest it for +you—a woman can't do that very well."</p> + +<p>"The bank does it, don't it?"</p> + +<p>"I mean after you are of age and have control of your own property."</p> + +<p>"Oh," the girl murmured vaguely, running her hand through the ripples of +river water. "That's a good ways off!... I suppose I shall be married by +that time, and <i>he</i> will look after it for me."</p> + +<p>She said this in a thoroughly matter-of-fact voice, but the banker +almost jumped from his seat at the words.</p> + +<p>"You aren't thinking of getting married yet!" he exclaimed hastily.</p> + +<p>"I suppose I shall some day," she replied.</p> + +<p>"Of course you'll marry sometime," he said with relief; and ran on +glibly,—"That is the natural thing. Every girl should get married +early. But you must take good care, my dear girl, not to make a mistake. +You might be very unhappy, you know. He might not treat you right." And +with a sense of climax he exclaimed,—"He might lose all your +money—ruin you!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, he might," Adelle agreed with composure. "They do that sometimes."</p> + +<p>She looked at him from her open gray eyes undisturbed by the prospect, +as if, womanlike, she was aware of this unpleasant fate in danger of +which she must always be. Mr. Ashly Crane knew that this was the point +when his love-making should begin, but suddenly he felt that Adelle +Clark was a very difficult person to make love to.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps you've been thinking of the man?" he opened clumsily.</p> + +<p>She shook her head thoughtfully.</p> + +<p>"No, I haven't."</p> + +<p>"But you could love some one?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose so," she answered in such a matter-of-fact tone that for the +moment he was baffled. The present situation, he decided, was +unfavorable for love-making, and searched desperately within for his +next words.</p> + +<p>"I wonder what they look like," Adelle mused aloud.</p> + +<p>"Who look like—husbands?"</p> + +<p>"No, Edward's children—the other heirs," she explained.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps there aren't any," he snapped.</p> + +<p>And under his breath Mr. Ashly Crane consigned Edward S. Clark and all +his offspring to perdition.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX</h2> + + +<p>Mr. Crane was a persistent person. Otherwise he would hardly have +arrived where he had in the Washington Trust Company. Having failed to +broach the great subject in the afternoon, he immediately made another +opportunity for himself by hustling Adelle, ahead of the others, into +his own cab for the return drive to the city, and then jumping in after +her and giving the driver the order to leave. It was very ill-bred and +he knew it, but he was determined not to bother about Miss Comstock any +longer. His vacation was very nearly at an end, and this would be his +last chance for another year if the ward was to remain in Europe as was +her present determination. He consoled himself with the thought that the +others had Adelle's car at their disposal, and gave the order to take a +roundabout road back to London. The driver needed but the suggestion to +plunge them into a maze of forgotten country roads where there were no +lights and no impeding traffic....</p> + +<p>There are in general three ways in which to make love to a woman, young +or old: the deliberate, the impulsive, and the inevitable. Of the third +there is no occasion to speak here, as neither Ashly Crane nor Adelle +understood it. Of the remaining two the deliberate method of cautious, +persistent siege was more to the taste and the temperament of the +banker, but he was strictly limited in time. The Kaiser Nonsuch, on +which his passage was reserved, sailed in three days from Southampton, +and he must win within that brief period or put the matter over for a +whole year. And he judged that Adelle, under her present environment +with such an expert manager as Miss Catherine Comstock, would not be +left hanging on the bough within his reach for long. A year's delay +would almost surely be fatal, and it was uncertain whether he could get +away before the next summer from his important responsibilities at the +Washington Trust Company. So haste must be the word.</p> + +<p>That he should reason thus about a delicate matter of sentiment betrays +not merely the man's coarse grain, but the inferiority of the commercial +experience in making an accomplished lover. He had been trained in the +"new school" of rapid finance to complete large transactions on the +moment, never letting small uncertainties or delays interfere with his +purposes. It was really not essential to the working of the financial +system—even for the salvation of the Washington Trust Company—that Mr. +Ashly Crane should turn up at his desk on the morning of the +twenty-sixth instanter. It might just as well have been the thirty-first +or even the middle of the next month—or, if he should have the good +luck to gain the heart and hand of the heiress, never at all! But Mr. +Ashly Crane was neither of the temperament nor of the age to play the +sentimental game thus desperately. He was altogether too much an +American to let his love-making interfere with his business schedule. +(Besides, there was not another swift steamer sailing for New York for +three weeks.)</p> + +<p>So he sighed, and when the cab shot into the umbrageous dimness of old +trees he took the girl's hand in his. She made no attempt to withdraw +her hand. Probably Adelle was more frightened by this first experience +in the eternal situation than the man was, and that is saying a good +deal. She took refuge in her usual defense against life and its many +perplexities, which was silence, permitting the banker to press her +captive hand for several moments while the cab tossed on the uneven road +and Crane was summoning his nerve for the next step. Her heart beat a +little faster, and she wondered what was going to happen.</p> + +<p>That was the man's attempt to encircle her waist with his free arm. In +this maneuver Adelle did not assist him: instead, she pushed herself +back against the cushion so firmly that it made it a difficult +engineering feat to obtain possession of her figure. By this time his +face was close to hers, and he was stammering incoherently such words +as—"Adelle" ... "Dearest" ... "Love" ... etc. But we will spare the +reader Mr. Ashly Crane's crude imitation of ardor. All love-making, even +the most sincere and eloquent, is verbally disappointingly alike and +rather tame. The human animal, ingenious as he is in many ways, is +nevertheless almost as limited as the ape when it comes to the +articulation of the deeper emotions. That is why delicacy and the habit +of <i>nuances</i> give the experienced wooer such an immense advantage, even +with a raw girl like Adelle, over the mere clumsy male. Love, like the +drama, being so rigidly limited in technique, is no field for the +bungler! And Mr. Ashly Crane was far from being an artist in anything.</p> + +<p>By this time Adelle had become aware that she was being made love to. It +filled her with a variety of emotions not clearly defined. First of all, +there was something of the woman's natural complacency in her first +capture, more vivid than when the other girls had dubbed Mr. Crane her +"beau." This was a <i>bona fide</i> illustration of what all the girls talked +about most of the time and the novels were full of from cover to +cover—love-making! And next was a feeling akin to repugnance. Mr. Crane +was not aged—barely forty-two—and he was good-looking enough and quite +the man. But to Adelle he had always been, if not exactly a parent, at +least an older brother or uncle,—in some category of relationship other +than that of young love. That he should thus hastily be professing +ardent sentiments towards her seemed a trifle improper. Beneath these +superficial feelings there were, of course, some deeper ones;—for +instance, a slight sense of humor in his clumsy management and a feeling +of gratification that at last the unknown had arrived. And a something +else not wholly unpleasant in her own small person....</p> + +<p>Crane was mumbling something about his loneliness and her unprotected +condition. Adelle was not aware that she was to be pitied because of +lack of protection, but she liked to be the object of sympathy. +Gradually she relaxed, and permitted him to insert his arm between her +and the cushion, which he seemed so ridiculously anxious to do. At once +he drew her slight form towards him. He was saying,—</p> + +<p>"Dearest! Can you—will you—"</p> + +<p>And she demanded point-blank,—</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>"Love me!" the man breathed very close to her.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," she replied, struggling to regain her refuge in the +corner from which his embrace had dragged her.</p> + +<p>And just here Ashly Crane committed an irretrievable blunder, due to +those imperfections of nature and technique which have been described +before. As the cab lurched, throwing the girl nearer him, he grasped her +very firmly and kissed her. The Kaiser Nonsuch sailed on the Thursday, +and it was now Monday....</p> + +<p>As his mustached lips sought her small mouth and met the cold, hard +little lips, he knew that he had taken a fearful risk. Adelle did not +scream. She did not struggle very much. She took the kiss passively, as +if she had some curiosity to know what a man's kiss was like. After he +had given it with sufficient ardor and was ready to relax his passionate +embrace, she drew back calmly into her corner and looked at him very +coolly out of her gray eyes. After the flurry of the struggle, with her +brown hair slightly awry, her hat tipped back, and her lips still half +open as they had been forced by his kiss, she was almost pretty. But +those gray eyes looked at him as no girl ought to look after her lover's +first kiss, and let us hope as few girls do look. Mr. Ashly Crane read +there that he had lost his chance with the heiress. There was just +enough of spirit even in his common clay to divine this. If only he had +not been so hasty!—not tried to "put the thing through" before sailing, +and do it in the manner of the "whirl-wind campaign"....</p> + +<p>For a moment or two there was silence within the cab while the car +rocked on in its mad race for London. They were well within the +outskirts of the city now, and the banker knew that there would not be +time to work up to another crisis. He must defer the recovery until the +morrow, if he could summon courage to go on with it at all. But the girl +still stared at him out of her wide-open eyes, as if she were saying in +her small head—"So that's what a man's kiss is like." He muttered +uncomfortably a lot of nonsense about forgetting himself, and her +forgiving him,—ignorant that in such a grave matter forgiveness is +always out of the question: either it is not needed, or it cannot +possibly be given. Adelle said nothing, merely looked at him until he +was driven to turn his head away and gaze out of the swiftly moving cab +at the lighted streets to escape the wonder and the surprise and the +contempt in those gray eyes. As they turned into Piccadilly, he remarked +brusquely,—"I shall come to-morrow morning—and get your answer!" That +was to "save his face," as we say, for her answer was written in those +eyes. Again he took her little ungloved hand and tried to bear it to his +lips. But this time Adelle gently, firmly extracted it from his grasp +and placed it behind her back with its mate, safely out of reach, still +looking at him gravely.</p> + +<p>Crane helped her out of the cab, and turned to pay the driver, who was +beaming with expectation of an extra fee for his participation in this +adventure. When he had settled the fare, Adelle had disappeared within +the hotel. Judging that it might be unwise to follow her, Mr. Ashly +Crane walked off to his hotel, scowling along the way, very little +pleased with himself. He was really more mortified at discovering how +poor an artist in the business he was than by his ill success itself.</p> + +<p>"Nothing but a meek, pale-faced, little school-girl, too!" he was saying +to himself. And aloud,—"Oh, damn the women."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX</h2> + + +<p>Adelle went straight to her own rooms, but before she could close the +door Miss Comstock was on her heels. Having taken the direct route to +London in Adelle's swift car, she had had ample time to change her gown, +and now looked specially groomed and ready for the encounter, with keen, +knowing green eyes. Closing the door carefully, Miss Comstock turned, +looked Adelle over from her hat, which was still slightly tipped, to her +ungloved hands.</p> + +<p>"Well?" she remarked with perceptible irony.</p> + +<p>Adelle did not mean to tell anything. She wanted to keep this, her first +affair, to herself, no matter what she might consider it to be, and she +was not yet sure what she should think of it finally. So she had tried +her best to dodge her companions until she had had time to simulate her +usual appearance. But she had been caught by "Pussy" red-handed. To the +mentor's repeated "Well?" she said nothing, a foolish little smile +starting without her will around the corners of her mouth.</p> + +<p>"So he kissed you?" Miss Comstock continued; and as Adelle's eyes +dropped guiltily, she remarked contemptuously,—"The cad!"</p> + +<p>Adelle was only vaguely acquainted with the meaning of this hateful +word, but if she had realized its full significance she would not have +cared, though she had no desire to defend Mr. Ashly Crane. She was +silent, while Miss Comstock tore a few more shreds from Adelle's poor +little "affair."</p> + +<p>"I knew that was what he was after from the first, my dear. It was +written all over him!... A pretty kind of an officer for a trust company +to have! If the directors of the Washington Trust Company knew of this +there would be trouble for Mr. Ashly Crane!... A ward, too—"</p> + +<p>"He's always been nice to me," Adelle protested lamely, feeling that in +her invective Pussy was reflecting upon her guardians.</p> + +<p>"Of course!... I have no doubt he made up his mind to get you, as soon +as he knew how rich you would be."</p> + +<p>This was too raw even for Adelle. The girl drew herself up haughtily, +and Miss Comstock adroitly covered up her mistake.</p> + +<p>"You know, my dear, that is one of the dangers any woman with money is +exposed to. Luckily this is your first experience with the mere +fortune-hunter, but you will find that there are many men in the world +just like this Mr. Ashly Crane, who are incapable of a genuine passion +for any woman, and are always looking for a rich wife. No girl wants to +think that a man is making love to her because she has money—especially +when she has other attractions.... To think that this man, who ought to +have shielded you from everything, should be the one to humiliate you +so!"</p> + +<p>She proceeded with an admirable mingling of flattery and friendliness to +put Adelle on her guard against the male sex.</p> + +<p>"At least," she concluded, "a man ought to have something to offer a +rich girl,—a name or position. What has that little cad to give you? +Social position? A title? Nothing! If a woman must marry, she should get +something in the bargain."</p> + +<p>She succeeded in thoroughly humiliating Adelle for what she had secretly +been a little proud of, her first "affair," and easily killed with her +contempt any possibility of the girl's yielding to the banker's +persistency.</p> + +<p>"He said he was coming to see me to-morrow," Adelle finally pouted +almost tearfully.</p> + +<p>"He will see <i>me</i> to-morrow instead," Miss Comstock said promptly; "and +I don't think he will trouble you again."</p> + +<p>The encounter on the following morning between the trust officer and +Pussy Comstock is not a part of this story. Enough to say that Mr. Crane +got his steamer at Southampton and was happily so seasick all the way +across that he could not worry over his failure in the gentle art of +love-making. He told his friends that he had spent a dull vacation in +England, and spoke disparagingly of British institutions and of Europe +for Americans generally. When President West inquired about the ward, he +spoke very guardedly of Adelle and of Miss Catherine Comstock. He +intimated that Miss Clark had developed into an uninteresting and +somewhat headstrong young woman, and implied that he had doubts about +the influence which her present mentor had upon her character. However, +the trust company would soon be absolved from all responsibility for its +ward, and it might be as well to let matters rest as they were for the +present, if the drafts from Paris did not become too outrageous, which, +of course, was exactly what Mr. West and the other officers wished to +do—nothing.</p> + +<p>Hereafter Mr. Ashly Crane must honor any draft that Adelle might make, +no matter how "outrageous" it was. (The drafts came fluttering across +the ocean on every steamer for ever-increasing amounts until the young +heiress was living at the rate of nearly forty thousand dollars a year.) +The banker might wonder how a young girl, still nominally in school, +could get away with so much money. He might fear that her extravagance +would become a habit and carry her even beyond the limits of her large +means. But he could not say a word. Miss Comstock, indeed, had put him +in a sorry situation for a full-grown banker. The more he thought about +the unfortunate episode of his love-making, the more he cursed himself. +President West, whose special protégé the young banker had always been, +held very strict notions about honor and the relation of the officers of +the company to its clients. In Adelle's case—that of a minor entrusted +to them by the probate court—the president would feel doubly incensed +if he suspected that any officer had attempted to take advantage of her +unprotected and inexperienced youth. So Mr. Ashly Crane walked softly +these days and promptly honored Adelle's drafts.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI</h2> + + +<p>Of course this was precisely what Pussy Comstock had been clever enough +to see when, in the idiom with which Mr. Crane was familiar, she had had +the trust officer "on the carpet" and "called him down" on that +memorable occasion of the day after. He might tell her, as he had +recklessly done, that her own relation to the rich girl depended solely +upon his consent, and hint coarsely that he knew well enough the ground +of her extreme interest in Adelle's fate. Miss Comstock did not take the +trouble to deny either fact. She merely smiled at the blustering banker, +and intimated that the president and directors of the trust company +might have views about the conduct of its trust officer towards their +ward. She had heard much of the prominent social position of President +West, and if she were not mistaken Mr. Nelson Glynn, the father of one +of her girls, was a director in the bank. Mr. Crane wilted under this +fine treatment, and departed as we have seen to do Miss Comstock's will.</p> + +<p>This blunder of Adelle's official guardian also gave Miss Comstock a +great prestige with the girl herself. Pussy had so cleverly unmasked the +designing man that Adelle felt only mortification for the incident and +was grateful for Miss Comstock's friendship and impressed by her +knowledge of the world. Miss Comstock made much of her in the ensuing +weeks, and for this angular and somewhat worn middle-aged woman Adelle +began to have the first real passion of her life. She was putty in her +hands for a time and obeyed her slightest suggestion. Instead of curbing +Adelle's tendency to extravagance, the mistress of the Villa Ponitowski +encouraged it, partly for her own gratification and partly to serve +warning upon the trust officer. Mr. Crane might well wonder where Adelle +put the money she drew; he would have been amazed if he could have known +the ingenious ways which Miss Comstock found for improving her +opportunity. In all the years that she had pursued her parasitic +occupation, she had never had such a free chance, and she began to dream +ambitiously of appropriating Adelle and Clark's Field for life.</p> + +<p>With Pussy's approval Adelle bought another motor, a high-powered +touring-car, and she kept besides several saddle-horses for use in the +Bois. She generously assumed the entire rent of Miss Baxter's expensive +studio when that imprudent artist found herself in difficulties; but +that comes a little later. Adelle defrayed all the expenses of the Nile +trip which Miss Comstock made with her family this winter. These are a +few instances of the spending habit, but the great leak was the constant +wastefulness to which Adelle was becoming accustomed. She spent a lot of +money merely for the sake of spending it, buying nothings of all sorts +to give away or throw away. It seemed as if all the penurious years of +the Clarks were now being revenged in one long prodigal draft by this +last representative of their line. The magic lamp responded admirably +each time Adelle rubbed it by simply writing her name upon a slip of +paper at the banker's. She had a child's curiosity to find out the +limits of its marvelous power, and daringly increased her demands upon +it. Possibly if Miss Comstock's designs had carried, she might have +discovered this limit within a few years: but her fate was shaping +otherwise.</p> + +<p>Meantime her little "affair" with the banker excited the other girls in +the family, who felt that the rich young heiress must encounter many +wonderful adventures in love. Adelle was initiated in the great theme, +and for the first time began to take an interest in men. Perhaps Mr. +Ashly Crane's crude love-making had broken down certain inhibitions in +the girl's passive nature, had overcome an instinctive repugnance to sex +encounters. The path of the next wooer would doubtless be easier. But +that lucky man did not put in an appearance. Miss Comstock jealously +guarded the approaches to her treasure with greater discretion than ever +before. She made no effort to prepare for her an alliance with an +impecunious scion of the minor Continental nobility such as she arranged +later for Sadie Paul. She said that she could think of no one good +enough for her dear Adelle, and anyway the girl was altogether too young +to think of marrying—another year would be ample time. So Adelle was +confined to the younger brothers and friends of her companions, who +turned up in Paris at different times, and upon these she tried timidly +her powers of charm with no great success. Apparently she was content to +remain without "beaux." Luxury had made her indolent, and her days were +full of petty occupations that distract the spirit. Yet at times she +felt a vague emptiness in her life which she soon found means of filling +in an unsuspected manner.</p> + +<p>Adelle's interest in the art of jewelry had not ceased, but she was away +from Paris this second year so much that her work in Miss Baxter's +studio had been sadly interrupted. After her return from the Nile in +March, however, she developed anew her passion for making pins and +chains and rings, and spent long afternoons in the studio on the Rue de +l'Université. Miss Comstock thought nothing of these absences; indeed, +was relieved to have Adelle so harmlessly and elegantly employed. It is +true that Adelle was working in the studio, but she was working under a +new tutelage. A fellow-townsman of Miss Baxter's had turned up in Paris +that autumn and frequented her studio as the only place where he could +be sure of a welcome, warmth, and an occasional cup of tea. This young +Californian, Archie Davis by name, had found his way to Paris as the +traditional home of the arts, and expected to make himself famous as a +painter. A graduate of the State University, he had been engaged by his +father in vine culture on the sunny slopes of Santa Rosa, but the life +of a California wine-grower had not appealed to him. From the slopes of +Santa Rosa he soon drifted to San Francisco, and there conceived of +himself as a painter. He was a large, vigorous, rather common young +Californian, with reddish hair and a slightly freckled face, who was +really at home on horseback in the wilds of his native land, but at a +loss on the streets of Paris where he found himself frequently without +much money. Viticulture was not paying well at this time in California, +and Archie's father, in cutting down expenses all around, chose to begin +with Archie, who had not done anything to assist the family fortunes. +Archie took it good-naturedly and kept usually cheerful, though seedy +and often hungry. He felt that his was the typical story of the artist, +and if he would only persist, in spite of poverty and discouragement, he +must ultimately become a great painter because of his discomfiture.</p> + +<p>"They can't freeze me out!" was a common saying on his lips, given with +a toss of the head and a smiling face which made an impression upon +women. Also his whistling philosophy, phrased as, "You never know your +luck!"</p> + +<p>Miss Baxter, who had no great confidence in his ability, was kind to +Archie Davis for the sake of California, where she had known his people, +and because a single woman, no matter what her kind or condition may be, +likes to have some man within call. Adelle met him, as she met dozens of +other men, in the easy intimacy of the studio. At first she did not +regard him nor he her. Sadie Paul, who happened to be present at the +time, pronounced him a "bounder," which made no great impression upon +Adelle, any more than had Miss Comstock's "cad" for the banker. It was +not until she had settled in Paris for the spring and was a fairly +regular worker in the studio that Archie began to play a part in her +life.</p> + +<p>It is easy to see why they should draw together. Adelle, thanks to all +the accessories that her money provided, presented a radiant and rare +vision to the young Californian, who knew only women like Cornelia +Baxter—mere workers—or the more vulgar intimacies of the streets and +cafes. Adelle Clark did not resemble even the sturdy California lassies +with whom he had been a favorite on the university campus. With her +motors and gowns and jewels she was the exotic, the privileged goddess +of wealth. To her Archie was at first mere Boy, then Youth. His seedy +state did not disturb her. Though dainty in habit, she had not become +delicate in instinct. And Archie's "freshness" amused her, his casual +familiarity of the sort that exclaimed, while he fingered a bit of her +handiwork,—"Say, girlie, but that is a peach of a ring!... Is it for +Some One now?"</p> + +<p>She laughed at his "freshness," and felt perfectly at home with him. It +was not until after several weeks of this acquaintanceship that the +affair developed, unexpectedly, the opportunity being given.</p> + +<p>One rainy April afternoon when Adelle arrived at the studio she found it +empty except for the presence of Archie Davis, who was dozing on the +divan in front of the small stove. Adelle had come briskly up the stairs +from her car, and the ride through the damp air had given her pale +cheeks some color. She threw back her long coat, revealing a +rose-colored bodice that made her quite pretty. Then the two discovered +themselves alone in the big studio. Adelle had a faint consciousness of +the fact, but supposing that Miss Baxter would return, she tossed aside +her wrap and with a mere "Hello, Archie!" went over to the corner where +on a small bench she was wont to pound and chisel and twist.</p> + +<p>"Say, but you look good enough to eat!" the youth remarked +appreciatively.</p> + +<p>Adelle laughed at the compliment.</p> + +<p>"Why are you always thinking of eating?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"I guess because a good meal don't often come my way," he yawned in +reply.</p> + +<p>Adelle wanted to find out why this was so, but could not frame her +question to her satisfaction. Archie happened to be in one of those rare +moments of melancholy introspection when he doubted even his divine +calling to art. He was really hungry and somewhat cold, and life did not +seem inviting.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," he observed after a time, "as this art game is all it +looks to be from a distance—that is," he added, watching Adelle with +appreciative eyes, "unless you happen to have the dough to support it on +the side."</p> + +<p>"Aren't you painting?" Adelle asked after another pause.</p> + +<p>"Nope!"</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"I can't paint when I'm feeling bad."</p> + +<p>"What's the matter?..."</p> + +<p>According to the novelists love-making—"the approach of the sexes"—is +an affair of infinite precision and fine intention; but according to +nature, at least in those less self-conscious circles wherein are found +the vast majority, it is one of the casual and apparently aimless forms +of human contact. For a good hour these two played the ancient game, but +the movements, the articulate ones, at least, were of the last degree of +banality and insignificance—too trivial to recite even here.</p> + +<p>That consciousness of being alone with a young man, which had come over +Adelle on her entrance, developed gradually into a pleasant sense of +intimacy with Archie. Miss Baxter did not come back to make the tea, as +she usually did at this hour. Adelle was acutely aware that the young +man had counted on getting this tea and really needed the nourishment. +She wanted to give him food, to be kind to him. At last she ventured to +suggest,—"Don't you know some place around here where we could get +something to eat? I guess Miss Baxter isn't coming back this afternoon."</p> + +<p>Archie instantly rose to the suggestion: he knew all the restaurants +within the radius of two miles. And so, escorted by the young man, +Adelle was soon entering a discreet small café, where, after infinite +conversation with the proprietor, a tepid concoction was served with +some excellent small cakes. Adelle then had one of the purest joys of +her existence in watching the gusto with which the young Californian +dispatched his tea and cakes even to the last crumbs of the <i>brioche</i>. +She wanted to ask him to dine with her somewhere, but did not dare. In +time they went back to the studio, which was now dark and still +deserted, and after puttering for another half-hour Adelle departed in +her car for the Villa Ponitowski. Nothing more momentous than what has +been related happened, but both felt profoundly that something had +happened. Archie, less daring or more skillful than his predecessor, did +not press his advantage,—did not even ask to accompany the girl +home,—and Adelle was left with the happy illusion of a mysterious human +interest.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII"></a>XXII</h2> + + +<p>At last Adelle had a young man! He was not much of a young man in the +eyes of Miss Comstock or Irene Paul, perhaps, but Adelle did not care +for that. Incipient love awoke in the girl all her latent power of +guile. This time she did not "give herself away" to "Pussy" nor to her +companions, knowing instinctively that her toy would be taken away from +her if it was discovered. For two months she managed almost daily +meetings with Archie Davis without arousing the suspicion of any one, +except possibly Miss Baxter, who did not consider the matter seriously. +When late in May Miss Comstock took it into her head to motor to Italy +for a trip to the Lakes and Venice, Adelle tried her best to escape, but +failed. She departed sulkily, and managed to scrawl a letter and post it +privately almost every day. Each mile that bore her farther from Paris +filled her heart with gloom, and she made mad plans of escape. Her +emotions having at last been stirred dominated her exclusively. She +wanted Archie every moment. She wrote him to meet the party, casually, +somewhere. But Archie, alas, was altogether too poor to follow his lady +about Europe. She would have sent him the money for the journey if she +had known how to do it. Instead, she sent him picture postcards of the +monuments of southern France and northern Italy.</p> + +<p>It was in Venice one languid afternoon in early June, as she was coming +out from Cook's, where she had been to get her mail, that she heard her +name,—"Adelle!... Miss Clark,"—and looking around discovered her lover +leaning against a pillar of the piazza. He had somehow found the means +to follow her, arriving that morning by the third-class train, and had +hung around the piazza, confident that the girl must appear in this +center of civic activity. They at once took to a gondola as the safest +method of privacy. And it was in this gondola, behind the little black +curtains of the <i>felza</i>, that Adelle received her second kiss from the +lips of a man. But this time due preparation had been made: the kiss was +neither unexpected nor undesired, and on her part, at least, the embrace +had all the fervor of nature.</p> + +<p>As they floated out upon the still waters of the lagoon beyond the +lonely hospital, with the translucent silver haze of the magic city +hanging above them, Adelle felt that heaven had been thrust unexpectedly +into her arms. This was something far beyond the magic touch of her +lamp, and all the sweeter because it came to her as a personal gift, +independent of her fortune. At least she felt so. It is permissible to +doubt if Archie Davis would have been sufficiently stirred by a +penniless girl to have spent his recent remittance in chasing her to +Italy, but such fine discriminations about young love are cruel. +Sufficient for them both, in these gray and golden hours of the June +afternoon in Venice, that they had come together. In time Adelle learned +just how the miracle had been worked. Father Davis's remittance to take +his son back to the ranch had at last arrived with a rather acid letter +of parental instructions from the wine-grower. Archie with the true +recklessness of youth had torn the letter to shreds and cashed the +draft, purchased a third-class ticket for Venice, and put almost all +that was left of the money into a much-needed suit of clothes. And now?</p> + +<p>Adelle, with an unexpected acuteness, felt that Archie even in his +present rehabilitated condition would be an object of suspicion to the +keen eyes of Pussy Comstock, whom she was beginning to find troublesome. +And she felt quite inadequate to explaining Archie plausibly. So it was +decided between the lovers before the gondola returned to the city that +they should meet clandestinely while the party remained in Venice. It +was the family habit to take prolonged siestas after the second +breakfast, when Adelle would be free to slip forth and join Archie in +the cool recesses of a neighboring church. Other opportunity might +arise. Young love is content with little—or thinks it will be. They +parted with a final kiss, and Adelle thoughtfully paid the boatmen when +they landed at the piazzetta.</p> + +<p>There followed for one week the most exciting and the most taxing +episode in Adelle's small existence. She never had time for naps or odd +moments of indolent nothings. In spite of the languorous heat, she +became alert and schemed all her waking moments how best to make time +for Archie. After a few days she bribed her maid so that she could get +out of the hotel to a gondola after the others had gone to their rooms +for the night. It was all a piece of pure recklessness, and Adelle was +hardly adept enough to have carried it on long without detection. +Fortunately, Miss Comstock was much occupied with some important English +people, for whose sake she had really dragged the party down to Venice. +And for seven days Adelle spent rapturous hours behind the black +curtains of a gondola, varied by hardly less exciting hours of planning +to bring her joy once more to her lips. Then Miss Comstock's English +friends departed and the family set out for the North. They went by the +International and Archie followed more slowly by the <i>omnibus</i>. He +overtook the party at Lucerne, but Lucerne is not as well adapted as +Venice for the shy retreats of love. They were content to return to +Paris, where they imagined their liberty would be less circumscribed....</p> + +<p>It was at Lucerne that Adelle's lover demanded rather brusquely why she +was "so mortal scared of the schoolma'am?" Was she not a young woman of +nineteen and of independent means, without the annoying necessity of +consulting her parents in her choice of a lover? This put it into +Adelle's mind that in the last resort she might defy Pussy and have her +precious one all to herself in untrammeled freedom—in other words, +marry Archie. But she was really afraid of Miss Comstock, and also +doubtful of what her guardian, the trust company, might do to her. For +the present she was content, or nearly so, with what she had, and was +not thinking much about marriage. Her lover must be satisfied with +stolen moments and secret meetings in public places, with an occasional +kiss.</p> + +<p>Marriage was really the only solution, and Archie knew it. If Adelle had +not been possessed of such a very large golden spoon, the whole affair +might have resulted differently and more disastrously. But her fortune +both endangered and protected her. For Archie was no worse and no better +than many a young man of his antecedents and condition. It is, perhaps, +to be doubted if he would have contented himself indefinitely with +innocent love-making, if the girl had not been so far removed from him +in estate.... He meant to marry Adelle when he could, which meant as +soon as it would be safe for her to marry. That might not be for another +two years, until she was mistress of herself in law and of her fortune.</p> + +<p>Shortly after their return to Paris, the "home" at Neuilly was closed +for the summer and the family went to Étretat to occupy a villa that +Adelle had leased previous to her infatuation. There seemed no way of +escaping Étretat without betraying her real reasons. She said something +about staying on in Paris through June to work in the studio, but Pussy +firmly closed the house and shipped the servants to Adelle's villa. If +she only had not chosen Étretat, she wailed to Archie, but some nearer +Normandy watering-place from which she might have motored up to Paris on +one excuse or another and thus had glimpses of her lover! He must come +to Étretat. But Archie was again without funds, living on the bounty of +a hospitable fellow-countryman. After a fortnight of loneliness beside +the sea, Adelle invented an elaborate pretext to return to Paris, but +Miss Comstock insisted on accompanying her and stuck so closely to her +side during three hot days that there was no chance for a sight of +Archie. At last Adelle was sulkily dragged back to Étretat. Then she +asked Miss Baxter to visit her and induced that good-natured young woman +to send Archie a sufficient sum of money, as coming from an admirer of +his art, to enable him to take up his residence in the neighborhood. +Miss Baxter demurred over "giving him such a head," but finally was +persuaded. Archie Davis was probably more surprised than ever before in +his life to learn that one of his loose efforts on canvas had so +impressed an American amateur of the arts that the latter had given Miss +Baxter a five-hundred-dollar check for him and an order for a seascape +from the Brittany shore. Behold Archie established at Pluydell in a +picturesque thatched cottage with his easel and paint-box! Pluydell is +on the road from Étretat to Fécamp, and not over ten minutes' ride in a +swift motor-car from the villa that Adelle occupied.</p> + +<p>The young man painted intermittently during August, and Adelle +discovered a mad passion for driving her new runabout alone, which her +friends naturally voted quite "piggy" in her. If she was occasionally +bullied into taking a companion with her, she drove the car so +recklessly around the roughest country lanes that the friend never asked +for another chance to ride with her. And thus she was free many times to +make the dash over the familiar bit of chalk road, leave her car beneath +the yellow rose-vine that covered the cottage, and walk across the sand +to that particular corner of the wide beach where the young American had +established himself with umbrella and painting tools....</p> + +<p>What did they do with themselves all the hours that Adelle contrived to +snatch for her Archie? First there was a good deal of kissing. Adelle +grew fonder of this emotional expression as she became accustomed to it, +and sometimes rather wearied Archie with her tenderness. Then there was +a good deal of affectionate fondling, rumpling his red hair, pulling his +clothes and tie into place, criticizing his appearance and health. +Adelle when she was at the doll age never had had a chance for these +things, and now all her woman's instincts began to bloom at once. She +wanted to dress and care for her treasure and deluged him with small +trinkets, many of them made by her own somewhat bungling hands. After +these more intimate desires had been gratified, Adelle might take a +critical look at the canvas over which Archie was dawdling and pronounce +it "pretty" or "odd," or ask what it was meant to be. Then throwing +herself down on the sand or turf and pulling her broad straw hat over +her face she prepared for "talk." "Talk" consisted mostly of question +and answer,—</p> + +<p>"Where did you go last night?"</p> + +<p>"Casino."</p> + +<p>"Whom did you see at the casino?"</p> + +<p>"Same crowd."</p> + +<p>"Did you play?"</p> + +<p>"Just a little."</p> + +<p>"Did you win?"</p> + +<p>"Yep!"</p> + +<p>"Much?"</p> + +<p>"A couple of plunks," etc.</p> + +<p>Or,—</p> + +<p>"Did Pussy catch you last night?"</p> + +<p>"No! Never said a word."</p> + +<p>"Who was the man you were walking with?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, that little man with the glasses—he's a friend of Pussy's, +English."</p> + +<p>Perhaps as follows,—</p> + +<p>"Pussy is talking of our all going to India next winter."</p> + +<p>"India;—what for?"</p> + +<p>"She always wants to go some place."</p> + +<p>"You aren't going to India?" (Lover's alarms.)</p> + +<p>"Of course I shan't!"</p> + +<p>One easily might undervalue Adelle's passion, however, if it were judged +solely by its intellectual quality. The beauty and the wonder of passion +is that it cannot be weighed by any mental scales, its terms are not +transferable. Adelle's share of the universal mystery, in spite of the +banality of its expression, may have been as great as any woman's who +ever lived. At least it filled her being and swept her to unexpected +heights of feeling and power.</p> + +<p>She was completely happy at this time, but Archie after the first days +was restless and somewhat bored. There were long periods when he could +neither make love nor paint, and he took to spending his idle evenings +at the Casino, which was not good for his slender purse. As the weeks +passed and their ruses seemed successful, the two grew more reckless and +indulged in flying expeditions about the country roads in Adelle's +little car. One evening, as they were returning in the sunset glow from +a long jaunt down the coast, Adelle at the wheel and Archie's arm +encircling her waist, they came plump upon Irene Paul and Pussy Comstock +in a hired motor. Adelle stiffened and threw on high speed. They dashed +past in a whirl of dust, but the Paul girl's eyes met Adelle's. She felt +sure of Irene, and hoped that Pussy had not recognized them. But they +must be more careful in the future. If Pussy found out—well, they must +"do something." This time she shouldn't be deprived of Archie. Never!</p> + +<p>Adelle dressed slowly, revolving in her mind what she should say to +Irene, who had called Archie a "bounder," and descended to the salon +where the family were waiting for her. Nothing was said until they were +seated at the dinner-table. Irene obstinately kept her eyes away and +Adelle felt troubled. Suddenly Miss Comstock, looking across the table +with her penetrating smile, asked sweetly,—"Don't you find it difficult +to drive as you were this afternoon, Adelle?"</p> + +<p>Like all clumsy persons Adelle lied and lied badly. She had not been on +the road since she took Eveline to the Casino. Pussy must have been +mistaken. Miss Comstock did not press the point, but Irene Paul looked +at Adelle and smiled wickedly. Adelle knew that she had been betrayed +and her heart sank. Presently Miss Comstock began to talk about the +red-haired artist who was living in a picturesque cottage out on the +Pluydell road. A very ordinary young American, she observed cuttingly. +Had the girls seen him sketching? Adelle knew that the blood was +mounting to her pale face, and she bent her head over her food. The end +had come.</p> + +<p>That evening they went to the Casino to hear the music, and by chance +Archie was there, too, and threw self-conscious glances towards their +table. Between the soothing strains of Franz Lehr, Pussy whispered into +Adelle's ear,—</p> + +<p>"Why don't you bow to your young friend? He looks as if he wanted to +join us."</p> + +<p>Adelle gazed at her tormentor pitifully, but said nothing. The rest of +the evening she sat in cold misery trying to think what might happen, +resolved that in any case the worst should not happen: she would not +lose her Archie. She returned to the villa in dumb pain to await in her +room the expected visit. She did not even undress, preferring to be +ready for instant action. Soon there was a knock and Pussy entered. She +was in her dressing-gown and looked formidable and unlovely to the girl.</p> + +<p>"Adelle," she said with a sneer, sitting down before the fire, "I +thought you knew too much to do this sort of thing."</p> + +<p>Adelle was silent.</p> + +<p>"And such a common bounder, too!"</p> + +<p>It was Irene Paul's opprobrious epithet, which Adelle was beginning to +comprehend. She winced, but made no reply.</p> + +<p>"You might easily get yourself into serious trouble, my dear, with a man +like that."</p> + +<p>Adelle cowered under the stings of her lash and said nothing.</p> + +<p>"I shall write the young man to-morrow that if he wants to see you he +had better pay his visits here," she said tolerantly. "This is your +house—you can see him here, you know. There are ways and ways of doing +such things, my dear."</p> + +<p>With a yawn and a hateful smile Pussy departed.</p> + +<p>It was over, and she was alive. At first Adelle felt relieved until she +pondered what it meant. Archie would be exposed to the keen shafts of +Pussy's contempt and to the girls' titters and snubs. And probably there +would be no chance at all for the kissing and all the rest. It was +Pussy's clever way of effectually disposing of Archie. She understood +that.</p> + +<p>Adelle stayed awake for several hours, a most unusual occurrence, +revolving matters in her confused mind. When she could stand it no +longer she got up, dressed herself carefully in her motoring dress, and +stole downstairs through the silent house, out to the garage which was +at the other end of the garden. Eveline's little Pomeranian squeaked +once, but did not arouse the household. Adelle cranked her car +feverishly and succeeded at last, after much effort, in starting the +engine and in pushing back the garage door. It was by far the most +desperate step in life she had ever taken, and she felt ready to faint. +She clambered into the car and released the clutch, more dead than +alive, as she thought. With a leap and a whir she was down the road to +Archie's cottage.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII"></a>XXIII</h2> + + +<p>Safely there she felt more composed. Stopping her engine she got out and +walked to the window of the room on the ground floor that she knew the +young Californian occupied. It was open. Leaning through the rose-vine +she called faintly,—"Archie! Archie!" But the young painter slept +solidly, and she was forced to take a stick and poke the bunch of +bed-clothes in the corner before she could arouse the sleeping Archie. +When he came to the window, she exclaimed,—</p> + +<p>"Some thing awful has happened, Archie!"</p> + +<p>"What's the row?"</p> + +<p>"We're found out. Pussy knows and the girls. Irene told 'em!"</p> + +<p>That apparently did not seem to Archie the ultimate catastrophe that it +did to her. He stood in his pajamas beside the window, ungallantly +yawning and rubbing his eyes.</p> + +<p>"Well," he observed, "what are you going to do about it?"</p> + +<p>Doubtless to his masculine good sense it seemed merely adding folly to +folly thus to run away from the villa at midnight and expose them to +further trouble.</p> + +<p>Adelle did not argue nor explain.</p> + +<p>"Put your clothes on," she said, with considerable decision, "and come +out to the car."</p> + +<p>Thereupon she went back to the car, cranked it afresh, and waited for +him to appear. He came out of the rose-covered window, after a +reasonable time, and climbed in beside the girl. She seemed to expect +it, and there was not anything else to do. Adelle threw in the clutch +and started at a lively pace, turning into the broad highroad which ran +in a straight line southwards towards the French capital.</p> + +<p>"What are you going to do?" Archie asked, now seriously awake and +somewhat disturbed.</p> + +<p>"I'm never going back to that place again," the girl flamed resolutely. +"Never!"</p> + +<p>As if to emphasize a vow she threw one arm around her lover's neck and +drew his face to hers so that she could kiss it,—a maneuver she +executed at some risk to their safety. "Oh, Archie, I love you so—I +can't give you up!" she whispered by way of explanation.</p> + +<p>He returned her kiss with good will, though mentally preoccupied, and +said, "Of course not, dearest!" and continued to hold her while she +steered the car, which was traveling at a lively rate along the empty +<i>route nationale</i> in the direction of Paris. And thus they proceeded for +mile after mile or rather ten kilometres after ten kilometres. Adelle +and the car seemed to be inspired by the same energy and will. Archie +realized that they were going rapidly to Paris and felt rather +frightened at first. It was one thing to make love to an heiress not yet +of age, but another to elope with her across France at night. Archie was +not sure, but he thought there might be legal complications in the way +of immediate matrimony. He might be getting himself in for a +thoroughgoing scrape, which was not much to his liking. But there seemed +no way of stopping Adelle or the car.</p> + +<p>For Adelle had no doubts. It was the greatest night of her life. She +drove the car recklessly, but splendidly. Every now and then she would +turn her pale face to her lover and say peremptorily,—"Kiss me, +Archie!"—and Archie dutifully gave the kiss, which seemed to be all the +stimulant she needed.</p> + +<p>The wild rush through the night beside her lover appeased something +within her. It answered her craving for romance, newly awakened, for +daring and desperation and achievement of bliss. She felt exalted, proud +of herself, as if she were vindicating her claim to character. +To-morrow, when Pussy Comstock and the girls found that she had gone, +they would know that she was no weak fool. And by that time, of course, +it would all be over—irrevocable.</p> + +<p>"You'll marry me as soon as we get there," she remarked once to Archie +in exactly the same tone as she said, "Kiss me, Archie." The young man +falteringly replied,—"Of course, if we can."</p> + +<p>"Of course we can! Why not?" Adelle replied firmly. "Americans can marry +any time."</p> + +<p>She felt sure that speedy marriage was an inalienable right that went +with American citizenship together with the privilege of getting +divorced whenever one cared to. Archie was by no means so sure of this +point, but he thought it well not to discuss it until they both had more +exact information. So the car bowled along through the night at a good +forty miles an hour.</p> + +<p>Long before they reached Paris the sun had come up out of the hot +meadows along the road and they were forced to stop at Chartres for +<i>petrol</i> and breakfast. Adelle wanted to cut the breakfast to a bowl of +hot coffee, but Archie firmly insisted that they must be braced with +food for the ordeal before them. She yielded to Archie and reluctantly +descended from her seat, stiff with fatigue but elated. After breakfast +Archie suggested that they should leave the car at the inn and proceed +to Paris conventionally by train. But Adelle would not give up one +kilometre of her great dash for liberty and Archie. Nor would she +consider his going on by train to make arrangements for the marriage.</p> + +<p>So they resumed their rapid flight, but mishaps with tires began, and it +was noon before they entered the Porte Maillot. As they drove past the +Villa Ponitowski, Adelle looked furtively up at the shutters as if she +expected to see Pussy's severe face lurking there. She guided the +machine to the Rue de l'Université and stopped beneath Miss Baxter's +studio windows. If Archie had proposed it, she would have gone at once +to a hotel with him and registered, but he prudently suggested the +studio, where he hoped to find Cornelia Baxter. But the sculptress had +gone away somewhere, and the big room was empty—also hot and dusty. +They sat down before the fireless stove and looked at each other.</p> + +<p>Adelle was very tired and on the verge of hysterical tears. Archie had +not been very efficient in the tire trouble. She felt that now, at any +rate, he should take hold of their situation and manage. But Archie +seemed helpless, was not at home in the situation. (If Adelle had had +more experience she might have been chilled even now by his conduct and +managed her life differently.)</p> + +<p>"I'm so tired," she moaned, throwing herself down on the divan. "Don't +you love me, Archie?"</p> + +<p>Of course he did, but he did not offer to embrace her, and she was +obliged to go over to where he sat in a wilted attitude and embrace him.</p> + +<p>"You are mine now for always," she said, almost solemnly.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he admitted, as if he did not exactly like the form in which the +sentiment had been expressed.</p> + +<p>"What are we going to do?"</p> + +<p>"Get some food first. I'm starved, aren't you?"</p> + +<p>Adelle, weary as she was, might not consider food as of the first +importance in this crisis, but recognizing Archie's greater feebleness, +she yielded to his desire for refreshment. So they drove to Foyot's and +consumed two hours more in lunching delectably. Archie seemed somewhat +aimless after <i>dejeuner</i>, perhaps he did not know just how to attack his +formidable problem. It was Adelle who suggested that they drive to her +banker's and inquire how to get married in American fashion in France. +Adelle felt that bankers knew everything. It was a very elegant and +bewildered young Frenchman whom they found alone in this vacation season +at the bank which Adelle used. After he understood what they wanted he +directed them to their consul. Adelle knew the American consulate +because she had been there to sign papers, and turned the car into the +Avenue de l'Opéra with renewed hope. They stopped before the building +from which the American flag was languidly floating and mounted the +stairs to the offices. In the further room, beyond the assortment of +deadbeats that own allegiance to the great American nation, was a little +Irish clerk, who in the absence of the consul and his chief assistant +held up the dignity of the United States. He was a political appointee +from the great State of Illinois, and after an apprenticeship in the +City Hall of Chicago was much more familiar with hasty matrimony than +either of the two flustered young persons who demanded his advice. To +Adelle's blunt salutation, "We want to get married, please!" and then, +as if not sufficiently impressive,—"Now—right off!" he replied +agreeably, not taking the time to remove the cigarette from his +mouth,—"Sure! That's easy."</p> + +<p>And he made it easy for them. He found the necessary blank forms in an +office desk and filled them out according to the information the couple +gave him. Adelle in deference to Archie's scruples stretched a point and +made herself of age. When the formalities had been completed, the young +Irishman called in from the outer office one of the hangers-on who +happened to be a seedy minister of the gospel and who looked as if he +were in Paris by mistake.</p> + +<p>Thus almost before Archie knew it he had taken to himself Adelle Clark +as wife, the ceremony being witnessed by the consular clerk,—Morris +McBride of Chicago,—and an ex-sailor on his way back to New York of the +name of Harrington. Adelle distributed the remaining pieces of gold in +her purse in the way of <i>pour-boires</i>, and then the two found themselves +in the runabout on the Avenue de l'Opéra—married.</p> + +<p>"I didn't know it could be done so easily," Archie observed +breathlessly.</p> + +<p>"Anything can be done when you want to, if you have the money," Adelle +replied, evincing how thoroughly she had mastered the philosophy of the +magic lamp.</p> + +<p>"And what shall we do now?" her husband inquired.</p> + +<p>(They say that in marriage the first trivial events are significant of +what will happen thereafter, like straws upon the stream betraying which +way the current flows. Possibly Archie's question indicates the quality +of this marriage, also the fact that presently Adelle set their course.)</p> + +<p>The consular clerk, judging that his compatriots were affluent, had +hinted at the propriety of a wedding feast at the Café de Paris; but +Adelle, who hated dinners, vetoed the suggestion. Archie was for +returning unsentimentally to the empty studio for their wedding night, +as they were short of cash and it was after banking hours. But Adelle +had not dashed madly across half of France in the night to spend the +first hours of her honeymoon in a dusty, hot studio on the Rue de +l'Université. She turned the car into the great Avenue and swept on past +the Arch, through the Bois, out into the open country. Ultimately the +lack of <i>petrol</i> stopped them at a little wayside <i>cabaret</i> some miles +outside of the fortifications, where, too exhausted to proceed farther, +they decided to spend the night.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV"></a>XXIV</h2> + + +<p>Fortunately Adelle was not of an imaginative habit of mind. She rarely +envisaged with keenness anything of the future, and thus escaped many of +the perplexities and annoyances of life, with some of its pleasures. +Hers was always a single road,—from desire to the gratification of +desire,—as it had been with Archie. Thus far her nature had developed +few disturbing impulses, which accounts for the simple, not to say dull, +character of her story up to the present. Even the supreme desire of +woman's heart had come to her in a commonplace way and had been +fulfilled precipitately, as the desires of the untutored usually are, +but uncomplexly. As she fondly contemplated her husband the next +morning, she did not realize that in one swift day she had accomplished +the main drama of her existence and henceforth must be content with the +humdrum course of life. Archie was scarcely more concerned with mental +complexities.</p> + +<p>"Won't Pussy Comstock be jarred!" was about the depth of his reaction to +the momentous step they had taken.</p> + +<p>Adelle smiled a wary smile in answer: she distinctly enjoyed having both +outwitted Pussy and escaped the bother of opposition to her desires and +the shafts of ridicule. She stroked her master's bright red hair and +kissed him again. They felt very well content with themselves this +morning. Archie certainly ought to have congratulated himself. He had a +young wife, who loved him to distraction and who was extremely +well-to-do, and, moreover, had no inconvenient relatives to "cut up +ugly" over her imprudent step. There was only a trust company to reckon +with, and what can a trust company do when it feels fussed and +aggrieved?...</p> + +<p>After a leisurely breakfast and more love-making under the plane trees +in the little garden behind the inn, the pair had to reckon with fact. +They must get some money at once: they had only enough loose silver in +their two purses to pay the modest charges at the <i>cabaret</i> and buy a +litre or two of <i>petrol</i> to get them to Paris. Yet they dallied on in +the way of young love and drove up to the bank just before it closed. +When Adelle in her nonchalant manner asked the young man at the window +to give her five thousand francs in notes, she received a great +shock—the worst shock of her life. The young cashier, who had paid out +to her through the little brass <i>guichet</i> many tens of thousands of +pretty white notes and gold-pieces, informed her that he could not give +her any money. It developed, under a storm of exclamation and protest, +that only that noon the bankers had received a cablegram from their +correspondent in America curtly directing them not to cash further +drafts drawn by Miss Clark against the Washington Trust Company. The +magic lamp had gone out most inopportunely! In vain Adelle expostulated, +declared there was a mistake, even introduced to the cashier "my +husband," who looked uncomfortable, but tried to assume authority and +demanded reasons for the bank's treatment of his wife. All the reason +lay in that brief cablegram. The couple at last turned dejectedly into +the street and again got into Adelle's runabout, which obviously was in +need of more <i>petrol</i>.</p> + +<p>"It's Pussy," Adelle pronounced with divination.</p> + +<p>"If it is, she's got in her fine work fast."</p> + +<p>The two might reflect sadly that if they had been prudent, they would +not have spent all that morning in love-making, having a lifetime for +that, but would have taken prompt measures to secure funds as soon as +the bank opened. Of course, it had never occurred to either of them that +trouble would fall in just this way.</p> + +<p>And now what was to be done? Adelle felt that they should drive at once +to the Villa Ponitowski, secure her clothes and jewelry, and make Pussy, +who she had no doubt was there, bank them until the embargo on her +drafts was raised. But neither had what Archie called "the nerve" to do +this. So they went for refuge to the only place they knew, Miss Baxter's +studio.</p> + +<p>There they found Miss Comstock. She had come to Paris, of course, by the +first train the day before, arriving at the studio shortly after they +had left in search of food. She had vibrated between the studio and the +Neuilly villa ever since, sure that when Adelle was short of funds she +would go home to roost. And Pussy had taken immediate measures to cut +off funds by cabling to the trust company the exact facts of Adelle's +disappearance in company with the Californian. She received them +amiably.</p> + +<p>"My dear Adelle," she began, "you should not be so eccentric. You gave +us all a shock!... I was coming up to Paris and would have been glad to +motor up with you and—er—Mr. Davis, I believe." There was a deadly +pause while she scrutinized the guilty couple through her glasses, as if +she were determining the exact extent of the mischief already done. She +looked disgustedly over the dusty studio and observed,—"It's not a +sweet place for—er—love-making is it? Why didn't you go to the Villa, +my dear, and let Marie look after you?"</p> + +<p>Archie laughed inanely. Adelle felt that she could not stand more of +this feline fooling. She said bluntly,—</p> + +<p>"We're married."</p> + +<p>"Married! So soon! How—er—nice!" Pussy commented.</p> + +<p>"Yes, we're married, Miss Comstock," Archie added lamely, mopping his +brow.</p> + +<p>"You don't mean that?" Miss Comstock said quickly, her tone changing.</p> + +<p>Adelle nodded.</p> + +<p>"Then it is really a serious matter."</p> + +<p>Adelle's blood froze.</p> + +<p>"I can't believe you have been such a fool," she said to the girl. "Or +you such a scamp," she turned upon the frightened youth.</p> + +<p>It seemed to Adelle that Pussy would have condoned anything or +everything except that fatal visit to the consulate. Pussy's morals, she +knew, were of the strictly serviceable sort, and she was gladder than +ever that she had prodded Archie into having the ceremony performed at +once. Now Pussy could do nothing but scold.</p> + +<p>But Miss Comstock accepted only the inevitable, and she was not yet +convinced that the visit to the consulate and the ceremony there +constituted an inevitable marriage. She pleaded with Adelle to leave her +so-called husband and come back with her to the Neuilly villa "until the +matter could be straightened out, and an announcement of the marriage +made to the world," as she was wily enough to put it. But Adelle was +adamant. Archie, to whom the woman next appealed, was more yielding. She +succeeded in frightening him, talking about the dangers of French laws +that had to do with minors. Of course they had lied about Adelle's age, +and there were all sorts of complications besides the scandal, which was +perfectly needless in any case. And Miss Comstock assured them that the +trust company would probably take every step to annul the marriage. +There was a very hard road ahead of them if they persisted in their +idiotic course. Finally she even suggested that Archie might return to +the Villa with them until his status could be determined. Adelle, +however, feared Pussy's cleverness and would not stir from the studio. +All through the protracted interview in this crisis, when her heart's +desire was threatened, Adelle displayed surprising courage and +steadfastness of purpose. Her courage naturally was an egotistic +courage: it amounted in sum to this—nobody should take away her toy +from her this time. And finally Miss Comstock retired from the scene +defeated and somewhat venomous.</p> + +<p>"I hope, my dear," she sent as a parting shot, "that Mr. Davis can give +you the comforts you are used to. I think it may be extremely difficult +for you to use your own money for the present."</p> + +<p>Adelle seemed quite indifferent to the comforts she had been used to, +although she well knew that there was not a five-franc piece in the +studio, when Miss Comstock departed to cable the trust company the +results of her interview. The trust company, it may be said in passing, +was much upset over the news, and after consultation decided to send the +third vice-president across the ocean to examine into the matter, Mr. +Ashly Crane having declined to undertake the delicate mission. Meantime +they did not rescind their instructions to their Paris correspondent, +and so for some days to come the young people were reduced to absurd +straits for the want of money.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>After Pussy had gone, with her threat, Adelle burst into tears and +accused Archie of not supporting her in this battle. Was she not giving +up everything for him?—etc. Archie had his first lesson in being the +husband of an heiress, even a much-petted husband. It was finally +learned, and kisses were exchanged. Then they thought to appease their +hunger, which by this time was acute, and debated how this was to be +done. Adelle was confident that on the morrow she could sell what +jewelry she had with her for enough to support them pleasantly until she +could make it right with the trust company and get hold of her lamp +again. For this evening she borrowed five francs from the suspicious and +unwilling concierge, and with the money Archie went forth to the corner +and brought back a dubious mess of cold food and a bottle of poor wine, +which they consumed in the dark studio, then went to sleep upon the +divan in each other's arms like a couple of romance. Rather late in the +day on the morrow Adelle sallied out in a cab to the Rue de la Paix +confident that she would return with much gold. She found naturally that +her own handiwork was unsalable at any price, and that the fashionable +shops where she had dealt prodigally would not advance her a cent even +upon their own wares. Pussy, she realized, had shut off also this avenue +to ease! They were obliged to induce the concierge's wife to pledge at +the pawnshop the more marketable things Adelle had with her. With the +few francs thus derived they managed to picnic in the studio for the +next week. They became acquainted with busses and the <i>batteau mouche</i> +and other lowly forms of transportation and amusement, but spent most of +their time in the studio, love-making, of which Adelle did not weary. +Archie was used to the devices of a short purse and Adelle thought it +all a great lark for love's sake. Besides, it must end soon, and the +high noon of prosperity return with the possession of her precious lamp. +To hasten that event she wrote a rather peremptory note to the +Washington Trust Company, notifying them of her change of name and +complaining of the mistake they had made in cutting off her drafts. It +would take a fortnight at the most to get a reply, and then all would be +right. Archie did not feel so confident.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXV" id="XXV"></a>XXV</h2> + + +<p>Prosperity did not return as completely as Adelle expected, nor as +easily. Mr. Solomon Smith, the vice-president of the trust company, +arrived in Paris in due course on the seventh day and fell naturally +first into the hands of Miss Comstock. For Pussy, realizing to the full +the consequences of this situation to herself as an exploiter of rich +American girls from the very best families, had moved her family back to +the Villa Ponitowski and had set the stage demurely and convincingly for +the arrival of the trust company's emissary. She impressed Mr. Smith +easily as an intelligent and prudent woman, who was terribly concerned +over Adelle's false step, and quite blameless in the affair.</p> + +<p>"Such an unfortunate accident," she explained to him, "from every point +of view:—think of my dear girls, the example to them!... And such +deceit,—one would not have expected it of the girl, I must say!... I +know nothing whatever about the young man, except that he comes from the +West—from California. One of my girls—a daughter of Hermann Paul, the +rich San Francisco railroad man, you know—tells me that this Davis +fellow is of most ordinary people, what is called a 'bounder,' you know. +Adelle naturally did not meet him here, but at the studio of one of her +friends. I knew nothing whatever about it until just before the +elopement—the very day before, in fact, when I surprised them together +in a motor-car. I spoke to the girl that night, of course, kindly but +severely. I had no idea she could do such a thing! It must have been in +her mind a long time. The girl showed great powers of duplicity, all the +trickiness of a parvenue, to be quite frank. I never had a girl of such +low tastes, I may say;—all my girls are from the very best families, +most carefully selected."</p> + +<p>Thus Miss Comstock skillfully contrived to throw the responsibility for +Adelle's misstep upon her birth and upon the trust company which had +brought her up. In doing this she but confirmed Mr. Smith in his opinion +that the guardianship of minor girls was not a branch of the business +that the Washington Trust Company should undertake. They lacked the +proper facilities, as he would express it, and it was more of a nuisance +than it was worth. He had had a tempestuous September passage across the +ocean and dreaded the return voyage.</p> + +<p>Having won a vantage-point Miss Comstock next proceeded to give a +piquant account of Mr. Ashly Crane's dealings with the girl, who in a +way had been his special charge.</p> + +<p>"Fortunately I nipped that affair in the bud," she said, "although, as +it turned out, I suppose he might have been less objectionable than the +fellow she took. I am afraid that Mr. Crane lowered the girl's ideals of +manhood and thus paved the way for her fall," she added gravely.</p> + +<p>Mr. Smith listened to the tale of Mr. Crane's futile attempt in rising +astonishment and wrath. He was himself a married man with a family of +growing daughters. He made a mental note of Mr. Crane's conduct, which +ultimately terminated that promising young banker's career in finance +with the trust company.</p> + +<p>"Where is the girl?" he asked at the end, sighing. "I must see her, I +suppose, though it seems too late to do anything now."</p> + +<p>Pussy had sagely taken account of Mr. Solomon Smith's character and +concluded that the banker was the sort of middle-class American who +might insist upon the young couple's being married all over again in due +form if he suspected anything irregular, and so to save bother all +around she assured him that she herself had made inquiry at the +consulate and found that the marriage performed there was binding +enough,—"unless the trust company wished to intervene as guardian of +the minor and contest its validity on the ground of misrepresentation of +Adelle's age," which, of course, must involve considerable scandal.</p> + +<p>"It would be very unpleasant, indeed," she said meaningly.</p> + +<p>The banker, who hated all publicity for himself and for his institution, +hastened to say that he had no idea of taking such action; merely wished +to be sure that the girl was really married and that her children, if +any came to her, would be born in lawful wedlock. Miss Comstock hid a +smile and set his mind at rest on that point.</p> + +<p>(One sequel of this affair, by the way, was the prompt conclusion of Mr. +Morris McBride's diplomatic career: he returned presently to a patient +fatherland to renew in Cook County, Illinois, his services to the +Republican Party.)</p> + +<p>After a delectable luncheon at Miss Comstock's, Mr. Smith drove alone +from the Neuilly villa to Miss Baxter's studio, where he found the young +couple somewhat in négligé, recovering from one of the concierge's +indigestible repasts, funds now running too low to permit them to +indulge in restaurant life. The untidy studio and the disheveled couple +themselves made a very bad impression upon the trust company's officer, +who loathed from the depths of his orderly soul all slatternness and +especially "bohemian art." He examined the young husband through his +horn-bowed glasses so sternly that Archie slunk into the darkest corner +of the studio and remained there during the banker's visit, which he +left to Adelle to bear. Mr. Smith could not be harsh with the young +bride, no matter how foolish and wrong-headed he thought her.</p> + +<p>"Mrs.—er—Davis," he began, going straight to the point like a business +man, "I am informed that you are regularly married. It might be possible +to have such a marriage as you have chosen to make set aside on the +ground that you are a minor—still a ward of an American court—and +misrepresented your age to the consular officer."</p> + +<p>Adelle opened her gray eyes in consternation. Were they, after all, +thinking of taking Archie from her? But she was reassured by the trust +officer's next words.</p> + +<p>"Your guardians, however, will in all likelihood not take any such +steps—I shall not recommend it. Although you yet lack eighteen months +of being legally of age, and of course ought not to have married without +our consent, nevertheless you are of an age when many young women assume +the responsibilities of marriage. The facts being what they are,"—he +paused to look around disgustedly at the evidences of the picnicking +<i>mênage</i>,—"I see no use in our interfering now in this unfortunate +affair."</p> + +<p>Adelle's pale face brightened. He was a good old sort, she thought, and +wasn't going to make trouble, after all,—merely lecture them a bit, and +she composed her face properly to receive his scolding. It came, but it +was not very bad, at least Adelle did not feel its sting.</p> + +<p>"It is also needless for me to pain you," he began, "by telling you what +I—what every mature person—must think of your rash step. Its +consequences upon your own future life will probably manifest themselves +only too soon. For a young girl like you, carefully brought up under the +best educational influences, and still in the charge of +a—er—companion,—" Adelle smiled demurely at Mr. Smith's difficulty in +finding the right word to describe Pussy Comstock,—"to deceive the kind +watchfulness, the confidence reposed in you, and carry on clandestine +relations"—What's that? thought Adelle—"with the first young fellow +who presents himself, indicates a serious lack on your part of something +that every woman should have to—er—to cope with life successfully," he +concluded, letting her down at the end softly.</p> + +<p>This long sentence, by the way, was an interesting composite of several +"forms" that Mr. Smith used frequently on different occasions. It did +not impress Adelle as it should. She felt, as a matter of fact, that in +deceiving Pussy, she had merely pitted her feeble will and intelligence +against a much stronger one of an experienced woman, who was none too +scrupulous in her own methods. Also that in acting as she had in running +away with Archie, she had displayed the first real gleam of character in +her whole life. But she could not put these things into words. So she +let Mr. Smith continue without protest, which was the best way.</p> + +<p>"As for the husband you have chosen, I know nothing about him of course. +I can only say that men of standing have slight regard for any man who +takes advantage of the weakness and folly of a school-girl, especially +when he has everything to gain financially from her and nothing to +give."</p> + +<p>Archie winced at this truthful statement and nervously dropped a palette +with which he had been fussing. It clattered to the floor and broke, +setting the nerves of all three on edge.</p> + +<p>"Such a man," Mr. Smith proceeded in his most acid tones, glaring at +Archie, "is properly called an adventurer, and rarely if ever proves to +have character enough to retain the respect of the woman he has wheedled +into sacrificing herself."</p> + +<p>This was a bit unfair, for Archie had been wheedled rather than wheedled +Adelle. Moreover, the world is full, as Mr. Smith must surely know, of +young men who have committed matrimony with girls financially to their +advantage and who have retained not only their own self-respect, but won +the admiration of their acquaintances into the bargain for their skill +and good luck.</p> + +<p>And Adelle resented the slur for Archie even more than the young man +did. She felt vaguely that Archie ought to do something to demonstrate +that he was not a worthless character, possibly kick Mr. Smith out of +the studio, at least protest at being called a "cad" and "adventurer." +But Archie took it all meekly and busied himself with recovering the +pieces of the broken palette from the floor. Mr. Smith did not press his +dialectic advantage; in other words, did not specifically hit Archie +again. Perhaps a human compunction, for the sake of the young girl who +had just rashly hazarded her life's happiness with the young man, +restrained him. He turned instead again to Adelle in a gentler tone.</p> + +<p>"I feel sincerely sorry for you, Mrs. Davis. A young woman in your +position, without family or near friends to shield her, is exposed to +all the evil selfishness of the world. You have succumbed, I am afraid, +to a delusion, although the trust company did its best to supply your +lack of natural protectors, to shield you."</p> + +<p>He reflected, perhaps, that the trust company had been, even from the +easy American standard, a rather negligent parent, chiefly concerned +with its ward's fortune, and hastened to say defensively,—"We placed +you with an excellent woman,"—Adelle had placed herself, but it made no +difference,—"one in whom we have every confidence not only as a +teacher, but also as a friend and guide." Even Adelle smiled broadly at +this description of Pussy. "But all our care has been in vain: you have +put us now where we cannot help you further!"</p> + +<p>Adelle lowered her eyes, but felt happier—the sermon was coming to an +end.</p> + +<p>"It is useless for me to continue, however. It rests with you alone, +with you and your husband,"—he pronounced the term with infinite +scorn,—"to prove that your rash choice is not what it seems,—the end +of your career, the end of your happiness. And it rests with you, sir," +he added severely, looking over at Archie, "to prove that you are man +enough to be a kind husband to the girl who has married you under such +circumstances. I sincerely hope that your future will be better than +your act promises!"</p> + +<p>Here was another opening for the kick, but Archie failed to grasp it. He +took his cue from Adelle and maintained a sulky silence.</p> + +<p>"There remains but one more thing for me to speak of, Mrs. Davis, and +that is your property, of which the trust company must continue guardian +for nearly two years more until you become of age and the company is +released from its guardianship by the court."</p> + +<p>The couple pricked up their ears with relief at the mention of property.</p> + +<p>"You have shown yourself to be prodigal in expenditure," Mr. Smith +remarked, pulling from his pocket a card with a list of figures. "This +past year you drew very nearly if not quite thirty-eight thousand +dollars,—altogether too much money, I should say, for a young woman to +spend safely."</p> + +<p>"It was the cars and the Nile trip," Adelle murmured.</p> + +<p>"Fortunately it happens to be well within the income of your estate, and +so I suppose I cannot raise objections except upon moral grounds. It is +too much money for any woman to spend wisely!"</p> + +<p>Mr. Smith apparently had positive convictions on this subject. Adelle +did not seem to care what he thought a woman could spend wisely.</p> + +<p>"And so I propose that for the remainder of the time while you are +nominally under our guardianship the trust company shall allow you—" He +paused as if debating the figure with himself, and Archie unconsciously +walked a couple of steps nearer the others. Alas! It drew Mr. Smith's +attention from Adelle, for whom he was sorry, to the cause, as he +thought, of her misfortune. Whatever had been in his mind he said +curtly, looking at Archie, "Five thousand dollars a year, to be paid in +quarterly installments on your personal order, Mrs. Davis."</p> + +<p>The young people looked at him aghast. As a matter of fact, five +thousand dollars a year was not penury, at least to Archie, who had +rarely seen a clear twelve hundred from January to January. Even Adelle, +after her training in the Church Street house, might at a pinch hold +herself in for eighteen months, all the more as after that period of +probation she could not be prevented by the trust company from indulging +herself to the full extent of her income. Adelle, indeed, who was still +somewhat vague about the limitations and possibilities of money, was not +as much annoyed as Archie. But she knew that she was being punished for +her conduct in running away with Archie by this disagreeable old man, +and she resented punishment as a child might resent it. Mr. Smith, +observing the signs of discontent with his announcement, remarked with +increased decision and satisfaction:—</p> + +<p>"I am sure that will be best for both of you. Especially for you, Mrs. +Davis! It will give you an opportunity to find out how much you care for +each other, without the luxuries that wealth brings. And it will protect +you, my dear, from—er—the indiscretions of a young husband, who has +not been accustomed to the use of much money, I gather."</p> + +<p>Undoubtedly Mr. Smith thought he was acting wisely towards them,—"Just +as I would if it had been my own daughter," according to his report to +President West. As a matter of fact, he acted precisely as parents are +only too prone to act, with one third desire for the best interests of +the parties concerned and two thirds desire to have them punished for +their folly. The punitive motive was large in Mr. Smith's decision to +put the couple on short rations as long as he had the power to do so. He +would have liked to tie up Adelle's fortune indefinitely, so that the +young scamp who had married her for her money (as he was convinced) +might get as little of it as possible. Unfortunately the trust company +had no control after Adelle's twenty-first birthday, unless by that time +experience should teach her the wisdom of voluntarily putting her +fortune beyond her husband's reach; but, at any rate, for the next few +months it could arbitrarily and tyrannically disappoint his hungry +appetite, and that is what Mr. Smith meant to do. His psychology, +unfortunately, was faulty. It was perhaps the poorest way of securing +Adelle's happiness in the end, as he might have foreseen if he had been +less conscientious and more human....</p> + +<p>Shortly after delivering his blow, Mr. Smith took his hat and left the +studio without shaking hands with Archie, although he smiled frostily on +the trust company's ward and "hoped all would go well with her in her +new life." All the way back to his hotel he congratulated himself for +his dispatch, finesse, eloquence, and wisdom in handling a deplorable +and difficult situation. Yet it is hard to see just what he had +accomplished by crossing the ocean. He washed his hands of "the Clark +girl" before he left Paris for his return voyage, and, like so many +persons with whom the young heiress had dealings, never again actively +entered her life.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXVI" id="XXVI"></a>XXVI</h2> + + +<p>When the studio door closed upon the emissary of the trust company, the +young couple looked at each other a little ruefully. Archie kicked over +a chair or two and expressed himself volubly, now that it was safe, upon +the priggishness and meanness of such folks as Mr. Solomon Smith. Adelle +might wish that he had expressed himself in these vigorous terms +earlier, when there could have been discussion and a chance of modifying +Mr. Smith's decision. But she realized how raw he was feeling from the +old gentleman's contempt and sweetly put her arms around her husband's +strong shoulders and kissed him tenderly.</p> + +<p>"It won't be so bad, Archie," she said hopefully. "We'll get on somehow, +I expect, and it isn't forever—not two years." She could recall much +graver crises in life than being compelled to live for eighteen months +with an adored companion on seventy-five hundred dollars, and people +somehow survived them.</p> + +<p>"It isn't just the money," Archie protested, a little shamed, but still +grumpy. "It's his rotten talk. A feller doesn't like being called all +sorts of names."</p> + +<p>"Well, he's gone now and he won't come back," Adelle remarked +soothingly, with another effort to caress her young lord into amiability +and resignation to fate. That proved more difficult than usual: Archie +felt the sting of the older man's taunts, especially the horrid word +"adventurer" rankled in his subconsciousness. He saw himself reflected +in the opinion of other men,—at least of stodgy, middle-aged men like +Mr. Smith, who worked hard for what they got and had families,—and it +ruffled him seriously. He was not in a happy temper otherwise. A +fortnight of conjugal picnicking in the perpetual society of Adelle, +whose conversational powers were limited, had chafed him. So Adelle had +her first experience in that woman's pathetic task of endeavoring to +soothe and harmonize the disturbed soul of her lord, who, she is aware, +has only himself to blame for his state of spiritual discomfiture. But +Adelle, like all her sisters who love, since the world began, rose nobly +to her part.</p> + +<p>Finally, they sallied forth and with some money that Adelle had +contrived to extract, probably from the sale of another piece of real +jewelry, they consoled themselves with an elaborate dinner at a famous +restaurant in the Champs Élysées, and as it was a warm evening drove +afterwards out to the Bois. The next day Adelle ventured forth to the +bankers alone, and secured the first quarterly installment of the funds +left there to her account by the prim Mr. Smith. With the notes and gold +she hastened back to Archie, and the couple began to plan seriously for +the future.</p> + +<p>It is not my purpose to follow the pair in their erratic course during +the next eighteen months, although it had its ludicrous as well as +pathetic steps. That they were not ready for any sort of matrimonial +partnership, is of course obvious, but as they shared their disability +with a goodly proportion of young married people the world over, it does +not count. Adelle, being the woman, learned her lesson more quickly than +Archie, and under conceivable circumstances might have made as much of a +success with her rash choice, in spite of Mr. Smith's prophecies, as +many others make with their more prudently premeditated ones. She wanted +to be married, and on the whole she was content when she got what she +wanted,—at least, in the beginning,—which is the essential condition +of marital comfort. But Archie had not by any means been as anxious to +tie himself up for good as Adelle had been, and was more restive with +what he found marriage to a rich—at least, expectantly rich—wife to +be.</p> + +<p>In a blind effort to find a congenial environment, they moved about over +the map a good deal. First they went to Venice, of which Adelle +especially had rosy memories associated with the dawn of love. They took +a furnished apartment in an old palace over the Canal, and set up four +swarthy, muscled rowers in blue sashes. Venice has been for many +generations the haven of love, especially of irregular or illicit love: +but its attraction evaporates swiftly after the ceremony has taken +place. No spot where the male cannot stretch himself and get away from +domesticity for a few hours is safe except for the diviner, more +ecstatic forms of passion. In a few weeks the couple became deadly bored +with Venice and its picture postcard replica of life. At Archie's +suggestion they next sought Munich, where some of his artist +acquaintance had settled.</p> + +<p>This was an atmosphere of work, more or less, and Adelle amused herself +by thinking that she and her husband were members of that glorious band +of free lances of art. They took a studio apartment and set up their +crafts jointly. If either had had the real stuff of the artist, it might +have gone well; but two idle and rather uninformed persons in the same +studio produce disaster. Munich soon became an affair of beer, skittles, +and music in company with the more careless spirits that gathered there +that winter. Among them happened to be Sadie Paul.</p> + +<p>A good deal had happened to the California sisters, and as the "two +Pols" will come into Adelle's life later on, their story can be briefly +given here. Irene, the sister who had brutally betrayed Adelle in a +spirit of careless mischief, had attracted with her ripe California +charm a young Englishman of family. Mr. Hermann Paul, the "San Francisco +railroad man" referred to by Miss Comstock, meantime had died, and Irene +had gone home to join her mother and younger brothers and ultimately was +married to her Englishman. She divided her time thereafter about equally +between England and the new earthly paradise of the Pacific. Her sister +Sadie had determined to remain in Europe, under other chaperonage than +Pussy Comstock. It was rumored that a young Hungarian nobleman was +hanging somewhere in the horizon, but for the present she played about +with Adelle and Archie. Apparently Sadie Paul did not share her sister's +prejudices about "the red-headed bounder," for she flirted unconcernedly +with Archie as far as he would go, which to do Archie justice was not +dangerously far. Adelle, good-natured and easy-going by disposition, +welcomed the return of her old school friend and was not in the least +disturbed by her flirtatious attempts with Archie. That sort of amorous +pretense was more or less the habit of the world she had known, and +besides, she was aware that Sadie was "having a desperate affair" with +Count Zornec, the Hungarian referred to above, who was temporarily +exiled to his remote estate. Indeed, she became the means of furthering +this passion and speeding it to its destined end in matrimony, which has +to do with a subsequent part of our tale....</p> + +<p>To return to the wanderings of Adelle and Archie, in the Easter holidays +they left Munich for Switzerland for the winter sports, and in the +spring Archie conceiving the idea that he wanted to do Dutch landscape, +they went to Holland for a few weeks. That summer they rented a small +villa along the Bay of Biscay and had Sadie Paul and her Count as their +guests for a time. The second winter of their marriage they spent in +Paris, and by this time were rather hard-pressed for ready money, as +neither had relaxed in wanting things and Adelle especially still had +the habit of buying whatever attracted her attention,—bright-colored +stuffs, jewels, and useless odds and ends of bric-á-brac, with the idea +that sometime they should want to establish themselves permanently +somewhere and purchases would all come in usefully. It was much as a +bird gathers sticks, straws, and bright-colored threads, but in Adelle +it was an expensive instinct. Towards the end of their period of +probation, they had to get aid from money-lenders, to whom Sadie Paul +introduced them. Adelle did not find it difficult to raise money on her +expectations, at a stiff rate of interest, and thus the object of the +Puritan Mr. Smith was defeated. It would have pained his thrifty +banker's soul had he known that the trust company's ward was gayly +paying ten and fifteen percent for "temporary accommodation," while her +own funds were barely earning five per cent in the careful investments +of the trust company! When Adelle finally got hold of her fortune, a +goodly sum had to be paid over to settle the claims of these obliging +money-lenders....</p> + +<p>Of the quarrels, big and little, that the young couple had these first +months it is useless to speak. Thus far they were neither excessively +severe nor dangerously frequent—no worse, perhaps, than the average +idle couple must create in love's readjustment to prosaic fact. Adelle +no longer believed that her Archie would be the great painter that she +had once fondly dreamed of helping him to become. He was too lazy and +fond of good things to eat and drink and other sensual rewards of life +to become distinguished in anything, unless perchance he were well +starved into discipline. His present life of comparative ease and +expected wealth was the very worst thing for him as man and as artist. +Like an over-fertilized plant he went to leaf and bore little fruit. And +thus again Clark's Field, with its delayed expectations, had a baleful +influence upon a new generation of human beings. The Davises had just +enough money to wander loose over Europe, disturbed, as Addie had once +been disturbed, by the hope of a more golden future.</p> + +<p>Adelle herself was content not to work hard at the manufacture of +jewelry, although if she had been encouraged, she might have become +almost second-rate in this minor art. She, too, was indolent, if not by +disposition, by training, and Europe offers abundant distraction of a +semi-intellectual sort to fill the days of people like Archie and +Adelle. To loaf herself was not so fatal for Adelle as to acquiesce in +Archie's loafing, to accept the parasitic notion for her man that +obtained in the easy-going circles she knew. "Oh, well," she said to +Sadie, "why should Archie work if he doesn't want to?"</p> + +<p>Sadie saw no reason and suggested,—"There isn't one of those painters +who would stick at it if he didn't have to."</p> + +<p>Like all poor people, they hadn't any luck; that was her idea. And +Adelle cultivated another dangerous conception of marriage.</p> + +<p>"It's enough for me if he's good to me and loves me—I have plenty of +money for us both."</p> + +<p>In other words, she thought that she should be satisfied to keep her +lover always as an appanage of her magic lamp, to maintain a human being +and a male human being as she might maintain a motor-car or an estate or +a stable, as something desirable and pleasurable, contributing to her +happiness,—the privilege of her fortunate position as a woman of means. +There were many rich women who had that idea or cultivated it as a +solace to their defeated souls.</p> + +<p>"Isn't he a dear?" she would say to Sadie Paul in these moments of proud +consciousness of possession; and conversely she would say sternly when +some case of masculine errancy was brought to her notice,—"If Archie +treated me like that, he'd find his bag packed and sitting outside the +door!"</p> + +<p>So she was very fussy about her husband's appearance,—his dress and +manners and appointments; and insisted upon giving him every accessory +of luxury, everything that rich men supposably enjoy. As her nearest and +dearest possession, she was more concerned with his brave appearance +than she was with her own. She "dolled" him up, as Sadie Paul laughingly +called it. "Isn't he cunning?" was one of her common expressions of +marital happiness. Occasionally, in more serious moods, she might talk +largely about Archie's "going into business" when they "got their +money," but as time went on and Archie displayed little aptitude for +managing money, she talked less about this. Adelle would have been +content to buy the Basque villa they had rented and establish herself +and Archie there in complete idleness and luxury, provided he would +always be "good" to her, by which she meant faithful to those +unconsidered marriage vows made in the Paris consulate, and not too +cross.</p> + +<p>And thus Archie and Adelle drifted on towards that great date of their +complete emancipation from control, when all the riches of Clark's +Field, now accumulating in the trust company's pool, should be handed +over to them. That would be, indeed, the ultimate crisis for the old +Field, when, having been finally transmuted into coin of the realm, it +should cease to have an entity or any personal relation with the Clark +race!</p> + +<p>Meantime Archie and Adelle were not vicious, though Archie drank too +much for his digestion and was often peevish in consequence, and Adelle +was almost aimless and lazy enough to be described as vicious. Yet they +were no worse than many, many other well-to-do young persons with no +deep roots, no permanent incentives, no profound passions to give them +significance. Likely enough they might have ended in some charming +English country house, or Roman palace, or pink-and-white villa along +the Mediterranean,—if their fate had not been still involved with +Clark's Field. They would have become perfectly respectable, utterly +negligible modern citizens of the world,—the infertile by-product of a +rich civilization with its perfected machinery for the preservation of +accumulated wealth. There are more Archies and Adelles about us than is +commonly recognized: they are on all our calling-lists, in every +European capital or congregation of expensive country homes. Their names +stud the "blue books" and the "red books" of conventional "society." +They fill the great hotels and the mammoth steamships. They, in sum, +make up a large part of that fine fruit of civilization for which the +immense majority toil, and for whom serious people plan and legislate, +for whom laws are interpreted and trust companies formed in order to +handle the money they themselves are incapable of controlling usefully, +even of safely preserving....</p> + +<p>Archie and Adelle were hungry at this period for more money and felt +themselves martyrized by the whim of an ill-natured old man who had +arbitrarily made them wait to be wholly happy. They talked perpetually +about what they should do with themselves "after" the great event,—the +sort of touring-car they should buy, the kind of establishment they +should keep, the best place to live in, etc. It must be somewhere in +Europe, of course, for neither was eager to return to America "where +everybody worked and there was nothing fit to eat," according to Archie. +Adelle's ideas of America, never extensive, were growing dimmer every +season, and the occasional friends who returned from the other shore +described their native land in unflattering terms. Adelle thought that +every American who could lived as much of the time as possible somewhere +in Europe, but she did not think much about it at this time.</p> + +<p>They had no children. Adelle had no objections to child-bearing and +expected "sometime" to have "two or three" children. Archie thought +there would be plenty of time for that "later on" when they had their +money. Adelle was still very young, and in the present wandering state +of their life children would be a nuisance.</p> + +<p>Finally they were neither happy nor unhappy. Restless was the adjective +that described them most closely. Their bodies and stomachs and nerves +and minds and souls were always in a state of disequilibrium, and they +were feeling about for equilibrium like blind kittens without forming +any successful plan of extricating themselves from their subconscious +state of dissatisfaction. With another order of gray matter in their +brains either one might have produced out of this disequilibrium some +fine, rare flower of form or color or words. But Archie's gray matter, +like Adelle's, was not expressive.</p> + +<p>Their friends thought them happy as well as fortunate. Sadie Paul +reported to her sister and Eveline Glynn,—"Dell is crazy about her +Archie—she won't let him out of her sight. He's not such a bad sort, +but fearfully stuck on himself, just because Dell pets him so."</p> + +<p>Adelle, as she frequently told Archie, infinitely preferred her choice +to Sadie's "Black-and-Tan," as she called the Count Zornec.</p> + +<p>This was their state after eighteen months of married life.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXVII" id="XXVII"></a>XXVII</h2> + + +<p>The trust company had left its ward severely alone since Mr. Smith's +visit to Paris. Like punishing parents they seemed resolved to let +Adelle taste the dregs of her folly by herself. Each quarter they +deposited with the Paris bankers twelve hundred and fifty dollars and +notified them not to honor Mrs. Davis's drafts in excess of this amount. +It was automatic. That was the ideal of the trust company, as it is of +many private persons, to reduce life to automatic processes.</p> + +<p>But as the day drew near when the trust company had to give a final +accounting to the probate court of its guardianship, they notified +Adelle by a curt letter that her presence would be desirable. There were +certain matters in connection with her assuming control of her fortune +and terminating their trust that could be transacted more expeditiously +if Mrs. Davis would present herself at their office by the end of May. +"We beg to remain," etc.</p> + +<p>The suggestion came as a welcome incentive to the young couple. Anything +that might expedite matters was to their taste. They had talked of +making a visit to Archie's relatives and introducing Adelle to the +modern paradise of the golden slope and at the same time visiting the +Pauls. And so, about the middle of May, the Davises took ship from Havre +for the New World, occupying, in deference to their coming wealth, an +expensive deck suite in the transatlantic hotel, and thus made their +journey in all possible comfort.</p> + +<p>They arrived in B—— with a great many trunks that contained a small +part of all those purchases which Adelle had made; also with a dog and +Adelle's maid. Their first real experience of their American citizenship +came naturally at the dock. Archie, who had lost some money on the way +across, and was hazy about his duties and rights as a returning citizen, +had put in an absurd declaration for the customs officers. With their +formidable array of trunks the couple presented at once a vulnerable +aspect to the inspectors, and long after the procession of travelers had +scurried away in cabs, Archie and Adelle were left, hot and +uncomfortable, trying to "explain" their false declaration. Adelle, who +was not usually untruthful, lied shamelessly about the prices she had +paid for things. "It cost just nothing at all,—twenty francs," she +declared as the officer held forth some article whose real value he knew +perfectly well. Adelle lost her assurance, shed tears of shame; Archie +lost his temper and swore at the officer for insulting his wife, and in +consequence every article in the fourteen pieces of baggage was dumped +upon the dock while a grinning audience of inspectors, reporters, and +stevedores gathered about the unhappy pair.</p> + +<p>"What a country!" Archie fumed while the inspector was summoning his +superior officer.</p> + +<p>"No wonder Americans prefer to live abroad," he remarked loftily to a +convenient reporter, who was preparing copy with his eager eyes.</p> + +<p>"We won't live here, will we!" Adelle chorused to her husband.</p> + +<p>"Not much!"</p> + +<p>"To treat decent people like this, just because they have a few clothes +and things. What do they take us for—hoboes?" Archie continued.</p> + +<p>He forgot that he had departed from his native land a scant two years +before with a lean dress-suit case and a small trunk. Also that his wife +and indirectly himself were among the beneficiaries of the law they had +tried to evade. The reporter, who had appraised the pair more +expeditiously than the inspector had their goods, hypocritically drew +them out, asking their opinion of America and Americans, which Archie +set forth volubly.</p> + +<p>When the inspectors finally came upon deposits of Adelle's jewelry which +she had skillfully concealed in the toes of her shoes, they declared the +game off and sent all the trunks forthwith to the stores. Their case was +so serious that it must be dealt with specially. The pair finally left +the dock, much chagrined, feeling as nearly like common criminals as +they were ever likely to feel; indeed, somewhat frightened and much less +voluble in protest, whatever their opinion of their fatherland might +still be. It was evidently a serious affair they had got themselves in +for by their perfectly natural desire to save a few dollars at the +expense of the Government.</p> + +<p>The next morning when they awoke in the Eclair Hotel, which still +remained B——'s best hostelry, where they had consoled themselves by +taking an expensive suite and ordering a good dinner, they found that +their arrival in America was not unheralded. The reporter had not been +idle. His description of Archie was unkind, and his satirical report of +the couple's sayings and doings was unfriendly. He had somehow +discovered Adelle's connection with Clark's Field, the story of which in +a much garbled form he gave to the public and incidentally doubled the +size of her fortune,—"drawn from one of the most unblushing pieces of +real estate promotion this State has ever seen." Altogether it was the +kind of article to make the conservative gentlemen of the Washington +Trust Company very unhappy. When they read it they wished again that +they had never seen Adelle.</p> + +<p>Other papers took up the scent of the "Morning Herald," and for a week +Archie and Adelle were thoroughly introduced to the American people as +an idle pair, of immense inherited wealth, who had failed in their +attempt to defraud the custom house of a few thousand dollars. This +affair kept them busy for the better part of a week, and was finally +settled without prosecution when the collector became convinced that no +serious wrong had been plotted by Archie and Adelle. He gave them both a +little lecture, which they received in a humbler frame of mind than they +had shown at the dock.</p> + +<p>Archie rather enjoyed the newspaper notoriety that his marriage to the +heiress of Clark's Field was bringing him. He entertained the reporters +affably at the hotel bar, and established a reputation for not being a +"snob," though so much of a "swell." In fact he was a much less uncouth +specimen than when Adelle had first encountered him in the Paris studio. +A year and a half of ease and petting had served to smooth off those +more obvious roughnesses that had caused Irene Paul to describe him as a +"bounder." He was fashionably dressed according to the Anglo-French +style, and fortunately did not affect soft shirts or flowing ties or +eccentric head-gear, or any other of the traditional marks of the +artist. Lounging in the luxurious hotel corridor, he looked like any +well-to-do young American of twenty-seven or eight. His bright red hair +and small waxed mustache, and his habit of dangling a small cane, +perhaps, were the only distinguishing marks about him. After the customs +case had been disposed of, Archie found time hanging on his hands. +Adelle was occupied with the trust company and all the formalities she +had to go through with before she could actually lay her hands upon her +fortune. Archie read the lighter magazines and loafed about the streets +of B——, peering up through his glasses at the lofty buildings, and +imbibing more cocktails and other varieties of American stimulants than +was good for him.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXVIII" id="XXVIII"></a>XXVIII</h2> + + +<p>Adelle was distinctly roused by her return to America and all the +memories awakened at the sight of familiar streets, the home of the +Washington Trust Company, and the probate court whither she was obliged +to go. Judge Orcutt was still sitting on the bench and seemed to her to +be exactly as she remembered him, only grayer and a little more bent +over his high bench. He was still that courteous, slightly distant +gentleman from another age, whose mind behind the dreamy eyes seemed +eternally occupied with larger matters than the administration and +disposal of human property. He remembered Adelle, or professed to, and +gave her a kindly old man's smile when he shook hands with her, in spite +of all the <i>réclame</i> of her indecorous return to her native land. He +said nothing of that, however, but refreshed his memory by consulting a +little book where he entered all sorts of curious items not strictly +legal that occurred to him in connection with important cases. From +these pages he easily revived all the details of Adelle, her aunt, and +the now famous Clark's Field.</p> + +<p>Looking up from his book, he scrutinized with unusual interest the young +woman who had come before him after an absence of seven years. He was +reflecting, perhaps, that, although she was unaware of the fact, he had +played the part to her in an important crisis of a wise and beneficent +Providence. In all likelihood he had preserved for her the chance of +possessing the large fortune which she was about to receive with his +approval from the Washington Trust Company. No wonder that he looked +keenly at the young woman standing before him! What was she now? What +had she done with herself these seven crucial years of her life to +prepare herself for her good fortune and justify his care of her +interests? How had the enjoyment of ease and the expectation of coming +wealth, with all its opening of gates and widening of horizons, affected +little Adelle Clark—the insignificant drudge from the Alton +rooming-house?...</p> + +<p>Judge Orcutt no longer published thin volumes of poetry. The bar said +that he was now devoting himself more seriously to his profession. The +truth was, perhaps, that in face of his accumulating knowledge of life +and human beings, he no longer had the incentive to write lyrics. The +poetry, however, was there ineradicably in his soul, affecting his +judgments,—the lawyers still called him "cranky" or "erratic,"—and +giving even to routine judicial acts a significance and dignity little +suspected by the careless practitioners in his court.... And so this +elderly gentleman, for he had crossed the sixty mark by now, recalled +the timid, pale-faced, undersized girl, with her "common" aunt, who +seven years before had appeared in his court and to whom he had been the +instrument of giving riches. What had she done with the golden spoon he +had thrust into her mouth and what would she do with it now? Ah, that +was always the question with these inheritances which he was called upon +to administer according to the complicated rules of law—and the law +books afforded no answer to such questions!...</p> + +<p>"My dear," he said, with one of his beautiful smiles that seemed to +irradiate the "case" before him with its personal kindliness and +sympathy, "so you have been living in Europe the last few years and are +now married?"</p> + +<p>Adelle said "yes" to both questions, while the trust officer who had +accompanied her to court—not our Mr. Ashly Crane—fussed inwardly +because he saw that Judge Orcutt was in one of his "wandering" and +leisurely moods, and might detain them to discourse upon Europe or +anything that happened into his mind before signing the necessary order. +But after this introduction, the judge was silent, while his smile still +lingered in the gaze he directed to the young woman before him.</p> + +<p>Adelle, as has been amply admitted in these pages, was neither beautiful +nor compelling. But she was very different indeed from the small, shabby +girl of fourteen. She was taller, with a well-trained figure that showed +the efforts of all the deft maids and skillful dressmakers through which +it had passed. She was dressed in the very height of the prevailing +fashions—a high-water mark of eccentricity that Judge Orcutt rarely +encountered in the staid circles of the good city of B——. Her skirt +was slit so as to accentuate all there was of hips, and the bodice did +the same for the bust. And the hat—well, even in New York its long +aigrette and daring folds had caused women to look around in the +streets. She carried in one hand a large bunch of mauve orchids and wore +an abundance of chains and coarse, bizarre jewelry. Her face was still +pale, and the gray eyes were almost as empty of expression as they had +been seven years before. But altogether Adelle was <i>chic</i> and modern, as +she felt with satisfaction, of a type that might find more approval in +Paris than in America, where a pretty face and fresh coloring still win +distinction. She was <i>new</i> all over from head to foot, of a loud, hard +newness that gave the impression of impertinence, even defiance.</p> + +<p>This was accentuated by Adelle's new manner—the one that had grown upon +her ever since her elopement. Then she had taken a great step in +defiance of authority, and to support her self-assertion she had put on +this defiant manner, of conscious indifference to expected criticism. It +was the note of her period, moreover, to flaunt independence, to push +things to extremes. Needless to say that in Adelle's case it had been +further emphasized by the episode with the customs officers. Here again +she had defied recognized authorities and got into trouble over it; +indeed, had become mildly notorious in the newspapers. The only way she +could carry off her mistake and her notoriety was, like a child, by +exaggerating her nonchalance. Thus she had met President West and the +other officers of the trust company. Alone—for as usual Archie had +evaded the disagreeable—she had met them in their temple and felt their +frigid disapprobation of her and all her ways. She had carried it off by +forcing her note, "throwing it into the old boy," as she described it to +Archie, with all the loud clothes, the loud manners she had at her +command, and she knew that she had succeeded in making a very bad +impression upon the trust company's president. She felt that she did not +care—he was nothing to her.</p> + +<p>In the same defiant mood and with the same "war-paint" she had entered +Judge Orcutt's court and answered his preliminary questions. But she +felt ill at ease, rather miserable under his kindly, heart-searching +gaze. She wished that she hadn't: she wanted to blush and drop her eyes. +Instead she returned his look out of her still, gray eyes with a +fascinated stare.</p> + +<p>At last the smile faded from the judge's lips, and he withdrew his gaze +from the bizarre figure before him. He asked in a brisker tone with +several shades less of personal interest,—</p> + +<p>"Your husband is with you?"</p> + +<p>"No," she stammered uncomfortably, realizing that Archie was again +evading.</p> + +<p>He was outside lolling in the motor that they had hired by the day, +fooling with Adelle's lapdog and getting through the time as best he +could. Adelle so informed the judge, who received the news with a slight +frown and proceeded to the business before them. The trust officer +thought that now matters would be expedited, but the judge disappointed +him. After taking his pen to sign the papers, he kept his hand upon +them, and clearing his throat addressed Adelle.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Davis," he began in formal tones, "you first came into my court +seven years ago, with your aunt, at the time of your uncle's death—you +remember, doubtless?"</p> + +<p>Adelle said "yes" faintly.</p> + +<p>"As your mother's only heir, and owing to the death of your aunt the +following year who left you her sole heir, you became vested with all +the known interest in certain valuable real estate that had belonged to +your ancestors for many generations—what was known then as 'Clark's +Field.' As you are probably aware, this property, after many years of +disuse and much litigation, has finally been cleared as to title and put +upon the market. It has been sold, or much of it, for large prices. For +in all these years its value has very greatly increased—ten and +twentyfold."</p> + +<p>He paused for a moment, then with an unaccustomed sternness he +resumed,—</p> + +<p>"Clark's Field is no longer the pasture land of an outlying farm. In the +course of all these years the city has grown up to it and around it. +Generations of men have been born, come into activity, and died, +increasing in numbers all the time, demanding more and more room for +homes and places of business. Thus the value of real estate has greatly +risen, latterly doubling and trebling almost each year."</p> + +<p>He stopped again, and the bored trust officer thought, "The old fellow +is worse than ever to-day—getting positively dotty—likes to hear +himself talk...."</p> + +<p>"For thus," resumed the judge slowly, impressively, "is the nature of +man, of the civilization he has created. Men must have room—land to +grow upon; and that which was of little or no value becomes by the +economic accidents of life of exceedingly great importance because of +its necessity to the race.... Your forefathers, Mrs. Davis, got their +own living from the farm of which this piece of land—Clark's Field—was +a part; a meager living for themselves and their families they got by +tilling the poor soil. They were content with taking a living out of it +for themselves and their families. Indeed, if I am not mistaken, your +own grandfather was anxious to sell this same field, which was all that +was left to him of the ancestral farm, for a comparatively small sum of +ready money—five thousand dollars."</p> + +<p>Adelle had time to reflect that this was the exact sum on which she and +Archie had tried to live for a year, with considerable inconvenience. +But then everybody said times had changed, and you couldn't do now with +a thousand dollars what you could once.</p> + +<p>"Fortunately for you, Mrs. Davis," the judge was saying with a dry +little smile, "your grandfather was unable to carry out his intention of +disposing of Clark's Field for five thousand dollars. Nor were your +mother and her brother—his children—more successful in selling their +ancestral estate, although I believe they made many attempts to do so. +There were legal obstructions in the way, of which doubtless you have +heard. But at the very close of your uncle's life he had entered into an +agreement with some real estate speculators to dispose of his equity in +the property and of yours also—you being his ward—for twenty-five +thousand dollars—I believe that was the sum."</p> + +<p>Judge Orcutt put on his glasses and consulted his little book, laid the +glasses down, and repeated reflectively,—</p> + +<p>"Yes, for twenty-five thousand dollars! And he had so far carried out +his intention that had he lived but a few weeks longer there would not +have remained a foot of Clark's Field belonging now to any of the Clark +family."</p> + +<p>Poor uncle! Adelle thought. He was very little good in the world.</p> + +<p>"Twenty-five thousand dollars, Mrs. Davis, is a considerable sum of +money, but it is a small mess of pottage compared with what awaits you +in the hands of the Washington Trust Company. Let me see how much the +estate amounts to now!"</p> + +<p>Hereupon the trust officer handed to the judge an inventory of the +estate, which the judge ran over through his glasses, muttering the +items,—"Stocks, bonds, mortgages, interest in the Clark's Field +Associates," etc.</p> + +<p>At last he laid the paper aside, and looking up announced in grave +tones,—</p> + +<p>"It comes very near being five millions of dollars."</p> + +<p>Adelle had already been told the figures by the trust company, but in +the mouth of the probate judge the sum took on a new solemnity.</p> + +<p>"Five millions of dollars," he repeated slowly. "Even in our day of +large accumulations, that is a very considerable sum of money, Mrs. +Davis. It is just one thousand times more than the amount your +grandfather hoped to derive from the same piece of property."</p> + +<p>The trust officer smiled, and thrusting his hands deep into his +trousers' pockets gazed at the ceiling. Of course five millions was a +lot of cash, but the judge seemed to forget the hour in which they were, +when everyday transactions involved millions. The young woman, who had +expensive tastes, would not find the income of five millions such a huge +fortune to spend. She didn't look as if she would have any trouble in +spending it, nor the red-headed chap she had married. Still a +comfortable little fortune, all in "gilt-edge stuff"....</p> + +<p>"Your estate represents an increment in value of one thousand per cent +in—let me see—a little over forty-five years, less than fifty years, +less than a lifetime, less than my own lifetime!"</p> + +<p>Here the judge seemed to come to a dead stop, forgetting himself in +reverie. But rousing himself suddenly he asked Adelle,—</p> + +<p>"Have you ever seen Clark's Field?"</p> + +<p>Adelle thought she remembered being taken there as a young girl by her +aunt.</p> + +<p>"I mean have you been there recently, since it has been subdivided and +brought into human use?"</p> + +<p>No, she had not been in Alton since her return to America, in fact not +for seven years.</p> + +<p>"Then, Mrs. Davis," the judge said very earnestly, almost sternly, "I +most strongly advise you to go there at once and see what has happened +to your grandfather's old pasture. Look at the source of your wealth! It +must interest you deeply, I should think! The changes that you will find +in Clark's Field are very great, the spiritual changes even greater than +the physical ones, perhaps. Go to Clark's Field, by all means, before +you leave the city. Go at once! And take your husband with you.... And +now, Mr. Niver," he said to the astonished trust officer, "if you have +all the papers—yes, I have examined the inventory of the estate +sufficiently. Mr. Smith brought it to me some time ago...."</p> + +<p>There followed certain legal exchanges between the court and the trust +officer, while Adelle thought over what the judge had said to her about +Clark's Field and felt rather queer, uncomfortably so, as if the probate +judge had distilled a subtle medicine in her cup of joy, or had clouded +the clear horizon of her young life with a mysterious veil of +unintelligible considerations. Yet he seemed to be, as she had always +thought him, a good old man, and wise. And he was making no trouble +about giving her and Archie the money they so much wanted to have. Even +now he was writing his signature with the old-fashioned steel pen he +used, a clear, beautiful signature, upon several documents. As he +finished the last one, he glanced up at her and with another of his fine +smiles, as if he wished to reassure her after his little sermon, said to +Adelle,—</p> + +<p>"Now, Mrs. Davis, it is yours,—your own property, to do with as you +will. You are no longer a ward of my court!"</p> + +<p>He rose from his judge's chair and took her hand, which he held a trifle +longer than necessary, smiling down upon the woman-girl, his lips +apparently forming themselves for another little speech, but he did not +utter it. Instead, he dropped Adelle's hand and with a nod of dismissal +turned into his chambers. So Adelle left the probate court, as she +thought for the last time, wondering what the judge wanted to say to +her, but had refrained from speaking.</p> + +<p>It would be interesting to know, also, what were the entries that Judge +Orcutt made in his little note-book upon this, his final official act in +the Clark's Field drama. But that we have no means of discovering. All +legal requirements had been duly fulfilled, and everything else must +remain within the judge's breast for his own spiritual nourishment—and +for Adelle's if she could divine what he meant.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXIX" id="XXIX"></a>XXIX</h2> + + +<p>When Adelle reached the street she found Archie lolling in the car, +across the way, in the shade of a tall building. At her appearance he +yawned and stretched his cramped legs.</p> + +<p>"It took you an awful time," he grumbled to his wife. "What was the +trouble?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing," Adelle replied.</p> + +<p>As she got into the car she gave the driver an order,—"Go out to +Alton."</p> + +<p>"Where's that?" Archie inquired.</p> + +<p>"A little way out—across the river," Adelle informed him.</p> + +<p>"What do you want to go there for—it's nearly lunch-time," Archie +demurred.</p> + +<p>"I'm going out to see Clark's Field," Adelle replied succinctly.</p> + +<p>Archie knew vaguely that the Field had something to do with his wife's +fortune, but understood that it had been mostly "cashed in" as he would +phrase it.</p> + +<p>"What's your hurry?" Archie objected. "We can go out there some other +time just as well."</p> + +<p>But for once Archie was compelled to bend to a superior purpose and +endure being bumped over the rough pavements of the city out to the old +South Road, which was still cut up badly by heavy teaming as it had been +in the days of the farmers' market carts, and which also swarmed with +huge trolley boxes and motor trucks and pedestrians. For Alton was now +merely a lively industrial quarter of the "greater" city. In addition to +the old stove-works of enduring fame there were also foundries and +factories and mills. The old, leisurely "Square" had become a knot of +squalid arteries radiating into this human hive. Life teemed all over, +swarmed upon the pavements, hung from the high tenement windows, +infested the strange delicatessen and drink shops, many of which bore +foreign names. Most marvelous fact of all was that the thin, pale +American type, of which Adelle herself was an example, had largely +disappeared from the Alton streets, and in its place there were members +from pretty nearly all the races of the earth,—Greeks, Poles, Slavs, +Persians,—especially Italians. Many a sturdy young woman, with bare +brown arms and glossy black hair, strode along, hatless and unashamed, +on her way to shop or mill through the streets where Addie Clark had +sidled with prim consciousness of her "place" in society. Archie +remarked the growing cosmopolitanism of his native land with strong +expressions of disapproval.</p> + +<p>"It looks like a slum," he grumbled. "And nothing but dagoes in it. What +a place!—and what scum!" he commented frankly upon his wife's +birthplace. "Was it like this when you lived here?" he asked pityingly.</p> + +<p>"Not so much," she said quietly, not knowing why she disliked his tone +and his comment upon the present population of Alton.</p> + +<p>"They ought to do something to prevent all this foreign trash from +swarming over here," Archie observed.</p> + +<p>He did not reflect, nor did Adelle, that this "foreign scum" had come to +replace his race because he and his kind refused any longer to do the +hard labor of the world. If he had been of a more serious turn of mind, +he would have joined the anti-Immigration League and raised the +patriotic slogan of "America for Americans!"</p> + +<p>Adelle made no reply to his remarks. She sat silent in her corner of the +car, glancing intently at the old scenes that were so new and +unexpected. From time to time she directed the chauffeur when he was in +doubt, the old turnings of the streets coming back to her with +astonishing sureness. At last, at Shepard Street, she told him to turn +off the South Road, and at once they were in the maze of brick and +mortar that had been Clark's Field,—the old Clark pasture. The bulky +car had to move slowly through the narrow streets, much to the driver's +impatience, and he had frequently to toot his horn or screech his +raucous Claxton to warn the pedestrians to make way for the visitors. +The children crawled off the streets with the instinctive unconcern of +familiarity with traffic; the bareheaded women and dark-faced men +scowlingly gave the chariot of the rich space to proceed. So they +threaded the lanes and the cross-streets that ribbed the old Field, +crossing it twice and completely circling it once, until Archie was in a +state of vocal rebellion at the stench, the squalor, the ugliness of the +place.</p> + +<p>But Adelle looked and looked with unwonted curiosity. In her European +wanderings she had penetrated by necessity or accident similar +industrial neighborhoods, where human beings swarmed and life was ugly, +only to escape as soon as possible. But this time she did not wish to +hurry. Clark's Field seemed different to her from anything else she had +ever seen.</p> + +<p>It was all new, and yet in the way of slums it was immemorially ancient +at the same time, as if the members of old races that had come to fill +it had brought with them all the grime, all the dreariness of +generations of bitter living. And it was this, rather than the marvelous +transformation of the sandy field which Adelle dimly remembered, that +seized hold of her. How could people live so thickly together, swarm +like flies in so many identical doorways, get along with so little air +or sunshine or freedom of movement!</p> + +<p>"Packed like rotting sardines," was Archie's sneering comment.</p> + +<p>Artificially packed, too, scientifically packed in an up-to-date manner, +and all in the space of a few years! Modern magic they said of things +like this, and took a strange blind pride in it. Even Archie observed +with curiosity,—"They must have been a busy little bunch that got this +up so quickly!"</p> + +<p>Indeed, the Washington Trust Company, under the thin disguise of the +Clark's Field Associates, had shown great shrewdness and ingenuity in +"developing" the fifty-acre tract so that the greatest possible sum +could be extracted from its lean soil. They had resisted all temptations +to open it as "a residential section" of the growing city. They knew +that Alton was condemned to the coarser uses of society and must be an +industrial slum. So they had sold a small portion in one corner to a +steel foundry—one of the subsidiaries of a great corporation. And then +they developed the remainder for the use of the operatives gathered +together from all parts of the earth. The choicest lots they reserved +for "future growth." Along the broad South Road they built substantial +brick buildings for stores and offices. In the nest of by-streets that +ribbed the tract they erected lofty tenement warrens, as closely packed +as the law allows,—not the lowest order of tenement, to be sure, +because in the long run such buildings do not make a good investment; +but a slightly higher class of brick, bathroomed, three-and four-room +tenements, from the rear of which flowed out long streamers of clothes +drying in the wind. For the most part Clark's Field had thus received +its "development." That which had agitated a number of generations of +Alton citizens had been accomplished. For a considerable term of years +Clark's Field would not change in character unless a disturbance of +unexpected magnitude should wipe clean the ground for men to plan anew.</p> + +<p>As I have said, Clark's Field was now an industrial slum, but its +character was not as bad as much else in the cities of men. There are +far worse places in London or New York or Chicago—even in such smaller +cities as Pittsburg and Liverpool—for filth, crowding, and gloom. Age +added to cheapness increases misery and squalor, and Clark's Field was +still an infant. Indeed, the promoters of Clark's Field were proud of +their achievement and advertised it as the last and most enlightened +example of wholesale, industrial housing. But as Archie felt about it, +the place was worse really than the more celebrated slums of older +cities in its pretentious cheapness, its dreary monotony and +colorlessness, its very respectability and smug tediousness. A life +dropped into its maze and growing up in it must be lost for good and +all—must become just another human ant crawling over Clark's Field, +with the habits and coloring of all the other human ants striving there +for life and happiness. Archie, perhaps, felt this cramped and deadening +atmosphere more keenly than Adelle, and he prided himself on his greater +sensitiveness. He thanked God that he had come from the broad sunny +vineyards of the Golden State, where life still touches the arcadian +age,—not from <i>this</i>, as his wife had! His two years of foreign +rambling had educated him into a prideful sense of American vulgarity +and hideousness of detail.</p> + +<p>Adelle seemed wholly absorbed in the bricks and mortar laid upon old +Clark's Field. She did not speak. It would be impossible to say what she +was thinking of.... At last, as they emerged from another long stretch +of narrow street bordered on either side by high tenements that were +varied according to a machine pattern by different colored bricks, +Archie protested. He growled,—"Well, haven't you seen enough of this +sort of thing to last you awhile?"</p> + +<p>Adelle gave the order to retrace their journey to the hotel. She looked +back into the dreary maze with her wide gray eyes, and now they were not +quite empty eyes as they had been in the probate courtroom. She looked +and looked as if she were seeing the past as well as the present, as if +she were trying to fathom what Judge Orcutt had meant. When the Field +faded into the distance behind the rapid car, she sank back into her +corner with an unconscious sigh. Archie had taken a cigarette from the +little gold case that had been one of Adelle's first presents to him, +and as he lighted it skillfully in face of the wind was doubtless +thinking that never again would he be misled into going to Clark's +Field.</p> + +<p>On the way back Adelle ordered the driver to stop in the Square, and +despite Archie's protest that it was already long past lunch-time she +left him in the car and turned down the side street that led to the old +rooming-house. It was gone! In its place was a five-story flat building +that occupied not only all their yard, but the livery-stable lot as +well. Adelle realized the change with a positive shock. Latterly, since +the little lecture by the probate judge, the images of her early life +had come back to her mind as they had not for years. The transformation +of Clark's Field did not matter so much even: it had not been in the +immediate horizon of her youth,—more an idea than a physical +possession. But Church Street and the rooming-house and the +livery-stable—they had been her very self. She felt strangely as she +had seven years before when she was returning to her aunt's house after +the funeral of the widow. The last of all her landmarks had been swept +away....</p> + +<p>She returned to the car with a thoughtful face, and all the way into the +city she paid no attention to Archie's chatter, her mind far away, busy +with her forlorn little past. Once or twice she wondered what the judge +had meant by urging her to take her husband to see Clark's Field. But +she was glad that she had gone. She should have visited Alton sometime +or other she supposed to see what the old place was like;—she must +remember to go to the cemetery before they left B—— and look for her +aunt's grave. But this was not all that the judge meant, Adelle +suspected.</p> + +<p>She was not to discover for some years the full, fine meaning of the +judge's intention, perhaps might never recognize all the implications of +his message to her on her twenty-first birthday.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXX" id="XXX"></a>XXX</h2> + + +<p>Archie was pacified by a copious luncheon in the Eclair restaurant, +which is almost as good as a second-class Paris restaurant, and after an +idle afternoon the couple went to a popular musical comedy to end their +day. Adelle's business with the trust company was now finished, and they +must decide upon their next move. Their first impulse after the rout +upon the dock had been to dart back to Europe as expeditiously as +possible, with Adelle's recovered lamp, and never darken again their +native shores. But this pettish mood had been largely forgotten during +the fortnight that ensued, and they remembered their plan of going to +California so that Archie might present himself in his new estate and +his wife to his own people. A cable from Sadie Paul, stating that she +had taken "the B. and T." (which being properly interpreted meant that +she had decided to marry her Hungarian count) and was returning to her +home to celebrate her wedding, determined them. They forthwith made +their arrangements to cross the continent and spend the summer on the +Pacific Coast.</p> + +<p>It may as well be said that before departing Adelle had one quite +serious business talk with President West of the trust company and the +excellent Mr. Smith, whose had been the chastening hand at the time of +her elopement. Possibly the wisdom of his remarks was becoming more +evident to Adelle as marriage wore on, or it might be that she still did +usually as she was told, if she were told with sufficient authority. At +any rate, she agreed to leave in the hands of the Washington Trust +Company the bulk of her estate, not strictly in the form of a +trust,—they could not induce her to surrender the privilege of the lamp +to that extent,—but under an agreement by which she bound herself not +to disturb the principal of her fortune for a term of years. The bankers +represented to her tactfully that neither she nor Mr. Davis had yet had +extensive experience in the investment of money; that the operations of +the Clark's Field Associates were not finally wound up; that they had +had such success in their investments on her account that it would be +well to allow them to carry out their scheme of investment, etc. In +short, she signed the agreement, which was the last thing she did in +B——.</p> + +<p>Archie, when he learned what she had done, was irritated. Naturally he +did not like Mr. Smith and had a grudge against the trust company as a +whole. He said that the arrangement reflected upon him and his dignity +as a husband, although, as Mr. West had pointed out to Adelle, it was +not customary for a husband to be entrusted with the disposal of all his +wife's property. Since the vogue of international marriages, American +fathers had taken refuge in the trust companies. In spite of argument +and sulks, however, Archie could not prevail upon Adelle to undo what +she had done, and he had to content himself with the shrewd reflection +that it was probably not legally binding and could be broken when +opportunity offered.</p> + +<p>In this affair Adelle displayed an unexpected caution by her willingness +to let the trust company remain guardian of her magic lamp for the +present. She had a woman's instinctive confidence in an institution, +especially in one which years of use had made familiar to her. Archie, +she felt justly, must content himself with their income, which would be +more than two hundred thousand a year. That should satisfy their +immediate wants after the eighteen months of bread-and-butter probation. +And after all it was her own money, as the trust officers had said to +her again and again. This, however, she did not repeat to Archie. She +soothed his irritated pride in other ways, and in the end a fairly +contented and harmonious couple were whirled westward in the track of +the setting sun to that more golden shore of our continent, where other +fate awaited them.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXI" id="XXXI"></a>XXXI</h2> + + +<p>After a brief visit at the Santa Rosa vineyard, where oddly enough +Adelle seemed to feel more at home than Archie, they went to Bellevue to +attend the famous Paul wedding. Here Irene Paul, now an "Honorable Mrs." +George Pointer, entertained them, both Adelle and Irene apparently +forgetting their old grudges. Arm about waist they went lovingly up the +grand staircase of the old Paul mansion to Adelle's rooms, babbling +about school days, Pussy Comstock, and the other girls of her famous +"family." Irene even looked with favor upon Archie in his developed +condition of a rich woman's husband. Adelle reflected complacently that +he was quite as presentable as a man as the young Englishman Irene had +married. All you had to do to succeed, in marriage as in other things, +was to do what you wanted and make the world accept you and your acts. +And she honestly admired the tall blonde Irene, who had bloomed under +the influences of matrimony into something suggestively +English—high-colored, stately, emphatic. She liked the rambling ugly +mansion built in the eighties after Hermann Paul's success with +railroads, in the best mansard style of the day, and never touched +since. The grounds which had been extensively planted by the railroad +man were now covered with a luxuriant growth of exotic trees that +completely hid the house and afforded only peeps of the distant bay. +California, with its pungent stimulants of odor and color, appealed to +her from the very first. She was quite happy, and Archie seemed to +expand in his native soil and was less peevish than he had grown to be +latterly.</p> + +<p>After the wedding, which according to the local newspapers was a very +grand affair, but which unfortunately does not come into this story, +Archie and Adelle prolonged their visit. They found the easy atmosphere +of this pretty California town so agreeable, with its busy air of +luxurious leisure, that they took a furnished house for the remainder of +the season, and in the autumn they rented a larger place out on the +hills behind the town, having a lovely view of the great valley and the +distant waters of the Bay, with the blue tips of the inland hills rising +through the mists. They still talked confidently of returning to Europe +to live.</p> + +<p>They did not, however, at least for permanent residence. Archie was too +content with life in this land of sunshine, flowers, and informal +living, to leave. He said quite flatly now that he did not think he was +meant to be a painter and there was no point in being an artist if you +did not have to be something. Adelle perceived that according to Archie +there was not much point in doing anything unless one had to. She began +to suspect dimly the existence of a deep human law. "By the sweat of thy +brow," it had been writ in that Puritan Bible she studied at the First +Congregational Church in Alton. Then it had a very definite meaning even +to her child's mind, but during the easy years since, she had forgotten +it altogether. Now something like its stern truth was boring into her +consciousness. It seemed that when the larger incentives of living—the +big universal ones—had been removed for any cause, human beings were +often at a loss what to do with themselves. They sighed for "freedom" +when bound to the common wheel, but when released, as Archie and Adelle +had been, the average man or woman had but the feeblest notion of what +to do with his "freedom."</p> + +<p>With women such as Adelle the tragedy is less apparent than with men, +because woman's life for uncounted ages has consisted in great part of +playing games with herself at the dictates of men, and large wealth +assists her in making these games socially interesting and agreeable. +Adelle, to be sure, had no social ambition of the conventional sort. She +was more content than Archie with merely being married and having plenty +of money to spend in any way she chose. In this respect she was nearer +the primitive than Archie, who often reminded her of the fact somewhat +cruelly. Yet, as we shall see, when the time came she awoke to the full +realization of the situation, which Archie never understood at all.</p> + +<p>Art having finally been thrown out of the window by both, it remained to +determine how best they could dispose of themselves and their riches so +as to "get the most out of life." The first of the game substitutes for +real living happened to be a "ranch." The suggestion came from Irene's +husband, who had been attracted to California by this lure of +"ranching."</p> + +<p>"Why don't you go in for a big ranch?" he said to Archie one evening, +when the four were yawning sleepily over the fire after a day spent +motoring in the wind. "There's the Arivista property in Sonoma County. I +hear they want to sell—ten thousand acres."</p> + +<p>The idea of becoming a large landowner appealed to the Californian in +Archie. They talked the matter over, and it resulted in their all +motoring down the State to the Arivista property. In the end they bought +at considerable expense this ten-thousand-acre tract of mountain, +valley, and plain, and began elaborate improvements. It had been once a +"cattle proposition," but Archie's idea was to turn it into fruit and +nuts, as well as a gentleman's estate of a princely sort, with a large +"mission style" cement mansion. He engaged an architect and a +superintendent, and began building and planting on an elaborate scale.</p> + +<p>Adelle was glad to see her Archie really interested in something and +encouraged him in all his ambitious plans. They motored frequently to +the ranch to inspect operations. It took them two days to go and return, +and there were only rough accommodations at the ranch. But she liked it. +The great untamed spaces of hill and plain, with the broad horizon of +blue mountains, appealed to her. She was less interested in the big +house, the barns, outbuildings, orchards,—all the paraphernalia that +goes with an "estate," which Archie wished impatiently to have created +at once. It took, naturally, a great deal of money. Before the work at +Arivista was finally stopped, it was estimated that close to half a +million dollars of Clark's Field had been poured into this California +"ranch," from which, of course, less than a quarter was ever recovered, +no other rich man being found with similar conceptions of what a "ranch" +should be. All told, the Davises lived upon their ranch less than four +months during the next spring, and before the blossoms had finally +fallen sufficient reasons were found to move them back nearer people and +the ordinary diversions of life. Water, it was discovered, could not be +got in sufficient quantity. The relaxing climate of the south did not +seem to agree with Adelle. And, above all, a child was expected.</p> + +<p>The little boy was born in Bellevue. He had come to them by accident, +for neither felt that it was yet the right time to have children; but +Adelle recognized almost at once that it was likely to be a happy +accident for her and welcomed it with all proper fervor. It served, at +any rate, to settle them in California for the present. They decided to +buy the place they had rented upon the hills and live there for most of +the year. And it also served to strengthen the bond between husband and +wife, which was wearing dangerously thin in places. With the coming of +the child the family was constituted, and another interest was given to +Adelle, which compensated for Archie's pettish moods. The child also +released Archie from the constant attention which Adelle exacted of him, +and permitted him more of that precious "freedom," which he found wealth +did not always bring.</p> + +<p>Thus they definitely started their California life.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXII" id="XXXII"></a>XXXII</h2> + + +<p>Bellevue is one of those country towns in the neighborhood of a large +city that have flourished especially since the discovery of the +motor-car. It took quite two hours to reach it from San Francisco by +train and nearly that by fast driving in a car, owing to the poor roads. +Thus it was removed for the present from the contaminating contact of +the "commuter" and all the commonness of suburbanism. Bellevue had, of +course, its country club, with a charming new clubhouse, where polo was +played in season, as well as the humbler forms of sport such as golf and +tennis, and where a good deal of lively entertaining went on at all +seasons. It was an old settlement; that is, it had been the country home +of a few families for almost two generations, the first of the great +places having been developed in the seventies when the railroad fortunes +were being made. Besides these older estates, which were marked by the +luxuriance of their planting and by the ugliness of their houses, there +was a growing number of smaller, more modern estates with attractive +houses, and also a little settlement "across the tracks" of +trades-people and servants. Except for the eternal spring and the wealth +of California foliage, Bellevue was much like any number of towns +outside of Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, or Boston. And the social +life of the place, except for the minor modifications due to climate and +environment, was so exactly typical of what everybody knows that it +needs no description.</p> + +<p>Thanks to Irene's good will as well as to Adelle's fortune the Davises +became immediately acquainted with the "colony" of Bellevue, and were +easily accepted as members of that supposedly exclusive society. Archie +rapidly made a place for himself at the club. Having no regular +occupation he could devote himself to polo with the exclusiveness of a +single passion. For diversion he motored up to the city frequently, +where he became a member of several clubs, and for business there was +always the ranch to worry about. In this way he kept up a current of +movement in his daily life, which for persons like the Davises takes the +place of real activity.</p> + +<p>Adelle was indolent about social life as about much else. She did not +like to take pains over anything and found entertaining a bore. She was +a poor diner-out, and when the coming of her child gave her an excuse +she was quite content to leave the social aspect of their life to +Archie, who was generally thought to be much more agreeable than his +wife. After they finally decided to buy the Bellevue place, Adelle +occupied herself with ambitious schemes for the improvement of the +property. She decided that the old house was uncomfortable and badly +placed, too near the road, and selected a site upon the steep hillside, +which commanded a large view of the valley and the great Bay across the +verdurous growth of the town. Then she engaged a young architect, who +was a member of the Bellevue Country Club and had "done" several houses +in the neighborhood, and at once she was involved in a bewildering maze +of plans for house and grounds. This kept her busy during her +convalescence and gratified the rudimentary creative instinct in her, +which had led her before to making jewelry. In planning a large country +estate there was also a pleasant sense of rivalry with her old friend +Irene, who was forced to content herself for the present with her +father's out-of-date mansion. It took much money, of course, and the +young architect spared his clients no possible expense, but Adelle felt +that the springs of Clark's Field were inexhaustible.</p> + +<p>It was, perhaps, the happiest period of Adelle's existence. Her marriage +had begun to prove uncomfortable in Europe and threatened badly at +Arivista, because there was not enough of anything between her and her +husband to support idleness alone. It was much better at Bellevue, for +here Archie was taken care of, not always in a safe way, but, as far as +Adelle knew, satisfactorily. The rich, sensuous country, with its +peculiar profusion of exotic vegetation and the luxury of perpetual good +weather, made Adelle, pale offspring of an outworn Puritanism, bloom, +especially after the birth of her child. It was as if all the desires of +the old Clarks to escape the hardships of their bleak lives found at +last their fulfillment in her. She expanded under the influence of +warmth and color; for climate is a larger moral factor than is usually +recognized. In California the struggle for life is a meaningless figure +of speech, and Adelle did not like struggling. She loved to putter about +in the overgrown garden and to slumber in the sun beside her little boy, +refusing to descend to the delights of the club and Bellevue hospitality +even after she had no excuse. When Irene took her to task for her +dawdling by herself she gurgled contentedly,—</p> + +<p>"What's the good of doing those things? Archie likes it—he sees the +crowd at the club—that's enough for him."</p> + +<p>"You've got to take your position," Irene remonstrated with a new pose. +She herself aspired to lead on the score of her family's antiquity in +Bellevue.</p> + +<p>"What's that?" Adelle asked blankly.</p> + +<p>It was difficult as Irene found to explain just what position Adelle +Davis should take in human society, just what it meant to be a "leader." +But she talked much about "the world going by one," and "duties of our +position," and "keeping in touch," with a note of mature tolerance and +responsibility in her voice. To all of which Adelle opposed merely a +lazy stare. In her gray eyes she seemed to mirror the fussy little +social life of this ideal country town, with its spread of motors about +the station on the arrival of the afternoon train from the city, its +properly garbed men and women strenuously amusing themselves at the +country club, its numerous "places," all very much alike, with their +gardens and greenhouses and tennis-courts, and ten masters' and five +servants' rooms, and all the rest of it.</p> + +<p>If Adelle could find no very cogent reason why she should make herself +toilsomely a pillar of this society, shall we blame her? If she found +for the present enough of content in the soft sunshine, the fragrant +flowers, her baby, and her own home, with the intermittent companionship +of the one man she had chosen to spend her life with, shall we consider +her highly culpable, deficient in the moral or social sense? All the +rest was much ado about nothing to Adelle, and, perhaps, as far as +Bellevue went,—and a good deal like it in life elsewhere,—Adelle was +not far wrong in her instinct....</p> + +<p>"Here's Archie now," she remarked, observing her lord coming up the +drive in his car.</p> + +<p>"Hello, Archie!" Irene called in greeting. Her tone was quite friendly +and intimate. Archie certainly had been "accepted" in this quarter. +"Going to the Carharts?"</p> + +<p>Archie, of course, was going to the Carharts to dine and play cards.</p> + +<p>"Coming, Dell?" he asked his wife casually.</p> + +<p>Adelle shook her head.</p> + +<p>"I've been telling Dell she ought not to be so lazy," Irene commented. +"She never goes off the place if she can help it!"</p> + +<p>"Adelle don't like people," Archie observed gloomily.</p> + +<p>"Yes I do, well enough," his wife protested.</p> + +<p>"It's a queer way you have of showing it, then."</p> + +<p>"Why should I like 'em, anyway, if I don't want to?" she retorted with +some heat, childishly eager to put herself in the right.</p> + +<p>"That's just it," Irene commented. "I tell her some day she will want +people, and she will find it isn't easy to have them then.... Besides, +it's her duty to take her part—everybody must."</p> + +<p>Adelle made a bored gesture and filched a cigarette from Archie's case.</p> + +<p>"Go on, you two, and have a good time," she said amiably.</p> + +<p>And presently Archie departed with Irene, driving her back to Bellevue +in his own car. As Adelle watched them depart from the veranda, very +companionably, in close conversation, she smiled, perhaps because she +knew that they were still talking about her and her social delinquency, +perhaps because it amused her to think how thoroughly Irene had revised +her opinion of the "red-headed bounder." In the still twilight her quiet +mind speculated upon many things—the friendship between Archie and +Irene, the obsession most people seemed to have to get together in one +way or another, Irene's creed of "taking your place in the +world,"—possibly even the purpose and meaning of life in general, +although Adelle would scarcely recognize her meditations under those +terms.... In the end she went up softly to her baby's room and spent a +long time in examining minutely the child's features. Now that she had +discovered all the delights of maternity she wondered at herself for +having been so indifferent to this great power latent in her of creating +life, and determined to have other children as soon as possible. As a +matter of course she thought of Archie as their father, but it was only +in that way that she thought of him at all, if she did happen to think +of him. A husband was the necessary means of fulfilling her new desire +to have her own young.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXIII" id="XXXIII"></a>XXXIII</h2> + + +<p>That summer while the new house was going up they went back to Europe +for a few months, as it was too hot on the ranch and they had nothing +better to do. They also meant to buy furniture, rugs, pictures, and +other material for the new home which they expected would be their +permanent abiding-place....</p> + +<p>It would be a waste of time to chronicle in minute detail this period of +Adelle's marriage. As the reader must suspect by this time, nothing of +spiritual significance was to come to Adelle through Archie nor to +Archie through Adelle. They did continue for a number of years to be man +and wife, although they frequently had bitter quarrels and felt rather +than clearly recognized that their union had been a mistake, which +neither one seemed able to rectify nor make the best of. It was not so +much principle that prolonged their tie, nor design on Archie's part to +keep possession of the wealth his wife had brought him, as the fact of +the child—and Adelle's hope, which was never realized, of having other +children.</p> + +<p>One of their more serious quarrels was occasioned by Adelle's discovery +at this time of Archie's unfortunate speculations. She had already +yielded to his constant demands for money for the ranch and broken her +arrangement with the Washington Trust Company, converting part of their +excellent investments into cash, which she removed to San Francisco, +where it could be got at more easily. Archie had had charge of this +uninvested portion of the estate; it gave him something to do and to +talk about with men. Until her illness, to be sure, Adelle had kept run +of what was being done with her money, and opposed any considerable +further changes in the investments of the estate, which were of the sort +that a good trust company would make, and which had very greatly +appreciated in value during these last years of national prosperity. But +during her illness and afterwards when she was absorbed in the child, +Archie had taken a freer hand and had changed some of the investments +unknown to his wife. He had put the money into local enterprises, of +which the men he met told him, but about which he could know very +little. There were new water-power companies up in the mountains, and +there was especially the Seaboard Railroad and Development Company—a +daring scheme for opening up a tract of land along the northern coast of +California. Into this last venture Archie had put much more of Adelle's +money than he liked to remember. It was a pet project of the men he knew +best in the Bellevue Club—the polo-playing set. The Honorable George +Pointer was very active in Seaboard, representing an English syndicate +that was supposed to be backing the enterprise with ample funds, and for +this reason the Pointers had prolonged their California sojourn beyond +the usual term. Seaboard, it was said, would prove eventually to be much +more important than a short line of new railroad developing a desolate +stretch of the Pacific: it was to be used as a club upon one of the +older railroads. The best families of the State were heavily interested +in it, the younger generation of bloods expecting by means of it to +rival the railroading exploits of their fathers, whose fortunes, as +everybody knows, were acquired in the golden seventies and eighties in +much the same way. (And when the explosion in Seaboard came off, it left +deep scars all through California society.)</p> + +<p>All this Archie tried to make Adelle understand, when unexpectedly she +gained a knowledge of his operations in Seaboard. She happened to open +some letters from his brokers that came to Archie during his +absence—letters that clamored for more ready money with which to pay +for options that Archie had taken upon the common stock of the new +company. Adelle was disturbed when she discovered that more than a +million of her money had already gone into Seaboard. The couple had some +sharp words about the matter, in which Adelle put the thing rather too +bluntly to Archie,—</p> + +<p>"What do you know about railroads? You aren't a business man—you never +earned a dollar in business in your life!"</p> + +<p>Adelle was probably remembering how she had given Archie the only order +he had ever received for his painting. Archie naturally resented her +allusion to his penniless and dependent state. He knew, he asserted, +quite as much as other men, whom he instanced, all of whom managed their +wives' money affairs without being scolded for what they did.</p> + +<p>But why, Adelle urged more softly, did he have to speculate—try to make +more money than they already had? And Archie's somewhat incoherent reply +was much the same as Irene Pointer's reasons for going into the society +of one's fellows. To try to make more money when one already had the use +of a great deal was an honorable and sensible ambition—every one would +tell her so. All moneyed men who were worth their salt were always alive +to opportunities of enlarging their possessions. Did she want her +husband to sit around with folded hands and do nothing in the world? +Archie waxed righteous and right-minded, which is the easiest way to +eloquence.</p> + +<p>Adelle was silent, though not convinced by his reasoning any more than +she had been by Irene's about "taking her part." Both seemed to make +life needlessly dangerous and complicated, under the disguise of duty. +But she could not endure sullenness and bad temper in Archie. Having +taken the sort of husband she had, she must make the best of life with +him, even if he hazarded her fortune in doubtful enterprises. She +remembered with comfort that there was a great deal of money, and +ultimately would be even more when Clark's Field was finally liquidated. +Archie could hardly go so wrong in investments as to make away with all +of it. So she agreed to his selling another block of General Electric or +Bell Telephone and taking up his options, and having thus made up their +difference, they drifted on their way.</p> + +<p>They motored across the continent to the remote fastness where the +Countess Zornec was housed upon her husband's estate and spent some +weeks with the couple. It was easy, even for Adelle's unobservant eyes, +to detect signs of trouble in this new marriage. Sadie had a temper. All +the girls at the Hall had known that. Indeed, she had the +characteristics of her mother, who report said had been an Irish girl in +one of the U. P. construction camps when old Paul found her—that was +long before his fortune came, when he was a simple contractor for the +railroad. Sadie had an unfortunate mouth, with coarse teeth, and when +she was crossed, this long mouth wrinkled into a snarl. The Count +apparently had already found out how to cross her. Indeed, he did not +disguise his contempt for his bride's origins, and sometimes decorum was +badly strained at the dinner-table. Sadie was little and lithe and was +something of the <i>gamine</i>—her "tricks," as the girls called her daring +maneuvers, had always pleased men. But the Count did not like "tricks." +He wished more dignity in the wife of a Zornec and did not hesitate to +tell Sadie so. Nor did he care to have her <i>gaminerie</i> attract other +men. In short, as Sadie confided to Adelle in a burst shortly after her +arrival, the Count was a "regular brute." It seemed that Europeans made +very good lovers, but dangerous husbands. Adelle was to be congratulated +for having married an American, "who at least knew how to treat a +woman," as if she were more than his horse or his servant. Adelle might +once have been pleased by this admission of envy of her Archie; but now +she had her own troubles. However, she did not confess them to any one. +She said good-naturedly that it was hard being married to most any man, +until you got used to it. Sadie shook her small head and showed her +large teeth.</p> + +<p>"I'll show him," she said, "that he can't wipe his feet on me! An +American woman won't stand what he's used to."</p> + +<p>Adelle suspected dire things, physical violence even, and was silent.</p> + +<p>Sadie continued,—"Some day he'll go too far, and then—" She closed +her lips over the teeth in a hard fashion.</p> + +<p>Adelle wondered what she would do with the Count in such an event. She +could hardly divorce him, for the Pauls were Catholic as well as the +Zornecs, of course. It was very inconvenient being a Catholic, she +reflected, if you were to be married. And it seemed less easy to drop a +husband in Europe than it was in America. There would be trouble about +the children and all that.</p> + +<p>Archie did not find the Count so bad, although he growled sometimes at +his host's thinly veiled contempt for all Americans. Archie felt +superior to the foreign nobleman who had made a rich American marriage. +At least he had taken an heiress from his own people, and there was +distinction in that. But the Count and Archie hunted and rode together, +also drank deeply of the Hungarian wines and excellent French champagne +that the castle contained. He was of the opinion that Sadie Paul had got +"what she deserved."</p> + +<p>"She needed a man to throw her around a bit—she was always too fresh," +he told Adelle.</p> + +<p>Archie believed in the strong hand with women. Adelle wondered whether +Archie would ever attempt to use it upon her and what she would do under +such circumstances. She was sure that she would resent it dreadfully. +That would seem too much for any woman to bear—to marry a poor man and +support him quite handsomely in idleness and then be abused by him. But +fortunately it had not got to that point in their marriage—nothing +worse than sullenness and silence or angry words had happened thus far.</p> + +<p>The Davises terminated their visit sooner than had been expected. The +little boy's ill health was made the excuse, but the fact was that the +tempestuous atmosphere of the Zornec household was far from pleasant to +easy-going people. They engaged the couple for a return visit the next +spring in California and motored off to Paris. The Zornecs had been a +good object lesson to them, and for the rest of their trip they remained +good friends, being almost lover-like in their respect for each other. +They seemed to feel the dangers ahead and restrained their moods. +Finally, gathering together their plunder they sailed home, and this +time did not make any attempt to evade the custom-house ordeal. They +paid nobly for the privilege of being American citizens and did not +demur. Adelle insisted upon that, remembering their former experience. +Archie was in such haste to get back to California where "Seaboard was +acting queer" that he would have paid double for the privilege of +entering his own country. They sped swiftly across the continent to +their new home.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXIV" id="XXXIV"></a>XXXIV</h2> + + +<p>The house was far from finished by the end of September when they +arrived. Their idea of what it should be had developed so fast under the +stimulus of the young architect that they could not recognize the +original conception in the imposing structure that awaited them. It was +meant to be an adaptation of a Spanish villa, in two wings, with a long +elevation upon the ravine connecting the two. There was also to be a +complicated set of terraces and forecourt, formal gardens, pool, and +orangery, which required an immense amount of masonry work that had +scarce been begun. Nevertheless they attempted to install themselves in +spite of the fact that the workmen were cluttered all over the place, +and moved into the wing that was most nearly completed, husband and wife +occupying a ground floor suite that was meant for bachelor guests, the +child and its nurse being housed temporarily upstairs in the main house. +Adelle did not like this separation from the child, but there seemed +nothing else to do for the present.</p> + +<p>That autumn and winter they lived at close quarters with an army of +workmen, who, having three masters,—Adelle, Archie, and the +architect,—took advantage of the resulting confusion to move as slowly +as possible. Adelle was not impatient as Archie had been with the ranch. +She liked directing the work, and discovered that she had her own ideas, +which necessitated extensive changes. She spent almost all her time on +the place, while Archie was often away for days at a time in the city, +attending to business or amusing himself. Adelle scarcely noticed his +absences. With her little boy and the house she had her hands quite +full, and it was easier to do things when Archie was not there to +interfere.</p> + +<p>Theirs was a rare location, even in this lovely land, as all their +neighbors said. Behind the house the land rose rapidly to a steep ridge +of hill that divided the valley from the coast valleys, and thus +protected them with its crown of tall eucalyptus trees from the raw sea +winds. Their hillside had been thickly planted to cedars and eucalyptus, +and the house looked out from its niche in the hill upon the fertile +valley in which Bellevue lies, dotted with rich country estates and +fruit orchards. Farther east shimmered the waters of the Bay, and on +clear days the blue tops of the Santa Clara mountains melted into the +clouds beyond the Bay. Immediately beneath the house was the cañon, +through which in the rainy season a stream of water gushed melodiously. +The steep sides of this cañon were covered with a growth of aromatic +plants and shrubs, the pale blues of the wild lilac touching it here and +there. Like a bit of real California, "Highcourt," as they had called +the place, was a perpetual bower of bloom and fragrance and sunshine, +with a broad panorama of valley, sea, and mountain to gaze upon. Adelle +loved to wander about her new possession, exploring its every corner, +and when she was tired she could come back to the sunny forecourt and +supervise the workmen, making petty decisions, summoning the foreman and +the architect for consultation. She thus planned so many alterations +which entailed delays that Archie grumbled that they would never get to +rights and be able to have people to dinner. Adelle did not seem to +care. She had not profited by Irene's advice, and made no effort to +create a social atmosphere. Irene apparently gave her up as a hopeless +case, and rarely came up the long driveway to Highcourt. The Pointers +were still anchored in California, thanks to Seaboard and the darkening +financial horizon, and Irene was improving her time by "living hard," +which was her philosophy. Adelle knew that she and Archie saw much of +each other, were very good friends, indeed, but the intimacy did not +disturb her. She no longer had that passionate jealousy of Archie's +every movement which had rendered the first years of their marriage so +irksome to Archie. It is doubtful if she would have resented his +intimacy with any woman, but his "affair" with Irene Pointer merely +amused her. Archie was no longer her most precious possession....</p> + +<p>The winter after their return to California a new specter appeared—the +last that Adelle expected to encounter in her life. Archie hinted that +it would be well to go slow with their "improvements" at Highcourt. The +times were getting bad, he said, and the market looked as if they would +get worse rather than better. Every one was talking of a dark future, +unsettled conditions industrially in the country, and "tightening +money," whatever that might mean. Adelle could not see why it should +affect her solid fortune based upon Clark's Field. To be sure, men +talked business more than usually, the ill treatment that capital was +receiving, the "social unrest," and such matters, which did not interest +her. She thought that Archie had caught the trick of complaining about +business and cursing social conditions in America from the men at his +clubs, most of whom were obliged to earn their living by business. If +the worst came, if America became impossible, as Nelson Carhart was +always predicting, for "decent people to endure," they could go abroad +until things straightened out again.</p> + +<p>Then in midwinter came the Seaboard smash. As a matter of fact, that +crazy enterprise had been tottering upon the brink of failure from its +inception, and Archie was merely one of the stool pigeons on whom the +shrewd promoters had unloaded their "underwriting" in approved style. He +came back from San Francisco one night very glum and announced +peremptorily that they must cut down their expenses and "quit all this +fool building." He wanted to sell the ranch, but it could not be sold in +these depressed times when rich men were hoarding their pennies like +paupers. And there began at Highcourt a régime of retrenchment, bitterly +fought by Adelle—the rich man's poverty where there is no actual want, +but a series of petty curtailments and borrowings and sometimes a real +shortness of cash, almost as squalid as the commoner sort of poverty. +Adelle could not understand the reason for this sudden change, and +refused absolutely to stop all work upon Highcourt and go abroad again +for the sake of economy. Why should she be made uncomfortable, just +because Archie had been foolish about investments and felt hard up? So +they had some words, and Archie went oftener than ever to San Francisco, +frequently staying in the city for days at a time, which was bad for +Adelle's fortune, had she but realized it. But, as has been shown, she +had come now to the time when she felt relieved if Archie was not at +home, glum and sulky, or nagging and fighting her will. With the place +and her boy she had enough to fill her mind, and easily forgot all money +troubles when Archie was not there to remind her of them. Somehow they +raised the money for the workmen, and the building went on, more slowly.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXV" id="XXXV"></a>XXXV</h2> + + +<p>The workmen at Highcourt were of the nondescript labor army that America +has recruited. For the rougher outside work there were a number of +Italians, whom Adelle liked to entertain with her tourist Italian. There +were also a few Greeks and Slavs who had got into this kind of work from +other occupations. Inside the house the carpenters, painters, and +plumbers were Swedes, Finns, Germans, one Englishman—no one who might +justly be described as a native American. It was a typical instance of +the way in which all the hard, rough labor of the country was being +done, from building railroads to getting out the timber from the forests +or making shoes and blankets in the factories. Hard physical labor was +no longer performed to any extent by native Americans. Contractors +everywhere recruited their polyglot companies in the great cities and +shipped them out into the country where there was a demand. The men +employed at Highcourt were thus obtained in San Francisco by the head +contractor and merely boarded in the town of Bellevue. They lived +"across the tracks" in the labor settlement, or in lath and tar-paper +shacks about the hills, camping in their eternal campaign of day labor +wherever the job happened to take them. Few were married, and all were +given more or less to drink and riotous living when pay-day came; and of +course they were constantly changing jobs. Adelle often heard the +architect and the head contractor deplore the conditions of the labor +market and the poor quality of work to be got out of the men at ruinous +wages. She had also heard her neighbors, Carter Pound and Nelson +Carhart, speak feelingly about the "foreign riff-raff" they had to +employ on their estates. No workman had a conscience these days, they +said. The women, too, talked of the rowdy character of the town "across +the tracks," and the unsafety of the roads for women. Adelle did not +think much about the matter, accepting it as a necessity, like gnats or +drought or flood.</p> + +<p>The Italians at least stuck to their jobs and were good-natured. Adelle +always said "bon giorno" when she ran across them toiling up the +slippery paths with their loads of stone or cement. She liked the way in +which they showed their teeth and touched their hats politely to "la +signora." They had a feeling for her as the mistress of the house, a +latent sense of feudal loyalty to their employer that had quite +disappeared among the other workmen. Apart from the Italians, the faces +of the men upon the job were not familiar to her and were constantly +changing, a strange one appearing almost every day. So Adelle felt less +at home with them and rarely spoke to them unless she had an order to +give that she could not easily transmit through the foreman.</p> + +<p>One morning in early March—it was while the Seaboard trouble was +acute—Adelle made her customary rounds of the place to see what was +being done. She descended to the cañon and stopped for some time where +the stone masons were laying up the wall that was to support the +terraces. It was a continuation of the massive wall that rose sheer from +the bottom of the little cañon to the front of the house, nearly a +hundred feet in all perpendicularly from the bottom course to the first +floor of the house. (It was the decision to thrust the house out over +the cañon that had necessitated the building of this massive wall and +had delayed matters for months.) Adelle had heard Archie grumble about +the useless expense caused by this great wall, but she liked it. Its +sheer height and strength gave her a pleasant sensation of +accomplishment and endurance. She liked to stare up at it as she liked +to see great trees or massive mountains or tall buildings. It was a +symbol of something humanly important which supplied a secret craving in +her soul.</p> + +<p>So this morning she stood silently watching the masons at their slow +work. One of the men she recognized as having been steadily on the job +ever since her arrival at Highcourt. He was a youngish, slender man with +sandy hair and blue eyes, and had the unmistakable air of being a +native-born American. His sinewy hands were roughened by his work, and +his face was almost a brick red, either from constant exposure to the +sun or from drinking, probably both. He seemed morose, as if he were +consciously ignoring the presence of his "boss," and worked steadily on, +once even failing to answer Adelle when she spoke, apparently +unconscious of her presence behind him. Adelle liked especially to watch +the masons at work. Their clever management of the great stones they had +to handle, the precise yet easy way in which they lined and chipped and +trigged and mortared, fitting all the detail of their rough mosaic, gave +her a pleasant sense of accomplishment such as she had felt in her own +efforts with metal and stone. It stirred an instinct for manual labor +which was not far down in her character, and actually made her own +shapely hands twitch to be at the fascinating work. And the masons' work +grew so surely, course upon course, and when done seemed so solid, so +eternal!... This morning she lingered longer than usual watching the +young mason wield his hammer and trowel. Archie had ruffled her badly +with his talk about money losses, and now she felt soothed, freed from +stupid perplexities. The mason's large hands, she noted, were supple and +dexterous—he made no useless movements. Occasionally he turned his head +to spit tobacco or drew off to look at his wall, but these were the only +interruptions in his rhythmic motions. He paid no attention whatever to +the woman behind him.</p> + +<p>Adelle was prettily dressed in a costume of white linen with a cloud of +chiffon tied about her small hat and a parasol that she had purchased +this summer in Paris, which consisted of an enormous gold lace +butterfly. She was fuller in figure than before her child had come and +in perfect health, though still pale. Fresh and well cared for, she was +if not beautiful very attractive and dainty—all that money could make +of her human person. Adelle was not given to prolonged reflection of any +sort, but probably she could not help comparing her own dainty, cool, +exquisitely clean person with this sweaty, sun-burned, coarse laborer in +his black cotton shirt, frayed khaki trousers, and shoes that the lime +had burned all color from. She must have felt a complacent sense of +physical superiority to the man who was working for her, and perhaps +congratulated herself that her lot in the universe had come out such a +comfortable one.</p> + +<p>The mason rolled up a large stone and prepared to set it home in the +bottom course. Adelle observed that he was about to crush one of the +Japanese shrubs that she had been at such pains to have planted along +the bank of the cañon.</p> + +<p>"Look out—don't hurt that bush!" she ordered peremptorily, as she was +in the habit of speaking to servants.</p> + +<p>The mason tranquilly deposited the rock full upon the shrub and +proceeded to slap mortar around it and tap it home with his mallet.</p> + +<p>"Didn't you hear me?" Adelle demanded, stepping forward and pointing at +the offending rock with her heavily jeweled finger. "Take it out! I +don't want the shrubs killed."</p> + +<p>The mason looked up for the first time. There was a glint in his clear +blue eyes as he said distinctly, without any trace of foreign accent,—</p> + +<p>"It's got to go there!"</p> + +<p>A smile relaxed his red face, a scornful smile at the impertinence of +this dainty specimen of woman-kind who thought that the foundation +course of his rock wall could be disturbed for such a trivial matter as +a bush.</p> + +<p>"No, it hasn't," Adelle rejoined in her imperious tone. "Fix it some +other way."</p> + +<p>But the mason continued to pat his rock, looking around for the next one +to lay upon it.</p> + +<p>"Do what I say!" Adelle ordered, almost angrily, irritated by the man's +obstinacy.</p> + +<p>Then the mason rose, and with his trowel tapping the rock said slowly +and emphatically,—</p> + +<p>"I'm laying this wall—and I don't take no orders from you!"</p> + +<p>Whereupon, after another shot from his hard blue eyes, he turned back to +the wall.</p> + +<p>At first Adelle was speechless; then she asked in a less peremptory +tone,—</p> + +<p>"Don't you know who I am?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," the mason called back over his shoulder. "You're the boss up +there." He indicated the unfinished house with a wave of his trowel, and +went on with his work. He seemed indifferent to the fact that he was +dealing with the mistress of Highcourt, and Adelle helplessly retreated.</p> + +<p>"I will have you discharged!" she said as she walked away.</p> + +<p>The mason did not reply, and his face exhibited no emotion over this +dire threat.</p> + +<p>After considerable search Adelle found the contractor and made her +complaint against the mason.</p> + +<p>"I warned him not to hurt the shrubs and he kept right on. Please +discharge him at once."</p> + +<p>The contractor, who had not been long away from the trowel and mortar +himself, frowned.</p> + +<p>"He's a good worker, ma'am," he protested. "It ain't always you can get +a man like him out on a country job. Happens there is a building strike +in the city, and he needed the work, so he came. And he's been steady, +which is more than most masons."</p> + +<p>"He's impudent," Adelle asserted with an air of finality.</p> + +<p>"Very well, ma'am," the contractor said reluctantly. "I'll fire him +to-night."</p> + +<p>And Adelle thereupon went back to the house, gratified that she had +enforced discipline, not hearing the contractor's profanity about +meddlesome women. Later on the same day after the workmen had +left,—they knocked off from their eight hours while the sun was still +high in the heavens,—Adelle was wandering over the place, idly looking +for a suitable location for a tennis-court. The doctor had told her to +take some active exercise like tennis to prevent becoming unduly stout. +And Archie had picked out a site below the new house on fairly level +ground, but Adelle wanted to have the court cut out of the steep +hillside above the pool. Having found what she considered to be the +right spot, which would necessitate much expensive excavation and +building of retaining walls, she followed a little worn path through the +eucalyptus grove over the brow of the hill, curious to discover where it +led. After a time she emerged on the other side of the hill, and getting +through the barbed wire fence that marked the boundary of her own +estate, she followed the path along the farther side of the slope +through a clearing in the woods to an open field. From this side there +was a wild prospect westwards to the low haze which she knew indicated +the presence of the Pacific. The country on this slope of the hills +seemed wild and uninhabited. Adelle did not remember ever to have been +in the place and wondered if it was accessible by motor. At the farther +end of the field there was one of the tar-paper shacks that the workmen +put up for themselves, and the path evidently led to this hut. Usually +these shacks were huddled together in bunches nearer the town, within +easy reach of shop and saloon, but this one stood all alone on the edge +of the clearing. A man was bending over a tin basin before the door, +apparently washing out some clothes. As Adelle approached, he looked up +from his washing and Adelle recognized the impertinent stone mason. He +looked at her coolly, as if this time she were trespassing on his +domain, and as she came leisurely down the path, trying to ignore his +presence, he calmly threw out the dirty water from his pan on the path +and went into his shack, pulling the door to after him with a bang. +Adelle suspected the smile of contempt upon his face as he recognized +her. She did not like the movement he had made in throwing the dirty +water from his washpan directly in her path, although she was some +distance away. Probably by this time he had learned his fate and took +this means of testifying his resentment. The color rose in her pale +face. She was not a proud woman, had no large amount of that +self-importance which is the almost inevitable result of possessing +wealth. But one of the penalties of property is that it cultivates +whatever egotism and sensitiveness to its prerogative its owner is +capable of. That one of the common laborers employed upon her estate +should thus openly flout her made Adelle angry.</p> + +<p>She thought first to turn back,—her walk was really aimless,—but she +felt that the man would interpret such a retreat as due to his +impertinence, would think that she was afraid of him. So she kept on +past the shack into another open field. This was but the beginning of a +wild treeless descent towards the ocean. The little tar-paper shack was +the only sign of habitation in sight. There was an immense panorama of +tumbled hill and valley bounded westward by the curving coast-line where +the Pacific surges broke into faint lines of white spume, and where, she +might reflect sadly, the ill-fated Seaboard Railroad should now be +running trains to open up all this unoccupied land to civilization. +However, wild and unsettled as it was, it offered an attractive view, +and Adelle at once coveted it. They must buy up this tract over the +hill—they should have looked into it when they had arranged to take +Highcourt. Thus musing, she wandered on into the country until the sun +dipping into the ocean warned her to return for dinner.</p> + +<p>As she came back along the crest of the hill, she thought again of the +discharged stone mason and for her did a large amount of reflection. Why +was he living like this in a lonely shack far away from everybody? Why +had he chosen to isolate himself from his fellow-workmen, who herded +together near the town where they could slip down to the saloons after +their work? He must be by nature a sullen, unsociable fellow. And what +sort of life did he live in there, doing his own washing and probably +also his own cooking? A kind of curiosity about the truculent stone +mason and his way of life thus occupied Adelle's unspeculative mind. He +was a good-looking young fellow, lean and well muscled. If he were +dissipated, as she had been told all the laborers were, his excesses had +not yet shown in his person. What would he do now that he had lost his +job at Highcourt?</p> + +<p>There he was sitting on the doorstep of his shack, smoking his pipe, his +bare arms akimbo, staring out across the sunset void towards the sea. He +seemed also to be meditating with himself upon something of interest. +Upon Adelle's approach this time, he did not take himself off, but +continued to smoke indifferently, totally ignoring her presence. As she +came in front of him, she stopped involuntarily and found herself +speaking to the mason.</p> + +<p>"Good-evening," was all she said.</p> + +<p>The man mumbled some reply, as if against his will. And then again the +unexpected happened to Adelle,—at least the unforeseen. She asked him a +question. It was a simple question, but it was entirely out of Adelle's +character to make even the small advance implied by asking a question, +especially to a servant who had been discharged on her orders.</p> + +<p>"Do you live up here alone?"</p> + +<p>"Have been living here," the man replied grudgingly, "till to-day. Don't +expect to much longer," he added meaningly.</p> + +<p>Adelle knew that he was referring to what had occurred earlier in the +day between them, and throwing the blame for his dislodgment upon her.</p> + +<p>"What are you going to do?" she asked after a pause.</p> + +<p>He looked at her with mild astonishment for her question in his blue +eyes, then said,—</p> + +<p>"Donno exactly—get drunk, maybe," and he glanced at her truculently.</p> + +<p>Adelle did not know why she went on talking to the man, but her +curiosity was thoroughly aroused and the questions popped unexpectedly +into her mind.</p> + +<p>"Why did you kill that shrub when I asked you not to put the stone upon +it?" she demanded next.</p> + +<p>The man looked at her for a moment with an expression of mingled +surprise, dislike, and amusement.</p> + +<p>"Asked me! You ordered me."</p> + +<p>"Why did you do it?" Adelle repeated, ignoring this subtle distinction.</p> + +<p>"Guess I felt like it," he replied evasively. "I don't take no orders +except from my boss," he grumbled. "Don't like no interference."</p> + +<p>"But it's my place—you were working for me!" Adelle rejoined +convincingly.</p> + +<p>"And," the mason demanded bluntly, "who in hell are you, anyway?"</p> + +<p>Adelle had not heard such direct language from a man for a good many +years, although Archie sometimes hinted the same thing in slightly more +polished language. At first she was staggered and thought she had made a +mistake in giving this man another opportunity to insult her. But +Adelle, thanks to her origin, was not easily insulted. She stayed on—to +hear more.</p> + +<p>"You've got a big pile of money and that place and lots of servants and +motors and all the rest," the mason went on to explain. "But that's no +reason you should go bossing around my job 'bout what you don't know +nothing. I get my orders from the boss, <i>my</i> boss—see? And I know how +to lay a wall as good as any man—and your damned bushes shouldn't been +there."</p> + +<p>"You needn't be insulting," Adelle gasped with an attempt at dignity.</p> + +<p>"Insultin'!" the man blazed. "Who's insultin'? It's you who are +insultin' to God's earth—rich folks like you who've got more money that +ain't yours by rights than you know what to do with. You think because +you pay the bill you own the earth and every man on it. But you +don't—not everybody! And the quicker you and your kind learn that the +easier it will be for all of us."</p> + +<p>This was what Major Pound meant by "anarchy among the working-classes." +She had often heard him and Nelson Carhart deplore this,—using +interchangeably the two dread terms, "socialism" and "anarchy." Both the +gentlemen were of the opinion that "before we see an end to this spirit +in the working-classes, we shall have bloodshed." But it was the first +time Adelle had met the thing face to face, and it gave her a faint +thrill. She tried to think of some of Major Pound's excellent arguments +directed against the "anarchy" of the laboring-classes.</p> + +<p>"You're paid good wages, very high wages," she said after a time, +remembering that that was one of the grievances gentlemen most often +complained of—that laborers were paid altogether too much, thanks to +the unions, so that no profit was left for the men who supplied capital, +and also that they did less work and poorer work than they had once done +when they got only half the wages now paid.</p> + +<p>"You think five dollars a day is big money, don't you? It wouldn't go +far to fit <i>you</i> out!" He nodded at Adelle's rich dress. "It would +hardly get you a dinner—wouldn't pay for the booze your husband will +drink to-night."</p> + +<p>Adelle winced at this shot, because it was only too evident to the +servants and the men about the place that Archie drank too much at +times. How could she complain of the workingman's drinking and wasting +his money, which was the next argument she remembered from her +neighbors' repertory, when her own husband drank more than was good for +him and many of the men they knew socially did the same?</p> + +<p>"It's no thanks to you rich people we get big pay either," the man +continued. "You'd like mighty well to cut it down to nothing if you +could get your work done."</p> + +<p>That was perfectly true. All their crowd at Bellevue were perpetually +complaining of the high wages they had to pay. They gave it as an excuse +for all sorts of petty meanness. Adelle felt that Major Pound would have +the suitable reply to the mason's argument, but she could not remember +it.</p> + +<p>"Five dollars a day for a day's hard work ain't so much either, when you +think how many days in the year there's nothing doing for one reason or +another. Last year I only had four months' work all told on account of +the strikes."</p> + +<p>"Yes," Adelle joined in eagerly, feeling that this ground was familiar +and safe, "but the strikes were your own fault, weren't they? You didn't +have to strike?"</p> + +<p>For reply the mason looked wearily at her, and rising from his seat on +the doorstep with a gesture remarked,—</p> + +<p>"Well, I can't stay here gassin' all night, lady. I must hike along soon +to get the Frisco train.... What do you care about it anyway, whether +the strikes are our fault or not? You've got plenty of the stuff, and we +little folks ain't got nothin' but what we earn, and that ought to +satisfy you. We must work for you sometimes, and you don't have to do a +damn thing for anybody no times. You've got the luck, and we ain't! See? +And that's about all there is to it."</p> + +<p>Adelle felt that so far as her own case went, the man had come +remarkably near the truth. The mason turned, with an afterthought.</p> + +<p>"And I'm not whinin' 'bout it neither, remember that! I can always earn +enough to keep me goin' and get whiskey when I want it."</p> + +<p>He said it with a touch of pride, his workman's boast that he was +beholden to no one for meat or drink. It was more than Archie could say +now or at any time in his life.</p> + +<p>"Are you married?" Adelle asked, feeling that if there was a woman in +the situation another line of argument might be used.</p> + +<p>"Married! Hell, no! What do I want of being married?"</p> + +<p>Married men, Adelle had heard, were likely to be steadier workers than +the unmarried. Also more what her class called "moral."</p> + +<p>"I should think you would want to have your own home and children in +it," she ventured.</p> + +<p>The mason gave her an ironical look full of meaning.</p> + +<p>"That would sure be nice, if I could always give 'em plenty to eat and +education, the same as you can. But what can a man do with a wife when +he's here to-day and off to the other end of the land to-morrow lookin' +for a job? A steady job in one place where it's fit for a woman to live +ain't to be found every day.... A workingman who marries, unless he's +got money in the bank and a sure payin' job that'll last, is a fool or +worse. What good is it to bring children into the world to be like him +or maybe worse?"</p> + +<p>Adelle had no reply to this blunt logic. Marriage, he seemed to think, +was one of the privileges of the rich class, which she was sure ought +not to be so.</p> + +<p>"The trouble with the workingman, ma'am, is that he has done that too +long,—got families that had to live the best they could, any old way, +and take any old job they could get. That's what's made it easy goin' +for you! But the workingman is learnin' a thing or two. Men like me +won't get married, nor have children to slave for the rich."</p> + +<p>"What do the girls do?" Adelle asked, thinking of her own fate if she +had been left in the Church Street rooming-house.</p> + +<p>The mason shrugged his shoulders and came out with another brutality.</p> + +<p>"Some of 'em go into the houses for your men to use—there's always that +for 'em," he added, with a disagreeable laugh. "No, ma'am, I tell you +until things are made more right in this world, it's better for a poor +man to get along the best he can without draggin' a woman after him and +a lot of helpless children."</p> + +<p>"I didn't know it was as bad as that," Adelle remarked helplessly.</p> + +<p>"I guess, ma'am, there are a good many things about life you don't +know."</p> + +<p>"That's so," Adelle admitted honestly.</p> + +<p>"But I know!" the mason exclaimed with rising excitement. "I've seen it +over and over, everywhere. I've seen it in my own family," he said in a +burst of bitter confidence. "There were eight of us and we were only +middling poor until father died. The old man was a carpenter, up north +in Sacramento County. He had a small place outside of town and we raised +some stuff. But he got sick and died, when he weren't forty, and mother +had the whole eight of us on her hands. I was just twelve and my oldest +brother fifteen,—he was the only one could earn a dollar. We got on +somehow, those that lived. Two of my sisters are married to farmers and +there's another—well, she's the other thing." He stopped to look +belligerently at Adelle as if she had somehow to do with it. "She was +married to a workingman, good enough, I guess, but he got out of work +and heard of something up north and never came back.... We boys +scattered around where we could get work. Two of us is married and got +families. Guess they wish often enough they hadn't, too!"</p> + +<p>Adelle was absorbed by the mason's personal statement. She had forgotten +by this time her first self-consciousness in talking to the discharged +workman, and he, too, seemed less truculent, as if he enjoyed letting +off steam and stating his point of view to his ex-employer.</p> + +<p>"How old are you?" Adelle asked.</p> + +<p>"Twenty-eight," the mason replied.</p> + +<p>That was only a few years older than Adelle herself, but she recognized +that the man's experience of living had been far more than hers, also +deeper, so that he was justified in having opinions on the serious +things of life. Wealth, she might think, was not the only road to "a +full life" so much talked of in her circle.</p> + +<p>"Have you always been a stone mason?" she wanted to know.</p> + +<p>"Pretty much ever since I could lift a stone. An old feller took me from +mother to work for my keep when I was fourteen. He used to do some mason +work, and he knew how to lay stone—none better! He learned his trade +back East where he come from. He was one of the real forty-niners, and +knew my grandfather's folks—they all came to California the same +time.... I've been all over this country, up and down the Coast, to +Alasky and over in Nevada, at Carson City; drilling for oil, too, south. +Oh, I've seen things," he mused complacently, puffing at his pipe and +scratching his bare arms that were as smooth and brown as fine bronze. +"And I tell you there ain't much in it for the laboring-man, no matter +what wages he gets, unless he's got extry luck, which most of 'em ain't. +No wonder he goes after booze when he has the chance. What's there in it +for him anyhow?"</p> + +<p>Adelle, who had not been educated to philanthropy and social service, +did not attempt to answer this difficult question.</p> + +<p>"Not that I booze often," the mason explained with pride. "I reckon not +to make a hog of myself, but when you've been off on a job for months, +working all day long six days in the week in the heat and dust, you +accumulate a thirst and a devilment in you that needs letting out."</p> + +<p>He grinned at Adelle as if he felt that she might be sympathetic with +his simple point of view and added,—</p> + +<p>"I guess that's what made me sassy to you this morning!"</p> + +<p>It was his sole apology. They both laughed, accepting it as such, and +Adelle, to shift the topic, remarked,—</p> + +<p>"You've got a nice place up here for your house."</p> + +<p>The mason wrinkled his lips against the suggestion of sentiment.</p> + +<p>"The shack's all right—kind of fur to tote supplies over the hill. But +I can't stand those dagoes and their dirty ways. They have too many +boarders where they live."</p> + +<p>His American ancestry betrayed itself thus in his selection of an +exclusive position for his bunk. The conversation seemed to have come to +a natural conclusion, but Adelle did not start. At last she said what +she had had in mind for some time,—</p> + +<p>"You'd better stay here—come back to work Monday."</p> + +<p>"I don't know as I want to," the mason replied, with a touch of his +former truculency. "I can get all the work I want most anywheres."</p> + +<p>"I'll speak to Mr. Ferguson about it," Adelle said. "Good-night!"</p> + +<p>She could not do more, she thought, as she hurried along the path, +although she was unreasonably anxious not to have the young stone mason +leave, more anxious than she had been that morning to have him +discharged for his insolence to her. When she was about to enter the +wood, she turned and looked back at the shack. She hoped that he was not +going to start on a spree. The mason, who had been sitting on the step +where she had left him, rose as if he had come to a sudden resolution +and marched into the shack. Adelle felt sure that he had made up his +mind to go to San Francisco and get his "booze." She divined the craving +in him for excitement, some relief from his toilsome hours under the hot +sun. Possibly he had fought against this desire all the summer, +restrained from breaking loose by a prudence which she had defeated by +arbitrarily discharging him from his job and could not so easily restore +with her change of whim. She did not feel any personal blame for his +action, however, nor did she blame him for yielding to this gross +temptation, as her more conservative neighbors might, although they +sometimes yielded themselves both to drink and the stock market to +stimulate their nerves. She merely hoped that he would think better of +his purpose. For the man interested her, and before she dressed for +dinner she sent a servant to the village with a note for the contractor, +asking him to reëngage the discharged stone mason and be sure that he +came back to work on the Monday.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXVI" id="XXXVI"></a>XXXVI</h2> + + +<p>Nevertheless, when Adelle looked for him the next Monday morning his was +not among the faces of the men at work on the lofty retaining wall. She +asked the contractor about him, but the boss merely shrugged his +shoulders and said that somebody had seen the man getting on the late +Saturday night train for the city.</p> + +<p>"It's too bad," he added, to punish Adelle for interfering in his +business. "He was a mighty good worker, and you don't get that kind +often these days. I'd rather have him than any four of these dagoes."</p> + +<p>He waved a disdainful arm at the squad of sons of sunny Italy who were +toiling along the wall.</p> + +<p>Adelle did not forget the young stone mason, but she could do nothing +more for him even had she known just what to do. Then one morning when +she made her usual rounds, she was happily surprised to find him back on +the job, working as was his wont a little to one side of his foreign +mates with his own helper. His face looked as red as ever, and his eyes +were also suspiciously red, but this was the only evidence of his spree +that she could see. As Adelle advanced to the place where he was +working, the mason glanced up and replied gruffly to her greeting,—</p> + +<p>"Morning, ma'am!"</p> + +<p>She knew that he was not ashamed of himself, merely embarrassed. And she +thought that if he had not felt kindly to her, he would not have come +back to Highcourt to work after his spree—or was it, perhaps, his +pleasant shack on the hill that lured him to his old job? Adelle did not +tell him that she was glad to see him back, but passed on without +stopping. Presently, however, when his helper had disappeared for a load +of mortar she came back to the place and watched him. He worked as +steadily and swiftly as ever, his lithe bronze arm lifting the stones +accurately to their places, his wrist giving a practiced flip to each +trowel full of mortar, which landed it on the right spot. Adelle wanted +to talk to him again, to ask him questions, but did not know how to +begin. Apparently he meant to let her make all the advances.</p> + +<p>"That's fascinating work," she said at length.</p> + +<p>He flipped a fresh dab of mortar to place and replied,—</p> + +<p>"You might think so lookin' on—but no work is fascinatin' when you've +had too much of it. I've laid enough stone to last me a lifetime."</p> + +<p>"What else had you rather do?"</p> + +<p>"Oh," he said, pausing a moment to wipe the sweat from his face with the +back of his shirt-sleeve, "'Most anything at times! I tried mining once, +but it's worse and uncertain. And lumbering—no pay. When I was a kid I +wanted to be a doctor—that's before I left school. A nice sort of +doctor I'd make, wouldn't I?"</p> + +<p>He laughed at himself, but Adelle felt that in spite of his mirthless +laugh his mind was chafing. He was dissatisfied with himself and the +work he was doing and hungered for some larger demand upon his powers +than laying so many feet of rock wall per day. She herself had so little +of this sort of hunger in her own soul that it made the young mason all +the more interesting to her.</p> + +<p>"You might save up your money and try—" she began.</p> + +<p>"To be a doctor?" he laughed back. "I saved up once—got most five +hundred dollars and a feller came along and persuaded me to put it into +some land. Well, I got the land still.... No, ma'am, there ain't much +chance to change for the workingman when he's once fixed in his creek +bed. He must just roll along with the rest the best he can. And I'm +better off than most because I've got a paying trade. Lots of boys like +me and my brothers don't learn ever to do anything, and just slave on +all their lives at any job comes handy until they are all wore out. Lots +and lots. Their folks can't keep 'em in school and they never know +enough to more'n sign their names. All they are good for is rough work, +same as the dago helper here. He thinks two dollars a day big money. I +guess it is to him."</p> + +<p>He spat disdainfully with all an American's contempt for the inferior.</p> + +<p>"I expect where he come from it was a fortune, two dollars a day, eh?" +He appealed to Adelle to appreciate the joke. "Think of that now! And +he's got a woman and kids, and I bet has saved money, too. But he's only +a dago," he explained tolerantly.</p> + +<p>"Say," he resumed after a pause. "It costs more 'n two dollars to go to +the opery in San Francisco."</p> + +<p>"Did you go to the opera?" Adelle asked, recalling that Archie had said +something about the current engagement of the New York Opera company. +They had a box or something for the season—they always did. "What did +they give?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, it was some German piece. It took place in the woods with a lot of +folks in armor, but the music was fine, and there was one place where +they had a castle upon a big hill, like that where my shack is, way off +towards the clouds, and a river down in front going by with women in it +swimming," and he described with relish the last act of the +"Rheingold-dammerung," which Adelle recognized because she had seen it +many times in Europe and been horribly bored by it. The story of the +opera seemed to interest the young mason especially. He retold it +minutely for Adelle's benefit, offering amusing explanations of its +mythological mysteries.</p> + +<p>"But how did you happen to go to the opera?" Adelle asked.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said in vague diffidence, "I was feeling pretty good by that +time, and I seen the poster. I had the price—why shouldn't I go?" he +demanded brusquely; and with another sardonic laugh the real motive came +out,—"I wanted to see what you folks who go to the opery see—how you +enjoy yourselves. Well, the opery ain't so bad—it ain't one bit bad," +and he attempted to hum the Rheingold music. "I believe I'll go to the +opery again when I'm on the loose and don't know any better way to blow +my money. I like music," he added inconsequentially. "Mother used to +sing sometimes."</p> + +<p>This was as far as they got conversationally that day. Something +interrupted Adelle in the midst of the musical discussion and she did +not have a chance to return to the wall. But she had almost daily +opportunity for talk with the young mason in the succeeding weeks, for +after his return from his spree, he worked steadily on his job every +day. He was one of the very few American-born workmen employed at +Highcourt, and after their misunderstanding and subsequent agreement, +Adelle felt better acquainted with him than with the others. He taught +her to handle the trowel and to lay stone. After a few attempts, she +managed quite well and found a curious pleasure in the manual labor of +fitting stone to stone and properly bedding the whole in cement. She +learned to select the right pieces with a rapid glance and to chip an +obtrusive corner or face a rock with a few taps of the heavy hammer. It +gave her a pleasure akin to her experiments in jewelry, and it must be +said the results were better. She used to show her visitors proudly the +bit of wall she had laid up herself under the young mason's direction +and assert that, instead of bookbinding or jewelry or other ladylike +occupations, she meant to set up stone walls about Highcourt for her +recreation. The Bellevue people considered her whim a harmless bit of +eccentricity in the young mistress of Highcourt, and she was the object +of many a good-humored joke about her new method of "beating the +unions." Little did any of these pleasure-loving rich folk suspect where +Adelle's instinct for manual labor came from, how natural it was for her +to work at coarse tasks with her large, shapely hands.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>She needed all the distraction she could get, for these were not happy +days for Adelle within her big new house. The inexplicable stringency of +money grew worse, and there were constant quarrels between her and +Archie over her "extravagance" when he was at home. Adelle could not +understand why she should be obliged to curb her prodigal hand in making +"improvements" at Highcourt. Did the trust officers not tell her that +hers was a "large fortune," not far from five millions, enough surely to +permit a woman freedom for every whim? If there was trouble about money, +it must be Archie's fault: she wished she had never consented to take +her property out of the safe keeping of the careful trust company. Her +logic in these discussions, if irrefutable, was bitter, and Archie +resented it, all the more because he knew that he had made a fool of +himself with his wife's ample fortune, and allowed stronger men to bite +him. He had not sufficient character to confess the fact and refrain +altogether from further speculation. He tried instead to make good what +had been lost in Seaboard and was always nagging Adelle to dispose of +certain stocks and bonds that still remained from the investments of the +prudent trust company. But Adelle was obstinate: she would not sell +anything more. So Archie's large debit at his brokers went on rolling +up, and there continued to be "words" at Highcourt whenever he was +there, which was less often then he might have been.</p> + +<p>Proverbially, money is the cause of the bitterest disputes in families. +Abstractly it might seem remarkable that this should be so, but the +peculiar nature of property of all sorts is that it becomes the inmost +shrine of its possessor's being, and when the shrine is robbed or +desecrated, the injured personality resents the outrage with bitterness. +Many a man or woman will submit with Christian fortitude to insults upon +character or positive unjust burdens, but will flame into rebellion at +the least touch upon the purse. In the case of Archie and Adelle it was +all the more remarkable because neither had been born to wealth so that +property could become a part of the nature: they were both "the spoiled +children of fortune" as the story-books say, having had their wealth +thrust upon them unexpectedly, and so might take its loss lightly. Not +at all! Adelle felt as much wronged as if she had been the last of an +ancient line of dukes and duchesses or had accumulated the riches of +Clark's Field by a lifetime of toil and self-denial. Was it not <i>hers</i>? +Had the law not made it inalienably a part of her? Such is human nature +in a capitalistic society.</p> + +<p>Bellevue began to gossip about the couple at Highcourt, and divided as +always into two camps with shades of opinion within each camp. The women +were generally for Archie, even if he had been foolish with his wife's +money and was conducting his "affair" with Irene Pointer rather +recklessly. If his wife were less stupid and selfish about not going +about with him in society, she could have "held him." The men liked +Archie well enough, but knew that he was "no good."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXVII" id="XXXVII"></a>XXXVII</h2> + + +<p>It was some time after the young mason's return to his job before Adelle +even learned his name. She had no curiosity about his name, indicating +how little of the personal or sentimental there was in the interest she +felt in him. He was just the "mason," and she always addressed him as +"mason" until one day she heard the foreman call him—"Clark"; and then, +when the foreman had passed on, she said with mild curiosity,—</p> + +<p>"Is your name Clark?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," the man replied with a touch of pride in the pure English +name,—"Clark without the e. I'm Tom Clark. Father's name was Stanley +Clark, same as grandfather's. Everybody about Sacramento used to know +old Stan Clark!"</p> + +<p>"My name was Clark, too, before I was married," Adelle remarked.</p> + +<p>"Did you spell it with an <i>e</i>?" Tom Clark asked.</p> + +<p>"No, the same as yours, without the <i>e</i>," she replied.</p> + +<p>"We must be related somewheres," the mason laughed, with a sense of +irony.</p> + +<p>"Where did your family come from?"</p> + +<p>"Somewhere East—Missouri, I think. But that was long ago—before the +gold times. Grandfather Stan came out in forty-nine and settled on the +Sacramento River, and that was where father was raised."</p> + +<p>Adelle felt a slight increase in her interest in the mason from their +having the same name, and she remarked idly,—</p> + +<p>"So your family lived once in Missouri?"</p> + +<p>"The Clarks came from Missouri—that's all I know. Mother's folks were +Scotch-Irish, and that's where I get my red head, I guess!"</p> + +<p>Like most Americans of his class he knew nothing more of his origin than +the preceding two generations. The family was lost in the vague limbo of +"back East somewheres." Yet he was proud that the Clarks had come from +the East and were among the first Americans to enter the golden land of +opportunity. And he apologized for the failure of his ancestors to +attach to themselves a larger share of prosperity.</p> + +<p>"If we could have hung on to grandfather's old ranch, we'd not one of us +been working for other folks to-day. He had a hundred and sixty acres of +as pretty a bit of land as there is in Sacramento Valley—part of it is +now in the city limits, too. But father was sort of slack in some +ways,—didn't realize what a big future California had,—so he sold off +most of the ranch for almost nothing, and mother had to part with the +rest."</p> + +<p>He flipped a trowelful of mortar and whistled as if to express thus his +sense of fate.</p> + +<p>"Too bad," Adelle replied. "They say you ought never to sell any land. +It's all likely to be more valuable some day."</p> + +<p>"Sure!" the mason rejoined sourly. "That's why most of us work for a few +of you!"</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" Adelle asked, puzzled by the economic theory implied +in this remark.</p> + +<p>But before Clark could explain, Adelle was summoned to the house. As she +went up the slippery path she thought about what the mason had said, +about his being a Clark, too. She felt herself on much closer terms of +knowledge and sympathy with this workman of her own name than with the +fashionable women who had come for luncheon to Highcourt.</p> + +<p>Hitherto Adelle had met in the journey of life mainly coarse-minded +persons—I do not mean by this, nasty or vulgar people, but simply men +and women who were content to live on the surfaces and let others do for +them what thinking they needed—people upon whom the experience of +living could make little fine impression. In the rooming-house, with her +aunt and uncle and the transient roomers, naturally there had been no +refinement of any sort. Nor, in spite of its luxury and its boast of +educating the daughters of "our best families," had the expensive +boarding-school to which the trust company in their blindness condemned +their ward added much to Adelle's spiritual opportunities. Pussy +Comstock, for all her sophistication, was no better, and as for the "two +Pols" and Archie Davis, the reader can judge what fineness of mind or +soul was to be found in them. Even the officers of the Washington Trust +Company, who were of indubitable respectability and prominence in their +own community,—everything that bankers should be,—had neither mental +nor spiritual elevation, and coarsely pigeonholed their ideas about life +as they had done with Adelle. The thinking of the best spirits in +Bellevue has been exemplified in the utterance upon labor that Adelle +had taken from Major Pound and Nelson Carhart who are doubtless still +enunciating the same trite remarks at the dinner-table and in their +clubs with a profound conviction of thinking seriously upon important +topics. All these diverse human elements, which thus far had been cast +up in Adelle's path, were good people enough—some of them earnest and +serious about living, but all without exception coarse-minded. All the +wealth of Clark's Field had not yet given its owner one simple, +clear-thinking human companion.</p> + +<p>The young stone mason, Tom Clark, outwardly crude and coarse and with a +knowledge of life limited by his personal estate, was nevertheless the +first person Adelle had met who tried to do his own thinking about life. +It was not very important thinking, perhaps, but it had for Adelle the +attraction of freshness and sincerity. The mason stimulated the mistress +of Highcourt intellectually and spiritually, which would have made the +good ladies at luncheon with her that day laugh or do worse. Adelle felt +that he could help her to understand many things that she was beginning +to think about, that were stirring in her dumb soul and troubling her. +And she knew that she could talk to him about them, as she could not +talk to George Pointer nor Major Pound nor even Archie. In her simple +way, when she discovered what she wanted, she went directly after it +until she was satisfied. She meant to talk more with the young stone +mason of the widespread race of Clark.</p> + +<p>The next time Adelle made the ascent of the hill behind Highcourt she +took her little boy with her, and after wandering about the eucalyptus +wood with him in search of flowers sent him back to the house with his +nurse and kept on over the hill to the shack where Clark lived. She +examined the tar-paper structure more carefully, noticing that the mason +had set out some vegetables beside the door and that a little vine was +climbing up the paper façade of the temporary home. She knew that the +mason was still at his work below, and so she ventured to peek into the +shack. Everything within the one small room was clean and orderly. There +was a rough bunk in one corner, which was made into a neat bed, and +beneath this were arranged in pairs the man's extra shoes, one pair +bleached by lime and another newer pair of modern cut for dress use. In +one corner was a small camper's stove with a piece of drain-pipe for +chimney; a board table, one or two boxes, and some automobile oil cans +made up the furniture of the room. There was also a little lime-spotted +canvas trunk that probably contained the mason's better clothes and his +extra tools. On the table was a lamp and a few soiled magazines, with +which Clark probably whiled away free hours when not disposed to descend +to the town for active amusement.</p> + +<p>For a woman in Adelle's position such a workingman's home has the +interest of the unfamiliar. It is always incomprehensible to a woman +nurtured to a high standard of comfort to realize a totally different +and presumably lower standard of living. This may be seen when travelers +peer with exclamations of surprise and pity or disgust into the stuffy +homes of European peasants or the dark mud-floor rooms of Asiatics. The +prejudices of race as well as of social class seem to come to the +surface in this concrete experience of how another kind of human being +sleeps, eats, and amuses himself. With Adelle this sensation of +strangeness was not very keen, because her own acquaintance with the +habits of the rich was less than ten full years old. Clark's one-room +tar-paper shack did not seem so squalid to her as it might to Irene +Pointer, though Adelle had never before had the curiosity to enter a +humble dwelling. She looked about her, indeed, with a certain +appreciation of its coziness and adequacy. All that a single man really +needed for decency and modest comfort was to be found here, at least +under the conditions of the sunny California clime, which Providence +seems to have adapted for poverty. All the wealth of Clark's Field could +have added little valuable luxury to this tar-paper shack on the ridge +of high hills with a prospect of mountain, valley, and ocean before the +front door. Of course, with the assistance of Clark's Field, its +proprietor would have been sitting in the great room of the Pacific +Coast Club, as Archie was at this moment, imbibing foreign wine and +deploring the "agitation among the people," which was making a very bad +stock market.</p> + +<p>After having taken in every item in the single room carefully, Adelle +went on her way full of thought. Her first impression was that the mason +must be a superior sort of workman because he kept his home and his few +possessions neatly and orderly. She did not know that there are many +naturally clean persons in the laboring-classes. However, she made no +fetish of tubbing herself once a day, and thought on to more important +considerations. Evidently the young man was attached to his beautiful +solitary abode—he had planted and watered a vine for the door. She +resolved to tell him that he could help himself to the fruit and flowers +in Highcourt. If he cared to set out a small flower garden, he could get +seeds and slips from her own formal garden. But there was the question +of water: it would not be possible for him to start a garden on this +hilltop without water. She supposed that he must lug what water he used +from Highcourt. Probably that was the use he put those large tin cans +to....</p> + +<p>Adelle's mind was naturally slow in its operations. Ideas and +impressions seemed to lie in it for months like seed in a dry and cold +ground without any sign of fruitful germination. But they were not +always dead! Sometimes, after days or weeks or even months of apparent +extinction, they came to life and bore fruit,—usually a meager fruit. +To-day, for an inexplicable reason, she began to think again of the +mason's family name. He was a Clark without the e, and his people came +from "back East." It might seem strange that this fact had not at once +roused a train of ideas in Adelle's mind when she first learned of it. +But the lost heir to Clark's Field had never been to her of that vital +importance he had been to her mother and uncle. It must be remembered +that her aunt was the only one of her family who had been at all near to +her, and her aunt had small faith in the Clark tradition and was not of +a reminiscent turn of mind. Of course, the trust officers had explained +carefully to Adelle's aunt in her hearing all about the difficulties +with the title, and at various times after her aunt's death had alluded +to this matter in their brief communications with her. But they had not +gone into the specific measures they had taken to look for the lost +heirs of old Edward Clark, nor the means by which the title at last had +been "quieted," to use the expressive legal term. And finally all such +business details passed through Adelle's mind like a stream of water +through a pipe, leaving little sediment. She had not thought about the +Clarks or Clark's Field for some years....</p> + +<p>To-day she began wondering whether by chance this young mason of the +name of Clark could be related to any of her mother's people. She must +find out more about his family history. So she prolonged her walk among +the hills until the declining sun told her that the mason would have +returned to his home. Then she came back along the path by the shack. +Clark was inside, whistling loudly, and evidently preparing his evening +meal, for a thin stream of bluish smoke emerged into the still air from +the mouth of the drain-pipe. Adelle called,—</p> + +<p>"Mr. Clark!"</p> + +<p>The mason came to the open door. He was bareheaded and barearmed, +clothed merely in khaki trousers and red flannel undershirt, but he was +glisteningly clean and shaved. In one hand he carried his frying-pan +into which he had just put some junks of beef. He seemed surprised on +seeing the lady of Highcourt at his door and scowled slightly in the +sunlight.</p> + +<p>"I was going by," she explained without any embarrassment, "and wanted +to ask you about something."</p> + +<p>The mason removed his pipe from his teeth and stood at attention.</p> + +<p>"Do you know where your family came from before they lived in Missouri?" +she asked. "I mean the Clarks, your grandfather's people."</p> + +<p>The mason looked surprised to find this was the important question she +had come all the way to his shack to ask.</p> + +<p>"No, I don't know, Mrs. Davis."</p> + +<p>"Did you ever hear any one of them speak of Alton?"</p> + +<p>He slowly shook his head.</p> + +<p>"Never heard the name of the place before that I know of."</p> + +<p>"Oh," Adelle observed in a disappointed tone, "I thought you might know +where they came from before the Missouri time."</p> + +<p>The mason gave a short, harsh laugh and stuck his pipe back between his +teeth.</p> + +<p>"I don't see as it makes any odds where they came from," he remarked. "I +guess we ain't got any fancy family tree to boast of."</p> + +<p>"Well," Adelle observed; and then, recollecting her other intention, she +said,—</p> + +<p>"Don't you want some flowers or fruit or stuff from the garden? You +can't raise much up here."</p> + +<p>"No, thanks; I don't want nothin'—much obliged to you."</p> + +<p>In spite of the conventional terms there was a surly burr to his tone +that belied the courtesy. Adelle was surprised at the hardness of his +mood. She felt quite friendly, almost intimate with him, after all their +talks, and now he was as gruff as he had been the first day. She looked +at his face for an explanation. He was scowling slightly, and in the +reddish light of the setting sun his face seemed to burn as with fever, +and his blue eyes glinted dangerously. She could not make out what was +going on in the man's mind. Probably he did not himself rightly know. +The discovery that he bore the same name as his employer had once might +have set off some unpleasant train of subconscious reflection, +accentuating the bitter sense of class distinction and the unreason of +it, which he was only too prone to entertain. He did not want any +"kindness" from rich people. He worked for them because he must, but he +worked in a spirit of armed neutrality at the best, like so many of his +kind, and he spat mentally upon Carnegie libraries and all other +evidences of the philanthropic spirit in those relieved from the toil of +day labor.</p> + +<p>Adelle could not follow this, but she knew that the man was close to an +explosion point of some sort, as he had been that other time when she +had encountered him before his shack. Then he had suddenly jumped up +from the doorstep, the lust for action in his movement, and had +disappeared for the better part of a week. She felt that he might be on +the verge of another such outbreak and tried clumsily to prevent it if +possible. She hesitated, thinking what to say, while the mason glared at +her as if he were controlling himself with an effort.</p> + +<p>"I thought you might like something," she said at last. "There's plenty, +and you are welcome to what you want."</p> + +<p>"I don't want nothin'"; and he added meaningly,—"least of all flowers +and fruits."</p> + +<p>"There are a lot of magazines at the house—you might call for them or +books."</p> + +<p>"I don't do much reading."</p> + +<p>He checked her every move. There was nothing more to say, and so Adelle +turned slowly and went on her way to her home, thinking rather sadly +that the young mason would surely go to "'Frisco" to-night and might +never come back. Meanwhile, the mason had entered his shack and closed +the door, as if he wished to keep out intruders. He was not +whistling....</p> + +<p>That evening Archie arrived by motor from the city, bringing with him +some friends, and others came up to dinner from Bellevue, so that they +had a party of eight or ten. Dinner was late, and as the night was +pleasant with starlight and a soft breeze, coffee was served on the +unfinished terrace. As Adelle was pointing out to one of the guests the +line of proposed wall, she saw a man's figure coming down the path from +the eucalyptus grove. She watched it draw near to the terrace, then +stop. She was sure that it was the mason's figure. He must be on his way +to town to take the evening train for the city, which passed Bellevue at +nine forty-five. She utterly forgot what she was saying, what was being +said to her, in her intense effort to discover in the darkness what the +figure just above the terrace was doing. She could not tell whether he +had gone back to skirt the house and go on by a more roundabout way or +was waiting for an opportunity to descend unobserved. Some time +afterwards she heard the rolling of a stone on the hill-path and knew +that he must have retraced his steps to the grove. She thought that +there was no path down that way and was unreasonably glad for—she did +not know what. Archie had observed her distraction and remarked,—</p> + +<p>"Must be one of the workmen sneaking about up there. They are all over +the place, thick as flies. There's one has built himself a shack on the +other side of the hill and worn a path down here across the +terrace—cheeky rascal. I'll tell Ferguson to smoke him out!"</p> + +<p>Adelle said nothing, but she was sure that Ferguson would never execute +that order.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXVIII" id="XXXVIII"></a>XXXVIII</h2> + + +<p>The next morning Adelle went straight to the terrace wall from her room +where she had her coffee. All she had to do was to step out of the +French window and around the corner of the house, for she had not yet +moved to the rooms designed for her in the other wing. This morning she +wished to know surely whether the mason had gone off on his spree or had +really turned back as she thought he had the night before. And there he +was on the job, sure enough! Upon her approach, he looked up and rumpled +his hat over his head, which was his shamefaced method of saluting a +lady. He still looked somewhat stormy, but there were no traces of +debauch in his eyes, and he was tossing in his mortar with a fine swing, +and handling the heavy stones as if they were loaves of bread.</p> + +<p>"Good-morning, Mr. Clark," was all that Adelle said, and started to go +on.</p> + +<p>But the mason called out,—</p> + +<p>"Say!" and throwing down his trowel he hunted for something in his hip +pocket. "You was asking me about that town in the East—Alton. Well, I +found this after you had gone."</p> + +<p>He produced a tattered package of what seemed to be old letters, +yellowed with age and torn at the corners, and handed them up to Adelle.</p> + +<p>"They were grandfather's and mother always kep' 'em; I don't know why. +When she died one of my sisters giv' em to me. I been totin' 'em 'round +in my trunk ever since. They're kind of dirty and spotted," he +apologized for their condition. "But they were pretty old, I guess, when +I got 'em, and they ain't had much care since.... Last night after you +were up there I got 'em out of the trunk and tried to read 'em. There's +one there from Alton—it's got the postmark on the outside."</p> + +<p>Clark pointed with his mortar-coated thumb to the faint circle of the +stamp in the corner. Adelle took the letter from him with a sense of +faintness that she could not explain. She had been right in her +conjecture: that seemed to her a very great point.</p> + +<p>"I was bringin' 'em up to the house last night," the mason explained, +"but seen you had company, so kep' 'em until to-day."</p> + +<p>So he had not thought of going to San Francisco on a spree! Adelle's +woman conceit might have been sadly dashed.</p> + +<p>"May I read them?" she asked, looking curiously at the package of faded +letters.</p> + +<p>"Sure! Read 'em over. That's what I brought 'em to you for," the mason +said heartily. "I couldn't make much out of the old writing myself. I +ain't no scholar, you know, and the ink is pretty thin in spots. But I +seed the Alton postmark and thought you would be interested."</p> + +<p>"I'll look them over," Adelle said slowly, "and let you know what I find +in them."</p> + +<p>She carried the letters with her back to her rooms, but she did not open +them at once. She had no desire to do so, now that she had them. It was +not until the afternoon, while she was lounging in her room,—Archie +having gone to play polo at the club,—that she finally took up the +stained packet of old letters, and opened them. They were addressed +variously to "E. S. Clark," or "Edward S. Clark," and one to "E. Stanley +Clark," but that was a later one than the others and had to do with some +land business in California. The mason had spoken of his grandfather as +"Stanley Clark"—"old Stan Clark," he called him. Evidently the elder +Clark had called himself by his middle name after settling in +California, but before that he had been known as "Edward" or "Edward S. +Clark."</p> + +<p>Almost at random Adelle opened a letter—the one that the mason had +pointed out to her as having the Alton postmark. It was written in a +scrawly, heavy hand, which was almost illegibly faint and yellow after +the lapse of more than fifty years, and must have been written by one +little accustomed to the pen, for there was much hard spelling as well +as irregular chirography. Adelle looked for the signature. It was in the +lower inside corner, and the name, in the effort to economize space, was +almost unreadable. It might be "Sam." After considerable puzzlement, she +felt sure that it was "Sam." The S had an indubitable corkscrew effect, +and the straight splotches must have been an <i>m</i>, and there was the +faint trace of the <i>a</i>. But who was "Sam"?</p> + +<p>It was a few moments before Adelle realized that the "Sam" at the bottom +of the old letter was an abbreviation for her grandfather's name. It was +old Samuel Clark's signature. When she had grasped this fact, she turned +back to look at the date. It was 1847—July 19. She looked at the +envelope. It was addressed to "Mr. Edward S. Clark," at "Mr. Knowlton's, +8 Dearborn St., Chicago." At last Adelle got to the letter itself and +spent much time trying to make out the parts she could read. It was all +about family matters—the letter of one brother to another. There were +references to some family trouble, and "Sam" seemed to be defending +himself from a charge of unfair dealing with his brother, and protested +his good faith many times. Adelle was not greatly interested in the +contents of the letter, with its reference to a musty family row. She +knew too little of the Clark history to appreciate the significance of +Sam's verbose self-defense.</p> + +<p>What she did realize overwhelmingly was the fact that the young mason +was related to her—was her second cousin, the grandson of the elder +brother Clark, while she was the granddaughter, through her mother, of +the younger brother. And that was all she realized for the present. It +was a large enough fact. She was not a familyless woman as she had +always supposed, and this young workman on her estate was her cousin. He +had the same blood that she had in part, was of the same race, and as he +inherited through his father from the elder brother, while she inherited +through the mother from the younger brother, he would be considered in +certain social systems to be her family superior! The Head of the +Family! Adelle had no great class pride, as must have been perceived, +but even to her it was something of a shock to discover that she was +cousin to the stone mason employed in building her wall—an uneducated +young man who chewed tobacco, used poor grammar, and went on sprees, +vulgar sprees, for Archie had taught her that money makes a great +difference in the way men get drunk. And she remembered that Clark had +said, in his bitter indictment of the laboring-man's lot, that one of +his sisters was not all that she should be! Naturally it gave her much +to think about. Not the question whether she should tell him what she +had discovered from his grandfather's letters, but the fact itself of +her relationship with the young mason. That was stunning at first, even +to Adelle!</p> + +<p>But as she lay upon her pretty bed, which had been painted for her in +Paris with a flock of unblushing Amours, and stared at the painted +ceiling, her good sense rapidly came back to her. In her character it +was the substitute for humor. After all, there was nothing so +extraordinary in the fact. There must be many similar cases of poor +relations among all the people she knew, even with the Paysons and the +Carharts, who were the primates of Bellevue society. When families had +been living for a long time on this earth, there must grow up such +inequalities of fortune between the different branches, even among the +different members of the same generation. If people were only aware of +all their relations, there would doubtless be many surprises in life. +What would Archie say to it? In the first place, she probably would not +tell him, and he had no good ground for criticism anyway. The Davises +were not highly distinguished folk: no doubt Archie could find in any +telephone directory plenty of distant cousins of humble station. As for +Tom Clark himself, she did not feel that he would be disagreeable after +he had learned his relationship to his employer. He might whistle and +laugh and get off one of those ironical and contemptuous utterances +about society of which he seemed fond.</p> + +<p>After thinking it all over, Adelle rose and dressed herself; then, +taking the package of letters, of which she had only casually examined +the others, went up the path to the tar-paper shack. It was a hot +afternoon, and the mason had only just come back from his task. He had +not yet washed, and was sitting before his door, all red and sweaty, +smoking his pipe and scratching his arms in a sensuous relaxation of +muscles after the day's work. He looked altogether the workman. He did +not rise at her approach, but removing his pipe, remarked, as if he had +been expecting her visit,—</p> + +<p>"Well, did you read the stuff?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," Adelle replied, holding out the package; "I read some of them."</p> + +<p>"That's more'n I could do," he said, receiving the letters and staring +at them as if they had been Egyptian hieroglyphs. "What could you make +out of 'em?"</p> + +<p>"One thing!" Adelle exclaimed. "Your grandfather and my grandfather must +have been own brothers."</p> + +<p>"You don't say!" Tom Clark exclaimed, throwing back his head and giving +vent to that robust, ironical laugh that Adelle had expected. "So old +Stan Clark was your great-uncle?"</p> + +<p>Adelle nodded.</p> + +<p>"Just think of that now!" and the mason went off into another peal of +laughter which made Adelle uncomfortable. He did not take seriously his +relationship with the mistress of Highcourt. "I bet old grandfather Stan +would have been mighty surprised if he could see his niece and her swell +house!"</p> + +<p>Suddenly the mason rose, and, fetching out a box from his house, said +with an elaborate flourish of ironical courtesy,—</p> + +<p>"Sit down, cousin, and we'll talk it over."</p> + +<p>Adelle accepted the seat meekly.</p> + +<p>"So father's folks didn't really come from Missouri—but from way back +East?" he inquired with appreciation of the added aristocracy that this +gave the family.</p> + +<p>"Surely they came from Alton," Adelle replied. "That was where the +Clarks had always lived—ever since before the Revolution."</p> + +<p>"As long as that! Think of it—I'll be damned—beggin' your pardon, +cousin!" the mason exclaimed.</p> + +<p>Except for this familiar use of the term of relationship Tom Clark's +attitude was respectful enough, more humorous than anything else, as if +the news Adelle had given him merely completed his ironic philosophy of +life. He mused,—</p> + +<p>"So I had to get into a fight in 'Frisco and come here to work on this +job to find out my family connections."</p> + +<p>He seemed impressed with the devious paths of Providence.</p> + +<p>"And I had to go all the way from Alton to Paris to find a Californian +husband, who brought me out here!" laughed Adelle, who was beginning to +comprehend the mason's humor and the situation.</p> + +<p>Neither thought of any money concern in the new-found relationship. They +were still sitting before the shack on boxes in the red light of the +descending sun and Clark was explaining to "cousin" his theory of the +unimportance of family ties, when Archie came up the path. Adelle +perceived him first, and hastily getting up went to meet him. She did +not want him to hear the news, at least not until she had had time to +manage his susceptibilities, for she knew that his first reaction would +be to get rid of her "cousin" as soon as possible, and he would nag her +until the mason had been discharged. Archie, who had been drinking +enough since his game to give free rein to his poor temper, immediately +began the attack within hearing of the stone mason.</p> + +<p>"So this is where you are! I've been looking for you all over the place. +Thought you were too tired to go to the polo," he said accusingly.</p> + +<p>"I only just came up the hill for a little walk," Adelle explained.</p> + +<p>"I've been back an hour myself, and they said you'd gone out before," +her husband retorted suspiciously.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps it was earlier," Adelle replied indifferently.</p> + +<p>She cared less than she had once for Archie's outbursts of temper, and +at present her mind was occupied with other matters than calming him. +Archie looked at her with a peculiar stare in which ugliness and +something more evil were mixed.</p> + +<p>"Been having such an interesting conversation that you didn't know how +fast time was going?" he sneered.</p> + +<p>"Yes," Adelle replied literally.</p> + +<p>"Talkin' with that fellow?" Archie demanded, hitching a shoulder in the +direction of the stone mason, who was still sitting not far off watching +the couple.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I had something important to say to him," Adelle replied, and +started away.</p> + +<p>But Archie did not stir.</p> + +<p>"I have something important to say to him, too," he growled, walking +towards the mason.</p> + +<p>"Archie!" Adelle called.</p> + +<p>But Archie paid no attention. He strode furiously up to the shack, and +even before he reached it he called out,—</p> + +<p>"Here, you there! What business have you got building your dirty little +roost on my land without permission?"</p> + +<p>The mason merely smiled at the angry man in reply. Adelle, who had run +up to her husband, tried to pull him back, with a hand on his arm.</p> + +<p>"It isn't our land," she said disgustedly. Her foolish husband did not +even know the boundaries of their own property, which stopped at the +edge of the eucalyptus grove on the top of the hill.</p> + +<p>"Well, I won't have him tracking up the place with his paths," Archie +said weakly. "He was prowling around the house last night. I saw him."</p> + +<p>The mason again smiled at him, as if he scorned to answer back a man who +was so evidently "in his booze," as he would put it, and trying to pick +a quarrel.</p> + +<p>"Anyway you are discharged," he said, in a lordly attempt to get back +his dignity. "See Mr. Ferguson in the morning and get your money +and—get out!"</p> + +<p>"I will not," the mason replied imperturbably.</p> + +<p>"What do you say?"</p> + +<p>Clark grinned at Adelle and replied with an intentional drawl,—</p> + +<p>"I been discharged once on this job and taken back, and this time I mean +to stick until the job's done."</p> + +<p>"No, you won't!" Archie shouted.</p> + +<p>"Oh, so I won't?... Well, I ain't taking my orders from you. She's the +boss on the ranch, I guess."</p> + +<p>He indicated Adelle with a nod. This came altogether too near the truth +to be pleasant for Archie.</p> + +<p>"You damned—"</p> + +<p>With his heavy polo whip raised he sprang at the mason. Adelle dragged +at his arm, and he turned to shake her off, raising his free hand +threateningly.</p> + +<p>"Take care!" the mason called out. "Don't hit a woman!"</p> + +<p>As if in defiance, as if to show that he could hit at least this woman +who belonged to him by law, even though her possessions might not belong +to him entirely, Archie's left hand came down upon Adelle's arm with +sufficient force to be called a blow. Adelle dropped her grip of her +husband's arm with a slight cry of fright and shame rather than of pain. +Archie did not have to step forward to get at the mason, for with one +bound Clark sprang from his seat on the box and dealt Archie such a +smashing blow in the middle of the face that he fell crumpled in a heap +on the ground between Adelle and the mason. He lay there gasping and +groaning for a few moments—long enough for Adelle to realize completely +how she loathed him. Before this she had known that she was not happy in +her marriage, that Archie was far from the lover she had dreamed of, +that he was lacking in certain common virtues very necessary in any +society. Indeed, he had treated her roughly before now, in accesses of +alcoholic irritation, but always there had been in her mind a lingering +affection for the boy she had once loved and spoiled—enough to make her +pardon and forget. But now she saw him beneath the skin with the deadly +clearness of vision that precludes all forgiveness.</p> + +<p>At last Archie crawled giddily to his feet, his nose running with blood +which spattered over his rumpled silk shirt. He looked at his opponent +uncertainly, as if he would like to try conclusions again, but a glance +at the mason's large hard hands and stocky frame was enough. Turning, he +said,—"I'll fix you for this," and started for Highcourt.</p> + +<p>"Oh, go to hell!" the mason called after him, resuming his seat on the +soap-box and relighting his pipe.</p> + +<p>Adelle, before she followed her husband, said to her new-found cousin in +a tone clear enough to reach Archie's ears,—</p> + +<p>"Of course you are not discharged. I am very sorry for this."</p> + +<p>"That's all right," the mason replied. "I don't worry about him."</p> + +<p>Archie kept on as if he had not heard, and Adelle followed back to +Highcourt at sufficient distance not to be forced to speak to him. They +did not meet or speak that night, which had happened before more than +once. Adelle lay awake far into the night, thinking many surprisingly +new thoughts—about the cousin in his shack, the way in which he had +taken her news of their relationship, and also the calm manner in which +he had stood her husband's outrageous behavior. She as nearly admired +the cold humor with which he received her husband's abuse until Archie +had struck her as she did anything she knew in the way of conduct. The +mason cousin might use bad grammar and chew tobacco and go on sprees +occasionally, but as between him and her husband he was the gentleman of +the two—better still, the man of the two. His patience under insult and +his treating Archie like a child when he saw that the "gentleman" had +been drinking were truly admirable!</p> + +<p>As for Archie it was not a new experience for her latterly to lie awake +cogitating her marriage in unhappy sleeplessness. It had seemed to her +on such occasions that all the old banker's predictions about the +results of her marrying Archie had come true like a curse, and sooner +than might have been thought. But never before had she seen so clearly +how impossible Archie was, never before felt herself without one atom of +regard for him—not even desire. And yet her mind was too little fertile +in expedients to suggest to her any way out of her trouble. She was of +those many women who will not take a step even against the most brutal +of husbands until driven into it. So she quickly dismissed him from her +thoughts.</p> + +<p>It was then that for the first time, in connection with her new cousin, +she thought of the money—the buried treasure of Clark's Field, which +had been discovered for her benefit and which had been of such poor use +to her apparently. Archie, she had said to herself, was less of a man +than this rough stone mason, Tom Clark. He was, after all, nothing more +than a very ordinary American citizen, with the prestige and power of +her wealth. If that other man had happened to have the money—and it was +here that light broke over her. It did belong to him, at least a large +part of it! She recalled now the substance of those legal lectures she +had received at different times from the officers of the trust company. +The trouble about Clark's Field all these years had been the +disappearance of an heir, the elder brother of her grandfather, and the +lack of absolute proof that he had left no heirs behind him when he +died, to claim his undivided half interest in the field. But he had left +heirs, a whole family of them, it seemed! And to them, of course, +belonged at least a half of the property quite as much as it did to her!</p> + +<p>When she had arrived at this illumination she was in a great state of +excitement. She almost waked Archie from his alcoholic slumbers in the +neighboring room to tell him that he was not married to a rich woman—at +least to one as rich as he thought by a half. And the workman whom he +had insulted and discharged in his fury was really his superior, in +money as well as character, and might perhaps drive him out of +Highcourt, instead! But she decided to put off this ironical blow until +a more opportune time, when Archie was nagging her for money. He could +be too disagreeable in his present state.</p> + +<p>Then she thought of breaking the astounding news to the stone mason +himself. She must do that the first thing in the morning. But presently +doubts began to rise in her mind. Of course, knowing nothing of law, she +resolved the problem by the very simple rules of thumb she was capable +of. These California Clarks, of whom the mason was one, undoubtedly +owned a half of Clark's Field,—in other words, of her estate,—for +Clark's Field had been sold for the most part and no longer belonged to +her. If so there would be only one half left for her and her child, and +she had good reason to fear that her half had considerably shrunken by +now, thanks to Archie's investments and their way of living, if it had +not wholly disappeared! What then? She would be poor, as poor as Tom +Clark was now. And it would all go to him—the thought made her smile. +But no, he had brothers and sisters, probably uncles and aunts and +cousins. He would have to share his half with them. And one of his +sisters was the sort of woman she had been taught to despise and abhor. +It was all a horrible tangle, which she felt herself incapable to see +through at once. She was not sure that she could tell Archie or even her +new cousin, anyway not until she had thought it out more clearly and +knew the case in all its bearings.</p> + +<p>The truth was, perhaps, that Adelle's natural fund of egotism, which was +not small, had begun to work as soon as she realized that she might lose +her magic lamp altogether. It may be doubted that, if certain events had +not happened, Adelle ever would have risen to the point where she could +have told any one the truth as she was now convinced she knew it. For +the present she would put it off,—a few days. It was so much easier to +say nothing at all: the mason did not seem to suspect the truth. She +could let things go on as fate had shaped them thus far.</p> + +<p>And there was her little boy, too, who was very precious to her. She +would be disinheriting him, which she had no right to do. It was all +horribly mixed up! Adelle did not get much sleep that night.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXIX" id="XXXIX"></a>XXXIX</h2> + + +<p>Although she had made up her mind not to tell her secret to any one at +present, Adelle could not refrain from looking up the stone mason the +first thing in the morning. She seemed to be attracted to him as the +moth is to the proverbial flame, all the more after her new +understanding of the situation between them. And she was also +apprehensive of what Archie might be up to. If he were violent, and the +two men had another quarrel, she might be forced to declare the truth, +which she didn't want to do this morning.</p> + +<p>Therefore, she felt relieved to find that Tom Clark was not at his post +on the wall. She asked no questions of Mr. Ferguson. And morning after +morning she was both disappointed and relieved when she went to the wall +and found his place still empty. The foreman had not put other masons to +work there, but continued the work at a different point. She asked him +no questions. Perhaps her cousin had left voluntarily in disgust with +Highcourt. She even went up the hill one morning and found his little +shack closed. Peeking through the windows she perceived his trunk and +kitty-bag in their place, with his old shoes and clothes beside them. So +he intended to come back! Again she was both pleased and frightened. The +return would mean complications. She must make up her mind definitely +whether she should tell him the secret. She felt a strong impulse to do +so and take the consequences. And there was Archie, with whom she had +not exchanged a dozen words since the scene on the hill. It was quite +the longest quarrel that they had ever had and wearing to them both. So +it went for nearly a week.</p> + +<p>And then one morning, as she was passing heedlessly along the terrace, +she heard a man's voice which was familiar, and peering over the great +wall, saw Tom Clark below at his accustomed post. He caught sight of the +mistress of Highcourt, and bobbed his head shamefacedly. After a time +she came to him through the cañon, but he pretended not to see her. She +knew that he was ashamed of himself for something he had done—she +wondered what—probably drinking. He looked a trifle paler than usual +and very red-eyed. He acted like a puppy that knows perfectly well it +has been up to mischief and deserves a licking, wishes, indeed, that its +master would go to it and get it over soon so that they could come back +to the old normal friendship. Adelle herself felt cold with excitement +of all sorts, and could hardly control her voice enough to say +unconcernedly,—</p> + +<p>"Haven't seen you, Mr. Clark, for some time."</p> + +<p>"No!" (Head down.) "Just thought I'd take a little vacation—and rest +up."</p> + +<p>"Did you go up to San Francisco?"</p> + +<p>"Yep!"</p> + +<p>"Did you see another opera?"</p> + +<p>"There weren't no opera this trip," the mason replied, spitting out his +quid. "I—seed—other things."</p> + +<p>"Is that so—what?"</p> + +<p>The mason did not reply, but there was a reckless gleam in his blue +eyes. He worked vigorously, then volunteered evasively,—</p> + +<p>"I was just celebratin' around."</p> + +<p>"Celebrating what?"</p> + +<p>"Things in general—what you was tellin' me about our bein' cousins," he +said, with a touch of his usual humor.</p> + +<p>"Oh!" Adelle replied, discomposed. He had been thinking about it, then.</p> + +<p>"Thought it deserved some celebratin'," Clark added.</p> + +<p>Adelle's heart beat a little faster. If he only knew the whole +truth!—then there would be something to celebrate, indeed!</p> + +<p>"The strike's off," the mason remarked soon, as if he were anxious to +get away from his own misdeeds.</p> + +<p>"Is it?"</p> + +<p>"Yep! They made a compromise—that's what they call it when the fellers +on top get together and deal it out so the men lose."</p> + +<p>"I suppose, then, you will be going back to the city when you finish the +work here?" Adelle asked.</p> + +<p>"Maybe—I dunno—got some money comin' to me"—Adelle's guilty heart +stood quite still. "I ain't drawed a cent on this job so far," he added +to her relief. "Perhaps I'll blow in what's coming to me in goin' East +to see where my folks used to live in Alton."</p> + +<p>He spoke half in jest, but Adelle replied faintly,—</p> + +<p>"That might be a good idea."</p> + +<p>"I heard from one of my sisters while I was gone. She's in +Philadelphy—married to a feller there that works in the carpet mills. I +ain't seen her for more 'n ten years—might stop in Philadelphy, too."</p> + +<p>Adelle was curious to know whether this was the sister who "had gone +wrong," but did not know how to phrase the question. After a time, she +felt the temptation to tell the mason what she knew becoming +intolerable. Her mind hovered about her secret as a bird hovers over a +great void; she was irresistibly drawn to the fatal plunge. She moved +off while she yet felt the power to do so without speaking. Her cousin +looked up in some surprise.</p> + +<p>"You goin'?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Let me know before you start East," she called back to him. "Perhaps I +could do something to help you on your trip."</p> + +<p>"Sure I'll let you know," came up heartily from the bottom of the wall +where the mason had gone for a tool.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>If Archie realized Tom Clark's return to Highcourt, he was wise enough +to make nothing of it. He was in a poor way nervously at this time, +playing bad polo and drinking altogether too much. He stayed away from +the city, which was a nuisance to Adelle, but he spent most of his time +at the country club. Adelle meanwhile was wrestling with herself; with +what people have the habit of calling the "conscience," but what had +better be called the "consciousness," endeavoring to realize more fully +the position in which she found herself. The idea within, like most +ideas hotly nursed in a troubled brain, was growing all the time, until +it filled all her waking moments and most of her dreams. She had to will +deliberately not to take the little path up the hill to the mason's +shack. Once she yielded, and when she arrived breathless, her heart +thumping, she found the door safely padlocked. The mason had gone to the +town for supplies. She sneaked back to Highcourt by a roundabout course +through the eucalyptus wood, to avoid meeting her cousin on the path. +Thus day by day she lived in an agony of preoccupation, so that even +Archie began to notice how thin and pale she was, and attributed her +distress to all sorts of reasons except the right one, of which he knew +nothing. Her friends said that she was "trying to do too much," needed +distraction, and recommended a trip somewhere, though what she did, +except to dine and lunch out a few times each week or trail about the +unfinished estate and play with her child, would be hard to say. Adelle, +in truth, was thinking, thinking harder than ever before in her life. +Her new secret was the most stimulating influence, next to her child, +that she had known in all her life. Her brain once started led her into +all sorts of mad by-paths, ramifications of perception that she and the +reader, too, might not suspect lay within her powers. She asked herself +what the mason, with his ideas about the injustice of property, would do +with her money? She began even to question the meaning of life! Its +queer treatment of her, in jerking her up to a high plane of privilege +and then throwing her down in this unexpected manner, appeared for the +first time inexplicable.</p> + +<p>But greatest of all triumphs from this thinking was that Adelle began to +look upon life objectively, trying to see what it must mean to +others—to her new cousin, who evidently had had his own ambitions, +which had been thwarted by a fate that he could not surmount alone. +Would he do better with the money than she had? Achieve happiness more +lastingly? She began to doubt the power of money to give happiness. She +was losing faith in magic lamps. Of course, if Adelle had profited by +her Puritan ancestry, she would have known that all this kind of +reasoning was useless; for she had no business to assume the part of +Providence to the stone mason and deprive him of his own choice in the +matter of the inheritance. But fortunately she was not given to the +picking of moral bones. She said to herself positively that Tom Clark, +whatever he might once have become under other conditions, would not +know now what to do with money: he would merely "get into trouble with +it," as Archie had got into trouble. Already he had the habit of going +off on "vacations" like the past week, for which he seemed ashamed.</p> + +<p>And there were other lives than his to be considered—hers and Archie's, +though she did not give much thought to them. But there was her boy's +future. He had been Adelle's other great education. She had studied him +from the hour he was born and noted each tiny, trivial development of +his character. Already she knew that he was gay and pleasure-loving by +nature—had a curling, sensuous lip much like his father's. She felt +that he would need a great deal of guidance and care if he were to +arrive safely at man's estate. Of course, it was often said that the +struggle of poverty was the way of salvation. But she was not convinced +of this heroic creed. All the more if the little fellow should really +develop weakness; for wealth covered up and prevented the more dreadful +aspects of incompetence. No, she could never bring herself to deprive +her boy of his inheritance. She thought that this was the deciding +consideration in her resolve finally to keep her secret to herself. It +was a large reason, no doubt. But the decision came rather from her old +habit of letting fate work with her as it would; that passive acceptance +of whatever happened which had always been her characteristic attitude +towards life. She had an almost superstitious shrinking from interfering +with this outside arrangement of destiny. For where she had +interfered—as in getting Archie—she had brought disaster upon herself. +It was always the safer and wiser part for a woman to do nothing until +she was compelled to act. This conviction of Adelle's may seem to our +modernly strenuous natures to evince the last degree of cowardice and +pusillanimity before life. We like to believe that we are changing our +destiny every day and "making character" through a multitude of petty +decisions. As a matter of cold examination, it would probably be found +that few of us, through all our momentous and character-forming +decisions, affect the stream of life as much as we like to think, or +mould character. The difference between Adelle and the strenuous type of +constantly willing woman lies more in the consciousness of fuss and +effort that the latter has. When it came to the necessary point Adelle, +as we have seen, made her own decisions and abided by them, which is +more than the strenuous always do.</p> + +<p>At one time, in the course of the long debate with herself, Adelle felt +that she must appeal to some one for advice. In such stress and +perplexity a woman usually appeals to priest or doctor, or both. But +Adelle was entirely without any religious connection, and she had no +doctor in whom she trusted. Instead, she thought of the Washington Trust +Company, which had been the nearest thing to parental authority she had +ever known, but rejected the idea of presenting to them this delicate +problem. The thing, she saw, was beyond their scope and jurisdiction. +The only person she instinctively turned towards for advice was the old +probate judge, who had given her such a lecture on Clark's Field for a +benediction when she last appeared before him. She felt that he would +understand, and that he would have the right idea of what ought to be +done....</p> + +<p>Possibly, as the days passed and her mind grew still more towards +comprehension, she would have consulted Judge Orcutt, although she hated +to write letters. She might even have crossed the continent to talk with +the judge. But again Fate took the matter out of her hands and resolved +it in other ways.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XL" id="XL"></a>XL</h2> + + +<p>That Saturday night there was a large dinner-party at Highcourt in +celebration of some polo match, where the local team was gloriously +vanquished. Archie was eager to gather people around him, all the more +as his drinking and his mistakes in "investments" had lowered his +prestige in the "colony." Why had they gone to the expense and the +bother of this big establishment, he argued, if they were not to +entertain, and entertain in a large and lavish fashion? This was the +first of a series of dinners he had planned to give. If the invitations +had not been sent long before, Adelle would never have had the party, +for with the strained relations between herself and her husband, social +life was more difficult than ever to her. Adelle was never a brilliant +hostess. She talked little and with effort, and people herded together +in large numbers rendered her quite dumb. This evening she was more +distrait than ever, for her mind clung tenaciously to its one theme as +was the habit of her mind. It would stick to an idea until some solution +presented itself. No mere distraction could shunt it off its course, as +with Archie, who drank and gambled and played polo and shouted and +laughed in order not to think of the many disagreeable things there were +to think about when he allowed himself to lapse into a sober mood.</p> + +<p>Even Major Pound, who sat at his hostess's right, noticed after a time +Adelle's preoccupation, although he could be trusted to monologize +egotistically by the half-hour. He had started zestfully on the building +trades in San Francisco. The settlement of the long strike did not seem +to please him any more than it had Tom Clark. He thought that the +"tyranny of labor" was altogether unsupportable, that this country was +fast sinking into the horrors of "socialism," and capital was already +winging its way in fear to other safer refuges. Adelle had heard all +this many times not only from Major Pound and Nelson Carhart, but from +George Pointer and the other men she saw. It was the only kind of +"serious" conversation they ever indulged in. To-night, although she +heard the familiar prophecies of ruin faintly, through the haze of her +own problem, she had a distinct perception of the stupidity of it. What +right had any man to talk in this bitter, doleful tone of his country +and the life of the day? How could any man tell what the times were +going to bring forth? Perhaps her anarchistic cousin—the stone mason +who had considered these matters as he plied his trade under blistering +heat or chilling winds—had arrived at as sane conclusions as this +sleek, well-dressed, well-fed railroad man by her side. She recognized +that life was mostly a bitter fight, and her sympathies were strangely +not with her own class as represented by this gathering.</p> + +<p>All day long a high north wind had been blowing, one of those shrill +winds from the snow-capped Sierras that bring drought to California and +rasp the nerves like a steel whip. The wind had not gone down at sunset, +as it often did, and even while they dined with a roaring wood fire in +the great chimney-place, the noise of the wind could be heard as it +streamed through the cañon, lashing the tall trees above the house. +Adelle, listening to the uproar outside, wondered whether the tar-paper +shack on the hillside, which must be directly in the path of the gale, +had been able to withstand it. She thought of the mason sitting in his +flimsy beaten room listening to the mouthings of the tempest, alone. He +was not complaining, she felt. The tempest and the strife of life merely +roused the ironic demon within him—to laugh sardonically, to laugh but +fight on....</p> + +<p>"As I was saying," the major iterated to fix her wandering mind, and she +stared at him. What difference did it make what he was saying! The +polite major shifted his conversation from politics to art, with the +urbanity of the good diner-out. Had she seen the work of the "futurists" +when she was last in Paris. Really it was beyond belief! Another sign of +the general degeneracy of the age—revolt from discipline, etc. But +Adelle had nothing for the "futurists"; and finally Major Pound gave her +up and turned to the lady on his right. Archie, whose restless eyes had +seen the situation opposite him, cast his wife some sour looks. He +himself was more boisterous than usual, as if to cover up the dumbness +of his wife. They were dining to-night the younger "polo" set for the +most part, and the men and women of this set liked to make a great deal +of noise, laughed boisterously at nothing, shouted at each other, sang +at the table, and often drank more than was good for them. Archie +ordered in the victrola, and between courses the couples "trotted," then +a new amusement that had just reached the Coast.</p> + +<p>When at last the company divided for coffee and smoking, Archie +whispered to his wife snarlingly,—</p> + +<p>"Can't you open your mouth?"</p> + +<p>Adelle was insensible to his little dig, as she called it, and silently, +mechanically went through with her petty task of hostess in the hall +where the women sat, as the drawing-room was still in the hands of the +decorators. All the fictitious gayety of the party died out as soon as +the sexes separated. The women gathered in a little knot around the +fireplaces to smoke and talked about the wind. It got on their nerves, +they asserted querulously.</p> + +<p>"It's the one thing I can't stand in California," a pretty little woman, +who had recently taken up her residence on the Coast, remarked in a tone +of personal grievance.</p> + +<p>"We have had a great deal of north wind this year," another said.</p> + +<p>Adelle made no comment. The weather never interested her. It was one of +the large impersonal facts of life, outside her control, that she +accepted without criticism. The men stayed away a long time in Archie's +"library" in the other wing, probably talking polo or business, and +cosily enjoying their coffee, liqueurs, and cigars. Archie's cigars took +a long time to smoke and the older men usually had two. The women were +bored. Irene Pointer yawned openly in her corner by the fire. She and +her old friend rarely exchanged remarks these days. Irene avoided +Adelle, which Adelle was beginning to perceive. It was understood in the +colony that Irene Pointer did not approve of the way in which Adelle +"managed" her husband, and told her so. Irene herself was very discreet, +and "managed" George Pointer admirably so that she had a great deal of +freedom, and he was perfectly content.</p> + +<p>At last the men drifted back and stood in a row before the blazing fire. +Archie had in the victrola once more and tried to start them dancing, +but the hall was too crowded with furniture and the drawing-room could +not be used. He wanted to have the dining-room cleared, but there was a +spirit of restlessness among the guests. They could not revive the +gayety of the dinner-table. It was not long before the last motor had +rolled down the drive. Archie came back into the hall from the door +after speeding his guests and stood moodily staring at Adelle. He was +vexed. The party had been a failure,—dull. And she knew that he thought +her responsible for it. She expected an outburst, for Archie did not +usually take any pains to control his feelings. She waited. She knew +that if he spoke she should say something this time. She would probably +regret it, but she might even tell him her secret, as the easiest way to +crush him utterly. She looked at him, a dangerous light in her gray +eyes.</p> + +<p>This was the man she had craved so utterly that she had run every risk +to possess him! Irene had called him "a bounder"; and now he was "going +too far" with Irene—not that she especially cared about that, either. +But all his arrogance, his folly, his idleness and futility were built +upon her fortune, which really did not belong to her after all. A cruel +desire to see him crumble entered her heart, and she knew that she +should tell him the truth if he attacked her as she expected.</p> + +<p>But this one time Archie refrained from expressing himself. Even in his +flustered state he recognized a peculiar danger signal in the stare of +his passive wife. With a gesture of disgust he lounged out of the hall +in the direction of his library. Adelle watched him go. Should she +follow him in there and deal her blow? She heard the door of the large +drawing-room open and close behind him. She knew that he would keep on +drinking by himself until he felt properly sleepy. She did not follow +him. Instead, she went upstairs to the rooms occupied by her child and +his nurse, as she did every night before going to bed. The little fellow +was lying at full length on his small bed. His hands were clenched; his +arms stretched out above his head; his face had an expression of effort, +as if in his dreams he were putting forth all his tiny might to +accomplish something. He looked very handsome. Except for that weak +curve to the pleasure-loving lips, he resembled neither Archie nor +Adelle. Nature seemingly had been dissatisfied with them both, and in +drawing new life from them had chosen to return along the line of their +ancestry to select a more promising mould than either of the parents. +The fact that this could be so—that the child from her womb might be +more than herself or Archie—thrilled Adelle. "Boy" as she called him +was mystery and religion to her. He was to become the unfulfilled dream +of her life. This one perfect thing had been given her out of the +accidents of her disordered life, and she must make the utmost of it.</p> + +<p>She covered him up where in his dream he had kicked himself free from +the blanket. She bent and kissed him on the forehead gently not to +awaken him. He rolled over, settled himself into an easier position, and +the tension of his small face relaxed. Instead of the frown of effort a +beautiful smile broke over his face, as if at the touch of his mother's +lips the character of his dreams had changed to something highly +pleasurable. Adelle's eyes filled with unaccustomed tears, and she +lingered there a few moments. Nothing was too much to do for him, to +bear for him, no sacrifice that she might make for his future! It was +settled. She should never speak to any one of what she knew. "Boy" +should have everything she could give him, all that was left of her +magic lamp. Even Archie could never exasperate her again enough to +endanger the child's future.</p> + +<p>She turned down the night-light and tiptoed out of the room. To-morrow +she would move up here, even if she had to put the nurse in some other +place, and henceforth she would never be separated from her child. He +should stand between her and his father. She went to her rooms on the +lower floor, but before undressing she stepped out on the broad terrace, +which was now almost ready for the sod. The great wall was all but +finished—the corner by the orangery to be built up even with the rest. +As she came out from the shelter of the house the blast of wind caught +her thin dress and swept it out before her like a streamer. She had to +hold her hair to prevent the wind from unwinding it. She could see +nothing—the impalpable blackness reached far down into the depths of +the cañon, far out into the space above the land and the sea. Usually +even on dark nights the hill behind the house brooded over the place +like a faint shadow, but to-night it was blotted out. The house was dark +except for the light in Archie's library at the other end of the terrace +and the faint candle gleam of the night-light in the nursery.</p> + +<p>Adelle liked the black storm. It soothed her troubled mind by its sheer +force, passing through her like the will of a stronger being. Adelle was +growing, at last, after all these years of imperceptible change, of +spiritual stagnation. She had begun to grow with the coming of her +child, and these last weeks she had been growing fast. She even realized +that she was changing, was becoming another, unfamiliar person. She felt +it to-night more than at any time in all her life—the strangeness of +being somebody other than her familiar self. She said it was her +"experiences." It was, indeed, familiarity with Archie and his +disgusting weakness. It was her young cousin, the stone mason, and all +that the discovery of him as a person, as well as her relationship to +him and his claim upon her property, had meant. It was, of course, the +influence of creative motherhood upon her. But it was more than all +these combined that had started the belated growth of her soul, now that +she was twenty-five, married, and had a child. It was an unknown power +within her, like this mighty passionate wind, germinating late and +unexpectedly in the thin soil of her mind, irresistibly taking +possession of her and shaping her anew. Many would call it God. Adelle +did not name the power.</p> + +<p>This becoming another person was not especially pleasurable. It was +perplexing and tragic as now. But Adelle was beginning to realize very +dimly that she was not living for her own happiness, not even for the +happiness of her child, wholly. She did not know why she was living. But +she knew that life meant much more than the happiness of any one being +or of many beings. It was like this high wind from the mountains and the +deserts, rushing over the earth with a fierce, compelling +impulse—whither? Ah, that no one could say. One must bend before the +blast, but not yield to it altogether—not be scattered fruitless by its +careless hand. Adelle thus had come a long way from that girl who had +run off with Archie to Paris: she knew it. And having come so far, who +could say where she would finally end?... She pressed her body against +the strong wind and felt it wrap her about like the firm embrace of a +living being. The tempest calmed and strengthened her.</p> + +<p>At last she went back to her room, undressed quickly, and got to bed. +The last conscious thought that came to her was a resolve to look into +her affairs herself at once and put an end to all the folly that she and +Archie had committed with her money—to guard what was left for the use +of her boy. For the rest, she should go on as she had begun, waiting +always for the convincing urge of her destiny, proving her way step by +step. She would not confide in any one what she knew about the lost +heirs of Clark's Field.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLI" id="XLI"></a>XLI</h2> + + +<p>After a time Adelle became confusedly conscious of some disturbance +around her. She thought at first that it must be Archie noisily entering +the neighboring chamber. But soon she heard loud cries and sat upright, +listening. Then she became aware of a thick, suffocating atmosphere and +the acrid taste of smoke in her mouth. The electric light would not +respond to her touch. She knew what it meant—Fire! With one bound she +leaped from her bed and ran, just as she was in nightdress, for the hall +from which the large staircase led up to the upper story—the only +approach to her child's rooms from this end of the house. The staircase +was a bank of roaring flame and the hall itself was vividly streaked +with dashes of eating flame. She rushed chokingly straight for the +blazing staircase and would have died in the fire had not one of the +servants caught her in time and dragged her back outside through the +open door. She quickly slipped through the man's grasp, and without +uttering a cry started around the house for the servants' entrance. +Archie came stumbling into the light, half dressed in his evening +clothes, struggling to put an arm into one of the sleeves of his coat. +She cried,—</p> + +<p>"The boy—the boy—save him!"</p> + +<p>One glance at Archie's nerveless, vacant face was enough. There was no +help to be had in him!</p> + +<p>"Dell—where is he?" Archie called, still fumbling for the lost sleeve. +But she had disappeared.</p> + +<p>At the servants' door some men were pounding and shouting. The door was +locked and bolted and stood fast. Adelle threw herself against it, +pounding with her fists; then, as if divining its unyielding strength, +she sped on around the corner of the house to the open terrace. There a +number of the servants and helpers on the estate were running to and fro +shouting and calling for help. Already the fire gleamed through the +house from the front and the wind lifted great plumes of flame against +the dark hillside, painting the tall eucalyptus trees fantastically. The +fire, starting evidently in the central part of the house which +contained the drawing-room, had shot first up the broad staircase and +was now eating its way through the second floor and reaching across to +the farther wing that hung directly above the cañon. More and more +persons arrived while Adelle ran up and down the terrace, like a hunted +animal, moaning—"Boy! Boy!" There was talk of ladders, which had been +left by the workmen at the garage half a mile away. Before these could +be got or the hose attached to the fireplugs, the flame had swirled out +from the lonely wing where the child and his nurse slept. Even if the +ladders came, they would be of no use over the deep pit of the cañon, +and the center of the house was now a roaring furnace. Adelle clung to +the rough rock of her great wall—the supporting wall to this part of +her house—the wall she had watched with such interest, such admiration +for its size and strength. It reached away from her slight, white figure +down into the gloom of the cañon, and upon it rested the burning house. +While she clung there dry-eyed, moaning, she was conscious of Archie's +attempt to pull her back. He was the same bewildered figure, collarless, +in evening clothes—the same feeble, useless man, failing her at this +crisis as always. She shook off his touch with repugnance and crouched +close to the wall, as near as she could get to her child.</p> + +<p>Then there passed a few of those terrible moments that are as nothing +and as a lifetime crowded with agony to the human being. The wind poured +noisily through the cañon, bending before its blast the swaying trees, +but even louder than the wind was the roar of the conquering fire that +now illuminated all the hillside like day and revealed the little +figures of impotent men and women, who ran this way and that confusedly, +helplessly, crying and shouting. The center of the great house was a +solid pillar of flame, and the fire was eating its way on either side +into the wings. The wing where the child slept rose from the cañon like +a walled castle, impregnable—Adelle might remember that "Boy" had +chosen these rooms in the remote corner of the house, fascinated by +their lofty perch over the deep cañon. And there, at the bottom of the +wall that she had built, the mother clung, helpless, beyond reach of her +child.</p> + +<p>A man ran out on the parapet of the terrace past Adelle. He stopped +where the parapet touched the sheer wall of the building, looked up at +the burning house which cast out great waves of heat, knocked off his +shoes, threw down his coat, and dove as it seemed into space. She knew +it was Clark, the stone mason. People crowded around Adelle and leaned +over the parapet to see what had become of him. They shouted—"See him! +There! There!"—pointing, as the wreaths of smoke rose and revealed the +man's dark figure clinging to the wall, creeping forward, walking, as it +were, on nothing in space. With fingers and toes he stuck himself like a +leech to the broken surfaces of the rock wall, feeling for the cracks +and crannies, the stone edgings, the little pockets in the masonry that +he himself had laid. He climbed upwards in a zigzag, slowly, steadily, +groping above his head for the next clutch, clinging, crawling like a +spider over the surface of sheer rock. As he rose foot by foot he became +clearly visible in the red light of the flames, a dark shadow stretched +against the blank surface above the gulf. The Scotch foreman said,—</p> + +<p>"He's crazy—he can't skin that wall!"</p> + +<p>Adelle knew that he was speaking of the stone mason; she knew that Clark +was daring the impossible to get at her child, to save her "Boy." She +felt in every fiber of her body the strain of that feat—the clinging, +creeping progress up the perpendicular wall over the cañon. Those around +groaned as they watched, expecting each moment to see the man's body +fall backwards sickeningly into space.</p> + +<p>But he stuck to the wall as if part of it, his arms widespread, his +fingers feeling every inch for hold, and now he was mounting faster as +if sure of himself, confident that he could cling. If he could keep hold +until his hand touched the first row of window-sills, he had a chance. A +long red arm reached up; groped painfully; the finger-tips touched the +end of a blind. There was dead silence except for the roar of the +wind-driven fire while the mason pawed along the window-sill for safe +lodgment; then—"He's caught it!"</p> + +<p>A shout went up, and while her breath seemed to choke her, Adelle saw +the man in the glare of the flame pull himself up, inch by inch, until +his head was level with the glass, butt his head against the heavy pane, +and with a final heave disappear within while a black smudge of smoke +poured from the vent he had made.</p> + +<p>A long, silent, agonizing emptiness while he was gone, and he was back +at the window, standing large and bloody in the light, his arms about +the figure of the nurse, who had evidently fainted. Adelle felt one +sharp pang of agony;—"Why had he taken her, not the child?" But her +soul rejected this selfish thought;—"He knows," she said, "he knows—he +must save her first!"</p> + +<p>Clark had tied the sheets under the woman's shoulders, and holding the +weight of the body with one hand, he crept lightly from one window ledge +to the next until he came within reach of the terrace, then swung the +woman and cast her loose. She fell in a heap beside Adelle. They said +she was living.</p> + +<p>Already the mason had groped his way back along the sills to the open +window and disappeared. When he reappeared he had the small boy in his +arms, evidently asleep or unconscious, for he lay a crumpled little +bundle against the mason's breast. This time Clark continued his course +along the sills until he reached a gutter, clinging with one hand, +holding his burden tight with the other. It was a feat almost harder +than the skinning of the naked wall. When he dropped the last ten feet +to the ground cries rose from the little group below. It was the +unconscious recognition of an achievement that not one man in ten +thousand was capable of, a combination of courage, skill, and perfect +nerve which let him walk safely above the abyss across the perpendicular +wall. It was more than human,—the projection of man's will in reckless +daring that defies the physical world.</p> + +<p>Adelle always remembered receiving the child, who was still sleeping, +she thought, from the mason's arms. Clark was breathing hard, and his +face was slit across by a splinter from the window-pane. He was a +terrible, ghastly figure. The blood ran down his bare arms and dripped +on the white bundle he gave her.... Then she remembered no more until +she was in a bare, cold room—the place that was to have been the +orangery, where they kept the garden tools. She was kneeling, still +holding in her arms her precious bundle, calling coaxingly,—"Boy, wake +up! Boy, it's mother! Boy, how can you sleep like that!" calling softly, +piteously, moaningly, until she knew that her child could never answer +her. He had been smothered by the smoke before the mason reached him. +Then Adelle knew nothing more of that night and its horrors.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLII" id="XLII"></a>XLII</h2> + + +<p>There is always the awakening, the coming back once more to +consciousness, to the world that has been, and must endure, but will +never again be as it was. Adelle woke to consciousness in the orangery, +where they had laid mattresses for her and the dead child. Through the +open door she might see the blackened walls of what had been Highcourt. +The fire had swept clear through the three parts, scorching even the +eucalyptus trees above on the hillside, and had died out at last for +lack of food. The débris was now smouldering sullenly in the cloudless, +windless day that had succeeded the storm. All the beauty of an early +spring morning in California rioted outside, insulting the bereaved +woman with its refreshment and joy. It was on mornings like this after a +storm that Adelle loved the place most. She would take "Boy" and ramble +through the fragrant paths. For then Nature, like a human being, having +thrown off its evil mood, tries by caresses and sweet smiles to win +favor again....</p> + +<p>Adelle lay there this golden morning, one arm around the little figure +of her dead child, staring at the pool outside which was dappled with +sunshine, at the ghastly wreck of her great house—not thinking, perhaps +not even feeling acutely—aware merely of living in a void, the +shattered fragments of her old being all around her. How long she might +have lain there one cannot tell: she felt that she should be like this +always, numbed in the presence of life and light. They brought her food +and clothes, and said things to her. Archie came in and sat down on one +of the upturned flower-pots. He was fully dressed now, but still looked +shaken, bewildered, a little cowed, as if he could not understand. At +sight of him Adelle remembered the night, remembered the shaking, feeble +figure of her husband, trying to get his arm into the sleeve of his +dress-coat, useless before the tragedy, useless in the face of life. +"What can I do!" he had whined then. Adelle could not then realize that +she had made him as he was and should be merciful. She was filled with a +physical loathing, a spiritual weariness of him, and turned her face to +the wall so that she might not even see him.</p> + +<p>"Adelle," he said. There was no reply. "Dell, dear," he began again, and +put his hand coaxingly upon her shoulder.</p> + +<p>She sat up, looking like a fierce animal, her hair tumbled about her +neck and breasts, her pale face drawn and haggard. "Don't touch +me—don't speak to me!" she whispered hoarsely. "Never again!"</p> + +<p>She threw into those last words an intensity, a weight of meaning that +startled even Archie, who whimpered out,—"It wasn't my fault!"</p> + +<p>Adelle neither knew nor cared then what had caused the fire. It was +stupid of Archie to understand her so badly—she was not blaming him for +the fire. She turned her face again to the wall, but suddenly, as if a +light had struck through her blurred and blunted consciousness of the +world, she called,—</p> + +<p>"I want to see him—Clark, the mason;—tell him to come here to see me!"</p> + +<p>Archie, crestfallen, sneaked out of the orangery on her errand. After a +time he returned with the young mason, who stumbled into the dark room. +Clark was washed and his cut had been bandaged, but he showed the +terrible strain of those few minutes on the wall. His face twitched and +his large hands opened and closed nervously. He looked pityingly at +Adelle and mumbled,—</p> + +<p>"Sorry I was too late!"</p> + +<p>That was all. Adelle made a gesture as if to say that it was useless to +use words over it. She did not thank him. She looked at him out of her +gray eyes, now miserable with pain. She felt a great relief at seeing +him, a curious return of her old interest in his simple, native strength +and nerve, his personality. It made her feel more like herself to have +him there and to know that he was sorry for her. After one or two +attempts to find her voice she said clearly,—</p> + +<p>"I must tell you something.... I thought of telling you about it before, +but I couldn't. I thought there were reasons not to. But now I must tell +you before you go."</p> + +<p>"Don't trouble yourself now, ma'am," the mason said gently. "I guess +it'll keep until you're feelin' stronger."</p> + +<p>"No, no, I can't wait. I must tell you now!" She raised herself with +effort and leaned her thin face upon her hands. "I want him"—she +pointed to Archie—"to hear it, too."</p> + +<p>Then she tried again to collect her mind, to phrase what she had to say +in the clearest possible way.</p> + +<p>"Half of my money belongs to you, Mr. Clark."</p> + +<p>The two men must have thought that her reason had left her after the +terrible night, but she soon made her meaning clear.</p> + +<p>"I didn't know it until a little while ago when I found out from those +letters who you were. Not even then, just afterwards. Clark's Field was +left to your grandfather and mine together, and somehow I got the whole +of it—I mean I did from my mother and uncle. The lawyers can tell you +all about it. Only it's really half yours—half of all there was!"</p> + +<p>Archie now began to comprehend that his wife referred to the old legal +difficulty over the title to Clark's Field, and interposed.</p> + +<p>"You'd better wait, dear, until you are stronger before you try to think +about business."</p> + +<p>But Adelle utterly ignored him, as she was to do henceforth, and +addressed herself singly to her cousin.</p> + +<p>"I always thought it was all mine—they said it was. And when I knew +about you, I didn't want to give it up; there isn't as much as there was +because he has lost a good deal. But that makes no difference. Half of +the whole belongs to you and your brothers and sisters. I'll see that +you get it. That's all!"</p> + +<p>She lay back exhausted.</p> + +<p>The mason remarked,—</p> + +<p>"It's rather surprising. But I guess it can wait. It's waited a good +many years."</p> + +<p>And after standing by her side and looking down on her dumb, colorless +face a while longer, he left the room.</p> + +<p>Archie, who was clearly mystified by his wife's brief statement, +concluded to regard it all as an aberration, an effort on her part to +express fantastically her sense of obligation to the stone mason who had +risked his life to save the child. He was concerned to have Adelle moved +to a more comfortable place and told her that friends were coming to +take her to their home. She made a dissenting gesture without opening +her eyes. She wished to be left alone, entirely alone, here in the +orangery whither she had taken her dead child the night before. Archie, +seeing that he could not persuade her immediately to leave the cheerless +spot, spoke of other things. He was voluble about the cause of the fire, +hinting at a dire "anarchistic" plot of some discharged workingmen. +There was much talk in their neighborhood at this time of the efforts of +"anarchists" to destroy rich people's property by incendiary fires. +Adelle, with her face turned to the wall, moaned,—</p> + +<p>"Go away!"</p> + +<p>And at last Archie went.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLIII" id="XLIII"></a>XLIII</h2> + + +<p>Archie was voluble about this non-essential in face of the personal +tragedy, anxious to state his theory of the disaster, because he had +more than an uncomfortable consciousness of what the servants and the +men on the place were saying about it. And that was that the master +himself had set the house on fire. It had started in the large, empty +drawing-room, in which the decorators had been still working with +paints, oils, and inflammable stuff. The workmen, however, had not been +in the room for hours before the fire started. The only person who had +entered it during the evening was Archie himself, for it was on his way +from his library to his suite of rooms in the other wing. He had sat up +late as usual after the guests had gone, smoking and drinking by +himself, then had stumbled drowsily through the house to his bedroom, +and on the way doubtless had dropped a match or lighted cigar in the +drawing-room, and in his fuddled condition had failed to notice what he +had done.</p> + +<p>The first person to discover the fire had happened to be Tom Clark, who +had been returning late from the village to his shack on the hill, and +had seen an unnatural glow through the long French windows of the +drawing-room. By the time he had roused the house servants in their +remote quarters and set off for the garage to summon help, the +drawing-room and the adjoining hall were a mass of flame. When he +returned with the new hose-cart and helpers the servants had already +opened the large front door, admitting the wind, which blew the fire +through the stairway like a bellows and completed the destruction of the +house. Clark knew as well as Ferguson, the superintendent, and a +half-dozen others, that when Archie emerged from his rooms on the ground +floor, he was not fully undressed: though it was past one in the +morning, he had not yet gone to bed. And although no one said anything, +habitually cautious as such people usually are when indiscretion may +involve them with their masters, they had easily made the correct +deductions about the cause of the fire....</p> + +<p>When Archie came from the orangery, he saw Clark standing on the terrace +beside the ruins, examining the scene of his already famous exploit of +the night before. He may well have been wondering how he had ever +succeeded in keeping his balance and in crawling like a fly over the +surface of the wall he had helped to put up. There were a number of +other people loitering about the ruins, some of them from neighboring +estates, who had motored over to offer help and lingered to discuss the +disaster. Archie joined a group of these, among whom was the stone +mason. He was feeling unhappy about many things, especially about his +responsibility for the fire. He began to talk out his theory, turning +first to Clark.</p> + +<p>"You didn't happen to see any of the men hanging about the place when +you came up last night?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"No," the mason replied shortly.</p> + +<p>"I thought maybe those Italians might have been sneaking about here. +They're ugly fellows," Archie remarked.</p> + +<p>"I didn't see nobody around."</p> + +<p>"Some of those fellows are regular anarchists," Archie persisted. "They +wouldn't stop at firing a house to get even with a man they're down on."</p> + +<p>The mason stared at him out of his steely blue eyes, but said nothing. +He began to understand what Archie was driving at, and a deep disgust +for the man before him, who was trying to "put over" this cheap +falsehood to "save his face," filled the mason's soul. The others had +instinctively drawn away from them, and Clark himself looked as if he +wanted to turn on his heel. But he listened.</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't be surprised if the house had been set on fire," Archie +continued confidentially. "I'm going to have detectives look into it. It +must have been either that or spontaneous combustion in the +drawing-room."</p> + +<p>The mason's lips twitched ominously.</p> + +<p>"But I think it was set on purpose!" Archie asserted.</p> + +<p>"Oh, go to hell!" the mason groaned, his emotions getting the better of +him. "Set, nothing!... Spontaneous combustion! You know how it got on +fire better than anybody."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" Archie demanded.</p> + +<p>But the mason strode away from him around the corner of the wall and +disappeared. Archie followed him with his eyes, dazed and scowling. He +had never liked the fellow, and resented the fact that he had been the +hero of the disaster, while he himself, as he was well enough aware, had +presented a sorry figure. Now this common workman had insulted him a +second time, treated him as though he were dirt, dared even to make +dastardly insinuations. Across Archie's miserable mind came Adelle's +confused words about her property belonging to the stone mason—a half +of it. He had explained this at the time as due to the shock and a +woman's sentimental feeling of gratitude, but now he began to give it +another and more sinister interpretation. What had she been doing up at +this fellow's shack that afternoon? It hardly seemed possible, but +unfortunately in Archie's set, even among the very best people socially +of Bellevue, almost anything in the way of sex aberration was possible. +He started back for the orangery, but before he got there he realized +that it would be just as well not to approach his wife at this time with +what he had in mind. Lying there with her dead child in her arms she had +the air of a wounded wild animal that might be aroused to a dangerous +fury. He had the sense to see that even if his worst suspicions were +justified, it was hardly the moment to exact his social rights.</p> + +<p>So he wandered back to the ruin of Highcourt, where he found condoling +friends, who took him off to the country club and kept him there, and it +is to be feared provided him with his usual consolation for the manifold +contrarieties of life, even for the very rich.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLIV" id="XLIV"></a>XLIV</h2> + + +<p>In due time Adelle roused herself and took direction of affairs. She +went down to the manager's cottage near the gate of Highcourt and +thither brought the body of her child. From this cottage the little boy +was buried on the next day. Adelle directed that the grave should be +prepared among the tall eucalyptus trees on the hillside behind the +ruins—there where she had often played with the little fellow. She +herself carried the body to its small grave and laid it tenderly away in +the earth, being the only one to touch it since the mason had first put +it lifeless in her arms. Then she scattered the first dirt upon the +still figure and turned away only when the flowers had been heaped high +over the little grave. Archie was there and a few of their friends from +Bellevue, as well as a group of servants, by whom Adelle had always been +liked; and among the latter was the stone mason. Adelle did not seem to +notice any one, and when all was over she walked off alone to the +manager's cottage.</p> + +<p>Observing his wife's tragic calm, her bloodless face, Archie might well +have forgotten his suspicions and refrained from attacking her, as he +had meant to. But he never had the opportunity to attack her. In some +way Adelle conveyed to him that all was at an end between them, and made +it so plain that even Archie was forced to accept it as a fact for the +time being. He never saw Adelle again after the brief service at the +hillside grave.</p> + +<p>Such a conclusion was inevitable: it came to Adelle without debate or +struggle of any sort. A tragedy such as theirs, common to man and woman, +either knits the two indissolubly together as nothing else can, or marks +the complete cessation of all relationship. In their case they had +nothing now, absolutely, to cement together. And Adelle was dimly +conscious that she had before her pressing duties to perform in which +Archie would be a mere drag.</p> + +<p>For the present Archie went to the club to live, crestfallen, but +unbelieving that his little gilded world had come to an end for good in +this summary fashion. After a few attempts to get an interview with his +wife, and learning finally that she had left the neighborhood, he +drifted up to the city, for he found Bellevue less congenial than it had +been, with all the talk about the Davises' affairs that was rife. His +true performances the night of the fire had leaked out in a somewhat +exaggerated form and even his pleasure-loving associates found him "too +yellow." Oddly enough, Adelle, who had been thought generally "cold" and +"stupid," "no addition to the colony," came in for a good deal of +belated praise for her "strong character," and there was much sympathy +expressed for her tragedy. Thus the world revises its hasty judgments +with other equally hasty ones, remaining always helplessly in error +whether it thinks well or ill of its neighbors!</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>For a number of days after the burial of her child, Adelle remained at +the manager's cottage in a state of complete passivity, scarcely making +even a physical exertion. She did not cry. She did not talk. She neither +writhed nor moaned in her pain. She was making no effort to control her +feelings: she did not play the stoic or the Christian. Actually she did +not feel: she was numb in body and soul. This hebetude of all faculty +was the merciful, protecting method that Nature took with her, dimming +the lamp of consciousness until the wounded creature could gain +sufficient resiliency to bear a full realization of life. The pain would +come, months and years hence, bitter, aching pain; but then she would be +able to bear it.</p> + +<p>Each day she went to the grave on the hillside, and carefully ordered +the planting of the place so that it should be surrounded with flowers +that she liked. Also she laid out a little shrub-bordered path to be +made from the pool beside the orangery to the hillside. In these ways +she displayed her concrete habit of thought. For the rest she sat or lay +upon her bed, seeing nothing, probably thinking very little. It was a +form of torpor, and after it had continued for a week or ten days, her +maid was for sending for a doctor. That functionary merely talked +platitudes that Adelle neither understood nor heeded. The maid would +have tried a priest, but feared to suggest it to her mistress.</p> + +<p>The truth was that Adelle was recovering very slowly from her shock. She +was only twenty-five and strong. Her body held many years of activity, +possibly other children, and her mind still awaited its full +development. How that would come was the really vital matter. The +ordinary result would be that, after the full period of lethargy and +physical and mental recuperation, Adelle should drift back into +something like the same life she had previously led. She would go abroad +and establish herself in a new environment, gradually acquiring new +associations that in time would efface the more poignant surfaces of her +tragedy at Highcourt. She would probably marry again, for she was still +a young woman and had a considerable remnant of her fortune. She might +reasonably expect more children to come to her, and thus, with certain +modifications due to her experiences with Archie, live out an average +life of ease and personal interests in the manner of that class that the +probate court and the laws of our civilization had made it possible for +her to join.</p> + +<p>But all that conventional resolution of her destiny was not to be +because of ideas already at work within her—the sole vital remains from +her previous life. Even in her dullest moments of physical and mental +hebetude she felt something pressing upon her from within for +accomplishment, like a piece of unfinished business that she must +presently rouse herself to put through. She scarcely knew what it was +until she made an effort to think it out, and for days she did not make +this effort.</p> + +<p>Gradually she focussed more concretely this unconscious weight upon her +soul. It had to do with the stone mason and his rights to his +grandfather's inheritance. She must see him before he left the country +and come to a final understanding about it all. She wanted, anyway, to +see him more than anybody else. He seemed to her in her dark hour the +healthiest and most natural person she knew—most nearly on her own +level of understanding, the one who really knew all about her and what +her boy's death meant to her. But she was still too utterly will-less to +bring about an interview between herself and her cousin either by +sending for him or going up to the shack to find him.</p> + +<p>Finally, after ten days of this semi-conscious existence, she awoke one +morning with a definite purpose stirring at the roots of her being, and +instead of returning from her child's grave as before she kept on up +over the brow of the hill to the open field. The sight of the large +sweep of earth and ocean and sky on this clear April morning was the +first sensation of returning life that came to her. She stood for some +time contemplating the scene, which glowed with that peculiar intense +light, like vivid illumination, that is characteristic of California. +The world seemed to her this morning a very big place and +lonely—largely untried, unexplored by her, for all her moving about in +it and tasting its sweets. In this mood she proceeded to the little +tar-paper shack. She feared to find it empty, to discover that the mason +had gone to the city, in which case she should have to follow him and go +to the trouble of hunting him up.</p> + +<p>But he had not yet left, although his belongings were neatly packed in +his trunk and kitty-bag. He was fussing about the stove, whistling to +himself as he prepared a bird which he had shot that morning for his +dinner. He had on his town clothes, which made him slightly unfamiliar +in appearance. She knew him in khaki and flannel shirt, with bare arms +and neck. He looked rougher in conventional dress than in his +workingman's clothes.</p> + +<p>At sight of Adelle standing in the doorway, the mason laid down his +frying-pan and stopped whistling. Without greeting he hastily took up +the only chair he had and placed it in the shade of the pepper tree in +front of the shack. Adelle sat down with a wan little smile of thanks.</p> + +<p>"I'm glad you hadn't gone," she said.</p> + +<p>"I ain't been in any particular hurry," her cousin answered. "Been +huntin' some down in the woods," he added, nodding westward. He sat on +the doorsill and picked up a twig to chew.</p> + +<p>"I've been wanting to talk to you about that matter I told you of the +morning after the fire."</p> + +<p>The mason nodded quickly.</p> + +<p>"I don't know yet what should be done about the property," she went on +directly. "I must see some lawyer, I suppose. But it's just what I told +you, I'm sure. Half of Clark's Field belonged to your grandfather and +half to mine, and I have had the whole of it because they couldn't find +your family."</p> + +<p>The mason listened gravely, his bright blue eyes unfathomable. He had +had ample time, naturally, to think over the astounding communication +Adelle had made to him, though he had come to no clear comprehension of +it. A poor man, who for years has longed with all the force of his being +for some of the privilege and freedom of wealth, could not be told that +a large fortune was rightfully his without rousing scintillating lights +in his hungry soul.</p> + +<p>"There isn't all the money there was when I got it," Adelle continued. +"We have spent a lot of money—I don't know just how much there is left. +But there must be at least a half of it—what belongs to you!"</p> + +<p>"Are you sure about this?" the mason demanded, frowning, a slight tremor +in his voice; "about its belonging to father's folks? I never heard any +one say there was money in the family."</p> + +<p>"There wasn't anything but the land—Clark's Field," Adelle explained. +"It was just a farm in grandfather's time, and nothing was done with it +for a long time. It was like that when I was a girl and living in Alton. +It's only recently it has become so valuable."</p> + +<p>"You didn't say nothin' about any property the first time we talked +about our being related," the mason observed.</p> + +<p>"I know," Adelle replied, with a sad little smile. Then she blurted out +the truth,—"I knew it—not then, but afterwards. But I didn't tell +you—I wanted to—but I meant never to tell. I meant to keep it all for +myself and for him—my boy."</p> + +<p>The mason nodded understandingly, while Adelle tried to explain her +ruthless decision.</p> + +<p>"You'd never had money and didn't know about the Field. And it seemed +wrong to take it all away from him—it wasn't his fault, and I didn't +want him to grow up poor and have to fight for a living," she explained +bravely, displaying all the petty consideration she had given to her +problem. Then she added with a sob—"Now it's all different! He was +taken away," she said slowly, using the fatalistic formula which +generations of religious superstition have engraved in human hearts. "He +will not need it!"</p> + +<p>There was silence. Then unconsciously, as if uttered by another person, +came from her the awful judgment,—"Perhaps that was why he was +taken—because I wouldn't tell about the money."</p> + +<p>"It ain't so!" the mason retorted hastily, with a healthy reaction +against this terrible creed of his ancestors. "It had nothin' to do with +your actions, with you, his being smothered in the fire—don't you go +worryin' 'bout that!"</p> + +<p>In his dislike of the doctrine and his desire to deal generously with +the woman, the mason was not wholly right, and later Adelle was to +perceive this. For if she had not been such as she was she would not +have willfully taken to herself such a disastrous person as Archie and +thus planted the seed of tragedy in her life as in her womb. If human +beings are responsible for anything in their lives, she was responsible +for Archie, which sometime she must recognize.</p> + +<p>"You don't think so?" Adelle mused, somewhat relieved. After a little +time she came safely back to sound earth as was her wont,—"Anyway, it's +all different now. I don't want to keep the money. It isn't mine—it +never was; never really belonged to me. Perhaps that was why I spent it +so badly.... I want you to have your share as soon as possible."</p> + +<p>The fire had done its work, she might have said, if not in one way, at +least in another. The result was that she no longer desired to thwart +the workings of law and justice, of right as she knew it. She wished to +divest herself as quickly as possible of that which properly belonged to +another. After all, her money had not brought her much! Why should she +cling to it?</p> + +<p>The mason was still doubtful and observed frowningly,—</p> + +<p>"It's a mighty long time since grandfather left Alton—more'n fifty +years."</p> + +<p>"Clark's Field has only been put on the market for a little over ten +years," Adelle remarked. "They couldn't do it before, as I told you."</p> + +<p>"But it's been settled now," the mason demurred. "I don't know the law, +but it must be queer if the property could hang fire all these years and +be growing richer all the time."</p> + +<p>"Alton is a big city now where the old Clark farm was," Adelle +explained.</p> + +<p>"I suppose it's growed considerable."</p> + +<p>Then both were silent. The mason's mind was turbulent with feelings and +thoughts. Across the glorious reach of land and sky before his eyes +there opened a vision of radiant palaces and possessions, all that money +could buy to appease the desires of a starved life.</p> + +<p>"My folks will be some surprised," he remarked at last, with his +ironical laugh.</p> + +<p>"I suppose so," Adelle replied seriously. "You'll have to explain it to +them. How many brothers and sisters have you?"</p> + +<p>"There are five of us left," Clark said. "I'm sorry mother has gone. She +would have liked mighty well having a bit of ready money for herself. +She never had much of a time in her life," he added, thinking of the +hard-working wife and mother who had died in poverty after struggling +against odds for fifty years. "It'll mean a good deal, too, to Will and +Stan, I guess;—they've got families, you know."</p> + +<p>Adelle listened with a curious detachment to the happiness that her +magic lamp might bestow when handed over to the other branch of the +family.</p> + +<p>"Money doesn't always mean so much," she remarked, with a deep +realization of the platitude which so many people repeat hypocritically.</p> + +<p>The mason looked at her skeptically out of his blue eyes. That was the +sort of silly pretense the rich or well-to-do often got off for the +benefit of their poorer neighbors—he read stories like that in the +newspapers and magazines. But he knew that the rich usually clung to all +their possessions, in spite of their expressed conviction, at times, of +the inadequacy of material things to provide them with happiness. He was +quite ready for his part, having experienced the other side, to run the +risks of property!</p> + +<p>"I'd like to try having all the money I want for a time!" he laughed +hardily.</p> + +<p>"I almost believe it would have been better for me if I had never heard +of Clark's Field!" Adelle exclaimed, with a bitter sense of the futility +of her own living. And then she told her cousin very briefly what had +happened to her since she first entered the probate court and had been +made a ward of the trust company.</p> + +<p>The mason listened with interest and tried to make out, as well as he +could with his meager equipment of experience in such matters and +Adelle's bare statement, what had been the trouble with her life. At the +end he stated his conclusion,—</p> + +<p>"I guess it depends on what sort of stuff you've got in you whether +money agrees with you or don't. To some folks it does seem poison, like +drink; but the trouble ain't with the money, perhaps, it's with them."</p> + +<p>"I suppose so," Adelle admitted meekly. "I had no one to show me, and, +anyway, I am not the right kind, I suppose. It takes a good deal of a +person to spend money right and get the best out of it there is."</p> + +<p>"Sure!" the mason replied freely; and added with a frank laugh,—"But we +all want our chance to try!"</p> + +<p>"What will you do with your money?" Adelle asked.</p> + +<p>The young man threw back his head and drew in a long breath as if he +were trying to focus in one desire all the aspirations of his thirsty +soul, which now he could satisfy.</p> + +<p>"I'll take a suite at the Palace and have the best booze money can buy!" +he said with a careless laugh.</p> + +<p>"No, don't do that!" Adelle protested earnestly, thinking of Archie. +"You won't get much out of your money that way."</p> + +<p>"I was joking," the young man laughed. "No, I don't mean to be any booze +fighter. There's too much else to do."</p> + +<p>He confessed to his new cousin some of the aspirations that had been +thwarted by his present condition,—all his longing for education, +experience, and, above all, the desire to be "as good as the next man, +bar none, no matter where I be," an aspiration inexplicable to Adelle, a +curiously aristocratic sensitiveness to caste distinction that might not +be expected in a healthy-minded laboring-man. It was the most American +note in his character, and like a true American he felt sure that money +would enable him to attain "equality" with the land's best.</p> + +<p>"When I see some folks swelling around in motor-cars and spending their +money in big hotels like it was dirt, and doing nothin' to earn it, and +I know those who are starving or slaving every day just to live in a +mean, dirty little way—why, it makes me hot in the collar. It makes me +'most an anarchist. The world's wrong the way things are divided up!" he +exclaimed, forgetting that he was about to take his seat with the +privileged.</p> + +<p>"Well," Adelle mused dubiously, "now you'll have a chance to do what you +want and be 'on top' as you call it."</p> + +<p>"Mos' likely then," the mason turned on himself with an ironic laugh, "I +shan't want to do one thing I think I do now!"</p> + +<p>"I hope it won't change you," Adelle remarked quite frankly.</p> + +<p>The quality that had first attracted her to the young man was his manly +independence and ability to do good, honest, powerful work. If he should +lose this vital expression of himself and his zest for action, the half +of Clark's Field would scarcely pay him for the loss.</p> + +<p>"Don't you worry about me, cousin!" he laughed back confidently. "But +here we are gassin' away as if I were already a millionaire. And most +likely it's nothin' more than a pipe-dream, all told."</p> + +<p>"No, it's true!" Adelle protested.</p> + +<p>"I'll wait to see it in the bank before I chuck my tools. I guess the +lawyers will have to talk before they upset all their fine work for me," +he suggested shrewdly.</p> + +<p>"You must go to Alton right away and see the trust company. I will meet +you there whenever you like—there's nothing to keep me here much +longer."</p> + +<p>"When you are feeling ready for the trip, let me know," the mason said +with good feeling. "Say," he added with some confusion, "you're a good +one to be sittin' there calmly talkin' to me about what I am goin' to do +with your money."</p> + +<p>"It isn't mine any longer—you must get over that idea."</p> + +<p>"What you've always considered to be yours, anyway, and that amounts to +the same thing in this world."</p> + +<p>"I like to talk about it with you," Adelle replied simply, and with +perfect sincerity, as every important statement of Adelle's was sincere. +"I want you to have the money really.... I'm glad it is you, too."</p> + +<p>"Thank you."</p> + +<p>"I'll do everything I can to make it easy for you to get it soon, and +that is why I will go to Alton."</p> + +<p>The mason rose from the doorstep and walked nervously to and fro in +front of the shack. At last he muttered,—</p> + +<p>"Guess I won't say nothin' to the folks about the money until it is all +settled—it might make 'em kind of anxious."</p> + +<p>"No, that would be better," Adelle agreed.</p> + +<p>"I'm goin' to pull out of here to-night!"</p> + +<p>He turned as he spoke and shoved one foot through the paper wall of his +home, as if he were thus symbolically shedding himself of his toilsome +past. Adelle did not like this impulsive expression, she did not know +why. She rose.</p> + +<p>"Let me know your San Francisco address," she said, "and I will write +you when to meet me in Alton."</p> + +<p>"All right!"</p> + +<p>The mason walked back with her down the hill to the grave of her little +boy. He would have turned back here, but she gently encouraged him to +come with her and stand beside the flower-laden grave. It seemed to her, +after what he had done in risking his life to rescue the child, he had +more right to be there than any one else except herself—far more than +her child's own father. They stood there silently at the foot of the +little mound for some minutes, until Adelle spoke in a perfectly natural +voice.</p> + +<p>"I'd have wanted him to do some real work, if he had grown up—I mean +like yours, and become a strong man."</p> + +<p>"He was a mighty nice little kid," the mason observed, remembering well +the child, who had often that summer played about his staging and talked +to him.</p> + +<p>Adelle explained her scheme of treatment for the grave and the grounds +about it, and they walked slowly down the path to the orangery.</p> + +<p>"Would you like me to fix it all up as you want it?" the mason asked.</p> + +<p>"Would you?"</p> + +<p>"All right—I'll start in to-day and you can watch me and see if it's +done right."</p> + +<p>"But you wanted to go up to the city," Adelle suggested.</p> + +<p>"That don't matter much—there's plenty of time," Clark replied hastily.</p> + +<p>And in a few minutes he remarked gruffly, "Say, I don't want you to +think I was goin' up to 'Frisco on a tear."</p> + +<p>"I didn't think so!"</p> + +<p>She realized then that Clark had not left the place all these ten days +since the fire.</p> + +<p>"I'm goin' to cut out the booze, now there's something else for +excitement," he added.</p> + +<p>"That's good!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLV" id="XLV"></a>XLV</h2> + + +<p>Adelle registered at the Eclair Hotel in B—— with her maid. It was the +only hotel that she knew in the city, although when she first crossed +the ornate lobby she remembered with a sick sensation that other visit +with Archie on their scandalously notorious arrival from Europe to take +possession of her fortune. However, Adelle was not one to allow +sentimental impressions to upset her, and signed the register +carefully—"Mrs. Adelle Clark and maid, Bellevue, California." She had +resolved to signify her new life by renouncing her married name here in +the country where she had begun life as Adelle Clark, although her +divorce was not yet even started.</p> + +<p>She expected her cousin Tom Clark in a few days. She had thought it best +to precede him and pave the way for him at the Washington Trust Company +by announcing her news to the officers first. A little reflection and +the memory of certain expressions from the trust officers of complacency +in their success in "quieting" the Clark title had convinced her that +this would be the wiser course to pursue. The trust company might find +some objections to undoing all the fine legal work that they had +accomplished in the settlement of the estate.</p> + +<p>Adelle was received by the new president, that same Mr. Solomon Smith +who had delivered the trust company's ultimatum to her after her +marriage. Mr. Smith, it seemed, had recently succeeded to the dignity of +President West, who had retired as chairman of the company's board, fat +with honor and profit. President Solomon Smith received Adelle with all +the consideration due to such an old and rich client, whose business +interests were still presumably considerable, although latterly she had +seen fit to remove them from the cautious guardianship of the trust +company. She was in mourning, he noticed, and looked much older and more +of a person in every way than when it had been his official duty to +deliver his solemn wigging in the Paris studio to the trust company's +erring ward. Mr. Smith probably realized with satisfaction the success +of his prophecies on the consequences of her rash act, which he had so +eloquently pointed out. Adelle made no reference, however, to her own +troubles, nor explained why she had announced herself by her maiden +name. She had come on more important business.</p> + +<p>It took her some time to make clear to the banker what the real purpose +of her visit was, and when Mr. Smith realized it he summoned to the +conference two other officers of the institution, who were better +acquainted with the detail of the Clark estate than he was. After the +thing had been put before them, the temperature in the president's +office leaped upwards with astonishing rapidity on this chilly day in +early May. Three more horrified gentlemen it would have been hard to +find in the entire city, whose citizens are easily horrified. For this +woman, whom Fate and the Washington Trust Company had endowed with a +large fortune, to try to raise the ghost of that troublesome Edward S. +Clark, whom they had been at so much pains and expense to lay, seemed +merely mad. When Adelle reiterated her conviction that she herself had +discovered at last the heirs of the lost Edward S., President Smith +demanded with some asperity whether Mrs. Davis—Mrs. Clark—understood +what this meant. Adelle replied very simply that she supposed it meant +the California Clarks getting at last their half of Clark's Field, which +certainly belonged to them more than to her.</p> + +<p>"Not at all!" all three gentlemen roared at her exasperatedly.</p> + +<p>"They'd have a hard time making good their title now!" one of them +remarked, with a cynical laugh.</p> + +<p>"It would mean a lot of expensive litigation for one thing," another +injected.</p> + +<p>"Which would fall upon you," the trust president pointed out.</p> + +<p>"But why?" Adelle asked quietly. "I shouldn't fight their claims."</p> + +<p>The three gentlemen gasped, and then let forth a flood of discordant +protest, which was summed up by the president's flat assertion,—</p> + +<p>"You'd have to!"</p> + +<p>Patiently, while his colleagues waited, he tried to make clear to Adelle +in words of two syllables that the Clark's Field Associates would be +obliged to defend the titles they had given to the land, and she as +majority partner in this lucrative enterprise would have to stand her +share of the risk and the legal expense involved. Adelle saw that the +affair was more complex than she had thought and said so, with no +indication, however, of giving up her purpose.</p> + +<p>"It is not a simple matter at all to consider the claims of these +California Clarks. The land has passed out of our—your control: it has +probably passed through several hands in many instances, each owner +pledging his faith in the validity of his title. You can see that any +action taken now by these heirs of Edward S. Clark against the present +owners of Clark's Field would injure numberless innocent people. It is +not to be thought of for one moment!" Having reached a moral ground for +not upsetting things as they were, the president of the trust company +felt more at ease and expatiated at length on "the good faith of the +Washington Trust Company and all others" who had been parties to the +transaction. Adelle sighed as she listened to the torrent of eloquence +and realized what an upheaval her simple act of restitution would cause. +It seemed to her that the law was a very peculiar institution, indeed, +which prevented people from using their property for many years in order +not to injure some possible heirs, and then just as stoutly prevented +those heirs when they had been discovered from getting their own!</p> + +<p>"It is simply preposterous, the whole thing," one of the younger +officers observed, rising to go about more important business.</p> + +<p>"It's not likely to come to anything—they are poor people, these other +Clarks, you said?" inquired Mr. Smith.</p> + +<p>"I know only one of them," Adelle replied. "He was a stone mason working +on my place in California. It was by accident that I learned of his +relationship to me. He has some brothers and sisters living, four of +them I think he said. They are all poor people. I don't know whether he +has any cousins. I didn't ask him. But I think he said something once +about an uncle or aunt, so it's likely there are other heirs, too."</p> + +<p>The trust president asked testily,—</p> + +<p>"You didn't by any chance mention to this stone mason your belief that +he was entitled to a share in his grandfather's property?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I did!" Adelle promptly replied. "We talked it over several +times."</p> + +<p>The three gentlemen murmured something.</p> + +<p>"And he is coming on to see about it. I arranged to meet him here on the +sixteenth, day after to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"Here!"</p> + +<p>Adelle nodded.</p> + +<p>"We thought that would be the quickest way to settle it, as you know all +about the property."</p> + +<p>"The young man will have his journey for nothing," the president said +grimly.</p> + +<p>Then he took Adelle to task in the same patronizing, moral tone he had +used to her on the occasion of her marriage.</p> + +<p>"My dear young woman, you have acted in this matter very inadvisedly, +very rashly!"</p> + +<p>That was her unfortunate habit, he seemed to say, to act rashly. The +irony of it all was that Adelle, who acted so rarely of her own +initiative, should be exposed to this charge in the two most important +instances when she had acted of her own volition and acted promptly!</p> + +<p>"You see now how disastrous any such course as you proposed would be for +you and for many others." (He was thinking chiefly of his board of +directors and the gentlemen who had profited through the Clark's Field +Associates, but he put it in the altruistic way.) "Fortunately, you can +do no great harm to these innocent persons. The titles to Clark's Field +we firmly believe are unassailable, impregnable. No court in this State +would void those titles after they have once been quieted. You have +merely aroused false hopes, I am afraid, and the spirit of greed in a +lot of ignorant poor people,—who unless they are well advised will +waste their savings in a vain attempt to get property that doesn't +belong to them."</p> + +<p>His tone was both moral and reproving. He wanted her to feel that, +whereas she had thought she was doing a generous and high-minded thing +by communicating to this lost tribe of Clarks her knowledge of their +outlawed opportunity for riches, she had in reality merely made trouble +for every one including herself.</p> + +<p>"You are a woman," Mr. Solomon Smith continued severely, "and naturally +ignorant of business and law. It is a pity that you did not consult some +one, some strong, sensible person whose judgment you could rely on, and +not fly off at a tangent on a foolish ideal!... By the way, where is +your husband?"</p> + +<p>"In California," Adelle replied sulkily.</p> + +<p>She did not like Mr. Smith's tone. He knew very well that Archie was not +the strong, sensible person upon whose judgment she might rely.</p> + +<p>"Are you divorced?" the president asked, remembering that she had +announced herself by her maiden name.</p> + +<p>"No," Adelle admitted, wondering what this had to do with the business.</p> + +<p>"Well, your husband is concerned—what does he think of it?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. It makes no difference what he thinks of it," Adelle +replied.</p> + +<p>"You will find that it does make a great difference," the trust officer +quickly rejoined, seizing upon Archie as a convenient weapon. He +thereupon discoursed upon the legal and moral rights of a husband in his +wife's property and warned Adelle solemnly that she was taking a +dangerous course in acting without Archie's consent. Archie doubtless +would have been much pleased. It seemed trying to Adelle, who had not +the least idea of ever again waiting upon Archie's consent about +anything, to have her marriage used against her in this fashion by the +trust company. They had done everything they could to keep Archie's +hands off the property, and now they gravely told her that it belonged +to Archie as well as to herself!</p> + +<p>Mr. Smith continued to talk for some time longer, but Adelle was calmly +oblivious to what he was saying. She was thinking. It was clear to her +that there were objections to the simple method by which she had +expected to transfer a part of Clark's Field to its rightful owners, but +she had by no means abandoned her purpose, as the trust company +president thought. Like many forceful men whom President Smith very much +admired, she was no great respecter of law as such. What couldn't be +done in one way might in another, and she must now find out that other +way, which obviously she would not discover from the officers of the +Washington Trust Company. So she rose and pulled on her long gloves.</p> + +<p>"I must think it over," she remarked thoughtfully, "and see what my +cousin, Mr. Clark, thinks about it. I will come in again in a few days." +And with a slight nod to the assembled gentlemen she passed out of the +president's private office.</p> + +<p>Three disgusted gentlemen looked at each other after her departure. One +of them said the trite and stupid and untrue thing,—"Just like a +woman!"</p> + +<p>Another reacted equally conventionally,—"She must be a little queer."</p> + +<p>And the third—the president—vouchsafed,—"What she needs is a strong +hand to keep her straight."</p> + +<p>All of which Adelle, like any self-respecting woman, might have +resented.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLVI" id="XLVI"></a>XLVI</h2> + + +<p>Adelle passed through the marble banking-room of the trust company, +which once had been for her the acme of splendor, out upon the narrow +city street in considerable puzzlement. She did not know which way to +turn next, literally. She might consult some lawyer; that in fact was +what the trust people had advised—that she should see their lawyers. +But Adelle shrewdly concluded that it would be useless to see the +Washington Trust Company's lawyers, who would doubtless tell her again +in less intelligible language precisely what the trust officers had +said. And she knew of no other lawyers in the city whom she might +consult independently. Besides, she thought it better to see her cousin +before going to the lawyers, feeling that this self-reliant, if socially +inexperienced, young workman might have pertinent suggestions to offer. +In the mean time, not having anything else to do immediately, she turned +in the direction of her hotel.</p> + +<p>Any of the preoccupied citizens of B—— who might have encountered this +black-dressed, pale young woman sauntering up their crowded street this +morning, could scarcely have divined what was going on behind those +still, gray eyes. She was not thinking of the goods displayed in the +shop windows, though her eyes mechanically flitted over them, nor was +she musing upon a lover, though Tom Clark often crossed her mind, nor +was she considering the weather, which was puritanically raw and +ruffling, nor of any other thing than how she might divest herself of a +large part of that fortune which the Washington Trust Company had so +meritoriously preserved for her! There was a very simple way out of her +dilemma, of course, but it had never occurred to her; and if it had +occurred to the trust officers, they had thought best not to suggest it +to their scatter-brained client. So she knitted her brows and thought, +without heeding where she was.</p> + +<p>When she came to a certain small square, she turned off the main street +unconsciously and walked up a quiet block towards the court-house. It +was the path she had trod eleven years before, only in the reverse +direction when she had led her aunt from Judge Orcutt's courtroom to the +home of the Washington Trust Company. Her mind took charge of her +without calling upon her will, as it did so often, and presently she +entered the great granite court-house with no clear purpose in her mind, +other than a hidden desire, perhaps, to see the probate judge once more. +Judge Orcutt was not in the room on the second floor which she +remembered. Instead, there was a stranger holding court there, a +dull-eyed, fat gentleman with drooping black mustache and a snappy +voice, who did not attract Adelle. She thought she had made a mistake in +the room and looked up and down the corridor for a room labeled with +Judge Orcutt's name, but found none. Then she asked a court attendant, +who told her that the judge had been retired for the last two years! +Adelle was turning away, with a sense of disappointment, when it came +into her mind like an inspiration—"He might still be living in the +city!" She inquired, and the court attendant, who did not know, was +polite enough to consult a directory and found that sure enough Judge +Orcutt was living on Mountcourt Street, which happened to be not far +away—in fact just over the hill from the court-house.</p> + +<p>Thereupon, Adelle went on her way more swiftly, with a conscious purpose +guiding her feet, and found Mountcourt Street—a little, quiet, by-path +of a street such as exists in no other city of our famous land. It was +not a rifle-shot from the court-house and the busiest centers of the +city, yet it was as retired and as reposeful as if it had been forgotten +ever since the previous century, when its houses were built. And in the +middle of the first block, a sober, little brick house with an old white +painted door and window lights, was Judge Orcutt's number. Adelle was +shown to a small room in the front of the house and sat down, her heart +strangely beating as if she were waiting an appointment with a lover. +The house was so still! An old French clock ticked silently on the +mantelpiece beneath a glass case. All the chairs and tables, even the +rug, in the small room seemed like the house and the street, relics of +an orderly, peaceful past. Adelle knew something about furniture and +house decoration: it was one of the minor arts patronized by her class, +and she had learned enough to talk knowingly about "periods" and +"styles." Judge Orcutt's house was of no particular "period" or "style," +but it was remarkably harmonious—the garment carefully chosen by a +person with traditions.... Presently the servant came back and invited +Adelle to go upstairs to the judge's library, as Judge Orcutt was not +feeling well to-day, she explained.</p> + +<p>The study was like the room below, only larger, lighter, and well filled +with books. The judge was sitting near the grate, in which was burning a +soft-coal fire. He smiled on Adelle's entrance and apologized for not +rising.</p> + +<p>"It's the east wind," he explained. "I've known it all my life, but it +gets us old fellows, you know, on days like these!"</p> + +<p>Adelle took his thin hand and sat down in the seat he pointed out near +the fire. The judge appeared to her to be no older than he had the first +time she had seen him when she went to the probate court with her aunt. +Then he had seemed to her child's eyes an old man, and now he was +indubitably old and rather frail, with a clean-shaven, delicately +moulded chin beneath his white mustache. Adelle was in no hurry to begin +on her errand. She glanced about at the cheerful room with its rows of +old books, presumably the works of those poet friends to whom the judge +could now devote an uninterrupted leisure in communion. She looked at +the old chairs and lounge and mahogany secretary, handed down, no doubt, +from the judge's ancestors, for they antedated even the old judge. And +then, through the little square panes in the windows, out to the +chimney-pots on the slope of the hill, and across the harbor, with its +tangle of wharves and masts, to the bay, through which the ships passed +on into the ocean. She felt that it was exactly the right location for +an old gentleman, who was done with the battles of life and yet wanted +to remain within sight and sound of the battle-field.</p> + +<p>The judge, noticing her roving eyes, remarked genially,—"I like to look +out over the place where I have been working so many years!"</p> + +<p>"It's nice here," Adelle replied.</p> + +<p>There was much more in the room and the house that Adelle vaguely +felt—an air of peace, of gentle and serene contemplation, that came +from the man himself, who had taken what life had offered him and turned +it to good in the alembic of his peculiar nature. It had been a sound +and sweet life, on the whole, and this was a sweet retreat, smelling of +old books and old meetings, fragrant with memories of another world, +another people! This fruit of the spirit, which is all that is left from +living, Adelle could now feel acutely, if she could not express it fitly +in words. And she was grateful for it. She knew that at last she had +come to the right place for the solution of her problem, and she did not +hasten. Neither did the judge hurry her to her errand. Evidently he +recalled who she was, and his keen eyes probably read more of the +secrets of those years since her last appearance in his +court—extravagantly dressed, almost insolent, to listen indifferently +to his severe homily upon Clark's Field—than she suspected. So they +chatted for a few minutes about the view, the city, the old house, and +then, as Adele still seemed tongue-tied, the judge remarked,—</p> + +<p>"My servant gave your name as Mrs. Clark—did she not make a mistake?"</p> + +<p>"No," Adelle said, "That is what I shall call myself now—Mrs. Adelle +Clark."</p> + +<p>The judge murmured something behind his hand. Hers was another of these +modern mishaps, it seemed, falsely called marriages. Each case of +divorce gave his old heart a little stab, wounding a loyalty to a +beautiful ideal that he had kept intact. But he was old enough and wise +enough, having judged men and women all his life, not to pronounce +judgment on the most intimate and secret of all human affairs. He waited +for Adelle to tell her story, and presently she began.</p> + +<p>"Judge Orcutt," she said, "I want to tell you something and ask your +advice because I feel that you will know what to do."</p> + +<p>With this introduction she proceeded to retell her story, the one she +had told that morning to the officers of the trust company. But having +been over it once she told it much better to the judge, more coherently, +more fully, with many small, intimate, revealing touches that she had +omitted before. It was easier for her to talk to the old man, who +listened with warm, understanding eyes, and nodded his white head when +she cut to the quick of things as if he understood why without being +told everything precisely. She felt that she could tell him everything, +all her own life, all that she was but now beginning to comprehend and +see as a whole. He had for her the lure of the confessor, and Adelle +needed a confessor.</p> + +<p>So she described to him briefly the course of her married life up to the +time when she first began to notice the mason at work upon the terrace +wall. Without accusing Archie, she made the judge nevertheless +comprehend why she no longer could bear his name. From her first meeting +with her cousin she was much more detailed in her story, giving +everything chronologically, anxious to omit nothing which might be of +importance. She told all the circumstances of her slow comprehension of +the truth, that this stone mason was her second cousin and should have +inherited equally with herself the riches of Clark's Field. She told +squarely of her weeks of hesitation and final decision not to reveal to +the mason or to any one her knowledge of the truth. Then came the night +of the fire and her personal tragedy in the ruin of Highcourt. And all +this she told, dry-eyed, without passion, quite baldly, as if that was +the only way in which she could face it. Lastly she told of sending for +the mason the next morning and before her husband confessing her useless +secret, and then briefly she spoke of the subsequent steps that had +brought her to the city to see the Washington Trust Company.</p> + +<p>"And they told you?" queried the judge, leaning forward to poke the coal +fire into flame.</p> + +<p>"They said that nothing could be done now for these California Clarks, +because it would make a lot of trouble and harm innocent people to go +back of the new titles to the property," Adelle replied.</p> + +<p>"And they were perfectly right," Judge Orcutt said, with a long sigh, +after a moment of consideration. "It was the only thing they could say +to you!"</p> + +<p>He went into the law of it and explained to Adelle, more clearly than it +had ever been done, just how the uncertain title had finally been +"quieted," all the legal steps which had been duly taken to notify the +unknown heirs, and the judicial sale ordered by the court, with the +meaning of the process.</p> + +<p>"So you can see that the law took great pains to find these people, and +make sure that no wrong should be done to any rightful claimants, and +because it failed to find the lost heirs there is no reason why people +who bought the land in good faith should be made to suffer. You see?"</p> + +<p>Adelle saw, but she was disappointed. It was the same thing the trust +company had said to her, only now she felt sure of it. What could she +say to her young cousin? That troubled her a great deal. She hated to +disappoint his expectations, which she had ignorantly aroused.</p> + +<p>"And the law is right," the old judge mused aloud, "whatever hardship it +may seem to work to these unknown heirs like your California cousins. +For you must see that human life could not go on unless we cleaned the +slate sometimes arbitrarily, and began all over. It is better for +everybody to accept certain inexact or unjust conditions rather than to +disturb the whole fabric of human society by attempting to do exact +justice, which, after all, is in itself a human impossibility. That is +what our good people, reformers and anarchists alike, often fail to +understand!... So these Clarks, I am afraid, will have to suffer for the +carelessness of their ancestor in not leaving his address behind him +when he left for the West. No court would open up the old tangle about +Clark's Field now that it has been finally adjudicated according to due +process of law. No court would order the case reopened—it is <i>res +judicata</i>, fixed unalterably!"</p> + +<p>He smiled indulgently upon Adelle with his little tag of legal Latin. He +might be a poet, but he knew the laws of inheritance, and moreover, now +in his old age, he had come out from his valleys of indecision and knew +that there must be many wrongs both legal and extra-legal in our human +system, and that it was not always accomplishing the most good to try to +do exact justice. As he had said to Adelle, ours is a world of chance +and mistake, and the most wholesome thing for every generation is to +wipe the slate clean as far as possible and go ahead hopefully, +courageously to create a new and sounder life upon a substructure +possibly of fraud and injustice and cruelty. Thus man climbed always +upwards. To rend and tear and fight, to try to eradicate every wrong was +also human, but it was largely futile.</p> + +<p>So when Adelle ventured to say,—</p> + +<p>"But people often do try to upset titles, don't they? I have seen +stories in the newspapers about heirs getting together to recover +possession of valuable lands that have been out of the family longer +than Clark's Field."</p> + +<p>The judge nodded, and added,—</p> + +<p>"Too true! But do you know how few of these attempts ever succeed—even +get to a trial of the case? Almost none. Usually they are fraudulent +schemes of rascals who collect money from gullible persons and then put +the money into their own pockets and nothing whatever is done. It would +be very foolish of these cousins of yours to try anything of the sort. +It would make them miserable for years and eat up what little money they +have. You must make this all clear to the young man who is to meet you +here. Send him to me if he has any doubts!"</p> + +<p>"What can I do about it, then?" Adelle demanded. "It belongs to them, +and I want them to have it. There must be some way!"</p> + +<p>The judge looked at the young woman with a curious, indulgent smile. He +had gathered from her story that her own experience with Clark's Field +had not been a successful one by any means. Was that why she was so +anxious to shoulder off upon these unknown members of her family the +burden of riches which had proved too much for her? Just what was her +motive? A conscience newly aroused by her terrible tragedy and +hypersensitive? An interest womanwise in this young stone mason, who was +the only one of the California Clarks she had yet seen?... The judge +leaned forward and took Adelle's hand.</p> + +<p>"Tell me, my dear," he said, "just why you want them to have your money. +For of course it would be <i>your</i> money that they would get in the end, +if by any possibility they could win their case."</p> + +<p>Adelle looked into the old man's kind eyes, but did not reply. It was +not easy for her to explain the persistent purpose that moved her.</p> + +<p>"Has wealth meant so much to you? or so little?" the judge asked, +thinking of his own part in providing Adelle's fortune for her.</p> + +<p>Adelle slowly shook her head.</p> + +<p>"Do you think that these other Clarks would use it more wisely?" And as +Adelle did not reply at once he repeated,—"Have you any reason to +believe that they would be happier than you have been or better?"</p> + +<p>"Money doesn't make happiness," Adelle said with a pathetic conviction +of the truth of the truism. The energy of her life, it seemed, as in the +case of so many others, had been given to proving the truth of axioms +one after another!</p> + +<p>The judge smiled and released her hand. He sat back in his deep chair +watching Adelle with kindly eyes. He seemed to see the woman's awakening +mind slowly at work before him, struggling patiently to grasp what was +still just beyond her comprehension.</p> + +<p>"What shall I do?" she appealed finally. "Tell me!"</p> + +<p>"There is something you can do—a very simple thing! I wonder it has not +occurred to you before."</p> + +<p>"What is it?" Adelle asked eagerly.</p> + +<p>"You can give part of your own fortune—an exact half of it if you +like—to these new cousins of yours, and so accomplish what you want +without hurting any one but yourself."</p> + +<p>"I don't think they would take the money that way—I don't believe <i>he</i> +would!" Adelle said doubtfully.</p> + +<p>"There are few persons," the judge observed indulgently, "who cannot be +induced to take money in one way or another!"</p> + +<p>"It isn't quite the same thing," Adelle said, in a disappointed tone. "I +don't think he would like it that way."</p> + +<p>"It amounts to the same thing in the end, doesn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps."</p> + +<p>She did not tell the judge that if she should give these California +Clarks one half of the fortune she had received from Clark's Field, she +should be poor, perhaps destitute.</p> + +<p>"But before you decide to do anything, you must make up your mind very +carefully, for it cannot be undone. Are you quite sure that you are +doing the wisest thing in turning over such a large fortune to persons +you know almost nothing about?"</p> + +<p>"I know <i>him</i>—the mason, and I think it would be safer with him than +with me."</p> + +<p>The judge smiled enigmatically.</p> + +<p>"If he would take it from me like that—perhaps he need not know?" she +asked.</p> + +<p>"I think that he had better know!... Bring him to see me when he comes +and we can talk it over together, all three of us," the judge suggested.</p> + +<p>"I will do that!"</p> + +<p>"And now I want you to give me the pleasure of lunching with me, a very +simple old man's lunch, when we can talk about other things than money!" +And with another gentle smile the judge took Adelle's arm and hobbled +out to the next room.</p> + +<p>A cheerful bar of sunlight fell across the small table between the two +napkins and made the old silver gleam. Adelle felt more at peace, more +calmly content with life, than she had since the death of her child. She +was sure that somehow it was all coming out right, not only the money +from Clark's Field, but also her own troubled life, although she could +not see the precise steps to be taken. As usual her destiny, after +leading her by many devious routes, brought her to the one door where +she might obtain light....</p> + +<p>"Tell me," said her host in his courteous tones, "about your +California—I have always wanted to go there some day."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLVII" id="XLVII"></a>XLVII</h2> + + +<p>When Adelle descended from her room to the hotel parlor to meet her +cousin on his arrival, she was conscious of trepidation. However the +matter might turn out in the end, she must now give the young mason a +first disappointment, and she was keenly aware of what that might be to +him after dreaming his dream all these weeks of freedom and power that +was unexpectedly to be his. She did not like to disappoint him, even +temporarily, and she also felt somewhat foolish because she had so +confidently assumed that it would be a simple matter to set the Clark +inheritance right.</p> + +<p>The stone mason was sitting cornerwise on his chair in the hotel room, +twirling on his thumb a new "Stetson" hat that he had purchased as part +of his holiday equipment. There was nothing especially bizarre in the +costume that Tom Clark had chosen. Democracy has eradicated almost +everything individual or picturesque in man's attire. The standard +equipment may be had in every town in the land. There remains merely the +fine distinction of being well dressed against being badly dressed, and +Clark was badly dressed, as any experienced eye such as Adelle's could +see at a glance. Nothing he had on fitted him or became him. A very red +neck and face emerged from a high white collar, and those muscular arms +that Adelle had always admired for their color of copper bronze and +their free, graceful action, now merely prodded out the stiff folds of +his readymade suit. His muscles seemed to resent their confinement in +good clothes and played tricks like a naughty boy.</p> + +<p>Adelle, perceiving him in his corner as soon as she entered the room, +realized at once that he was out of place. It seemed that there were +people, men as well as women, who were born to wear fine clothes and to +acquire all the habits that went with them. For the past ten years these +were the people she had associated with almost exclusively, people who +could be known by their clothes. The stone mason belonged to that large +fringe of the social world who must be known by something else. Adelle +had recently perceived that there was another, small class of people +like Judge Orcutt who could be known both by their clothes and by +something finer than the clothes which they wore. Tom Clark could never +become one of these.</p> + +<p>But as soon as Adelle was seated near her cousin and talking to him, she +forgot his defects of appearance—his red neck and great paws and clumsy +posture. She felt once more the man—the man she had come to respect and +like, who had an individuality quite independent of clothes and culture. +After the first greetings Adelle was silent, and it was the mason +himself who asked her bluntly,—</p> + +<p>"Well, what did the bank say? I guess it surprised 'em some, didn't it?"</p> + +<p>Then Adelle was obliged to tell him of her fruitless expedition to the +Washington Trust Company.</p> + +<p>"So they turned us down hard!" Clark commented, with a slight +contraction of his eyebrows. "The stiffs!"</p> + +<p>Already a sardonic grin was loosening the corners of his compressed +lips. Life had in fact jested with him too often and too bitterly for +him to trust its promises completely. He had no real confidence in +Fortune's smiles.</p> + +<p>"It doesn't seem right," Adelle hastened to say. "But I am afraid what +they said must be so, for Judge Orcutt told me it was the law."</p> + +<p>"And who is your Judge Orcutt?" the mason demanded suspiciously.</p> + +<p>For an instant he seemed to doubt Adelle's good faith, believed that she +was trying to "double-cross" him as he would express it, having had time +since they parted to realize that it was not for her own interest to +admit the claims of the senior branch of the Clarks. But he could not +have kept his suspicion long, for Adelle's honest, troubled eyes were +plain proof of her concern for him.</p> + +<p>"Judge Orcutt," she explained, "was the probate judge who had charge of +the estate when my uncle died. He made the trust company my guardian +then. I went to see him yesterday, and had a long talk with him about it +all. I want you to see him, too;—can't you go to his house with me this +morning?"</p> + +<p>"Why should I see the judge?" the mason demanded.</p> + +<p>"He can make you understand better than I can the reasons why all the +titles can't be disturbed. And there may be a way, another way of doing +what we want," Adelle added hesitantly, with some confusion.</p> + +<p>The mason looked at her closely, but he seemed to have no more suspicion +than Adelle herself had had at first of what this way was. He said,—</p> + +<p>"Well, I've got no particular objection to seeing the judge. There's +plenty of time—ain't much else for me to do in these parts, now I'm +here."</p> + +<p>With another sardonic laugh for his dashed hopes, he rose jerkily, as if +he was ready to go anywhere at once.</p> + +<p>"It's rather early yet," Adelle remarked, consulting her watch. "We had +better wait a little while before going to the judge."</p> + +<p>The young man reseated himself and looked about idly at the rich +ornamentation of the hotel room.</p> + +<p>"Some class this," he observed, concerning the Eclair Hotel, which was +precisely what the hotel management wanted its patrons to feel.</p> + +<p>"Did you see your sister in Philadelphia?" Adelle asked.</p> + +<p>"Yep," he replied non-committally. Evidently his tour of the family had +not begun favorably, and Adelle refrained from pressing the questions +she had in mind.</p> + +<p>"You have some first cousins, too, haven't you?" Adelle asked, +remembering the judge's inquiry.</p> + +<p>"A whole bunch of 'em!" the mason laughed. "Father had two brothers and +one sister, and all of 'em had big families, and my mother had a lot of +nephews and nieces, but they don't count for the inheritance."</p> + +<p>In contrast with the Alton Clarks, of whom Adelle was the sole survivor, +the California branch of the family had been prolific. Adelle realized +that as the judge had pointed out to her, it was not simply a question +of endowing one intelligent, interesting young man with a half of +Clark's Field, but of parceling it out in small lots to a numerous +family connection—a much less pleasant deed.</p> + +<p>"Do you know these Clark cousins?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Some of 'em," the mason said. "They don't amount to much, the lot of +'em. There's only one made any stir in the world, that's Stan Clark, my +uncle Samuel's son. He's in the California Legislature," he said with a +certain pride. "And they tell me he's as much of a crook as they make +'em! Then there's a brother of Stan—Sol Clark. He runs a newspaper up +in Fresno County, and I guess he's another little crook. There's a bunch +of Clarks down in Los Angeles, in the fruit commission business—I don't +know nothing about them. Oh, there's Clarks enough of our sort!" he +concluded grimly.</p> + +<p>Adelle could see that the stone mason had very slight intercourse with +any of his cousins. Like most working-people he was necessarily limited +in his social relations to his immediate neighbors, the relatives he +could get at easily in his free hours—holidays and Sundays and after +his eight hours of work was done. The mason's hands were not formed for +much penmanship! Adelle also realized that the stone mason, like more +prosperous people, did not love the members of his family just because +they were Clarks. There was no close family bond of any sort. The mason +knew less about his immediate relatives than he did about many other +people in the world, and felt less close to them; and of course she knew +them not even by name. She felt no great incentive to bequeath small +portions of Clark's Field to these unknown little people who happened to +bear the name of Clark—now that the law no longer demanded a +distribution of the estate, in fact prohibited it!</p> + +<p>Thus Adelle realized the absurdity of the family inheritance scheme by +which property is preserved for the use of blood descendants of its +owner, irrespective of their fitness to use it. She saw that inheritance +was a mere survival of an archaic system of tribal bond, which society, +through its customary inertia and timidity and general dislike for +change, had preserved,—indeed, had made infinitely complex and precise +by a code of property laws. She sat back in her chair, silent, puzzled +and baffled by the situation. The only way, it seemed, in which she +could give the stone mason his share of his grandfather's property was +by stripping herself of all her possessions for the tribe of California +Clarks, which she felt no inclination to do.</p> + +<p>Her cousin, apparently, had been following the same course of reflection +in part. He observed dispassionately,—</p> + +<p>"I don't know much about 'em, and you don't know anything at all, of +course. Mos' likely they 're no better and no worse than any average +bunch of human beings. It's curious to think that if grandfather had +kept his folks back East informed of his post-office address, all these +Clarks big and little would have come in for a slice of the pie!"</p> + +<p>"It might not have been such a big pie, then," Adelle remarked.</p> + +<p>She remembered quite well what the judge had said about the accumulation +of her fortune. It was just because these California Clarks had been +lost to sight that there was any "pie" at all. If Edward S. had left his +post-office address, there was no doubt that long before this Clark's +Field would have been eaten up: there would have been no Adelle +Clark—and no book about her and Clark's Field!</p> + +<p>The mason tossed his hat in the air and caught it dexterously on the +point of his thumb. He mused,—</p> + +<p>"All the same they'd open their eyes some, I guess, if they knew what we +know. My, wouldn't it make 'em mad to think how near they'd come to some +easy money!"</p> + +<p>He laughed with relish at the ironical humor of the situation—the +picture of the California Clarks running hungrily with outstretched +hands to grab their piece of Clark's Field. And he laughed with a bitter +perception of the underlying farce of human society. It was his ironic +sense of the accidental element in life, especially in relation to +property ownership and class distinctions, based on property possession, +that made him an incipient anarchist, such as he had described himself +to Adelle. He was far too intelligent to believe what the Sunday School +taught, and the average American thinks he believes, that property and +position in this world are apportioned by desert of one sort or another. +He knew in the radius of his own circumscribed life too many instances +where privilege was based on nothing more real than Adelle's claim to +Clark's Field. In the hasty fashion of his nature he concluded +intolerantly that all personal privilege was rotten, and hated—or +thought he did—all those "grafters" who enjoyed what Fate had not been +kind enough to give him. Adelle disliked his ironical laughter, for +without knowing it she was groping towards a sounder belief about life +than the anarchist's, and she felt sorry for her mistake in arousing +false expectations in her cousin, because in the end it might make him +all the harder, confirm him in his revolt against life. No, she must +find some way out, so that a part of her unearned fortune could be of +real benefit to him.</p> + +<p>"Tell me again," Clark demanded moodily, "just what those banker stiffs +said about the title? When was it finally fixed up so as to shut us +out?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know just when, but I suppose some time before I came of age. +It must have been between the time my aunt and I first went to see them +and my twenty-first birthday."</p> + +<p>Clark made a rapid calculation.</p> + +<p>"That was about the time father died and mother and we kids were tryin' +to live on nothin'. The money would have come in mighty handy then, let +me tell you!... Well, I suppose the lawyers know what they're about."</p> + +<p>"I suppose they do," Adelle admitted reluctantly.</p> + +<p>"I guess they don't want no more fuss with Clark's Field—after they've +got the thing all troweled out fine and smooth."</p> + +<p>Adelle felt the cynicism in his voice, and keenly realized that it was +for her benefit that the "troweling" had been skillfully performed.</p> + +<p>"That's gone into the discard!" the mason exclaimed finally, jumping up +and whistling softly.</p> + +<p>He had that look in his blue eyes that Adelle recognized—the dangerous +glint. If she were not there or if she had been a man, he would have +found the shortest path to a drink, then taken another, and probably +many others. Very likely that was what he meant to do to-night, but at +least she would keep him for dinner and make him take her to the theater +for which she had already procured seats. Adelle did not censure him for +drinking, not as she had censured Archie, because she felt that he drank +in a different spirit, as an outlet for his realization of the sardonic +inadequacy of life, not as a mere sensual indulgence. If the keen spirit +of the man were satisfied with work, he would never drink at all, she +was sure.</p> + +<p>"I think we can go over to the judge's now," she said, observing his +restlessness.</p> + +<p>The two crossed the few blocks of city streets to the quiet corner on +the hill behind the court-house where Judge Orcutt lived. The east wind +had blown itself out the night before, and a beautiful May morning +filled even the city with the spirit of spring.</p> + +<p>They found the old judge up and about his study, quite lively and full +of cordial welcome. He glanced keenly at the young mason, who lingered +awkwardly, scowling, beside the door.</p> + +<p>"Come in, do!... It's too fine a day for indoors, isn't it? I've ordered +a carriage," he said almost at once, "and I want you both to take a +drive with me."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLVIII" id="XLVIII"></a>XLVIII</h2> + + +<p>Since Adelle's visit Judge Orcutt had given some hours of profound +reflection to Clark's Field, for the second time in his life. Not to the +legal problem suggested by the young woman's desire to upset the +disposition of her property. That he had answered in the only way he +could, firmly and decisively. Unscrupulous lawyers might hold out +delusive hopes to these newly found heirs if they should fall into their +clutches; but the probate judge knew the law of the land and the temper +of the courts on this familiar topic. No, his attention had been given +to Adelle herself and to her request for his advice upon what she should +do with the property that had been given her in the due process of the +law. He realized that he was called upon to advise again crucially in +regard to Clark's Field. For he recognized Adelle's earnestness of +purpose and her pathetically groping desire for light upon life.</p> + +<p>He had already reversed that decision about her, given when Adelle upon +her majority appeared in his court and he had had occasion to lecture +her about the nature of the fortune he was handing over to her. Then his +harsh tone had been due to a sense of futility in having been at great +pains to preserve for this foolishly dressed and apparently empty-headed +young woman a very great property. To him had come then acutely the +disheartening realization of the underlying irony of life, when such +power and privilege could be put into such futile hands. And he—the +conscientious judge—had been the instrument of the law in perpetrating +this bitter jest upon justice. But now he felt that Adelle might justify +her good fortune. For it seemed that her riches after poisoning her had +already begun to work their own cure. She wanted to rid herself of them. +That was a good sign.</p> + +<p>Not that he sympathized in her crude plan of endowing these unknown +Clark cousins with a lot of her money. He was glad that, at any rate, +the law put a stop to further litigation over Clark's Field. If she +wanted to distribute her estate to them she could, of course. But in all +probability it would do them little good; and it might do a great deal +of harm. He was interested in Adelle, in her development and her being, +much more than in the Clark money. What would be best for her +ultimately? If he had been a conventionally minded old gentleman, he +would have urged her to bestow her money prudently upon safe +charities—perhaps create a special philanthropic trust for the +distribution of Clark's Field, after her death, of course, for the good +of education, or hospitals, or art—the ordinary channels chosen by +those rich persons who cared to alienate from themselves and their heirs +a portion of their property. But the judge, fortunately, was not +conventionally minded, although he had sat upon the bench for upwards of +forty years. He knew that philanthropy was a very wasteful and +mechanical method of attaining an end, and often did great harm to +everybody, because such a little charity made such an immense amount of +social salve. He did not believe that "philanthropy" would appeal in its +common forms to Adelle, certainly not deathbed giving.</p> + +<p>She had been through some terrible experiences, that was evident, and +was still more shaken by them than she knew. But she was young, with a +long life presumably to lead, and other children and loves and interests +to blossom in it. Would it not be wise for her to retain her property, +now that she had learned something of the nature of money, and endeavor +by herself to use Clark's Field wisely? It was here that the judge's +musings brought up. He was inclined to have faith in Adelle as a person +for the first time.</p> + +<p>We can see how far from the anarchist his philosophy of life led him. +The accidents of life—yes, but mysterious, not merely ironic and +meaningless, accidents! Adelle Clark, the unpromising little girl, the +loud, silly young married woman, was the instrument chosen by Fate—only +the judge said God-sharpened by pain and sorrow to become the +intelligent destiny of Clark's Field. Could the law with all its hedging +and guarding beat that? Could the stone mason or the judge himself or +any human mind select a better executor for Clark's Field than the +unlikely instrument which Fate had chosen? The judge thought not, and +with his own little plan in mind serenely awaited the arrival of the +Clark cousins on this joyous May morning, having previously ordered the +horses and carriage that he commonly used for his outings.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Adelle sat beside the judge in the old-fashioned brougham, and the stone +mason opposite to them, his great brown hands bedded on his knees, his +face critically examining the city landscape. The judge talked chiefly +to the young man, in his humorous and rather garrulous manner, +describing for his benefit the glories of the old city. They plunged +almost at once off the hill into a slum, where in the tall brick +tenements women were hanging out of the windows enjoying the spring day. +The sunshine and the blue sky made the narrow, dirty streets, and the +evil-looking buildings even more out of place than usual. The young +Californian wrinkled his mouth scornfully over it. But soon they drove +out upon a new bridge that bound the two parts of the city together +where the breeze came in across the water gayly. The mason was specially +pleased with the tunnel through which the surface cars disappeared into +the bowels of the city. That was some good, he said, and added that they +did not have it in California. "But we don't need it yet—we aren't so +crowded out there," he explained. He did not think much of the tall +buildings they encountered on their route. They had better ones in +"'Frisco," and had he not seen New York? His attitude towards this home +of his forefathers was mildly tolerant. If the issue had been put to him +squarely, he would never have exchanged his free California inheritance +for his share of Clark's Field! He seemed to think better of his +grandfather for having shaken the dust of Alton from his scornful feet. +That was exactly what he himself would have done if it had been his +misfortune to belong to the younger branch of the family. But in that +case, perhaps, he would not have had the courage to brave the unknown!</p> + +<p>Adelle from her corner of the carriage silently followed this in her +cousin's expressive face. She saw that it all seemed small to him, +petty, planned on a little scale.</p> + +<p>"Give me the Coast!" he said when at last they reached the famous Square +of Alton, which was now little more than the intersection of three noisy +streets, and turned up the old South Road. That simple expression meant +volumes as she knew. It expressed the love of freedom, vigor, +simplicity, natural manhood, the longing for the large, fresh face of +Nature, where the hopeful soul of man is ready to meet his destiny by +himself, unpropped by his ancestors and relatives. There was an echo in +her own soul to this primitive lyric cry,—"Give me the Coast!"</p> + +<p>(Need we explain that to the true son of California there is but one +"Coast" in all the world?)</p> + +<p>The old judge smiled sympathetically in response to the cry. Evidently +he liked the young man, for he was at great pains to point out to him +everything of interest and to explain certain historic monuments that +they passed.</p> + +<p>Alton had never been notable as a place of residence even in Adelle's +childhood, but now it was almost completely converted to industrial +uses. The stove factory had grown like a tropic plant, and had spawned +about itself a number of parasitic industries, such as tack-mills, +paper-box factories, and other occupations that use the labor of women +and children. It was one long, smoky, grimy thoroughfare, where in a +small, congested area the coarser labors of humanity were performed +wholesale by a race of imported gnomes, such as might be found in any of +the larger centers of the country. Alton was not one of the "show +places," and it may be wondered why the judge had chosen to drive his +guests thither instead of to the famous parks of the city.</p> + +<p>But Adelle suspected something of his purpose, and more when they turned +into that brick maze of small streets that had once been Clark's Field. +At this the Californian's mobile face expressed frank contempt, not to +say disgust. Even on this beautiful May morning, Clark's Field, with its +close-packed rows of lofty tenements, its narrow, dirty alleys, and +monotonous blocks of ugly brick facades, was dreary, depressing, a +needless monstrosity of civilization. And all this had come about in a +little over ten years, as the judge carefully explained to the mason. It +had taken less than a generation to cover Clark's Field with its load of +brick and mortar, to make it into a swarming hive of mean human lives—a +triumph of our day, so often boastfully celebrated in newspaper and +magazine, the triumph of efficient property exploitation by the +Washington Trust Company under the thin disguise of the "Clark's Field +Associates"!</p> + +<p>The judge was indefatigable in his determination to penetrate to every +dreary corner, every noisome alley of the place, although the young +stranger seemed to think that he had had enough at the first glance. It +is not necessary for us to make the rounds of the Field for the third +time with the little party. Adelle, who had a greater interest than her +cousin because of her dim understanding of the judge's purpose, gazed +searchingly at everything, and was able to see it differently, to +comprehend it all as she had not been able to the time before when she +had forced Archie to make the expedition with her. She realized now, at +least in part, what Clark's Field really meant, what the magic lamp she +had so carelessly rubbed for years to gratify her desires was made of. +And it made her thoughtful.</p> + +<p>About noon, when the little streets were flooded from curb to curb by a +motley army of pale-faced foreign workers from the high lofts and the +noisy factories, the judge's carriage drew up beside a vacant corner, +the one large undeveloped bit of land still left, nearly in the center +of the whole tract. This was plastered with the signs of the realty +company, seductively offering to lease it for a term of years or improve +it with a building to suit tenant, etc.</p> + +<p>"About all the open space and blue sky there is left!" the judge +remarked, pointing out the figures of a few dirty children who were +exploring a puddle and a pit of rubbish in the vacant lot. (These, I +suppose, were the descendants of that brave body of little hoodlums of +which I and my brothers were members years ago, and the puddle and pit +were all that was left of our mysterious playground!)</p> + +<p>"There's a heap of cheap foreign rubbish all around here," the mason +growled, spitting contemptuously into the roadbed, as if he resented +that human beings could be found forlorn enough, low enough, to labor +under such conditions. "Not one of 'em looks as if he had had enough to +eat or knew what a good wash was or what the earth smells like!"</p> + +<p>No, the Coast for him, and the sooner the better, too!</p> + +<p>The judge smiled tolerantly, observing,—</p> + +<p>"I don't suppose they have much chance to bathe here. The city cannot +afford to put up public baths and employers rarely think of those +things."</p> + +<p>"Look at the rotten stuff they eat!" The mason pointed disdainfully to +the tipcarts drawn up along the curb, where men and women were +chaffering over dried fish and forlorn vegetables that would have soured +the soul of old Adams, who once raised celery on this very spot. "Don't +the folks in these parts eat better than that?"</p> + +<p>"Not generally," the judge replied. "We have no public market in this +city, and it is very difficult for the poorer sort to get fresh food."</p> + +<p>"You'd oughter see the California markets!" the young man bragged.</p> + +<p>"Tell me about them," the judge said.</p> + +<p>And while the young mason expatiated on his land of plenty where the +poor man could still enjoy his own bit of God's sunlight and fresh fruit +and flowers from the earth, Adelle watched the thick stream of workers +in Clark's Field, pushing and dawdling along the narrow street. There +were girls with bare arms and soiled shirt-waists and black skirts, +there were lean, pale boys, and women old before their time, hurrying +from tenement to shop, their hearts divided between the two cares of +home and livelihood. Adelle recalled one of her first talks with the +stone mason, in which he had crudely told her that her yearly income +represented the total wages of four or five hundred able-bodied men and +women, such as these, who worked from ten to sixteen hours a day for +three hundred days each year, when they could, and all told earned +hardly what she drew by signing her name to slips of paper as income +from her property during the same space of time. He said to her,—"You +can think that you are worth about four hundred human lives! Who talks +about slavery being abolished? Hell!" She had thought then that his way +of putting it was quite wrong, unjust: she was sure that Major Pound +could easily have disposed of his contention. Indeed, she had heard the +major and men like him maintain that capitalists like herself were the +only true benefactors of humanity, that without them the working-people +could never be fed! But to-day she was not sure that her cousin had been +wrong. She saw a concrete proof of his statement in this stream of +poorly nourished, hard-worked men, women, boys, and girls, all toiling +to maintain themselves and pay her the interest upon the crowded land of +Clark's Field. In a very definite sense they were all working for her; +they were her slaves!</p> + +<p>The younger women and girls looked into the judge's brougham curiously +or impudently, attracted by the spectacle of leisure and quiet richness +that Adelle presented, a sight not commonly afforded them in the streets +of Clark's Field and always fascinating to women of any class wherever +it may be. Adelle's dress was plain black, and she had shed much of her +jewelry; but beneath her simple gown and fine linen and carefully +cherished skin she began to feel a new sensation, not exactly pity for +these less lucky sisters, rather wonder that it should all be so, that +she should be sitting there in idleness and comfort and they should be +tramping the pavement of Clark's Field to the factory....</p> + +<p>When she saw the boys playing in the mud puddle in the one vacant lot, +she thought of her own little boy, on whom she had lavished every care, +every luxury. So with these working-girls, she thought how easily she +might have been one of them going from the rooming-house in Church +Street to shop or factory, as many women of better Puritan families than +hers had done. It was pure accident, she could see, why she and her +child had been saved from such a lot—due neither to her own ability nor +that of any of her Clark forbears! It was a humbling perception.</p> + +<p>"Hell!" her cousin was saying explosively, "these people are no better +'n cattle. At least they ought to give 'em a trough to wash in and a +place where they could buy decent food."</p> + +<p>"A few other things, too, perhaps," the judge added with his gentle +smile. "But who will do it? The city is already badly debt-ridden. The +owners of the land pay so much in taxes and interest, due to the high +price of the land here, that they probably make a bare eight per cent +net on their investment."</p> + +<p>He looked inquiringly at the young man.</p> + +<p>"It's all wrong," the mason retorted heatedly, forgetting that he had +hoped to become one of these "owners of the land," and returning to his +incipient rebellion at the state of society in which he lived. "Somebody +ought to be made to do such things."</p> + +<p>The judge smiled finely, merely remarking in a casual tone,—</p> + +<p>"It is a very perplexing question, all that, my young friend!"</p> + +<p>"But you don't think it's right so," the mason persisted belligerently, +thinking to challenge a supporter of things as they are.</p> + +<p>"There's very little that is quite right in this world, my boy," the +judge replied simply.</p> + +<p>"Well, we'd better set out now to make it nearer right," the young man +grumbled.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, that is perfectly sound doctrine.... And shall we begin with +Clark's Field?" he asked, turning to Adelle with one of his playful, +kindly smiles.</p> + +<p>"It needs it," she said simply.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I think it needs it!"</p> + +<p>"Sure!" the mason asserted resoundingly.</p> + +<p>A little while afterwards the judge said to the driver,—</p> + +<p>"I think that we will go home now, John."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLIX" id="XLIX"></a>XLIX</h2> + + +<p>In these last moments something had happened to Adelle. While the judge +and her cousin had been talking, she had been watching the stream of +humanity flow past her, not hearing what the two were saying, listening +to the voice of her own soul. It is difficult to describe in exact words +the nature of Adelle's mental life. Ideas never came to her in orderly +succession. They were not evolved out of other ideas, nor gathered up +from obvious sources and repeated by her brain, parrotlike, as with so +many of us. They came to her slowly from some reservoir of her being, +came painfully, strugglingly, and often were accompanied to their birth +by an inner glow of emotional illumination like the present when she saw +herself and her child living the life of Clark's Field. But after they +had struggled into birth, they became eternal possessions of her +consciousness, never to be forgotten, or debated, or denied. She had +thus slowly and painfully achieved whatever personality she had since +she came for the first time a pale child into Judge Orcutt's court. If +any one had talked to her about the "obligations of wealth," "social +service," or "love of humanity," she would have listened with a vacant +stare and replied like a child of ten. The judge seemed to know that.</p> + +<p>It was only by idleness and Archie and unhappiness and the fire and the +tragic death of her child that she had come to realize that there were +other people in the world besides herself and the few who were a +necessary part of herself, and that these other lives were of importance +to themselves and might be almost as important to her as her own. It had +taken Adelle a good many years of foolish living and reckless use of her +magic lamp to get this simple understanding of life. But she was not yet +twenty-six, really at the start of life. If already she had come so far +along the road, what might she not reach by fifty? In such matters it is +the destination alone that counts....</p> + +<p>Just now, as has been said, a greater illumination had come over her +spirit than was ever there before, although for the life of her Adelle +could not have expressed in words what she felt, or at this time put her +new thought into concrete acts. But with Adelle acts had never been +wanting when the time for them came, and her slow mind had absorbed all +the necessary ideas. The judge recognized the illumination in the young +woman at his side. For the first time in her life, perhaps, at least for +one of the rare moments of it, her face was in no sense vacant. The wide +gray eyes that looked forth upon the sordid world of Clark's Field were +seeing eyes, though they did not see merely physical facts. Instead of +their usual blankness or passive intelligence, they had a quality in +them now of dream. And this gave Adelle's pale face a certain rare +loveliness that in human faces does not depend upon color or line or +emotional vivacity. It is rather the still radiance of the inner spirit, +penetrating in some inexplicable manner the physical envelope and +creating a beauty far more enduring, more compelling to those who +perceive it, than any other form of beauty intelligible to human eyes. +The judge perceived it. As the carriage slowly retraced its way through +the crowded streets of Clark's Field, he silently took the young woman's +hand and held it within his own, smiling gently before him as one who +understood what was too complex to put in words. He was an old man now, +and it was permitted him to express thus the compulsion of Adelle's rare +loveliness, thus to confide to her the sympathy of his own dreaming +heart. The little ungloved hand lay within his old hand, warm and +passive, not clinging, content to rest there in peace.</p> + +<p>Thus they jogged back to the city, all three silent, occupied with +personal thoughts suggested by their expedition this fine May morning +into Clark's Field, which the judge for one felt had been thoroughly +successful.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Judge Orcutt kept the two cousins to luncheon, and when Adelle had gone +with his housekeeper to lay aside her hat and wraps, he was left alone +with the young stone mason. After long years of watching human beings +from the bench, the judge formed his opinions of people rapidly and was +rarely mistaken upon the essential quality of any one. He liked Tom +Clark. He did not mind, as much as Adelle did, his spitting habit, for +he remembered the time not more than a generation or two ago when the +best American gentlemen chewed tobacco or took snuff, and he could see +quality in a person who spat upon the ground, but did not conceal ugly +and vile thoughts, or who abused the language of books in favor of that +more enduring vernacular of the street, or who confused the table +implements, or did the hundred and one other little things that are +supposedly the indelible marks of an inferior culture. A most fastidious +person himself, as was obvious, he looked in others for a fastidiousness +of spirit rather than for a correct performance of the whims of +refinement. For the one, as everybody knows but forgets, is eternal, and +the other is merely transitory—the most transitory aspect of human +beings, their manners. He was pleased with Tom Clark's vigorous reaction +against the East in favor of his own freer land, his disgust with the +incipient squalor of Clark's Field, and his honest scorn for a +civilization that would permit human beings to live as they lived there +and generally in the more crowded industrial centers of the world. What +the stone mason had recklessly vaunted to Adelle as "anarchism," the +judge recognized as a healthy reaction against unworthy human +institutions,—the idiom in him of youth and hope and will. And he could +understand, now that he was face to face with the vigorous young man, +the reason why Adelle had been drawn to the stone mason from that first +time when she had discharged him from her employ. For he had those +qualities of vitality, expression, initiative that the younger branch of +the Clarks had exhausted. The Edward S. Clarks, transplanted fifty years +and more ago to new soil, may not have risen far in the human scale in +their new environment, but they had renewed there, at least in the +person of this young stone mason, their capacity for health and vigor. +Once more they had strong desires, will, and the courage to revolt +against the settled, the safe, the formal, and the proper. Of course, +this Clark was an anarchist! All strong blood must create some such +anarchists, if there is to be progress in this world.</p> + +<p>It did not seem so preposterous to the judge, after these few hours of +contact with the mason, that Adelle should want to endow her cousin with +a part of that fortune which but for accident and legal formality would +have been his. There were, however, many other of these California +Clarks, in whom Adelle could not possibly be interested and who might +not be equally promising, but who would have to share her liberality +with the mason. It was a delicate tangle, as the judge realized when he +attempted to untie the knot.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Clark," he began, sinking into the deep wing chair before his +fireplace, "I suppose your cousin has informed you of the results of her +interview with the Washington Trust Company?"</p> + +<p>"Yes!" the young man emitted shortly, with an inquiring grin. "She said +there was nothing doing about our claim."</p> + +<p>"The officers of the trust company were right so far as the law is +concerned, as I had to tell Mrs. Clark. The law is doubtless often slow +and bungling in its processes, but when it has once fully decided an +issue it is very loath to open it up again, especially when, as in this +case, litigation would involve hardship and injustice to a great many +innocent people."</p> + +<p>"Well, I somehow thought it might be too late," the young mason +remarked, throwing himself loosely into the chair opposite the judge. +After a moment of reflection he added feelingly,—"The law is an +infernal contraption anyhow—it's always rigged so's the little feller +gets left."</p> + +<p>"The law rigged it so that your cousin, who was a penniless girl, got a +thousand times more than her grandfather asked for his property," the +judge observed with a twinkle.</p> + +<p>"She had the luck, that's all—and we other Clarks didn't!" the young +man replied.</p> + +<p>"You can call it luck, if you like," the judge mused.</p> + +<p>"That's what most folks would call it, I guess."</p> + +<p>"I suppose that is what she feels, because she was anxious when she came +to see me yesterday to divide her fortune with you other Clarks."</p> + +<p>It was a daring move, and as he spoke the judge looked keenly into the +young man's face.</p> + +<p>"Did she?" Tom Clark inquired unconcernedly. "I know she's always on the +square—there aren't many like her!"</p> + +<p>"You may not know that if she should carry out her intention, she would +strip herself of almost every dollar she possesses."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean by that?"</p> + +<p>"Her husband, I understand, conducted her affairs so badly that very +nearly if not quite half the great fortune she received five years ago +from her guardians has wasted away. I don't know what ultimately may be +recovered from these California investments, but judging from what Mrs. +Clark tells me I should say almost nothing. So that there can be left of +the original estate only a little over two millions of dollars."</p> + +<p>"Well, that's enough for any woman to worry along on," the mason grinned +lightly.</p> + +<p>"But not enough for her to pay out of it two and a half millions, which +would have been the share of your grandfather's heirs."</p> + +<p>"Hell! She ain't thinkin' of doin' that!"</p> + +<p>"She certainly was. She would have made the proposal to you already, if +I had not asked her to wait until I could advise with her again."</p> + +<p>The young man's blue eyes opened wide in astonishment.</p> + +<p>"What good would that do her?"</p> + +<p>"It would give all of you California Clarks your slice of Clark's +Field—how many of you are there?"</p> + +<p>"I dunno exactly—maybe twenty or twenty-five—I haven't kep' count."</p> + +<p>"Say there are twenty-five heirs of old Edward S. living. Each of them +would have a hundred thousand dollars apiece roughly. That sum of money +is not to be despised even to-day."</p> + +<p>"You bet it ain't," murmured the mason feelingly. His face settled into +a scowl; and leaning forward he demanded,—"What are you drivin' at +anyway, Judge?"</p> + +<p>The judge did not answer.</p> + +<p>"You ain't goin' to let that woman hand over all her money to a lot of +little no-'count people she's never laid eyes on, just because they are +called 'Clark' instead of 'Smith' or some other name?"</p> + +<p>"You happen to be one of them," the judge observed with a laugh.</p> + +<p>"I know that,—and I guess I'm a pretty fair sample of the whole +bunch,—but I ain't takin' charity from any woman!"</p> + +<p>The judge settled back into his chair, a satisfied little smile on his +lips. The mason's reaction was better than he had dared expect.</p> + +<p>"It ought not to be called charity, exactly," he mused.</p> + +<p>"What is it, then? It ain't law!"</p> + +<p>"No, it wouldn't be legal either," the judge admitted. "But there are +things that are neither legal nor charitable. There are," he suggested, +"justice and wisdom and mercy!"</p> + +<p>The mason could not follow such abstract thought. He looked blankly at +the judge. His mind had done its best when it had rejected without +hesitation the gift of Adelle's fortune because he happened to be a +grandson of Edward S. Clark.</p> + +<p>"Tell me," said the judge after a time, as if his mind had wandered to +other considerations, "about these California Clarks—what do you know +of them?"</p> + +<p>The mason related for the judge's edification the scraps of family +history and biography that he could recollect. Adelle, who had come into +the room, listened to his story. Tom Clark might be limited in knowledge +of his family as he was in education, but he was certainly literal and +picturesque. He spared neither himself nor his brothers and sisters, nor +his remoter cousins. The one whose career seemed to interest him most +was that Stan Clark, the politician, who now represented Fresno County +in the State Legislature. There was a curious mixture of pride and +contempt in his feeling for this cousin, who had risen above the dead +level of local obscurity.</p> + +<p>"He thinks almighty well of himself," he concluded his portrait; "but +there ain't a rottener peanut politician in the State of California, and +that's sayin' some. He got into the legislater by stringin' labor, and +now, of course, the S. P. owns him hide and clothes and toothpick. I +hear he's bought a block of stores in Fresno and is puttin' the dough +away thick. He don't need no Clark's Field! He's got the whole people of +California for his pickings."</p> + +<p>The judge turned to Adelle laughingly.</p> + +<p>"Your cousin doesn't seem to see any good reason why the California +Clarks should be chosen for Fortune's favor."</p> + +<p>"Ain't one of 'em," the young man asserted emphatically, "so far as I +know, would know what to do with a hundred dollars, would be any better +off after a couple of years if he had it. That's gospel truth—and I +ain't exceptin' myself!" he added after a moment of sober reflection.</p> + +<p>Adelle made no comment. She did not seem to be thinking along the same +line as the judge and the young mason. Since the yesterday her +conception of her problem had changed and grown. Adelle was living fast +these days, not in the sense in which she and Archie had lived fast +according to their kind, but psychologically and spiritually she was +living fast. Her state of yesterday had already given place to another +broader, loftier one: she was fast escaping from the purely personal out +into the freedom of the impersonal.</p> + +<p>"Allowing for Mr. Clark's natural vivacity of statement," the judge +observed with an appreciative chuckle, "these California relatives of +yours, so far as I can see, are pretty much like everybody else in the +world, struggling along the best they can with the limitations of +environment and character which they have inherited.... And I am rather +inclined to agree with Mr. Clark that it might be unwise to give them, +most of them, any special privilege which they hadn't earned for +themselves over their neighbors."</p> + +<p>"What right have they got to it anyway?" the mason demanded.</p> + +<p>"Oh, when you go into rights, Mr. Clark," the judge retorted, "the whole +thing is a hopeless muddle. None of us in a very real sense has any +rights—extremely few rights, at any rate."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, they've no good reason for havin' the money."</p> + +<p>"I agree with you. There is no good reason why these twenty-five Clarks, +more or less, should arbitrarily be selected for the favors of Clark's +Field. And yet they might prove to be as good material to work upon as +any other twenty-five taken at random."</p> + +<p>Adelle looked up expectantly to the judge. She understood that his mind +was thinking forward to wider reaches than his words indicated.</p> + +<p>"But you would want to know much more about them than you do now, to +study each case carefully in all its bearings, and then doubtless you +would make your mistakes, with the best of judgment!"</p> + +<p>"I don't see what you mean," the mason said.</p> + +<p>"Nor I," said Adelle.</p> + +<p>"Let us have some lunch first," the judge replied. "We have done a good +deal this morning and need food. Perhaps later we shall all arrive at a +complete understanding."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>At the close of their luncheon the judge remarked to Adelle,—</p> + +<p>"Your cousin and I, Mrs. Clark, have talked over your idea of giving to +him and his relatives what the law will not compel you to distribute of +Clark's Field. He doesn't seem to think well of the idea."</p> + +<p>"It's foolish," the mason growled.</p> + +<p>Adelle looked at him swiftly, with a little smile that was sad.</p> + +<p>"I was afraid he would say that, Judge," she said softly.</p> + +<p>"You know any man would!... I ain't never begged from a woman yet."</p> + +<p>"The woman, it seems to me, has nothing to do with the question," the +judge put in.</p> + +<p>"And it isn't begging," Adelle protested. "It's really yours, a part of +it, as much as mine,—more, perhaps."</p> + +<p>"It's nobody's by rights, so far as I can see!" the mason retorted with +his dry laugh.</p> + +<p>"Exactly!" the judge exclaimed. "Young man, you have pronounced the one +final word of wisdom on the whole situation. With that for a premise we +can start safely towards a conclusion. Clark's Field doesn't belong to +you or to your cousin or to any of the Clarks living or dead. It belongs +to itself—to the people who live upon it, who use it, who need it to +get from it their daily bread and shelter."</p> + +<p>"But," jeered the mason, "you can't call 'em out into the street and +hand each of 'em a thousand-dollar bill."</p> + +<p>"No, and you would make a lot of trouble for everybody if you +did—especially for the Alton police courts, I am afraid! But you can +act as trustees for Clark's Field—" He turned to Adelle and continued +whimsically,—"That's what the old Field did for you, my dear, with my +assistance. Its wealth was tied up for fifty years to be let loose in +your lap! You found it not such a great gift, after all, so why not pour +it back upon the Field?... Why not make a splendid public market on that +vacant lot that's still left? And put some public baths in, and a public +hall for everybody's use, and a few other really permanent +improvements?—which I fear the city will never feel able to do! In that +way you would be giving back to Clark's Field and its real owners what +properly belongs to it and to them."</p> + +<p>So the judge's thought was out at last. It did not take Adelle long to +understand it now.</p> + +<p>"I'll do it," she said simply, as if the judge had merely voiced the +struggling ideas of her own brain. "But how shall I go to work?"</p> + +<p>"I think your cousin can show you," the judge laughed. "He has many more +ideas than I should dare call my own about what society should do for +its disinherited. Suppose you talk it over with him and get his +suggestions."</p> + +<p>"My God!" the stone mason groaned enigmatically.</p> + +<p>The sardonic smile spread over his lean face as he further explained +himself,—</p> + +<p>"It ain't exactly what I took this trip from California for."</p> + +<p>"You didn't understand then," the judge remarked.</p> + +<p>"And I didn't understand either," Adelle added.</p> + +<p>"I guess I could keep you from getting into trouble with your money as +well as the next man. I'd keep you out of the hands of the charity +grafters anyhow!"</p> + +<p>"I think," the judge summed up whimsically, "that you are one of the +best persons in the world to advise on how to distribute the Clark +millions. That is what should be done with every young anarchist—set +him to work spending money on others. He would end up either in prison +or among the conservatives."</p> + +<p>"But," Adelle demurred finally, "that leaves the others—all the +California Clarks—out of it for good."</p> + +<p>"Where they belong," put in the mason.</p> + +<p>"I'm not so sure of that," the judge added cautiously. And after further +reflection he suggested, "Why shouldn't you two make yourselves into a +little private and extra-legal Providence for these members of your +family? Once, my dear," he said to Adelle, "I did the same for you! At +considerable risk to your welfare I intervened and prevented certain +greedy rascals from doing your aunt and you out of Clark's Field, you +remember?"</p> + +<p>He paused to relate for Tom Clark's benefit the story of the transaction +with which we are fully familiar.</p> + +<p>"Of course, if then I had known of the existence of our young friend and +his family, I should have been obliged to include him in the beneficence +of my Providence. But I didn't. It was left for you, my dear, to +discover him!... There was a time when I felt that I had played the part +of Providence rashly,"—he smiled upon Adelle, who recalled quite +vividly the stern lecture that the court had given her when she was +about to receive her fortune. "But now I feel that I did very well, +indeed. In fact I am rather proud of my success as Providence to this +young woman.... So I recommend the same rôle to you and Mr. Clark. Look +up these California Clarks, study them, make up your minds what they +need most, then act as wisely as you can, not merely in their behalf, +but in behalf of us all, of all the people who find themselves upon this +earth in the long struggle out of ignorance and misery upwards to +light.... It will keep you busy," he concluded with his fine +smile,—"busy, I think, for the better part of your two lives. But I can +think of no more interesting occupation than to try to be a just and +wise Providence!"</p> + +<p>"It's some job," the mason remarked. "I don't feel sure we'd succeed in +it much better than Fate."</p> + +<p>"You will become a part of Fate," the judge said earnestly, "as we all +are! Don't you see?"</p> + +<p>"We'd better begin with Cousin Stan first," the mason shouted. "I'd like +to be his fate, you bet!"</p> + +<p>"What would you do with the Honorable Stanley Clark?" the judge asked.</p> + +<p>"Boot him clear out of the State of California—show him up for what he +is—a mean little cuss of a grafter; no friend of labor or anything else +but his own pocket."</p> + +<p>"Good! But it will take money to do that these days, a good deal of +money! You will have to pay for publicity and court expenses and all the +rest of it."</p> + +<p>"Hoorah! I'd like to soak him one with his share of Clark's Field!"</p> + +<p>"Providence blesses as well as curses," warned the old judge. "And it's +chief work, I take it, is educational—to develop all that is possible +from within. Remember that, sir, when you are 'soaking' Cousin Stan."</p> + +<p>"The educational can wait until we've done some correctin'!"</p> + +<p>They all laughed. And presently they parted. As they stood in the little +front room waiting for Adelle's car to fetch her, the judge remarked +with a certain solemnity,—</p> + +<p>"Now at last I believe the fate of Clark's Field is settled. In that +good old legal term, the title to the Field, so long restless and +unsettled, at last is 'quieted,' I think for good and all, humanly +speaking!"</p> + +<p>"I think so," Adelle assented, with the same dreamy look in her gray +eyes that had moved the judge to take her hand that morning. "At least I +see quite clearly what I must do with my share of it."</p> + +<p>"Come and see me again before you go away, as often as you can, both of +you!" the judge said as they left. "Remember that I am an old man, and +my best amusement is watching Providence working out its ways with us +all. And you two are part of Providence:—come and tell me what you +find!"</p> + +<p>"We will!" they said.</p> + +<p>After the door had swung to behind his visitors, the judge stood +thoughtfully beside the window watching the cousins depart. As the young +mason hopped into the car in response to Adelle's invitation, and +clumsily swung the door after him with a bang, the judge smiled +tenderly, murmuring to himself,—</p> + +<p>"It's all education, and they'll educate each other!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="L" id="L"></a>L</h2> + + +<p>And here we must abandon Adelle Clark and Clark's Field, not that +another volume might not be written concerning her further adventures +with the old Field. But that would be an altogether different story. She +went back to see Judge Orcutt, not only at this time, but many times +later, as long as the judge lived. So he was able to watch the idea that +had sprung into being, helped by his wise sympathy, grow and bear its +slow fruit to his satisfaction. In starting this chance couple upon the +quest of their scattered relatives, to play the part of Providence to +all the little, unknown California Clarks, and also to restore to +Clark's Field its own riches, which for two generations had been +unjustly hoarded for the use of one human being, the judge was doubtless +doing a dangerous and revolutionary thing, according to the belief of +many good people, something certainly ill befitting a retired judge of +the probate courts of his staid Commonwealth! Had he not been employed +for forty years of his life in expounding and upholding that absurd code +of inheritance and property rights that the Anglo-Saxon peoples have +preserved from their ancient tribal days in the gloomy forests of the +lower Rhine? Nay, worse, was he not guilty of disrespect to the most +sacred object of worship that the race has—the holy institution of +private property, aiding and abetting an anarchist in his loose views +upon this subject? I will not try to defend the judge. He seemed +tranquil that first day as he hobbled up his old stairs to his study, as +if he felt that he had done a good day's business and was enjoying the +approval of a good conscience; also, the satisfaction of insight into +human nature, which is one of the rare rewards of becoming old. Nor did +he worry for one moment about our heroine Adelle. He thought Adelle one +of the safest persons in the universe, because she could derive good +from her mistakes, and any one who can get good out of evil is the +safest sort of human being to raise in this garden plot of human souls. +The judge may have been more doubtful about the stone mason, but in the +young man's own phrase he considered him, too, a good bet in the human +lottery.</p> + +<p>As to what they might do to each other in the course of their mutual +education, the judge left that wisely to that other Providence of his +fathers, sure that Adelle this time would not take such a long and +painful road to wisdom as she had done in marrying Archie. But we must +not mistake the judge's last foolish remark,—interpret it, at least in +a merely sentimental sense, too literally. Like a poet the judge spoke +in symbols of matters that cannot be phrased in any tongue precisely. He +did not think of their marrying each other, because they were deeply +concerned together, although I am aware that my readers are speculating +on this point already. The judge left that to Adelle and Tom Clark and +Providence, and we can safely do the same thing. He set them forth on +their jaunt after the stray members of the Clark tribe and other deeds +with a favorable expectation that they would commit along the road only +the necessary minimum of folly, and above all, sure of Adelle's +destination. For at twenty-six she had passed through crude desire, +through passion and pain and sorrow, and had discovered for herself the +last commonplace of human thinking—that the end of life is not the +"pursuit of happiness," as our materialistic forefathers put it in the +Constitution they made for us, and cannot be "guaranteed" to any mortal. +With that bedrock axiom of human wisdom embedded in her steadfast +nature, to what heights might not the dumb Adelle, the pale, passive, +inarticulate woman creature, ultimately rise?</p> + +<p>There were many stations on her road. And first of all her husband, +Archie. Adelle began to think again about Archie in the new light she +had. She had not thought about him at all since she had dropped him so +summarily from her life after the fire at Highcourt. She wrote him +finally a considerable letter, in which she made plain the results of +her thinking. It was a surprising letter, as Archie felt, not only in +length, but in its point of view and its kindly tone. She seemed to see +the great wrong she had ignorantly done to him. The youth she had +blindly taken to gratify her green passion and to become the father of +her only child! She had ruined him, as far as any one human being can +ruin another, and now she knew it. She had been the stupid means of +providing him with a feast of folly, and then had abandoned him when he +behaved badly. So she wrote him gently, as one who at last comprehended +that mercy and forgiveness are due all those whom we harm upon our road +either consciously or ignorantly, giving them evil to eat. Yet she saw +the crude folly of attempting to resume their marriage in any way, and +did not for once consider it. They had sinned gravely against each other +and must face life anew, separately, recognizing that theirs was an +irreparable mistake. So she wrote unpassionately of the legal divorce +which must come. And she gave him money, promising him more as he might +need it, within reason. Archie straightway put a good part of it into +oil wells because every one in California was talking oil, and of course +lost it all. Then Adelle sent him money to buy a nut ranch, in one of +the interior valleys, and there we may leave Archie growing English +walnuts fitfully. At times he felt aggrieved with Adelle, complained +that he had been abused as a man who had married a rich woman and then +been thrown aside when he considered himself placed for life. But also +at times he had a fleeting conception of Adelle's character, realized +that she was not now the girl who had married him out of hand after a +mad night ride across France. She was bigger and better than he now, and +he was not really worthy of her. But these rare moments of insight +usually came only when Adelle had answered favorably his pleas for more +money.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>One memory of her early years came back to Adelle at this time—a +picture that had been dark to her then. It was when she first met her +little Mexican friend at the fashionable boarding-school. She could not +understand the girl's foreign name, and so the little Mexican had +written it out in pencil,—"Diane Merelda," and underneath she wrote in +tiny letters,—"F. de M."</p> + +<p>"What do those mean?" Adelle had demanded, pointing to the mysterious +letters.</p> + +<p>"Fille de Marie," the little Catholic lisped, and translated,—"Daughter +of the Blessed Virgin; you understand?"</p> + +<p>Adelle had not understood then, nor had she thought of it all these +years. But now the incident came back to her from its deep resting-place +in her consciousness, and she understood its full meaning. She, too, was +a child of God! albeit she had lived many years and done folly and +suffered sorrow before she could recognize it.</p> + +<p>And so Clark's Field had taught its last great lesson,—Clark's Field, +that fifty acres of lean, level land with its crop of bricks and mortar, +its heavy burden of human lives, the sacrificial altar of our economic +system and our race prejudices,—Clark's Field! We pass it night and +morning of all the days of our lives, but rarely see it—see, that is, +more than its bricks and mortar and empty faces. It should be called, in +the quaint phrase of the judge's people, "God's Acre!" One might say +that the beauty, the supreme fruit of this Clark's Field, which never +blossomed into flower and fruit all these years we have been concerned +with its fate, was Adelle. Just Adelle! The judge thought that was +enough. Adelle would go on, he believed, growing into new wisdom, slowly +acquired according to her nature, and also into tranquillity, +friendship, love, and motherhood-all the eternal rewards of right +living. Would she accomplish this best through that other Clark—the +workman—whom she had discovered for herself? The sentimental reader +probably has this already settled to his satisfaction.</p> + +<p>But I wonder!</p> + + +<h4>THE END</h4> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="By_ARTHUR_STANWOOD_PIER" id="By_ARTHUR_STANWOOD_PIER"></a>By ARTHUR STANWOOD PIER</h2> + +<h3>THE WOMEN WE MARRY</h3> + + +<p>"Keen and incisive in character study, logical and life-like in plot +invention and development, 'The Women We Marry,' is a novel that stands +sturdily on its own merits. It is vigorous, frank and emotional in the +best sense of that much-abused word, and there is little in it that is +not faithfully representative of life." <i>Boston Transcript.</i></p> + +<p>"The author of this realistic novel has not been afraid to endow his +people richly with the ordinary faults and foibles of human nature.... +Both his men and women are very real, human people." <i>New York Times.</i></p> + +<p>"As a study of types, 'The Women We Marry' is one of the best things +that American fiction has recently produced." <i>Springfield Republican.</i></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="By_WILLA_SIBERT_CATHER" id="By_WILLA_SIBERT_CATHER"></a>By WILLA SIBERT CATHER</h2> + +<h3>O PIONEERS!</h3> + + +<p>"A great romantic novel, written with striking brilliancy and power, in +which one sees emerge a new country and a new people.... Throughout the +story one has the sense of great spaces; of the soil dominating +everything, even the human drama that takes place upon it; renewing +itself while the generations come and pass away."—<i>McClure's Magazine.</i></p> + + +<p>"The book is big in its conception and strikes many great live topics of +the day—the feminist movement and the back-to-the-soil doctrines being +two of the most conspicuous. There is a spirit of the open spaces about +this story—a bigness that suggests that Miss Cather has taken more than +her title from Whitman's hymn to progress, 'Pioneers, O +Pioneers.'"—<i>San Francisco Chronicle.</i></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="By_ELIA_W_PEATTIE" id="By_ELIA_W_PEATTIE"></a>By ELIA W. PEATTIE</h2> + +<h3>THE PRECIPICE</h3> + + +<p>"A frank and fearless study of the New Womanhood which we now see all +around us ... done upon a broad canvas."—<i>The Bookman.</i></p> + +<p>"No stronger novel pleading the cause of woman has yet been written than +'The Precipice.'"—<i>Los Angeles Times.</i></p> + +<p>"The author knows life and human nature thoroughly, and she has written +out of ripened perceptions and a full heart ... a book which men and +women alike will be better for reading, of which any true hearted author +might be proud."—<i>Chicago Record Herald.</i></p> + +<p>"So absolutely true to life that it is hard to consider it +fiction."—<i>Boston Post.</i></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="By_HENRY_SYDNOR_HARRISON" id="By_HENRY_SYDNOR_HARRISON"></a>By HENRY SYDNOR HARRISON</h2> + +<h3>V. V.'S EYES</h3> + + +<p>"'V. V.'s Eyes' is a novel of so elevated a spirit, yet of such strong +interest, unartificial, and uncritical, that it is obviously a +fulfillment of Mr. Harrison's intention to 'create real +literature.'"—<i>Baltimore News.</i></p> + +<p>"In our judgment it is one of the strongest and at the same time most +delicately wrought American novels of recent years."—<i>The Outlook.</i></p> + +<p>"'V. V.'s Eyes' is an almost perfect example of idealistic realism. It +has the soft heart, the clear vision and the boundless faith in humanity +that are typical of our American outlook on life."—<i>Chicago +Record-Herald.</i></p> + +<p>"A delicate and artistic study of striking power and literary quality +which may well remain the high-water mark in American fiction for the +year.... Mr. Harrison definitely takes his place as the one among our +younger American novelists of whom the most enduring work may be hoped +for."—<i>Springfield Republican.</i></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="By_Mrs_Romilly_Fedden" id="By_Mrs_Romilly_Fedden"></a>By Mrs. Romilly Fedden</h2> + +<h3>THE SPARE ROOM</h3> + + +<p>"A bride and groom, a villa in Capri, a spare room and seven guests +(assorted varieties) are the ingredients which go to make this +thoroughly amusing book."—<i>Chicago Evening Post.</i></p> + +<p>"Bubbling over with laughter ... distinctly a book to read and chuckle +over."—<i>Yorkshire Observer.</i></p> + +<p>"Mrs. Fedden has succeeded in arranging for her readers a constant fund +of natural yet wildly amusing complications."—<i>Springfield Republican.</i></p> + +<p>"A clever bit of comedy that goes with spirit and sparkle, Mrs. Fedden's +little story shows her to be a genuine humorist.... She deserves to be +welcomed cordially to the ranks of those who can make us laugh."—<i>New +York Times.</i></p> + +<p>"Brimful of rich humor."—<i>Grand Rapids Herald.</i></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="By_Meredith_Nicholson" id="By_Meredith_Nicholson"></a>By Meredith Nicholson</h2> + +<h3>OTHERWISE PHYLLIS</h3> + + +<p>"The most delightful novel-heroine you've met in a long time. You like +it all, but you love Phyllis."—<i>Chicago Inter-Ocean.</i></p> + +<p>"A true-blue, genuine American girl of the 20th century."—<i>Boston +Globe.</i></p> + +<p>"Phyllis is a fine creature.... 'Otherwise Phyllis' is a 'comfortable, +folksy, neighborly tale' which is genuinely and unaffectedly American in +its atmosphere and point of view."—<i>Hamilton Wright Mabie, in the +Outlook.</i></p> + +<p>"'Phil' Kirkwood—'Otherwise Phyllis'—is a creature to welcome to our +hearth, not to our shelf, for she does not belong among the things that +are doomed to become musty."—<i>Boston Herald.</i></p> + +<p>"Phyllis is a healthy, hearty, vivacious young woman of prankish +disposition and inquiring mind.... About the best example between book +covers of the American girl whose general attitude toward mankind is one +of friendliness."—<i>Boston Advertiser.</i></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="By_Grant_Richards" id="By_Grant_Richards"></a>By Grant Richards</h2> + +<h3>VALENTINE</h3> + + +<p>"A far better novel than its predecessor, 'Caviare.'"—<i>London +Athenæum.</i></p> + +<p>"Cheeriness, youth, high spirits and the joy of life—these are the +principal ingredients of this novel."—<i>London Telegraph.</i></p> + +<p>"In 'Valentine' the action is laid almost wholly in London, with +occasional week ends at Paris.... 'Valentine' is a good story about +enjoyably human people, told with the rich personal charm of the +accomplished raconteur."—<i>Boston Transcript.</i></p> + +<p>"Its details and all the actions of all connected with its details are +worked out with a realistic thoroughness that makes the story seem a +piece of recorded history.... Distinctly light reading, clever, +engaging, skillfully wrought."—<i>Churchman.</i></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="By_Sarah_Morgan_Dawson" id="By_Sarah_Morgan_Dawson"></a>By Sarah Morgan Dawson</h2> + +<h3>A CONFEDERATE GIRL'S DIARY</h3> + + +<p>"A living voice from the past of the Civil War comes to us from the +pages of 'A Confederate Girl's Diary.'... It is fascinatingly +interesting, a volume of real life.... A very human document, and one +remarkably mature and just, to have been written by so young a girl in +times so trying."—<i>Chicago Tribune.</i></p> + +<p>"No such intimate diary of the war from a woman's point of view has yet +been given to the world, and certainly no diary of such unusual literary +merit."—<i>San Francisco Argonaut.</i></p> + +<p>"We can but wonder that this maiden of the sixties could have created +and left to posterity such an adequate, convincing and psychologically +perfect portrayal of a woman of the South in the era that closed with +the surrender at Appomattox.... Not a page of the story could be spared. +No one can wonder at the intense courage and bravery of the Southern +soldiers after reading with what passionate faith and devotion these +fiery-hearted Southern women sent them into battle."—<i>Boston +Transcript.</i></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="By_Mary_Johnston" id="By_Mary_Johnston"></a>By Mary Johnston</h2> + +<h3>HAGAR</h3> + + +<p>"Hagar will stand out as one of the splendid woman characters of modern +fiction—serene and strong, an ideal feminist and a thorough +American."—<i>Portland (Me.) Telegram.</i></p> + +<p>"A splendid story ... not the least part of its charm is that delightful +atmosphere of Virginia family life with which Miss Johnston's readers +are familiar."—<i>Baltimore Evening Sun.</i></p> + +<p>"A powerful plea for woman suffrage in the guise of gripping +fiction."—<i>Springfield Republican.</i></p> + +<p>"Feminism has never had a more human exposition. It is a book notable +for sane methods as well as a delightful plot."—<i>Literary Digest.</i></p> + +<p>"Hagar is one of the most admirable of Miss Johnston's creations and the +novel is a worthy addition to Miss Johnston's works."—<i>Philadelphia +Record.</i></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="By_KATE_DOUGLAS_WIGGIN" id="By_KATE_DOUGLAS_WIGGIN"></a>By KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN</h2> + +<h3>The Story of Waitstill Baxter</h3> + + +<p>"It cannot fail to prove a delight of delights to 'Rebecca of Sunnybrook +Farm' enthusiasts."—<i>Chicago Inter-Ocean.</i></p> + +<p>"All admirers of Jane Austen will enjoy Waitstill Baxter.... The +solution the reader must find out for himself. It is a triumph of +ingenuity. The characters are happy in their background of Puritan +village life. The drudgery, the flowers, the strictness in morals and +the narrowness of outlook all combine to form a harmonious +picture."—<i>The London Times.</i></p> + +<p>"Always generously giving of her best, and delightful as that best +always is, Mrs. Wiggin has provided us with something even better in +'Waitstill Baxter.'"—<i>Montreal Star.</i></p> + +<p>"In the strength of its sympathy, in the vivid reality of the lives it +portrays, this story will be accepted as the very best of all the +popular books that Mrs. Wiggin has written for an admiring +constituency."—<i>Wilmington Every Evening.</i></p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Clark's Field, by Robert Herrick + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLARK'S FIELD *** + +***** This file should be named 30736-h.htm or 30736-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/0/7/3/30736/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Clark's Field + +Author: Robert Herrick + +Release Date: December 22, 2009 [EBook #30736] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLARK'S FIELD *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + CLARK'S FIELD + + BY ROBERT HERRICK + + +BOSTON AND NEW YORK +HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY +The Riverside Press Cambridge +1914 + +COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY ROBERT HERRICK +ALL RIGHTS RESERVED +_Published June 1914_ + + + + +CLARK'S FIELD + + +The other day I happened to be in the town where I was born and not far +from the commonplace house in the humbler quarter of the town where my +parents were living at the time of my birth, half a century and more +ago. I am not fond of my native town, although I lived in the place +until I was seventeen or eighteen years old. It was never a +distinguished spot and seems to have gained nothing as yet from having +been my birthplace. It has some reputation of its own, however, but that +is due to the enduring popularity of a certain cookstove that has long +been manufactured there, the "Stearns and Frost Cooker," known to many +housewives of several generations. In my youth the Stearns and Frost +stove works were reputed to be the largest in the world, and most of the +plain citizens of Alton were concerned in one way or another with them. +I do not happen to be interested in the manufacture or sale, or I may +add the use, of the domestic cookstove. As a boy I always thought the +town a dull, ugly sort of place, and although it has grown marvelously +these last thirty years, having been completely surrounded and absorbed +by the neighboring city of B----, it did not seem to me that day when I +revisited it to have grown perceptibly in grace.... + +Having a couple of spare hours before meeting a dinner engagement, I +descended into a subway and was shot out in less than ten minutes from +the heart of the city to the old "Square" of Alton,--a journey that took +us formerly from half to three quarters of an hour, and in cold or rainy +weather, of which there is a good deal in Alton, seemed truly +interminable. From the "Square," which no longer had the noble amplitude +of my memory, the direct way to Fuller Place lay up the South Road,--a +broad thoroughfare, through the center of which there used to trickle +occasionally a tiny horse-drawn vehicle to and from the great city of +B----. South Road, I found, had changed its name to the more pompous +designation of State Avenue, and it was noisy and busy enough to accord +with my childish imagination of it, but none too large for the mammoth +moving-vans in which the electric railroad now transported the +inhabitants. These shot by me in bewildering numbers. I had chosen to +make the rest of my journey on foot, trying leisurely to revive old +memories and sensations. For a few blocks I succeeded in picking out +here and there a familiar object, but by the time I reached the +cross-street where we used to descend from the street-cars and penetrate +the lane that led to Fuller Place I was completely at sea. The ample +wooden houses fronting the South Road, each surrounded by its green lawn +with appropriate shrubbery, had all given way before the march of brick +business blocks. Even the "Reformed Methodist" church on the corner of +Lamb Street had been replaced by a stone structure that discreetly +concealed its denominational quality from the passer-by. Beyond the +church there had been a half-mile of unoccupied land fronting on the +Road, but now the line of "permanent improvements" ran unbroken as far +as the eye could see. Into this maze of unfamiliar buildings I plunged +and wandered at random for half an hour through blocks of brick stores, +office buildings, factories, tenements,--chiefly tenements it seemed to +me. Off in one corner of the district instead of high tenement buildings +there was something almost worse, rows of mean, little two-story brick +cottages that ranged upwards along a gentle slope that I tried to fancy +was Swan's Hill,--a dangerous descent where my older brothers and I were +once allowed to coast on our "double-runner." I will not weary the +reader with further details of my wandering with its disappointment and +shattered illusions, which can in no way be of interest to any but the +one in search of his past, and of purely sentimental importance to him. +It is, of course, a common form of egotism to chronicle such small-beer +of one's origin, but it happens to have nothing to do with my purpose. + +Enough to say that at last I discovered Fuller Place,--a mean, little +right-angled street that led nowhere; but from one end to the other I +could not find my old home. Its site must now be occupied by one of +those ugly five-story apartment boxes that spring like weeds in old +towns and cities. As I lingered in front of the brick wall that I judged +must very nearly cover the site of my birthplace, I tried to understand +the sensation of utter unfamiliarity with which the whole place filled +me. The answer came to me in a flash as I turned away from Fuller +Place,--Clark's Field no longer existed! Its place was completely filled +by the maze of brick and mortar in which for the better part of an hour +I had lost myself. There was nothing surprising that after a third of a +century a large, vacant field should have been carved up into streets, +alleys, and lots, and be covered with buildings to house the growing +population of a city. It is one of the usual commonplaces in our +American cities and towns. But to me the total disappearance of Clark's +Field seemed momentous. That large, open tract near my old home had more +significance, at least in memory, than the home itself. It was +intricately interwoven with all the imaginative and more personal life +that I had known as a boy. One corner of the irregular open land known +as Clark's Field had abutted my father's small property in Fuller Place, +and I and my older brothers and our friends had taken advantage of this +fact to open an unauthorized entrance into the Field through the board +fence in the rear yard. Over that fence lay freedom from parental +control and family tasks, and there was also, it happened, a certain bed +of luscious strawberries which we regularly looted until the market +gardener, who at the time leased this corner of Clark's Field, resigned +himself to the inevitable and substituted winter cabbages for the +strawberries,--a crop he had never been able to get to market. + +From the gardener's beds and small forcing-houses the land stretched +away unbroken by cultivation or building to that Swan's Hill where we +coasted and farther to the suburban estates of several affluent +citizens,--I presume the homes of Stearns and Frost of stove fame and +others no longer remembered. These places, with their stately trees and +greenhouses and careful lawns, have also been merged into the domain of +brick and mortar and concrete. To the right of the market garden, +between us and the South Road, lay the level, treeless tract, about +fifty acres in extent, which was specifically known as Clark's Field, +although all the unused land in the neighborhood had originally belonged +to the Clark farm. The Field was carefully fenced in with high white +palings,--too high for a small boy to climb safely in a hurry. Certain +large signs, at the different corners, averred that the Field was for +sale and would be divided into suitable lots for building purposes, and +also that trespassers were so little desired that they would be +prosecuted by law. These signs were regularly defaced with stones and +snowballs according to season, and were as regularly reerected every +spring by the hopeful owner or his agent. For in spite of its difficult +paling and warning signs, Clark's Field remained our favorite ball-field +and recreation spot where in summer we dug caves and skated when the +autumn rains were obliging enough to come before the frost. I suppose +that we destroyed the signs as a point of honor, and preferred Clark's +Field to all the other open land free to us because we could see no +reason for the prohibition. At any rate, we "trespassed" upon it at all +hours of day and night, and many a time have I ripped my clothes on the +sharp points of those palings in my breathless haste to escape some real +or fancied pursuit by one in authority. We had not only the regular +police--the "cops"--to contend with, but we believed that old man Clark +employed private watchmen and even descended to the mean habit of +sneaking about the Field himself, peering through the close palings to +snare us. There must have been some fire in all this smoke of memory, +for I distinctly recall one occasion that resulted disastrously to me +and has left with me such a vivid picture that its origin must have been +real. I was one of the younger and less athletic of our gang and had +been nabbed by the fat policeman on our beat and led ignominiously +through the streets of Alton by the collar of my coat,--not to the +police station in the "Square," nor to my father's house where my older +brothers had often been brought in similar disgrace. This time the +policeman, with the ingenuity of a Persian cadi, took me through the +public streets direct to headquarters,--the home of Mr. Samuel Clark. It +was, I believe, the only occasion on which I ever met the owner of +Clark's Field, certainly the only time I ever had speech with him; not +that there was much speech from me then. As I was reluctantly urged up +the long graveled drive of the respectable wooden house near the Square, +I saw an old, white-haired man getting into his family carriage with +some difficulty. The large, heavy person of the owner of Clark's Field +seemed to me a very formidable object when he turned upon me a pair of +dark, scowling eyes beneath bushy white brows and muttered something +about "bad boys." Those eyes and a curious trembling of the heavy +limbs--due to palsy, I suppose--are the only things I recollect of +Samuel Clark. Nor do I remember what he said to me beyond calling me a +bad boy or what judgment he meted out. All I know is that I returned +home without visiting the "lockup" behind the Square and became the +subject of a protracted and animated family discussion. My mother, +unexpectedly, took my part, inveighing against the "ogre" of a Clark who +deprived "nice" boys of the enjoyment of his useless field, and urged my +father, who had some acquaintance with fact as well as with law, to "do +something about Clark's Field." My father, I think, was at last +persuaded to visit the owner of the field to see what lawful +arrangements could be made so that well-behaved boys might freely and +honorably use the Field for their pleasure, until it should be disposed +of to builders. (Which, of course, would have taken from it every shred +of charm!) Whether in fact he made some such arrangement I cannot +remember, nor whether having been once caught I was sufficiently +intimidated by my visit to old Clark. All I know is that as long as we +remained in Alton, the Field continued its useless, forlorn, unoccupied +existence, jealously surrounded by a dilapidated though constantly +patched fence, with its numerous signs inviting prospective purchasers +to consult with the "owner"--signs that were regularly destroyed by +succeeding generations of boys. Already in my youth the busy town was +growing far beyond Clark's Field, along the South Road towards the new +railroad station; but the Field remained in dreary isolation from all +this new life until long after I had left the town. + +As I have said, this empty field of fifty acres was the most permanent +experience of my youth. Its large, level surface, so persistently +offered to unwilling purchasers of real estate, seized hold of my boyish +imagination. I invented mysterious reasons for its condition, which as +time went on must have been influenced by what I heard at the family +table of the Clarks and their possessions. Now it is all inextricably +woven in my memory into a web of fact and fancy. The Field stood for me +during those fertile years as the physical symbol of the unknown, the +mysterious,--the source of adventure and legend,--long, long after I had +outgrown childish imaginings and had become fully involved in what we +like to call the serious matters of life. To-day I had but to close my +eyes and think of Fuller Place and my boyhood there to see that lonely +field, jealously hedged about by its fence of tall white palings,--see +it in all its former emptiness and mystery. + +Of Clark's Field and the Clarks I mused as I retraced my way through the +maze of living that had been planted upon the old open land. All this +close-packed brick and mortar, these dull streets and high business +buildings, had been crowded man-fashion into the free, wind-swept field +of my fancy. Five thousand people at least must now be living and +largely have their being on our old playground,--a small town in itself. +And the change had come about in the last fifteen years or less. How had +it been brought to pass? Why after all the years of idleness that it had +endured had a use for Clark's Field been found? Something must have +broken that spell which had effectually restrained prospective +purchasers of real estate through all the years when the city was +pressing on beyond this point far away into the country.... The facts +are not all dime-novelish, but very human and significant, and by chance +the main thread of the real story of Clark's Field came to my knowledge +shortly after my visit, correcting and enlarging the impressions I had +formed from family gossip, the talk of playmates, and my own +imagination. And this story--the story of Clark's Field--I deem well +worth setting forth.... + +That same evening, when I entered the city hotel where I was to dine, I +found my friend walking impatiently up and down the lobby, for in my +search for the past I had forgotten my engagement and was late. Scarcely +greeting my guest, I burst out,-- + +"Edsall, do you remember Clark's Field?" (For Edsall had once lived in +Alton, though not in my part of the town.) + +"Yes," he replied, somewhat surprised by my breathless eagerness. "What +about it?" + +"I want to know what happened to it and why?" + +Edsall, being a lawyer with a special interest in real estate, could +tell me many of the known facts about the Clark property over which +there had been some curious litigation. So the story grew that evening +over our dinner, to be filled in later by many details that came to me +unexpectedly,--I suppose because I was interested in the fate of Clark's +Field. + + + + +I + + +The Clarks, as their name implies, were of common English blood, +originally of some clerkly tribe and so possessing no distinctive +patronymic. These Clarks were ordinary Yankee farmers, who had been +settled in one place for upwards of two hundred years. Very likely some +ancestor of my old Samuel Clark had stood at Concord with "the embattled +farmers." I know not. He easily could have done so, for Alton was not +many miles distant from the battle field. But little either spiritual or +militant fervor from these Puritan ancestors seems to have come down to +Samuel, who in 1860 occupied the family farm of one hundred and forty +acres, "more or less," according to the loose description of old deeds. +Samuel, indeed, had not enough patriotism to sympathize with his son, +John Parsons, who finally ran off to the war, as so many boys did, to +escape the monotony of farm life. For Samuel, his father, was a plain, +ordinary, selfish, and not very thrifty New England farmer, who laid +down his fields every year to the same crops of oats and rye and hay, +kept a few sheep and hogs and cows, and in the easy, shiftless way of +his kind drained the soil of his old farm, with the narrow consolation +that it would somehow last his time. + +So little ambition he had that shortly after his son went to the war, +thus depriving him of free labor, he "retired" from his farm,--that is, +he sold what he could of its fields and pastures and bought himself a +house on Church Street near the Square in Alton, probably the same house +where I was taken for my one interview with him. What he did not sell of +the farm he rented to another more energetic farmer, one Everitt Adams, +the old market-gardener whom I remembered. Adams with more thrift and +the great incentive of necessity built hothouses and went in for +market-gardening to supply the wants of the neighboring city, which was +already making itself felt upon the surrounding country. Hence the long +rows of celery, cabbage, lettuce, and peas that I remember across my +father's back fence. All the near-by farmers were doing much the same +thing, turning the better part of their land into gardens. They would +start before dawn in summer time for the city, making their way along +the South Road, which was the main thoroughfare into this part of the +country. Many a time have I seen their covered wagons returning from the +city about the time when I was starting for school, the horses wearily +plodding along at a walk, the farmer or his boy asleep in the wagon on +his empty crates. + +I don't know what sort of an arrangement old Clark made with his tenant, +but Adams, who was a hard-working fellow with a tribe of strong +children, must have found the business profitable, especially after he +built the forcing-houses and began to supply unseasonable luxuries to +the prosperous citizens of B----. Prices ran high in the years of the +great war, and those farmers who stayed at home and cultivated their +gardens industriously made money at every turn. At any rate, it was +common knowledge in the neighborhood of Fuller Place that Everitt Adams +wished to purchase Clark's Field from its owner--the last piece of the +old farm that he had not hitherto disposed of--and had the money to pay +for it in the River Savings Bank. Indeed, gossip said that the price was +agreed upon,--five thousand dollars,--which was considered a fair price +in those days for fifty acres, six or seven miles from the city. And +Samuel Clark, so tradition also says, was anxious to sell his last field +for that price. His son had returned from the war wounded and incapable +of work, and his father wanted to set him up in a small shop in the +Square. The son, in spite of his invalidism, married shortly after his +return from the ranks and this made the need of ready money in the +Church Street house all the more urgent. + +Trouble came when the lawyer employed by the market-gardener discovered +what old Clark must have known all the time, and that is that the Field +had a cloud upon its title, or rather an absolute restriction which +would render worthless any title that Samuel might give alone. To +explain this legal obstacle we must go back before the war and my day +into the previous generation. There had been a family quarrel between +Samuel and his older brother, which had resulted finally in Edward +Stanley--the elder son--going off to seek his fortunes in the new West, +which was attracting young men from the East at that time. This was in +1840 or thereabouts when Edward S. left his father's home in Alton, and +nothing more had been heard of him except the vague report from some +other exile from Alton that he had been seen in Chicago where he had +become a carpenter, and it was said had married. Probably Samuel, who +was then a young man and recently married with two little children, had +no great desire to have his elder brother's existence recalled to his +father. Everything I have learned about Samuel confirms the impression +of him I had as a boy, that he was not the kind of man whose conscience +would be sensitive in such matters. He probably considered that his +brother Ed, having taken his fate in his hands, should expect nothing +from the more timid members of the family who had stuck by the old farm. +But when the elder Clark died, a will was found in which to Samuel's +disgust an undivided half interest in the Field--the best part of the +farm--was left to his eldest son and his heirs. + +There is no evidence that Samuel, at the time of his father's death, +ever took any measures, even of the most casual sort, to hunt up this +elder brother or find out if he had left any children. He made some sort +of deal with a younger brother who could not be ignored and continued to +work the old farm, living in his father's house on Swan's Hill. Probably +a long term of undisturbed possession of the farm convinced him that he +was the sole legitimate owner of the property, that the land was +absolutely and wholly his to do with what he would. And so, as we have +seen, in his old age he tried to dispose of the Field to the +market-gardener for five thousand dollars. But the lawyer raised the +obvious objection that the Field could not be sold without Edward's +consent, and of Edward nothing whatsoever was known. Some attempt was +made at this time by John Clark on behalf of his father to trace the +missing Edward--a feeble attempt. He wrote to an army friend in Chicago, +who found evidence that Edward S. Clark, a carpenter, had lived in the +city for five or six years and had moved thence to St. Louis. No trace +of him could be found in St. Louis, where John also wrote to the +postmaster. At that time, it should be remembered, St. Louis was the +port of departure for the little-known West, and possibly Edward and his +family had taken boat up the Missouri and gone on to the distant gold +fields or had merely drifted out into the neighboring prairie country +and stuck in some nook. It was all speculation. Nothing further of +Edward Stanley Clark was ever known by either Samuel or his son John. He +never announced himself to his Eastern relatives. + +But Samuel could not sell the Field. Old Adams was altogether too shrewd +to spend five thousand dollars upon a property that had such an +uncertainty about its title, and in those days the lawyers whose advice +they were able to get could not suggest a satisfactory way of evading +the difficulty. No such thing as a title guaranty company had ever been +heard of in the old Commonwealth of M----. There was nothing to do but +wait in the hope that either information about Edward S. would be +forthcoming some day or that in time the law could be invoked to gloss +over the title. But Samuel, in hope of inducing some gullible purchaser +to run the risk, had the Field carefully fenced and put signs upon it. +For he needed the money, and needed it more as the years went by and +John's invalidism turned into chronic laziness and incapacity for +earning a livelihood. Everitt Adams moved away after a time and his +successors who leased the Field were never satisfactory. There were +taxes and assessments to be met, which grew all the time with the rising +value of adjacent land, as well as lawyer's fees. The income from the +small part of the Field now under cultivation was hardly adequate to +meet these, and after a time this income ceased altogether and the Field +became an absolute burden. For nobody seemed willing either to rent or +buy the property. + +Of course, the son John, if he had had the energy, might have followed +old Adams's example and worked the Field for a time, until the gas and +sewer mains had corrupted the soil and spoiled it for market gardening. +But he preferred to rely upon his record as an old soldier and secured a +small clerkship in the Alton Gas Company, and some years later obtained +a pension. Of course, all this trouble with the Field supplied both him +and his father with ample cause for grumbling. Samuel had never liked +his brother Edward, who seemed almost spitefully to be turning this +trick against him in his old age, and he handed on his grievance to John +and his wife. The small, wooden house in Church Street contained a +narrow, ungracious family life, it can be seen, of petty economies and +few interests. No wonder that the Field--the one important family +possession remaining--became the favorite topic of discussion and +speculation. The city was growing fast, and Alton was already its most +considerable suburb. The lines of modern life had crept up to within +call of the old Field before the death of Samuel. So the old fellow was +not indulging in much exaggeration when he bragged towards the end that +he wouldn't take twenty-five thousand dollars for his property, although +ten years earlier he had been eager to sell for five thousand dollars! + +That twenty-five thousand dollars, however, was as far away as the five +thousand, and the life in the Church Street house was more penurious and +uncomfortable than it had ever been on the old farm, which had provided +a coarse plenty for many generations. The Clarks were obviously running +out, and when the old man died in 1882 he must have had the bitter +consciousness that the family destiny had dwindled in his hands. From +being prosperous and respected farmers, living on their own land in +their ancestral square wooden house with its one enormous chimney, they +were living in real poverty in a small house on a dusty side street off +the noisy Square, which was not what it had once been as a place of +residence. And they did not even own this Church Street house--merely +clung to it from inertia and bad habit. The only thing they did own was +Clark's Field, and Mrs. John sometimes thought it would be better if +that had gone the way of the rest of the Clark farm, so insidious was +its moral influence upon the men as well as costly in the way of +outgo.... + +If a man's accomplishment in this life is to be reckoned by the +substantial gains he has made on his father's estate and condition, old +Samuel Clark had nothing to be proud of when he was borne to his grave +in the new cemetery a mile south of Clark's Field. He had left nothing +to his children but the Field, encumbered with the undivided and +indivisible half interest belonging to his brother Edward Stanley, were +he alive at this date, and to his heirs if he had any. + + + + +II + + +The possession of property of any kind gives a curious consciousness of +dignity to the human being who is its owner, due very likely to the +traditional estimate of the importance of all possessions, and to the +mystical but generally erroneous belief that property is in some way an +outward and visible proof of the worth or the ability of its +possessor--or his forbears. Even the possession of a possibility such as +Clark's Field--which was of no positive value to the Clarks, and indeed +an increasing source of expense and anxiety to the impoverished family, +as taxes rose in company with the rise of all values--conferred upon the +Clarks some small consideration in Alton and made them feel the dignity +and the tragedy of property ownership. John, who was nothing but a +seedy, middle-aged clerk, none too careful of his appearance and +uneasily aware of his failure, had ample excuse to himself for his +shortcomings and willingness to live on a kind Government, because he +had been hardly used by fate in the matter of his inheritance. As the +property that might have been his was just beyond his reach, he had a +small swagger of superiority in the gas office, and the tradition was +well established there that he belonged to a family "land poor,"--the +most genteel form of poverty if any form of poverty can be genteel. Even +old farmer Samuel had tottered about the Square on his malacca stick and +exchanged the time of day with the small merchants there, with a sense +of his own importance as the owner of "a valuable piece of property" +temporarily under legal disability. + +As for the women of the family this sense of unrealized importance grew +tenfold in their consciousness, because they had few opportunities of +encountering reality in their narrow lives and because as women they +were apt to dream of wealth, even of visionary wealth. It cannot be said +that Clark's Field had much to do with John's marriage which had taken +place in 'sixty-seven, because at that early date it was not considered +a large expectation even by the Clarks. But John had a younger sister, +Ada or "Addie" Clark as she was always known, and over Addie's destiny +Clark's Field had a large and sinister influence as I shall presently +show. At the time when her father finally abandoned his farm in favor of +town life, Addie was a mere child, so young that she could forget the +wholesome pictures of domestic farm industry that she must have shared. +Or, if there lingered in the background of her memory a consciousness of +her mother's butter-making, feeding the pigs, cooking for the occasional +farm hands, washing and mending, and all the other common tasks of this +laborious condition, she conveniently ignored it as women easily +contrive to do. Her life was centered in the Church Street house where +the Clarks had at first indulged in certain pretensions. Addie had gone +to the Alton schools and there associated with the better class of +children,--a doctor's daughter and a retired bank clerk's family being +the more intimate of these. As a young girl she had a transparent +complexion and a thin sort of American prettiness that unfortunately +quickly faded, under the influences of the Church Street house, into a +sallow commonplaceness. But Addie unlike the men of the family never +wholly abandoned her aspirations and ambitions. She was very careful +about the young men whom she "encouraged," and the families into whose +houses she would enter. Thus she sacrificed her slim chances of +matrimony on the altar of a visionary family pride. One of her +high-school mates, the son of the prosperous liveryman in Alton, might +have married her had he been more warmly met, and taken her with him to +Detroit, where in time he became the well-to-do head of a large +automobile manufactory. This was not the single instance of her family +pride. + +It is a fascinating subject to speculate what would have happened to Ada +if she had had the moral vigor to shake herself loose from the hampering +family traditions of riches to be, and struck out for an independent, +wholesome life as women have been known to do under similar +circumstances. But Alton, like most old towns, had strong class +traditions that exercised an iron influence upon feminine destinies. It +was, of course, hopeless for Ada, the daughter of a retired farmer who +could not sell his farm, to come into close social contact with the +local aristocracy, which consisted at this time of the Stearns and Frost +relationship together with a few well-to-do merchants from B---- who had +always lived in Alton and owned those large semi-suburban estates in its +environs. But at least she could jealously guard herself from falling +into the mire of the commoner sort of small shopkeepers who were +pressing into the Square. The end was that Addie fast became what was +then called, without any circumlocution, an "old maid," and an +uninteresting one, whose days were occupied by church and gossip, and +who went over and over the threadbare family tradition. Old Mrs. Clark, +her mother, was a realist and never forgot the farm days. She was enough +of a woman to regret sincerely the fatal mistake that the family had +made in trying to become something other than their destiny had fitted +them to be. She was a thorn in the sentimental flesh of Addie, whose +thoughts preferred to play with the dignities and ease that would be +hers when the Field had been sold. Addie dressed herself as finely as +she could on Sundays and in the afternoons would walk down the South +Road past the abandoned Field and remark to a friend upon the family +property and the misfortune that kept them all down in the depths of +poverty. As the years went on and the price of real estate advanced, her +tale sounded less ridiculous than it might. But it was a bloodless sort +of consolation even for Addie, and all her friends knew the story by +heart and listened to it merely with kind indulgence. "A bird in the +hand," etc., is a proverb peculiarly to the liking of Yankees. They do +not take much interest in Peruvian mines or other forms of +non-negotiable wealth unless they see a chance to work them off on a +more credulous public. As for old Mrs. Clark, when she became tied to +her chair, she was bitter on the topic. "That dratted old Field!" she +would say with the brutal directness of the realist; "your father would +have sold the whole of it for five thousand dollars and been +thankful!"--a fact that seemed to her children of no importance. + +When the old woman was laid away in Woodlawn beside her husband, Addie +could give free rein to her fancies, untroubled by the darts of the +realist. But the family fortunes soon became most desperate. Fortunately +John had no children, his one small son having died as a baby. His wife, +who had perhaps become tired of the family fortune as it never quite +realized itself, tried to prod her shiftless husband into a greater +activity. But except for the getting of the pension, which was put +through in 1885, John added little to the family purse, and before his +mother's death lost his position in the gas office, a new administration +of the company holding that a municipal utility was not an asylum for +old soldiers. The trouble was, as Mrs. John knew, and as Ada always +refused to recognize, John drank. At first it was a convivial weakness +indulged in only at the reunions of old veterans,--John was a most +ardent "Vet,"--but it became a habit that took away his little +usefulness for anything. So now the family for steady income was reduced +to the pension, which was only twenty-two dollars a month. Clearly +something had to be done. Mrs. John took in lodgers in the Church Street +house, a clerk or two from the neighboring shops. And Addie finally +brought herself to learn the manipulation of the typewriter, which was +fast becoming a woman's profession, and found a position in a large +store in the city. + +It would seem that the Clark fortunes had reached their lowest ebb: +family extinction was all that now remained for them. The Church Street +house rested solely, save for the small pension, on the exertions of two +ineffective women. It could just get on as it was, and if the family +life had never been a bright and cheerful one, it was now drearier than +ever. Then Addie married. She was nearly if not quite forty years old, +and neither her brother nor sister-in-law expected such an event. She +was sallow, thin, and rather querulous in temperament. Very likely Addie +felt that marriage could not make her lot worse, and as middle-age +threatened, she accepted the defeat of her ambitions and in the spirit +of better-late-than-never struck out for herself in the race for +personal happiness, throwing over the burden of Clark's Field. + +At any rate, she was married to William Scarp, a fellow-clerk in Minot +Brothers--wholesale wool. Addie represented that Mr. Scarp was of +excellent Southern blood from somewhere in North Carolina. It is +needless to enter into that nebulous question. He was earning thirty +dollars a week with Minot Brothers when they became engaged and was a +few years younger than his bride. The firm gave him a five-dollar +increase of salary on his marriage, old Savage remarking facetiously +that he believed in rewarding courage. The couple went to live in the +city, and for a year or two they moved nomadically from one +boarding-house or cheap hotel to another. It may be presumed that Addie, +without any clear idea of deceiving, had misled William Scarp in the +matter of Clark's Field--her fixed delusion. The Field made this +marriage, and it was not a happy one. The John Clarks, who still hung on +in the Church Street house with an additional roomer, soon began to +suspect that Addie was not wholly happy in her married life. William had +a quick temper and was very plain-spoken about the "job" that Addie had +"put over him" in the matter of the Clark property, though in fact she +had exercised no more mendacity than women of forty in her position are +wont to do. At one time shortly after the marriage Scarp had an +"understanding" with John Clark about the family estate. When he learned +that the Field could not be sold in the present state of its title and +that such leases as had been made of it to meet taxes and other +obligations tied it up until the opening of the next century, he +expressed himself abusively. Later he suggested that a "syndicate" +should be formed to employ lawyers to straighten out the title and +dispose of the property piecemeal as the leases fell in. It seemed a +brilliant plan, quite modern in its sound, but alas! William, no more +than John, could finance the "syndicate." So the suggestion lapsed, and +the Scarps worried along on William's salary for a time, and then moved +to Philadelphia. What Addie's experiences were there, or in Cincinnati +and Indianapolis, to which cities they also wandered, I have no means of +knowing, nor did the John Clarks hear from her, except for a rare +penciled postcard. The Clarks, as may be observed, were no great +letter-writers. + +All is that one day in November of 1889, Addie arrived at the Church +Street house with a forlorn parcel of a little girl and a bedraggled bag +that contained her entire worldly possessions. She was ill and old. She +would say little about her husband, but later it came out in the +newspapers that William Scarp had been convicted of forgery and sent to +prison in Indiana (where he died soon after of consumption contracted in +prison). Addie had come back to the only human refuge she knew. She was +too ill and too beaten by life to work. She sat around in the Church +Street house dumbly for nearly a year, then died, leaving the forlorn, +pale little girl to her brother and sister-in-law as a legacy. This +child she had named Adelle, thus proving the persistence of her fancy +even in her forlornest hours. Ada or Addie was too common for the last +of the Clarks. She should at least have something poetic for name. For +who could say? She might some day become an heiress and shine in that +social firmament so much desired by her mother. In that event she should +not be handicapped by a vulgar name. As Addie had resumed her maiden +name after Scarp had been sent to prison, the little girl was destined +to grow up as Adelle Clark,--the last member of the Alton branch of the +Clarks, ultimate heiress to Clark's Field, should there be anything of +it left to inherit when the law let go. + +The silent little girl, who played about the lodgers' rooms in the dingy +Church Street house, was of course unaware of the weight of expectation +hanging to her. She was almost abnormally silent, perhaps because of her +depressing prenatal experiences as well as the forlorn environment of +the rooming-house,--perhaps because of physical and spiritual anaemia. +"She's a puny mite of a child," Mrs. John Clark said complainingly, +unpromising like everything Clark; nevertheless, the last of the sturdy +yeoman stock of Clarks. + + + + +III + + +That "weight of expectation" hanging to the little girl was not quite as +fantastic as might seem. It must be remembered that old Samuel before +his death, in pressing need of ready money to finance some foolish +venture of his son, had leased a good part of Clark's Field to some +speculative builders, who had covered that portion of the old pasture +that bordered the South Road with a leprous growth of cheap stores, +which brought in a fair return. The leases ran up to the new century. +Just why this precise term for the gambling venture had been chosen +probably only the lawyers who made the arrangement could say. Possibly +old Samuel had superstitious reasons for not pledging the family +expectation beyond the present century. He may have thought that the +turn of the century would bring about some profound change in the +customs and habits of society that the family could take advantage of. +At any rate, so it was. And it was not many years now to the close of +the century when Clark's Field would be released to its original owners +with all its shabby encumbrances. + +The field had gained enormously in value and importance in men's eyes +these last years. The city of B---- had eaten far into the country, +creating prosperous appendages in the way of modern suburbs for twenty +miles and more from Alton, and there was much talk of its annexing the +old town to itself, which it accomplished not long after. Those were the +days of the "greater" everything, the worship of size. Alton in fact was +now a city itself of no mean size, and the shallow stream of water that +nominally divided it from B---- was a mere boundary line. As men had +multiplied upon this spot of earth, needing land for dwelling and +business, envious eyes had been cast upon the Field, the last large +"undeveloped" tract anywhere near the great city. Men who were skillful +in such real estate "deals," greedy and ingenious in the various ways of +turning civic growth to private profit, were figuring upon the +possibility of getting hold of Clark's Field, when the short leases +expired, and after making the necessary "improvements" cutting it up for +sale. They saw fat profits in the transaction. Men needed it for their +lives; the community needed it for its growing corporate life. And yet +it was "tied up" with a legal disability--left largely useless and +waste. It looked as if when the legal spell was finally broken, as it +must be, and the land so long unprofitable and idle should be +apportioned to these human needs, it would be neither the Clarks nor the +community that would derive benefit from it,--certainly not the people +who would live upon it,--but some gang of skillful speculators, who knew +the precise moment to take advantage of the mechanism of the law and the +more uncertain mechanism of human nature so as to obtain for a small +amount what they could sell to others for much. The crisis in the +history of Clark's Field seemed approaching. + +It was time. The fence of high white palings that Samuel had jealously +maintained about his old field had long since completely disappeared. +Latterly the neighbors crisscrossed the vacant portions of the Field +with short cuts and contractors either dumped refuse upon it or burrowed +into it for gravel. The sod had long since been stripped from every foot +of its surface. In a word, it was treated as no man's land, so low had +the Clark family sunk in the world. And it was covered with a cloud of +invisible disabilities, further than the original difficulty created by +Edward S. in not leaving an address behind him. There were liens against +it by the city for improvements in the way of gas and sewer and water +pipes, and for taxes, as well as first, second, and third mortgages of a +dubious character that John in extremity had been forced to put upon the +Field in order to "carry" his expectation. Under this burden of +invisible lien as well as outward degradation Clark's Field had +struggled until 1898, and the ultimate doom was not far off. John +thought so and struggled less to preserve his inheritance. What he owned +of the Field was a diminishing fraction, long since negligible, were it +not for the marvelous increase in all real-estate values, due to the +growth of population in these parts and the activity of the country. It +was rumored about the Square that Clark's Field would shortly be sold +for taxes, and a tax title, poor as that is, would probably be the best +title that could ever be got for the Field. Capitalists and their +lawyers were already figuring on that basis for the distribution of the +property.... + +But before we concern ourselves in the plot of these greedy exploiters, +it would be well to go back for a time to the dingy Church Street house +and the pale little Adelle, who was now in her twelfth year. Her +ancestors, certainly, had done little for her physical being. She was a +plain, small child, with not enough active blood in her apparently to +make a vivid life under any circumstances. She was meek and +self-effacing,--two excellent virtues for certain spheres, but not for a +poor child in America at the opening of the new century! Her earliest +impressions of life must have been the dusty stairs and torn stair +carpet of her aunt's house, defaced under the dirty feet of many +transient "roomers," and next her aunt herself, a silent, morose woman +over fifty, who accepted life as nearly in the stoic spirit as her +education permitted. Mrs. John Clark had none of Addie's cheap +pretentions, fortunately: she was obviously the poor woman with a +worthless husband, who kept cheap lodgings for a livelihood. She was +kind enough to the little girl as such people have the time and the +energy to be kind. She could not give her much thought, and as soon as +Adelle was old enough to handle a broom or make beds she had to help in +the endless housework. At eight she was sent to school, however, to the +public school close by in the rear of the livery-stable, where she +learned what American children are supposed to learn in the grade +schools. At twelve she was a small, undersized, poorly dressed, +white-faced little girl, so little distinctive in any way that probably +hundreds exactly like her could be picked from the public schools of any +American city. If this story were a mere matter of fiction, we should be +obliged to endow Adelle with some marks of exceptionality of person, or +mind, or soul,--evident to the discerning reader even in her childhood. +She would already possess the rudiments of an individuality under her +Cinderella outside,--some poetic quality of day-dreaming or laughing or +sketching. But this is a plain chronicle of very plain people as they +actually found themselves in life, and it is not necessary to embellish +the truth so that it may please any reader's sensibilities or ideals. +Adelle Clark was a wholly ordinary, dumb little creature, neither +passionate nor spiritual. She laughed less than children of her age +because there was not much in her experience to laugh about. She talked +less--much less--than other little girls, because the Church Street +house was not a place to encourage conversation. She liked her aunt +rather better than her uncle, who was an untidy, not to say smelly, +person, who sat dozing in the kitchen much of the time, a few strands of +long gray hair vainly trying to cover the baldness of a blotchy head. +His principal occupation these latter years was being a "Vet." He was a +faithful attendant at all "post nights," "camp-fires," and veteran +"reunions," and when in funds visited neighboring posts where he had +friends. On his return from these festivities he was smellier and +stupider than ever,--that was all his small niece realized. He never did +any work, so far as she was aware, but as his wife had accepted the fact +and no longer discussed it in public, the little girl did not think much +about his idleness. That might be the man-habit generally. + +Adelle was in her thirteenth year and in the last grade of her school +when she first began to notice the presence of some strangers in the +Church Street house. She was not an observant child, and there was such +a succession of "roomers" in the house that a stranger's face aroused +little curiosity. But these men were better dressed than any roomers and +talked in tones of authority and conscious position. They held long +conversations with her uncle and aunt in the dining-room behind closed +doors, and once she saw a bundle of papers spread out upon the table. +These days her uncle and aunt talked much about titles, mortgages, +deeds, and other matters she did not understand nor ask about. But she +felt that something important was astir in the Church Street house, as a +child realizes vaguely such movements outside its own sphere. Once one +of the men, who was putting on his silk hat in the hall and preparing to +leave the house, inquired, "Is that the girl?" To which question her +uncle and aunt answered briefly, "Yes." The tone of the stranger was +exactly as if he had asked, "Is that the bundle of clothes we were +talking about?" + +Something was afoot of momentous importance to Adelle, as we shall +shortly discover. Fate once more in the person of a feeble Clark was +about to play her an unkind trick. For John, reduced to complete +incompetence by his life and his habit of drink, pestered by the +accumulating claims upon Clark's Field, had consented to an +"arrangement" that certain capitalists had presented to him through +their lawyers. They had urged him to sell to them all the remaining +equity that he held in the property, giving a quitclaim deed for himself +and his wife and for Adelle, whose legal guardian he was. The purchasers +would assume all the liabilities of the encumbered Field, the risk of +title, and for this complete surrender of the family interest in Clark's +Field, John Clark was to receive the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars +all told in cash. It was five times what his father had been anxious to +get for the same property, as the lawyers pointed out, when John in the +beginning talked large about the great possibilities of his Field. It +was true, so they said, that the property had increased in value in the +last twenty years, but so had the encumbrances increased, and there was +always the danger of expensive litigation and loss due to the cloudy +title, even after the lapse of fifty years since the disappearance of +Edward S. They could not see their way to offering another dollar for +the dubious gamble before them, so they said. And for this twenty-five +thousand dollars in ready money, all the family expectations were to be +cashed in, all the hopes of Samuel, the pretensions of Addie, the +desires and needs of John and his wife, not to mention the future of the +small Adelle. John hesitated.... + +In the end he was convinced, or his desire for some ready money overcame +his scruples. His wife, who was perhaps agreeably surprised to find that +the Clark expectations had any cash value, counseled him to accept the +offered terms. No doubt, she admitted, the lawyers were probably doing +them; that was the way of lawyers. But they had no money to spend on +other lawyers to find a better bargain or to engage in the speculation +upon the Field themselves. As for hanging on to Clark's Field, the +family had had enough of that. "A bird in the hand," etc. So the +numerous papers were drawn and John even touched a small advance +payment. Adelle remembered the discussions--not to say quarrels--between +her uncle and aunt over the use to which they should put the Clark +fortune when it should finally be theirs. John was for moving away from +Alton altogether, which was not what it had been once for residence he +said. He talked of going into the country and buying a farm. His wife, +who remembered how he had scorned to work the old Clark farm when it was +a paying possibility, smiled grimly at his talk. She wanted to take a +larger house in the neighborhood, furnish it better, and bid for a +higher class of roomers. Hers was, of course, the more sensible plan. +They were still discussing their plans, and the lawyers were taking +their time about preparing the interminable series of legal papers that +seemed necessary when the great Grand Army Encampment of 1900 came off +in Chicago. John, who had been obliged latterly to forego these annual +sprees, resolved to attend the reunion of his old comrades and "to go in +style." For this purpose he obtained a small sum from the prospective +purchasers of Clark's Field, who were only too ready to get him further +committed to their bargain by a payment down and a receipt on +account,--on condition, of course, that he sign an agreement to sell the +property when the necessary formalities could be satisfied. So he signed +with an easy flourish the simple agreement presented to him, pocketed +two hundred dollars, and bought a new suit of clothes with a black-felt +veteran's hat, the first he had had in many years. When Adelle watched +him strut down Church Street on the way to the train one hot July +morning, splendid in his new uniform with his white gloves and short +sword under his arm, she did not know that she herself had contributed +to this piece of self-indulgence her last right to a share in the Clark +possession,--her one inheritance of any value from her mother. Very +possibly she would not have said anything had she known all the facts, +had she been old enough to realize the significance of that signature +her uncle had given the lawyers a few days before. Probably she would +have accepted this act of fate as meekly as she had all else in her +short life. For it must be clearly understood that the signature was +irrevocable. No change of mind, no sober second thought coming into +John's cloudy mind, would be of any use. A contract of sale is as +binding under such circumstances as the deed itself. + +Adelle felt an unconscious relief in the absence of her uncle from the +house. There was an end to the disputes about the money, and his +unpleasant person no longer occupied the best chair in the kitchen. Her +aunt also seemed to be more cheerful than was her wont. It was the slack +season in the rooming business, and so the two had some spare time on +their hands in the long summer days and could dawdle about, an unusual +luxury. They even went to walk in the afternoons. Her aunt took Adelle +to see Clark's Field,--a forlorn expanse of empty land with a fringe of +flimsy one-story shops along its edge that did not attract the child. +She never remembered, naturally, what her aunt told her about the Field, +but she must have learned something of its story because she always had +in her mind a sense of the importance of this waste and desolate city +field. In her childish way she got a vague notion of some great wrong +that had been done about the land so that her uncle was smelly and +stupid and her aunt had to take in more roomers than she liked. That was +as close to the facts as she could get then--as close, it may be said, +as many people ever get.... Then they went to look at houses, a more +interesting occupation to the child. Her aunt seemed much concerned in +the comparative size and location and number of rooms of different +houses and this Adelle could understand. The family was going to move +sometime from the Church Street house.... In these simple ways the two +passed a quiet vacation of ten days. Then came a telegram, and three +days later arrived the remains of Veteran John Clark, accompanied by +members of the local G. A. R. post who had brought back the body of +their dead comrade. John Clark had kept his boasting word to his wife +that "this time he would show the boys a good time and prove to 'em that +his talk about his property wasn't all hot air!" He had in truth shown +himself such a good time that he could not stand a spell of excessively +hot weather, to which he succumbed like a sapped reed. A very +considerable funeral was arranged and conducted by the members of G. A. +R. Post Number I of Alton, to which John Clark had belonged. There was a +military band and the post colors, and a number of oldish men in blue +uniforms trailed behind the hearse all the way to the cemetery where the +veteran was laid away in the lot with his mother and father. Little +Adelle, riding in the first carriage with her aunt, observed all this +military display over the dead veteran, and concluded that she had done +her uncle an injustice during his life. It seemed that he was really a +much more important person than she had supposed him to be. This burial +was the last benefit poor John Clark received from a grateful country +for that spurt of patriotism or willfulness that had led him to run away +from the Clark farm to the war forty years before. + +And here really concludes the history of the Clarks in the story of +Clark's Field. For Adelle, upon whom the burden of the inheritance was +to fall, was only half a Clark at the most, and had largely escaped the +deadly tradition of family expectations under which Addie had been +blighted; while her aunt, of course, had no Clark blood in her veins and +had been cured of the Clark habit of expecting. + + + + +IV + + +It may easily be imagined that the veteran's untimely death at the Grand +Army Reunion caused more uneasiness in certain other quarters than it +did in the Church Street house, where John's going had its mitigations. +The lawyers who had arranged the purchase of the Clark interest in the +great Field did not really fear that their plans for the cheap capture +of the property would ultimately miscarry. But John's death must cause +further delay, which might possibly be improved by other interested +speculators. And so the legal representatives of the capitalists +concerned in the "deal" constituted themselves at once friends and +advisers of the widow. They assured her that a mere formality must be +satisfied before she could actually touch her husband's estate, and +promised to attend to the legal matters without expense to her, it being +understood, of course, that whenever the law allowed she should carry +out her husband's agreement to sell the Clark interest in the Field. +They even went so far as to offer further small advances to the widow if +she found herself in immediate need. But this the widow resolutely +refused. She was becoming a little suspicious of so much thoughtful +kindliness from these lawyers, whom after the prejudice of her sort she +was wont to regard as human harpies. She had her widow's pension and her +roomers, and her expenses would be considerably lessened by the death of +the incompetent veteran, who would no longer be begging money for his +"reunions." + +There was, of course, Adelle. Her uncle had been her legal guardian and +as such had intended to sell her interest in the Field for a pittance. +The lawyers assumed that her aunt would be appointed by the probate +court to the empty honor of guardianship. Otherwise they regarded her, +as everybody always did, as entirely negligible. And she so regarded +herself. The lawyers were prompt in having the guardianship question +brought up in the probate court for settlement first. It was introduced +there as a motion early in the fall term of court, the papers being +presented to the judge by the junior member of the distinguished firm of +B---- lawyers, Bright, Seagrove, and Bright. Any other judge, probably, +would have scribbled his initials then and there upon the printed +application for guardianship,--the affair being in charge of such +eminent counsel,--and there must have been an end altogether to Adelle's +expectations and of this story. That was what the lawyers naturally +expected. But this judge, after a hasty glance or two at the +application, took the matter under advisement. + +"Of course the old boy had to sleep upon it!" young Bright reported to +the senior members of the firm. The lawyers of B---- were accustomed to +make fun of Judge Orcutt or grumble about his ways of doing things. He +was certainly different from the ordinary run of probate judges or of +all judges for that matter. The smart law firms that had dealings with +him professed to consider him a poor lawyer, but everybody knows that +eminent lawyers usually have a poor opinion of the ability of judges. +They reason that if the judges had their ability, they would not be +poorly paid judges, but holding out their baskets for the fat fruit +falling abundantly from the corporation trees. + +It should be said that the law was not Judge Orcutt's first love: +probably was not his supreme mistress at any time. Perhaps for that very +reason he made a better probate judge--a more human judge--than any of +the smart lawyers could have made. The little gray-haired judge was a +poet, and not an unpublished poet. I will not stop to pass judgment on +those thin volumes of verse, elegantly printed and bound, that from time +to time appeared in the welter of modern literature with the judge's +name. The judge was fonder of them, no doubt, and perhaps prouder of +them than Bright, Seagrove, and Bright are of their large retainers. And +I believe that the published volumes of verse, and the unprinted ones +within his heart and brain, made Judge Orcutt an altogether sounder +judge than if he had mused in his idle hours upon the law or upon +corporation fees. He was one of those rare judges, who even after twenty +years of forms--motions and pleas and precedents--could never wholly +forget the individual human being behind the legal form. + +And so in this trivial matter of appointing a guardian for a poor girl, +the probate judge could not ignore Adelle in the mass of legal verbiage +through which such things are done. Who was this Adelle Clark? and what +sort of person was this aunt who seemed willing and anxious to assume +the legal and moral guardianship of the minor? An aunt by marriage only, +wasn't it? Yes, by marriage he assured himself after consulting again +the stiff paper form that the lawyers had properly filled out; and he +gave one of those funny little quirks to his eye which he did when not +wholly satisfied with a "proposition" presented to him. And here was the +characteristic difference between Judge Orcutt and any other probate +judge. He speculated--maybe for only the better part of ten seconds--but +he speculated upon the entity of the small human being that had fallen +within the bounds of his court. Was it really for this little girl's +best good to let this aunt by marriage take charge of her? Did any +hocus-pocus contriving, with which he had become only too familiar, lie +beneath this innocent application? + +Probably at this point the poet judge would have dismissed the matter +from speculation and signed the papers as he usually did, very much, +after all, like any other judge, with an additional sigh because he +could never really discover all the necessary facts. But another +observation held his pen. The paper had been brought to him by young +Bright, of Bright, Seagrove, and Bright--a notable firm of lawyers, but +not one famous for their charitable practice. Why should Bright, +Seagrove, and Bright interest themselves in procuring the guardianship +of a poor girl? Ah, it is to be feared that this is where the eminent +counsel "fell down" badly, as young Bright said. They should have sent +an office boy with the papers or let the aunt go there alone to see the +judge! For Judge Orcutt, after another moment of frowning meditation, +threw the document into that basket which contained papers for further +consideration. Had the girl expectations of property? He would inquire, +at least have the girl and her aunt into his court and get a good look +at them before performing his routine function of initialing the legal +form. Poet that he was, he prided himself much on his powers of +penetration into human motives, when he had his subject before him.... + +For this reason Adelle and her aunt were notified that they should +appear before His Honor. The lawyers told Mrs. Clark that the visit to +the probate court was a mere formality,--meant nothing at all. But under +their breaths they cursed Judge Orcutt for a meddlesome old nuisance, +which would not have worried him. Adelle and her aunt, got up in their +best mourning, accordingly appeared before the probate judge, who at the +moment was hearing a case of non-support. So they waited in the dim, +empty courtroom, while the judge, ignoring their presence, went on with +the question of whether John Thums could pay his wife three dollars a +week or only two-fifty. At last he settled it at three dollars and +beckoned to Mrs. Clark and the little girl to come forward and +courteously inquired their business. Ignoring the officious young +lawyer, who was there and tried to shuffle the matter through, Judge +Orcutt asked both Adelle and her aunt all sorts of questions that did +not always seem to the point. He appeared to be curious about the family +history. Mr. Bright fumed. However, it was all going well enough until +Mrs. John blurted out something about the girl's share of the money that +was coming to them. At the word "money" the judge pricked up his ears. +In his court certainly money was the root of much evil as well as of +pain. What money? Was the little girl an heiress? From the blundering +lips of honest Mrs. Clark the story tumbled out, under the judge's +expert questioning, exactly as it was. At the conclusion, with one +significant scowl at the uncomfortable Mr. Bright, the judge gathered to +himself all the papers, saying that he should give the matter further +consideration and disappeared into his private chamber. The two Clarks +returned to Alton much mystified. + +Young Mr. Bright remarked to his superiors, on his return to the office, +that he thought "there will be the devil to pay!" And there was. Of this +the little girl and her aunt knew nothing except that another legal +difficulty had been discovered and that the lawyers did not seem as +genial and happy as they had before. Thus a week slipped past, and then +they were again summoned to the probate court and taken into the judge's +private chamber behind the courtroom. + + + + +V + + +A good deal had happened in a quiet way during these seven days that had +much influence upon the fate of Clark's Field and of Adelle Clark. Up to +this time Judge Orcutt had never heard of Clark's Field or of the +Clarks. He lived on the other side of B----, in the country, and was not +much of a gossip. But he had ways of finding out about what was going on +when he wanted to. A word lightly cast forth at the club table where he +always lunched, and he could get a clue to almost anything of current +interest. And that noon, after he had first seen Mrs. Clark and her +niece, my friend Edsall happened to be at the judge's table. Orcutt +asked him what he knew about the Clark property in Alton. Edsall +happened to know almost all of importance that has been told here and +more. He knew of the movement on foot to develop the property, so long +held in idleness, but he did not know who were the persons interested. +He could find out. He did so, and within the week he had given the +probate judge the outline of as pretty a story of cheap knavishness as +the judge had come across for years. + +"No one can say what the property is worth now," Edsall reported, "but +it must be millions." + +"Millions!" the judge growled. "And they're trying to get it from an old +woman and a girl for twenty-five thousand dollars." + +"A plain steal," the real estate man remarked. + +"Sculduggery--I smelt it!" laughed the judge. + +One of the first results of this was that Mr. Osmond Bright, senior +member of Bright, Seagrove, and Bright, was invited to call upon Judge +Orcutt in his chambers, and there received probably the worst lecture +this eminent corporation lawyer ever took from any man. He blustered, of +course, and defended his clients on the ground that they were taking a +great risk with the title, which was unsound, etc., etc. The poet judge +dealt him a savage look and curtly advised him to withdraw at once from +the position of counsel to the men involved in this shady transaction; +at least never to appear in his court in the guardianship case. (It may +be said here that the firm did withdraw from the case, as there was, in +their words, "nothing doing." But not much was accomplished, for another +equally eminent and unscrupulous firm of lawyers was employed the next +day and went to work in a more devious manner to get hold of the Field.) + +Next the judge devoted half an hour to meditation over the fate of +Adelle Clark, more time than any one in her whole career hitherto had +given to consideration of her. It was clear enough to him that Mrs. John +Clark, honest woman though she appeared to be, could not cope with the +situation that must present itself. Nor, of course, could the girl. The +nefarious agreement to sell out all the Clark equity in the Field which +John Clark had executed prior to his departure for the Grand Army +Reunion, and which Judge Orcutt had forced the elder Bright to produce, +was evidence enough that the little girl needed some strong defender if +she were not to be fleeced utterly of her property. For she was heir now +to nearly three fourths of what the Clark estate might bring, and her +aunt to the remaining portion--so said the law. But who could be found, +modern knight, honest and disinterested and able enough to take upon his +shoulders the difficult defense of the girl's rights? + +Judge Orcutt had not been greatly impressed by the appearance of the +girl. She was nearly fourteen now, and seemed to the discriminating +taste of the judge to be a quite ordinary young girl with a rather +common aunt. Nevertheless that must not enter into the question: she had +her rights just as much as if she had been all that his poet's heart +might desire a young girl to be! Rights--a curious term over which the +judge often stumbled. Had she any more real right to the property than +the sharks who were trying to steal it from her? Who had any right to +this abandoned field that for fifty years had been waiting for an absent +heir to announce himself? Did it really belong to the Public? When he +got thus far in his speculation, the judge always pulled himself up with +a start. That wasn't his business. He was bound to administer the +antiquated and curious system of laws concerning the bequest of property +with a serious sense of their sacredness whether he felt it or not. They +seemed to be an essential part of the crazy structure of society that +must not be questioned, least of all by a probate judge! If men had +devised these unreal rules and absurd regulations, probably there was +some divine necessity for them beyond his human insight. Judge Orcutt +never got farther than this point in his speculations. With a sigh he +dropped the Clark case, and the next morning sent for the two women to +appear in his court. + +It did not take him long this time to discover that they were singularly +without good friends or advisers. They had no known relatives, no one +who could be expected to take a friendly interest in their affairs and +trusted to manage the business wisely. In earlier days Judge Orcutt +would have tried to find, in such a case, some able and scrupulous young +lawyer to perform the necessary function, somebody like himself who +would have a chivalrous regard for the defenseless condition of the two +women. Either that breed of lawyers had run out, or the judge was +becoming less confiding. For latterly, since the introduction of trust +companies, he had more than once put such cases in charge of these +impersonal agents. Trust companies were specially designed to meet two +pressing human wants,--permanence and honesty. They might not always be +efficient, for they were under such strict legal supervision that they +must always take the timid course, and they charged highly for their +services. But they could not very well be dishonest, nor die! They would +go on forever, at least as long as there was the institution of private +property and an intricate code of laws to safeguard it. Thus the judge +argued to himself again in considering the plight of these Clarks, and +decided to use the Washington Trust Company of B----, whose officers he +knew.... + +After explaining all this in simple terms to Mrs. Clark, he proposed to +her that her niece's interest in the Clark estate should be placed in +the hands of the trust company rather than hers, if they would accept +such an involved guardianship as Adelle Clark's promised to be. + +"You know, my good woman," he said in conclusion, "you must be careful +in this matter." (The judge's manner towards "ordinary people" was +aristocratically condescending, and he considered the rooming-house +keeper very ordinary.) "Of course, you understand that I--that this +court--has no control whatever over your acts. You can if you like carry +out your husband's intention and convey to these parties all your +interest in his estate. But I cannot permit you to jeopardize the +interests of this minor, who is a ward of my court, by conveying her +share of the estate to them on any such terms as they propose." + +"I'm sure," Mrs. John Clark mumbled in an aggrieved tone, "I had no idea +of doing any harm to the girl." + +"No, of course not, my good woman. But you don't understand. As I have +told you, it looks as if there might be some money, considerable money, +coming to you and to her from this land when the title is straightened +out, and you don't want to do anything foolish now." + +"I s'pose not," Mrs. Clark assented, somewhat dubiously. The "good +woman" had heard of this bonanza to come from Clark's Field when the +title was made right for so many years that she was humanly anxious to +touch a tangible profit at once. But she knew only too well that her +husband was a poor business man and probably the judge was right in +telling her not to sell the Field yet. The probate judge seemed to take +a good deal of interest in them for a gentleman of his importance. So +she listened respectfully to what he went on to say. + +"You can do whatever you like, as I said. But if you should decide to +dispose of your husband's estate as he intended, your niece's +representative might be forced to oppose you, which would add another +bad complication to the legal troubles of Clark's Field, and necessarily +defer the time when either of you could sell the land or derive an +adequate return from it." + +He paused after this polite threat, to let the idea sink in. + +"I'm sure she and me don't want to fight," Mrs. Clark quickly replied +with a touch of humor, and the first expression that the judge had seen +upon the little girl's mute face appeared. A smile touched her lips, +flickered and went out. She sat stiffly beside her aunt in the judge's +great leather chair,--a pale, badly dressed little mouse of a girl, who +did not seem to understand the conversation. + +"Well, then, I take it you will be guided in your actions about your +estate by the advice of your niece's guardian, whom I shall appoint." + +He explained to them what a trust company was, and said that he hoped to +get the Washington Trust Company to undertake the guardianship of the +little girl. Then he dismissed them, appointing another meeting a week +hence when they were to return for final settlement of the matter. So +they left the judge's chambers. The girl neither dropped a curtesy, as +the judge would have thought suitable, nor gave him another smile, nor +even opened her lips. She faded out of his chambers after her black aunt +like a pale winter shadow. + +The judge thought she showed a deplorable lack of breeding. He was +conscious that he had probably saved a fortune for the girl by all the +pains he was taking in this matter and felt that at least common +politeness was his due. But one was never paid for these things except +by a sense of duty generously performed. What was duty? And off the +judge went into another thorny speculation that would have made Bright, +Seagrove, and Bright laugh, and they were not inclined to laugh either +at or with Judge Orcutt these days. For in the words of the junior +member, this old maid of a probate judge had cut them out of the fattest +little piece of graft the office had seen in a twelvemonth! If judges +had been elective in the good old Commonwealth of M----, Judge Orcutt's +chances of reelection would have been slim, for Bright, Seagrove, and +Bright had strange underground connections with the politicians then +governing the city. Perhaps the poet in the judge would have rejoiced at +such a misadventure and profited thereby. As it was, whenever Bright, +Seagrove, and Bright had business in the probate court, which was not +often, they got other lawyers to represent them. Even "eminent counsel" +shrink from appearing before a judge who knows their real character. + + + + +VI + + +Adelle was not really unresponsive to the judge's kindness. She liked +the polite old gentleman,--old to fourteen because of the grizzled +mustache,--and was for her deeply impressed by her visits to the probate +judge's chambers. It was the first real event in her pale life, that and +her uncle's funeral, which seemed closely related. They made the date +from which she could reckon herself a person. What impressed her more +than the austere dignity of the judge's private rooms, with their prints +of famous personages, lined bookcases, and rich furniture, was Judge +Orcutt himself. He was the first gentleman she had ever met in any real +sense of the word. And Judge Orcutt was very much of a gentleman in +almost every sense of the word. He came from an old Puritan family, as +American families are reckoned, which had had its worthies for a young +man to respect, and its traditions, not of wealth but of culture and +breeding, kindly humanity, and an interest in life and letters. +Something of this aristocratic inheritance could be felt in his manners +by the two women who were not of his social class and who were treated +with an even greater consideration than if they had been. Adelle liked +also his sober gray suit with the very white linen and black tie, which +he wore like a man who cares more for the cleanliness and propriety of +his person than for fashion. All this and the modulated tones of his +cultivated voice had made a lively impression upon the dumb little girl. +She would have done anything in the world to please the judge, even +defying her aunt if that had been necessary. And she had always stood in +a healthy awe of her vigorous, outspoken aunt. + +The first occasion when Adelle had an opinion all her own and announced +it publicly and unasked was due to the judge. Of course the question of +guardianship was much discussed in their very limited circle. Joseph +Lovejoy, the manager of Pike's Livery at the corner of Church +Street,--the Pike whose son Addie Clark had disdained,--was the oldest +and most important of the "roomers." Mr. Lovejoy was of the opinion that +trust companies were risky inventions that might some day disappear in +smoke. He advised the perplexed widow to "hire a smart lawyer" to look +out for her business interests. What did an old probate judge know about +real estate? This was the occasion on which Adelle made her one +contribution: she thought that "Judge Orcutt must be wiser than any +lawyer because he was a judge." A silly answer as the liveryman said, +yet surprising to her aunt. And she added--"He's a gentleman, too," +though how the little girl discovered it is inexplicable. + +The news of the prospective importance of Clark's Field had quickly +spread through Church Street and the Square, where the widow's credit +much improved. Something really seemed about to happen of consequence to +the old Field and the modest remnants of the Clark family. Emissaries +from the routed speculators came to see the widow. It dribbled down from +the magnates of the local bank, the River National, by way of the +cashier to the chief clerk, that the widow Clark might easily get +herself into trouble and lose her property if she took everybody's +advice. It should be said that the River National Bank disliked these +rich upstart trust companies; also that the capitalists who had laid +envious eyes on the Field were associated with the local bank, which +expected to derive profit from this deal,-the largest that Alton had +ever known even during the boom years at the turn of the century. + +What wonder, then, that the widow Clark, who was a sensible enough woman +in the matter of roomers and household management and knew a bum from a +modest paying laboring man as well as any one in the profession, was +perplexed in the present situation as to the course of true wisdom? +Incredible as it may seem, it was Adelle who during this time of doubt +gave her aunt strength to resist much bad advice. Her influence was, as +might be expected, merely negative. For after that single deliverance of +opinion she made no comment on all the discussion and advice. She seemed +to consider the question settled already: it was this tacit method of +treating the guardianship as an accomplished fact that really influenced +her troubled aunt. When a certain point of household routine came up +between them, Adelle observed that, as they should not be at home on +Thursday morning, the thing would have to go over till the following +day. Thursday was the day of their appointment with the probate judge. +Mrs. Clark, of course, had not forgotten this important fact, but not +having yet made up her distracted mind she had purposely ignored the +appointment to see what her niece would say. Thus Adelle quietly settled +the point: they were to keep the appointment with the judge. Another +faint occasion of displaying will came to her, so faint that it would +seem hardly worth mentioning except that a faithful historian must +present every possible manifestation of character on the part of this +colorless heroine. + +It occurred when they saw the judge on Thursday. The probate judge, who +was busy with another case on their arrival, did not invite them into +his private room as on former occasions, but merely shoved across his +bench a card on which he had written a name and an address. + +"It's all arranged," he said to Mrs. Clark. "Just go over to the +Washington Trust Company and ask for Mr. Gardiner. He will take care of +you," and he smiled pleasantly in dismissal. + +The widow was much put out by this summary way of dealing, for she had +intended to pour out to the judge her doubts, though she probably knew +that in the end she should follow his advice. She hesitated in the +corridor of the court-house, saying something about not being in any +hurry to go to the Washington Trust Company. She had not fully made up +her mind, etc. But Adelle, as if she had not heard her aunt's +objections, set off down the street in the direction of the trust +company's handsome building. Her aunt followed her. The matter was thus +settled. + +Adelle had also felt disappointed at their brief interview; not bitterly +disappointed because she never felt bitterly about anything, but +consciously sorry to have missed the expected conference in the judge's +private chamber. She might never see him again! As a matter of fact, +although the probate court necessarily had much to do with her fate in +the settlement of the involved estate, it was not for seven years that +she had another chance of seeing the judge in chambers, and that, as we +shall discover, was on a very different occasion. Whether during all +these years Adelle ever thought much about the judge, nobody knows, but +Judge Orcutt often had occasion to recollect the pale, badly dressed +little girl who had no manners, when he signed orders and approved +papers _in re Adelle Clark, minor_. + + + + +VII + + +The Washington Trust Company had grown in power to the envy of its +conservative rivals ever since its organization, and was now one of the +richest reservoirs of capital in the city. Recently it had moved into +its new home in the banking quarter of the city,--the most expensive, +commodious, and richly ornamented bank premises in B----. The Washington +Trust Company was managed by "the younger crowd," and one way in which +the new blood manifested itself was by the erection of this handsome +granite building with its ornate bronze and marble appointments. The +officers felt that theirs was a new kind of business, largely involving +women, invalids, and dependents of rich habits, and for these a display +of magnificence was "good business." + +When Adelle and her aunt paused inside the massive bronze doors of the +Trust Building and looked about them in bewilderment across the immense +surface of polished marble floor, it probably did not occur to either of +them that a new page in the book of destiny had been turned for them. +Yet even in Adelle's small, silent brain there must have penetrated a +consciousness of the place,--the home as it were of her new +guardian,--and such a magnificent home that it inspired at once both +timidity and pride. The two women wandered about the banking floor for +some minutes, peering through the various grilles at the busy clerks, +observing the careless profusion of notes, gold, and documents of value +that seemed piled on every desk, as if to indicate ostentatiously the +immensity of the property interests confided to the company's care. At +last, after they had been rebuffed by several busy clerks, a uniformed +attendant found them and inquired their business. The widow handed to +him the card she had received from the probate judge, and the usher at +once led them to an elegant little private elevator that shot them +upwards through the floors of the bank to the upper story. Here, in a +small, heavily rugged room behind a broad mahogany table, they met Mr. +John Gardiner, then the "trust officer" of the Washington Trust Company. +He was a heavy, serious-minded, bald man of middle age, and Adelle at +once made up her mind that she liked him far less than the judge. The +trust officer did not rise on their entrance as the judge always had +risen; merely nodded to them, motioned to some chairs against the wall, +and continued writing on a memorandum pad. Both the widow and Adelle +felt that they were not of much importance to the Washington Trust +Company, which was precisely what the trust company liked to have its +clients feel. + +"Well," Mr. Gardiner said at last, clearing his voice, "so you are Mrs. +John Clark and Miss Adelle Clark?" + +Of course he knew the fact, but some sort of introduction must be made. +Mrs. Clark, who was sitting hostilely on the edge of her chair, hugging +to herself a little black bag, nodded her head guardedly in response. + +"I presume you have come to see me about the guardianship matter," the +trust officer continued. Then he fussed for some moments among the +papers on his desk as if he were hunting for something, which he at last +found. He seized the paper with relief, and took another furtive look at +his visitors from under his gold glasses as if to make sure that no +mistake had been made and began again:-- + +"At the request of Judge Orcutt,"--he pronounced the probate judge's +name with unction and emphasis,--"we have looked into the matter of the +Clark estate, and we have found, what I suppose you are already aware +of, that your husband's estate is extremely involved and with it this +little girl's interest in the property," For the first time he turned +his big bald head in Adelle's direction, and finding there apparently +nothing to hold his attention, ignored her completely thereafter, and +confined himself exclusively to the widow. + +He paused and cleared his throat as if he expected some defense of the +Clark estate from the widow. But she said nothing. To tell the truth, +she didn't like the trust officer's manner. As she said afterwards to +Mr. Lovejoy, he seemed to be "throwing it into her," trying to impress +her with her own unimportance and the goodness of the Washington Trust +Company in concerning itself with her soiled linen. "As if he were doing +me a big favor," she grumbled. That was in fact exactly the idea that +Mr. Gardiner had of the whole affair. If it had been left to him, as he +had told the president of the trust company, he would not have the +Washington Trust Company mix itself up in such a dubious "proposition" +as the Clark estate was likely to prove. He was of the "old school" of +banking,--a relic of earlier days,--and did not approve of the company's +accepting any but the most solid trusts that involved merely the trouble +of cutting four per cent coupons in their management. But his superior +officers had listened favorably to the request of the probate judge, +wishing always to "keep in close touch" with the judge of the court +where they had so much business, and also having a somewhat farther +vision than the trust officer, as will be seen. A recommendation by the +probate judge was to the Washington Trust Company in the nature of a +royal invitation, not to be considered on purely selfish grounds; and +besides, they already scented rich pickings in the litigious situation +of Clark's Fields. They would be stupid if they had to content +themselves with their usual one per cent commission on income. The +assistant to the president of the trust company, a lively young banker +of the "new school," Mr. Ashly Crane, who had been asked to examine into +the situation of the Clark estate, had recognized its manifold +possibilities and had recommended favorable action. In the event it +proved that the "new school" was right: the Washington Trust Company +lost nothing by its disinterested act. (It never did lose anything by +its acts of charity, and that is why it has prospered so abundantly.) + +"I do not know what the trust company will be able to do with the +property," the cautious Mr. Gardiner continued. "We have not yet +completed our examination: our attorneys are at present considering +certain legal points. But one thing is pretty certain," he hastened to +add with emphasis. "You must look for no income from the estate for the +present,--probably not for a term of years." + +This made little impression upon the women. It meant nothing at all to +Adelle, and the widow had become so accustomed to disappointments about +the Clark property that she did not move a muscle at the announcement, +though she inwardly might regret the twenty-five thousand dollars which +had been promised her husband by the other crowd. That would mean a good +deal more to her business than two or three times the amount after a +"term of years." She was getting on, and the rooming business needed +capital badly. However, she had determined to do nothing detrimental to +the interests of her husband's niece, as the probate judge had told her +she might if she listened to the seduction of immediate cash. And +fortunately the bank officer did not ask for money to pay taxes and +interest on the mortgages, which had been the bugbear of her married +life. This was the next point touched upon by the trust officer. + +"I presume that you are not in a financial position to advance anything +towards the expenses of the estate, which for the present may be heavy?" +He gave the widow another furtive look under his glasses, as if to +detect what money she had on her person. + +Mrs. Clark shook her head vigorously: that she would not do--go on +pouring money into the bottomless pit of Clark's Field! Of course the +trust company had considered this point and made up its mind already to +advance the estate the necessary funds up to a safe amount, which would +become another lien on the little girl's income from her mother's +inheritance, should there be any. + +This matter disposed of, the trust officer asked searching questions +about the Clark genealogy, which the widow answered quite fully, for it +was a subject on which her sister-in-law Addie had educated her so +completely that she knew everything there was to know except the exact +whereabouts of Edward S. or his heirs. Mr. Gardiner was specially +interested in Edward S., who had disappeared fifty years ago, and asked +Mrs. Clark to send him immediately all family letters bearing on Edward. +It was apparent that the trust company meant to go after Edward and his +heirs and either discover them if it were humanly possible or establish +the fact that they could safely be ignored. And they were in a much +better position, with their numerous connections and correspondents, to +prosecute such a search successfully than any one else who had tried it. +Mr. Gardiner, however, expressed himself doubtfully of their success. + +"We shall do our best," he said, "and let you know from time to time of +the progress we are making." + +And after exacting a few more signatures from the widow, who by this +time had become adept in signing "Ellen Trigg Clark," the trust officer +nodded to his visitors in dismissal. + +It would be difficult to say what Adelle was thinking about during this +interview. She sat perfectly still as she always did: one of her minor +virtues as a child was that she could sit for hours without wriggling or +saying a word. She did not even stare about her at the lofty room with +its colored glass windows and shiny mahogany furniture as any other +young person might. She gazed just above the bald crown of the trust +officer's head and seemed more nearly absorbed in Nirvana than a young +American ever becomes. But there is little doubt that the long interview +in the still, high room of the bank building did make an impression upon +the trust company's ward. + +She trailed after her aunt down the marble stairs, for the trust officer +did not trouble himself about their exit from his office as he did with +solid clients who had going estates, and the widow was too timid to +summon the bronze car from its hole in the wall. They passed through the +great banking room on the main floor, where, because of the largeness +and the decorum of this sanctuary of property, a crowd of patrons seemed +to make no disturbance. Adelle sat in reverie all the way out to Alton +in the street-car and did not wake up until they turned from the Square +into the dingy side street. Then she said, apropos of nothing,-- + +"It's a pretty place." + +"What place?" snapped the widow, who realized that a whole working day +had been lost "for nothing," and the roomers' beds were still to make. + +"That trust place," Adelle explained. + +"Um," her aunt responded enigmatically, as one who would say that +"pretty is as pretty does." + +It had not appeared to her as a place of beauty. But to Adelle, who had +seen nothing more ornate than the Everitt Grade School of Alton, the +Second Congregational Church, and the new City Hall, the interior of the +Washington Trust Company, with its bronze and marble and windows that +shed soft violet lights on the white floors, awakened an unknown +appetite for richness and splendor, color and size. That was what she +had been thinking about without realizing it while the trust officer +talked to her aunt. She called this barbaric profusion of rich materials +"pretty," and felt, very faintly, a personal happiness in being +connected with it in some slight manner. + + + + +VIII + + +If the excursions to the probate court and the trust company had roused +expectations of change in their condition, they were to be disappointed. +From that afternoon when they turned into Church Street on their return +from the Washington Trust Company, the monotony and drudgery of their +former life settled down on them with an even greater insistence. The +dusty ROOMS FOR RENT sign was tucked into the front window with its +usual regularity, for do what she could, Mrs. Clark could not attain +that pinnacle of the landlady's aspirations, a houseful of permanent +roomers. The young men were inconstant, the middle-aged liable to +matrimony, the old to death, and all to penury or change of occupation +and residence. So the old fight went on as before during all the +twenty-three years of the widow Clark's married life,--a fight to exist +in a dusty, worn, and shabby fashion, with a file of roomers tramping +out the stair carpet, spotting the furniture, and using up the linen. To +be sure, two great drains upon income no longer troubled her,--Clark's +Field and the Veteran. With these encumbrances removed she could make +ends meet. + +After a few weeks she forgot her doubts about the wisdom of following +Judge Orcutt's advice and placing her interest in the estate together +with her niece's in care of the trust company. The manager of the +livery-stable, who was the nearest thing to permanency the house knew, +shook his head over her folly in trusting a trust company, but the +speculators and their lawyers let her severely alone, knowing that they +had been outwitted and flitting to other schemes. The Square seemed to +accept the fresh eclipse of the Clark estate after its false appearance +of coming to a crisis. And the character of the Square was fast changing +with all else these busy years. It was no longer a neighborhood center +of gossip. There were new faces--and many foreign ones--in the rows of +shops. The neighborhood was deteriorating, or evolving, as you happened +to look at it. + +The Washington Trust Company seemed to have quite forgotten the +existence of the Clark women except for the occasional appearance in the +mail of an oblong letter addressed in type to Mrs. Ellen Trigg Clark, +which bore in its upper left-hand corner a neat vignette of the trust +building. Adelle studied these envelopes carefully, not to say tenderly, +with something of the emotion that the trust company's home had roused +in her the only time she had been within its doors. The vignette, which +represented a considerable Grecian temple, she thought "pretty," and the +neat, substantial-looking envelope suggested a rich importance to the +communication within that also pleased the girl. She knew that it had to +do with her remotely. Yet there was never anything thrilling in these +communications from the trust company. They were signed by Mr. Gardiner +and curtly informed Mrs. Clark of certain meaningless facts or more +often curtly inquired for information,--"Awaiting your kind reply," +etc., or merely requested politely another example of the widow's +signature. They were models of brief, impersonal, business +communications. If Adelle had ever had any experience of personal +relationship she might have resented these perfunctory epistles from her +legal guardian, but for all she knew that was the way all people treated +one another. Evidently her legal guardian had no desire for any closer +personal contact with its ward, and she waited, not so much patiently as +pensively, for it to demonstrate a more lively interest in her +existence.... + +Meanwhile there was debate in the Church Street house about a matter +that more closely touched the young girl. She had graduated from the +Everitt School the preceding June and would naturally be going on now +into the high school with her better conditioned schoolmates. But she +herself, though not averse to school, had suggested that she should stay +at home and help her aunt in the house or find a place in one of the +shops in the Square where she might earn a little money. Mrs. Clark, who +has been described as a realist, might have favored this practical plan, +had it not been that Adelle was a Clark--all that was left of them, in +fact. The widow had lived so long under the shadow of the Clark +expectations that she could not easily escape from their control now +that she was alone. A Trigg, of course, under similar circumstances +would have gone into a shop at once, but a Clark ought to have a better +education in deference to her expectations. The heiress of Clark's Field +must never conclude her education with the grades.... So finally it was +decided that Adelle should enter the high school for a year, at any +rate, and to that end a new school dress of sober blue serge was +provided, made by Adelle with her aunt's assistance. + +These days Adelle rose at an early hour to do the chamber work while her +aunt got breakfast, then changed her dress, looked hurriedly over her +lessons, gobbled her breakfast, and with her books and a tin lunch-box +strapped together set forth to walk the mile and a half to the high +school in order to save car-fare. There she performed her daily tasks in +a perfunctory, dead manner, not uncommon. Once an exasperated teacher +had demanded testily,-- + +"Miss Clark, don't you ever think?" + +The timid child had answered seriously,-- + +"Yes, sometimes I think." + +Whereat the class tittered and Adelle had a mild sensation of dislike +for the irascible teacher, who reported in "teachers' meeting" that +Adelle Clark was as nearly defective as a child of her years could be +and be "all right," and that the grades ought not to permit such pupils +to graduate into the high school. Indeed, algebra, Caesar, and Greek +history were as nearly senseless to Adelle Clark as they could be. They +were entirely remote from her life, and nothing of imagination rose from +within to give them meaning. She learned by rote, and she had a poor +memory. It was much the same, however, with English literature or social +science or French, subjects that might be expected to awaken some +response in the mind of a girl. The only subject that she really liked +was dancing, which the gymnasium instructor taught. Adelle danced very +well, as if she were aware of being alive when she danced. But even the +athletic young woman who had the gymnasium classes reported that Adelle +Clark was too dull, too lifeless, to succeed as a dancer or athletic +teacher. These public guardians of youth may or may not have been right +in their judgments, but certainly as yet the girl had not "waked up".... + +Adelle's high-school career was interrupted in January, just as she had +turned fifteen, by her aunt's sickness. For the first time in forty +years, as the widow told the doctor, she had taken to her bed. "Time to +make up for all the good loafing you have missed," the young doctor +joked cheaply in reply, not realizing the hardship of invalidism, with a +houseful of roomers, in a small back bedroom near enough to the center +of activities for the sick woman to know all that happened without +having the strength to interfere. It was only the grippe, the doctor +said, advising rest, care, and food. It would be a matter of a week or +two, and Adelle was doing her best to take her aunt's place in the house +and also nurse her aunt. But Mrs. Clark never left her bed until she was +carried to the cemetery to be laid beside the Veteran in the already +crowded lot. The grippe proved to be a convenient name to conceal a +general breaking-up, due to years of wearing, ceaseless woman's toil +without hope, in the disintegrating Clark atmosphere that ate like an +acid into the consciousness even of plain Ellen Trigg, with her humble +expectations from life. + +Adelle was much moved by the death of her aunt, the last remaining +relative that she knew of, though the few people who saw her at this +time thought she "took it remarkably well." They interpreted her +expressionless passivity to a lack of feeling. As a matter of fact, she +had been much more attached to her aunt than to any one she had ever +known. The plain woman, who had no pretensions and did her work +uncomplainingly because it was useless to complain, had inspired the +girl with respect and given her what little character she had. Ellen +Clark was a stoic, unconsciously, and she had taught Adelle the wisdom +of the stoic's creed. The girl realized fully now that she was alone in +life, alone spiritually as well as physically, and though she did not +drop tears as she came back to the empty Church Street house from the +cemetery,--for that was not the thing to do now: it was to get back as +soon as possible and set the house to rights as her aunt would have done +so that the roomers should not be put out any further,--her heart was +heavy, nevertheless, and she may even have wondered sadly what was to +become of her. + +That was the question that disturbed the few persons who had any +interest in the Clark women,--the manager of the livery-stable among +them. It was plainly not the "proper thing" for the girl to continue +long in a house full of men, and irresponsible men at that. Adelle was +not aware what was the "proper thing," but she felt herself inadequate +to keeping up the establishment unaided by her aunt, although that is +what she would have liked to do, go on sweeping and making beds and +counting out the wash and making up the bills, with or without school. +But the liveryman hinted to her on her return from the funeral that she +ought to go immediately to some friend's house, or have some married +woman stay with her until her future had been determined upon. Adelle +knew of no house where she could make such a visit, nor of any one whom +she could invite to stay with her. It may seem incredible, as it did to +Mr. Lovejoy, that "folks could live all their lives in Alton like the +Clarks" and have no relatives or friends to lean upon in an emergency. +But the truth is that when a family begins to go down in this world, +after having some pretensions, it is likely to shed social relations +very fast instead of acquiring new ones. A family in a settled social +equilibrium (rarely the case in America), or one that is going up in the +human scale, is apt to acquire connections, quite apart from the +accidents of birth and social gifts, because the mental attitude is an +open and optimistic one, attracting to itself humanity instead of +timidly withdrawing into itself. Strength attracts and weakness repels +in the long run here as elsewhere. The Clarks, who had never been +considerable or numerous, had in the course of three generations +gradually lost their hold upon the complex threads of life, shiftlessly +shedding relationships as the Veteran had done, or proudly refusing +inferior connections as Addie had, until the family was left solitary in +the person of this one fifteen-year-old girl, in whom the social habit +seemed utterly atrophied. Of course, Adelle could have appealed to her +aunt's pastor, but it never occurred to her to do that or to make use of +any other social machinery. She went back to the Church Street house, +occupied her old room, and for the next few days continued the catlike +routine of her life as nearly as she could under the changed conditions. + +Mr. Lovejoy, who continued to be the one most concerned in her welfare, +induced her to write a crude little note to the "Washington Trust +Company, Dear Sirs," notifying them of the demise of her aunt. The +livery-stable man, who was a widower and not beyond middle age, which +does not necessarily mean in his class that the wife is dead and buried, +but merely permanently absent for one reason or another, might have +thrown sentimental eyes upon the girl if she had been different, more of +a woman. + +"She'll likely enough be an heiress some of these days," he said to his +employer, old John Pike. + +Pike was an old resident of Alton and had known all the Clarks. He +grunted as if he had heard that song before. "That's what they used to +say of her mother, Addie Clark," he remarked, remembering Addie's +superior air towards his son. + +"Well," his manager continued, "I see that trust company's got its signs +up all over the Field." + +"'T ain't the first time there's been signs there," Pike retorted, +eyeing a succulent cigar he had succeeded in extracting from an inner +pocket, "nor the last either, I expect!" + +"It looks as if they meant business this time." + +"They can't get no title," Pike averred, for he banked with the River +National, which was now quite bearish on Clark's Field. After a pause +the old liveryman asked with a broad smile,--"Why don't you go in for +the heiress, Jim?" + +(Mr. Lovejoy was accounted "gay," a man to please the ladies.) + +"Me! I never thought of it--she's nothing but a girl. The old one +pleased me better--she was a smart woman!" + +"The girl's got all the property, ain't she?" + +"I suppose so." + +"Well, then, you get two bites from the same cherry." + +The manager made no advances to the girl, however, and for that we must +consider Adelle herself as chiefly responsible. For, as a woman, or +rather the hope of a woman, she was uninteresting,--still a pale, +passive, commonplace girl. What womanhood she might expect was slow in +coming to her. Even with the halo of the Clark inheritance she could +arouse slight amorous interest in any man. And thus Adelle's +insignificance again saved her--shall we say?--from the mean fate of +becoming the prey of this "roomer." + +"No man will ever take the trouble to marry that girl," Mr. Love joy +remarked to his employer, "unless she gets her fortune in hard cash." In +which prophecy the widower was wrong. + + + + +IX + + +In a few days Mr. Gardiner called at the Church Street house on behalf +of the trust company, to express to its ward its sympathy with her in +her bereavement and to find out what her situation was, and her needs +for the future. Adelle, sitting opposite the portly, bald-headed bank +officer in the little front room, did not feel especially excited. She +could not imagine what this visit might mean to her. She answered all +his questions in a low, colorless voice, promptly enough and +intelligently enough. Yes, her aunt was her only relative so far as she +knew. No, she had made no plans--she would like to stay where she was if +she could. It would be pretty hard to do everything alone, etc. As the +trust officer, puzzled by the situation, continued to ply her with +questions so that he might gain a clearer understanding of the +circumstances, he became more and more perplexed. This was something +quite out of his experience as a trust officer. He had supposed in +making this call that he would have merely a perfunctory duty to +perform, to ratify some obviously "sensible" plan for the future of the +institution's ward. As he happened to have other business in Alton, he +called personally instead of writing a note. + +But now he discovered that this fifteen-year-old girl had absolutely no +relatives, nor "proper friends," nor visible means of support except the +income from "a third-class boarding-house," as he told the president of +the trust company the next day. Clearly the company must do something +for its ward, whose fortune they were now beginning to discuss in seven +figures. + +"She must have a suitable allowance." + +That the good Mr. Gardiner saw at once. For to his thrifty, suburban +soul the situation of a girl of fifteen with large prospects in a +third-class rooming-house was truly deplorable. The dignities and +proprieties of life were being outraged: it might affect the character +of the trust company should it become known.... + +Rising at last from the dusty sofa where he had placed his large person +for this talk, the trust officer said kindly,-- + +"We must consider what is best to be done, my girl. Can you come to the +bank to see me next Monday?" + +Adelle saw no reason why she should not go to see him Monday, as high +school still seemed impossible with the house on her hands. + +"Come in, then, Monday morning!" And the trust officer went homewards to +confide his perplexity to his wife as trust officers sometimes do. It +was a queer business, his. As trust officer he had once gone out to some +awful place in Dakota to take charge of the remains of a client who had +got himself shot in a brawl, and brought the body back and buried it +decently in a New England graveyard with his ancestors. He had advised +young widows how to conduct themselves so that they should not be +exposed to the wiles of rapacious men. Once even he had counseled +matrimony to a client who was difficult to control and had approved, +unofficially, of her selection of a mate. A good many of the social +burdens of humanity came upon his desk in the course of the day's +business, and he was no more inhuman than the next man. He was a father +of a respectable family in the neighboring suburb of Chester. His habit +was naturally to hunt for the proper formula for each situation as it +arose and to apply this formula conscientiously. According to Mr. +Gardiner, the duty of trust companies to society consisted in applying +suitable formulas to the human tangles submitted to them by their +clients. And in the present case Mrs. Gardiner suggested the necessary +formula. + +"Why don't you send the girl to a good boarding-school? You say she's +fifteen and will have money." + +"Yes,--some money, perhaps a good deal," her husband replied. Even in +the bosom of his family, the trust officer was guarded in statement. + +"How much?" Mrs. Gardiner demanded. + +"What difference does it make how much, so long as we can pay her school +bills?" + +"It makes all the difference in the world!" the wife replied, with the +superior tone of wisdom. "It makes the difference whether you send her +to St. Catherine's or Herndon Hall." + +It will be seen that the trust officer's wife believed in that clause of +the catechism that recommends contentment with that state of life to +which Providence hath called one, and also that education should fit one +for the state of life to which he or she was to be called by Providence. +St. Catherine's, as the trust officer very well knew, was a modest +institution for girls under the direction of the Episcopal Church, for +which he served as trustee, where needy girls were cheaply provided with +a "sensible" education, and "the household arts" were not neglected. In +other words, the girls swept their rooms, made their own beds, and +washed the dishes after the austere repasts, and the fee was +correspondingly small. Whereas Herndon Hall--well, every one who has +young daughters to launch upon the troubled sea of social life, and the +ambition to give them the most exclusive companionship and no very high +regard for learning,--at least for women,--knows all about Herndon Hall, +by that name or some other equally euphonious. The fees at Herndon Hall +were fabulous, and it was supposed to be so "careful" in its scrutiny of +applicants that only those parents with the best introductions could +possibly secure admission for their daughters. There were, of course, no +examinations or mental tests of any kind. + +Mrs. Gardiner, who had the ambition to send her Alicia to Herndon Hall +in due course, if the trust officer felt that he could afford the +expense, opened her eyes when her husband replied to her question +promptly,-- + +"I guess we'll figure on Herndon Hall." + +Mrs. Gardiner inferred that the prospects of the trust company's ward +must be quite brilliant, and she was prepared to do her part. + +"Why don't you ask the girl out here over Sunday?" she suggested. + +"Oh, she's a queer little piece," the trust officer replied evasively. +"I don't believe you would find her interesting--it isn't necessary." + + + + +X + + +On her next visit to the splendid home of her guardian, Adelle was +received by no less a person than the president of the trust company +himself. In conference between the officers of the trust company it had +been decided that the president, his assistant, and the trust officer +should meet the girl, explain to her cautiously the nature of her +prospects, and announce to her the arrangement for her education that +they had made. But before recording this interview a word should be said +about the present situation of Clark's Field. + +The search that the bank had started for trace of the missing Edward S. +and his heirs had resulted as futilely as the more feeble measures taken +earlier by Samuel Clark. It is astonishing how completely people can +obliterate themselves, give them a few years! There was absolutely no +clue in all the United States for discovering this lost branch of the +Alton Clarks, nor any reason to believe in their existence except the +established fact that in 1848 Edward S., with a wife and at least three +babies, had left Chicago for St. Louis. Although the Alton branch of the +Clarks had shown no powers of multiplying,--their sole representative +now being one little girl,--nevertheless there might be a whole colony +of Clarks somewhere interested in one half of the valuable Field. But +more than fifty years had now passed since the final disappearance of +Edward S. Clark, and the law was willing to consider means of ignoring +all claims derived from him. It was the young assistant to the +president, Mr. Ashly Crane, who worked out the details of the plan by +which the restless title was to be finally "quieted" and the trust +company enabled to dispose of its ward's valuable estate. Some of the +officers and larger stockholders of the trust company were interested in +an affiliated institution known as the Washington Guaranty and Title +Company, which was prepared to do business in the guaranteeing of +real-estate titles that were from one reason or another defective, which +it is needless to say the majority are. For a reasonable sum this new +company undertook to perfect the title to Clark's Field and then to +insure purchasers and sellers against any inconvenient claims that might +arise in the future, defending the title against all comers or in case +of defeat assuming the losses. A very convenient institution in a +society where the laws of property are so intricate and sacred! As a +first step there was an extensive public advertisement for the missing +heir or heirs, and then in due form a "judicial sale" of the property by +order of court, after which the court pronounced the title to Clark's +Field, so long clouded, to be "quieted." And woe to any one who might +now dare to raise that restless spirit, be he Edward S. or any +descendant of his! + +This legal process of purification for Clark's Field being under way, +the ingenious mind of Mr. Ashly Crane turned to the next problem, which +was to dispose of the property advantageously. Manifestly the Washington +Trust Company could not go into the real estate business on behalf of +its ward and peddle out slices of her Field. That would not be proper, +nor would it be especially profitable to the trust company. Mr. Crane, +therefore, conceived the brilliant idea of forming a "Clark's Field +Associates" corporation to buy the undeveloped tract of land from the +trust company, who as guardian could sell it in whole or in part, and +the new corporation might then proceed at its leisure to "develop" the +old Field advantageously. For the benefit of the ignorant it maybe +bluntly stated here that this was merely a device for buying Adelle's +property cheaply and selling it at a big profit,--not as crude a method +as the other that the Veteran had almost fallen a victim to, because the +Washington Trust Company was a "high-toned" institution and did not do +things crudely; but in effect the device was the same. + +The Clark's Field Associates was, therefore, incorporated and made an +offer to the trust company for Clark's Field,--a fair offer in the +neighborhood of a million dollars for the fifty-acre tract of city land. +An obstacle, however, presented itself at this point, which in the end +forced the Associates to modify their plan materially. The sale had to +be approved by the probate judge, the same Judge Orcutt who had once +before befriended the unknown little girl. This time the judge examined +the scheme carefully, even asked for a list of the Associates, which was +an innocent collection of dummy names, and finally after conference with +the trust officers insisted that the ward should reserve for herself one +half the shares of the Clark's Field Associates, thus obtaining an +interest in the possible benefits to be derived from their transactions. +This was accordingly done, and the subscription to the stock of the new +corporation by some of the capitalists who had been invited to +"participate" in this juicy melon was cut down one half. They were not +pleased by the act of the probate judge, but they accepted half the +melon with good grace, assuring the judge through Mr. Crane that it was +a highly speculative venture anyhow to put Clark's Field on the market, +and the Associates might lose every penny they risked on it. The judge +merely smiled. Poet that he was, he was by no means a fool in the +affairs of this life. + +When Adelle made her second visit to the Washington Trust Company, the +scheme outlined above had not been perfected, but the legal process was +far enough along to show promise of a brilliant fulfillment. The "queer +little piece," as Mr. Gardiner described Adelle to his wife, had thus +grown in importance within a brief year to such dignified persons as +President West of the trust company and the wealthy stockholders who +under various disguises were embarking upon the venture of the Clark's +Field Associates. She was no longer merely the heiress of a legal mess: +she was the means by which a powerful modern banking institution hoped +to make for its inner circle of patrons a very profitable investment. So +these gentlemen examined with curiosity the shy little person who slowly +advanced across the carpeted floor of Mr. Gardiner's private office. The +president himself rose from his chair and extended to Adelle a large, +handsome, white hand with the polite greeting,-- + +"I am very glad to meet you, Miss Clark." + +Adelle was more than ordinarily dumb. She had expected to see the trust +officer alone as she had the other time, and in the presence of these +strangers she took her one means of defense,--silence. The president, +however, did the talking, and he talked more humanly than stuffy Mr. +Gardiner. After expressing a deep sympathy with Adelle for the death of +her aunt (of whose existence he had not been aware before this week), he +easily shifted to the topic of Adelle's future. She must, of course, +continue her education. Adelle replied that she should like to keep on +with school, by which she meant the Alton Girls' High. + +"Of course, of course," the president said easily. "Every girl should +have the proper sort of education, and it is all the more important when +her responsibilities and opportunities in life are likely to be +increased by the possession of property." + +But Adelle did not see how she could continue at the high school, now +that her aunt had died and there was no one but herself to look after +the roomers. + +"Oh, very easily, very easily," the president thought. "How would you +like to go to boarding-school, my dear?" + +Adelle did not know all at once. She had read something about +boarding-schools in story-books, but her conception of them was hazy. +And she ventured to say out loud that they must take a "sight of money." +The president of the trust company smiled for the benefit of his +fellow-officers and proceeded to break the news of the rich expectations +awaiting the timid little girl. + +"I think we shall find enough money somehow to send you to a good +school," he said gayly. "You know we have some money in the bank that +will be yours,--oh, not a great deal at present, but enough to give you +a good education, provided you don't spend too much on clothes, young +lady." + +This was a cruel jest, considering the quality of Adelle's one poor +little serge dress which she had on, and she took it quite literally. +While absorbing the idea that she must make her clothes go as far as +possible, she made no remark. + +"The property that we hold in trust for you until you shall become of +age," the president resumed more seriously, "is not yet in such +condition that we can tell you exactly how much it will amount to. But +it is safe to say that all your reasonable needs will be provided for. +You'll never have to worry about money!" + +He congratulated himself upon the happy phrasing of his announcement. It +was cautiously vague, and yet must relieve the little girl of all +apprehension or worry. Adelle made no response. For a Clark to be told +that there was no need to worry over money was too astounding for +belief. + +"Now," said the president, who felt that he had done everything called +for in the situation, "I will leave Mr. Gardiner to explain all the +details to you. I hope you will enjoy your new school.... Whenever you +are in the city, come in and see us!" + +He shook the little girl's hand and went off with his good-looking young +assistant, whose sharp glances had made Adelle shyer than ever. The two +men smiled as they went out, as though they were saying to +themselves,--"Queer little piece to have all that money!" + +Mr. Gardiner took a great many words to explain to Adelle that her +guardians had thought it best "after due consideration" to send her to +an excellent boarding-school for young ladies--Herndon Hall. He rolled +the name with an unction he had learned from his wife. Herndon Hall, it +seemed, was in a neighboring State, not far from the great city of New +York, and Adelle must prepare herself for her first long railroad +journey. She would not have to take this alone, however, for Miss +Thompson, the head teacher, had telephoned the trust company that she +herself would be in B---- on the following Friday and would escort Miss +Clark to the Hall. Adelle could be ready, of course, by Friday. + +Here Adelle demurred. There were the roomers--what would happen to them? +And the old Church Street house--what was to become of the house? The +banker waved aside these practical woman's considerations with a smile. +Some one would be sent out from the trust company to look after all such +unimportant matters. So, intimidated rather than persuaded, Adelle left +the trust company building to prepare herself for her new life that was +to begin on the following Friday noon. + +They were accustomed to doing large things in the Washington Trust +Company, and of course they did small things in a large way. But the +little orphan's fate had really been the subject of more consideration +than might possibly be inferred from the foregoing. The school matter +had been carefully canvassed among the officers of the company. Mr. +Gardiner had expressed some doubts as to the wisdom of sending Adelle at +once to a large, fashionable school, even if she had the money to pay +for it. Vague glimmerings of reason as to what really might make for the +little girl's happiness in life troubled him, even after his wife's +unhesitating verdict. But President West had no doubts whatever and +easily bore down his scruples. He belonged to a slightly superior class +socially and did not hold Herndon Hall in the same awe in which it was +regarded in the Gardiner household. His daughters had friends who had +got what education they had under Miss Annette Thompson and had married +well afterwards and "taken a good position in society," which was really +the important thing. Miss Thompson herself was of a very good New York +family,--he had known her father who had been something of a figure in +finance until the crash of ninety-three,--and the head of Herndon Hall +was reputed to have an excellent "formative" influence upon her girls. +And certainly that raw little specimen who had presented herself in his +office needed all the "formative influence" she could get! + +"We must give her the best," he pronounced easily, "for she is likely to +be a rich woman some day." + +It may be seen that President West agreed with Mrs. Gardiner's practical +interpretation of the catechism. After his interview with Adelle he said +to the trust officer,--"She needs--everything! Herndon Hall will be the +very thing for her--will teach her what a girl in her position ought to +know." + +These remarks reveal on his part a special philosophy that will become +clearer as we get to know better Miss Annette Thompson and Herndon Hall. +The officers of the trust company felt that in sending their ward to +this fashionable girls' school, they were doing their duty by her not +only safely but handsomely, and thenceforth dismissed her from their +thoughts, except when a subordinate brought them at regular intervals a +voucher to sign before issuing a check on behalf of Adelle.... + +"Terribly crude little piece," the president of the trust company said +of Adelle, thinking of his own vivacious daughters, who at her age had +been complete little women of the world, and of all the other pretty, +confident, voluble girls he met in his social life. "She has seen +nothing of life," he said in extenuation, by which he meant naturally +that Adelle Clark had never known how "nice people live," had never been +to dancing-school or parties, or country clubs or smart dressmakers, and +all the rest of what to him constituted a "suitable education" for a +young girl who was to inherit money. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile the "crude little piece" returned to her old home, somewhat +shaken in mind by what had happened to her. It never entered her little +head to argue with the august officers of the trust company, who stood +to her as the sacred symbol of Authority. She must buy a trunk, pack it, +and be at the Eclair Hotel in B---- by noon on the following Friday. +Those were her orders. She looked wonderingly at the two hundred dollar +check which Mr. Gardiner had given her for the expense of making herself +ready. She had never before seen two hundred dollars. She knew only +abstractly by the way of her arithmetic that such vast sums of money +existed. And now she was expected to spend this fortune in the space of +three days upon herself. She folded up the slip of paper and tucked it +carefully into her purse. When she presented it at one of the shops in +the Square in payment for the cheap trunk she had selected, she started +a local sensation. By the time the check had traveled from the clerk to +the proprietor and thence to the River National Bank, which did not take +long, it was known in that busy neighborhood that Clark's Field had made +good at last! Here was ready money from it as evidence. Adelle Clark was +in fact the heiress that her mother Addie had been in fancy. + +The manager of the livery-stable may have had his regrets for the light +manner in which he had treated old Pike's suggestion. He drove the girl +himself into B---- on Friday with her new trunk strapped behind the +closed carriage and touched his high hat when she dismounted before the +flunky-guarded doors of the hotel. Adelle did not notice the hat +business: she gave her old friend and best "roomer" her hand as she said +good-bye, then slowly mounted the stone steps of the hotel. And that was +the last that Church Street saw of the Clarks. + +The liveryman, slowly retracing his way across the bridge to Alton, +mused upon the picture that the little girl presented in her blue school +suit, going up the steps of the Eclair Hotel. It was all like a stage +story, he felt, and he thought long about the Clarks, whom he had known +for two generations and about human fate generally. He summed up his +reflections in one enigmatic exclamation,--"That blamed old pasture!" + +Adelle was an "heiress." Already she had been whisked away from Church +Street to her new life. And all because of "that blamed old +pasture"--otherwise Clark's Field. + + + + +XI + + +The civilized inhabitants of our twentieth-century world are acquainted +with many more kinds of torture than the ingenious managers of the +Inquisition ever dreamed of in their most lurid nightmares. And of all +these peculiarly modern forms of torture, perhaps the fashionable girls' +school such as Herndon Hall takes first rank. A boys' school of the same +order--conducted under the patronage of some holy saint's name--is often +pretty bad, but it cannot rival the girls' school because women are more +skillful in applying social torture and have a thousand ways of doing it +to a man's or boy's one. Even among the softest and snobbiest of boys +and masters there will always remain a residuum of male self-respect. If +the newcomer, no matter how wrongly classed, proves that he has physical +courage, or an aptitude for sports, or even a sunny, common-sense +disposition, he will quickly escape from his probationary period of +torture and become tolerated; while if a girl appears among her future +schoolmates with an ill-made, unfashionable frock, or has manners that +betray less sophistication than is to be expected, she may never survive +the torture that begins on the instant and follows her relentlessly, in +the schoolroom and out, until she either adapts herself to her +environment, becoming in turn a torturer, or is removed to a more +congenial environment. + +Adelle Clark presented to the little world of Herndon Hall a very +vulnerable appearance when she arrived at the school on that Friday +evening. She was still wearing the blue serge school dress that she and +her aunt had made for her high-school debut, also some coarse, faded +brown stockings, and stout cheap shoes, not to mention an unmentionable +hat of no style at all. She had taken that unfortunate joke of the trust +company's president literally: she must not waste her substance upon +clothes. Even without this inhibition she had scarcely the skill and the +courage necessary to spend her two hundred dollars to advantage in three +days. So she had bought herself a trunk, a few suits of much-needed +heavy underwear, some handkerchiefs, and a coat that she had desired all +winter, a thick, clumsy affair that completely enveloped her slight +figure. Then her imagination of wants had given out. + +The young teacher, who had taken Miss Thompson's place because of a +sudden indisposition that attacked the head mistress, had made Adelle +uncomfortably aware that something was wrong, but she put down her +coolness and unsympathetic silence during their brief journey to the +fact that Miss Stevens was a "teacher" and therefore felt "superior," +"Rosy," as the older Hall girls called Miss Stevens, was not at all +"superior" in her attitude to the girls. She dressed quite smartly and +youthfully and was their best confidante. But she had received a shock +when she saw "that little fright" (as she reported to Miss Thompson) +timidly sitting on the edge of her chair in the parlor of the Eclair +Hotel. "Where can she come from?" she had said to herself; and later she +had supplemented this query by thinking, "wherever it was, she had +better go back to it as fast as she can--the little fright!" + +Fortunately Adelle did not understand the glances that the elegant young +women who were chattering in the Hall drawing-room before dinner cast +upon her when she was introduced to her schoolmates. Nor did she +immediately comprehend the intention of the insults and tortures to +which she was submitted during the ensuing year. She felt lonely: she +missed her aunt and even the "roomers" more than she had expected to. +But gradually even into her dumb mind there penetrated a sense of +undeserved ignominy, not clearly localized, because she did not possess +a sufficient knowledge of sophisticated manners to realize the refined +nature of her torture. She had merely an accumulating sense of pain and +outrage. She was not happy in Herndon Hall: she did not know it until +afterwards, but that was the plain truth. Nobody wanted her there, and +she knew enough to understand it. Even a cat or a dog has sufficient +social sense for that! + + * * * * * + +Externally Herndon Hall was all that was charming and gracious--a much +more beautiful and refined home than Adelle had ever seen. It occupied +one of those spacious old manorial houses above the Hudson, where the +river swept in a gracious curve at the foot of the long lawn. An avenue +of old trees led up to the large stone house from the high road half a +mile away. There were all sorts of dependencies,--stables, greenhouses, +and ornamental gardens of the old-fashioned kind,--which were carefully +kept up so that the Hall resembled a large private estate, such as it +was meant to be, rather than a school. It was popularly supposed that +Herndon Hall had once been the country-place of Miss Thompson's people, +which was not true; but that shrewd woman of the world, recognizing all +the advantages of an aristocratic background, kept up the place on a +generous footing, with gardeners, stablemen, and many inside servants, +for which, of course, the pupils paid liberally. The Hall was run less +as a school than as a private estate. Many of the girls had their own +horses in the stable, and rode every pleasant afternoon under the care +of an old English riding-master, who was supposed to have been "Somebody +in England" once. (Later on, when the motor became popular the girls had +their own machines, but that was after Adelle's time.) There was lawn +tennis on the ample lawns, and this with the horseback riding and +occasional strolls was the only concession to the athletic spirit of the +day. + +The schoolrooms were not the feature of the Hall that one might expect. +They were confined to a small wing in the rear, or the basement, and +there were no laboratories or other paraphernalia of modern education. +The long drawing-room, with its recessed windows facing the river, was +hung with "old masters"--a few faded American protraits and some recent +copies of the Italian school. It was also furnished luxuriously and had +books in handsome bindings. But educationally, in any accepted sense of +the word, Herndon Hall was quite negligible, as all such institutions +for the care of the daughters of the rich must be, as long as the chief +concern of its patrons is to see their daughters properly married and +"taking a good position in society." Adelle quickly perceived that, +though she had been reckoned a dull pupil in the Alton Girls' High +School, she had much more than enough book knowledge to hold her own in +the classes of her new school. If it is difficult to say what is a good +education for a boy whose parents can afford to give him "the best," it +is almost impossible to solve the educational riddle for his sister. She +must have good manners, an attractive person, and, less clearly, some +acquaintance with literature, music, and art, and one modern language to +enable her to hold her own in the social circles that it is presumed she +will adorn. At least that was the way Miss Thompson looked at the +profound problem of girls' education. She herself was accounted +"accomplished," a "brilliant conversationalist," and "broadly cultured," +with the confident air that the best society is supposed to give, and +her business was to impart some of this polish to her pupils. +"Conversation," it may be added, was one of the features of Herndon +Hall. + +Art, music, and literature did not seem to awaken Adelle's dormant mind +any more than had the rigorous course of the public schools. She did as +most of the girls did,--nothing,--coming unprepared day after day to her +recitations to be helped through the lessons by the obliging teachers, +who professed to care little for "mere scholarship" and strove rather to +"awaken the intelligence" and "stir the spirit," "educate the taste," +and all the rest of the fluff with which an easy age excuses its +laziness. The girls at Herndon Hall impudently bluffed their teachers or +impertinently replied that they "didn't remember," just like their papas +and future husbands when they were cornered on the witness stand by +inconvenient questions about shady transactions. + +The tone of the school was distinctly fashionable, also idle and +luxurious, which was what its patrons desired. Many of the mothers and +other female relatives of the girls, besides the "old girls" themselves, +ran up to the school from New York, which was not far away, bringing +with them a rich atmosphere of jewels, clothes, and gossip that seemed +to hang about the large drawing-room of the stately stone mansion. The +more fortunate pupils found frequent excuses for getting down to the gay +city for the theater and parties, and there were besides boys from a +neighboring college, with parties to the races, all discreetly +chaperoned, of course. + +Miss Thompson was at great pains to maintain what the "old Hall girls" +called the "tone of Herndon," so that careful mothers and fathers should +have no hesitation in confiding to it their daughters from fear that +they might encounter "undesirable associates." In all the years of its +existence Miss Thompson had never admitted a member of a certain +religious creed. Yet latterly there had been rumors that the Hall was +not what it once had been. There were too many "Western" girls: some +said Herndon was getting "Pittsburghy." There were certain lively +daughters of Western millionaires, two in especial from the great State +of California whom Adelle later on was thrown with, who did not add to +the exclusive atmosphere of the Hall. + +The path of the manager of a fashionable school is by no means an easy +one. It is, in fact, as Miss Thompson had found, more difficult than the +famous eye of the needle. For if she were so scrupulous as to bar out +all the daughters of new wealth, she was in danger of lacking that +material support without which Herndon Hall could not be maintained. And +if she admitted too freely rich "Western girls" whose parents were +"nobodies," but were keenly anxious to have their daughters become +"somebodies," she was in danger of watering her wine to the point where +it would lose all its potency. A constant equilibrium between the +good-family class and the merely rich must be maintained if the school +was to preserve its position. And so it can be understood why the +proprietor and the teachers of Herndon Hall carefully scrutinized Adelle +on her first appearance. Would she merely water their precious wine? If +so she must be very rich, indeed, to compensate for her diluting +presence. Miss Thompson had accepted her on the strength of President +West's personal letter, and it did not take her long to discover that +she had made a grave mistake. Adelle was all water! + +She folded up her napkin at dinner in the thrifty manner of the Church +Street house. She ate her soup from the point of her spoon, and the +wrong spoon, and she wore her one dress from the time she got up in the +morning until she went to bed. If it had not been for the solid social +position of President West and the prestige of the trust company, whose +ward she was, it is probable that Adelle would have been sent packing by +the end of the second day. As it was, the head mistress said to Miss +Stevens, with a sigh of commendable Christian resignation,--"We must do +our best for the poor little thing--send her in to me after dinner." + +When Adelle entered the private sitting-room of the head mistress, she +expected to be given directions about her classes. Not at all. Miss +Thomson, who still seemed to be suffering from the indisposition that +Adelle found frequently attacked her, looked her over coldly as she +sipped her coffee and remarked that she "must have something fit to wear +at once." She put the little girl through a careful examination as to +the contents of her trunk, with the result that in a few days Adelle's +wardrobe was marvelously increased with a supply of suitable frocks for +all occasions, slippers, lingerie, and hats, and the bill was sent to +the trust company, which honored it promptly without question, not +knowing exactly what a girl ought to cost. Having equipped her pupil +"decently," Miss Thompson observed "that she didn't have an idea how to +wear her clothes," but she trusted to the spirit of the school to +correct that deficiency. Next she sent Adelle to the dentist and had her +teeth straightened,--a painful operation that dragged through several +years at great cost of time and money, and resulted finally in a set of +regular teeth that looked much like false ones. Having provided for her +outside, the teachers turned their attention to her manners and "form," +and here lay Adelle's worst mental torture. That young teacher, "Rosy" +Stevens, who had fetched her from B----, had this task. "Rosy," who was +only thirty, was supposed to be having "a desperate affair of the heart" +with an actor, which she discussed with the older girls. She was the +most popular chaperone in the school because she was "dead easy" and +connived at much that might have resulted scandalously. "Rosy" shared +the girls' tastes for sweets, dress, and jewelry, and smuggled into the +Hall, not candy--because that was openly permitted in any quantity--but +forbidden "naughty" novels. + +Miss Stevens had the deadliest weapon at her command that Adelle had +ever encountered--sarcasm. "My dear girl," she would say before a +tableful of girls, in the pityingly sweet tone of an experienced woman +of the world to a vulgar nobody, "how can you speak like that!" (This +when Adelle had emitted the vernacular grunt in answer to some +question.) "You are not a little ape, my dear." Then she would mimic in +her dainty drawl Adelle's habit of speech, which, of course, set all the +girls at the table tittering. Adelle naturally did not love "Rosy," but +she was helpless before her darts. The other teachers generally ignored +her presence, treating her with the perfect politeness of complete +indifference. Once, soon after her arrival, the child was caught talking +with one of the housemaids in the upper corridor, and was severely +reprimanded. She had merely sought for a ray of human sunlight, but she +was told that young women of her station in life were never familiar +with servants. In a word, Adelle was more nearly encased in an airproof +lining at Herndon Hall than ever before, and remained for another two +years the pale, furtive, undeveloped child she was when she first came. +Some cures, it seems, are so radical that they paralyze the nervous +system and develop rather than cure the disease. Such was the case of +Adelle in Herndon Hall. For nearly two years she sneaked about its +comfortable premises, a silent, forlorn, miserable little being, +frightened at what she could not understand, ready for a blow, but not +keen enough to put up a protecting hand. The verdict of the school was +that "the little fright of a Clark girl" was too stupid to learn +anything. As one girl said to "Rosy,"--"The Clark girl must have piles +of money to be here at all." + +And the teacher replied,--"She'll need it all, every cent, she's so +deadly common." + + * * * * * + +Let no reader suppose that Herndon Hall in which Adelle was suffering +her martyrdom is typical of all fashionable girls' boarding-schools. In +a real sense nothing in this life is sufficiently universal to be +considered typical. There are to-day many schools that have some of the +characteristics of Herndon Hall, though fortunately fewer than there +were when Adelle got her education. But even at that time there were +many excellent schools for girls where the teachers made sincere efforts +to teach the girls something, where the girls were human and well-bred, +and the teachers were kind and sympathetic and would not have tolerated +such conduct as went on almost openly in this "exclusive" establishment, +nor such brutal treatment as the girls dealt out to Adelle. + +Herndon Hall, with its utterly false standards of everything that +concerns woman's being, was the fruit of those ideals that have obtained +about women, their position and education, for many centuries. And +Herndon Hall was Adelle's accident--the fate to which the trust officers +in all good will consigned her. There always is and must be, even in our +own enlightened age of feminist movements, a Herndon Hall--perhaps more +than one. Parents who believe that marriage and "a suitable position in +society" are all there is in life for a woman will always create Herndon +Halls. + + + + +XII + + +If the history of Clark's Field and those whom it concerned were an +idealistic or romantic story, striving to present the world as it ought +to be rather than as it often happens to be, our little heroine should +at this crisis awaken from her apathy. Her spark of a soul should be +touched by some sympathetic agent,--one of the teachers who had lived +sadly and deeply, or some generous exception among her school-fellows, +who would extend a protecting wing to the persecuted girl. No doubt even +in Herndon Hall there were such who might have answered at a pinch to +regenerate Adelle and start her forth on a series of physical if not +spiritual adventures that would be exhilarating to the reader. But +nothing of the sort came into her life at this period. She was too +unpromising to arouse the incipient Samaritans. + +There was, of course, the religious or rather the church side of the +school in which Adelle might have taken refuge. This consisted of +attending the small Episcopal Church in the neighboring village, where +the excellent rector, a married man and the father of daughters, often +directed his discourses at the Hall pews. But Adelle was no more +religiously minded than her worldly little associates. There was nothing +in the service of ritualistic beauty to arouse a latent +sensuousness--nothing of color or form or sound. Religion in fact had +even less to do with daily life in Herndon Hall, in spite of weekly +church and morning prayers, than it had in the Church Street house. +There was more or less talk about "the Church" and "the spiritual life," +but, as Adelle soon perceived, the girls lied, cheated in their lessons, +spoke spitefully of one another--did even worse--quite as people acted +in the world outside. Even the teachers, she learned after a time, +failed to connect the religious life with their personal conduct. +"Rosy," the teacher with whom she had most to do the first year, aimed +to be the companion rather than the guide of the girls in their frequent +escapades. Miss Thompson herself, it was whispered among the older +girls, suffered from something worse than "neuralgia" in those frequent +attacks which incapacitated her. As for the general morale of the +school, even more serious things could be said if it were not for fear +that the authorities of Herndon Hall and others of a similar mind might +ban this tale as unfit for "nice girls" to peruse, although they +tolerate the deeds themselves. Of such matters, to be sure, Adelle knew +nothing until later, for at first she was so much an outsider that she +was not allowed to look beneath the decorous surface, and experienced +merely petty attacks of selfishness and snobbery. + +She might never have got completely beneath the surface if she had not +been obliged to spend all her vacations at the Hall. The teachers were +then off duty, when they were not visiting at the homes of their pupils, +and spoke and acted before the silent girl quite freely because they +considered her lacking mentally and harmless. And she was allowed to +converse occasionally with the house servants, who sometimes spoke +openly about Herndon Hall. She knew that the teachers had lively parties +where wine was served freely. Adelle was supposed to be in her room on +the third floor when these festivities were in progress, but she could +not be unaware of them. And once she encountered "Rosy" in a curious +state of exaltation that filled her with fear. At that time she did not +understand the working of wine upon the spirit.... + +She was, of course, often dull and lonely, especially the first summer +in the empty house above the steaming river. It was too hot much of the +time to do more than loll about the porches with a book or some sewing. +She tried to do a little gardening because she liked flowers, and +occasionally took walks alone into the country. It was a lazy, +unwholesome existence, and she was surprised to find herself looking +forward to the day when her tormentors would return and the routine of +school life would begin once more. During this first long vacation Mrs. +Gardiner made a feeble effort "to do something" for the trust company's +ward. She asked Adelle for a week's visit in the mountains, and shy as +she was Adelle longed for that week at the end of August as an escape +from prison. But, alas, the Gardiner children inopportunely contracted +some minor disease and Mrs. Gardiner wrote to recall her invitation. +Providence seemed determined to do nothing more for Adelle at present. + +The only other event of this twelve weeks was the letter she wrote to +Mr. Lovejoy, the manager of the livery-stable in Alton. This was the +result of an acute attack of loneliness when, after a thorough canvass +of her friends, Mr. Lovejoy's name was the only one she could think of. +She told him in her little letter about the school, said she missed the +Church Street house, and asked specifically after certain "roomers." But +she never received a reply. Whether the teachers suppressed Mr. +Lovejoy's letter, or he had never received Adelle's, or, which was more +likely, he was not sufficiently stimulated by the girl's epistle to +answer her, she never knew. After that one attempt Adelle made no effort +to reach back into her past: she accepted the present with that strange +stoicism that young people sometimes exhibit. + +At last when she had laboriously completed "Little Dorrit" and was +beginning heavily upon the "Christmas Stories," the vacation came to an +end and the Herndon girls returned for the fall term. Adelle was now a +familiar figure to them, and therefore less interesting to snub. She was +merely ignored, which did not hurt her. Whatever might have been her +slender expectations of happiness, she must have long since given up any +idea of accomplishing them like other girls. She was becoming a perfect +small realist, content to take the facts of life for what they seemed. +She watched without conscious pain or envy the flurry of greetings and +boastful exchanges of experiences among the girls the first day of their +return to school. She was either ignored or passed by with a polite nod +and a "Hello, Adelle! Did you have a good time with Rosy?"--while the +other girls gathered into knots and resorted to each others' rooms for +deeper confidences. It was an old story now, being an outsider, and the +small, unobtrusive girl of fifteen was fast sinking into a state of +apathy--the most dangerous condition of all. + +The new school year, however, brought her something--the arrival of a +friend. As she was dawdling with a book in a corner of the drawing-room, +watching a circle of "old girls" who were whispering and giggling over +some vacation tale, a small voice came to her ears,-- + +"Is it that you also are strange here?" + +Adelle was so surprised at being addressed, also at the foreign-looking +girl who had spoken, that she did not answer, and the other continued +with a smile on her singularly red lips,-- + +"I speak English ver--ver badly!" + +"What is your name?" Adelle asked bluntly. + +"Diane Merelda," the girl said in a liquid tone. + +"What?" Adelle asked with puckered brows. + +"Di-ane Merel-da," came more slowly in the same soft tone. "See!" She +took with a gracious movement the pencil from Adelle's hand and wrote on +a piece of paper the name, and added beneath in small letters "F. de M." + +"Oh," said Adelle, "what do those mean?" pointing to the letters +beneath. + +"Fille de Marie--a daughter of the Blessed Virgin," the girl translated +sweetly. + +Adelle looked at the stranger in bewilderment. She was a dainty person, +as small as Adelle, but a perfectly formed young woman. Her black hair +was tightly braided over her small head, in a fashion then strange, and +her face was very pale, of a natural pallor emphasized by the line of +carmine lips. Her eyes were black and wide. She smiled gently, +contentedly, upon Adelle. Altogether she was an unusual phenomenon to +the young American. She explained herself volubly if not fluently in +broken English, pausing every now and then with a charming birdlike toss +of her little black head and, "You say so, no?"--waiting for Adelle's +nod to dash on into further intricacies of speech. + +Miss Diane Merelda, as she told Adelle Clark, was the daughter of a +wealthy Mexican whose acquaintance with Americans had so liberalized him +that he preferred to educate his children in the States and in schools +not under Catholic control. Senorita Diane had left her father's home in +Morelos earlier than intended, however, because of the outbreak of an +insurrection in the province, in which her father was concerned. As his +hacienda near Morelos was not safe on account of brigands, Senor Merelda +had sent his wife and daughter abroad to join his sons, and so Diane had +reached Herndon Hall by the way of Madrid, Paris, and New York, after a +summer spent with relatives in Spain. Her mother had learned of Herndon +Hall from a chance traveling companion, and in some way had induced Miss +Thompson to waive her strict requirements for admission. + +From her way of dressing her hair to her pointed slippers and broken +English, the little Mexican was even more markedly different from the +Herndon type than Adelle, and though the older girls knew enough of the +world to recognize a distinction in differences, Diane did not seem to. +She was gracious to all, and Adelle happened to be the first girl she +could speak to while she waited for her mother, who was closeted with +Miss Thompson. Here was Adelle's chance, although she did not recognize +it as such. They talked for an hour, rather Diane talked and Adelle did +her best to understand the rapid, lisping, birdlike notes of the +foreigner. She learned that Diane had a brother in a school near St. +Louis, another in a technical college, and still another now in Germany. +The Merelda family seemed much scattered, but that did not disturb the +little Mexican. + +"We shall all be back in Morelos sometime!" She added sweetly, "Perhaps +you will come to Mexico with me, no?" + +Adelle soon learned all about Madrid, the Spanish relatives, the sight +of the young King of Spain at San Sebastian, the trip to Lourdes which +the family had taken in hope that the holy cure might help her mother's +lame knee, and too much else to relate here. Senorita Diane was +exceedingly loquacious: her little tongue wove in and out of the new +idiom with surprising facility, forever wagging in a low, sweet babble +of nothings. Adelle, as has been sufficiently indicated, absorbed +passively the small and the large facts of life. Diane was like a +twittering bird on a tiny twig that shook with the vehemence of her +expression. She reacted instinctively to every stimulus from a new +toothbrush to the sight of a motor-car, and she preferred not to react +alone. Thus Adelle did more talking of her blunt, bald kind to her new +friend than she had accomplished hitherto all her life. She explained +Herndon Hall literally to the stranger, while Diane exclaimed in three +languages. + +The presence of the little Mexican in the school did much to ameliorate +Adelle's lonely lot this second year. She formed a connecting link of a +sort between her and the rest of her schoolmates, who liked the +foreigner. Diane reported fully to Adelle what the other girls were +doing,--how Betty Langton was in love with an actor and for this reason +went to New York almost every week on one excuse or another; how the two +Californians, Irene and Sadie Paul, had a party in their room the night +before, with wine, much wine. Diane shook her head wonderingly over all +these doings of "the Americans." American girls seemed to her all +"queer," and, though she did not say so, rather vulgar and underbred. +Oddly enough she put Adelle apart in this sweeping judgment, for she was +not able to appreciate Adelle's common accent and primitive manners. +Adelle did not snub nor condescend nor do "naughty" things, and so, from +the Mexican's standard, a simple and somewhat antiquated one, Adelle was +a lady. Diane concluded that she must be poor and for that reason the +other girls treated her badly. To be poor was no disgrace in the eyes of +the Mexican. Many of the best people she had known, including her +Spanish relatives, were dreadfully poor, but none the less to be +considered. Poverty was a matter of God's will in the delightful Latin +sense of the word, not a matter of inherited personal disgrace as in a +free, Anglo-Saxon democracy. + +"I do not like your America," she said gravely to Adelle after she had +been a couple of months in the school. "Not to live in always when I am +married." + +"What's the matter with America?" Adelle asked. + +"It is all money, money," the little Mexican replied. "You come to see +nothing in your heart but dollars, dollars, dollars. It makes the heart +heavy." + +Adelle, who had never looked at the world in this light, thought Diane a +little "queer." Nevertheless they were good friends as school-girl +friendships go and consoled each other for what they lacked in their +common environment. + +Another event of this new year was perhaps even more momentous to Adelle +than the arrival of the little Mexican, and that was the visit paid to +her shortly after her sixteenth birthday by one of the trust company's +officers. It was Mr. Ashly Crane--the new trust officer, in fact--who +rode up the winding avenue from the river road in one of the noisy, +new-fangled motors that announced itself from afar. Mr. Gardiner, it +seemed, had been retired from his position as trust officer and was no +longer to be the human symbol of Adelle's wardship to the trust company. +The new trust officer had not of design chosen the occasion of the +ward's birthday to pay her a visit. Happening to be in the neighboring +city of Albany with a few hours on his hands before he could make +connections for the West, he bethought himself of the trust company's +young charge and ran out to look over the school and incidentally +Adelle. No one from the Washington Trust Company had ever paid its ward +a visit,--Adelle was the only unvisited girl in the school,--but Mr. +Ashly Crane was the kind of vigorous young banker, not yet quite forty, +who could be depended upon to "keep in personal touch" with all his +clients. That is why, probably, he had superseded Mr. Gardiner, who had +a staid habit of relying upon printed forms and the mail. + +Mr. Ashly Crane was a good-looking, keen American banker, who paid +strict attention to his manners, clothes, and habits. He was ambitious, +of course, and had been so busily climbing upwards from his first +clerkship in the trust company that he had not yet married. Very likely +he felt that with his ever-widening horizon of prospects it would not be +wise to anchor himself socially to any woman, who might prove to be a +drag upon his future. He was still well within the marriageable limits +and looked even younger. Nothing so well preserves youth as Success, and +of this tonic Mr. Ashly Crane had had an abundance. Mr. Crane, it should +not be thought, had armed himself with a bunch of enormous red roses +from the leading florist of Albany and set forth upon his expedition +with any formulated plot against the little heiress who was the +company's ward. He recalled her in fact as a most unattractive, gawky +little girl, who must have changed inconceivably for the better if she +were to interest Mr. Ashly Crane personally. But the Clark estate, under +the skillful method of treatment for which he was largely responsible, +was growing all the time, and thanks to the probate judge's precaution, +Adelle would ultimately reap rather more than one half of the earnings +of the Clark's Field Associates. Already her expenses, represented by +the liberal checks to Herndon Hall, were a mere nothing in the total of +the income that went on rolling up in conservative bonds and stocks that +were safely stowed away in the vaults under the Washington Trust +Company. It seemed only proper that the sole representative of so much +tangible property should be accorded every consideration by those +legally constituted her servants and guardians. Single motives are more +rarely found in life than in art, and Mr. Ashly Crane's motives this +fine April morning were quite typically hybrid. + +Whatever incipient anticipations of the girl herself he might have +entertained during his ride were immediately dissipated as soon as +Adelle entered the drawing-room from the class whence she had been +summoned. She was a little larger, perhaps, than he remembered her, but +essentially the same awkward, homely child, and she was now wearing an +ugly harness upon her teeth that further disfigured her. Mr. Ashly Crane +was an observant man, and he became at once merely the business man, +solely intent upon performing his duty and getting back to Albany in +time to catch his train. He presented his roses, which Adelle took from +him clumsily and allowed to lie across her lap, while with legs spread +apart to sustain their burden she listened to what he had to say. Mr. +Crane explained to her briefly Mr. Gardiner's retirement and his own +recent elevation to the post of being her nominal guardian, and then +inquired if everything was satisfactory in the school. When Adelle +replied, yes, she guessed so, he observed that the Hall was prettily +located above the river with a good view and that a girl ought to have a +fine time in such a pleasant country. + +"What do you do with yourself when you are not studying?" he concluded +in a patronizing tone. + +"Oh," Adelle responded vaguely, "I don't know. Nothing much--read some +and take walks." + +The new trust officer was enough of a human being to realize the +emptiness of this reply, and for a few moments was puzzled. This was a +woman's job, rather than a man's, he reflected sagely. However, being a +man he must do the best he could to win the girl's confidence, and after +all Herndon Hall had the highest reputation. + +"They treat you right?" he inquired bluntly. + +The girl murmured something in assent, because she could think of +nothing better to say. It was quite impossible for her to phrase the +sense of misery and indignity that was nearly constant in her mind. + +"The teachers are kind?" the trust officer pursued. + +"I guess so," she said, with a dumb look that made him uncomfortable. + +He rose nervously and walked across the room. As he gazed out of the +open window at the distant prospect across the "Noble River" (so +described in the dainty leaflet sent forth by the school) "from the +ivy-shrouded old stone Hall," he caught sight of a party of girls riding +off on horseback for their daily excursion. That gave him an idea. + +"You ride, too?" he inquired, turning again to the girl. + +"No, I haven't any horse," she replied simply. "You have to have your +own horse." + +"But you can have a horse if you want to ride," the trust officer +hastily remarked. "Riding is a very good exercise, and I should think it +would be fine in this country." + +Here was something tangible that a man could get hold of. The girl +looked pale and probably needed healthful exercise. If other girls had +their own horses, she could have one. It was really ridiculous how +little she was spending of her swelling income. And he proceeded at once +to take up this topic with Miss Thompson, who presently arrived upon the +scene. Mr. Ashly Crane was much more successful in impressing the head +mistress of Herndon Hall with the importance of the ward of the +Washington Trust Company than in probing the heart of the lonely little +girl. He gave the elegant Miss Thompson to understand clearly that Miss +Adelle Clark was to have every advantage that money could buy, not +merely music and art as extras, but horses,--he even put it in the +plural,--a groom, and if she wanted it a private maid, which he was told +was never permitted. Miss Thompson quickly gathered from his tone and +his words that Miss Adelle Clark's expectations were such as to insure +her the most careful consideration in every respect, and if Herndon Hall +could not provide her with all the advantages to which wealth was +entitled, her guardians would quickly remove her from the school. Miss +Thompson accompanied the trust officer to the door out of earshot of +Adelle and assured him haughtily that Herndon Hall which sheltered a +Steigman of Philadelphia, a Dyboy of Baltimore, not to mention a Miss +Saltonsby from his own city, knew quite as well as he what was fitting +under the circumstances. However, they shook hands as two persons from +the same world and parted in complete understanding. Adelle had already +slipped off with her armful of roses. + + + + +XIII + + +From the moment, when she emerged upon the corridor that led to the +schoolrooms with that huge bunch of American Beauty roses in her arms, a +new period of her school life began. The girls, of course, had seen from +their desks the arrival of the motor-car and its single occupant,--a +Man,--and the older girls who had peeked into the drawing-room reported +that Mr. Ashly Crane was a very smart-looking man, indeed. When a woman +first receives flowers from a man, an event of importance in her +existence has happened. Senorita Diane, who was an incorrigible +sentimentalist, went into ecstasies over the roses and at once whispered +about the school that they were the fruit of an admirer, not of a mere +relative. Miss Thompson talked to her teachers, especially to "Rosy," +and it became known throughout the Hall that the ugly duckling was +undoubtedly Somebody, and she was treated thereafter with more +consideration. If the trust company had thought to take notice of its +ward's existence earlier in her school career, Adelle might have been +saved a very disagreeable year of her life. + +In due time there arrived a beautiful saddle-horse and a groom, both +selected with judgment by Mr. Ashly Crane and charged to the ward's +account. The appearance of the blooded mount did more than anything else +to acquaint Adelle with the meaning and the power of money. In many +subtle ways she began to feel a change in the attitude of her world +towards her, and naturally related it immediately to the possession of +this unknown power. A dangerous weapon had thus been suddenly placed in +her hands. She could command respect, attention, even consideration, +thanks to this weapon--money. It was merely human that as the years went +on the silent child, who had absorbed many unhappy impressions of life +before discovering this key to the world, should become rapidly cynical +in her use of her one great weapon of offense and defense. The next few +years of her life was the period when she exercised herself in the use +of this weapon, although she did not become really proficient in its +control until much later. + +A suitable habit was quickly provided, and she set forth each pleasant +day with that little group of older girls who enjoyed this privilege, +accompanied always by her own groom, who was a well-trained servant and +effaced himself as nearly as possible. The California girls rode, and +that Miss Dyboy of Baltimore, but the little Mexican, though she had +ridden all her life, had no horse, and as long as affairs continued +unsettled in Morelos was not likely to have one. When Adelle discovered +this fact, she did not play the part of the unselfish heroine, I am +sorry to say, and allow Diane to use her horse even on those days when +she did not care to ride (as of course she would do in a well-conducted +story). Instead she merely wrote a little letter to Mr. Crane at the +Washington Trust Company, telling him rather peremptorily to send her +another horse. Somewhat to her surprise the second horse arrived in due +season, and now she lent the beast to her little friend, carefully +refraining from giving up her title to him. For a second time she felt +the sweet sense of unlimited power in response to desire. She wrote her +letter as Aladdin rubbed his magic lamp, and straightway her desire +became fact! It was modern magic. This time it happened that her desire +was a generous one and brought her the approval as well as the envy of +the small social world at the Hall. But that was purely accidental: the +next time she should try her lamp, as likely as not the cause might be +purely selfish. As a matter of fact she soon discovered that, by +distributing her favors and lending her extra horse to a number of +schoolmates, she could enlarge her circle of influence and +consideration. So the little Mexican by no means had all the rides. + +Horseback riding was a beneficial pleasure in more than one way. Adelle, +of course, profited from the exercise in the open air: she began to grow +slowly and to promise womanhood at some not distant day. It also brought +her into close relations with some of the leading girls, who had thus +far ignored her existence; among them the breezy California sisters, +"the two Pols," as they were known in school. These girls profited by +Adelle's groom to dispense with the chaperonage of the old +riding-master, and before long Adelle learned why this arrangement was +made. In their long expeditions across country, with the discreet groom +well in the rear, the girls put their heads together in the most +intimate gossip, from which Adelle learned much that completed her +knowledge of life. Most of this was innocent enough, though some was +not, as when one afternoon, when "the Pols" judged that Adelle was a +"good sport," they led the way to a remote road-house where a couple of +men were waiting evidently by appointment. One of them, a fair-haired, +overdressed young man, Adelle was given to understand was Sadie Pol's +"artist" friend. She herself was sent back to entertain the groom while +the two sisters went into the road-house with their "friends." Conduct, +even conduct that came near being vice, was largely meaningless to +Adelle: she silently observed. She had no evil impulses herself, very +few impulses, in fact, of any kind. But she was the last person to tell +tales, and "the two Pols," having tested her and pronounced her "safe," +she was allowed to see more and went more than once to the rendezvous at +the quiet road-house. In this way she raised herself nearly to a plane +of equality with the leaders of the school. Indeed, it was Adelle who +assisted Irene Paul to escape from the Hall one winter night, and stayed +awake far into the morning in order to let the girl in. But that was a +year later.... + +When Adelle discovered the power of her magic lamp, she was generous +with her pocket-money, ordering and buying whatever the older girls +desired. In this way she rapidly attained favor in the Hall, where few +even of the richer girls could procure money so easily as the ward of +the Washington Trust Company. "Get Adelle to do it," or "Adelle will dig +up the money," "Ask Adelle to write her bank," became familiar +expressions, and Adelle never failed to "make good." It is safe to say +that if contact with any sort of human experience gives education, +Adelle was being educated rapidly, although she was completely ignorant +of books and as nearly illiterate as a carefully protected rich girl can +be. Before Nature had completed within her its mission, Adelle was +cognizant of many kinds of knowledge, some of which included depravity. +For in the exclusive, protected, rich world of Herndon Hall she had met +everything she might have encountered in the Alton Girls' High and a +good deal more beside. + +By the end of this second year she was not much happier, perhaps, but +she was perfectly comfortable at the Hall and thoroughly used to her new +environment. The blonde Irene had given her a diploma,-- + +"Dell's all right--she's a good little kid." + + + + +XIV + + +That summer she did not have to mope by herself in the empty Hall. The +little Mexican carried her away for a long visit to her distant home. +The trouble in Morelos had temporarily subsided, so that Senor Merelda +felt that it was safe to gather his large family at the hacienda. The +journey, which the two girls made alone as far as St. Louis, where +Diane's elder brother met them, was the first view of the large world +that Adelle had ever had. They were both filled with the excitements of +their journey so that even Adelle's pale cheeks glowed with a happy +sense of the mystery of living. This ecstasy was somewhat broken by the +presence of Carlos, a gentlemanly enough young man; but Adelle was +afraid of all men. She failed also to assimilate the strange sights that +she encountered south of St. Louis. The journey became a jumble in her +memory of heat and red sunsets and dirty Indians and stuffy dining-cars. +But Morelos itself made a more lasting impression upon her little mind. +There was, first of all, the strange landscape, dominated by the snowy +peak of Popocatepetl, the sugar-fields, and the drowsy languor of the +little town, and then there was the family life of the Mereldas at the +hacienda. That was both delightful and queer to Adelle. Instead of one +"queer" person to whom she had become accustomed, there were half a +dozen odd human beings in the persons of Senor and Senora Merelda and +the older boys and girls. They all spoke all the time as did Diane, +about everything and nothing. They seemed to care warmly for one +another, yet quarreled like children over nothings. Young Carlos, who +was at a technical school, made violent love to Adelle. It was the first +time that a boy had looked at her twice even under compulsion, and it +bewildered and troubled Adelle until she perceived that it was all a +joke, a "queer" way of expressing courtesy to a stranger. + +"It would not be polite," Diane explained demurely, "if Carlos did not +make the bear to my friend." + +So Adelle got over her fright when the youth uttered strange speeches +and tried to take her hand. She even felt a faint pleasure in thus +becoming of a new importance. + +"Of course," Diane remarked sagely, "Carlos cannot marry yet--he is +still in school. But he will marry soon--why not you?... You are so very +rich. I should like Carlos to marry a rich girl and my friend, too ..." +And with a little sigh,--"It must be pleasant to be so rich as you!" +From which it will be seen that the little Mexican had also become +somewhat corrupted by her year at Herndon Hall. + +Adelle had not yet found out fully how nice it was to be rich, but she +was learning fast. To be able to attract the attentions of agreeable +young men like Carlos Merelda was another of the virtues of her magic +lamp that she had never thought of before. Although she had no idea of +taking Carlos's courtship seriously, she thought all the better of +herself for this extra magnetism which her money gave her person. The +kindliness of the Mereldas and their Mexican circle to the little +American was due largely to her being a good friend of their Diane and +also their guest, but it made Adelle grow in her own estimation. At +present life seemed to consist in a gradual unfolding to her of the +meaning of her new power, and a consequent enlargement of her egotism. +That is unfortunately one of the commonest properties of +wealth,--stimulating egotism,--and it takes much experience or an +extraordinary nature to counteract this unhealthy stimulus. For the +ordinary nature it is impossible to live day after day, year in and year +out, under the powerful external stimulus of riches, without confounding +the outer source of power with an innate virtue. + +But with our Adelle, by the time her visit had come to an end, her new +education had got merely to the point where she had the self-interest +and assurance of the ordinary American girl of twelve. That Church +Street experience had chastened her. But if her education was to +continue at the present rate, she was likely to become selfish, +egotistical, and purse-proud in a few years. As yet it had not made her +unpleasant, merely given her a little needed confidence in her own +being. + +She chose to make the long journey homewards by water from Vera Cruz to +New York in charge of the captain of the vessel. For Senor Merelda, +after the harassing activities of political warfare and its pecuniary +drains, did not feel able to send his daughter back to Herndon Hall. So +the two friends kissed and parted at Vera Cruz, Diane shedding all the +tears. They expected to meet again before long, and of course agreed to +write frequently. But life never again brought Adelle in contact with +the warm-hearted little Latin, who had first held out to her the olive +branch of human sympathy. + +Adelle was met at the dock by "Rosy," who had with her "the two Pols" +and Eveline Glynn at whose country home they were staying. "Rosy," as +well as her schoolmates, was agreeably surprised by Adelle's appearance +after her summer in Mexico. Nature was tardily asserting herself; Adelle +was becoming a woman,--a small, delicate, pale little creature, whose +rounding bust under her white dress gave her the dainty atmosphere of an +early spring flower, fragile and frigid, but full of charm for some +connoisseurs of human beauty. She had also acquired in Mexico a note of +her own, which was perhaps due to the clothes she had bought in Mexico +City on her way home, of filmy fabric and prominent colors; and her +usually taciturn speech had taken on a languorous slowness in imitation +of the Mereldas' way of speaking English. In the drawling manner in +which she said,--"Hello, Rosy," and nonchalantly accepted Miss Glynn's +invitation for the intervening days before school opened, the new Adelle +was revealed. The girls exchanged glances. And "Rosy" whispered Irene +Paul,--"Our little Adelle is coming on." To which the California girl +replied with a chuckle,--"Didn't I tell you she was a good old sport?" + +Adelle, overhearing this, felt an almost vivid sense of pride. + +But as yet hers was only a very little air, which was quickly wilted by +the oppressive luxury of the Glynns' country-place--one of those large, +ostentatious establishments that Americans are wont to start before they +know how, and where consequently the elaborate domestic machinery +creaks. There were men-servants of different nationalities, ladies' +maids, and a houseful of guests coming and going as in a private hotel. +Adelle shrank into the obscurest corner and her anemonelike charm, +tentatively putting forth, was quite lost in the scramble. Beechwood was +a much less genial home than the slipshod Mexican hacienda of the +Mereldas and nobody paid any attention to the shy girl. Eveline Glynn, +who expected in another year to be free from school, was too much +occupied with her own flirtations to bother herself about her chance +guest. Adelle, being left to her usual occupation of silent observation, +managed to absorb a good deal at Beechwood in four days, chiefly of the +machinery of modern wealth. There were the elaborate meals, the +drinking, the card-playing, the motors, the innumerable servants, and +the sickening atmosphere of inane sentimentalism between the sexes. +Everybody seemed to be having "an affair," and the talk was redolent of +innuendo. Adelle had occasion to observe the potency of her lamp in this +society. She worked it first upon the waiting-woman assigned to her, to +whom she gave a large fee and who coached her devotedly in the ways of +the house and supplied her with the gossip. It also brought her the +annoying attentions of a middle-aged man, to whom her hostess had +confided that the dumb little Clark girl was "awful rich." + +At the end of the visit the girls went back to New York, under the +chaperonage of "Rosy," to equip themselves for the school term, staying +at a great new hotel, and here Adelle's corruption by her wealth was +continued at an accelerated pace. The four girls flitted up and down the +Avenue, buying and ordering what they would. There were definite limits +to the purse of the Californians, but Adelle, perceiving the distinction +to be had from free spending, ordered with a splendid indifference to +price or amount. She won the admiration of her friends by the ease with +which she gave her name and address. Adelle was in fact a little +frightened by her own extravagance, but persisted with a child's +curiosity to find out the limit of her magic lamp. She did not reach it, +however. Mr. Crane at her request had opened an account for her at the +trust company's correspondent on upper Fifth Avenue, and apparently it +was of a size that produced respect in the heart of the shopkeeper. + +All these purchases, the clothes and the jewelry and the other rubbish +that the girl bought, gave her no special pleasure, gratified no +desires: she did not know what she could do with half the things at +Herndon Hall. What gave her keen pleasure was the prestige of lavish +spending.... After a debauch of theaters and dinners and shopping, the +four girls were again taken in tow by the sophisticated "Rosy" and went +up the river to Herndon Hall for Adelle's third year of boarding-school. + + + + +XV + + +Adelle Clark was thoroughly infected with the corruption of property by +this time, and the coming years merely confirmed the ideas and the +habits that had been started. She was now seventeen and an "old girl" at +the Hall, privileged to torture less sophisticated girls when they +presented themselves, if she had felt the desire to do so. She had not +forgotten her Church Street existence: it had been much too definite to +be easily forgotten. But she had been removed from it long enough to +realize herself thoroughly in her new life and to know that it was not a +dream. She would always remember Church Street, her aunt and uncle, and +the laborious years of poverty with which it was identified; but +gradually that part of her life was becoming the dream, while Herndon +Hall and the Aladdin lamp of her fortune were the reality. By means of +the latter she had won her position among her mates, and naturally she +respected more and more the source of her power. Eveline Glynn "took her +up" this year, and quite replaced the gentler Diane Merelda in her +affections. + +There was if anything less study this year than before. The older girls +scouted the idea of studying anything. Most of them expected to leave +school forever the next spring and under the auspices of their mothers +to enter the marriage game. A few intended as a preliminary to travel in +Europe, "studying art or music," But the minds of all were much more +occupied with love than anything else. Although the sex interest was +still entirely dormant in Adelle, she learned a great deal about it from +her schoolmates. Those good people who believe in a censorship of +literature for the sake of protecting the innocent American girl should +become enrolled at Herndon Hall. There they might be occasionally +horrified, but they would come out wiser mortals. Adelle knew all about +incredible scandals. Divorce, with the reasons for it,--especially the +statutory one,--was freely discussed, and a certain base, pandering +sheet of fashionable gossip was taken in at the Hall and eagerly +devoured each week by the girls, who tried to guess at the thinly +disguised persons therein pilloried. Thus Adelle became fully acquainted +with the facts of sex in their abnormal as well as more normal aspects. +That she got no special personal harm from this irregular education and +from the example of "the two Pols" was due solely to her own unawakened +temperament. Life had no gloss for her, and it had no poetic appeal. She +supposed, when she considered the matter at all, that sometime as a +woman she would be submitted to the coil of passion and sex, like all +the others about whom her friends talked incessantly. They seemed to +regard every man as a possible source of excitement to a woman. But she +resolved for her part to put off the interference of this fateful +influence as long as possible. Sometime, of course, she must marry and +have a child,--that was part of the fate of a girl with money of her +own,--and then she should hope to marry a nice man who would not scold +or ill-treat her or prefer some other woman--that was all. + +"Dell is just a lump of ice!" Irene Paul often said, putting her own +plump arms about Adelle's thin little body; and while Adelle tried to +wriggle out of the embrace she teased her by assuming the man's +aggressive role. + + * * * * * + +Thus the last months of her formal education slipped by. Adelle went +through the easy routine of the Hall like the other girls, riding +horseback a good deal during pleasant weather, taking a lively interest +in dancing, upon which great stress was laid by Miss Thompson as an +accomplishment and healthy exercise. She took a mild share in the +escapades of her more lively friends, but for the most part her life was +dull, though she did not feel it. The life of the rich, instead of being +varied and full of deep experience, is actually in most cases +exceedingly monotonous and narrowing. The common belief that wealth is +an open sesame to a life of universal human experience is a stupid +delusion, frequently used as a gloss to their souls by well-intentioned +people. Apart from the strict class limitations imposed by the +possession of large property, the object of protected and luxurious +people is generally merely pleasure. And pleasure is one of the +narrowest fields of human experience conceivable, becoming quickly +monotonous, which accounts for many extravagancies and abnormalities +among the rich. Moreover, the sensual life of the well-fed and idle +deadens imagination to such a degree that even their pleasures are +imitative, not original: they do what their kind have found to be +pleasurable without the incentive of initiative. If Adelle Clark had not +been attached to Clark's Field and had been forced to remain in the +Church Street rooming-house, by this time she would have been at work as +a clerk or in some other business: in any case she must have touched +realities closely and thus been immeasurably ahead of all the Herndon +Hall girls. + +Probably this doctrine would shock not only the managers of Herndon +Hall, but also the officers of the trust company, who felt that they +were giving their ward the best preparation for "a full life," such as +the possession of a large property entitles mortals to expect. And +though it may seem that the Washington Trust Company had been somewhat +perfunctory in its care of its young ward, merely accepting the routine +ideas of the day in regard to her education and preparation for life, +they did nothing more nor worse in this than the majority of well-to-do +parents who may be supposed to have every incentive of love and family +pride in dealing with their young. The trust company in fact was merely +an impersonal and legal means of fulfilling the ideals of the average +member of our society. Indeed, the trust company, in the person of its +president and also of Mr. Ashly Crane, were just now giving some of +their valuable time to consideration of the personal fate of their ward. +She had been the subject of at least one conference between these +officers. She was now on her way towards eighteen, and that was the age, +as President West well knew, when properly conditioned young women +usually left school, unless they were "queer" enough to seek college, +and entered "society" for the unavowed but perfectly understood object +of getting husbands for themselves. The trust company was puzzled as to +how best to provide this necessary function for its ward. They felt that +there existed no suitable machinery for taking this next step. They +could order her clothes, or rather hire some one to buy them for her, +order her a suitable "education" and pay for it, but they could not +"introduce her to society" nor provide her with a good husband. And that +was the situation which now confronted them. + +They had received excellent reports of their ward latterly from Herndon +Hall. Although Miss Thompson admitted that Miss Clark was not +"intellectually brilliant," she had a "good mind," whatever that might +mean, and had developed wonderfully at the Hall in bearing, deportment, +manner--in all the essential matters of woman's education. Miss Thompson +meant that Adelle spoke fairly correct English, drawled her _A_'s, wore +her clothes as if she owned them, had sufficiently good table-manners to +dine in public, and could hold her own in the conversation of girls of +her kind. Miss Thompson recommended warmly that Adelle join Miss +Stevens's "Travel Class," which was going abroad in June to tour the +Continent and study the masterpieces of art upon the spot. The +suggestion came as a relief to the trust company's officers: it put over +their problem with Adelle for another year. But before accepting Miss +Thompson's advice, Mr. Ashly Crane thought it wise to make another visit +to Herndon Hall and talk the matter over with Adelle herself. He +believed always in the "personal touch" method. And so once more he +broke a journey westwards at Albany and rolled up the long drive in a +motor-car. + + * * * * * + +Adelle enjoyed the impression which she was able to make upon the young +banker this time. She had seen his approach in the car on her return +from her ride, and had kept him waiting half an hour while she took a +bath and dressed herself with elaborate care as she had often seen other +girls do. Her teeth had at last been released from their harness and +were nice little regular teeth. Her dull brown hair, thanks to constant +skillful attention, had lately come to a healthy gloss. Her complexion +was clear though pale, and her dress was a dream of revealing +simplicity. Mr. Ashly Crane took in all these details at a glance, and +felt a glow of satisfaction beyond the purely male sense of +appreciation: the trust company which he represented had done its duty +by the little orphan, and what is more had got what it paid for. Their +ward, as she stood before him with a faint smile on her thin lips, was a +creditable creation of modern art. A thoroughly unpromising specimen of +female clay had been moulded into something agreeable and almost pretty, +with a faint, anemonelike bloom and fragrance. Mr. Ashly Crane, who was +rather given to generalization about the might and majesty of American +achievements, felt that the girl was a triumphant example of modern +power,--"what we do when we try to do something,"--like converting the +waste land of Clark's Field into a city of brick and mortar, or making a +hydrangea out of a field shrub. + +"Well, Miss Clark," he began as the two seated themselves where they had +sat the year before, "I needn't ask you how you are--your looks answer +the question." + +It was a banal remark, but Adelle recognized it for a compliment and +smiled prettily. She said nothing. Silence was still the principal +method of her social tactics. + +"You are getting to be a young woman fast," the banker continued quite +bluntly. + +Adelle looked down and possibly blushed. + +"Mr. West and I have been considering what to do"--he caught himself and +tried again;--"that is we have been in consultation with Miss Thompson +about--your future." + +Here Adelle looked the trust officer fully in the eye. On this point she +seemed really interested this time. So Mr. Crane proceeded more easily +to question her about the plan of joining Miss Stevens's "Travel Class." +Adelle listened blankly while Mr. Crane wandered off into generalities +about the advantages of travel and the study of "art" under the guidance +of a mature woman. Suddenly she said quite positively,-- + +"I don't want to go with the 'Travel Class.'" + +This was the first positive expression of any sort that the trust +officer had ever heard from the ward. It was one of the very few that +Adelle Clark had ever made in the eighteen years of her existence. Under +Mr. Crane's inquiries it soon developed that Adelle did not like "Rosy" +Stevens,--as nearly hated her as she was capable of hating any one,--nor +had she any great fondness for the girls who were to compose this year's +"Travel Class." They belonged to the snobbiest element in the school.... +What, then, did she wish to do with herself--remain another year at +Herndon Hall? Here again the ward amazed Mr. Crane, for she had ready a +definite plan of her own--a small plan to be sure and imitative, but a +plan. + +She wished to go with her new friend Eveline Glynn and the California +sisters to Paris. Eveline's parents, it seemed, were spending the next +season in Europe, and after the manner of their kind they did not +propose to be encumbered with a young daughter. So they had arranged to +send her to Miss Catherine Comstock at Neuilly, and "the two Pols" had +decided to do the same thing. It was not a school,--oh, no, not even a +"finishing school,"--but the home of an accomplished and brilliant +American woman, who had long lived abroad and who undertook to chaperone +in the French capital a very few desirable girls. The banker could not +see how Miss Comstock's establishment in Neuilly differed essentially +from the "Travel Class," except that it was more permanent, which shows +how socially blunt Mr. Crane was. But after an interview with Miss +Thompson he satisfied himself that the Glynns were "our very best +people"; anything they thought right for their daughter must be fit for +the Washington Trust Company's ward. So her guardian's assent to the +plan was easily obtained, and the four friends rejoiced in their coming +freedom.... + +Adelle had no clear idea why she preferred Neuilly to the "Travel +Class," except to be with Eveline Glynn and the two Paul girls. Paris +and Rome were hazily mixed geographically in her ill-furnished mind, and +culturally both were blank. Eveline had known girls who had stayed with +Miss Comstock and they had given glowing accounts of their experiences. +The Neuilly establishment, it appeared, was a place of perfect freedom, +where the girls were chaperoned sufficiently to keep them out of serious +mischief, but otherwise were allowed to please themselves in their own +way. And there was Paris, which, according to Eveline, who had informed +herself from many sources, was the best place in the world for a good +time. Friends were always coming there, to buy clothes and to make +excursions. Adelle could have her own car, in which the four would take +motor trips, and there was the opera, etc. And lastly Society--real +Society;--for it seemed that this was one of Miss Comstock's strong +points. She knew people, and had actually put a number of her girls in +the way of marrying titled foreigners. The California girls knew of a +compatriot who had thus acquired a Polish title. In short, there was +nothing of the boarding-school in Miss Comstock's establishment, except +the fees, which were enormous--five thousand dollars to start with. + + * * * * * + +Thus Adelle left Herndon Hall in the beautiful month of June, having +received her last communion in the little ivy-covered stone chapel from +the hands of the bishop himself, smiled upon by Miss Thompson and the +other teachers, who had three years before pronounced her "a perfect +little fright," and kissed by a few of her schoolmates. She felt that +she was coming into her own, thanks to her magic lamp--that life ahead +looked promising. Yet she had changed as little fundamentally during +these three years as a human being well could. She had passed from the +narrowest poverty of the Alton side street to the prodigal ease of +Herndon Hall, from the environment of an inferior "rooming-house" to +companionship with the rich daughters of "our very best people,"--from +an unformed child to the full physical estate of womanhood,--all within +three short years; but she had accommodated herself to these great +transitions with as little inward change as possible. Her soul was the +soul of the Clarks, tricked out with good clothes and the manners and +habits of the rich. Addie, it seemed, had at last arrived at her +paradise in the person of her daughter, but it was a pale and +inexpressive Addie, who made no large drafts upon paradise. + +Adelle departed in the Glynn motor for the Glynn country-place, where +she was to stay until the Glynns sailed for Europe. She was prettily +dressed in ecru-colored embroidered linen, with a broad straw hat and +suede gloves and boots, according to the style of the day, and she was +really happy and almost aware of it. Eveline was glum because her +mother--a stern-looking matron who knew exactly what she wanted out of +life and how to get it--had refused peremptorily to let her invite Bobby +Trenow to accompany them. Bobby was Eveline's darling of the hour, as +Adelle knew: Eveline had let him kiss her for the first time the +previous evening, and she was "perfectly crazy" about him. To Adelle, +Bobby was merely a smooth, downy boy like all the rest, who showed bare +brown arms and white flannels in summer, and had as little to say for +himself as she had. She was amused at Nelly's fussed state over the loss +of Bobby; she could not understand Mother Glynn's objection to the +harmless Bobby's occupying the vacant seat in the roomy car;--but then +she did not understand many things in the intricate social world in +which she found herself. She did not know that there is no one of their +possessions that the rich learn more quickly to guard than their women. +The aristocrats of all ages have jealously housed and protected their +women from entangling sexual relations, while permitting the greatest +license to their predatory males. The reasons are obvious enough to the +mature intelligence, but difficult for the young to comprehend. + +Adelle had not yet felt the need of a Bobby Trenow. + + + + +XVI + + +Some years ago Prince Ponitowski had built in Neuilly, near the gate of +the Bois, what contemporary novelists described as a "nest" for his +mistress--a famous Parisian lady. It was a fascinating little villa with +a demure brick and stone facade, a terrace, and a few shady trees in a +tiny, high-walled garden. The prince died, and the lady having made +other arrangements, the smart little villa came into the hands of Miss +Catherine Comstock, who took a long lease of the premises and +established there her family of "select" American girls. It might seem +that the tradition of the Villa Ponitowski (as the place continued to be +called) was hardly suitable for her purposes, but the robust common +sense of our age rarely hesitates over such intangible considerations, +and least of all the sophisticated Miss Comstock. At the Villa +Ponitowski the young women enjoyed the healthful freedom of a suburb +with the open fields of the Bois directly at their door, and yet were +within easy reach of Paris, "with its galleries and many cultural +opportunities"--according to the familiar phrasing of Miss Comstock's +letters to inquiring parents. (She had no circulars.) + +Miss Catherine Comstock herself was, in the last analysis, from Toledo, +Ohio, of an excellent family that had its roots in the soil of +Muskingum. When her father died, there being no immediate prospect of +marriage, she had taken to teaching in a girls' private school. It was +not long before the routine of an American private school became irksome +to her venturous spirit, and she conceived the idea of touring Europe +with rich girls who had nothing else to do. From this developed the +Neuilly scheme, which provided for the needs of that increasing number +of Americans with daughters who for one reason or another do not live in +America, and also for those American girls who could afford to +experiment in the fine arts "carefully shielded from undesirable +associates"--another favorite Comstock phrase. At first the art and +education idea had been much to the fore, and Miss Comstock had +fortified herself with one or two teachers and hired other assistants +occasionally. But the life of Paris had proved so congenial and its +"opportunities" so abundant that Miss Comstock had come to rely more and +more upon the "privilege of European residence" and dispensed altogether +with formal instruction. + +She soon found that that was what the girls who came to her really +wanted, even if their parents had vague thoughts of other things. In +short, the Neuilly school was nothing else than a superior sort of +select _pension_ for eight or ten girls, with facilities for travel and +more or less "society." Miss Comstock herself--affectionately known to +"her girls" as "Pussy" Comstock--had been rather angular and plain in +the Toledo days, but under the congenial air of Paris and good +dressmakers had developed into a smart specimen of the free-lance, +middle-aged woman, with the sophistication of a thorough acquaintance +with the world and much prudence garnered from a varied experience. She +made an excellent impression upon the sort of parents she dealt with as +a "woman who really knows life," and the girls always liked her, found +her "a good chum." They called her "Pussy"! Miss Comstock kept with her +a dumpy little American woman with glasses, who did what educational +work was attempted, and the more tedious chaperonage. The Villa +Ponitowski, in a word, was one of the modern adjustments between the +ignorance and selfishness of parents and the selfishness and folly of +children. The parents handed over their daughters for a season to Miss +Comstock with a sigh of relief, believing that their girls would be +perfectly "safe" in her care and might possibly improve themselves in +language and knowledge of art and the world. And the daughters rejoiced, +knowing from the reports of other girls that they would have "a +perfectly bully time," freed from the annoying prejudices of parents, +and might pick up an adventure or two of a sentimental nature.... + +Into this final varnishing bath our heroine was plunged with her three +friends, in the autumn of 1902, when she was eighteen years old. The +girls arrived at the Villa from a motoring trip across Europe, during +which they had scurried over the surface of five countries and put up in +thirty-eight different hotels as the labels on their bags triumphantly +proclaimed. Miss Comstock received the party in her own little salon in +the rear of the Villa, where, after the elder Glynns had withdrawn, +liqueurs and cigarettes were served. Miss Comstock lit a cigarette, +perched her well-shod feet on a stool, and listened with sympathetic +amusement to the adventures of the trio as vivaciously related by +Eveline Glynn. The California sisters, it developed, had the cigarette +habit, too, and Eveline tried one of "Pussy's" special kind. When the +girls went to their rooms, to which they were conducted by Miss Comstock +with an arm around the waist of Adelle and another about Irene Paul, the +girls agreed that "Pussy" was "all right" and congratulated themselves +upon the perspicacity of their choice. + +At Herndon Hall there had been at least the pretense of discipline and +study, but all such childish notions were laughed at in the Villa +Ponitowski. Eveline Glynn thought she had a voice and a teacher was +engaged for her. Irene Paul devoted herself to the art of whistling, +while her sister "went in for posters." Another girl was supposed to be +studying painting and resorted a few afternoons each week to a studio, +well chaperoned. Miss Comstock promised to find something for Adelle to +do in an art way. But there was nothing pedantic or professional about +the Villa Ponitowski. Miss Comstock prided herself upon her outlook. She +knew that her girls would marry in all likelihood, and she endeavored to +give them something of the horizon of broad boulevards and +watering-places as a preparation. All the girls had their own maids, who +brought them the morning cup of coffee whenever they rang--usually not +before noon. The European day, Adelle learned, began about one o'clock +with a variety of expeditions and errands, and frequently ended well +after midnight at opera or play, or dancing party at the home of some +American resident to whom Miss Comstock introduced her charges. This was +during the season. Then there were, of course, expeditions to Rome and +Vienna and Madrid, tours of cathedral towns, inspection of +watering-places, etc. + +Behold, thus, the sole descendant of the hard-grubbing, bucolic Clarks +waking from her final nap at eleven in the morning, imbibing her coffee +from a delicate china cup, and nibbling at her _brioche_, while her maid +opened the shutters, started a fire in the grate, and laid out her +dresses, chattering all the time in charming French about delectable +nothings. Addie Clark, surely, would have felt that she had not lived in +vain if she could have beheld her only child at this time, and overheard +the serious debate as to which "_robe_" Mademoiselle Adelle would adorn +herself with for the afternoon, and have seen her, finally equipped, +descending to the salon to join Miss Comstock, who was usually engaged +with her correspondence at this hour. + +Adelle, it is perhaps needless to say, had quickly perceived the +enlarged opportunity for the use of her magic lamp. She at once ordered +a very comfortable limousine, which was driven by an experienced +chauffeur, and thus transported herself, Miss Comstock, and any of the +girls she chose to invite to the exhibition at the Georges Petit +Gallery, thence to a concert, or perhaps merely to tea at the new hotel +in the Champs Elysees. If any reader has perhaps considered Adelle +backward or stupid, he must quickly revise that opinion at this point. +For it was truly extraordinary the rapidity with which the pale, passive +young heiress caught the pace of Paris. The note of the world about her +was the spending note, and the drafts she made through her French +bankers upon the Washington Trust Company caused a certain uneasiness +even among those sophisticated officials, used to the expenditures of +the rich. + +Of course, Miss Comstock introduced her charges to the best dressmakers +and dispensers of lingerie and millinery (for which service she obtained +free of charge all her own clothes). Adelle soon found her own way into +the shops of the Rue de la Paix and developed a genuine passion--the +first one of her life--for precious stones. It may be remembered that +when she was taken as a little girl for the first time into the new home +of the trust company, she had been much impressed by the gorgeousness of +colored marble and glass there profusely used. For a long time the great +banking-room with its dim violet light had remained in her memory as a +source of sensuous delight, and as her opportunities had increased she +had turned instinctively to things of color and warmth, especially in +stones and fabrics. In those public and private exhibitions to which she +was constantly conducted as part of her education in art she hung over +the cases that contained specimens of new designs in metal and stone. +Miss Comstock, perceiving her interest in these toys, encouraged Adelle +to try her own hand at the manufacture of jewelry, and engaged a needy +woman worker to give her the necessary lessons in the lapidary art. +Adelle had acquired considerable sloth from her desultory way of living; +nevertheless, when the chance was forced into her hands, she took to the +new work with ardor and produced some bungling imitations of the new +art, which were much admired at the Villa Ponitowski. Eveline, not to be +outdone, took up bookbinding, though she scarcely knew the inside of one +book from another. The art of tooling leather was then cultivated by +women of fashion in New York: it gave them something to talk about and a +chance to play in a studio. + +I should like to record that Adelle developed a latent talent for making +beautiful things in the art she had inadvertently chosen to practice. +But that would be straining the truth. It requires imagination to +produce original and pleasing objects in small jewelry, and of +imagination Adelle had not betrayed a spark. Moreover, it takes +patience, application, and a skillful hand to become a good craftsman in +any art, and these virtues had no encouragement in the life that Adelle +had led since leaving the Church Street house. So in spite of the +admiration aroused by her _bijoux_ when she gave them to the inmates of +the Villa, it must be admitted that they were more like the efforts of a +school child who has prepared its handiwork for presents to admiring +relatives than anything else. But at least it was a real interest, and +it raised Adelle in her own estimation. Some of the happiest days she +had known were spent in the studio of Miss Cornelia Baxter, on the Rue +de l'Universite. She would have spent more time there if her other +engagements or distractions had not constantly interrupted her pursuit +of art. Her position of practical independence and unlimited means gave +her a prestige in "Pussy" Comstock's household that exhausted most of +her time and energy. Her car and herself were in constant demand. And in +the Easter holidays "the family" went to Rome for a month, and to London +at the opening of the season there in June. So not much time was left +for the pursuit of art. + +Yet this effort to make jewelry on Adelle's part is important, as the +first sign of promise of individuality. It betrayed the possibility of a +taste. She loved color, richness of substance, and Europe was satisfying +this instinct. Pale and colorless herself, mentally perhaps anaemic or +at least lethargic, she discovered in herself a passion for color and +richness. Certain formless dreams about life began to haunt her +mind--vague desires of warmth and color and emotion. Thus Paris was +developing the latent possibilities of sensuousness in this pale +offshoot of Puritanism. + + + + +XVII + + +The winter had passed agreeably and rapidly for Adelle. But London did +not please her because Miss Comstock insisted upon a rather rigorous +course of museums and churches and show places, which always fatigued +and bored Adelle. She was also taken to garden parties where she was +expected to talk, and that was the last thing Adelle liked doing. +Whatever expressive reaction to life she had could never be put into +words for the casual comer. She would stand helpless before the most +persistent man, seeking a means of escape, and as men are rarely +persistent or patient with a dumb girl she stood alone much of the time +in spite of her reputation for wealth, which Miss Comstock carefully +disseminated to prepare the way for her. + +One morning while her maid was brushing her hair, an operation that +Adelle particularly liked and over which she would dawdle for hours, a +card was brought to her, which bore the name--"Mr. Ashly Crane"--and +underneath this simple and sufficient explanation--"The Washington Trust +Company." Adelle had almost forgotten Mr. Crane's existence. He had +become more a signature than a person to her. Nevertheless, the memory +of her girlish triumph the last time they had met caused her to hasten +her toilet and put in an appearance in the private salon she had at the +hotel in something less than half an hour. There she found the young +banker very spruce in his frock coat and silk hat, which he had +furnished himself with in America and assumed the day of his arrival on +English soil. He was taking a vacation, he promptly explained to Adelle, +in which, of course, he should do several pieces of important business. +But he gave the girl to understand that she was not on this business +list: he had looked her up purely as a pleasure. In fact, the trust +people had become somewhat uneasy over Miss Clark's frequent drafts, +which altogether exceeded the liberal sum that President West felt was +suitable for a young woman to spend, though well within her present +income, and suggested that Mr. Crane should find out what she was doing +and if she were likely to get into mischief. The young banker had had it +in mind to see Adelle in any case--she had left a sufficiently distinct +impression with him for that. There may have revived in his +subconsciousness that earlier dream of capturing for himself the +constantly expanding Clark estate, although as yet nothing had defined +itself positively in his active mind. + +When at last the girl entered the little hotel salon where he had been +cooling his heels for the half-hour, he had a distinct quickening of +this latent purpose. Adelle Clark was not at this period, if she ever +was, what is usually called a pretty girl. She had grown a little, and +now gave the impression of being really tall, which was largely an +effect of her skillful dressmaker. Pale and slender and graceful, +exquisitely draped in a gown subtly made for her, with a profusion of +barbaric jewelry which from this time on she always affected, Adelle was +what is commonly called striking. She had the enviable quality of +attracting attention to herself, even on the jaded streets of Paris, as +suggesting something pleasurably different from the stream of +passers-by. The American man of affairs did not stop to analyze all +this. He was merely conscious that here was a woman whom no man need be +ashamed of, even if he married her for other reasons than her beauty. +And he set himself at once, not to catechize the bank's ward about her +expenditures, but to interest the girl in himself. They went to the +Savoy for luncheon, and the trust officer noted pleasurably the +attention they received as they made their way through the crowded +breakfast-room. And in spite of Adelle's monosyllabic habit of +conversation, they got on very well over their food, about which Adelle +had well-formulated ideas. He suggested taking a cab and attending the +cricket match, and so after luncheon they gayly set forth on the long +ride to Hurlingham in the stream of motors and cabs bound for the match. + +Adelle smiled shyly at Mr. Crane's heavy sarcasm upon British ways, and +replied briefly to his questions about her winter in Paris. The +situation was a novel one to her, and she enjoyed it. The one thing her +money had thus far not done for her was to bring her men--she had, +indeed, done nothing herself to attract them. But now for five hours she +had the constant attention of a good-looking, well-dressed, mature man. +To be sure Mr. Ashly Crane was much older than she. He gave her the +curious sensation of being in some way a relative. Was the Washington +Trust Company not the nearest thing to a relative that she had? And Mr. +Ashly Crane was the personal symbol to her of the trust company--its +voice and lungs and clothes. So she felt a faint emotion over the +incident. As they were returning from the cricket field in the English +twilight, with the scurry of moving vehicles all about them, Mr. Crane +ventured on more personal topics than he had hitherto broached. He felt +that by this time they must be quite good friends. So he began,-- + +Did she like living in Europe? + +Yes, she found it very pleasant and Miss Comstock was the nicest teacher +she had ever had--really not like a teacher at all; and she liked Miss +Baxter and the metal-work. (This was a long and complicated statement +for Adelle.) + +She must show him some of her work. Was that chain (taking it familiarly +in his hands to look at it) her own handiwork? + +Oh, no; that was a Lalique ... the chief artist in this _genre_ in +Paris. (The banker mentally accounted for some of the recent drafts.) +Didn't he think it pretty?--such an unusual arrangement of the stones! + +He should not call it exactly pretty--odd rather;--but it was very +becoming to her.... He should like to see some of her own work, etc. + +Oh, she should never dare to show him anything she had done. She was +nothing but a beginner, etc., etc. + +Later on, as they entered the dark precincts of the city, another step +nearer the personal was taken. + +She would want to spend another year in Europe probably? + +Oh, yes, they had the loveliest plans. Miss Comstock was going to take +her and Eveline Glynn on a visit to some friends who had an estate in +Poland, in the mountains, a real castle, etc. (Mental note by the +banker--"Must look up this Comstock woman--seems to have a good deal of +influence upon the girl.") And then they were all going to Italy again +in the spring and perhaps Greece, though everybody said that was too +hard on account of the poor hotels. And she did want to go up the Nile +and see the Sphynx and all the rest of it, etc., etc. (Pause). + +Had she any idea what she would like to do afterwards, where she wanted +to live? + +When? + +Why, after she had finished her education. + +Oh, she wanted to go on making pretty things--she should have a studio +of her own, of course, like Miss Baxter. + +"Where?" + +"Why in Paris,--perhaps New York," Adelle replied vaguely, +indifferently. + +That gave Mr. Crane an opportunity for an improving homily on the folly +of expatriation, the beauty of living in one's own country among one's +own people, and so forth, which brought them to the door of Adelle's +hotel. Mr. Crane came in and met Miss Comstock and the girls she had +with her. Then he disappeared and returned later in full dress and took +the party to the Carlton for dinner and then to a light opera. The girls +were entranced with Mr. Crane, especially the two Californians, and +redoubled their envy of the fortunate Adelle in having this handsome +substitute for a parent. They called him her "beau," by which +designation Mr. Ashly Crane was henceforth known among Pussy Comstock's +girls during their sojourn in London. + +He had not made quite the same favorable impression upon Miss Comstock, +who was acquainted with all sorts and conditions of men. The two +recognized immediately an antagonism of interests, and spent this first +evening of their acquaintance in reconnoitering each other's position +with Adelle. "Little bounder," Miss Comstock pronounced with the quick +perception of a woman; "he's after the girl's money." While the man said +to himself, with the more ponderous indirectness of the male,--"That +woman is not quite the influence that an unformed girl should have about +her. She's working the girl, too, for motors and things." And yet both +smiled and joked companionably across the shoulders of the unconscious +Adelle. + +As the trust officer returned to his hotel in his hansom, he jingled a +few stray coins in his pocket, the remains of twenty pounds in gold that +the day had cost him. A long education in finance, however, had taught +him to be indifferent to these petty matters of preliminary expense. +Nevertheless, before retiring he entered up the sum to the Clark estate +expense account. Poor Adelle, dreaming of her "beau"! Her first real +spree with a man was charged to her own purse. + + + + +XVIII + + +There were many similar items added to the account during the next +fortnight. It seemed that Mr. Ashly Crane had nothing better to do with +his European vacation than to give Miss Clark and her companions a good +time, or, as he intimated to Miss Comstock, "to get into closer touch +with the company's ward." Naturally he was a godsend to the Comstock +girls, for he could take them to places where without a man they could +not go. There was a mild orgy of motoring, dining, and theater. Pussy +Comstock, experienced campaigner that she was, made no objection to this +junketing. A fixed principle with her was to let any man spend his money +as freely as he was inclined to. Yet she skillfully so contrived that +the young banker had few opportunities of solitary communion with his +ward. At first Mr. Crane did not understand why the Glynn girl or one of +the Paul sisters was always in the way, and then he comprehended the +artful maneuver of the woman and resented it. One afternoon, when he had +taken the party up the river, he announced bluntly after tea that he and +Adelle were going out in a punt together. Leaving Miss Comstock and the +three other girls to amuse themselves as they could, he stoutly pulled +forth from the landing and around a bend in the river. Thereafter his +efforts relaxed, and he had Adelle to himself for two long hours. And +Adelle, reclining on the gaudy cushions under an enormous pink sunshade, +was not unenticing. Her air of indolent taciturnity was almost +provoking. Mr. Ashly Crane quite persuaded himself that he was really in +love with the young heiress. + +Oddly enough he chose this opportunity to discuss with her her business +affairs, which was the excuse he had tossed Miss Comstock for +abstracting the ward from the rest of the party. He found that she knew +almost nothing about the source of her fortune--that lean stretch of +sandy acres known as Clark's Field. He related to her the outline of the +story of the Field as it has been told in these pages. Adelle listened +with a peculiarly blank expression on her pale face. She was in fact +trying hard to recall certain distant images of her early life--memories +that were neither pleasant nor painful, but very odd to her, so strange +that she could not realize herself as having once been the little drudge +in the rooming-house on Church Street, with the manager of the +livery-stable as the star roomer. While the banker was relating the +steps by which she had become an heiress, she was seeing the face of the +liveryman and that of the probate judge, who had first taken an active +part in her destiny and turned it into its present smooth course.... + +"So," Mr. Crane was saying, "the bank was finally able to make an +arrangement by which the long deadlock was broken and Clark's Field +could be sold--put on the market in small lots, you know. Owing to a +very fortunate provision, you are the beneficiary of one half of the +sales made by the Field Associates, as the corporation is +called--whenever they dispose of any of it they pay us for you half the +money!" + +(He neglected to state that this "fortunate provision" was due solely to +the shrewdness and probity of Judge Orcutt; that if he and the trust +company's president had had their way she would have been obliged to +content herself with a much more modest income than she now enjoyed. But +doubtless Mr. Crane felt that was irrelevant.) + +"So you see, little girl," he concluded, in a burst of unguarded +enthusiasm, "we are piling up money for you while you are playing over +here." + +As something seemed to be expected of her, Adelle remarked lamely,-- + +"That is very nice." + +"Yes," Mr. Crane continued with satisfaction. "You can congratulate +yourself on having such good care of your property as we give it.... And +let me tell you it didn't look promising at first. There were no end of +legal snarls that had to be straightened out--in fact, if I hadn't urged +it strongly on the old man I doubt if they would have taken hold of the +thing at all!" + +"Oh," Adelle responded idly, "what was the trouble?" + +"Why, those other heirs--that Edward S. Clark and his children. If +_they_ had turned up we should have been in a pretty mess." + +"Oh!" + +"It would have upset everything." + +"Why?" + +He had just explained all this, but thinking that women never understood +business matters until everything had been explained several times, and +anxious to impress the girl with the benefits that she had derived from +the guardian which the law had given her, also indirectly from himself, +he patiently went all over the point again. + +"Why, your great-grandfather Clark had two sons, and when he died he +left a will in which he gave both of his sons an undivided half interest +in this land. But the elder son had disappeared--they could never find +him." + +"Edward," observed the girl, remembering her uncle's frequent curses at +the obstinate Edward. "Yes, I know. He went to Chicago and got lost." + +"Afterward he went to St. Louis, but beyond that no trace of him or his +family can be found." + +"I suppose some day he will turn up when he hears that there's some +money," Adelle remarked simply. + +The banker scowled. + +"Well, I hope not!... Edward isn't likely to now: he must be a young +thing of eighty-seven by this time." + +"Well, his children, then." + +"They would have difficulty in proving their claim. You see there's been +a judicial sale, ordered by the court, and every precaution taken.... +No, there's no possibility of trouble in that quarter." + +"Then they won't get their money?" Adelle remarked, thinking how +disappointed these hypothetical descendants of Edward Clark must be. + +"No," agreed the trust officer with a laugh. "They're too late for +dinner." + +Adelle, who did not understand the mental jump of a figure of speech, +stared at him blankly. + +"It's too bad," she observed placidly at last. + +"Yes, it is decidedly too bad for them," the banker repeated ironically. +"But it's life." + +After this profound reflection they paddled idly for a few moments, and +then the trust officer resumed, nearer to his theme. + +"So you see, Miss Clark, you're likely to be a pretty rich woman when +you come of age. The old leases on the estate are running out, and as +fast as they can the managers of the Clark's Field Associates sell at a +good price or make a long lease at a high figure and everything helps to +swell the estate, which we are investing safely for you in good stocks +and bonds that are sure to increase in value before you will want to +sell them." + +"How much money is there?" Adelle demanded unexpectedly. This was her +opportunity to discover the size of her magic lamp. + +"I couldn't say off hand," the banker replied cautiously. "But enough to +keep you from want, if you don't spend too much making jewelry." He +added facetiously,--"You don't feel cramped for money, do you?" + +"No-o," the girl admitted dubiously. "But you can't always tell what you +may want." + +"If you don't want much more than you do at present, you're safe," Mr. +Crane stated guardedly. "That is, if nothing goes wrong--a panic, and +that sort of thing." + +After a pause he said,-- + +"But you should have some one look after your property, invest it for +you--a woman can't do that very well." + +"The bank does it, don't it?" + +"I mean after you are of age and have control of your own property." + +"Oh," the girl murmured vaguely, running her hand through the ripples of +river water. "That's a good ways off!... I suppose I shall be married by +that time, and _he_ will look after it for me." + +She said this in a thoroughly matter-of-fact voice, but the banker +almost jumped from his seat at the words. + +"You aren't thinking of getting married yet!" he exclaimed hastily. + +"I suppose I shall some day," she replied. + +"Of course you'll marry sometime," he said with relief; and ran on +glibly,--"That is the natural thing. Every girl should get married +early. But you must take good care, my dear girl, not to make a mistake. +You might be very unhappy, you know. He might not treat you right." And +with a sense of climax he exclaimed,--"He might lose all your +money--ruin you!" + +"Yes, he might," Adelle agreed with composure. "They do that sometimes." + +She looked at him from her open gray eyes undisturbed by the prospect, +as if, womanlike, she was aware of this unpleasant fate in danger of +which she must always be. Mr. Ashly Crane knew that this was the point +when his love-making should begin, but suddenly he felt that Adelle +Clark was a very difficult person to make love to. + +"Perhaps you've been thinking of the man?" he opened clumsily. + +She shook her head thoughtfully. + +"No, I haven't." + +"But you could love some one?" + +"I suppose so," she answered in such a matter-of-fact tone that for the +moment he was baffled. The present situation, he decided, was +unfavorable for love-making, and searched desperately within for his +next words. + +"I wonder what they look like," Adelle mused aloud. + +"Who look like--husbands?" + +"No, Edward's children--the other heirs," she explained. + +"Perhaps there aren't any," he snapped. + +And under his breath Mr. Ashly Crane consigned Edward S. Clark and all +his offspring to perdition. + + + + +XIX + + +Mr. Crane was a persistent person. Otherwise he would hardly have +arrived where he had in the Washington Trust Company. Having failed to +broach the great subject in the afternoon, he immediately made another +opportunity for himself by hustling Adelle, ahead of the others, into +his own cab for the return drive to the city, and then jumping in after +her and giving the driver the order to leave. It was very ill-bred and +he knew it, but he was determined not to bother about Miss Comstock any +longer. His vacation was very nearly at an end, and this would be his +last chance for another year if the ward was to remain in Europe as was +her present determination. He consoled himself with the thought that the +others had Adelle's car at their disposal, and gave the order to take a +roundabout road back to London. The driver needed but the suggestion to +plunge them into a maze of forgotten country roads where there were no +lights and no impeding traffic.... + +There are in general three ways in which to make love to a woman, young +or old: the deliberate, the impulsive, and the inevitable. Of the third +there is no occasion to speak here, as neither Ashly Crane nor Adelle +understood it. Of the remaining two the deliberate method of cautious, +persistent siege was more to the taste and the temperament of the +banker, but he was strictly limited in time. The Kaiser Nonsuch, on +which his passage was reserved, sailed in three days from Southampton, +and he must win within that brief period or put the matter over for a +whole year. And he judged that Adelle, under her present environment +with such an expert manager as Miss Catherine Comstock, would not be +left hanging on the bough within his reach for long. A year's delay +would almost surely be fatal, and it was uncertain whether he could get +away before the next summer from his important responsibilities at the +Washington Trust Company. So haste must be the word. + +That he should reason thus about a delicate matter of sentiment betrays +not merely the man's coarse grain, but the inferiority of the commercial +experience in making an accomplished lover. He had been trained in the +"new school" of rapid finance to complete large transactions on the +moment, never letting small uncertainties or delays interfere with his +purposes. It was really not essential to the working of the financial +system--even for the salvation of the Washington Trust Company--that Mr. +Ashly Crane should turn up at his desk on the morning of the +twenty-sixth instanter. It might just as well have been the thirty-first +or even the middle of the next month--or, if he should have the good +luck to gain the heart and hand of the heiress, never at all! But Mr. +Ashly Crane was neither of the temperament nor of the age to play the +sentimental game thus desperately. He was altogether too much an +American to let his love-making interfere with his business schedule. +(Besides, there was not another swift steamer sailing for New York for +three weeks.) + +So he sighed, and when the cab shot into the umbrageous dimness of old +trees he took the girl's hand in his. She made no attempt to withdraw +her hand. Probably Adelle was more frightened by this first experience +in the eternal situation than the man was, and that is saying a good +deal. She took refuge in her usual defense against life and its many +perplexities, which was silence, permitting the banker to press her +captive hand for several moments while the cab tossed on the uneven road +and Crane was summoning his nerve for the next step. Her heart beat a +little faster, and she wondered what was going to happen. + +That was the man's attempt to encircle her waist with his free arm. In +this maneuver Adelle did not assist him: instead, she pushed herself +back against the cushion so firmly that it made it a difficult +engineering feat to obtain possession of her figure. By this time his +face was close to hers, and he was stammering incoherently such words +as--"Adelle" ... "Dearest" ... "Love" ... etc. But we will spare the +reader Mr. Ashly Crane's crude imitation of ardor. All love-making, even +the most sincere and eloquent, is verbally disappointingly alike and +rather tame. The human animal, ingenious as he is in many ways, is +nevertheless almost as limited as the ape when it comes to the +articulation of the deeper emotions. That is why delicacy and the habit +of _nuances_ give the experienced wooer such an immense advantage, even +with a raw girl like Adelle, over the mere clumsy male. Love, like the +drama, being so rigidly limited in technique, is no field for the +bungler! And Mr. Ashly Crane was far from being an artist in anything. + +By this time Adelle had become aware that she was being made love to. It +filled her with a variety of emotions not clearly defined. First of all, +there was something of the woman's natural complacency in her first +capture, more vivid than when the other girls had dubbed Mr. Crane her +"beau." This was a _bona fide_ illustration of what all the girls talked +about most of the time and the novels were full of from cover to +cover--love-making! And next was a feeling akin to repugnance. Mr. Crane +was not aged--barely forty-two--and he was good-looking enough and quite +the man. But to Adelle he had always been, if not exactly a parent, at +least an older brother or uncle,--in some category of relationship other +than that of young love. That he should thus hastily be professing +ardent sentiments towards her seemed a trifle improper. Beneath these +superficial feelings there were, of course, some deeper ones;--for +instance, a slight sense of humor in his clumsy management and a feeling +of gratification that at last the unknown had arrived. And a something +else not wholly unpleasant in her own small person.... + +Crane was mumbling something about his loneliness and her unprotected +condition. Adelle was not aware that she was to be pitied because of +lack of protection, but she liked to be the object of sympathy. +Gradually she relaxed, and permitted him to insert his arm between her +and the cushion, which he seemed so ridiculously anxious to do. At once +he drew her slight form towards him. He was saying,-- + +"Dearest! Can you--will you--" + +And she demanded point-blank,-- + +"What?" + +"Love me!" the man breathed very close to her. + +"I don't know," she replied, struggling to regain her refuge in the +corner from which his embrace had dragged her. + +And just here Ashly Crane committed an irretrievable blunder, due to +those imperfections of nature and technique which have been described +before. As the cab lurched, throwing the girl nearer him, he grasped her +very firmly and kissed her. The Kaiser Nonsuch sailed on the Thursday, +and it was now Monday.... + +As his mustached lips sought her small mouth and met the cold, hard +little lips, he knew that he had taken a fearful risk. Adelle did not +scream. She did not struggle very much. She took the kiss passively, as +if she had some curiosity to know what a man's kiss was like. After he +had given it with sufficient ardor and was ready to relax his passionate +embrace, she drew back calmly into her corner and looked at him very +coolly out of her gray eyes. After the flurry of the struggle, with her +brown hair slightly awry, her hat tipped back, and her lips still half +open as they had been forced by his kiss, she was almost pretty. But +those gray eyes looked at him as no girl ought to look after her lover's +first kiss, and let us hope as few girls do look. Mr. Ashly Crane read +there that he had lost his chance with the heiress. There was just +enough of spirit even in his common clay to divine this. If only he had +not been so hasty!--not tried to "put the thing through" before sailing, +and do it in the manner of the "whirl-wind campaign".... + +For a moment or two there was silence within the cab while the car +rocked on in its mad race for London. They were well within the +outskirts of the city now, and the banker knew that there would not be +time to work up to another crisis. He must defer the recovery until the +morrow, if he could summon courage to go on with it at all. But the girl +still stared at him out of her wide-open eyes, as if she were saying in +her small head--"So that's what a man's kiss is like." He muttered +uncomfortably a lot of nonsense about forgetting himself, and her +forgiving him,--ignorant that in such a grave matter forgiveness is +always out of the question: either it is not needed, or it cannot +possibly be given. Adelle said nothing, merely looked at him until he +was driven to turn his head away and gaze out of the swiftly moving cab +at the lighted streets to escape the wonder and the surprise and the +contempt in those gray eyes. As they turned into Piccadilly, he remarked +brusquely,--"I shall come to-morrow morning--and get your answer!" That +was to "save his face," as we say, for her answer was written in those +eyes. Again he took her little ungloved hand and tried to bear it to his +lips. But this time Adelle gently, firmly extracted it from his grasp +and placed it behind her back with its mate, safely out of reach, still +looking at him gravely. + +Crane helped her out of the cab, and turned to pay the driver, who was +beaming with expectation of an extra fee for his participation in this +adventure. When he had settled the fare, Adelle had disappeared within +the hotel. Judging that it might be unwise to follow her, Mr. Ashly +Crane walked off to his hotel, scowling along the way, very little +pleased with himself. He was really more mortified at discovering how +poor an artist in the business he was than by his ill success itself. + +"Nothing but a meek, pale-faced, little school-girl, too!" he was saying +to himself. And aloud,--"Oh, damn the women." + + + + +XX + + +Adelle went straight to her own rooms, but before she could close the +door Miss Comstock was on her heels. Having taken the direct route to +London in Adelle's swift car, she had had ample time to change her gown, +and now looked specially groomed and ready for the encounter, with keen, +knowing green eyes. Closing the door carefully, Miss Comstock turned, +looked Adelle over from her hat, which was still slightly tipped, to her +ungloved hands. + +"Well?" she remarked with perceptible irony. + +Adelle did not mean to tell anything. She wanted to keep this, her first +affair, to herself, no matter what she might consider it to be, and she +was not yet sure what she should think of it finally. So she had tried +her best to dodge her companions until she had had time to simulate her +usual appearance. But she had been caught by "Pussy" red-handed. To the +mentor's repeated "Well?" she said nothing, a foolish little smile +starting without her will around the corners of her mouth. + +"So he kissed you?" Miss Comstock continued; and as Adelle's eyes +dropped guiltily, she remarked contemptuously,--"The cad!" + +Adelle was only vaguely acquainted with the meaning of this hateful +word, but if she had realized its full significance she would not have +cared, though she had no desire to defend Mr. Ashly Crane. She was +silent, while Miss Comstock tore a few more shreds from Adelle's poor +little "affair." + +"I knew that was what he was after from the first, my dear. It was +written all over him!... A pretty kind of an officer for a trust company +to have! If the directors of the Washington Trust Company knew of this +there would be trouble for Mr. Ashly Crane!... A ward, too--" + +"He's always been nice to me," Adelle protested lamely, feeling that in +her invective Pussy was reflecting upon her guardians. + +"Of course!... I have no doubt he made up his mind to get you, as soon +as he knew how rich you would be." + +This was too raw even for Adelle. The girl drew herself up haughtily, +and Miss Comstock adroitly covered up her mistake. + +"You know, my dear, that is one of the dangers any woman with money is +exposed to. Luckily this is your first experience with the mere +fortune-hunter, but you will find that there are many men in the world +just like this Mr. Ashly Crane, who are incapable of a genuine passion +for any woman, and are always looking for a rich wife. No girl wants to +think that a man is making love to her because she has money--especially +when she has other attractions.... To think that this man, who ought to +have shielded you from everything, should be the one to humiliate you +so!" + +She proceeded with an admirable mingling of flattery and friendliness to +put Adelle on her guard against the male sex. + +"At least," she concluded, "a man ought to have something to offer a +rich girl,--a name or position. What has that little cad to give you? +Social position? A title? Nothing! If a woman must marry, she should get +something in the bargain." + +She succeeded in thoroughly humiliating Adelle for what she had secretly +been a little proud of, her first "affair," and easily killed with her +contempt any possibility of the girl's yielding to the banker's +persistency. + +"He said he was coming to see me to-morrow," Adelle finally pouted +almost tearfully. + +"He will see _me_ to-morrow instead," Miss Comstock said promptly; "and +I don't think he will trouble you again." + +The encounter on the following morning between the trust officer and +Pussy Comstock is not a part of this story. Enough to say that Mr. Crane +got his steamer at Southampton and was happily so seasick all the way +across that he could not worry over his failure in the gentle art of +love-making. He told his friends that he had spent a dull vacation in +England, and spoke disparagingly of British institutions and of Europe +for Americans generally. When President West inquired about the ward, he +spoke very guardedly of Adelle and of Miss Catherine Comstock. He +intimated that Miss Clark had developed into an uninteresting and +somewhat headstrong young woman, and implied that he had doubts about +the influence which her present mentor had upon her character. However, +the trust company would soon be absolved from all responsibility for its +ward, and it might be as well to let matters rest as they were for the +present, if the drafts from Paris did not become too outrageous, which, +of course, was exactly what Mr. West and the other officers wished to +do--nothing. + +Hereafter Mr. Ashly Crane must honor any draft that Adelle might make, +no matter how "outrageous" it was. (The drafts came fluttering across +the ocean on every steamer for ever-increasing amounts until the young +heiress was living at the rate of nearly forty thousand dollars a year.) +The banker might wonder how a young girl, still nominally in school, +could get away with so much money. He might fear that her extravagance +would become a habit and carry her even beyond the limits of her large +means. But he could not say a word. Miss Comstock, indeed, had put him +in a sorry situation for a full-grown banker. The more he thought about +the unfortunate episode of his love-making, the more he cursed himself. +President West, whose special protege the young banker had always been, +held very strict notions about honor and the relation of the officers of +the company to its clients. In Adelle's case--that of a minor entrusted +to them by the probate court--the president would feel doubly incensed +if he suspected that any officer had attempted to take advantage of her +unprotected and inexperienced youth. So Mr. Ashly Crane walked softly +these days and promptly honored Adelle's drafts. + + + + +XXI + + +Of course this was precisely what Pussy Comstock had been clever enough +to see when, in the idiom with which Mr. Crane was familiar, she had had +the trust officer "on the carpet" and "called him down" on that +memorable occasion of the day after. He might tell her, as he had +recklessly done, that her own relation to the rich girl depended solely +upon his consent, and hint coarsely that he knew well enough the ground +of her extreme interest in Adelle's fate. Miss Comstock did not take the +trouble to deny either fact. She merely smiled at the blustering banker, +and intimated that the president and directors of the trust company +might have views about the conduct of its trust officer towards their +ward. She had heard much of the prominent social position of President +West, and if she were not mistaken Mr. Nelson Glynn, the father of one +of her girls, was a director in the bank. Mr. Crane wilted under this +fine treatment, and departed as we have seen to do Miss Comstock's will. + +This blunder of Adelle's official guardian also gave Miss Comstock a +great prestige with the girl herself. Pussy had so cleverly unmasked the +designing man that Adelle felt only mortification for the incident and +was grateful for Miss Comstock's friendship and impressed by her +knowledge of the world. Miss Comstock made much of her in the ensuing +weeks, and for this angular and somewhat worn middle-aged woman Adelle +began to have the first real passion of her life. She was putty in her +hands for a time and obeyed her slightest suggestion. Instead of curbing +Adelle's tendency to extravagance, the mistress of the Villa Ponitowski +encouraged it, partly for her own gratification and partly to serve +warning upon the trust officer. Mr. Crane might well wonder where Adelle +put the money she drew; he would have been amazed if he could have known +the ingenious ways which Miss Comstock found for improving her +opportunity. In all the years that she had pursued her parasitic +occupation, she had never had such a free chance, and she began to dream +ambitiously of appropriating Adelle and Clark's Field for life. + +With Pussy's approval Adelle bought another motor, a high-powered +touring-car, and she kept besides several saddle-horses for use in the +Bois. She generously assumed the entire rent of Miss Baxter's expensive +studio when that imprudent artist found herself in difficulties; but +that comes a little later. Adelle defrayed all the expenses of the Nile +trip which Miss Comstock made with her family this winter. These are a +few instances of the spending habit, but the great leak was the constant +wastefulness to which Adelle was becoming accustomed. She spent a lot of +money merely for the sake of spending it, buying nothings of all sorts +to give away or throw away. It seemed as if all the penurious years of +the Clarks were now being revenged in one long prodigal draft by this +last representative of their line. The magic lamp responded admirably +each time Adelle rubbed it by simply writing her name upon a slip of +paper at the banker's. She had a child's curiosity to find out the +limits of its marvelous power, and daringly increased her demands upon +it. Possibly if Miss Comstock's designs had carried, she might have +discovered this limit within a few years: but her fate was shaping +otherwise. + +Meantime her little "affair" with the banker excited the other girls in +the family, who felt that the rich young heiress must encounter many +wonderful adventures in love. Adelle was initiated in the great theme, +and for the first time began to take an interest in men. Perhaps Mr. +Ashly Crane's crude love-making had broken down certain inhibitions in +the girl's passive nature, had overcome an instinctive repugnance to sex +encounters. The path of the next wooer would doubtless be easier. But +that lucky man did not put in an appearance. Miss Comstock jealously +guarded the approaches to her treasure with greater discretion than ever +before. She made no effort to prepare for her an alliance with an +impecunious scion of the minor Continental nobility such as she arranged +later for Sadie Paul. She said that she could think of no one good +enough for her dear Adelle, and anyway the girl was altogether too young +to think of marrying--another year would be ample time. So Adelle was +confined to the younger brothers and friends of her companions, who +turned up in Paris at different times, and upon these she tried timidly +her powers of charm with no great success. Apparently she was content to +remain without "beaux." Luxury had made her indolent, and her days were +full of petty occupations that distract the spirit. Yet at times she +felt a vague emptiness in her life which she soon found means of filling +in an unsuspected manner. + +Adelle's interest in the art of jewelry had not ceased, but she was away +from Paris this second year so much that her work in Miss Baxter's +studio had been sadly interrupted. After her return from the Nile in +March, however, she developed anew her passion for making pins and +chains and rings, and spent long afternoons in the studio on the Rue de +l'Universite. Miss Comstock thought nothing of these absences; indeed, +was relieved to have Adelle so harmlessly and elegantly employed. It is +true that Adelle was working in the studio, but she was working under a +new tutelage. A fellow-townsman of Miss Baxter's had turned up in Paris +that autumn and frequented her studio as the only place where he could +be sure of a welcome, warmth, and an occasional cup of tea. This young +Californian, Archie Davis by name, had found his way to Paris as the +traditional home of the arts, and expected to make himself famous as a +painter. A graduate of the State University, he had been engaged by his +father in vine culture on the sunny slopes of Santa Rosa, but the life +of a California wine-grower had not appealed to him. From the slopes of +Santa Rosa he soon drifted to San Francisco, and there conceived of +himself as a painter. He was a large, vigorous, rather common young +Californian, with reddish hair and a slightly freckled face, who was +really at home on horseback in the wilds of his native land, but at a +loss on the streets of Paris where he found himself frequently without +much money. Viticulture was not paying well at this time in California, +and Archie's father, in cutting down expenses all around, chose to begin +with Archie, who had not done anything to assist the family fortunes. +Archie took it good-naturedly and kept usually cheerful, though seedy +and often hungry. He felt that his was the typical story of the artist, +and if he would only persist, in spite of poverty and discouragement, he +must ultimately become a great painter because of his discomfiture. + +"They can't freeze me out!" was a common saying on his lips, given with +a toss of the head and a smiling face which made an impression upon +women. Also his whistling philosophy, phrased as, "You never know your +luck!" + +Miss Baxter, who had no great confidence in his ability, was kind to +Archie Davis for the sake of California, where she had known his people, +and because a single woman, no matter what her kind or condition may be, +likes to have some man within call. Adelle met him, as she met dozens of +other men, in the easy intimacy of the studio. At first she did not +regard him nor he her. Sadie Paul, who happened to be present at the +time, pronounced him a "bounder," which made no great impression upon +Adelle, any more than had Miss Comstock's "cad" for the banker. It was +not until she had settled in Paris for the spring and was a fairly +regular worker in the studio that Archie began to play a part in her +life. + +It is easy to see why they should draw together. Adelle, thanks to all +the accessories that her money provided, presented a radiant and rare +vision to the young Californian, who knew only women like Cornelia +Baxter--mere workers--or the more vulgar intimacies of the streets and +cafes. Adelle Clark did not resemble even the sturdy California lassies +with whom he had been a favorite on the university campus. With her +motors and gowns and jewels she was the exotic, the privileged goddess +of wealth. To her Archie was at first mere Boy, then Youth. His seedy +state did not disturb her. Though dainty in habit, she had not become +delicate in instinct. And Archie's "freshness" amused her, his casual +familiarity of the sort that exclaimed, while he fingered a bit of her +handiwork,--"Say, girlie, but that is a peach of a ring!... Is it for +Some One now?" + +She laughed at his "freshness," and felt perfectly at home with him. It +was not until after several weeks of this acquaintanceship that the +affair developed, unexpectedly, the opportunity being given. + +One rainy April afternoon when Adelle arrived at the studio she found it +empty except for the presence of Archie Davis, who was dozing on the +divan in front of the small stove. Adelle had come briskly up the stairs +from her car, and the ride through the damp air had given her pale +cheeks some color. She threw back her long coat, revealing a +rose-colored bodice that made her quite pretty. Then the two discovered +themselves alone in the big studio. Adelle had a faint consciousness of +the fact, but supposing that Miss Baxter would return, she tossed aside +her wrap and with a mere "Hello, Archie!" went over to the corner where +on a small bench she was wont to pound and chisel and twist. + +"Say, but you look good enough to eat!" the youth remarked +appreciatively. + +Adelle laughed at the compliment. + +"Why are you always thinking of eating?" she asked. + +"I guess because a good meal don't often come my way," he yawned in +reply. + +Adelle wanted to find out why this was so, but could not frame her +question to her satisfaction. Archie happened to be in one of those rare +moments of melancholy introspection when he doubted even his divine +calling to art. He was really hungry and somewhat cold, and life did not +seem inviting. + +"I don't know," he observed after a time, "as this art game is all it +looks to be from a distance--that is," he added, watching Adelle with +appreciative eyes, "unless you happen to have the dough to support it on +the side." + +"Aren't you painting?" Adelle asked after another pause. + +"Nope!" + +"Why not?" + +"I can't paint when I'm feeling bad." + +"What's the matter?..." + +According to the novelists love-making--"the approach of the sexes"--is +an affair of infinite precision and fine intention; but according to +nature, at least in those less self-conscious circles wherein are found +the vast majority, it is one of the casual and apparently aimless forms +of human contact. For a good hour these two played the ancient game, but +the movements, the articulate ones, at least, were of the last degree of +banality and insignificance--too trivial to recite even here. + +That consciousness of being alone with a young man, which had come over +Adelle on her entrance, developed gradually into a pleasant sense of +intimacy with Archie. Miss Baxter did not come back to make the tea, as +she usually did at this hour. Adelle was acutely aware that the young +man had counted on getting this tea and really needed the nourishment. +She wanted to give him food, to be kind to him. At last she ventured to +suggest,--"Don't you know some place around here where we could get +something to eat? I guess Miss Baxter isn't coming back this afternoon." + +Archie instantly rose to the suggestion: he knew all the restaurants +within the radius of two miles. And so, escorted by the young man, +Adelle was soon entering a discreet small cafe, where, after infinite +conversation with the proprietor, a tepid concoction was served with +some excellent small cakes. Adelle then had one of the purest joys of +her existence in watching the gusto with which the young Californian +dispatched his tea and cakes even to the last crumbs of the _brioche_. +She wanted to ask him to dine with her somewhere, but did not dare. In +time they went back to the studio, which was now dark and still +deserted, and after puttering for another half-hour Adelle departed in +her car for the Villa Ponitowski. Nothing more momentous than what has +been related happened, but both felt profoundly that something had +happened. Archie, less daring or more skillful than his predecessor, did +not press his advantage,--did not even ask to accompany the girl +home,--and Adelle was left with the happy illusion of a mysterious human +interest. + + + + +XXII + + +At last Adelle had a young man! He was not much of a young man in the +eyes of Miss Comstock or Irene Paul, perhaps, but Adelle did not care +for that. Incipient love awoke in the girl all her latent power of +guile. This time she did not "give herself away" to "Pussy" nor to her +companions, knowing instinctively that her toy would be taken away from +her if it was discovered. For two months she managed almost daily +meetings with Archie Davis without arousing the suspicion of any one, +except possibly Miss Baxter, who did not consider the matter seriously. +When late in May Miss Comstock took it into her head to motor to Italy +for a trip to the Lakes and Venice, Adelle tried her best to escape, but +failed. She departed sulkily, and managed to scrawl a letter and post it +privately almost every day. Each mile that bore her farther from Paris +filled her heart with gloom, and she made mad plans of escape. Her +emotions having at last been stirred dominated her exclusively. She +wanted Archie every moment. She wrote him to meet the party, casually, +somewhere. But Archie, alas, was altogether too poor to follow his lady +about Europe. She would have sent him the money for the journey if she +had known how to do it. Instead, she sent him picture postcards of the +monuments of southern France and northern Italy. + +It was in Venice one languid afternoon in early June, as she was coming +out from Cook's, where she had been to get her mail, that she heard her +name,--"Adelle!... Miss Clark,"--and looking around discovered her lover +leaning against a pillar of the piazza. He had somehow found the means +to follow her, arriving that morning by the third-class train, and had +hung around the piazza, confident that the girl must appear in this +center of civic activity. They at once took to a gondola as the safest +method of privacy. And it was in this gondola, behind the little black +curtains of the _felza_, that Adelle received her second kiss from the +lips of a man. But this time due preparation had been made: the kiss was +neither unexpected nor undesired, and on her part, at least, the embrace +had all the fervor of nature. + +As they floated out upon the still waters of the lagoon beyond the +lonely hospital, with the translucent silver haze of the magic city +hanging above them, Adelle felt that heaven had been thrust unexpectedly +into her arms. This was something far beyond the magic touch of her +lamp, and all the sweeter because it came to her as a personal gift, +independent of her fortune. At least she felt so. It is permissible to +doubt if Archie Davis would have been sufficiently stirred by a +penniless girl to have spent his recent remittance in chasing her to +Italy, but such fine discriminations about young love are cruel. +Sufficient for them both, in these gray and golden hours of the June +afternoon in Venice, that they had come together. In time Adelle learned +just how the miracle had been worked. Father Davis's remittance to take +his son back to the ranch had at last arrived with a rather acid letter +of parental instructions from the wine-grower. Archie with the true +recklessness of youth had torn the letter to shreds and cashed the +draft, purchased a third-class ticket for Venice, and put almost all +that was left of the money into a much-needed suit of clothes. And now? + +Adelle, with an unexpected acuteness, felt that Archie even in his +present rehabilitated condition would be an object of suspicion to the +keen eyes of Pussy Comstock, whom she was beginning to find troublesome. +And she felt quite inadequate to explaining Archie plausibly. So it was +decided between the lovers before the gondola returned to the city that +they should meet clandestinely while the party remained in Venice. It +was the family habit to take prolonged siestas after the second +breakfast, when Adelle would be free to slip forth and join Archie in +the cool recesses of a neighboring church. Other opportunity might +arise. Young love is content with little--or thinks it will be. They +parted with a final kiss, and Adelle thoughtfully paid the boatmen when +they landed at the piazzetta. + +There followed for one week the most exciting and the most taxing +episode in Adelle's small existence. She never had time for naps or odd +moments of indolent nothings. In spite of the languorous heat, she +became alert and schemed all her waking moments how best to make time +for Archie. After a few days she bribed her maid so that she could get +out of the hotel to a gondola after the others had gone to their rooms +for the night. It was all a piece of pure recklessness, and Adelle was +hardly adept enough to have carried it on long without detection. +Fortunately, Miss Comstock was much occupied with some important English +people, for whose sake she had really dragged the party down to Venice. +And for seven days Adelle spent rapturous hours behind the black +curtains of a gondola, varied by hardly less exciting hours of planning +to bring her joy once more to her lips. Then Miss Comstock's English +friends departed and the family set out for the North. They went by the +International and Archie followed more slowly by the _omnibus_. He +overtook the party at Lucerne, but Lucerne is not as well adapted as +Venice for the shy retreats of love. They were content to return to +Paris, where they imagined their liberty would be less circumscribed.... + +It was at Lucerne that Adelle's lover demanded rather brusquely why she +was "so mortal scared of the schoolma'am?" Was she not a young woman of +nineteen and of independent means, without the annoying necessity of +consulting her parents in her choice of a lover? This put it into +Adelle's mind that in the last resort she might defy Pussy and have her +precious one all to herself in untrammeled freedom--in other words, +marry Archie. But she was really afraid of Miss Comstock, and also +doubtful of what her guardian, the trust company, might do to her. For +the present she was content, or nearly so, with what she had, and was +not thinking much about marriage. Her lover must be satisfied with +stolen moments and secret meetings in public places, with an occasional +kiss. + +Marriage was really the only solution, and Archie knew it. If Adelle had +not been possessed of such a very large golden spoon, the whole affair +might have resulted differently and more disastrously. But her fortune +both endangered and protected her. For Archie was no worse and no better +than many a young man of his antecedents and condition. It is, perhaps, +to be doubted if he would have contented himself indefinitely with +innocent love-making, if the girl had not been so far removed from him +in estate.... He meant to marry Adelle when he could, which meant as +soon as it would be safe for her to marry. That might not be for another +two years, until she was mistress of herself in law and of her fortune. + +Shortly after their return to Paris, the "home" at Neuilly was closed +for the summer and the family went to Etretat to occupy a villa that +Adelle had leased previous to her infatuation. There seemed no way of +escaping Etretat without betraying her real reasons. She said something +about staying on in Paris through June to work in the studio, but Pussy +firmly closed the house and shipped the servants to Adelle's villa. If +she only had not chosen Etretat, she wailed to Archie, but some nearer +Normandy watering-place from which she might have motored up to Paris on +one excuse or another and thus had glimpses of her lover! He must come +to Etretat. But Archie was again without funds, living on the bounty of +a hospitable fellow-countryman. After a fortnight of loneliness beside +the sea, Adelle invented an elaborate pretext to return to Paris, but +Miss Comstock insisted on accompanying her and stuck so closely to her +side during three hot days that there was no chance for a sight of +Archie. At last Adelle was sulkily dragged back to Etretat. Then she +asked Miss Baxter to visit her and induced that good-natured young woman +to send Archie a sufficient sum of money, as coming from an admirer of +his art, to enable him to take up his residence in the neighborhood. +Miss Baxter demurred over "giving him such a head," but finally was +persuaded. Archie Davis was probably more surprised than ever before in +his life to learn that one of his loose efforts on canvas had so +impressed an American amateur of the arts that the latter had given Miss +Baxter a five-hundred-dollar check for him and an order for a seascape +from the Brittany shore. Behold Archie established at Pluydell in a +picturesque thatched cottage with his easel and paint-box! Pluydell is +on the road from Etretat to Fecamp, and not over ten minutes' ride in a +swift motor-car from the villa that Adelle occupied. + +The young man painted intermittently during August, and Adelle +discovered a mad passion for driving her new runabout alone, which her +friends naturally voted quite "piggy" in her. If she was occasionally +bullied into taking a companion with her, she drove the car so +recklessly around the roughest country lanes that the friend never asked +for another chance to ride with her. And thus she was free many times to +make the dash over the familiar bit of chalk road, leave her car beneath +the yellow rose-vine that covered the cottage, and walk across the sand +to that particular corner of the wide beach where the young American had +established himself with umbrella and painting tools.... + +What did they do with themselves all the hours that Adelle contrived to +snatch for her Archie? First there was a good deal of kissing. Adelle +grew fonder of this emotional expression as she became accustomed to it, +and sometimes rather wearied Archie with her tenderness. Then there was +a good deal of affectionate fondling, rumpling his red hair, pulling his +clothes and tie into place, criticizing his appearance and health. +Adelle when she was at the doll age never had had a chance for these +things, and now all her woman's instincts began to bloom at once. She +wanted to dress and care for her treasure and deluged him with small +trinkets, many of them made by her own somewhat bungling hands. After +these more intimate desires had been gratified, Adelle might take a +critical look at the canvas over which Archie was dawdling and pronounce +it "pretty" or "odd," or ask what it was meant to be. Then throwing +herself down on the sand or turf and pulling her broad straw hat over +her face she prepared for "talk." "Talk" consisted mostly of question +and answer,-- + +"Where did you go last night?" + +"Casino." + +"Whom did you see at the casino?" + +"Same crowd." + +"Did you play?" + +"Just a little." + +"Did you win?" + +"Yep!" + +"Much?" + +"A couple of plunks," etc. + +Or,-- + +"Did Pussy catch you last night?" + +"No! Never said a word." + +"Who was the man you were walking with?" + +"Oh, that little man with the glasses--he's a friend of Pussy's, +English." + +Perhaps as follows,-- + +"Pussy is talking of our all going to India next winter." + +"India;--what for?" + +"She always wants to go some place." + +"You aren't going to India?" (Lover's alarms.) + +"Of course I shan't!" + +One easily might undervalue Adelle's passion, however, if it were judged +solely by its intellectual quality. The beauty and the wonder of passion +is that it cannot be weighed by any mental scales, its terms are not +transferable. Adelle's share of the universal mystery, in spite of the +banality of its expression, may have been as great as any woman's who +ever lived. At least it filled her being and swept her to unexpected +heights of feeling and power. + +She was completely happy at this time, but Archie after the first days +was restless and somewhat bored. There were long periods when he could +neither make love nor paint, and he took to spending his idle evenings +at the Casino, which was not good for his slender purse. As the weeks +passed and their ruses seemed successful, the two grew more reckless and +indulged in flying expeditions about the country roads in Adelle's +little car. One evening, as they were returning in the sunset glow from +a long jaunt down the coast, Adelle at the wheel and Archie's arm +encircling her waist, they came plump upon Irene Paul and Pussy Comstock +in a hired motor. Adelle stiffened and threw on high speed. They dashed +past in a whirl of dust, but the Paul girl's eyes met Adelle's. She felt +sure of Irene, and hoped that Pussy had not recognized them. But they +must be more careful in the future. If Pussy found out--well, they must +"do something." This time she shouldn't be deprived of Archie. Never! + +Adelle dressed slowly, revolving in her mind what she should say to +Irene, who had called Archie a "bounder," and descended to the salon +where the family were waiting for her. Nothing was said until they were +seated at the dinner-table. Irene obstinately kept her eyes away and +Adelle felt troubled. Suddenly Miss Comstock, looking across the table +with her penetrating smile, asked sweetly,--"Don't you find it difficult +to drive as you were this afternoon, Adelle?" + +Like all clumsy persons Adelle lied and lied badly. She had not been on +the road since she took Eveline to the Casino. Pussy must have been +mistaken. Miss Comstock did not press the point, but Irene Paul looked +at Adelle and smiled wickedly. Adelle knew that she had been betrayed +and her heart sank. Presently Miss Comstock began to talk about the +red-haired artist who was living in a picturesque cottage out on the +Pluydell road. A very ordinary young American, she observed cuttingly. +Had the girls seen him sketching? Adelle knew that the blood was +mounting to her pale face, and she bent her head over her food. The end +had come. + +That evening they went to the Casino to hear the music, and by chance +Archie was there, too, and threw self-conscious glances towards their +table. Between the soothing strains of Franz Lehr, Pussy whispered into +Adelle's ear,-- + +"Why don't you bow to your young friend? He looks as if he wanted to +join us." + +Adelle gazed at her tormentor pitifully, but said nothing. The rest of +the evening she sat in cold misery trying to think what might happen, +resolved that in any case the worst should not happen: she would not +lose her Archie. She returned to the villa in dumb pain to await in her +room the expected visit. She did not even undress, preferring to be +ready for instant action. Soon there was a knock and Pussy entered. She +was in her dressing-gown and looked formidable and unlovely to the girl. + +"Adelle," she said with a sneer, sitting down before the fire, "I +thought you knew too much to do this sort of thing." + +Adelle was silent. + +"And such a common bounder, too!" + +It was Irene Paul's opprobrious epithet, which Adelle was beginning to +comprehend. She winced, but made no reply. + +"You might easily get yourself into serious trouble, my dear, with a man +like that." + +Adelle cowered under the stings of her lash and said nothing. + +"I shall write the young man to-morrow that if he wants to see you he +had better pay his visits here," she said tolerantly. "This is your +house--you can see him here, you know. There are ways and ways of doing +such things, my dear." + +With a yawn and a hateful smile Pussy departed. + +It was over, and she was alive. At first Adelle felt relieved until she +pondered what it meant. Archie would be exposed to the keen shafts of +Pussy's contempt and to the girls' titters and snubs. And probably there +would be no chance at all for the kissing and all the rest. It was +Pussy's clever way of effectually disposing of Archie. She understood +that. + +Adelle stayed awake for several hours, a most unusual occurrence, +revolving matters in her confused mind. When she could stand it no +longer she got up, dressed herself carefully in her motoring dress, and +stole downstairs through the silent house, out to the garage which was +at the other end of the garden. Eveline's little Pomeranian squeaked +once, but did not arouse the household. Adelle cranked her car +feverishly and succeeded at last, after much effort, in starting the +engine and in pushing back the garage door. It was by far the most +desperate step in life she had ever taken, and she felt ready to faint. +She clambered into the car and released the clutch, more dead than +alive, as she thought. With a leap and a whir she was down the road to +Archie's cottage. + + + + +XXIII + + +Safely there she felt more composed. Stopping her engine she got out and +walked to the window of the room on the ground floor that she knew the +young Californian occupied. It was open. Leaning through the rose-vine +she called faintly,--"Archie! Archie!" But the young painter slept +solidly, and she was forced to take a stick and poke the bunch of +bed-clothes in the corner before she could arouse the sleeping Archie. +When he came to the window, she exclaimed,-- + +"Some thing awful has happened, Archie!" + +"What's the row?" + +"We're found out. Pussy knows and the girls. Irene told 'em!" + +That apparently did not seem to Archie the ultimate catastrophe that it +did to her. He stood in his pajamas beside the window, ungallantly +yawning and rubbing his eyes. + +"Well," he observed, "what are you going to do about it?" + +Doubtless to his masculine good sense it seemed merely adding folly to +folly thus to run away from the villa at midnight and expose them to +further trouble. + +Adelle did not argue nor explain. + +"Put your clothes on," she said, with considerable decision, "and come +out to the car." + +Thereupon she went back to the car, cranked it afresh, and waited for +him to appear. He came out of the rose-covered window, after a +reasonable time, and climbed in beside the girl. She seemed to expect +it, and there was not anything else to do. Adelle threw in the clutch +and started at a lively pace, turning into the broad highroad which ran +in a straight line southwards towards the French capital. + +"What are you going to do?" Archie asked, now seriously awake and +somewhat disturbed. + +"I'm never going back to that place again," the girl flamed resolutely. +"Never!" + +As if to emphasize a vow she threw one arm around her lover's neck and +drew his face to hers so that she could kiss it,--a maneuver she +executed at some risk to their safety. "Oh, Archie, I love you so--I +can't give you up!" she whispered by way of explanation. + +He returned her kiss with good will, though mentally preoccupied, and +said, "Of course not, dearest!" and continued to hold her while she +steered the car, which was traveling at a lively rate along the empty +_route nationale_ in the direction of Paris. And thus they proceeded for +mile after mile or rather ten kilometres after ten kilometres. Adelle +and the car seemed to be inspired by the same energy and will. Archie +realized that they were going rapidly to Paris and felt rather +frightened at first. It was one thing to make love to an heiress not yet +of age, but another to elope with her across France at night. Archie was +not sure, but he thought there might be legal complications in the way +of immediate matrimony. He might be getting himself in for a +thoroughgoing scrape, which was not much to his liking. But there seemed +no way of stopping Adelle or the car. + +For Adelle had no doubts. It was the greatest night of her life. She +drove the car recklessly, but splendidly. Every now and then she would +turn her pale face to her lover and say peremptorily,--"Kiss me, +Archie!"--and Archie dutifully gave the kiss, which seemed to be all the +stimulant she needed. + +The wild rush through the night beside her lover appeased something +within her. It answered her craving for romance, newly awakened, for +daring and desperation and achievement of bliss. She felt exalted, proud +of herself, as if she were vindicating her claim to character. +To-morrow, when Pussy Comstock and the girls found that she had gone, +they would know that she was no weak fool. And by that time, of course, +it would all be over--irrevocable. + +"You'll marry me as soon as we get there," she remarked once to Archie +in exactly the same tone as she said, "Kiss me, Archie." The young man +falteringly replied,--"Of course, if we can." + +"Of course we can! Why not?" Adelle replied firmly. "Americans can marry +any time." + +She felt sure that speedy marriage was an inalienable right that went +with American citizenship together with the privilege of getting +divorced whenever one cared to. Archie was by no means so sure of this +point, but he thought it well not to discuss it until they both had more +exact information. So the car bowled along through the night at a good +forty miles an hour. + +Long before they reached Paris the sun had come up out of the hot +meadows along the road and they were forced to stop at Chartres for +_petrol_ and breakfast. Adelle wanted to cut the breakfast to a bowl of +hot coffee, but Archie firmly insisted that they must be braced with +food for the ordeal before them. She yielded to Archie and reluctantly +descended from her seat, stiff with fatigue but elated. After breakfast +Archie suggested that they should leave the car at the inn and proceed +to Paris conventionally by train. But Adelle would not give up one +kilometre of her great dash for liberty and Archie. Nor would she +consider his going on by train to make arrangements for the marriage. + +So they resumed their rapid flight, but mishaps with tires began, and it +was noon before they entered the Porte Maillot. As they drove past the +Villa Ponitowski, Adelle looked furtively up at the shutters as if she +expected to see Pussy's severe face lurking there. She guided the +machine to the Rue de l'Universite and stopped beneath Miss Baxter's +studio windows. If Archie had proposed it, she would have gone at once +to a hotel with him and registered, but he prudently suggested the +studio, where he hoped to find Cornelia Baxter. But the sculptress had +gone away somewhere, and the big room was empty--also hot and dusty. +They sat down before the fireless stove and looked at each other. + +Adelle was very tired and on the verge of hysterical tears. Archie had +not been very efficient in the tire trouble. She felt that now, at any +rate, he should take hold of their situation and manage. But Archie +seemed helpless, was not at home in the situation. (If Adelle had had +more experience she might have been chilled even now by his conduct and +managed her life differently.) + +"I'm so tired," she moaned, throwing herself down on the divan. "Don't +you love me, Archie?" + +Of course he did, but he did not offer to embrace her, and she was +obliged to go over to where he sat in a wilted attitude and embrace him. + +"You are mine now for always," she said, almost solemnly. + +"Yes," he admitted, as if he did not exactly like the form in which the +sentiment had been expressed. + +"What are we going to do?" + +"Get some food first. I'm starved, aren't you?" + +Adelle, weary as she was, might not consider food as of the first +importance in this crisis, but recognizing Archie's greater feebleness, +she yielded to his desire for refreshment. So they drove to Foyot's and +consumed two hours more in lunching delectably. Archie seemed somewhat +aimless after _dejeuner_, perhaps he did not know just how to attack his +formidable problem. It was Adelle who suggested that they drive to her +banker's and inquire how to get married in American fashion in France. +Adelle felt that bankers knew everything. It was a very elegant and +bewildered young Frenchman whom they found alone in this vacation season +at the bank which Adelle used. After he understood what they wanted he +directed them to their consul. Adelle knew the American consulate +because she had been there to sign papers, and turned the car into the +Avenue de l'Opera with renewed hope. They stopped before the building +from which the American flag was languidly floating and mounted the +stairs to the offices. In the further room, beyond the assortment of +deadbeats that own allegiance to the great American nation, was a little +Irish clerk, who in the absence of the consul and his chief assistant +held up the dignity of the United States. He was a political appointee +from the great State of Illinois, and after an apprenticeship in the +City Hall of Chicago was much more familiar with hasty matrimony than +either of the two flustered young persons who demanded his advice. To +Adelle's blunt salutation, "We want to get married, please!" and then, +as if not sufficiently impressive,--"Now--right off!" he replied +agreeably, not taking the time to remove the cigarette from his +mouth,--"Sure! That's easy." + +And he made it easy for them. He found the necessary blank forms in an +office desk and filled them out according to the information the couple +gave him. Adelle in deference to Archie's scruples stretched a point and +made herself of age. When the formalities had been completed, the young +Irishman called in from the outer office one of the hangers-on who +happened to be a seedy minister of the gospel and who looked as if he +were in Paris by mistake. + +Thus almost before Archie knew it he had taken to himself Adelle Clark +as wife, the ceremony being witnessed by the consular clerk,--Morris +McBride of Chicago,--and an ex-sailor on his way back to New York of the +name of Harrington. Adelle distributed the remaining pieces of gold in +her purse in the way of _pour-boires_, and then the two found themselves +in the runabout on the Avenue de l'Opera--married. + +"I didn't know it could be done so easily," Archie observed +breathlessly. + +"Anything can be done when you want to, if you have the money," Adelle +replied, evincing how thoroughly she had mastered the philosophy of the +magic lamp. + +"And what shall we do now?" her husband inquired. + +(They say that in marriage the first trivial events are significant of +what will happen thereafter, like straws upon the stream betraying which +way the current flows. Possibly Archie's question indicates the quality +of this marriage, also the fact that presently Adelle set their course.) + +The consular clerk, judging that his compatriots were affluent, had +hinted at the propriety of a wedding feast at the Cafe de Paris; but +Adelle, who hated dinners, vetoed the suggestion. Archie was for +returning unsentimentally to the empty studio for their wedding night, +as they were short of cash and it was after banking hours. But Adelle +had not dashed madly across half of France in the night to spend the +first hours of her honeymoon in a dusty, hot studio on the Rue de +l'Universite. She turned the car into the great Avenue and swept on past +the Arch, through the Bois, out into the open country. Ultimately the +lack of _petrol_ stopped them at a little wayside _cabaret_ some miles +outside of the fortifications, where, too exhausted to proceed farther, +they decided to spend the night. + + + + +XXIV + + +Fortunately Adelle was not of an imaginative habit of mind. She rarely +envisaged with keenness anything of the future, and thus escaped many of +the perplexities and annoyances of life, with some of its pleasures. +Hers was always a single road,--from desire to the gratification of +desire,--as it had been with Archie. Thus far her nature had developed +few disturbing impulses, which accounts for the simple, not to say dull, +character of her story up to the present. Even the supreme desire of +woman's heart had come to her in a commonplace way and had been +fulfilled precipitately, as the desires of the untutored usually are, +but uncomplexly. As she fondly contemplated her husband the next +morning, she did not realize that in one swift day she had accomplished +the main drama of her existence and henceforth must be content with the +humdrum course of life. Archie was scarcely more concerned with mental +complexities. + +"Won't Pussy Comstock be jarred!" was about the depth of his reaction to +the momentous step they had taken. + +Adelle smiled a wary smile in answer: she distinctly enjoyed having both +outwitted Pussy and escaped the bother of opposition to her desires and +the shafts of ridicule. She stroked her master's bright red hair and +kissed him again. They felt very well content with themselves this +morning. Archie certainly ought to have congratulated himself. He had a +young wife, who loved him to distraction and who was extremely +well-to-do, and, moreover, had no inconvenient relatives to "cut up +ugly" over her imprudent step. There was only a trust company to reckon +with, and what can a trust company do when it feels fussed and +aggrieved?... + +After a leisurely breakfast and more love-making under the plane trees +in the little garden behind the inn, the pair had to reckon with fact. +They must get some money at once: they had only enough loose silver in +their two purses to pay the modest charges at the _cabaret_ and buy a +litre or two of _petrol_ to get them to Paris. Yet they dallied on in +the way of young love and drove up to the bank just before it closed. +When Adelle in her nonchalant manner asked the young man at the window +to give her five thousand francs in notes, she received a great +shock--the worst shock of her life. The young cashier, who had paid out +to her through the little brass _guichet_ many tens of thousands of +pretty white notes and gold-pieces, informed her that he could not give +her any money. It developed, under a storm of exclamation and protest, +that only that noon the bankers had received a cablegram from their +correspondent in America curtly directing them not to cash further +drafts drawn by Miss Clark against the Washington Trust Company. The +magic lamp had gone out most inopportunely! In vain Adelle expostulated, +declared there was a mistake, even introduced to the cashier "my +husband," who looked uncomfortable, but tried to assume authority and +demanded reasons for the bank's treatment of his wife. All the reason +lay in that brief cablegram. The couple at last turned dejectedly into +the street and again got into Adelle's runabout, which obviously was in +need of more _petrol_. + +"It's Pussy," Adelle pronounced with divination. + +"If it is, she's got in her fine work fast." + +The two might reflect sadly that if they had been prudent, they would +not have spent all that morning in love-making, having a lifetime for +that, but would have taken prompt measures to secure funds as soon as +the bank opened. Of course, it had never occurred to either of them that +trouble would fall in just this way. + +And now what was to be done? Adelle felt that they should drive at once +to the Villa Ponitowski, secure her clothes and jewelry, and make Pussy, +who she had no doubt was there, bank them until the embargo on her +drafts was raised. But neither had what Archie called "the nerve" to do +this. So they went for refuge to the only place they knew, Miss Baxter's +studio. + +There they found Miss Comstock. She had come to Paris, of course, by the +first train the day before, arriving at the studio shortly after they +had left in search of food. She had vibrated between the studio and the +Neuilly villa ever since, sure that when Adelle was short of funds she +would go home to roost. And Pussy had taken immediate measures to cut +off funds by cabling to the trust company the exact facts of Adelle's +disappearance in company with the Californian. She received them +amiably. + +"My dear Adelle," she began, "you should not be so eccentric. You gave +us all a shock!... I was coming up to Paris and would have been glad to +motor up with you and--er--Mr. Davis, I believe." There was a deadly +pause while she scrutinized the guilty couple through her glasses, as if +she were determining the exact extent of the mischief already done. She +looked disgustedly over the dusty studio and observed,--"It's not a +sweet place for--er--love-making is it? Why didn't you go to the Villa, +my dear, and let Marie look after you?" + +Archie laughed inanely. Adelle felt that she could not stand more of +this feline fooling. She said bluntly,-- + +"We're married." + +"Married! So soon! How--er--nice!" Pussy commented. + +"Yes, we're married, Miss Comstock," Archie added lamely, mopping his +brow. + +"You don't mean that?" Miss Comstock said quickly, her tone changing. + +Adelle nodded. + +"Then it is really a serious matter." + +Adelle's blood froze. + +"I can't believe you have been such a fool," she said to the girl. "Or +you such a scamp," she turned upon the frightened youth. + +It seemed to Adelle that Pussy would have condoned anything or +everything except that fatal visit to the consulate. Pussy's morals, she +knew, were of the strictly serviceable sort, and she was gladder than +ever that she had prodded Archie into having the ceremony performed at +once. Now Pussy could do nothing but scold. + +But Miss Comstock accepted only the inevitable, and she was not yet +convinced that the visit to the consulate and the ceremony there +constituted an inevitable marriage. She pleaded with Adelle to leave her +so-called husband and come back with her to the Neuilly villa "until the +matter could be straightened out, and an announcement of the marriage +made to the world," as she was wily enough to put it. But Adelle was +adamant. Archie, to whom the woman next appealed, was more yielding. She +succeeded in frightening him, talking about the dangers of French laws +that had to do with minors. Of course they had lied about Adelle's age, +and there were all sorts of complications besides the scandal, which was +perfectly needless in any case. And Miss Comstock assured them that the +trust company would probably take every step to annul the marriage. +There was a very hard road ahead of them if they persisted in their +idiotic course. Finally she even suggested that Archie might return to +the Villa with them until his status could be determined. Adelle, +however, feared Pussy's cleverness and would not stir from the studio. +All through the protracted interview in this crisis, when her heart's +desire was threatened, Adelle displayed surprising courage and +steadfastness of purpose. Her courage naturally was an egotistic +courage: it amounted in sum to this--nobody should take away her toy +from her this time. And finally Miss Comstock retired from the scene +defeated and somewhat venomous. + +"I hope, my dear," she sent as a parting shot, "that Mr. Davis can give +you the comforts you are used to. I think it may be extremely difficult +for you to use your own money for the present." + +Adelle seemed quite indifferent to the comforts she had been used to, +although she well knew that there was not a five-franc piece in the +studio, when Miss Comstock departed to cable the trust company the +results of her interview. The trust company, it may be said in passing, +was much upset over the news, and after consultation decided to send the +third vice-president across the ocean to examine into the matter, Mr. +Ashly Crane having declined to undertake the delicate mission. Meantime +they did not rescind their instructions to their Paris correspondent, +and so for some days to come the young people were reduced to absurd +straits for the want of money. + + * * * * * + +After Pussy had gone, with her threat, Adelle burst into tears and +accused Archie of not supporting her in this battle. Was she not giving +up everything for him?--etc. Archie had his first lesson in being the +husband of an heiress, even a much-petted husband. It was finally +learned, and kisses were exchanged. Then they thought to appease their +hunger, which by this time was acute, and debated how this was to be +done. Adelle was confident that on the morrow she could sell what +jewelry she had with her for enough to support them pleasantly until she +could make it right with the trust company and get hold of her lamp +again. For this evening she borrowed five francs from the suspicious and +unwilling concierge, and with the money Archie went forth to the corner +and brought back a dubious mess of cold food and a bottle of poor wine, +which they consumed in the dark studio, then went to sleep upon the +divan in each other's arms like a couple of romance. Rather late in the +day on the morrow Adelle sallied out in a cab to the Rue de la Paix +confident that she would return with much gold. She found naturally that +her own handiwork was unsalable at any price, and that the fashionable +shops where she had dealt prodigally would not advance her a cent even +upon their own wares. Pussy, she realized, had shut off also this avenue +to ease! They were obliged to induce the concierge's wife to pledge at +the pawnshop the more marketable things Adelle had with her. With the +few francs thus derived they managed to picnic in the studio for the +next week. They became acquainted with busses and the _batteau mouche_ +and other lowly forms of transportation and amusement, but spent most of +their time in the studio, love-making, of which Adelle did not weary. +Archie was used to the devices of a short purse and Adelle thought it +all a great lark for love's sake. Besides, it must end soon, and the +high noon of prosperity return with the possession of her precious lamp. +To hasten that event she wrote a rather peremptory note to the +Washington Trust Company, notifying them of her change of name and +complaining of the mistake they had made in cutting off her drafts. It +would take a fortnight at the most to get a reply, and then all would be +right. Archie did not feel so confident. + + + + +XXV + + +Prosperity did not return as completely as Adelle expected, nor as +easily. Mr. Solomon Smith, the vice-president of the trust company, +arrived in Paris in due course on the seventh day and fell naturally +first into the hands of Miss Comstock. For Pussy, realizing to the full +the consequences of this situation to herself as an exploiter of rich +American girls from the very best families, had moved her family back to +the Villa Ponitowski and had set the stage demurely and convincingly for +the arrival of the trust company's emissary. She impressed Mr. Smith +easily as an intelligent and prudent woman, who was terribly concerned +over Adelle's false step, and quite blameless in the affair. + +"Such an unfortunate accident," she explained to him, "from every point +of view:--think of my dear girls, the example to them!... And such +deceit,--one would not have expected it of the girl, I must say!... I +know nothing whatever about the young man, except that he comes from the +West--from California. One of my girls--a daughter of Hermann Paul, the +rich San Francisco railroad man, you know--tells me that this Davis +fellow is of most ordinary people, what is called a 'bounder,' you know. +Adelle naturally did not meet him here, but at the studio of one of her +friends. I knew nothing whatever about it until just before the +elopement--the very day before, in fact, when I surprised them together +in a motor-car. I spoke to the girl that night, of course, kindly but +severely. I had no idea she could do such a thing! It must have been in +her mind a long time. The girl showed great powers of duplicity, all the +trickiness of a parvenue, to be quite frank. I never had a girl of such +low tastes, I may say;--all my girls are from the very best families, +most carefully selected." + +Thus Miss Comstock skillfully contrived to throw the responsibility for +Adelle's misstep upon her birth and upon the trust company which had +brought her up. In doing this she but confirmed Mr. Smith in his opinion +that the guardianship of minor girls was not a branch of the business +that the Washington Trust Company should undertake. They lacked the +proper facilities, as he would express it, and it was more of a nuisance +than it was worth. He had had a tempestuous September passage across the +ocean and dreaded the return voyage. + +Having won a vantage-point Miss Comstock next proceeded to give a +piquant account of Mr. Ashly Crane's dealings with the girl, who in a +way had been his special charge. + +"Fortunately I nipped that affair in the bud," she said, "although, as +it turned out, I suppose he might have been less objectionable than the +fellow she took. I am afraid that Mr. Crane lowered the girl's ideals of +manhood and thus paved the way for her fall," she added gravely. + +Mr. Smith listened to the tale of Mr. Crane's futile attempt in rising +astonishment and wrath. He was himself a married man with a family of +growing daughters. He made a mental note of Mr. Crane's conduct, which +ultimately terminated that promising young banker's career in finance +with the trust company. + +"Where is the girl?" he asked at the end, sighing. "I must see her, I +suppose, though it seems too late to do anything now." + +Pussy had sagely taken account of Mr. Solomon Smith's character and +concluded that the banker was the sort of middle-class American who +might insist upon the young couple's being married all over again in due +form if he suspected anything irregular, and so to save bother all +around she assured him that she herself had made inquiry at the +consulate and found that the marriage performed there was binding +enough,--"unless the trust company wished to intervene as guardian of +the minor and contest its validity on the ground of misrepresentation of +Adelle's age," which, of course, must involve considerable scandal. + +"It would be very unpleasant, indeed," she said meaningly. + +The banker, who hated all publicity for himself and for his institution, +hastened to say that he had no idea of taking such action; merely wished +to be sure that the girl was really married and that her children, if +any came to her, would be born in lawful wedlock. Miss Comstock hid a +smile and set his mind at rest on that point. + +(One sequel of this affair, by the way, was the prompt conclusion of Mr. +Morris McBride's diplomatic career: he returned presently to a patient +fatherland to renew in Cook County, Illinois, his services to the +Republican Party.) + +After a delectable luncheon at Miss Comstock's, Mr. Smith drove alone +from the Neuilly villa to Miss Baxter's studio, where he found the young +couple somewhat in neglige, recovering from one of the concierge's +indigestible repasts, funds now running too low to permit them to +indulge in restaurant life. The untidy studio and the disheveled couple +themselves made a very bad impression upon the trust company's officer, +who loathed from the depths of his orderly soul all slatternness and +especially "bohemian art." He examined the young husband through his +horn-bowed glasses so sternly that Archie slunk into the darkest corner +of the studio and remained there during the banker's visit, which he +left to Adelle to bear. Mr. Smith could not be harsh with the young +bride, no matter how foolish and wrong-headed he thought her. + +"Mrs.--er--Davis," he began, going straight to the point like a business +man, "I am informed that you are regularly married. It might be possible +to have such a marriage as you have chosen to make set aside on the +ground that you are a minor--still a ward of an American court--and +misrepresented your age to the consular officer." + +Adelle opened her gray eyes in consternation. Were they, after all, +thinking of taking Archie from her? But she was reassured by the trust +officer's next words. + +"Your guardians, however, will in all likelihood not take any such +steps--I shall not recommend it. Although you yet lack eighteen months +of being legally of age, and of course ought not to have married without +our consent, nevertheless you are of an age when many young women assume +the responsibilities of marriage. The facts being what they are,"--he +paused to look around disgustedly at the evidences of the picnicking +_menage_,--"I see no use in our interfering now in this unfortunate +affair." + +Adelle's pale face brightened. He was a good old sort, she thought, and +wasn't going to make trouble, after all,--merely lecture them a bit, and +she composed her face properly to receive his scolding. It came, but it +was not very bad, at least Adelle did not feel its sting. + +"It is also needless for me to pain you," he began, "by telling you what +I--what every mature person--must think of your rash step. Its +consequences upon your own future life will probably manifest themselves +only too soon. For a young girl like you, carefully brought up under the +best educational influences, and still in the charge of +a--er--companion,--" Adelle smiled demurely at Mr. Smith's difficulty in +finding the right word to describe Pussy Comstock,--"to deceive the kind +watchfulness, the confidence reposed in you, and carry on clandestine +relations"--What's that? thought Adelle--"with the first young fellow +who presents himself, indicates a serious lack on your part of something +that every woman should have to--er--to cope with life successfully," he +concluded, letting her down at the end softly. + +This long sentence, by the way, was an interesting composite of several +"forms" that Mr. Smith used frequently on different occasions. It did +not impress Adelle as it should. She felt, as a matter of fact, that in +deceiving Pussy, she had merely pitted her feeble will and intelligence +against a much stronger one of an experienced woman, who was none too +scrupulous in her own methods. Also that in acting as she had in running +away with Archie, she had displayed the first real gleam of character in +her whole life. But she could not put these things into words. So she +let Mr. Smith continue without protest, which was the best way. + +"As for the husband you have chosen, I know nothing about him of course. +I can only say that men of standing have slight regard for any man who +takes advantage of the weakness and folly of a school-girl, especially +when he has everything to gain financially from her and nothing to +give." + +Archie winced at this truthful statement and nervously dropped a palette +with which he had been fussing. It clattered to the floor and broke, +setting the nerves of all three on edge. + +"Such a man," Mr. Smith proceeded in his most acid tones, glaring at +Archie, "is properly called an adventurer, and rarely if ever proves to +have character enough to retain the respect of the woman he has wheedled +into sacrificing herself." + +This was a bit unfair, for Archie had been wheedled rather than wheedled +Adelle. Moreover, the world is full, as Mr. Smith must surely know, of +young men who have committed matrimony with girls financially to their +advantage and who have retained not only their own self-respect, but won +the admiration of their acquaintances into the bargain for their skill +and good luck. + +And Adelle resented the slur for Archie even more than the young man +did. She felt vaguely that Archie ought to do something to demonstrate +that he was not a worthless character, possibly kick Mr. Smith out of +the studio, at least protest at being called a "cad" and "adventurer." +But Archie took it all meekly and busied himself with recovering the +pieces of the broken palette from the floor. Mr. Smith did not press his +dialectic advantage; in other words, did not specifically hit Archie +again. Perhaps a human compunction, for the sake of the young girl who +had just rashly hazarded her life's happiness with the young man, +restrained him. He turned instead again to Adelle in a gentler tone. + +"I feel sincerely sorry for you, Mrs. Davis. A young woman in your +position, without family or near friends to shield her, is exposed to +all the evil selfishness of the world. You have succumbed, I am afraid, +to a delusion, although the trust company did its best to supply your +lack of natural protectors, to shield you." + +He reflected, perhaps, that the trust company had been, even from the +easy American standard, a rather negligent parent, chiefly concerned +with its ward's fortune, and hastened to say defensively,--"We placed +you with an excellent woman,"--Adelle had placed herself, but it made no +difference,--"one in whom we have every confidence not only as a +teacher, but also as a friend and guide." Even Adelle smiled broadly at +this description of Pussy. "But all our care has been in vain: you have +put us now where we cannot help you further!" + +Adelle lowered her eyes, but felt happier--the sermon was coming to an +end. + +"It is useless for me to continue, however. It rests with you alone, +with you and your husband,"--he pronounced the term with infinite +scorn,--"to prove that your rash choice is not what it seems,--the end +of your career, the end of your happiness. And it rests with you, sir," +he added severely, looking over at Archie, "to prove that you are man +enough to be a kind husband to the girl who has married you under such +circumstances. I sincerely hope that your future will be better than +your act promises!" + +Here was another opening for the kick, but Archie failed to grasp it. He +took his cue from Adelle and maintained a sulky silence. + +"There remains but one more thing for me to speak of, Mrs. Davis, and +that is your property, of which the trust company must continue guardian +for nearly two years more until you become of age and the company is +released from its guardianship by the court." + +The couple pricked up their ears with relief at the mention of property. + +"You have shown yourself to be prodigal in expenditure," Mr. Smith +remarked, pulling from his pocket a card with a list of figures. "This +past year you drew very nearly if not quite thirty-eight thousand +dollars,--altogether too much money, I should say, for a young woman to +spend safely." + +"It was the cars and the Nile trip," Adelle murmured. + +"Fortunately it happens to be well within the income of your estate, and +so I suppose I cannot raise objections except upon moral grounds. It is +too much money for any woman to spend wisely!" + +Mr. Smith apparently had positive convictions on this subject. Adelle +did not seem to care what he thought a woman could spend wisely. + +"And so I propose that for the remainder of the time while you are +nominally under our guardianship the trust company shall allow you--" He +paused as if debating the figure with himself, and Archie unconsciously +walked a couple of steps nearer the others. Alas! It drew Mr. Smith's +attention from Adelle, for whom he was sorry, to the cause, as he +thought, of her misfortune. Whatever had been in his mind he said +curtly, looking at Archie, "Five thousand dollars a year, to be paid in +quarterly installments on your personal order, Mrs. Davis." + +The young people looked at him aghast. As a matter of fact, five +thousand dollars a year was not penury, at least to Archie, who had +rarely seen a clear twelve hundred from January to January. Even Adelle, +after her training in the Church Street house, might at a pinch hold +herself in for eighteen months, all the more as after that period of +probation she could not be prevented by the trust company from indulging +herself to the full extent of her income. Adelle, indeed, who was still +somewhat vague about the limitations and possibilities of money, was not +as much annoyed as Archie. But she knew that she was being punished for +her conduct in running away with Archie by this disagreeable old man, +and she resented punishment as a child might resent it. Mr. Smith, +observing the signs of discontent with his announcement, remarked with +increased decision and satisfaction:-- + +"I am sure that will be best for both of you. Especially for you, Mrs. +Davis! It will give you an opportunity to find out how much you care for +each other, without the luxuries that wealth brings. And it will protect +you, my dear, from--er--the indiscretions of a young husband, who has +not been accustomed to the use of much money, I gather." + +Undoubtedly Mr. Smith thought he was acting wisely towards them,--"Just +as I would if it had been my own daughter," according to his report to +President West. As a matter of fact, he acted precisely as parents are +only too prone to act, with one third desire for the best interests of +the parties concerned and two thirds desire to have them punished for +their folly. The punitive motive was large in Mr. Smith's decision to +put the couple on short rations as long as he had the power to do so. He +would have liked to tie up Adelle's fortune indefinitely, so that the +young scamp who had married her for her money (as he was convinced) +might get as little of it as possible. Unfortunately the trust company +had no control after Adelle's twenty-first birthday, unless by that time +experience should teach her the wisdom of voluntarily putting her +fortune beyond her husband's reach; but, at any rate, for the next few +months it could arbitrarily and tyrannically disappoint his hungry +appetite, and that is what Mr. Smith meant to do. His psychology, +unfortunately, was faulty. It was perhaps the poorest way of securing +Adelle's happiness in the end, as he might have foreseen if he had been +less conscientious and more human.... + +Shortly after delivering his blow, Mr. Smith took his hat and left the +studio without shaking hands with Archie, although he smiled frostily on +the trust company's ward and "hoped all would go well with her in her +new life." All the way back to his hotel he congratulated himself for +his dispatch, finesse, eloquence, and wisdom in handling a deplorable +and difficult situation. Yet it is hard to see just what he had +accomplished by crossing the ocean. He washed his hands of "the Clark +girl" before he left Paris for his return voyage, and, like so many +persons with whom the young heiress had dealings, never again actively +entered her life. + + + + +XXVI + + +When the studio door closed upon the emissary of the trust company, the +young couple looked at each other a little ruefully. Archie kicked over +a chair or two and expressed himself volubly, now that it was safe, upon +the priggishness and meanness of such folks as Mr. Solomon Smith. Adelle +might wish that he had expressed himself in these vigorous terms +earlier, when there could have been discussion and a chance of modifying +Mr. Smith's decision. But she realized how raw he was feeling from the +old gentleman's contempt and sweetly put her arms around her husband's +strong shoulders and kissed him tenderly. + +"It won't be so bad, Archie," she said hopefully. "We'll get on somehow, +I expect, and it isn't forever--not two years." She could recall much +graver crises in life than being compelled to live for eighteen months +with an adored companion on seventy-five hundred dollars, and people +somehow survived them. + +"It isn't just the money," Archie protested, a little shamed, but still +grumpy. "It's his rotten talk. A feller doesn't like being called all +sorts of names." + +"Well, he's gone now and he won't come back," Adelle remarked +soothingly, with another effort to caress her young lord into amiability +and resignation to fate. That proved more difficult than usual: Archie +felt the sting of the older man's taunts, especially the horrid word +"adventurer" rankled in his subconsciousness. He saw himself reflected +in the opinion of other men,--at least of stodgy, middle-aged men like +Mr. Smith, who worked hard for what they got and had families,--and it +ruffled him seriously. He was not in a happy temper otherwise. A +fortnight of conjugal picnicking in the perpetual society of Adelle, +whose conversational powers were limited, had chafed him. So Adelle had +her first experience in that woman's pathetic task of endeavoring to +soothe and harmonize the disturbed soul of her lord, who, she is aware, +has only himself to blame for his state of spiritual discomfiture. But +Adelle, like all her sisters who love, since the world began, rose nobly +to her part. + +Finally, they sallied forth and with some money that Adelle had +contrived to extract, probably from the sale of another piece of real +jewelry, they consoled themselves with an elaborate dinner at a famous +restaurant in the Champs Elysees, and as it was a warm evening drove +afterwards out to the Bois. The next day Adelle ventured forth to the +bankers alone, and secured the first quarterly installment of the funds +left there to her account by the prim Mr. Smith. With the notes and gold +she hastened back to Archie, and the couple began to plan seriously for +the future. + +It is not my purpose to follow the pair in their erratic course during +the next eighteen months, although it had its ludicrous as well as +pathetic steps. That they were not ready for any sort of matrimonial +partnership, is of course obvious, but as they shared their disability +with a goodly proportion of young married people the world over, it does +not count. Adelle, being the woman, learned her lesson more quickly than +Archie, and under conceivable circumstances might have made as much of a +success with her rash choice, in spite of Mr. Smith's prophecies, as +many others make with their more prudently premeditated ones. She wanted +to be married, and on the whole she was content when she got what she +wanted,--at least, in the beginning,--which is the essential condition +of marital comfort. But Archie had not by any means been as anxious to +tie himself up for good as Adelle had been, and was more restive with +what he found marriage to a rich--at least, expectantly rich--wife to +be. + +In a blind effort to find a congenial environment, they moved about over +the map a good deal. First they went to Venice, of which Adelle +especially had rosy memories associated with the dawn of love. They took +a furnished apartment in an old palace over the Canal, and set up four +swarthy, muscled rowers in blue sashes. Venice has been for many +generations the haven of love, especially of irregular or illicit love: +but its attraction evaporates swiftly after the ceremony has taken +place. No spot where the male cannot stretch himself and get away from +domesticity for a few hours is safe except for the diviner, more +ecstatic forms of passion. In a few weeks the couple became deadly bored +with Venice and its picture postcard replica of life. At Archie's +suggestion they next sought Munich, where some of his artist +acquaintance had settled. + +This was an atmosphere of work, more or less, and Adelle amused herself +by thinking that she and her husband were members of that glorious band +of free lances of art. They took a studio apartment and set up their +crafts jointly. If either had had the real stuff of the artist, it might +have gone well; but two idle and rather uninformed persons in the same +studio produce disaster. Munich soon became an affair of beer, skittles, +and music in company with the more careless spirits that gathered there +that winter. Among them happened to be Sadie Paul. + +A good deal had happened to the California sisters, and as the "two +Pols" will come into Adelle's life later on, their story can be briefly +given here. Irene, the sister who had brutally betrayed Adelle in a +spirit of careless mischief, had attracted with her ripe California +charm a young Englishman of family. Mr. Hermann Paul, the "San Francisco +railroad man" referred to by Miss Comstock, meantime had died, and Irene +had gone home to join her mother and younger brothers and ultimately was +married to her Englishman. She divided her time thereafter about equally +between England and the new earthly paradise of the Pacific. Her sister +Sadie had determined to remain in Europe, under other chaperonage than +Pussy Comstock. It was rumored that a young Hungarian nobleman was +hanging somewhere in the horizon, but for the present she played about +with Adelle and Archie. Apparently Sadie Paul did not share her sister's +prejudices about "the red-headed bounder," for she flirted unconcernedly +with Archie as far as he would go, which to do Archie justice was not +dangerously far. Adelle, good-natured and easy-going by disposition, +welcomed the return of her old school friend and was not in the least +disturbed by her flirtatious attempts with Archie. That sort of amorous +pretense was more or less the habit of the world she had known, and +besides, she was aware that Sadie was "having a desperate affair" with +Count Zornec, the Hungarian referred to above, who was temporarily +exiled to his remote estate. Indeed, she became the means of furthering +this passion and speeding it to its destined end in matrimony, which has +to do with a subsequent part of our tale.... + +To return to the wanderings of Adelle and Archie, in the Easter holidays +they left Munich for Switzerland for the winter sports, and in the +spring Archie conceiving the idea that he wanted to do Dutch landscape, +they went to Holland for a few weeks. That summer they rented a small +villa along the Bay of Biscay and had Sadie Paul and her Count as their +guests for a time. The second winter of their marriage they spent in +Paris, and by this time were rather hard-pressed for ready money, as +neither had relaxed in wanting things and Adelle especially still had +the habit of buying whatever attracted her attention,--bright-colored +stuffs, jewels, and useless odds and ends of bric-a-brac, with the idea +that sometime they should want to establish themselves permanently +somewhere and purchases would all come in usefully. It was much as a +bird gathers sticks, straws, and bright-colored threads, but in Adelle +it was an expensive instinct. Towards the end of their period of +probation, they had to get aid from money-lenders, to whom Sadie Paul +introduced them. Adelle did not find it difficult to raise money on her +expectations, at a stiff rate of interest, and thus the object of the +Puritan Mr. Smith was defeated. It would have pained his thrifty +banker's soul had he known that the trust company's ward was gayly +paying ten and fifteen percent for "temporary accommodation," while her +own funds were barely earning five per cent in the careful investments +of the trust company! When Adelle finally got hold of her fortune, a +goodly sum had to be paid over to settle the claims of these obliging +money-lenders.... + +Of the quarrels, big and little, that the young couple had these first +months it is useless to speak. Thus far they were neither excessively +severe nor dangerously frequent--no worse, perhaps, than the average +idle couple must create in love's readjustment to prosaic fact. Adelle +no longer believed that her Archie would be the great painter that she +had once fondly dreamed of helping him to become. He was too lazy and +fond of good things to eat and drink and other sensual rewards of life +to become distinguished in anything, unless perchance he were well +starved into discipline. His present life of comparative ease and +expected wealth was the very worst thing for him as man and as artist. +Like an over-fertilized plant he went to leaf and bore little fruit. And +thus again Clark's Field, with its delayed expectations, had a baleful +influence upon a new generation of human beings. The Davises had just +enough money to wander loose over Europe, disturbed, as Addie had once +been disturbed, by the hope of a more golden future. + +Adelle herself was content not to work hard at the manufacture of +jewelry, although if she had been encouraged, she might have become +almost second-rate in this minor art. She, too, was indolent, if not by +disposition, by training, and Europe offers abundant distraction of a +semi-intellectual sort to fill the days of people like Archie and +Adelle. To loaf herself was not so fatal for Adelle as to acquiesce in +Archie's loafing, to accept the parasitic notion for her man that +obtained in the easy-going circles she knew. "Oh, well," she said to +Sadie, "why should Archie work if he doesn't want to?" + +Sadie saw no reason and suggested,--"There isn't one of those painters +who would stick at it if he didn't have to." + +Like all poor people, they hadn't any luck; that was her idea. And +Adelle cultivated another dangerous conception of marriage. + +"It's enough for me if he's good to me and loves me--I have plenty of +money for us both." + +In other words, she thought that she should be satisfied to keep her +lover always as an appanage of her magic lamp, to maintain a human being +and a male human being as she might maintain a motor-car or an estate or +a stable, as something desirable and pleasurable, contributing to her +happiness,--the privilege of her fortunate position as a woman of means. +There were many rich women who had that idea or cultivated it as a +solace to their defeated souls. + +"Isn't he a dear?" she would say to Sadie Paul in these moments of proud +consciousness of possession; and conversely she would say sternly when +some case of masculine errancy was brought to her notice,--"If Archie +treated me like that, he'd find his bag packed and sitting outside the +door!" + +So she was very fussy about her husband's appearance,--his dress and +manners and appointments; and insisted upon giving him every accessory +of luxury, everything that rich men supposably enjoy. As her nearest and +dearest possession, she was more concerned with his brave appearance +than she was with her own. She "dolled" him up, as Sadie Paul laughingly +called it. "Isn't he cunning?" was one of her common expressions of +marital happiness. Occasionally, in more serious moods, she might talk +largely about Archie's "going into business" when they "got their +money," but as time went on and Archie displayed little aptitude for +managing money, she talked less about this. Adelle would have been +content to buy the Basque villa they had rented and establish herself +and Archie there in complete idleness and luxury, provided he would +always be "good" to her, by which she meant faithful to those +unconsidered marriage vows made in the Paris consulate, and not too +cross. + +And thus Archie and Adelle drifted on towards that great date of their +complete emancipation from control, when all the riches of Clark's +Field, now accumulating in the trust company's pool, should be handed +over to them. That would be, indeed, the ultimate crisis for the old +Field, when, having been finally transmuted into coin of the realm, it +should cease to have an entity or any personal relation with the Clark +race! + +Meantime Archie and Adelle were not vicious, though Archie drank too +much for his digestion and was often peevish in consequence, and Adelle +was almost aimless and lazy enough to be described as vicious. Yet they +were no worse than many, many other well-to-do young persons with no +deep roots, no permanent incentives, no profound passions to give them +significance. Likely enough they might have ended in some charming +English country house, or Roman palace, or pink-and-white villa along +the Mediterranean,--if their fate had not been still involved with +Clark's Field. They would have become perfectly respectable, utterly +negligible modern citizens of the world,--the infertile by-product of a +rich civilization with its perfected machinery for the preservation of +accumulated wealth. There are more Archies and Adelles about us than is +commonly recognized: they are on all our calling-lists, in every +European capital or congregation of expensive country homes. Their names +stud the "blue books" and the "red books" of conventional "society." +They fill the great hotels and the mammoth steamships. They, in sum, +make up a large part of that fine fruit of civilization for which the +immense majority toil, and for whom serious people plan and legislate, +for whom laws are interpreted and trust companies formed in order to +handle the money they themselves are incapable of controlling usefully, +even of safely preserving.... + +Archie and Adelle were hungry at this period for more money and felt +themselves martyrized by the whim of an ill-natured old man who had +arbitrarily made them wait to be wholly happy. They talked perpetually +about what they should do with themselves "after" the great event,--the +sort of touring-car they should buy, the kind of establishment they +should keep, the best place to live in, etc. It must be somewhere in +Europe, of course, for neither was eager to return to America "where +everybody worked and there was nothing fit to eat," according to Archie. +Adelle's ideas of America, never extensive, were growing dimmer every +season, and the occasional friends who returned from the other shore +described their native land in unflattering terms. Adelle thought that +every American who could lived as much of the time as possible somewhere +in Europe, but she did not think much about it at this time. + +They had no children. Adelle had no objections to child-bearing and +expected "sometime" to have "two or three" children. Archie thought +there would be plenty of time for that "later on" when they had their +money. Adelle was still very young, and in the present wandering state +of their life children would be a nuisance. + +Finally they were neither happy nor unhappy. Restless was the adjective +that described them most closely. Their bodies and stomachs and nerves +and minds and souls were always in a state of disequilibrium, and they +were feeling about for equilibrium like blind kittens without forming +any successful plan of extricating themselves from their subconscious +state of dissatisfaction. With another order of gray matter in their +brains either one might have produced out of this disequilibrium some +fine, rare flower of form or color or words. But Archie's gray matter, +like Adelle's, was not expressive. + +Their friends thought them happy as well as fortunate. Sadie Paul +reported to her sister and Eveline Glynn,--"Dell is crazy about her +Archie--she won't let him out of her sight. He's not such a bad sort, +but fearfully stuck on himself, just because Dell pets him so." + +Adelle, as she frequently told Archie, infinitely preferred her choice +to Sadie's "Black-and-Tan," as she called the Count Zornec. + +This was their state after eighteen months of married life. + + + + +XXVII + + +The trust company had left its ward severely alone since Mr. Smith's +visit to Paris. Like punishing parents they seemed resolved to let +Adelle taste the dregs of her folly by herself. Each quarter they +deposited with the Paris bankers twelve hundred and fifty dollars and +notified them not to honor Mrs. Davis's drafts in excess of this amount. +It was automatic. That was the ideal of the trust company, as it is of +many private persons, to reduce life to automatic processes. + +But as the day drew near when the trust company had to give a final +accounting to the probate court of its guardianship, they notified +Adelle by a curt letter that her presence would be desirable. There were +certain matters in connection with her assuming control of her fortune +and terminating their trust that could be transacted more expeditiously +if Mrs. Davis would present herself at their office by the end of May. +"We beg to remain," etc. + +The suggestion came as a welcome incentive to the young couple. Anything +that might expedite matters was to their taste. They had talked of +making a visit to Archie's relatives and introducing Adelle to the +modern paradise of the golden slope and at the same time visiting the +Pauls. And so, about the middle of May, the Davises took ship from Havre +for the New World, occupying, in deference to their coming wealth, an +expensive deck suite in the transatlantic hotel, and thus made their +journey in all possible comfort. + +They arrived in B---- with a great many trunks that contained a small +part of all those purchases which Adelle had made; also with a dog and +Adelle's maid. Their first real experience of their American citizenship +came naturally at the dock. Archie, who had lost some money on the way +across, and was hazy about his duties and rights as a returning citizen, +had put in an absurd declaration for the customs officers. With their +formidable array of trunks the couple presented at once a vulnerable +aspect to the inspectors, and long after the procession of travelers had +scurried away in cabs, Archie and Adelle were left, hot and +uncomfortable, trying to "explain" their false declaration. Adelle, who +was not usually untruthful, lied shamelessly about the prices she had +paid for things. "It cost just nothing at all,--twenty francs," she +declared as the officer held forth some article whose real value he knew +perfectly well. Adelle lost her assurance, shed tears of shame; Archie +lost his temper and swore at the officer for insulting his wife, and in +consequence every article in the fourteen pieces of baggage was dumped +upon the dock while a grinning audience of inspectors, reporters, and +stevedores gathered about the unhappy pair. + +"What a country!" Archie fumed while the inspector was summoning his +superior officer. + +"No wonder Americans prefer to live abroad," he remarked loftily to a +convenient reporter, who was preparing copy with his eager eyes. + +"We won't live here, will we!" Adelle chorused to her husband. + +"Not much!" + +"To treat decent people like this, just because they have a few clothes +and things. What do they take us for--hoboes?" Archie continued. + +He forgot that he had departed from his native land a scant two years +before with a lean dress-suit case and a small trunk. Also that his wife +and indirectly himself were among the beneficiaries of the law they had +tried to evade. The reporter, who had appraised the pair more +expeditiously than the inspector had their goods, hypocritically drew +them out, asking their opinion of America and Americans, which Archie +set forth volubly. + +When the inspectors finally came upon deposits of Adelle's jewelry which +she had skillfully concealed in the toes of her shoes, they declared the +game off and sent all the trunks forthwith to the stores. Their case was +so serious that it must be dealt with specially. The pair finally left +the dock, much chagrined, feeling as nearly like common criminals as +they were ever likely to feel; indeed, somewhat frightened and much less +voluble in protest, whatever their opinion of their fatherland might +still be. It was evidently a serious affair they had got themselves in +for by their perfectly natural desire to save a few dollars at the +expense of the Government. + +The next morning when they awoke in the Eclair Hotel, which still +remained B----'s best hostelry, where they had consoled themselves by +taking an expensive suite and ordering a good dinner, they found that +their arrival in America was not unheralded. The reporter had not been +idle. His description of Archie was unkind, and his satirical report of +the couple's sayings and doings was unfriendly. He had somehow +discovered Adelle's connection with Clark's Field, the story of which in +a much garbled form he gave to the public and incidentally doubled the +size of her fortune,--"drawn from one of the most unblushing pieces of +real estate promotion this State has ever seen." Altogether it was the +kind of article to make the conservative gentlemen of the Washington +Trust Company very unhappy. When they read it they wished again that +they had never seen Adelle. + +Other papers took up the scent of the "Morning Herald," and for a week +Archie and Adelle were thoroughly introduced to the American people as +an idle pair, of immense inherited wealth, who had failed in their +attempt to defraud the custom house of a few thousand dollars. This +affair kept them busy for the better part of a week, and was finally +settled without prosecution when the collector became convinced that no +serious wrong had been plotted by Archie and Adelle. He gave them both a +little lecture, which they received in a humbler frame of mind than they +had shown at the dock. + +Archie rather enjoyed the newspaper notoriety that his marriage to the +heiress of Clark's Field was bringing him. He entertained the reporters +affably at the hotel bar, and established a reputation for not being a +"snob," though so much of a "swell." In fact he was a much less uncouth +specimen than when Adelle had first encountered him in the Paris studio. +A year and a half of ease and petting had served to smooth off those +more obvious roughnesses that had caused Irene Paul to describe him as a +"bounder." He was fashionably dressed according to the Anglo-French +style, and fortunately did not affect soft shirts or flowing ties or +eccentric head-gear, or any other of the traditional marks of the +artist. Lounging in the luxurious hotel corridor, he looked like any +well-to-do young American of twenty-seven or eight. His bright red hair +and small waxed mustache, and his habit of dangling a small cane, +perhaps, were the only distinguishing marks about him. After the customs +case had been disposed of, Archie found time hanging on his hands. +Adelle was occupied with the trust company and all the formalities she +had to go through with before she could actually lay her hands upon her +fortune. Archie read the lighter magazines and loafed about the streets +of B----, peering up through his glasses at the lofty buildings, and +imbibing more cocktails and other varieties of American stimulants than +was good for him. + + + + +XXVIII + + +Adelle was distinctly roused by her return to America and all the +memories awakened at the sight of familiar streets, the home of the +Washington Trust Company, and the probate court whither she was obliged +to go. Judge Orcutt was still sitting on the bench and seemed to her to +be exactly as she remembered him, only grayer and a little more bent +over his high bench. He was still that courteous, slightly distant +gentleman from another age, whose mind behind the dreamy eyes seemed +eternally occupied with larger matters than the administration and +disposal of human property. He remembered Adelle, or professed to, and +gave her a kindly old man's smile when he shook hands with her, in spite +of all the _reclame_ of her indecorous return to her native land. He +said nothing of that, however, but refreshed his memory by consulting a +little book where he entered all sorts of curious items not strictly +legal that occurred to him in connection with important cases. From +these pages he easily revived all the details of Adelle, her aunt, and +the now famous Clark's Field. + +Looking up from his book, he scrutinized with unusual interest the young +woman who had come before him after an absence of seven years. He was +reflecting, perhaps, that, although she was unaware of the fact, he had +played the part to her in an important crisis of a wise and beneficent +Providence. In all likelihood he had preserved for her the chance of +possessing the large fortune which she was about to receive with his +approval from the Washington Trust Company. No wonder that he looked +keenly at the young woman standing before him! What was she now? What +had she done with herself these seven crucial years of her life to +prepare herself for her good fortune and justify his care of her +interests? How had the enjoyment of ease and the expectation of coming +wealth, with all its opening of gates and widening of horizons, affected +little Adelle Clark--the insignificant drudge from the Alton +rooming-house?... + +Judge Orcutt no longer published thin volumes of poetry. The bar said +that he was now devoting himself more seriously to his profession. The +truth was, perhaps, that in face of his accumulating knowledge of life +and human beings, he no longer had the incentive to write lyrics. The +poetry, however, was there ineradicably in his soul, affecting his +judgments,--the lawyers still called him "cranky" or "erratic,"--and +giving even to routine judicial acts a significance and dignity little +suspected by the careless practitioners in his court.... And so this +elderly gentleman, for he had crossed the sixty mark by now, recalled +the timid, pale-faced, undersized girl, with her "common" aunt, who +seven years before had appeared in his court and to whom he had been the +instrument of giving riches. What had she done with the golden spoon he +had thrust into her mouth and what would she do with it now? Ah, that +was always the question with these inheritances which he was called upon +to administer according to the complicated rules of law--and the law +books afforded no answer to such questions!... + +"My dear," he said, with one of his beautiful smiles that seemed to +irradiate the "case" before him with its personal kindliness and +sympathy, "so you have been living in Europe the last few years and are +now married?" + +Adelle said "yes" to both questions, while the trust officer who had +accompanied her to court--not our Mr. Ashly Crane--fussed inwardly +because he saw that Judge Orcutt was in one of his "wandering" and +leisurely moods, and might detain them to discourse upon Europe or +anything that happened into his mind before signing the necessary order. +But after this introduction, the judge was silent, while his smile still +lingered in the gaze he directed to the young woman before him. + +Adelle, as has been amply admitted in these pages, was neither beautiful +nor compelling. But she was very different indeed from the small, shabby +girl of fourteen. She was taller, with a well-trained figure that showed +the efforts of all the deft maids and skillful dressmakers through which +it had passed. She was dressed in the very height of the prevailing +fashions--a high-water mark of eccentricity that Judge Orcutt rarely +encountered in the staid circles of the good city of B----. Her skirt +was slit so as to accentuate all there was of hips, and the bodice did +the same for the bust. And the hat--well, even in New York its long +aigrette and daring folds had caused women to look around in the +streets. She carried in one hand a large bunch of mauve orchids and wore +an abundance of chains and coarse, bizarre jewelry. Her face was still +pale, and the gray eyes were almost as empty of expression as they had +been seven years before. But altogether Adelle was _chic_ and modern, as +she felt with satisfaction, of a type that might find more approval in +Paris than in America, where a pretty face and fresh coloring still win +distinction. She was _new_ all over from head to foot, of a loud, hard +newness that gave the impression of impertinence, even defiance. + +This was accentuated by Adelle's new manner--the one that had grown upon +her ever since her elopement. Then she had taken a great step in +defiance of authority, and to support her self-assertion she had put on +this defiant manner, of conscious indifference to expected criticism. It +was the note of her period, moreover, to flaunt independence, to push +things to extremes. Needless to say that in Adelle's case it had been +further emphasized by the episode with the customs officers. Here again +she had defied recognized authorities and got into trouble over it; +indeed, had become mildly notorious in the newspapers. The only way she +could carry off her mistake and her notoriety was, like a child, by +exaggerating her nonchalance. Thus she had met President West and the +other officers of the trust company. Alone--for as usual Archie had +evaded the disagreeable--she had met them in their temple and felt their +frigid disapprobation of her and all her ways. She had carried it off by +forcing her note, "throwing it into the old boy," as she described it to +Archie, with all the loud clothes, the loud manners she had at her +command, and she knew that she had succeeded in making a very bad +impression upon the trust company's president. She felt that she did not +care--he was nothing to her. + +In the same defiant mood and with the same "war-paint" she had entered +Judge Orcutt's court and answered his preliminary questions. But she +felt ill at ease, rather miserable under his kindly, heart-searching +gaze. She wished that she hadn't: she wanted to blush and drop her eyes. +Instead she returned his look out of her still, gray eyes with a +fascinated stare. + +At last the smile faded from the judge's lips, and he withdrew his gaze +from the bizarre figure before him. He asked in a brisker tone with +several shades less of personal interest,-- + +"Your husband is with you?" + +"No," she stammered uncomfortably, realizing that Archie was again +evading. + +He was outside lolling in the motor that they had hired by the day, +fooling with Adelle's lapdog and getting through the time as best he +could. Adelle so informed the judge, who received the news with a slight +frown and proceeded to the business before them. The trust officer +thought that now matters would be expedited, but the judge disappointed +him. After taking his pen to sign the papers, he kept his hand upon +them, and clearing his throat addressed Adelle. + +"Mrs. Davis," he began in formal tones, "you first came into my court +seven years ago, with your aunt, at the time of your uncle's death--you +remember, doubtless?" + +Adelle said "yes" faintly. + +"As your mother's only heir, and owing to the death of your aunt the +following year who left you her sole heir, you became vested with all +the known interest in certain valuable real estate that had belonged to +your ancestors for many generations--what was known then as 'Clark's +Field.' As you are probably aware, this property, after many years of +disuse and much litigation, has finally been cleared as to title and put +upon the market. It has been sold, or much of it, for large prices. For +in all these years its value has very greatly increased--ten and +twentyfold." + +He paused for a moment, then with an unaccustomed sternness he +resumed,-- + +"Clark's Field is no longer the pasture land of an outlying farm. In the +course of all these years the city has grown up to it and around it. +Generations of men have been born, come into activity, and died, +increasing in numbers all the time, demanding more and more room for +homes and places of business. Thus the value of real estate has greatly +risen, latterly doubling and trebling almost each year." + +He stopped again, and the bored trust officer thought, "The old fellow +is worse than ever to-day--getting positively dotty--likes to hear +himself talk...." + +"For thus," resumed the judge slowly, impressively, "is the nature of +man, of the civilization he has created. Men must have room--land to +grow upon; and that which was of little or no value becomes by the +economic accidents of life of exceedingly great importance because of +its necessity to the race.... Your forefathers, Mrs. Davis, got their +own living from the farm of which this piece of land--Clark's Field--was +a part; a meager living for themselves and their families they got by +tilling the poor soil. They were content with taking a living out of it +for themselves and their families. Indeed, if I am not mistaken, your +own grandfather was anxious to sell this same field, which was all that +was left to him of the ancestral farm, for a comparatively small sum of +ready money--five thousand dollars." + +Adelle had time to reflect that this was the exact sum on which she and +Archie had tried to live for a year, with considerable inconvenience. +But then everybody said times had changed, and you couldn't do now with +a thousand dollars what you could once. + +"Fortunately for you, Mrs. Davis," the judge was saying with a dry +little smile, "your grandfather was unable to carry out his intention of +disposing of Clark's Field for five thousand dollars. Nor were your +mother and her brother--his children--more successful in selling their +ancestral estate, although I believe they made many attempts to do so. +There were legal obstructions in the way, of which doubtless you have +heard. But at the very close of your uncle's life he had entered into an +agreement with some real estate speculators to dispose of his equity in +the property and of yours also--you being his ward--for twenty-five +thousand dollars--I believe that was the sum." + +Judge Orcutt put on his glasses and consulted his little book, laid the +glasses down, and repeated reflectively,-- + +"Yes, for twenty-five thousand dollars! And he had so far carried out +his intention that had he lived but a few weeks longer there would not +have remained a foot of Clark's Field belonging now to any of the Clark +family." + +Poor uncle! Adelle thought. He was very little good in the world. + +"Twenty-five thousand dollars, Mrs. Davis, is a considerable sum of +money, but it is a small mess of pottage compared with what awaits you +in the hands of the Washington Trust Company. Let me see how much the +estate amounts to now!" + +Hereupon the trust officer handed to the judge an inventory of the +estate, which the judge ran over through his glasses, muttering the +items,--"Stocks, bonds, mortgages, interest in the Clark's Field +Associates," etc. + +At last he laid the paper aside, and looking up announced in grave +tones,-- + +"It comes very near being five millions of dollars." + +Adelle had already been told the figures by the trust company, but in +the mouth of the probate judge the sum took on a new solemnity. + +"Five millions of dollars," he repeated slowly. "Even in our day of +large accumulations, that is a very considerable sum of money, Mrs. +Davis. It is just one thousand times more than the amount your +grandfather hoped to derive from the same piece of property." + +The trust officer smiled, and thrusting his hands deep into his +trousers' pockets gazed at the ceiling. Of course five millions was a +lot of cash, but the judge seemed to forget the hour in which they were, +when everyday transactions involved millions. The young woman, who had +expensive tastes, would not find the income of five millions such a huge +fortune to spend. She didn't look as if she would have any trouble in +spending it, nor the red-headed chap she had married. Still a +comfortable little fortune, all in "gilt-edge stuff".... + +"Your estate represents an increment in value of one thousand per cent +in--let me see--a little over forty-five years, less than fifty years, +less than a lifetime, less than my own lifetime!" + +Here the judge seemed to come to a dead stop, forgetting himself in +reverie. But rousing himself suddenly he asked Adelle,-- + +"Have you ever seen Clark's Field?" + +Adelle thought she remembered being taken there as a young girl by her +aunt. + +"I mean have you been there recently, since it has been subdivided and +brought into human use?" + +No, she had not been in Alton since her return to America, in fact not +for seven years. + +"Then, Mrs. Davis," the judge said very earnestly, almost sternly, "I +most strongly advise you to go there at once and see what has happened +to your grandfather's old pasture. Look at the source of your wealth! It +must interest you deeply, I should think! The changes that you will find +in Clark's Field are very great, the spiritual changes even greater than +the physical ones, perhaps. Go to Clark's Field, by all means, before +you leave the city. Go at once! And take your husband with you.... And +now, Mr. Niver," he said to the astonished trust officer, "if you have +all the papers--yes, I have examined the inventory of the estate +sufficiently. Mr. Smith brought it to me some time ago...." + +There followed certain legal exchanges between the court and the trust +officer, while Adelle thought over what the judge had said to her about +Clark's Field and felt rather queer, uncomfortably so, as if the probate +judge had distilled a subtle medicine in her cup of joy, or had clouded +the clear horizon of her young life with a mysterious veil of +unintelligible considerations. Yet he seemed to be, as she had always +thought him, a good old man, and wise. And he was making no trouble +about giving her and Archie the money they so much wanted to have. Even +now he was writing his signature with the old-fashioned steel pen he +used, a clear, beautiful signature, upon several documents. As he +finished the last one, he glanced up at her and with another of his fine +smiles, as if he wished to reassure her after his little sermon, said to +Adelle,-- + +"Now, Mrs. Davis, it is yours,--your own property, to do with as you +will. You are no longer a ward of my court!" + +He rose from his judge's chair and took her hand, which he held a trifle +longer than necessary, smiling down upon the woman-girl, his lips +apparently forming themselves for another little speech, but he did not +utter it. Instead, he dropped Adelle's hand and with a nod of dismissal +turned into his chambers. So Adelle left the probate court, as she +thought for the last time, wondering what the judge wanted to say to +her, but had refrained from speaking. + +It would be interesting to know, also, what were the entries that Judge +Orcutt made in his little note-book upon this, his final official act in +the Clark's Field drama. But that we have no means of discovering. All +legal requirements had been duly fulfilled, and everything else must +remain within the judge's breast for his own spiritual nourishment--and +for Adelle's if she could divine what he meant. + + + + +XXIX + + +When Adelle reached the street she found Archie lolling in the car, +across the way, in the shade of a tall building. At her appearance he +yawned and stretched his cramped legs. + +"It took you an awful time," he grumbled to his wife. "What was the +trouble?" + +"Nothing," Adelle replied. + +As she got into the car she gave the driver an order,--"Go out to +Alton." + +"Where's that?" Archie inquired. + +"A little way out--across the river," Adelle informed him. + +"What do you want to go there for--it's nearly lunch-time," Archie +demurred. + +"I'm going out to see Clark's Field," Adelle replied succinctly. + +Archie knew vaguely that the Field had something to do with his wife's +fortune, but understood that it had been mostly "cashed in" as he would +phrase it. + +"What's your hurry?" Archie objected. "We can go out there some other +time just as well." + +But for once Archie was compelled to bend to a superior purpose and +endure being bumped over the rough pavements of the city out to the old +South Road, which was still cut up badly by heavy teaming as it had been +in the days of the farmers' market carts, and which also swarmed with +huge trolley boxes and motor trucks and pedestrians. For Alton was now +merely a lively industrial quarter of the "greater" city. In addition to +the old stove-works of enduring fame there were also foundries and +factories and mills. The old, leisurely "Square" had become a knot of +squalid arteries radiating into this human hive. Life teemed all over, +swarmed upon the pavements, hung from the high tenement windows, +infested the strange delicatessen and drink shops, many of which bore +foreign names. Most marvelous fact of all was that the thin, pale +American type, of which Adelle herself was an example, had largely +disappeared from the Alton streets, and in its place there were members +from pretty nearly all the races of the earth,--Greeks, Poles, Slavs, +Persians,--especially Italians. Many a sturdy young woman, with bare +brown arms and glossy black hair, strode along, hatless and unashamed, +on her way to shop or mill through the streets where Addie Clark had +sidled with prim consciousness of her "place" in society. Archie +remarked the growing cosmopolitanism of his native land with strong +expressions of disapproval. + +"It looks like a slum," he grumbled. "And nothing but dagoes in it. What +a place!--and what scum!" he commented frankly upon his wife's +birthplace. "Was it like this when you lived here?" he asked pityingly. + +"Not so much," she said quietly, not knowing why she disliked his tone +and his comment upon the present population of Alton. + +"They ought to do something to prevent all this foreign trash from +swarming over here," Archie observed. + +He did not reflect, nor did Adelle, that this "foreign scum" had come to +replace his race because he and his kind refused any longer to do the +hard labor of the world. If he had been of a more serious turn of mind, +he would have joined the anti-Immigration League and raised the +patriotic slogan of "America for Americans!" + +Adelle made no reply to his remarks. She sat silent in her corner of the +car, glancing intently at the old scenes that were so new and +unexpected. From time to time she directed the chauffeur when he was in +doubt, the old turnings of the streets coming back to her with +astonishing sureness. At last, at Shepard Street, she told him to turn +off the South Road, and at once they were in the maze of brick and +mortar that had been Clark's Field,--the old Clark pasture. The bulky +car had to move slowly through the narrow streets, much to the driver's +impatience, and he had frequently to toot his horn or screech his +raucous Claxton to warn the pedestrians to make way for the visitors. +The children crawled off the streets with the instinctive unconcern of +familiarity with traffic; the bareheaded women and dark-faced men +scowlingly gave the chariot of the rich space to proceed. So they +threaded the lanes and the cross-streets that ribbed the old Field, +crossing it twice and completely circling it once, until Archie was in a +state of vocal rebellion at the stench, the squalor, the ugliness of the +place. + +But Adelle looked and looked with unwonted curiosity. In her European +wanderings she had penetrated by necessity or accident similar +industrial neighborhoods, where human beings swarmed and life was ugly, +only to escape as soon as possible. But this time she did not wish to +hurry. Clark's Field seemed different to her from anything else she had +ever seen. + +It was all new, and yet in the way of slums it was immemorially ancient +at the same time, as if the members of old races that had come to fill +it had brought with them all the grime, all the dreariness of +generations of bitter living. And it was this, rather than the marvelous +transformation of the sandy field which Adelle dimly remembered, that +seized hold of her. How could people live so thickly together, swarm +like flies in so many identical doorways, get along with so little air +or sunshine or freedom of movement! + +"Packed like rotting sardines," was Archie's sneering comment. + +Artificially packed, too, scientifically packed in an up-to-date manner, +and all in the space of a few years! Modern magic they said of things +like this, and took a strange blind pride in it. Even Archie observed +with curiosity,--"They must have been a busy little bunch that got this +up so quickly!" + +Indeed, the Washington Trust Company, under the thin disguise of the +Clark's Field Associates, had shown great shrewdness and ingenuity in +"developing" the fifty-acre tract so that the greatest possible sum +could be extracted from its lean soil. They had resisted all temptations +to open it as "a residential section" of the growing city. They knew +that Alton was condemned to the coarser uses of society and must be an +industrial slum. So they had sold a small portion in one corner to a +steel foundry--one of the subsidiaries of a great corporation. And then +they developed the remainder for the use of the operatives gathered +together from all parts of the earth. The choicest lots they reserved +for "future growth." Along the broad South Road they built substantial +brick buildings for stores and offices. In the nest of by-streets that +ribbed the tract they erected lofty tenement warrens, as closely packed +as the law allows,--not the lowest order of tenement, to be sure, +because in the long run such buildings do not make a good investment; +but a slightly higher class of brick, bathroomed, three-and four-room +tenements, from the rear of which flowed out long streamers of clothes +drying in the wind. For the most part Clark's Field had thus received +its "development." That which had agitated a number of generations of +Alton citizens had been accomplished. For a considerable term of years +Clark's Field would not change in character unless a disturbance of +unexpected magnitude should wipe clean the ground for men to plan anew. + +As I have said, Clark's Field was now an industrial slum, but its +character was not as bad as much else in the cities of men. There are +far worse places in London or New York or Chicago--even in such smaller +cities as Pittsburg and Liverpool--for filth, crowding, and gloom. Age +added to cheapness increases misery and squalor, and Clark's Field was +still an infant. Indeed, the promoters of Clark's Field were proud of +their achievement and advertised it as the last and most enlightened +example of wholesale, industrial housing. But as Archie felt about it, +the place was worse really than the more celebrated slums of older +cities in its pretentious cheapness, its dreary monotony and +colorlessness, its very respectability and smug tediousness. A life +dropped into its maze and growing up in it must be lost for good and +all--must become just another human ant crawling over Clark's Field, +with the habits and coloring of all the other human ants striving there +for life and happiness. Archie, perhaps, felt this cramped and deadening +atmosphere more keenly than Adelle, and he prided himself on his greater +sensitiveness. He thanked God that he had come from the broad sunny +vineyards of the Golden State, where life still touches the arcadian +age,--not from _this_, as his wife had! His two years of foreign +rambling had educated him into a prideful sense of American vulgarity +and hideousness of detail. + +Adelle seemed wholly absorbed in the bricks and mortar laid upon old +Clark's Field. She did not speak. It would be impossible to say what she +was thinking of.... At last, as they emerged from another long stretch +of narrow street bordered on either side by high tenements that were +varied according to a machine pattern by different colored bricks, +Archie protested. He growled,--"Well, haven't you seen enough of this +sort of thing to last you awhile?" + +Adelle gave the order to retrace their journey to the hotel. She looked +back into the dreary maze with her wide gray eyes, and now they were not +quite empty eyes as they had been in the probate courtroom. She looked +and looked as if she were seeing the past as well as the present, as if +she were trying to fathom what Judge Orcutt had meant. When the Field +faded into the distance behind the rapid car, she sank back into her +corner with an unconscious sigh. Archie had taken a cigarette from the +little gold case that had been one of Adelle's first presents to him, +and as he lighted it skillfully in face of the wind was doubtless +thinking that never again would he be misled into going to Clark's +Field. + +On the way back Adelle ordered the driver to stop in the Square, and +despite Archie's protest that it was already long past lunch-time she +left him in the car and turned down the side street that led to the old +rooming-house. It was gone! In its place was a five-story flat building +that occupied not only all their yard, but the livery-stable lot as +well. Adelle realized the change with a positive shock. Latterly, since +the little lecture by the probate judge, the images of her early life +had come back to her mind as they had not for years. The transformation +of Clark's Field did not matter so much even: it had not been in the +immediate horizon of her youth,--more an idea than a physical +possession. But Church Street and the rooming-house and the +livery-stable--they had been her very self. She felt strangely as she +had seven years before when she was returning to her aunt's house after +the funeral of the widow. The last of all her landmarks had been swept +away.... + +She returned to the car with a thoughtful face, and all the way into the +city she paid no attention to Archie's chatter, her mind far away, busy +with her forlorn little past. Once or twice she wondered what the judge +had meant by urging her to take her husband to see Clark's Field. But +she was glad that she had gone. She should have visited Alton sometime +or other she supposed to see what the old place was like;--she must +remember to go to the cemetery before they left B---- and look for her +aunt's grave. But this was not all that the judge meant, Adelle +suspected. + +She was not to discover for some years the full, fine meaning of the +judge's intention, perhaps might never recognize all the implications of +his message to her on her twenty-first birthday. + + + + +XXX + + +Archie was pacified by a copious luncheon in the Eclair restaurant, +which is almost as good as a second-class Paris restaurant, and after an +idle afternoon the couple went to a popular musical comedy to end their +day. Adelle's business with the trust company was now finished, and they +must decide upon their next move. Their first impulse after the rout +upon the dock had been to dart back to Europe as expeditiously as +possible, with Adelle's recovered lamp, and never darken again their +native shores. But this pettish mood had been largely forgotten during +the fortnight that ensued, and they remembered their plan of going to +California so that Archie might present himself in his new estate and +his wife to his own people. A cable from Sadie Paul, stating that she +had taken "the B. and T." (which being properly interpreted meant that +she had decided to marry her Hungarian count) and was returning to her +home to celebrate her wedding, determined them. They forthwith made +their arrangements to cross the continent and spend the summer on the +Pacific Coast. + +It may as well be said that before departing Adelle had one quite +serious business talk with President West of the trust company and the +excellent Mr. Smith, whose had been the chastening hand at the time of +her elopement. Possibly the wisdom of his remarks was becoming more +evident to Adelle as marriage wore on, or it might be that she still did +usually as she was told, if she were told with sufficient authority. At +any rate, she agreed to leave in the hands of the Washington Trust +Company the bulk of her estate, not strictly in the form of a +trust,--they could not induce her to surrender the privilege of the lamp +to that extent,--but under an agreement by which she bound herself not +to disturb the principal of her fortune for a term of years. The bankers +represented to her tactfully that neither she nor Mr. Davis had yet had +extensive experience in the investment of money; that the operations of +the Clark's Field Associates were not finally wound up; that they had +had such success in their investments on her account that it would be +well to allow them to carry out their scheme of investment, etc. In +short, she signed the agreement, which was the last thing she did in +B----. + +Archie, when he learned what she had done, was irritated. Naturally he +did not like Mr. Smith and had a grudge against the trust company as a +whole. He said that the arrangement reflected upon him and his dignity +as a husband, although, as Mr. West had pointed out to Adelle, it was +not customary for a husband to be entrusted with the disposal of all his +wife's property. Since the vogue of international marriages, American +fathers had taken refuge in the trust companies. In spite of argument +and sulks, however, Archie could not prevail upon Adelle to undo what +she had done, and he had to content himself with the shrewd reflection +that it was probably not legally binding and could be broken when +opportunity offered. + +In this affair Adelle displayed an unexpected caution by her willingness +to let the trust company remain guardian of her magic lamp for the +present. She had a woman's instinctive confidence in an institution, +especially in one which years of use had made familiar to her. Archie, +she felt justly, must content himself with their income, which would be +more than two hundred thousand a year. That should satisfy their +immediate wants after the eighteen months of bread-and-butter probation. +And after all it was her own money, as the trust officers had said to +her again and again. This, however, she did not repeat to Archie. She +soothed his irritated pride in other ways, and in the end a fairly +contented and harmonious couple were whirled westward in the track of +the setting sun to that more golden shore of our continent, where other +fate awaited them. + + + + +XXXI + + +After a brief visit at the Santa Rosa vineyard, where oddly enough +Adelle seemed to feel more at home than Archie, they went to Bellevue to +attend the famous Paul wedding. Here Irene Paul, now an "Honorable Mrs." +George Pointer, entertained them, both Adelle and Irene apparently +forgetting their old grudges. Arm about waist they went lovingly up the +grand staircase of the old Paul mansion to Adelle's rooms, babbling +about school days, Pussy Comstock, and the other girls of her famous +"family." Irene even looked with favor upon Archie in his developed +condition of a rich woman's husband. Adelle reflected complacently that +he was quite as presentable as a man as the young Englishman Irene had +married. All you had to do to succeed, in marriage as in other things, +was to do what you wanted and make the world accept you and your acts. +And she honestly admired the tall blonde Irene, who had bloomed under +the influences of matrimony into something suggestively +English--high-colored, stately, emphatic. She liked the rambling ugly +mansion built in the eighties after Hermann Paul's success with +railroads, in the best mansard style of the day, and never touched +since. The grounds which had been extensively planted by the railroad +man were now covered with a luxuriant growth of exotic trees that +completely hid the house and afforded only peeps of the distant bay. +California, with its pungent stimulants of odor and color, appealed to +her from the very first. She was quite happy, and Archie seemed to +expand in his native soil and was less peevish than he had grown to be +latterly. + +After the wedding, which according to the local newspapers was a very +grand affair, but which unfortunately does not come into this story, +Archie and Adelle prolonged their visit. They found the easy atmosphere +of this pretty California town so agreeable, with its busy air of +luxurious leisure, that they took a furnished house for the remainder of +the season, and in the autumn they rented a larger place out on the +hills behind the town, having a lovely view of the great valley and the +distant waters of the Bay, with the blue tips of the inland hills rising +through the mists. They still talked confidently of returning to Europe +to live. + +They did not, however, at least for permanent residence. Archie was too +content with life in this land of sunshine, flowers, and informal +living, to leave. He said quite flatly now that he did not think he was +meant to be a painter and there was no point in being an artist if you +did not have to be something. Adelle perceived that according to Archie +there was not much point in doing anything unless one had to. She began +to suspect dimly the existence of a deep human law. "By the sweat of thy +brow," it had been writ in that Puritan Bible she studied at the First +Congregational Church in Alton. Then it had a very definite meaning even +to her child's mind, but during the easy years since, she had forgotten +it altogether. Now something like its stern truth was boring into her +consciousness. It seemed that when the larger incentives of living--the +big universal ones--had been removed for any cause, human beings were +often at a loss what to do with themselves. They sighed for "freedom" +when bound to the common wheel, but when released, as Archie and Adelle +had been, the average man or woman had but the feeblest notion of what +to do with his "freedom." + +With women such as Adelle the tragedy is less apparent than with men, +because woman's life for uncounted ages has consisted in great part of +playing games with herself at the dictates of men, and large wealth +assists her in making these games socially interesting and agreeable. +Adelle, to be sure, had no social ambition of the conventional sort. She +was more content than Archie with merely being married and having plenty +of money to spend in any way she chose. In this respect she was nearer +the primitive than Archie, who often reminded her of the fact somewhat +cruelly. Yet, as we shall see, when the time came she awoke to the full +realization of the situation, which Archie never understood at all. + +Art having finally been thrown out of the window by both, it remained to +determine how best they could dispose of themselves and their riches so +as to "get the most out of life." The first of the game substitutes for +real living happened to be a "ranch." The suggestion came from Irene's +husband, who had been attracted to California by this lure of +"ranching." + +"Why don't you go in for a big ranch?" he said to Archie one evening, +when the four were yawning sleepily over the fire after a day spent +motoring in the wind. "There's the Arivista property in Sonoma County. I +hear they want to sell--ten thousand acres." + +The idea of becoming a large landowner appealed to the Californian in +Archie. They talked the matter over, and it resulted in their all +motoring down the State to the Arivista property. In the end they bought +at considerable expense this ten-thousand-acre tract of mountain, +valley, and plain, and began elaborate improvements. It had been once a +"cattle proposition," but Archie's idea was to turn it into fruit and +nuts, as well as a gentleman's estate of a princely sort, with a large +"mission style" cement mansion. He engaged an architect and a +superintendent, and began building and planting on an elaborate scale. + +Adelle was glad to see her Archie really interested in something and +encouraged him in all his ambitious plans. They motored frequently to +the ranch to inspect operations. It took them two days to go and return, +and there were only rough accommodations at the ranch. But she liked it. +The great untamed spaces of hill and plain, with the broad horizon of +blue mountains, appealed to her. She was less interested in the big +house, the barns, outbuildings, orchards,--all the paraphernalia that +goes with an "estate," which Archie wished impatiently to have created +at once. It took, naturally, a great deal of money. Before the work at +Arivista was finally stopped, it was estimated that close to half a +million dollars of Clark's Field had been poured into this California +"ranch," from which, of course, less than a quarter was ever recovered, +no other rich man being found with similar conceptions of what a "ranch" +should be. All told, the Davises lived upon their ranch less than four +months during the next spring, and before the blossoms had finally +fallen sufficient reasons were found to move them back nearer people and +the ordinary diversions of life. Water, it was discovered, could not be +got in sufficient quantity. The relaxing climate of the south did not +seem to agree with Adelle. And, above all, a child was expected. + +The little boy was born in Bellevue. He had come to them by accident, +for neither felt that it was yet the right time to have children; but +Adelle recognized almost at once that it was likely to be a happy +accident for her and welcomed it with all proper fervor. It served, at +any rate, to settle them in California for the present. They decided to +buy the place they had rented upon the hills and live there for most of +the year. And it also served to strengthen the bond between husband and +wife, which was wearing dangerously thin in places. With the coming of +the child the family was constituted, and another interest was given to +Adelle, which compensated for Archie's pettish moods. The child also +released Archie from the constant attention which Adelle exacted of him, +and permitted him more of that precious "freedom," which he found wealth +did not always bring. + +Thus they definitely started their California life. + + + + +XXXII + + +Bellevue is one of those country towns in the neighborhood of a large +city that have flourished especially since the discovery of the +motor-car. It took quite two hours to reach it from San Francisco by +train and nearly that by fast driving in a car, owing to the poor roads. +Thus it was removed for the present from the contaminating contact of +the "commuter" and all the commonness of suburbanism. Bellevue had, of +course, its country club, with a charming new clubhouse, where polo was +played in season, as well as the humbler forms of sport such as golf and +tennis, and where a good deal of lively entertaining went on at all +seasons. It was an old settlement; that is, it had been the country home +of a few families for almost two generations, the first of the great +places having been developed in the seventies when the railroad fortunes +were being made. Besides these older estates, which were marked by the +luxuriance of their planting and by the ugliness of their houses, there +was a growing number of smaller, more modern estates with attractive +houses, and also a little settlement "across the tracks" of +trades-people and servants. Except for the eternal spring and the wealth +of California foliage, Bellevue was much like any number of towns +outside of Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, or Boston. And the social +life of the place, except for the minor modifications due to climate and +environment, was so exactly typical of what everybody knows that it +needs no description. + +Thanks to Irene's good will as well as to Adelle's fortune the Davises +became immediately acquainted with the "colony" of Bellevue, and were +easily accepted as members of that supposedly exclusive society. Archie +rapidly made a place for himself at the club. Having no regular +occupation he could devote himself to polo with the exclusiveness of a +single passion. For diversion he motored up to the city frequently, +where he became a member of several clubs, and for business there was +always the ranch to worry about. In this way he kept up a current of +movement in his daily life, which for persons like the Davises takes the +place of real activity. + +Adelle was indolent about social life as about much else. She did not +like to take pains over anything and found entertaining a bore. She was +a poor diner-out, and when the coming of her child gave her an excuse +she was quite content to leave the social aspect of their life to +Archie, who was generally thought to be much more agreeable than his +wife. After they finally decided to buy the Bellevue place, Adelle +occupied herself with ambitious schemes for the improvement of the +property. She decided that the old house was uncomfortable and badly +placed, too near the road, and selected a site upon the steep hillside, +which commanded a large view of the valley and the great Bay across the +verdurous growth of the town. Then she engaged a young architect, who +was a member of the Bellevue Country Club and had "done" several houses +in the neighborhood, and at once she was involved in a bewildering maze +of plans for house and grounds. This kept her busy during her +convalescence and gratified the rudimentary creative instinct in her, +which had led her before to making jewelry. In planning a large country +estate there was also a pleasant sense of rivalry with her old friend +Irene, who was forced to content herself for the present with her +father's out-of-date mansion. It took much money, of course, and the +young architect spared his clients no possible expense, but Adelle felt +that the springs of Clark's Field were inexhaustible. + +It was, perhaps, the happiest period of Adelle's existence. Her marriage +had begun to prove uncomfortable in Europe and threatened badly at +Arivista, because there was not enough of anything between her and her +husband to support idleness alone. It was much better at Bellevue, for +here Archie was taken care of, not always in a safe way, but, as far as +Adelle knew, satisfactorily. The rich, sensuous country, with its +peculiar profusion of exotic vegetation and the luxury of perpetual good +weather, made Adelle, pale offspring of an outworn Puritanism, bloom, +especially after the birth of her child. It was as if all the desires of +the old Clarks to escape the hardships of their bleak lives found at +last their fulfillment in her. She expanded under the influence of +warmth and color; for climate is a larger moral factor than is usually +recognized. In California the struggle for life is a meaningless figure +of speech, and Adelle did not like struggling. She loved to putter about +in the overgrown garden and to slumber in the sun beside her little boy, +refusing to descend to the delights of the club and Bellevue hospitality +even after she had no excuse. When Irene took her to task for her +dawdling by herself she gurgled contentedly,-- + +"What's the good of doing those things? Archie likes it--he sees the +crowd at the club--that's enough for him." + +"You've got to take your position," Irene remonstrated with a new pose. +She herself aspired to lead on the score of her family's antiquity in +Bellevue. + +"What's that?" Adelle asked blankly. + +It was difficult as Irene found to explain just what position Adelle +Davis should take in human society, just what it meant to be a "leader." +But she talked much about "the world going by one," and "duties of our +position," and "keeping in touch," with a note of mature tolerance and +responsibility in her voice. To all of which Adelle opposed merely a +lazy stare. In her gray eyes she seemed to mirror the fussy little +social life of this ideal country town, with its spread of motors about +the station on the arrival of the afternoon train from the city, its +properly garbed men and women strenuously amusing themselves at the +country club, its numerous "places," all very much alike, with their +gardens and greenhouses and tennis-courts, and ten masters' and five +servants' rooms, and all the rest of it. + +If Adelle could find no very cogent reason why she should make herself +toilsomely a pillar of this society, shall we blame her? If she found +for the present enough of content in the soft sunshine, the fragrant +flowers, her baby, and her own home, with the intermittent companionship +of the one man she had chosen to spend her life with, shall we consider +her highly culpable, deficient in the moral or social sense? All the +rest was much ado about nothing to Adelle, and, perhaps, as far as +Bellevue went,--and a good deal like it in life elsewhere,--Adelle was +not far wrong in her instinct.... + +"Here's Archie now," she remarked, observing her lord coming up the +drive in his car. + +"Hello, Archie!" Irene called in greeting. Her tone was quite friendly +and intimate. Archie certainly had been "accepted" in this quarter. +"Going to the Carharts?" + +Archie, of course, was going to the Carharts to dine and play cards. + +"Coming, Dell?" he asked his wife casually. + +Adelle shook her head. + +"I've been telling Dell she ought not to be so lazy," Irene commented. +"She never goes off the place if she can help it!" + +"Adelle don't like people," Archie observed gloomily. + +"Yes I do, well enough," his wife protested. + +"It's a queer way you have of showing it, then." + +"Why should I like 'em, anyway, if I don't want to?" she retorted with +some heat, childishly eager to put herself in the right. + +"That's just it," Irene commented. "I tell her some day she will want +people, and she will find it isn't easy to have them then.... Besides, +it's her duty to take her part--everybody must." + +Adelle made a bored gesture and filched a cigarette from Archie's case. + +"Go on, you two, and have a good time," she said amiably. + +And presently Archie departed with Irene, driving her back to Bellevue +in his own car. As Adelle watched them depart from the veranda, very +companionably, in close conversation, she smiled, perhaps because she +knew that they were still talking about her and her social delinquency, +perhaps because it amused her to think how thoroughly Irene had revised +her opinion of the "red-headed bounder." In the still twilight her quiet +mind speculated upon many things--the friendship between Archie and +Irene, the obsession most people seemed to have to get together in one +way or another, Irene's creed of "taking your place in the +world,"--possibly even the purpose and meaning of life in general, +although Adelle would scarcely recognize her meditations under those +terms.... In the end she went up softly to her baby's room and spent a +long time in examining minutely the child's features. Now that she had +discovered all the delights of maternity she wondered at herself for +having been so indifferent to this great power latent in her of creating +life, and determined to have other children as soon as possible. As a +matter of course she thought of Archie as their father, but it was only +in that way that she thought of him at all, if she did happen to think +of him. A husband was the necessary means of fulfilling her new desire +to have her own young. + + + + +XXXIII + + +That summer while the new house was going up they went back to Europe +for a few months, as it was too hot on the ranch and they had nothing +better to do. They also meant to buy furniture, rugs, pictures, and +other material for the new home which they expected would be their +permanent abiding-place.... + +It would be a waste of time to chronicle in minute detail this period of +Adelle's marriage. As the reader must suspect by this time, nothing of +spiritual significance was to come to Adelle through Archie nor to +Archie through Adelle. They did continue for a number of years to be man +and wife, although they frequently had bitter quarrels and felt rather +than clearly recognized that their union had been a mistake, which +neither one seemed able to rectify nor make the best of. It was not so +much principle that prolonged their tie, nor design on Archie's part to +keep possession of the wealth his wife had brought him, as the fact of +the child--and Adelle's hope, which was never realized, of having other +children. + +One of their more serious quarrels was occasioned by Adelle's discovery +at this time of Archie's unfortunate speculations. She had already +yielded to his constant demands for money for the ranch and broken her +arrangement with the Washington Trust Company, converting part of their +excellent investments into cash, which she removed to San Francisco, +where it could be got at more easily. Archie had had charge of this +uninvested portion of the estate; it gave him something to do and to +talk about with men. Until her illness, to be sure, Adelle had kept run +of what was being done with her money, and opposed any considerable +further changes in the investments of the estate, which were of the sort +that a good trust company would make, and which had very greatly +appreciated in value during these last years of national prosperity. But +during her illness and afterwards when she was absorbed in the child, +Archie had taken a freer hand and had changed some of the investments +unknown to his wife. He had put the money into local enterprises, of +which the men he met told him, but about which he could know very +little. There were new water-power companies up in the mountains, and +there was especially the Seaboard Railroad and Development Company--a +daring scheme for opening up a tract of land along the northern coast of +California. Into this last venture Archie had put much more of Adelle's +money than he liked to remember. It was a pet project of the men he knew +best in the Bellevue Club--the polo-playing set. The Honorable George +Pointer was very active in Seaboard, representing an English syndicate +that was supposed to be backing the enterprise with ample funds, and for +this reason the Pointers had prolonged their California sojourn beyond +the usual term. Seaboard, it was said, would prove eventually to be much +more important than a short line of new railroad developing a desolate +stretch of the Pacific: it was to be used as a club upon one of the +older railroads. The best families of the State were heavily interested +in it, the younger generation of bloods expecting by means of it to +rival the railroading exploits of their fathers, whose fortunes, as +everybody knows, were acquired in the golden seventies and eighties in +much the same way. (And when the explosion in Seaboard came off, it left +deep scars all through California society.) + +All this Archie tried to make Adelle understand, when unexpectedly she +gained a knowledge of his operations in Seaboard. She happened to open +some letters from his brokers that came to Archie during his +absence--letters that clamored for more ready money with which to pay +for options that Archie had taken upon the common stock of the new +company. Adelle was disturbed when she discovered that more than a +million of her money had already gone into Seaboard. The couple had some +sharp words about the matter, in which Adelle put the thing rather too +bluntly to Archie,-- + +"What do you know about railroads? You aren't a business man--you never +earned a dollar in business in your life!" + +Adelle was probably remembering how she had given Archie the only order +he had ever received for his painting. Archie naturally resented her +allusion to his penniless and dependent state. He knew, he asserted, +quite as much as other men, whom he instanced, all of whom managed their +wives' money affairs without being scolded for what they did. + +But why, Adelle urged more softly, did he have to speculate--try to make +more money than they already had? And Archie's somewhat incoherent reply +was much the same as Irene Pointer's reasons for going into the society +of one's fellows. To try to make more money when one already had the use +of a great deal was an honorable and sensible ambition--every one would +tell her so. All moneyed men who were worth their salt were always alive +to opportunities of enlarging their possessions. Did she want her +husband to sit around with folded hands and do nothing in the world? +Archie waxed righteous and right-minded, which is the easiest way to +eloquence. + +Adelle was silent, though not convinced by his reasoning any more than +she had been by Irene's about "taking her part." Both seemed to make +life needlessly dangerous and complicated, under the disguise of duty. +But she could not endure sullenness and bad temper in Archie. Having +taken the sort of husband she had, she must make the best of life with +him, even if he hazarded her fortune in doubtful enterprises. She +remembered with comfort that there was a great deal of money, and +ultimately would be even more when Clark's Field was finally liquidated. +Archie could hardly go so wrong in investments as to make away with all +of it. So she agreed to his selling another block of General Electric or +Bell Telephone and taking up his options, and having thus made up their +difference, they drifted on their way. + +They motored across the continent to the remote fastness where the +Countess Zornec was housed upon her husband's estate and spent some +weeks with the couple. It was easy, even for Adelle's unobservant eyes, +to detect signs of trouble in this new marriage. Sadie had a temper. All +the girls at the Hall had known that. Indeed, she had the +characteristics of her mother, who report said had been an Irish girl in +one of the U. P. construction camps when old Paul found her--that was +long before his fortune came, when he was a simple contractor for the +railroad. Sadie had an unfortunate mouth, with coarse teeth, and when +she was crossed, this long mouth wrinkled into a snarl. The Count +apparently had already found out how to cross her. Indeed, he did not +disguise his contempt for his bride's origins, and sometimes decorum was +badly strained at the dinner-table. Sadie was little and lithe and was +something of the _gamine_--her "tricks," as the girls called her daring +maneuvers, had always pleased men. But the Count did not like "tricks." +He wished more dignity in the wife of a Zornec and did not hesitate to +tell Sadie so. Nor did he care to have her _gaminerie_ attract other +men. In short, as Sadie confided to Adelle in a burst shortly after her +arrival, the Count was a "regular brute." It seemed that Europeans made +very good lovers, but dangerous husbands. Adelle was to be congratulated +for having married an American, "who at least knew how to treat a +woman," as if she were more than his horse or his servant. Adelle might +once have been pleased by this admission of envy of her Archie; but now +she had her own troubles. However, she did not confess them to any one. +She said good-naturedly that it was hard being married to most any man, +until you got used to it. Sadie shook her small head and showed her +large teeth. + +"I'll show him," she said, "that he can't wipe his feet on me! An +American woman won't stand what he's used to." + +Adelle suspected dire things, physical violence even, and was silent. + +Sadie continued,--"Some day he'll go too far, and then--" She closed +her lips over the teeth in a hard fashion. + +Adelle wondered what she would do with the Count in such an event. She +could hardly divorce him, for the Pauls were Catholic as well as the +Zornecs, of course. It was very inconvenient being a Catholic, she +reflected, if you were to be married. And it seemed less easy to drop a +husband in Europe than it was in America. There would be trouble about +the children and all that. + +Archie did not find the Count so bad, although he growled sometimes at +his host's thinly veiled contempt for all Americans. Archie felt +superior to the foreign nobleman who had made a rich American marriage. +At least he had taken an heiress from his own people, and there was +distinction in that. But the Count and Archie hunted and rode together, +also drank deeply of the Hungarian wines and excellent French champagne +that the castle contained. He was of the opinion that Sadie Paul had got +"what she deserved." + +"She needed a man to throw her around a bit--she was always too fresh," +he told Adelle. + +Archie believed in the strong hand with women. Adelle wondered whether +Archie would ever attempt to use it upon her and what she would do under +such circumstances. She was sure that she would resent it dreadfully. +That would seem too much for any woman to bear--to marry a poor man and +support him quite handsomely in idleness and then be abused by him. But +fortunately it had not got to that point in their marriage--nothing +worse than sullenness and silence or angry words had happened thus far. + +The Davises terminated their visit sooner than had been expected. The +little boy's ill health was made the excuse, but the fact was that the +tempestuous atmosphere of the Zornec household was far from pleasant to +easy-going people. They engaged the couple for a return visit the next +spring in California and motored off to Paris. The Zornecs had been a +good object lesson to them, and for the rest of their trip they remained +good friends, being almost lover-like in their respect for each other. +They seemed to feel the dangers ahead and restrained their moods. +Finally, gathering together their plunder they sailed home, and this +time did not make any attempt to evade the custom-house ordeal. They +paid nobly for the privilege of being American citizens and did not +demur. Adelle insisted upon that, remembering their former experience. +Archie was in such haste to get back to California where "Seaboard was +acting queer" that he would have paid double for the privilege of +entering his own country. They sped swiftly across the continent to +their new home. + + + + +XXXIV + + +The house was far from finished by the end of September when they +arrived. Their idea of what it should be had developed so fast under the +stimulus of the young architect that they could not recognize the +original conception in the imposing structure that awaited them. It was +meant to be an adaptation of a Spanish villa, in two wings, with a long +elevation upon the ravine connecting the two. There was also to be a +complicated set of terraces and forecourt, formal gardens, pool, and +orangery, which required an immense amount of masonry work that had +scarce been begun. Nevertheless they attempted to install themselves in +spite of the fact that the workmen were cluttered all over the place, +and moved into the wing that was most nearly completed, husband and wife +occupying a ground floor suite that was meant for bachelor guests, the +child and its nurse being housed temporarily upstairs in the main house. +Adelle did not like this separation from the child, but there seemed +nothing else to do for the present. + +That autumn and winter they lived at close quarters with an army of +workmen, who, having three masters,--Adelle, Archie, and the +architect,--took advantage of the resulting confusion to move as slowly +as possible. Adelle was not impatient as Archie had been with the ranch. +She liked directing the work, and discovered that she had her own ideas, +which necessitated extensive changes. She spent almost all her time on +the place, while Archie was often away for days at a time in the city, +attending to business or amusing himself. Adelle scarcely noticed his +absences. With her little boy and the house she had her hands quite +full, and it was easier to do things when Archie was not there to +interfere. + +Theirs was a rare location, even in this lovely land, as all their +neighbors said. Behind the house the land rose rapidly to a steep ridge +of hill that divided the valley from the coast valleys, and thus +protected them with its crown of tall eucalyptus trees from the raw sea +winds. Their hillside had been thickly planted to cedars and eucalyptus, +and the house looked out from its niche in the hill upon the fertile +valley in which Bellevue lies, dotted with rich country estates and +fruit orchards. Farther east shimmered the waters of the Bay, and on +clear days the blue tops of the Santa Clara mountains melted into the +clouds beyond the Bay. Immediately beneath the house was the canon, +through which in the rainy season a stream of water gushed melodiously. +The steep sides of this canon were covered with a growth of aromatic +plants and shrubs, the pale blues of the wild lilac touching it here and +there. Like a bit of real California, "Highcourt," as they had called +the place, was a perpetual bower of bloom and fragrance and sunshine, +with a broad panorama of valley, sea, and mountain to gaze upon. Adelle +loved to wander about her new possession, exploring its every corner, +and when she was tired she could come back to the sunny forecourt and +supervise the workmen, making petty decisions, summoning the foreman and +the architect for consultation. She thus planned so many alterations +which entailed delays that Archie grumbled that they would never get to +rights and be able to have people to dinner. Adelle did not seem to +care. She had not profited by Irene's advice, and made no effort to +create a social atmosphere. Irene apparently gave her up as a hopeless +case, and rarely came up the long driveway to Highcourt. The Pointers +were still anchored in California, thanks to Seaboard and the darkening +financial horizon, and Irene was improving her time by "living hard," +which was her philosophy. Adelle knew that she and Archie saw much of +each other, were very good friends, indeed, but the intimacy did not +disturb her. She no longer had that passionate jealousy of Archie's +every movement which had rendered the first years of their marriage so +irksome to Archie. It is doubtful if she would have resented his +intimacy with any woman, but his "affair" with Irene Pointer merely +amused her. Archie was no longer her most precious possession.... + +The winter after their return to California a new specter appeared--the +last that Adelle expected to encounter in her life. Archie hinted that +it would be well to go slow with their "improvements" at Highcourt. The +times were getting bad, he said, and the market looked as if they would +get worse rather than better. Every one was talking of a dark future, +unsettled conditions industrially in the country, and "tightening +money," whatever that might mean. Adelle could not see why it should +affect her solid fortune based upon Clark's Field. To be sure, men +talked business more than usually, the ill treatment that capital was +receiving, the "social unrest," and such matters, which did not interest +her. She thought that Archie had caught the trick of complaining about +business and cursing social conditions in America from the men at his +clubs, most of whom were obliged to earn their living by business. If +the worst came, if America became impossible, as Nelson Carhart was +always predicting, for "decent people to endure," they could go abroad +until things straightened out again. + +Then in midwinter came the Seaboard smash. As a matter of fact, that +crazy enterprise had been tottering upon the brink of failure from its +inception, and Archie was merely one of the stool pigeons on whom the +shrewd promoters had unloaded their "underwriting" in approved style. He +came back from San Francisco one night very glum and announced +peremptorily that they must cut down their expenses and "quit all this +fool building." He wanted to sell the ranch, but it could not be sold in +these depressed times when rich men were hoarding their pennies like +paupers. And there began at Highcourt a regime of retrenchment, bitterly +fought by Adelle--the rich man's poverty where there is no actual want, +but a series of petty curtailments and borrowings and sometimes a real +shortness of cash, almost as squalid as the commoner sort of poverty. +Adelle could not understand the reason for this sudden change, and +refused absolutely to stop all work upon Highcourt and go abroad again +for the sake of economy. Why should she be made uncomfortable, just +because Archie had been foolish about investments and felt hard up? So +they had some words, and Archie went oftener than ever to San Francisco, +frequently staying in the city for days at a time, which was bad for +Adelle's fortune, had she but realized it. But, as has been shown, she +had come now to the time when she felt relieved if Archie was not at +home, glum and sulky, or nagging and fighting her will. With the place +and her boy she had enough to fill her mind, and easily forgot all money +troubles when Archie was not there to remind her of them. Somehow they +raised the money for the workmen, and the building went on, more slowly. + + + + +XXXV + + +The workmen at Highcourt were of the nondescript labor army that America +has recruited. For the rougher outside work there were a number of +Italians, whom Adelle liked to entertain with her tourist Italian. There +were also a few Greeks and Slavs who had got into this kind of work from +other occupations. Inside the house the carpenters, painters, and +plumbers were Swedes, Finns, Germans, one Englishman--no one who might +justly be described as a native American. It was a typical instance of +the way in which all the hard, rough labor of the country was being +done, from building railroads to getting out the timber from the forests +or making shoes and blankets in the factories. Hard physical labor was +no longer performed to any extent by native Americans. Contractors +everywhere recruited their polyglot companies in the great cities and +shipped them out into the country where there was a demand. The men +employed at Highcourt were thus obtained in San Francisco by the head +contractor and merely boarded in the town of Bellevue. They lived +"across the tracks" in the labor settlement, or in lath and tar-paper +shacks about the hills, camping in their eternal campaign of day labor +wherever the job happened to take them. Few were married, and all were +given more or less to drink and riotous living when pay-day came; and of +course they were constantly changing jobs. Adelle often heard the +architect and the head contractor deplore the conditions of the labor +market and the poor quality of work to be got out of the men at ruinous +wages. She had also heard her neighbors, Carter Pound and Nelson +Carhart, speak feelingly about the "foreign riff-raff" they had to +employ on their estates. No workman had a conscience these days, they +said. The women, too, talked of the rowdy character of the town "across +the tracks," and the unsafety of the roads for women. Adelle did not +think much about the matter, accepting it as a necessity, like gnats or +drought or flood. + +The Italians at least stuck to their jobs and were good-natured. Adelle +always said "bon giorno" when she ran across them toiling up the +slippery paths with their loads of stone or cement. She liked the way in +which they showed their teeth and touched their hats politely to "la +signora." They had a feeling for her as the mistress of the house, a +latent sense of feudal loyalty to their employer that had quite +disappeared among the other workmen. Apart from the Italians, the faces +of the men upon the job were not familiar to her and were constantly +changing, a strange one appearing almost every day. So Adelle felt less +at home with them and rarely spoke to them unless she had an order to +give that she could not easily transmit through the foreman. + +One morning in early March--it was while the Seaboard trouble was +acute--Adelle made her customary rounds of the place to see what was +being done. She descended to the canon and stopped for some time where +the stone masons were laying up the wall that was to support the +terraces. It was a continuation of the massive wall that rose sheer from +the bottom of the little canon to the front of the house, nearly a +hundred feet in all perpendicularly from the bottom course to the first +floor of the house. (It was the decision to thrust the house out over +the canon that had necessitated the building of this massive wall and +had delayed matters for months.) Adelle had heard Archie grumble about +the useless expense caused by this great wall, but she liked it. Its +sheer height and strength gave her a pleasant sensation of +accomplishment and endurance. She liked to stare up at it as she liked +to see great trees or massive mountains or tall buildings. It was a +symbol of something humanly important which supplied a secret craving in +her soul. + +So this morning she stood silently watching the masons at their slow +work. One of the men she recognized as having been steadily on the job +ever since her arrival at Highcourt. He was a youngish, slender man with +sandy hair and blue eyes, and had the unmistakable air of being a +native-born American. His sinewy hands were roughened by his work, and +his face was almost a brick red, either from constant exposure to the +sun or from drinking, probably both. He seemed morose, as if he were +consciously ignoring the presence of his "boss," and worked steadily on, +once even failing to answer Adelle when she spoke, apparently +unconscious of her presence behind him. Adelle liked especially to watch +the masons at work. Their clever management of the great stones they had +to handle, the precise yet easy way in which they lined and chipped and +trigged and mortared, fitting all the detail of their rough mosaic, gave +her a pleasant sense of accomplishment such as she had felt in her own +efforts with metal and stone. It stirred an instinct for manual labor +which was not far down in her character, and actually made her own +shapely hands twitch to be at the fascinating work. And the masons' work +grew so surely, course upon course, and when done seemed so solid, so +eternal!... This morning she lingered longer than usual watching the +young mason wield his hammer and trowel. Archie had ruffled her badly +with his talk about money losses, and now she felt soothed, freed from +stupid perplexities. The mason's large hands, she noted, were supple and +dexterous--he made no useless movements. Occasionally he turned his head +to spit tobacco or drew off to look at his wall, but these were the only +interruptions in his rhythmic motions. He paid no attention whatever to +the woman behind him. + +Adelle was prettily dressed in a costume of white linen with a cloud of +chiffon tied about her small hat and a parasol that she had purchased +this summer in Paris, which consisted of an enormous gold lace +butterfly. She was fuller in figure than before her child had come and +in perfect health, though still pale. Fresh and well cared for, she was +if not beautiful very attractive and dainty--all that money could make +of her human person. Adelle was not given to prolonged reflection of any +sort, but probably she could not help comparing her own dainty, cool, +exquisitely clean person with this sweaty, sun-burned, coarse laborer in +his black cotton shirt, frayed khaki trousers, and shoes that the lime +had burned all color from. She must have felt a complacent sense of +physical superiority to the man who was working for her, and perhaps +congratulated herself that her lot in the universe had come out such a +comfortable one. + +The mason rolled up a large stone and prepared to set it home in the +bottom course. Adelle observed that he was about to crush one of the +Japanese shrubs that she had been at such pains to have planted along +the bank of the canon. + +"Look out--don't hurt that bush!" she ordered peremptorily, as she was +in the habit of speaking to servants. + +The mason tranquilly deposited the rock full upon the shrub and +proceeded to slap mortar around it and tap it home with his mallet. + +"Didn't you hear me?" Adelle demanded, stepping forward and pointing at +the offending rock with her heavily jeweled finger. "Take it out! I +don't want the shrubs killed." + +The mason looked up for the first time. There was a glint in his clear +blue eyes as he said distinctly, without any trace of foreign accent,-- + +"It's got to go there!" + +A smile relaxed his red face, a scornful smile at the impertinence of +this dainty specimen of woman-kind who thought that the foundation +course of his rock wall could be disturbed for such a trivial matter as +a bush. + +"No, it hasn't," Adelle rejoined in her imperious tone. "Fix it some +other way." + +But the mason continued to pat his rock, looking around for the next one +to lay upon it. + +"Do what I say!" Adelle ordered, almost angrily, irritated by the man's +obstinacy. + +Then the mason rose, and with his trowel tapping the rock said slowly +and emphatically,-- + +"I'm laying this wall--and I don't take no orders from you!" + +Whereupon, after another shot from his hard blue eyes, he turned back to +the wall. + +At first Adelle was speechless; then she asked in a less peremptory +tone,-- + +"Don't you know who I am?" + +"Yes," the mason called back over his shoulder. "You're the boss up +there." He indicated the unfinished house with a wave of his trowel, and +went on with his work. He seemed indifferent to the fact that he was +dealing with the mistress of Highcourt, and Adelle helplessly retreated. + +"I will have you discharged!" she said as she walked away. + +The mason did not reply, and his face exhibited no emotion over this +dire threat. + +After considerable search Adelle found the contractor and made her +complaint against the mason. + +"I warned him not to hurt the shrubs and he kept right on. Please +discharge him at once." + +The contractor, who had not been long away from the trowel and mortar +himself, frowned. + +"He's a good worker, ma'am," he protested. "It ain't always you can get +a man like him out on a country job. Happens there is a building strike +in the city, and he needed the work, so he came. And he's been steady, +which is more than most masons." + +"He's impudent," Adelle asserted with an air of finality. + +"Very well, ma'am," the contractor said reluctantly. "I'll fire him +to-night." + +And Adelle thereupon went back to the house, gratified that she had +enforced discipline, not hearing the contractor's profanity about +meddlesome women. Later on the same day after the workmen had +left,--they knocked off from their eight hours while the sun was still +high in the heavens,--Adelle was wandering over the place, idly looking +for a suitable location for a tennis-court. The doctor had told her to +take some active exercise like tennis to prevent becoming unduly stout. +And Archie had picked out a site below the new house on fairly level +ground, but Adelle wanted to have the court cut out of the steep +hillside above the pool. Having found what she considered to be the +right spot, which would necessitate much expensive excavation and +building of retaining walls, she followed a little worn path through the +eucalyptus grove over the brow of the hill, curious to discover where it +led. After a time she emerged on the other side of the hill, and getting +through the barbed wire fence that marked the boundary of her own +estate, she followed the path along the farther side of the slope +through a clearing in the woods to an open field. From this side there +was a wild prospect westwards to the low haze which she knew indicated +the presence of the Pacific. The country on this slope of the hills +seemed wild and uninhabited. Adelle did not remember ever to have been +in the place and wondered if it was accessible by motor. At the farther +end of the field there was one of the tar-paper shacks that the workmen +put up for themselves, and the path evidently led to this hut. Usually +these shacks were huddled together in bunches nearer the town, within +easy reach of shop and saloon, but this one stood all alone on the edge +of the clearing. A man was bending over a tin basin before the door, +apparently washing out some clothes. As Adelle approached, he looked up +from his washing and Adelle recognized the impertinent stone mason. He +looked at her coolly, as if this time she were trespassing on his +domain, and as she came leisurely down the path, trying to ignore his +presence, he calmly threw out the dirty water from his pan on the path +and went into his shack, pulling the door to after him with a bang. +Adelle suspected the smile of contempt upon his face as he recognized +her. She did not like the movement he had made in throwing the dirty +water from his washpan directly in her path, although she was some +distance away. Probably by this time he had learned his fate and took +this means of testifying his resentment. The color rose in her pale +face. She was not a proud woman, had no large amount of that +self-importance which is the almost inevitable result of possessing +wealth. But one of the penalties of property is that it cultivates +whatever egotism and sensitiveness to its prerogative its owner is +capable of. That one of the common laborers employed upon her estate +should thus openly flout her made Adelle angry. + +She thought first to turn back,--her walk was really aimless,--but she +felt that the man would interpret such a retreat as due to his +impertinence, would think that she was afraid of him. So she kept on +past the shack into another open field. This was but the beginning of a +wild treeless descent towards the ocean. The little tar-paper shack was +the only sign of habitation in sight. There was an immense panorama of +tumbled hill and valley bounded westward by the curving coast-line where +the Pacific surges broke into faint lines of white spume, and where, she +might reflect sadly, the ill-fated Seaboard Railroad should now be +running trains to open up all this unoccupied land to civilization. +However, wild and unsettled as it was, it offered an attractive view, +and Adelle at once coveted it. They must buy up this tract over the +hill--they should have looked into it when they had arranged to take +Highcourt. Thus musing, she wandered on into the country until the sun +dipping into the ocean warned her to return for dinner. + +As she came back along the crest of the hill, she thought again of the +discharged stone mason and for her did a large amount of reflection. Why +was he living like this in a lonely shack far away from everybody? Why +had he chosen to isolate himself from his fellow-workmen, who herded +together near the town where they could slip down to the saloons after +their work? He must be by nature a sullen, unsociable fellow. And what +sort of life did he live in there, doing his own washing and probably +also his own cooking? A kind of curiosity about the truculent stone +mason and his way of life thus occupied Adelle's unspeculative mind. He +was a good-looking young fellow, lean and well muscled. If he were +dissipated, as she had been told all the laborers were, his excesses had +not yet shown in his person. What would he do now that he had lost his +job at Highcourt? + +There he was sitting on the doorstep of his shack, smoking his pipe, his +bare arms akimbo, staring out across the sunset void towards the sea. He +seemed also to be meditating with himself upon something of interest. +Upon Adelle's approach this time, he did not take himself off, but +continued to smoke indifferently, totally ignoring her presence. As she +came in front of him, she stopped involuntarily and found herself +speaking to the mason. + +"Good-evening," was all she said. + +The man mumbled some reply, as if against his will. And then again the +unexpected happened to Adelle,--at least the unforeseen. She asked him a +question. It was a simple question, but it was entirely out of Adelle's +character to make even the small advance implied by asking a question, +especially to a servant who had been discharged on her orders. + +"Do you live up here alone?" + +"Have been living here," the man replied grudgingly, "till to-day. Don't +expect to much longer," he added meaningly. + +Adelle knew that he was referring to what had occurred earlier in the +day between them, and throwing the blame for his dislodgment upon her. + +"What are you going to do?" she asked after a pause. + +He looked at her with mild astonishment for her question in his blue +eyes, then said,-- + +"Donno exactly--get drunk, maybe," and he glanced at her truculently. + +Adelle did not know why she went on talking to the man, but her +curiosity was thoroughly aroused and the questions popped unexpectedly +into her mind. + +"Why did you kill that shrub when I asked you not to put the stone upon +it?" she demanded next. + +The man looked at her for a moment with an expression of mingled +surprise, dislike, and amusement. + +"Asked me! You ordered me." + +"Why did you do it?" Adelle repeated, ignoring this subtle distinction. + +"Guess I felt like it," he replied evasively. "I don't take no orders +except from my boss," he grumbled. "Don't like no interference." + +"But it's my place--you were working for me!" Adelle rejoined +convincingly. + +"And," the mason demanded bluntly, "who in hell are you, anyway?" + +Adelle had not heard such direct language from a man for a good many +years, although Archie sometimes hinted the same thing in slightly more +polished language. At first she was staggered and thought she had made a +mistake in giving this man another opportunity to insult her. But +Adelle, thanks to her origin, was not easily insulted. She stayed on--to +hear more. + +"You've got a big pile of money and that place and lots of servants and +motors and all the rest," the mason went on to explain. "But that's no +reason you should go bossing around my job 'bout what you don't know +nothing. I get my orders from the boss, _my_ boss--see? And I know how +to lay a wall as good as any man--and your damned bushes shouldn't been +there." + +"You needn't be insulting," Adelle gasped with an attempt at dignity. + +"Insultin'!" the man blazed. "Who's insultin'? It's you who are +insultin' to God's earth--rich folks like you who've got more money that +ain't yours by rights than you know what to do with. You think because +you pay the bill you own the earth and every man on it. But you +don't--not everybody! And the quicker you and your kind learn that the +easier it will be for all of us." + +This was what Major Pound meant by "anarchy among the working-classes." +She had often heard him and Nelson Carhart deplore this,--using +interchangeably the two dread terms, "socialism" and "anarchy." Both the +gentlemen were of the opinion that "before we see an end to this spirit +in the working-classes, we shall have bloodshed." But it was the first +time Adelle had met the thing face to face, and it gave her a faint +thrill. She tried to think of some of Major Pound's excellent arguments +directed against the "anarchy" of the laboring-classes. + +"You're paid good wages, very high wages," she said after a time, +remembering that that was one of the grievances gentlemen most often +complained of--that laborers were paid altogether too much, thanks to +the unions, so that no profit was left for the men who supplied capital, +and also that they did less work and poorer work than they had once done +when they got only half the wages now paid. + +"You think five dollars a day is big money, don't you? It wouldn't go +far to fit _you_ out!" He nodded at Adelle's rich dress. "It would +hardly get you a dinner--wouldn't pay for the booze your husband will +drink to-night." + +Adelle winced at this shot, because it was only too evident to the +servants and the men about the place that Archie drank too much at +times. How could she complain of the workingman's drinking and wasting +his money, which was the next argument she remembered from her +neighbors' repertory, when her own husband drank more than was good for +him and many of the men they knew socially did the same? + +"It's no thanks to you rich people we get big pay either," the man +continued. "You'd like mighty well to cut it down to nothing if you +could get your work done." + +That was perfectly true. All their crowd at Bellevue were perpetually +complaining of the high wages they had to pay. They gave it as an excuse +for all sorts of petty meanness. Adelle felt that Major Pound would have +the suitable reply to the mason's argument, but she could not remember +it. + +"Five dollars a day for a day's hard work ain't so much either, when you +think how many days in the year there's nothing doing for one reason or +another. Last year I only had four months' work all told on account of +the strikes." + +"Yes," Adelle joined in eagerly, feeling that this ground was familiar +and safe, "but the strikes were your own fault, weren't they? You didn't +have to strike?" + +For reply the mason looked wearily at her, and rising from his seat on +the doorstep with a gesture remarked,-- + +"Well, I can't stay here gassin' all night, lady. I must hike along soon +to get the Frisco train.... What do you care about it anyway, whether +the strikes are our fault or not? You've got plenty of the stuff, and we +little folks ain't got nothin' but what we earn, and that ought to +satisfy you. We must work for you sometimes, and you don't have to do a +damn thing for anybody no times. You've got the luck, and we ain't! See? +And that's about all there is to it." + +Adelle felt that so far as her own case went, the man had come +remarkably near the truth. The mason turned, with an afterthought. + +"And I'm not whinin' 'bout it neither, remember that! I can always earn +enough to keep me goin' and get whiskey when I want it." + +He said it with a touch of pride, his workman's boast that he was +beholden to no one for meat or drink. It was more than Archie could say +now or at any time in his life. + +"Are you married?" Adelle asked, feeling that if there was a woman in +the situation another line of argument might be used. + +"Married! Hell, no! What do I want of being married?" + +Married men, Adelle had heard, were likely to be steadier workers than +the unmarried. Also more what her class called "moral." + +"I should think you would want to have your own home and children in +it," she ventured. + +The mason gave her an ironical look full of meaning. + +"That would sure be nice, if I could always give 'em plenty to eat and +education, the same as you can. But what can a man do with a wife when +he's here to-day and off to the other end of the land to-morrow lookin' +for a job? A steady job in one place where it's fit for a woman to live +ain't to be found every day.... A workingman who marries, unless he's +got money in the bank and a sure payin' job that'll last, is a fool or +worse. What good is it to bring children into the world to be like him +or maybe worse?" + +Adelle had no reply to this blunt logic. Marriage, he seemed to think, +was one of the privileges of the rich class, which she was sure ought +not to be so. + +"The trouble with the workingman, ma'am, is that he has done that too +long,--got families that had to live the best they could, any old way, +and take any old job they could get. That's what's made it easy goin' +for you! But the workingman is learnin' a thing or two. Men like me +won't get married, nor have children to slave for the rich." + +"What do the girls do?" Adelle asked, thinking of her own fate if she +had been left in the Church Street rooming-house. + +The mason shrugged his shoulders and came out with another brutality. + +"Some of 'em go into the houses for your men to use--there's always that +for 'em," he added, with a disagreeable laugh. "No, ma'am, I tell you +until things are made more right in this world, it's better for a poor +man to get along the best he can without draggin' a woman after him and +a lot of helpless children." + +"I didn't know it was as bad as that," Adelle remarked helplessly. + +"I guess, ma'am, there are a good many things about life you don't +know." + +"That's so," Adelle admitted honestly. + +"But I know!" the mason exclaimed with rising excitement. "I've seen it +over and over, everywhere. I've seen it in my own family," he said in a +burst of bitter confidence. "There were eight of us and we were only +middling poor until father died. The old man was a carpenter, up north +in Sacramento County. He had a small place outside of town and we raised +some stuff. But he got sick and died, when he weren't forty, and mother +had the whole eight of us on her hands. I was just twelve and my oldest +brother fifteen,--he was the only one could earn a dollar. We got on +somehow, those that lived. Two of my sisters are married to farmers and +there's another--well, she's the other thing." He stopped to look +belligerently at Adelle as if she had somehow to do with it. "She was +married to a workingman, good enough, I guess, but he got out of work +and heard of something up north and never came back.... We boys +scattered around where we could get work. Two of us is married and got +families. Guess they wish often enough they hadn't, too!" + +Adelle was absorbed by the mason's personal statement. She had forgotten +by this time her first self-consciousness in talking to the discharged +workman, and he, too, seemed less truculent, as if he enjoyed letting +off steam and stating his point of view to his ex-employer. + +"How old are you?" Adelle asked. + +"Twenty-eight," the mason replied. + +That was only a few years older than Adelle herself, but she recognized +that the man's experience of living had been far more than hers, also +deeper, so that he was justified in having opinions on the serious +things of life. Wealth, she might think, was not the only road to "a +full life" so much talked of in her circle. + +"Have you always been a stone mason?" she wanted to know. + +"Pretty much ever since I could lift a stone. An old feller took me from +mother to work for my keep when I was fourteen. He used to do some mason +work, and he knew how to lay stone--none better! He learned his trade +back East where he come from. He was one of the real forty-niners, and +knew my grandfather's folks--they all came to California the same +time.... I've been all over this country, up and down the Coast, to +Alasky and over in Nevada, at Carson City; drilling for oil, too, south. +Oh, I've seen things," he mused complacently, puffing at his pipe and +scratching his bare arms that were as smooth and brown as fine bronze. +"And I tell you there ain't much in it for the laboring-man, no matter +what wages he gets, unless he's got extry luck, which most of 'em ain't. +No wonder he goes after booze when he has the chance. What's there in it +for him anyhow?" + +Adelle, who had not been educated to philanthropy and social service, +did not attempt to answer this difficult question. + +"Not that I booze often," the mason explained with pride. "I reckon not +to make a hog of myself, but when you've been off on a job for months, +working all day long six days in the week in the heat and dust, you +accumulate a thirst and a devilment in you that needs letting out." + +He grinned at Adelle as if he felt that she might be sympathetic with +his simple point of view and added,-- + +"I guess that's what made me sassy to you this morning!" + +It was his sole apology. They both laughed, accepting it as such, and +Adelle, to shift the topic, remarked,-- + +"You've got a nice place up here for your house." + +The mason wrinkled his lips against the suggestion of sentiment. + +"The shack's all right--kind of fur to tote supplies over the hill. But +I can't stand those dagoes and their dirty ways. They have too many +boarders where they live." + +His American ancestry betrayed itself thus in his selection of an +exclusive position for his bunk. The conversation seemed to have come to +a natural conclusion, but Adelle did not start. At last she said what +she had had in mind for some time,-- + +"You'd better stay here--come back to work Monday." + +"I don't know as I want to," the mason replied, with a touch of his +former truculency. "I can get all the work I want most anywheres." + +"I'll speak to Mr. Ferguson about it," Adelle said. "Good-night!" + +She could not do more, she thought, as she hurried along the path, +although she was unreasonably anxious not to have the young stone mason +leave, more anxious than she had been that morning to have him +discharged for his insolence to her. When she was about to enter the +wood, she turned and looked back at the shack. She hoped that he was not +going to start on a spree. The mason, who had been sitting on the step +where she had left him, rose as if he had come to a sudden resolution +and marched into the shack. Adelle felt sure that he had made up his +mind to go to San Francisco and get his "booze." She divined the craving +in him for excitement, some relief from his toilsome hours under the hot +sun. Possibly he had fought against this desire all the summer, +restrained from breaking loose by a prudence which she had defeated by +arbitrarily discharging him from his job and could not so easily restore +with her change of whim. She did not feel any personal blame for his +action, however, nor did she blame him for yielding to this gross +temptation, as her more conservative neighbors might, although they +sometimes yielded themselves both to drink and the stock market to +stimulate their nerves. She merely hoped that he would think better of +his purpose. For the man interested her, and before she dressed for +dinner she sent a servant to the village with a note for the contractor, +asking him to reengage the discharged stone mason and be sure that he +came back to work on the Monday. + + + + +XXXVI + + +Nevertheless, when Adelle looked for him the next Monday morning his was +not among the faces of the men at work on the lofty retaining wall. She +asked the contractor about him, but the boss merely shrugged his +shoulders and said that somebody had seen the man getting on the late +Saturday night train for the city. + +"It's too bad," he added, to punish Adelle for interfering in his +business. "He was a mighty good worker, and you don't get that kind +often these days. I'd rather have him than any four of these dagoes." + +He waved a disdainful arm at the squad of sons of sunny Italy who were +toiling along the wall. + +Adelle did not forget the young stone mason, but she could do nothing +more for him even had she known just what to do. Then one morning when +she made her usual rounds, she was happily surprised to find him back on +the job, working as was his wont a little to one side of his foreign +mates with his own helper. His face looked as red as ever, and his eyes +were also suspiciously red, but this was the only evidence of his spree +that she could see. As Adelle advanced to the place where he was +working, the mason glanced up and replied gruffly to her greeting,-- + +"Morning, ma'am!" + +She knew that he was not ashamed of himself, merely embarrassed. And she +thought that if he had not felt kindly to her, he would not have come +back to Highcourt to work after his spree--or was it, perhaps, his +pleasant shack on the hill that lured him to his old job? Adelle did not +tell him that she was glad to see him back, but passed on without +stopping. Presently, however, when his helper had disappeared for a load +of mortar she came back to the place and watched him. He worked as +steadily and swiftly as ever, his lithe bronze arm lifting the stones +accurately to their places, his wrist giving a practiced flip to each +trowel full of mortar, which landed it on the right spot. Adelle wanted +to talk to him again, to ask him questions, but did not know how to +begin. Apparently he meant to let her make all the advances. + +"That's fascinating work," she said at length. + +He flipped a fresh dab of mortar to place and replied,-- + +"You might think so lookin' on--but no work is fascinatin' when you've +had too much of it. I've laid enough stone to last me a lifetime." + +"What else had you rather do?" + +"Oh," he said, pausing a moment to wipe the sweat from his face with the +back of his shirt-sleeve, "'Most anything at times! I tried mining once, +but it's worse and uncertain. And lumbering--no pay. When I was a kid I +wanted to be a doctor--that's before I left school. A nice sort of +doctor I'd make, wouldn't I?" + +He laughed at himself, but Adelle felt that in spite of his mirthless +laugh his mind was chafing. He was dissatisfied with himself and the +work he was doing and hungered for some larger demand upon his powers +than laying so many feet of rock wall per day. She herself had so little +of this sort of hunger in her own soul that it made the young mason all +the more interesting to her. + +"You might save up your money and try--" she began. + +"To be a doctor?" he laughed back. "I saved up once--got most five +hundred dollars and a feller came along and persuaded me to put it into +some land. Well, I got the land still.... No, ma'am, there ain't much +chance to change for the workingman when he's once fixed in his creek +bed. He must just roll along with the rest the best he can. And I'm +better off than most because I've got a paying trade. Lots of boys like +me and my brothers don't learn ever to do anything, and just slave on +all their lives at any job comes handy until they are all wore out. Lots +and lots. Their folks can't keep 'em in school and they never know +enough to more'n sign their names. All they are good for is rough work, +same as the dago helper here. He thinks two dollars a day big money. I +guess it is to him." + +He spat disdainfully with all an American's contempt for the inferior. + +"I expect where he come from it was a fortune, two dollars a day, eh?" +He appealed to Adelle to appreciate the joke. "Think of that now! And +he's got a woman and kids, and I bet has saved money, too. But he's only +a dago," he explained tolerantly. + +"Say," he resumed after a pause. "It costs more 'n two dollars to go to +the opery in San Francisco." + +"Did you go to the opera?" Adelle asked, recalling that Archie had said +something about the current engagement of the New York Opera company. +They had a box or something for the season--they always did. "What did +they give?" + +"Oh, it was some German piece. It took place in the woods with a lot of +folks in armor, but the music was fine, and there was one place where +they had a castle upon a big hill, like that where my shack is, way off +towards the clouds, and a river down in front going by with women in it +swimming," and he described with relish the last act of the +"Rheingold-dammerung," which Adelle recognized because she had seen it +many times in Europe and been horribly bored by it. The story of the +opera seemed to interest the young mason especially. He retold it +minutely for Adelle's benefit, offering amusing explanations of its +mythological mysteries. + +"But how did you happen to go to the opera?" Adelle asked. + +"Well," he said in vague diffidence, "I was feeling pretty good by that +time, and I seen the poster. I had the price--why shouldn't I go?" he +demanded brusquely; and with another sardonic laugh the real motive came +out,--"I wanted to see what you folks who go to the opery see--how you +enjoy yourselves. Well, the opery ain't so bad--it ain't one bit bad," +and he attempted to hum the Rheingold music. "I believe I'll go to the +opery again when I'm on the loose and don't know any better way to blow +my money. I like music," he added inconsequentially. "Mother used to +sing sometimes." + +This was as far as they got conversationally that day. Something +interrupted Adelle in the midst of the musical discussion and she did +not have a chance to return to the wall. But she had almost daily +opportunity for talk with the young mason in the succeeding weeks, for +after his return from his spree, he worked steadily on his job every +day. He was one of the very few American-born workmen employed at +Highcourt, and after their misunderstanding and subsequent agreement, +Adelle felt better acquainted with him than with the others. He taught +her to handle the trowel and to lay stone. After a few attempts, she +managed quite well and found a curious pleasure in the manual labor of +fitting stone to stone and properly bedding the whole in cement. She +learned to select the right pieces with a rapid glance and to chip an +obtrusive corner or face a rock with a few taps of the heavy hammer. It +gave her a pleasure akin to her experiments in jewelry, and it must be +said the results were better. She used to show her visitors proudly the +bit of wall she had laid up herself under the young mason's direction +and assert that, instead of bookbinding or jewelry or other ladylike +occupations, she meant to set up stone walls about Highcourt for her +recreation. The Bellevue people considered her whim a harmless bit of +eccentricity in the young mistress of Highcourt, and she was the object +of many a good-humored joke about her new method of "beating the +unions." Little did any of these pleasure-loving rich folk suspect where +Adelle's instinct for manual labor came from, how natural it was for her +to work at coarse tasks with her large, shapely hands. + + * * * * * + +She needed all the distraction she could get, for these were not happy +days for Adelle within her big new house. The inexplicable stringency of +money grew worse, and there were constant quarrels between her and +Archie over her "extravagance" when he was at home. Adelle could not +understand why she should be obliged to curb her prodigal hand in making +"improvements" at Highcourt. Did the trust officers not tell her that +hers was a "large fortune," not far from five millions, enough surely to +permit a woman freedom for every whim? If there was trouble about money, +it must be Archie's fault: she wished she had never consented to take +her property out of the safe keeping of the careful trust company. Her +logic in these discussions, if irrefutable, was bitter, and Archie +resented it, all the more because he knew that he had made a fool of +himself with his wife's ample fortune, and allowed stronger men to bite +him. He had not sufficient character to confess the fact and refrain +altogether from further speculation. He tried instead to make good what +had been lost in Seaboard and was always nagging Adelle to dispose of +certain stocks and bonds that still remained from the investments of the +prudent trust company. But Adelle was obstinate: she would not sell +anything more. So Archie's large debit at his brokers went on rolling +up, and there continued to be "words" at Highcourt whenever he was +there, which was less often then he might have been. + +Proverbially, money is the cause of the bitterest disputes in families. +Abstractly it might seem remarkable that this should be so, but the +peculiar nature of property of all sorts is that it becomes the inmost +shrine of its possessor's being, and when the shrine is robbed or +desecrated, the injured personality resents the outrage with bitterness. +Many a man or woman will submit with Christian fortitude to insults upon +character or positive unjust burdens, but will flame into rebellion at +the least touch upon the purse. In the case of Archie and Adelle it was +all the more remarkable because neither had been born to wealth so that +property could become a part of the nature: they were both "the spoiled +children of fortune" as the story-books say, having had their wealth +thrust upon them unexpectedly, and so might take its loss lightly. Not +at all! Adelle felt as much wronged as if she had been the last of an +ancient line of dukes and duchesses or had accumulated the riches of +Clark's Field by a lifetime of toil and self-denial. Was it not _hers_? +Had the law not made it inalienably a part of her? Such is human nature +in a capitalistic society. + +Bellevue began to gossip about the couple at Highcourt, and divided as +always into two camps with shades of opinion within each camp. The women +were generally for Archie, even if he had been foolish with his wife's +money and was conducting his "affair" with Irene Pointer rather +recklessly. If his wife were less stupid and selfish about not going +about with him in society, she could have "held him." The men liked +Archie well enough, but knew that he was "no good." + + + + +XXXVII + + +It was some time after the young mason's return to his job before Adelle +even learned his name. She had no curiosity about his name, indicating +how little of the personal or sentimental there was in the interest she +felt in him. He was just the "mason," and she always addressed him as +"mason" until one day she heard the foreman call him--"Clark"; and then, +when the foreman had passed on, she said with mild curiosity,-- + +"Is your name Clark?" + +"Yes," the man replied with a touch of pride in the pure English +name,--"Clark without the e. I'm Tom Clark. Father's name was Stanley +Clark, same as grandfather's. Everybody about Sacramento used to know +old Stan Clark!" + +"My name was Clark, too, before I was married," Adelle remarked. + +"Did you spell it with an _e_?" Tom Clark asked. + +"No, the same as yours, without the _e_," she replied. + +"We must be related somewheres," the mason laughed, with a sense of +irony. + +"Where did your family come from?" + +"Somewhere East--Missouri, I think. But that was long ago--before the +gold times. Grandfather Stan came out in forty-nine and settled on the +Sacramento River, and that was where father was raised." + +Adelle felt a slight increase in her interest in the mason from their +having the same name, and she remarked idly,-- + +"So your family lived once in Missouri?" + +"The Clarks came from Missouri--that's all I know. Mother's folks were +Scotch-Irish, and that's where I get my red head, I guess!" + +Like most Americans of his class he knew nothing more of his origin than +the preceding two generations. The family was lost in the vague limbo of +"back East somewheres." Yet he was proud that the Clarks had come from +the East and were among the first Americans to enter the golden land of +opportunity. And he apologized for the failure of his ancestors to +attach to themselves a larger share of prosperity. + +"If we could have hung on to grandfather's old ranch, we'd not one of us +been working for other folks to-day. He had a hundred and sixty acres of +as pretty a bit of land as there is in Sacramento Valley--part of it is +now in the city limits, too. But father was sort of slack in some +ways,--didn't realize what a big future California had,--so he sold off +most of the ranch for almost nothing, and mother had to part with the +rest." + +He flipped a trowelful of mortar and whistled as if to express thus his +sense of fate. + +"Too bad," Adelle replied. "They say you ought never to sell any land. +It's all likely to be more valuable some day." + +"Sure!" the mason rejoined sourly. "That's why most of us work for a few +of you!" + +"What do you mean?" Adelle asked, puzzled by the economic theory implied +in this remark. + +But before Clark could explain, Adelle was summoned to the house. As she +went up the slippery path she thought about what the mason had said, +about his being a Clark, too. She felt herself on much closer terms of +knowledge and sympathy with this workman of her own name than with the +fashionable women who had come for luncheon to Highcourt. + +Hitherto Adelle had met in the journey of life mainly coarse-minded +persons--I do not mean by this, nasty or vulgar people, but simply men +and women who were content to live on the surfaces and let others do for +them what thinking they needed--people upon whom the experience of +living could make little fine impression. In the rooming-house, with her +aunt and uncle and the transient roomers, naturally there had been no +refinement of any sort. Nor, in spite of its luxury and its boast of +educating the daughters of "our best families," had the expensive +boarding-school to which the trust company in their blindness condemned +their ward added much to Adelle's spiritual opportunities. Pussy +Comstock, for all her sophistication, was no better, and as for the "two +Pols" and Archie Davis, the reader can judge what fineness of mind or +soul was to be found in them. Even the officers of the Washington Trust +Company, who were of indubitable respectability and prominence in their +own community,--everything that bankers should be,--had neither mental +nor spiritual elevation, and coarsely pigeonholed their ideas about life +as they had done with Adelle. The thinking of the best spirits in +Bellevue has been exemplified in the utterance upon labor that Adelle +had taken from Major Pound and Nelson Carhart who are doubtless still +enunciating the same trite remarks at the dinner-table and in their +clubs with a profound conviction of thinking seriously upon important +topics. All these diverse human elements, which thus far had been cast +up in Adelle's path, were good people enough--some of them earnest and +serious about living, but all without exception coarse-minded. All the +wealth of Clark's Field had not yet given its owner one simple, +clear-thinking human companion. + +The young stone mason, Tom Clark, outwardly crude and coarse and with a +knowledge of life limited by his personal estate, was nevertheless the +first person Adelle had met who tried to do his own thinking about life. +It was not very important thinking, perhaps, but it had for Adelle the +attraction of freshness and sincerity. The mason stimulated the mistress +of Highcourt intellectually and spiritually, which would have made the +good ladies at luncheon with her that day laugh or do worse. Adelle felt +that he could help her to understand many things that she was beginning +to think about, that were stirring in her dumb soul and troubling her. +And she knew that she could talk to him about them, as she could not +talk to George Pointer nor Major Pound nor even Archie. In her simple +way, when she discovered what she wanted, she went directly after it +until she was satisfied. She meant to talk more with the young stone +mason of the widespread race of Clark. + +The next time Adelle made the ascent of the hill behind Highcourt she +took her little boy with her, and after wandering about the eucalyptus +wood with him in search of flowers sent him back to the house with his +nurse and kept on over the hill to the shack where Clark lived. She +examined the tar-paper structure more carefully, noticing that the mason +had set out some vegetables beside the door and that a little vine was +climbing up the paper facade of the temporary home. She knew that the +mason was still at his work below, and so she ventured to peek into the +shack. Everything within the one small room was clean and orderly. There +was a rough bunk in one corner, which was made into a neat bed, and +beneath this were arranged in pairs the man's extra shoes, one pair +bleached by lime and another newer pair of modern cut for dress use. In +one corner was a small camper's stove with a piece of drain-pipe for +chimney; a board table, one or two boxes, and some automobile oil cans +made up the furniture of the room. There was also a little lime-spotted +canvas trunk that probably contained the mason's better clothes and his +extra tools. On the table was a lamp and a few soiled magazines, with +which Clark probably whiled away free hours when not disposed to descend +to the town for active amusement. + +For a woman in Adelle's position such a workingman's home has the +interest of the unfamiliar. It is always incomprehensible to a woman +nurtured to a high standard of comfort to realize a totally different +and presumably lower standard of living. This may be seen when travelers +peer with exclamations of surprise and pity or disgust into the stuffy +homes of European peasants or the dark mud-floor rooms of Asiatics. The +prejudices of race as well as of social class seem to come to the +surface in this concrete experience of how another kind of human being +sleeps, eats, and amuses himself. With Adelle this sensation of +strangeness was not very keen, because her own acquaintance with the +habits of the rich was less than ten full years old. Clark's one-room +tar-paper shack did not seem so squalid to her as it might to Irene +Pointer, though Adelle had never before had the curiosity to enter a +humble dwelling. She looked about her, indeed, with a certain +appreciation of its coziness and adequacy. All that a single man really +needed for decency and modest comfort was to be found here, at least +under the conditions of the sunny California clime, which Providence +seems to have adapted for poverty. All the wealth of Clark's Field could +have added little valuable luxury to this tar-paper shack on the ridge +of high hills with a prospect of mountain, valley, and ocean before the +front door. Of course, with the assistance of Clark's Field, its +proprietor would have been sitting in the great room of the Pacific +Coast Club, as Archie was at this moment, imbibing foreign wine and +deploring the "agitation among the people," which was making a very bad +stock market. + +After having taken in every item in the single room carefully, Adelle +went on her way full of thought. Her first impression was that the mason +must be a superior sort of workman because he kept his home and his few +possessions neatly and orderly. She did not know that there are many +naturally clean persons in the laboring-classes. However, she made no +fetish of tubbing herself once a day, and thought on to more important +considerations. Evidently the young man was attached to his beautiful +solitary abode--he had planted and watered a vine for the door. She +resolved to tell him that he could help himself to the fruit and flowers +in Highcourt. If he cared to set out a small flower garden, he could get +seeds and slips from her own formal garden. But there was the question +of water: it would not be possible for him to start a garden on this +hilltop without water. She supposed that he must lug what water he used +from Highcourt. Probably that was the use he put those large tin cans +to.... + +Adelle's mind was naturally slow in its operations. Ideas and +impressions seemed to lie in it for months like seed in a dry and cold +ground without any sign of fruitful germination. But they were not +always dead! Sometimes, after days or weeks or even months of apparent +extinction, they came to life and bore fruit,--usually a meager fruit. +To-day, for an inexplicable reason, she began to think again of the +mason's family name. He was a Clark without the e, and his people came +from "back East." It might seem strange that this fact had not at once +roused a train of ideas in Adelle's mind when she first learned of it. +But the lost heir to Clark's Field had never been to her of that vital +importance he had been to her mother and uncle. It must be remembered +that her aunt was the only one of her family who had been at all near to +her, and her aunt had small faith in the Clark tradition and was not of +a reminiscent turn of mind. Of course, the trust officers had explained +carefully to Adelle's aunt in her hearing all about the difficulties +with the title, and at various times after her aunt's death had alluded +to this matter in their brief communications with her. But they had not +gone into the specific measures they had taken to look for the lost +heirs of old Edward Clark, nor the means by which the title at last had +been "quieted," to use the expressive legal term. And finally all such +business details passed through Adelle's mind like a stream of water +through a pipe, leaving little sediment. She had not thought about the +Clarks or Clark's Field for some years.... + +To-day she began wondering whether by chance this young mason of the +name of Clark could be related to any of her mother's people. She must +find out more about his family history. So she prolonged her walk among +the hills until the declining sun told her that the mason would have +returned to his home. Then she came back along the path by the shack. +Clark was inside, whistling loudly, and evidently preparing his evening +meal, for a thin stream of bluish smoke emerged into the still air from +the mouth of the drain-pipe. Adelle called,-- + +"Mr. Clark!" + +The mason came to the open door. He was bareheaded and barearmed, +clothed merely in khaki trousers and red flannel undershirt, but he was +glisteningly clean and shaved. In one hand he carried his frying-pan +into which he had just put some junks of beef. He seemed surprised on +seeing the lady of Highcourt at his door and scowled slightly in the +sunlight. + +"I was going by," she explained without any embarrassment, "and wanted +to ask you about something." + +The mason removed his pipe from his teeth and stood at attention. + +"Do you know where your family came from before they lived in Missouri?" +she asked. "I mean the Clarks, your grandfather's people." + +The mason looked surprised to find this was the important question she +had come all the way to his shack to ask. + +"No, I don't know, Mrs. Davis." + +"Did you ever hear any one of them speak of Alton?" + +He slowly shook his head. + +"Never heard the name of the place before that I know of." + +"Oh," Adelle observed in a disappointed tone, "I thought you might know +where they came from before the Missouri time." + +The mason gave a short, harsh laugh and stuck his pipe back between his +teeth. + +"I don't see as it makes any odds where they came from," he remarked. "I +guess we ain't got any fancy family tree to boast of." + +"Well," Adelle observed; and then, recollecting her other intention, she +said,-- + +"Don't you want some flowers or fruit or stuff from the garden? You +can't raise much up here." + +"No, thanks; I don't want nothin'--much obliged to you." + +In spite of the conventional terms there was a surly burr to his tone +that belied the courtesy. Adelle was surprised at the hardness of his +mood. She felt quite friendly, almost intimate with him, after all their +talks, and now he was as gruff as he had been the first day. She looked +at his face for an explanation. He was scowling slightly, and in the +reddish light of the setting sun his face seemed to burn as with fever, +and his blue eyes glinted dangerously. She could not make out what was +going on in the man's mind. Probably he did not himself rightly know. +The discovery that he bore the same name as his employer had once might +have set off some unpleasant train of subconscious reflection, +accentuating the bitter sense of class distinction and the unreason of +it, which he was only too prone to entertain. He did not want any +"kindness" from rich people. He worked for them because he must, but he +worked in a spirit of armed neutrality at the best, like so many of his +kind, and he spat mentally upon Carnegie libraries and all other +evidences of the philanthropic spirit in those relieved from the toil of +day labor. + +Adelle could not follow this, but she knew that the man was close to an +explosion point of some sort, as he had been that other time when she +had encountered him before his shack. Then he had suddenly jumped up +from the doorstep, the lust for action in his movement, and had +disappeared for the better part of a week. She felt that he might be on +the verge of another such outbreak and tried clumsily to prevent it if +possible. She hesitated, thinking what to say, while the mason glared at +her as if he were controlling himself with an effort. + +"I thought you might like something," she said at last. "There's plenty, +and you are welcome to what you want." + +"I don't want nothin'"; and he added meaningly,--"least of all flowers +and fruits." + +"There are a lot of magazines at the house--you might call for them or +books." + +"I don't do much reading." + +He checked her every move. There was nothing more to say, and so Adelle +turned slowly and went on her way to her home, thinking rather sadly +that the young mason would surely go to "'Frisco" to-night and might +never come back. Meanwhile, the mason had entered his shack and closed +the door, as if he wished to keep out intruders. He was not +whistling.... + +That evening Archie arrived by motor from the city, bringing with him +some friends, and others came up to dinner from Bellevue, so that they +had a party of eight or ten. Dinner was late, and as the night was +pleasant with starlight and a soft breeze, coffee was served on the +unfinished terrace. As Adelle was pointing out to one of the guests the +line of proposed wall, she saw a man's figure coming down the path from +the eucalyptus grove. She watched it draw near to the terrace, then +stop. She was sure that it was the mason's figure. He must be on his way +to town to take the evening train for the city, which passed Bellevue at +nine forty-five. She utterly forgot what she was saying, what was being +said to her, in her intense effort to discover in the darkness what the +figure just above the terrace was doing. She could not tell whether he +had gone back to skirt the house and go on by a more roundabout way or +was waiting for an opportunity to descend unobserved. Some time +afterwards she heard the rolling of a stone on the hill-path and knew +that he must have retraced his steps to the grove. She thought that +there was no path down that way and was unreasonably glad for--she did +not know what. Archie had observed her distraction and remarked,-- + +"Must be one of the workmen sneaking about up there. They are all over +the place, thick as flies. There's one has built himself a shack on the +other side of the hill and worn a path down here across the +terrace--cheeky rascal. I'll tell Ferguson to smoke him out!" + +Adelle said nothing, but she was sure that Ferguson would never execute +that order. + + + + +XXXVIII + + +The next morning Adelle went straight to the terrace wall from her room +where she had her coffee. All she had to do was to step out of the +French window and around the corner of the house, for she had not yet +moved to the rooms designed for her in the other wing. This morning she +wished to know surely whether the mason had gone off on his spree or had +really turned back as she thought he had the night before. And there he +was on the job, sure enough! Upon her approach, he looked up and rumpled +his hat over his head, which was his shamefaced method of saluting a +lady. He still looked somewhat stormy, but there were no traces of +debauch in his eyes, and he was tossing in his mortar with a fine swing, +and handling the heavy stones as if they were loaves of bread. + +"Good-morning, Mr. Clark," was all that Adelle said, and started to go +on. + +But the mason called out,-- + +"Say!" and throwing down his trowel he hunted for something in his hip +pocket. "You was asking me about that town in the East--Alton. Well, I +found this after you had gone." + +He produced a tattered package of what seemed to be old letters, +yellowed with age and torn at the corners, and handed them up to Adelle. + +"They were grandfather's and mother always kep' 'em; I don't know why. +When she died one of my sisters giv' em to me. I been totin' 'em 'round +in my trunk ever since. They're kind of dirty and spotted," he +apologized for their condition. "But they were pretty old, I guess, when +I got 'em, and they ain't had much care since.... Last night after you +were up there I got 'em out of the trunk and tried to read 'em. There's +one there from Alton--it's got the postmark on the outside." + +Clark pointed with his mortar-coated thumb to the faint circle of the +stamp in the corner. Adelle took the letter from him with a sense of +faintness that she could not explain. She had been right in her +conjecture: that seemed to her a very great point. + +"I was bringin' 'em up to the house last night," the mason explained, +"but seen you had company, so kep' 'em until to-day." + +So he had not thought of going to San Francisco on a spree! Adelle's +woman conceit might have been sadly dashed. + +"May I read them?" she asked, looking curiously at the package of faded +letters. + +"Sure! Read 'em over. That's what I brought 'em to you for," the mason +said heartily. "I couldn't make much out of the old writing myself. I +ain't no scholar, you know, and the ink is pretty thin in spots. But I +seed the Alton postmark and thought you would be interested." + +"I'll look them over," Adelle said slowly, "and let you know what I find +in them." + +She carried the letters with her back to her rooms, but she did not open +them at once. She had no desire to do so, now that she had them. It was +not until the afternoon, while she was lounging in her room,--Archie +having gone to play polo at the club,--that she finally took up the +stained packet of old letters, and opened them. They were addressed +variously to "E. S. Clark," or "Edward S. Clark," and one to "E. Stanley +Clark," but that was a later one than the others and had to do with some +land business in California. The mason had spoken of his grandfather as +"Stanley Clark"--"old Stan Clark," he called him. Evidently the elder +Clark had called himself by his middle name after settling in +California, but before that he had been known as "Edward" or "Edward S. +Clark." + +Almost at random Adelle opened a letter--the one that the mason had +pointed out to her as having the Alton postmark. It was written in a +scrawly, heavy hand, which was almost illegibly faint and yellow after +the lapse of more than fifty years, and must have been written by one +little accustomed to the pen, for there was much hard spelling as well +as irregular chirography. Adelle looked for the signature. It was in the +lower inside corner, and the name, in the effort to economize space, was +almost unreadable. It might be "Sam." After considerable puzzlement, she +felt sure that it was "Sam." The S had an indubitable corkscrew effect, +and the straight splotches must have been an _m_, and there was the +faint trace of the _a_. But who was "Sam"? + +It was a few moments before Adelle realized that the "Sam" at the bottom +of the old letter was an abbreviation for her grandfather's name. It was +old Samuel Clark's signature. When she had grasped this fact, she turned +back to look at the date. It was 1847--July 19. She looked at the +envelope. It was addressed to "Mr. Edward S. Clark," at "Mr. Knowlton's, +8 Dearborn St., Chicago." At last Adelle got to the letter itself and +spent much time trying to make out the parts she could read. It was all +about family matters--the letter of one brother to another. There were +references to some family trouble, and "Sam" seemed to be defending +himself from a charge of unfair dealing with his brother, and protested +his good faith many times. Adelle was not greatly interested in the +contents of the letter, with its reference to a musty family row. She +knew too little of the Clark history to appreciate the significance of +Sam's verbose self-defense. + +What she did realize overwhelmingly was the fact that the young mason +was related to her--was her second cousin, the grandson of the elder +brother Clark, while she was the granddaughter, through her mother, of +the younger brother. And that was all she realized for the present. It +was a large enough fact. She was not a familyless woman as she had +always supposed, and this young workman on her estate was her cousin. He +had the same blood that she had in part, was of the same race, and as he +inherited through his father from the elder brother, while she inherited +through the mother from the younger brother, he would be considered in +certain social systems to be her family superior! The Head of the +Family! Adelle had no great class pride, as must have been perceived, +but even to her it was something of a shock to discover that she was +cousin to the stone mason employed in building her wall--an uneducated +young man who chewed tobacco, used poor grammar, and went on sprees, +vulgar sprees, for Archie had taught her that money makes a great +difference in the way men get drunk. And she remembered that Clark had +said, in his bitter indictment of the laboring-man's lot, that one of +his sisters was not all that she should be! Naturally it gave her much +to think about. Not the question whether she should tell him what she +had discovered from his grandfather's letters, but the fact itself of +her relationship with the young mason. That was stunning at first, even +to Adelle! + +But as she lay upon her pretty bed, which had been painted for her in +Paris with a flock of unblushing Amours, and stared at the painted +ceiling, her good sense rapidly came back to her. In her character it +was the substitute for humor. After all, there was nothing so +extraordinary in the fact. There must be many similar cases of poor +relations among all the people she knew, even with the Paysons and the +Carharts, who were the primates of Bellevue society. When families had +been living for a long time on this earth, there must grow up such +inequalities of fortune between the different branches, even among the +different members of the same generation. If people were only aware of +all their relations, there would doubtless be many surprises in life. +What would Archie say to it? In the first place, she probably would not +tell him, and he had no good ground for criticism anyway. The Davises +were not highly distinguished folk: no doubt Archie could find in any +telephone directory plenty of distant cousins of humble station. As for +Tom Clark himself, she did not feel that he would be disagreeable after +he had learned his relationship to his employer. He might whistle and +laugh and get off one of those ironical and contemptuous utterances +about society of which he seemed fond. + +After thinking it all over, Adelle rose and dressed herself; then, +taking the package of letters, of which she had only casually examined +the others, went up the path to the tar-paper shack. It was a hot +afternoon, and the mason had only just come back from his task. He had +not yet washed, and was sitting before his door, all red and sweaty, +smoking his pipe and scratching his arms in a sensuous relaxation of +muscles after the day's work. He looked altogether the workman. He did +not rise at her approach, but removing his pipe, remarked, as if he had +been expecting her visit,-- + +"Well, did you read the stuff?" + +"Yes," Adelle replied, holding out the package; "I read some of them." + +"That's more'n I could do," he said, receiving the letters and staring +at them as if they had been Egyptian hieroglyphs. "What could you make +out of 'em?" + +"One thing!" Adelle exclaimed. "Your grandfather and my grandfather must +have been own brothers." + +"You don't say!" Tom Clark exclaimed, throwing back his head and giving +vent to that robust, ironical laugh that Adelle had expected. "So old +Stan Clark was your great-uncle?" + +Adelle nodded. + +"Just think of that now!" and the mason went off into another peal of +laughter which made Adelle uncomfortable. He did not take seriously his +relationship with the mistress of Highcourt. "I bet old grandfather Stan +would have been mighty surprised if he could see his niece and her swell +house!" + +Suddenly the mason rose, and, fetching out a box from his house, said +with an elaborate flourish of ironical courtesy,-- + +"Sit down, cousin, and we'll talk it over." + +Adelle accepted the seat meekly. + +"So father's folks didn't really come from Missouri--but from way back +East?" he inquired with appreciation of the added aristocracy that this +gave the family. + +"Surely they came from Alton," Adelle replied. "That was where the +Clarks had always lived--ever since before the Revolution." + +"As long as that! Think of it--I'll be damned--beggin' your pardon, +cousin!" the mason exclaimed. + +Except for this familiar use of the term of relationship Tom Clark's +attitude was respectful enough, more humorous than anything else, as if +the news Adelle had given him merely completed his ironic philosophy of +life. He mused,-- + +"So I had to get into a fight in 'Frisco and come here to work on this +job to find out my family connections." + +He seemed impressed with the devious paths of Providence. + +"And I had to go all the way from Alton to Paris to find a Californian +husband, who brought me out here!" laughed Adelle, who was beginning to +comprehend the mason's humor and the situation. + +Neither thought of any money concern in the new-found relationship. They +were still sitting before the shack on boxes in the red light of the +descending sun and Clark was explaining to "cousin" his theory of the +unimportance of family ties, when Archie came up the path. Adelle +perceived him first, and hastily getting up went to meet him. She did +not want him to hear the news, at least not until she had had time to +manage his susceptibilities, for she knew that his first reaction would +be to get rid of her "cousin" as soon as possible, and he would nag her +until the mason had been discharged. Archie, who had been drinking +enough since his game to give free rein to his poor temper, immediately +began the attack within hearing of the stone mason. + +"So this is where you are! I've been looking for you all over the place. +Thought you were too tired to go to the polo," he said accusingly. + +"I only just came up the hill for a little walk," Adelle explained. + +"I've been back an hour myself, and they said you'd gone out before," +her husband retorted suspiciously. + +"Perhaps it was earlier," Adelle replied indifferently. + +She cared less than she had once for Archie's outbursts of temper, and +at present her mind was occupied with other matters than calming him. +Archie looked at her with a peculiar stare in which ugliness and +something more evil were mixed. + +"Been having such an interesting conversation that you didn't know how +fast time was going?" he sneered. + +"Yes," Adelle replied literally. + +"Talkin' with that fellow?" Archie demanded, hitching a shoulder in the +direction of the stone mason, who was still sitting not far off watching +the couple. + +"Yes, I had something important to say to him," Adelle replied, and +started away. + +But Archie did not stir. + +"I have something important to say to him, too," he growled, walking +towards the mason. + +"Archie!" Adelle called. + +But Archie paid no attention. He strode furiously up to the shack, and +even before he reached it he called out,-- + +"Here, you there! What business have you got building your dirty little +roost on my land without permission?" + +The mason merely smiled at the angry man in reply. Adelle, who had run +up to her husband, tried to pull him back, with a hand on his arm. + +"It isn't our land," she said disgustedly. Her foolish husband did not +even know the boundaries of their own property, which stopped at the +edge of the eucalyptus grove on the top of the hill. + +"Well, I won't have him tracking up the place with his paths," Archie +said weakly. "He was prowling around the house last night. I saw him." + +The mason again smiled at him, as if he scorned to answer back a man who +was so evidently "in his booze," as he would put it, and trying to pick +a quarrel. + +"Anyway you are discharged," he said, in a lordly attempt to get back +his dignity. "See Mr. Ferguson in the morning and get your money +and--get out!" + +"I will not," the mason replied imperturbably. + +"What do you say?" + +Clark grinned at Adelle and replied with an intentional drawl,-- + +"I been discharged once on this job and taken back, and this time I mean +to stick until the job's done." + +"No, you won't!" Archie shouted. + +"Oh, so I won't?... Well, I ain't taking my orders from you. She's the +boss on the ranch, I guess." + +He indicated Adelle with a nod. This came altogether too near the truth +to be pleasant for Archie. + +"You damned--" + +With his heavy polo whip raised he sprang at the mason. Adelle dragged +at his arm, and he turned to shake her off, raising his free hand +threateningly. + +"Take care!" the mason called out. "Don't hit a woman!" + +As if in defiance, as if to show that he could hit at least this woman +who belonged to him by law, even though her possessions might not belong +to him entirely, Archie's left hand came down upon Adelle's arm with +sufficient force to be called a blow. Adelle dropped her grip of her +husband's arm with a slight cry of fright and shame rather than of pain. +Archie did not have to step forward to get at the mason, for with one +bound Clark sprang from his seat on the box and dealt Archie such a +smashing blow in the middle of the face that he fell crumpled in a heap +on the ground between Adelle and the mason. He lay there gasping and +groaning for a few moments--long enough for Adelle to realize completely +how she loathed him. Before this she had known that she was not happy in +her marriage, that Archie was far from the lover she had dreamed of, +that he was lacking in certain common virtues very necessary in any +society. Indeed, he had treated her roughly before now, in accesses of +alcoholic irritation, but always there had been in her mind a lingering +affection for the boy she had once loved and spoiled--enough to make her +pardon and forget. But now she saw him beneath the skin with the deadly +clearness of vision that precludes all forgiveness. + +At last Archie crawled giddily to his feet, his nose running with blood +which spattered over his rumpled silk shirt. He looked at his opponent +uncertainly, as if he would like to try conclusions again, but a glance +at the mason's large hard hands and stocky frame was enough. Turning, he +said,--"I'll fix you for this," and started for Highcourt. + +"Oh, go to hell!" the mason called after him, resuming his seat on the +soap-box and relighting his pipe. + +Adelle, before she followed her husband, said to her new-found cousin in +a tone clear enough to reach Archie's ears,-- + +"Of course you are not discharged. I am very sorry for this." + +"That's all right," the mason replied. "I don't worry about him." + +Archie kept on as if he had not heard, and Adelle followed back to +Highcourt at sufficient distance not to be forced to speak to him. They +did not meet or speak that night, which had happened before more than +once. Adelle lay awake far into the night, thinking many surprisingly +new thoughts--about the cousin in his shack, the way in which he had +taken her news of their relationship, and also the calm manner in which +he had stood her husband's outrageous behavior. She as nearly admired +the cold humor with which he received her husband's abuse until Archie +had struck her as she did anything she knew in the way of conduct. The +mason cousin might use bad grammar and chew tobacco and go on sprees +occasionally, but as between him and her husband he was the gentleman of +the two--better still, the man of the two. His patience under insult and +his treating Archie like a child when he saw that the "gentleman" had +been drinking were truly admirable! + +As for Archie it was not a new experience for her latterly to lie awake +cogitating her marriage in unhappy sleeplessness. It had seemed to her +on such occasions that all the old banker's predictions about the +results of her marrying Archie had come true like a curse, and sooner +than might have been thought. But never before had she seen so clearly +how impossible Archie was, never before felt herself without one atom of +regard for him--not even desire. And yet her mind was too little fertile +in expedients to suggest to her any way out of her trouble. She was of +those many women who will not take a step even against the most brutal +of husbands until driven into it. So she quickly dismissed him from her +thoughts. + +It was then that for the first time, in connection with her new cousin, +she thought of the money--the buried treasure of Clark's Field, which +had been discovered for her benefit and which had been of such poor use +to her apparently. Archie, she had said to herself, was less of a man +than this rough stone mason, Tom Clark. He was, after all, nothing more +than a very ordinary American citizen, with the prestige and power of +her wealth. If that other man had happened to have the money--and it was +here that light broke over her. It did belong to him, at least a large +part of it! She recalled now the substance of those legal lectures she +had received at different times from the officers of the trust company. +The trouble about Clark's Field all these years had been the +disappearance of an heir, the elder brother of her grandfather, and the +lack of absolute proof that he had left no heirs behind him when he +died, to claim his undivided half interest in the field. But he had left +heirs, a whole family of them, it seemed! And to them, of course, +belonged at least a half of the property quite as much as it did to her! + +When she had arrived at this illumination she was in a great state of +excitement. She almost waked Archie from his alcoholic slumbers in the +neighboring room to tell him that he was not married to a rich woman--at +least to one as rich as he thought by a half. And the workman whom he +had insulted and discharged in his fury was really his superior, in +money as well as character, and might perhaps drive him out of +Highcourt, instead! But she decided to put off this ironical blow until +a more opportune time, when Archie was nagging her for money. He could +be too disagreeable in his present state. + +Then she thought of breaking the astounding news to the stone mason +himself. She must do that the first thing in the morning. But presently +doubts began to rise in her mind. Of course, knowing nothing of law, she +resolved the problem by the very simple rules of thumb she was capable +of. These California Clarks, of whom the mason was one, undoubtedly +owned a half of Clark's Field,--in other words, of her estate,--for +Clark's Field had been sold for the most part and no longer belonged to +her. If so there would be only one half left for her and her child, and +she had good reason to fear that her half had considerably shrunken by +now, thanks to Archie's investments and their way of living, if it had +not wholly disappeared! What then? She would be poor, as poor as Tom +Clark was now. And it would all go to him--the thought made her smile. +But no, he had brothers and sisters, probably uncles and aunts and +cousins. He would have to share his half with them. And one of his +sisters was the sort of woman she had been taught to despise and abhor. +It was all a horrible tangle, which she felt herself incapable to see +through at once. She was not sure that she could tell Archie or even her +new cousin, anyway not until she had thought it out more clearly and +knew the case in all its bearings. + +The truth was, perhaps, that Adelle's natural fund of egotism, which was +not small, had begun to work as soon as she realized that she might lose +her magic lamp altogether. It may be doubted that, if certain events had +not happened, Adelle ever would have risen to the point where she could +have told any one the truth as she was now convinced she knew it. For +the present she would put it off,--a few days. It was so much easier to +say nothing at all: the mason did not seem to suspect the truth. She +could let things go on as fate had shaped them thus far. + +And there was her little boy, too, who was very precious to her. She +would be disinheriting him, which she had no right to do. It was all +horribly mixed up! Adelle did not get much sleep that night. + + + + +XXXIX + + +Although she had made up her mind not to tell her secret to any one at +present, Adelle could not refrain from looking up the stone mason the +first thing in the morning. She seemed to be attracted to him as the +moth is to the proverbial flame, all the more after her new +understanding of the situation between them. And she was also +apprehensive of what Archie might be up to. If he were violent, and the +two men had another quarrel, she might be forced to declare the truth, +which she didn't want to do this morning. + +Therefore, she felt relieved to find that Tom Clark was not at his post +on the wall. She asked no questions of Mr. Ferguson. And morning after +morning she was both disappointed and relieved when she went to the wall +and found his place still empty. The foreman had not put other masons to +work there, but continued the work at a different point. She asked him +no questions. Perhaps her cousin had left voluntarily in disgust with +Highcourt. She even went up the hill one morning and found his little +shack closed. Peeking through the windows she perceived his trunk and +kitty-bag in their place, with his old shoes and clothes beside them. So +he intended to come back! Again she was both pleased and frightened. The +return would mean complications. She must make up her mind definitely +whether she should tell him the secret. She felt a strong impulse to do +so and take the consequences. And there was Archie, with whom she had +not exchanged a dozen words since the scene on the hill. It was quite +the longest quarrel that they had ever had and wearing to them both. So +it went for nearly a week. + +And then one morning, as she was passing heedlessly along the terrace, +she heard a man's voice which was familiar, and peering over the great +wall, saw Tom Clark below at his accustomed post. He caught sight of the +mistress of Highcourt, and bobbed his head shamefacedly. After a time +she came to him through the canon, but he pretended not to see her. She +knew that he was ashamed of himself for something he had done--she +wondered what--probably drinking. He looked a trifle paler than usual +and very red-eyed. He acted like a puppy that knows perfectly well it +has been up to mischief and deserves a licking, wishes, indeed, that its +master would go to it and get it over soon so that they could come back +to the old normal friendship. Adelle herself felt cold with excitement +of all sorts, and could hardly control her voice enough to say +unconcernedly,-- + +"Haven't seen you, Mr. Clark, for some time." + +"No!" (Head down.) "Just thought I'd take a little vacation--and rest +up." + +"Did you go up to San Francisco?" + +"Yep!" + +"Did you see another opera?" + +"There weren't no opera this trip," the mason replied, spitting out his +quid. "I--seed--other things." + +"Is that so--what?" + +The mason did not reply, but there was a reckless gleam in his blue +eyes. He worked vigorously, then volunteered evasively,-- + +"I was just celebratin' around." + +"Celebrating what?" + +"Things in general--what you was tellin' me about our bein' cousins," he +said, with a touch of his usual humor. + +"Oh!" Adelle replied, discomposed. He had been thinking about it, then. + +"Thought it deserved some celebratin'," Clark added. + +Adelle's heart beat a little faster. If he only knew the whole +truth!--then there would be something to celebrate, indeed! + +"The strike's off," the mason remarked soon, as if he were anxious to +get away from his own misdeeds. + +"Is it?" + +"Yep! They made a compromise--that's what they call it when the fellers +on top get together and deal it out so the men lose." + +"I suppose, then, you will be going back to the city when you finish the +work here?" Adelle asked. + +"Maybe--I dunno--got some money comin' to me"--Adelle's guilty heart +stood quite still. "I ain't drawed a cent on this job so far," he added +to her relief. "Perhaps I'll blow in what's coming to me in goin' East +to see where my folks used to live in Alton." + +He spoke half in jest, but Adelle replied faintly,-- + +"That might be a good idea." + +"I heard from one of my sisters while I was gone. She's in +Philadelphy--married to a feller there that works in the carpet mills. I +ain't seen her for more 'n ten years--might stop in Philadelphy, too." + +Adelle was curious to know whether this was the sister who "had gone +wrong," but did not know how to phrase the question. After a time, she +felt the temptation to tell the mason what she knew becoming +intolerable. Her mind hovered about her secret as a bird hovers over a +great void; she was irresistibly drawn to the fatal plunge. She moved +off while she yet felt the power to do so without speaking. Her cousin +looked up in some surprise. + +"You goin'?" he asked. + +"Let me know before you start East," she called back to him. "Perhaps I +could do something to help you on your trip." + +"Sure I'll let you know," came up heartily from the bottom of the wall +where the mason had gone for a tool. + + * * * * * + +If Archie realized Tom Clark's return to Highcourt, he was wise enough +to make nothing of it. He was in a poor way nervously at this time, +playing bad polo and drinking altogether too much. He stayed away from +the city, which was a nuisance to Adelle, but he spent most of his time +at the country club. Adelle meanwhile was wrestling with herself; with +what people have the habit of calling the "conscience," but what had +better be called the "consciousness," endeavoring to realize more fully +the position in which she found herself. The idea within, like most +ideas hotly nursed in a troubled brain, was growing all the time, until +it filled all her waking moments and most of her dreams. She had to will +deliberately not to take the little path up the hill to the mason's +shack. Once she yielded, and when she arrived breathless, her heart +thumping, she found the door safely padlocked. The mason had gone to the +town for supplies. She sneaked back to Highcourt by a roundabout course +through the eucalyptus wood, to avoid meeting her cousin on the path. +Thus day by day she lived in an agony of preoccupation, so that even +Archie began to notice how thin and pale she was, and attributed her +distress to all sorts of reasons except the right one, of which he knew +nothing. Her friends said that she was "trying to do too much," needed +distraction, and recommended a trip somewhere, though what she did, +except to dine and lunch out a few times each week or trail about the +unfinished estate and play with her child, would be hard to say. Adelle, +in truth, was thinking, thinking harder than ever before in her life. +Her new secret was the most stimulating influence, next to her child, +that she had known in all her life. Her brain once started led her into +all sorts of mad by-paths, ramifications of perception that she and the +reader, too, might not suspect lay within her powers. She asked herself +what the mason, with his ideas about the injustice of property, would do +with her money? She began even to question the meaning of life! Its +queer treatment of her, in jerking her up to a high plane of privilege +and then throwing her down in this unexpected manner, appeared for the +first time inexplicable. + +But greatest of all triumphs from this thinking was that Adelle began to +look upon life objectively, trying to see what it must mean to +others--to her new cousin, who evidently had had his own ambitions, +which had been thwarted by a fate that he could not surmount alone. +Would he do better with the money than she had? Achieve happiness more +lastingly? She began to doubt the power of money to give happiness. She +was losing faith in magic lamps. Of course, if Adelle had profited by +her Puritan ancestry, she would have known that all this kind of +reasoning was useless; for she had no business to assume the part of +Providence to the stone mason and deprive him of his own choice in the +matter of the inheritance. But fortunately she was not given to the +picking of moral bones. She said to herself positively that Tom Clark, +whatever he might once have become under other conditions, would not +know now what to do with money: he would merely "get into trouble with +it," as Archie had got into trouble. Already he had the habit of going +off on "vacations" like the past week, for which he seemed ashamed. + +And there were other lives than his to be considered--hers and Archie's, +though she did not give much thought to them. But there was her boy's +future. He had been Adelle's other great education. She had studied him +from the hour he was born and noted each tiny, trivial development of +his character. Already she knew that he was gay and pleasure-loving by +nature--had a curling, sensuous lip much like his father's. She felt +that he would need a great deal of guidance and care if he were to +arrive safely at man's estate. Of course, it was often said that the +struggle of poverty was the way of salvation. But she was not convinced +of this heroic creed. All the more if the little fellow should really +develop weakness; for wealth covered up and prevented the more dreadful +aspects of incompetence. No, she could never bring herself to deprive +her boy of his inheritance. She thought that this was the deciding +consideration in her resolve finally to keep her secret to herself. It +was a large reason, no doubt. But the decision came rather from her old +habit of letting fate work with her as it would; that passive acceptance +of whatever happened which had always been her characteristic attitude +towards life. She had an almost superstitious shrinking from interfering +with this outside arrangement of destiny. For where she had +interfered--as in getting Archie--she had brought disaster upon herself. +It was always the safer and wiser part for a woman to do nothing until +she was compelled to act. This conviction of Adelle's may seem to our +modernly strenuous natures to evince the last degree of cowardice and +pusillanimity before life. We like to believe that we are changing our +destiny every day and "making character" through a multitude of petty +decisions. As a matter of cold examination, it would probably be found +that few of us, through all our momentous and character-forming +decisions, affect the stream of life as much as we like to think, or +mould character. The difference between Adelle and the strenuous type of +constantly willing woman lies more in the consciousness of fuss and +effort that the latter has. When it came to the necessary point Adelle, +as we have seen, made her own decisions and abided by them, which is +more than the strenuous always do. + +At one time, in the course of the long debate with herself, Adelle felt +that she must appeal to some one for advice. In such stress and +perplexity a woman usually appeals to priest or doctor, or both. But +Adelle was entirely without any religious connection, and she had no +doctor in whom she trusted. Instead, she thought of the Washington Trust +Company, which had been the nearest thing to parental authority she had +ever known, but rejected the idea of presenting to them this delicate +problem. The thing, she saw, was beyond their scope and jurisdiction. +The only person she instinctively turned towards for advice was the old +probate judge, who had given her such a lecture on Clark's Field for a +benediction when she last appeared before him. She felt that he would +understand, and that he would have the right idea of what ought to be +done.... + +Possibly, as the days passed and her mind grew still more towards +comprehension, she would have consulted Judge Orcutt, although she hated +to write letters. She might even have crossed the continent to talk with +the judge. But again Fate took the matter out of her hands and resolved +it in other ways. + + + + +XL + + +That Saturday night there was a large dinner-party at Highcourt in +celebration of some polo match, where the local team was gloriously +vanquished. Archie was eager to gather people around him, all the more +as his drinking and his mistakes in "investments" had lowered his +prestige in the "colony." Why had they gone to the expense and the +bother of this big establishment, he argued, if they were not to +entertain, and entertain in a large and lavish fashion? This was the +first of a series of dinners he had planned to give. If the invitations +had not been sent long before, Adelle would never have had the party, +for with the strained relations between herself and her husband, social +life was more difficult than ever to her. Adelle was never a brilliant +hostess. She talked little and with effort, and people herded together +in large numbers rendered her quite dumb. This evening she was more +distrait than ever, for her mind clung tenaciously to its one theme as +was the habit of her mind. It would stick to an idea until some solution +presented itself. No mere distraction could shunt it off its course, as +with Archie, who drank and gambled and played polo and shouted and +laughed in order not to think of the many disagreeable things there were +to think about when he allowed himself to lapse into a sober mood. + +Even Major Pound, who sat at his hostess's right, noticed after a time +Adelle's preoccupation, although he could be trusted to monologize +egotistically by the half-hour. He had started zestfully on the building +trades in San Francisco. The settlement of the long strike did not seem +to please him any more than it had Tom Clark. He thought that the +"tyranny of labor" was altogether unsupportable, that this country was +fast sinking into the horrors of "socialism," and capital was already +winging its way in fear to other safer refuges. Adelle had heard all +this many times not only from Major Pound and Nelson Carhart, but from +George Pointer and the other men she saw. It was the only kind of +"serious" conversation they ever indulged in. To-night, although she +heard the familiar prophecies of ruin faintly, through the haze of her +own problem, she had a distinct perception of the stupidity of it. What +right had any man to talk in this bitter, doleful tone of his country +and the life of the day? How could any man tell what the times were +going to bring forth? Perhaps her anarchistic cousin--the stone mason +who had considered these matters as he plied his trade under blistering +heat or chilling winds--had arrived at as sane conclusions as this +sleek, well-dressed, well-fed railroad man by her side. She recognized +that life was mostly a bitter fight, and her sympathies were strangely +not with her own class as represented by this gathering. + +All day long a high north wind had been blowing, one of those shrill +winds from the snow-capped Sierras that bring drought to California and +rasp the nerves like a steel whip. The wind had not gone down at sunset, +as it often did, and even while they dined with a roaring wood fire in +the great chimney-place, the noise of the wind could be heard as it +streamed through the canon, lashing the tall trees above the house. +Adelle, listening to the uproar outside, wondered whether the tar-paper +shack on the hillside, which must be directly in the path of the gale, +had been able to withstand it. She thought of the mason sitting in his +flimsy beaten room listening to the mouthings of the tempest, alone. He +was not complaining, she felt. The tempest and the strife of life merely +roused the ironic demon within him--to laugh sardonically, to laugh but +fight on.... + +"As I was saying," the major iterated to fix her wandering mind, and she +stared at him. What difference did it make what he was saying! The +polite major shifted his conversation from politics to art, with the +urbanity of the good diner-out. Had she seen the work of the "futurists" +when she was last in Paris. Really it was beyond belief! Another sign of +the general degeneracy of the age--revolt from discipline, etc. But +Adelle had nothing for the "futurists"; and finally Major Pound gave her +up and turned to the lady on his right. Archie, whose restless eyes had +seen the situation opposite him, cast his wife some sour looks. He +himself was more boisterous than usual, as if to cover up the dumbness +of his wife. They were dining to-night the younger "polo" set for the +most part, and the men and women of this set liked to make a great deal +of noise, laughed boisterously at nothing, shouted at each other, sang +at the table, and often drank more than was good for them. Archie +ordered in the victrola, and between courses the couples "trotted," then +a new amusement that had just reached the Coast. + +When at last the company divided for coffee and smoking, Archie +whispered to his wife snarlingly,-- + +"Can't you open your mouth?" + +Adelle was insensible to his little dig, as she called it, and silently, +mechanically went through with her petty task of hostess in the hall +where the women sat, as the drawing-room was still in the hands of the +decorators. All the fictitious gayety of the party died out as soon as +the sexes separated. The women gathered in a little knot around the +fireplaces to smoke and talked about the wind. It got on their nerves, +they asserted querulously. + +"It's the one thing I can't stand in California," a pretty little woman, +who had recently taken up her residence on the Coast, remarked in a tone +of personal grievance. + +"We have had a great deal of north wind this year," another said. + +Adelle made no comment. The weather never interested her. It was one of +the large impersonal facts of life, outside her control, that she +accepted without criticism. The men stayed away a long time in Archie's +"library" in the other wing, probably talking polo or business, and +cosily enjoying their coffee, liqueurs, and cigars. Archie's cigars took +a long time to smoke and the older men usually had two. The women were +bored. Irene Pointer yawned openly in her corner by the fire. She and +her old friend rarely exchanged remarks these days. Irene avoided +Adelle, which Adelle was beginning to perceive. It was understood in the +colony that Irene Pointer did not approve of the way in which Adelle +"managed" her husband, and told her so. Irene herself was very discreet, +and "managed" George Pointer admirably so that she had a great deal of +freedom, and he was perfectly content. + +At last the men drifted back and stood in a row before the blazing fire. +Archie had in the victrola once more and tried to start them dancing, +but the hall was too crowded with furniture and the drawing-room could +not be used. He wanted to have the dining-room cleared, but there was a +spirit of restlessness among the guests. They could not revive the +gayety of the dinner-table. It was not long before the last motor had +rolled down the drive. Archie came back into the hall from the door +after speeding his guests and stood moodily staring at Adelle. He was +vexed. The party had been a failure,--dull. And she knew that he thought +her responsible for it. She expected an outburst, for Archie did not +usually take any pains to control his feelings. She waited. She knew +that if he spoke she should say something this time. She would probably +regret it, but she might even tell him her secret, as the easiest way to +crush him utterly. She looked at him, a dangerous light in her gray +eyes. + +This was the man she had craved so utterly that she had run every risk +to possess him! Irene had called him "a bounder"; and now he was "going +too far" with Irene--not that she especially cared about that, either. +But all his arrogance, his folly, his idleness and futility were built +upon her fortune, which really did not belong to her after all. A cruel +desire to see him crumble entered her heart, and she knew that she +should tell him the truth if he attacked her as she expected. + +But this one time Archie refrained from expressing himself. Even in his +flustered state he recognized a peculiar danger signal in the stare of +his passive wife. With a gesture of disgust he lounged out of the hall +in the direction of his library. Adelle watched him go. Should she +follow him in there and deal her blow? She heard the door of the large +drawing-room open and close behind him. She knew that he would keep on +drinking by himself until he felt properly sleepy. She did not follow +him. Instead, she went upstairs to the rooms occupied by her child and +his nurse, as she did every night before going to bed. The little fellow +was lying at full length on his small bed. His hands were clenched; his +arms stretched out above his head; his face had an expression of effort, +as if in his dreams he were putting forth all his tiny might to +accomplish something. He looked very handsome. Except for that weak +curve to the pleasure-loving lips, he resembled neither Archie nor +Adelle. Nature seemingly had been dissatisfied with them both, and in +drawing new life from them had chosen to return along the line of their +ancestry to select a more promising mould than either of the parents. +The fact that this could be so--that the child from her womb might be +more than herself or Archie--thrilled Adelle. "Boy" as she called him +was mystery and religion to her. He was to become the unfulfilled dream +of her life. This one perfect thing had been given her out of the +accidents of her disordered life, and she must make the utmost of it. + +She covered him up where in his dream he had kicked himself free from +the blanket. She bent and kissed him on the forehead gently not to +awaken him. He rolled over, settled himself into an easier position, and +the tension of his small face relaxed. Instead of the frown of effort a +beautiful smile broke over his face, as if at the touch of his mother's +lips the character of his dreams had changed to something highly +pleasurable. Adelle's eyes filled with unaccustomed tears, and she +lingered there a few moments. Nothing was too much to do for him, to +bear for him, no sacrifice that she might make for his future! It was +settled. She should never speak to any one of what she knew. "Boy" +should have everything she could give him, all that was left of her +magic lamp. Even Archie could never exasperate her again enough to +endanger the child's future. + +She turned down the night-light and tiptoed out of the room. To-morrow +she would move up here, even if she had to put the nurse in some other +place, and henceforth she would never be separated from her child. He +should stand between her and his father. She went to her rooms on the +lower floor, but before undressing she stepped out on the broad terrace, +which was now almost ready for the sod. The great wall was all but +finished--the corner by the orangery to be built up even with the rest. +As she came out from the shelter of the house the blast of wind caught +her thin dress and swept it out before her like a streamer. She had to +hold her hair to prevent the wind from unwinding it. She could see +nothing--the impalpable blackness reached far down into the depths of +the canon, far out into the space above the land and the sea. Usually +even on dark nights the hill behind the house brooded over the place +like a faint shadow, but to-night it was blotted out. The house was dark +except for the light in Archie's library at the other end of the terrace +and the faint candle gleam of the night-light in the nursery. + +Adelle liked the black storm. It soothed her troubled mind by its sheer +force, passing through her like the will of a stronger being. Adelle was +growing, at last, after all these years of imperceptible change, of +spiritual stagnation. She had begun to grow with the coming of her +child, and these last weeks she had been growing fast. She even realized +that she was changing, was becoming another, unfamiliar person. She felt +it to-night more than at any time in all her life--the strangeness of +being somebody other than her familiar self. She said it was her +"experiences." It was, indeed, familiarity with Archie and his +disgusting weakness. It was her young cousin, the stone mason, and all +that the discovery of him as a person, as well as her relationship to +him and his claim upon her property, had meant. It was, of course, the +influence of creative motherhood upon her. But it was more than all +these combined that had started the belated growth of her soul, now that +she was twenty-five, married, and had a child. It was an unknown power +within her, like this mighty passionate wind, germinating late and +unexpectedly in the thin soil of her mind, irresistibly taking +possession of her and shaping her anew. Many would call it God. Adelle +did not name the power. + +This becoming another person was not especially pleasurable. It was +perplexing and tragic as now. But Adelle was beginning to realize very +dimly that she was not living for her own happiness, not even for the +happiness of her child, wholly. She did not know why she was living. But +she knew that life meant much more than the happiness of any one being +or of many beings. It was like this high wind from the mountains and the +deserts, rushing over the earth with a fierce, compelling +impulse--whither? Ah, that no one could say. One must bend before the +blast, but not yield to it altogether--not be scattered fruitless by its +careless hand. Adelle thus had come a long way from that girl who had +run off with Archie to Paris: she knew it. And having come so far, who +could say where she would finally end?... She pressed her body against +the strong wind and felt it wrap her about like the firm embrace of a +living being. The tempest calmed and strengthened her. + +At last she went back to her room, undressed quickly, and got to bed. +The last conscious thought that came to her was a resolve to look into +her affairs herself at once and put an end to all the folly that she and +Archie had committed with her money--to guard what was left for the use +of her boy. For the rest, she should go on as she had begun, waiting +always for the convincing urge of her destiny, proving her way step by +step. She would not confide in any one what she knew about the lost +heirs of Clark's Field. + + + + +XLI + + +After a time Adelle became confusedly conscious of some disturbance +around her. She thought at first that it must be Archie noisily entering +the neighboring chamber. But soon she heard loud cries and sat upright, +listening. Then she became aware of a thick, suffocating atmosphere and +the acrid taste of smoke in her mouth. The electric light would not +respond to her touch. She knew what it meant--Fire! With one bound she +leaped from her bed and ran, just as she was in nightdress, for the hall +from which the large staircase led up to the upper story--the only +approach to her child's rooms from this end of the house. The staircase +was a bank of roaring flame and the hall itself was vividly streaked +with dashes of eating flame. She rushed chokingly straight for the +blazing staircase and would have died in the fire had not one of the +servants caught her in time and dragged her back outside through the +open door. She quickly slipped through the man's grasp, and without +uttering a cry started around the house for the servants' entrance. +Archie came stumbling into the light, half dressed in his evening +clothes, struggling to put an arm into one of the sleeves of his coat. +She cried,-- + +"The boy--the boy--save him!" + +One glance at Archie's nerveless, vacant face was enough. There was no +help to be had in him! + +"Dell--where is he?" Archie called, still fumbling for the lost sleeve. +But she had disappeared. + +At the servants' door some men were pounding and shouting. The door was +locked and bolted and stood fast. Adelle threw herself against it, +pounding with her fists; then, as if divining its unyielding strength, +she sped on around the corner of the house to the open terrace. There a +number of the servants and helpers on the estate were running to and fro +shouting and calling for help. Already the fire gleamed through the +house from the front and the wind lifted great plumes of flame against +the dark hillside, painting the tall eucalyptus trees fantastically. The +fire, starting evidently in the central part of the house which +contained the drawing-room, had shot first up the broad staircase and +was now eating its way through the second floor and reaching across to +the farther wing that hung directly above the canon. More and more +persons arrived while Adelle ran up and down the terrace, like a hunted +animal, moaning--"Boy! Boy!" There was talk of ladders, which had been +left by the workmen at the garage half a mile away. Before these could +be got or the hose attached to the fireplugs, the flame had swirled out +from the lonely wing where the child and his nurse slept. Even if the +ladders came, they would be of no use over the deep pit of the canon, +and the center of the house was now a roaring furnace. Adelle clung to +the rough rock of her great wall--the supporting wall to this part of +her house--the wall she had watched with such interest, such admiration +for its size and strength. It reached away from her slight, white figure +down into the gloom of the canon, and upon it rested the burning house. +While she clung there dry-eyed, moaning, she was conscious of Archie's +attempt to pull her back. He was the same bewildered figure, collarless, +in evening clothes--the same feeble, useless man, failing her at this +crisis as always. She shook off his touch with repugnance and crouched +close to the wall, as near as she could get to her child. + +Then there passed a few of those terrible moments that are as nothing +and as a lifetime crowded with agony to the human being. The wind poured +noisily through the canon, bending before its blast the swaying trees, +but even louder than the wind was the roar of the conquering fire that +now illuminated all the hillside like day and revealed the little +figures of impotent men and women, who ran this way and that confusedly, +helplessly, crying and shouting. The center of the great house was a +solid pillar of flame, and the fire was eating its way on either side +into the wings. The wing where the child slept rose from the canon like +a walled castle, impregnable--Adelle might remember that "Boy" had +chosen these rooms in the remote corner of the house, fascinated by +their lofty perch over the deep canon. And there, at the bottom of the +wall that she had built, the mother clung, helpless, beyond reach of her +child. + +A man ran out on the parapet of the terrace past Adelle. He stopped +where the parapet touched the sheer wall of the building, looked up at +the burning house which cast out great waves of heat, knocked off his +shoes, threw down his coat, and dove as it seemed into space. She knew +it was Clark, the stone mason. People crowded around Adelle and leaned +over the parapet to see what had become of him. They shouted--"See him! +There! There!"--pointing, as the wreaths of smoke rose and revealed the +man's dark figure clinging to the wall, creeping forward, walking, as it +were, on nothing in space. With fingers and toes he stuck himself like a +leech to the broken surfaces of the rock wall, feeling for the cracks +and crannies, the stone edgings, the little pockets in the masonry that +he himself had laid. He climbed upwards in a zigzag, slowly, steadily, +groping above his head for the next clutch, clinging, crawling like a +spider over the surface of sheer rock. As he rose foot by foot he became +clearly visible in the red light of the flames, a dark shadow stretched +against the blank surface above the gulf. The Scotch foreman said,-- + +"He's crazy--he can't skin that wall!" + +Adelle knew that he was speaking of the stone mason; she knew that Clark +was daring the impossible to get at her child, to save her "Boy." She +felt in every fiber of her body the strain of that feat--the clinging, +creeping progress up the perpendicular wall over the canon. Those around +groaned as they watched, expecting each moment to see the man's body +fall backwards sickeningly into space. + +But he stuck to the wall as if part of it, his arms widespread, his +fingers feeling every inch for hold, and now he was mounting faster as +if sure of himself, confident that he could cling. If he could keep hold +until his hand touched the first row of window-sills, he had a chance. A +long red arm reached up; groped painfully; the finger-tips touched the +end of a blind. There was dead silence except for the roar of the +wind-driven fire while the mason pawed along the window-sill for safe +lodgment; then--"He's caught it!" + +A shout went up, and while her breath seemed to choke her, Adelle saw +the man in the glare of the flame pull himself up, inch by inch, until +his head was level with the glass, butt his head against the heavy pane, +and with a final heave disappear within while a black smudge of smoke +poured from the vent he had made. + +A long, silent, agonizing emptiness while he was gone, and he was back +at the window, standing large and bloody in the light, his arms about +the figure of the nurse, who had evidently fainted. Adelle felt one +sharp pang of agony;--"Why had he taken her, not the child?" But her +soul rejected this selfish thought;--"He knows," she said, "he knows--he +must save her first!" + +Clark had tied the sheets under the woman's shoulders, and holding the +weight of the body with one hand, he crept lightly from one window ledge +to the next until he came within reach of the terrace, then swung the +woman and cast her loose. She fell in a heap beside Adelle. They said +she was living. + +Already the mason had groped his way back along the sills to the open +window and disappeared. When he reappeared he had the small boy in his +arms, evidently asleep or unconscious, for he lay a crumpled little +bundle against the mason's breast. This time Clark continued his course +along the sills until he reached a gutter, clinging with one hand, +holding his burden tight with the other. It was a feat almost harder +than the skinning of the naked wall. When he dropped the last ten feet +to the ground cries rose from the little group below. It was the +unconscious recognition of an achievement that not one man in ten +thousand was capable of, a combination of courage, skill, and perfect +nerve which let him walk safely above the abyss across the perpendicular +wall. It was more than human,--the projection of man's will in reckless +daring that defies the physical world. + +Adelle always remembered receiving the child, who was still sleeping, +she thought, from the mason's arms. Clark was breathing hard, and his +face was slit across by a splinter from the window-pane. He was a +terrible, ghastly figure. The blood ran down his bare arms and dripped +on the white bundle he gave her.... Then she remembered no more until +she was in a bare, cold room--the place that was to have been the +orangery, where they kept the garden tools. She was kneeling, still +holding in her arms her precious bundle, calling coaxingly,--"Boy, wake +up! Boy, it's mother! Boy, how can you sleep like that!" calling softly, +piteously, moaningly, until she knew that her child could never answer +her. He had been smothered by the smoke before the mason reached him. +Then Adelle knew nothing more of that night and its horrors. + + + + +XLII + + +There is always the awakening, the coming back once more to +consciousness, to the world that has been, and must endure, but will +never again be as it was. Adelle woke to consciousness in the orangery, +where they had laid mattresses for her and the dead child. Through the +open door she might see the blackened walls of what had been Highcourt. +The fire had swept clear through the three parts, scorching even the +eucalyptus trees above on the hillside, and had died out at last for +lack of food. The debris was now smouldering sullenly in the cloudless, +windless day that had succeeded the storm. All the beauty of an early +spring morning in California rioted outside, insulting the bereaved +woman with its refreshment and joy. It was on mornings like this after a +storm that Adelle loved the place most. She would take "Boy" and ramble +through the fragrant paths. For then Nature, like a human being, having +thrown off its evil mood, tries by caresses and sweet smiles to win +favor again.... + +Adelle lay there this golden morning, one arm around the little figure +of her dead child, staring at the pool outside which was dappled with +sunshine, at the ghastly wreck of her great house--not thinking, perhaps +not even feeling acutely--aware merely of living in a void, the +shattered fragments of her old being all around her. How long she might +have lain there one cannot tell: she felt that she should be like this +always, numbed in the presence of life and light. They brought her food +and clothes, and said things to her. Archie came in and sat down on one +of the upturned flower-pots. He was fully dressed now, but still looked +shaken, bewildered, a little cowed, as if he could not understand. At +sight of him Adelle remembered the night, remembered the shaking, feeble +figure of her husband, trying to get his arm into the sleeve of his +dress-coat, useless before the tragedy, useless in the face of life. +"What can I do!" he had whined then. Adelle could not then realize that +she had made him as he was and should be merciful. She was filled with a +physical loathing, a spiritual weariness of him, and turned her face to +the wall so that she might not even see him. + +"Adelle," he said. There was no reply. "Dell, dear," he began again, and +put his hand coaxingly upon her shoulder. + +She sat up, looking like a fierce animal, her hair tumbled about her +neck and breasts, her pale face drawn and haggard. "Don't touch +me--don't speak to me!" she whispered hoarsely. "Never again!" + +She threw into those last words an intensity, a weight of meaning that +startled even Archie, who whimpered out,--"It wasn't my fault!" + +Adelle neither knew nor cared then what had caused the fire. It was +stupid of Archie to understand her so badly--she was not blaming him for +the fire. She turned her face again to the wall, but suddenly, as if a +light had struck through her blurred and blunted consciousness of the +world, she called,-- + +"I want to see him--Clark, the mason;--tell him to come here to see me!" + +Archie, crestfallen, sneaked out of the orangery on her errand. After a +time he returned with the young mason, who stumbled into the dark room. +Clark was washed and his cut had been bandaged, but he showed the +terrible strain of those few minutes on the wall. His face twitched and +his large hands opened and closed nervously. He looked pityingly at +Adelle and mumbled,-- + +"Sorry I was too late!" + +That was all. Adelle made a gesture as if to say that it was useless to +use words over it. She did not thank him. She looked at him out of her +gray eyes, now miserable with pain. She felt a great relief at seeing +him, a curious return of her old interest in his simple, native strength +and nerve, his personality. It made her feel more like herself to have +him there and to know that he was sorry for her. After one or two +attempts to find her voice she said clearly,-- + +"I must tell you something.... I thought of telling you about it before, +but I couldn't. I thought there were reasons not to. But now I must tell +you before you go." + +"Don't trouble yourself now, ma'am," the mason said gently. "I guess +it'll keep until you're feelin' stronger." + +"No, no, I can't wait. I must tell you now!" She raised herself with +effort and leaned her thin face upon her hands. "I want him"--she +pointed to Archie--"to hear it, too." + +Then she tried again to collect her mind, to phrase what she had to say +in the clearest possible way. + +"Half of my money belongs to you, Mr. Clark." + +The two men must have thought that her reason had left her after the +terrible night, but she soon made her meaning clear. + +"I didn't know it until a little while ago when I found out from those +letters who you were. Not even then, just afterwards. Clark's Field was +left to your grandfather and mine together, and somehow I got the whole +of it--I mean I did from my mother and uncle. The lawyers can tell you +all about it. Only it's really half yours--half of all there was!" + +Archie now began to comprehend that his wife referred to the old legal +difficulty over the title to Clark's Field, and interposed. + +"You'd better wait, dear, until you are stronger before you try to think +about business." + +But Adelle utterly ignored him, as she was to do henceforth, and +addressed herself singly to her cousin. + +"I always thought it was all mine--they said it was. And when I knew +about you, I didn't want to give it up; there isn't as much as there was +because he has lost a good deal. But that makes no difference. Half of +the whole belongs to you and your brothers and sisters. I'll see that +you get it. That's all!" + +She lay back exhausted. + +The mason remarked,-- + +"It's rather surprising. But I guess it can wait. It's waited a good +many years." + +And after standing by her side and looking down on her dumb, colorless +face a while longer, he left the room. + +Archie, who was clearly mystified by his wife's brief statement, +concluded to regard it all as an aberration, an effort on her part to +express fantastically her sense of obligation to the stone mason who had +risked his life to save the child. He was concerned to have Adelle moved +to a more comfortable place and told her that friends were coming to +take her to their home. She made a dissenting gesture without opening +her eyes. She wished to be left alone, entirely alone, here in the +orangery whither she had taken her dead child the night before. Archie, +seeing that he could not persuade her immediately to leave the cheerless +spot, spoke of other things. He was voluble about the cause of the fire, +hinting at a dire "anarchistic" plot of some discharged workingmen. +There was much talk in their neighborhood at this time of the efforts of +"anarchists" to destroy rich people's property by incendiary fires. +Adelle, with her face turned to the wall, moaned,-- + +"Go away!" + +And at last Archie went. + + + + +XLIII + + +Archie was voluble about this non-essential in face of the personal +tragedy, anxious to state his theory of the disaster, because he had +more than an uncomfortable consciousness of what the servants and the +men on the place were saying about it. And that was that the master +himself had set the house on fire. It had started in the large, empty +drawing-room, in which the decorators had been still working with +paints, oils, and inflammable stuff. The workmen, however, had not been +in the room for hours before the fire started. The only person who had +entered it during the evening was Archie himself, for it was on his way +from his library to his suite of rooms in the other wing. He had sat up +late as usual after the guests had gone, smoking and drinking by +himself, then had stumbled drowsily through the house to his bedroom, +and on the way doubtless had dropped a match or lighted cigar in the +drawing-room, and in his fuddled condition had failed to notice what he +had done. + +The first person to discover the fire had happened to be Tom Clark, who +had been returning late from the village to his shack on the hill, and +had seen an unnatural glow through the long French windows of the +drawing-room. By the time he had roused the house servants in their +remote quarters and set off for the garage to summon help, the +drawing-room and the adjoining hall were a mass of flame. When he +returned with the new hose-cart and helpers the servants had already +opened the large front door, admitting the wind, which blew the fire +through the stairway like a bellows and completed the destruction of the +house. Clark knew as well as Ferguson, the superintendent, and a +half-dozen others, that when Archie emerged from his rooms on the ground +floor, he was not fully undressed: though it was past one in the +morning, he had not yet gone to bed. And although no one said anything, +habitually cautious as such people usually are when indiscretion may +involve them with their masters, they had easily made the correct +deductions about the cause of the fire.... + +When Archie came from the orangery, he saw Clark standing on the terrace +beside the ruins, examining the scene of his already famous exploit of +the night before. He may well have been wondering how he had ever +succeeded in keeping his balance and in crawling like a fly over the +surface of the wall he had helped to put up. There were a number of +other people loitering about the ruins, some of them from neighboring +estates, who had motored over to offer help and lingered to discuss the +disaster. Archie joined a group of these, among whom was the stone +mason. He was feeling unhappy about many things, especially about his +responsibility for the fire. He began to talk out his theory, turning +first to Clark. + +"You didn't happen to see any of the men hanging about the place when +you came up last night?" he asked. + +"No," the mason replied shortly. + +"I thought maybe those Italians might have been sneaking about here. +They're ugly fellows," Archie remarked. + +"I didn't see nobody around." + +"Some of those fellows are regular anarchists," Archie persisted. "They +wouldn't stop at firing a house to get even with a man they're down on." + +The mason stared at him out of his steely blue eyes, but said nothing. +He began to understand what Archie was driving at, and a deep disgust +for the man before him, who was trying to "put over" this cheap +falsehood to "save his face," filled the mason's soul. The others had +instinctively drawn away from them, and Clark himself looked as if he +wanted to turn on his heel. But he listened. + +"I shouldn't be surprised if the house had been set on fire," Archie +continued confidentially. "I'm going to have detectives look into it. It +must have been either that or spontaneous combustion in the +drawing-room." + +The mason's lips twitched ominously. + +"But I think it was set on purpose!" Archie asserted. + +"Oh, go to hell!" the mason groaned, his emotions getting the better of +him. "Set, nothing!... Spontaneous combustion! You know how it got on +fire better than anybody." + +"What do you mean?" Archie demanded. + +But the mason strode away from him around the corner of the wall and +disappeared. Archie followed him with his eyes, dazed and scowling. He +had never liked the fellow, and resented the fact that he had been the +hero of the disaster, while he himself, as he was well enough aware, had +presented a sorry figure. Now this common workman had insulted him a +second time, treated him as though he were dirt, dared even to make +dastardly insinuations. Across Archie's miserable mind came Adelle's +confused words about her property belonging to the stone mason--a half +of it. He had explained this at the time as due to the shock and a +woman's sentimental feeling of gratitude, but now he began to give it +another and more sinister interpretation. What had she been doing up at +this fellow's shack that afternoon? It hardly seemed possible, but +unfortunately in Archie's set, even among the very best people socially +of Bellevue, almost anything in the way of sex aberration was possible. +He started back for the orangery, but before he got there he realized +that it would be just as well not to approach his wife at this time with +what he had in mind. Lying there with her dead child in her arms she had +the air of a wounded wild animal that might be aroused to a dangerous +fury. He had the sense to see that even if his worst suspicions were +justified, it was hardly the moment to exact his social rights. + +So he wandered back to the ruin of Highcourt, where he found condoling +friends, who took him off to the country club and kept him there, and it +is to be feared provided him with his usual consolation for the manifold +contrarieties of life, even for the very rich. + + + + +XLIV + + +In due time Adelle roused herself and took direction of affairs. She +went down to the manager's cottage near the gate of Highcourt and +thither brought the body of her child. From this cottage the little boy +was buried on the next day. Adelle directed that the grave should be +prepared among the tall eucalyptus trees on the hillside behind the +ruins--there where she had often played with the little fellow. She +herself carried the body to its small grave and laid it tenderly away in +the earth, being the only one to touch it since the mason had first put +it lifeless in her arms. Then she scattered the first dirt upon the +still figure and turned away only when the flowers had been heaped high +over the little grave. Archie was there and a few of their friends from +Bellevue, as well as a group of servants, by whom Adelle had always been +liked; and among the latter was the stone mason. Adelle did not seem to +notice any one, and when all was over she walked off alone to the +manager's cottage. + +Observing his wife's tragic calm, her bloodless face, Archie might well +have forgotten his suspicions and refrained from attacking her, as he +had meant to. But he never had the opportunity to attack her. In some +way Adelle conveyed to him that all was at an end between them, and made +it so plain that even Archie was forced to accept it as a fact for the +time being. He never saw Adelle again after the brief service at the +hillside grave. + +Such a conclusion was inevitable: it came to Adelle without debate or +struggle of any sort. A tragedy such as theirs, common to man and woman, +either knits the two indissolubly together as nothing else can, or marks +the complete cessation of all relationship. In their case they had +nothing now, absolutely, to cement together. And Adelle was dimly +conscious that she had before her pressing duties to perform in which +Archie would be a mere drag. + +For the present Archie went to the club to live, crestfallen, but +unbelieving that his little gilded world had come to an end for good in +this summary fashion. After a few attempts to get an interview with his +wife, and learning finally that she had left the neighborhood, he +drifted up to the city, for he found Bellevue less congenial than it had +been, with all the talk about the Davises' affairs that was rife. His +true performances the night of the fire had leaked out in a somewhat +exaggerated form and even his pleasure-loving associates found him "too +yellow." Oddly enough, Adelle, who had been thought generally "cold" and +"stupid," "no addition to the colony," came in for a good deal of +belated praise for her "strong character," and there was much sympathy +expressed for her tragedy. Thus the world revises its hasty judgments +with other equally hasty ones, remaining always helplessly in error +whether it thinks well or ill of its neighbors! + + * * * * * + +For a number of days after the burial of her child, Adelle remained at +the manager's cottage in a state of complete passivity, scarcely making +even a physical exertion. She did not cry. She did not talk. She neither +writhed nor moaned in her pain. She was making no effort to control her +feelings: she did not play the stoic or the Christian. Actually she did +not feel: she was numb in body and soul. This hebetude of all faculty +was the merciful, protecting method that Nature took with her, dimming +the lamp of consciousness until the wounded creature could gain +sufficient resiliency to bear a full realization of life. The pain would +come, months and years hence, bitter, aching pain; but then she would be +able to bear it. + +Each day she went to the grave on the hillside, and carefully ordered +the planting of the place so that it should be surrounded with flowers +that she liked. Also she laid out a little shrub-bordered path to be +made from the pool beside the orangery to the hillside. In these ways +she displayed her concrete habit of thought. For the rest she sat or lay +upon her bed, seeing nothing, probably thinking very little. It was a +form of torpor, and after it had continued for a week or ten days, her +maid was for sending for a doctor. That functionary merely talked +platitudes that Adelle neither understood nor heeded. The maid would +have tried a priest, but feared to suggest it to her mistress. + +The truth was that Adelle was recovering very slowly from her shock. She +was only twenty-five and strong. Her body held many years of activity, +possibly other children, and her mind still awaited its full +development. How that would come was the really vital matter. The +ordinary result would be that, after the full period of lethargy and +physical and mental recuperation, Adelle should drift back into +something like the same life she had previously led. She would go abroad +and establish herself in a new environment, gradually acquiring new +associations that in time would efface the more poignant surfaces of her +tragedy at Highcourt. She would probably marry again, for she was still +a young woman and had a considerable remnant of her fortune. She might +reasonably expect more children to come to her, and thus, with certain +modifications due to her experiences with Archie, live out an average +life of ease and personal interests in the manner of that class that the +probate court and the laws of our civilization had made it possible for +her to join. + +But all that conventional resolution of her destiny was not to be +because of ideas already at work within her--the sole vital remains from +her previous life. Even in her dullest moments of physical and mental +hebetude she felt something pressing upon her from within for +accomplishment, like a piece of unfinished business that she must +presently rouse herself to put through. She scarcely knew what it was +until she made an effort to think it out, and for days she did not make +this effort. + +Gradually she focussed more concretely this unconscious weight upon her +soul. It had to do with the stone mason and his rights to his +grandfather's inheritance. She must see him before he left the country +and come to a final understanding about it all. She wanted, anyway, to +see him more than anybody else. He seemed to her in her dark hour the +healthiest and most natural person she knew--most nearly on her own +level of understanding, the one who really knew all about her and what +her boy's death meant to her. But she was still too utterly will-less to +bring about an interview between herself and her cousin either by +sending for him or going up to the shack to find him. + +Finally, after ten days of this semi-conscious existence, she awoke one +morning with a definite purpose stirring at the roots of her being, and +instead of returning from her child's grave as before she kept on up +over the brow of the hill to the open field. The sight of the large +sweep of earth and ocean and sky on this clear April morning was the +first sensation of returning life that came to her. She stood for some +time contemplating the scene, which glowed with that peculiar intense +light, like vivid illumination, that is characteristic of California. +The world seemed to her this morning a very big place and +lonely--largely untried, unexplored by her, for all her moving about in +it and tasting its sweets. In this mood she proceeded to the little +tar-paper shack. She feared to find it empty, to discover that the mason +had gone to the city, in which case she should have to follow him and go +to the trouble of hunting him up. + +But he had not yet left, although his belongings were neatly packed in +his trunk and kitty-bag. He was fussing about the stove, whistling to +himself as he prepared a bird which he had shot that morning for his +dinner. He had on his town clothes, which made him slightly unfamiliar +in appearance. She knew him in khaki and flannel shirt, with bare arms +and neck. He looked rougher in conventional dress than in his +workingman's clothes. + +At sight of Adelle standing in the doorway, the mason laid down his +frying-pan and stopped whistling. Without greeting he hastily took up +the only chair he had and placed it in the shade of the pepper tree in +front of the shack. Adelle sat down with a wan little smile of thanks. + +"I'm glad you hadn't gone," she said. + +"I ain't been in any particular hurry," her cousin answered. "Been +huntin' some down in the woods," he added, nodding westward. He sat on +the doorsill and picked up a twig to chew. + +"I've been wanting to talk to you about that matter I told you of the +morning after the fire." + +The mason nodded quickly. + +"I don't know yet what should be done about the property," she went on +directly. "I must see some lawyer, I suppose. But it's just what I told +you, I'm sure. Half of Clark's Field belonged to your grandfather and +half to mine, and I have had the whole of it because they couldn't find +your family." + +The mason listened gravely, his bright blue eyes unfathomable. He had +had ample time, naturally, to think over the astounding communication +Adelle had made to him, though he had come to no clear comprehension of +it. A poor man, who for years has longed with all the force of his being +for some of the privilege and freedom of wealth, could not be told that +a large fortune was rightfully his without rousing scintillating lights +in his hungry soul. + +"There isn't all the money there was when I got it," Adelle continued. +"We have spent a lot of money--I don't know just how much there is left. +But there must be at least a half of it--what belongs to you!" + +"Are you sure about this?" the mason demanded, frowning, a slight tremor +in his voice; "about its belonging to father's folks? I never heard any +one say there was money in the family." + +"There wasn't anything but the land--Clark's Field," Adelle explained. +"It was just a farm in grandfather's time, and nothing was done with it +for a long time. It was like that when I was a girl and living in Alton. +It's only recently it has become so valuable." + +"You didn't say nothin' about any property the first time we talked +about our being related," the mason observed. + +"I know," Adelle replied, with a sad little smile. Then she blurted out +the truth,--"I knew it--not then, but afterwards. But I didn't tell +you--I wanted to--but I meant never to tell. I meant to keep it all for +myself and for him--my boy." + +The mason nodded understandingly, while Adelle tried to explain her +ruthless decision. + +"You'd never had money and didn't know about the Field. And it seemed +wrong to take it all away from him--it wasn't his fault, and I didn't +want him to grow up poor and have to fight for a living," she explained +bravely, displaying all the petty consideration she had given to her +problem. Then she added with a sob--"Now it's all different! He was +taken away," she said slowly, using the fatalistic formula which +generations of religious superstition have engraved in human hearts. "He +will not need it!" + +There was silence. Then unconsciously, as if uttered by another person, +came from her the awful judgment,--"Perhaps that was why he was +taken--because I wouldn't tell about the money." + +"It ain't so!" the mason retorted hastily, with a healthy reaction +against this terrible creed of his ancestors. "It had nothin' to do with +your actions, with you, his being smothered in the fire--don't you go +worryin' 'bout that!" + +In his dislike of the doctrine and his desire to deal generously with +the woman, the mason was not wholly right, and later Adelle was to +perceive this. For if she had not been such as she was she would not +have willfully taken to herself such a disastrous person as Archie and +thus planted the seed of tragedy in her life as in her womb. If human +beings are responsible for anything in their lives, she was responsible +for Archie, which sometime she must recognize. + +"You don't think so?" Adelle mused, somewhat relieved. After a little +time she came safely back to sound earth as was her wont,--"Anyway, it's +all different now. I don't want to keep the money. It isn't mine--it +never was; never really belonged to me. Perhaps that was why I spent it +so badly.... I want you to have your share as soon as possible." + +The fire had done its work, she might have said, if not in one way, at +least in another. The result was that she no longer desired to thwart +the workings of law and justice, of right as she knew it. She wished to +divest herself as quickly as possible of that which properly belonged to +another. After all, her money had not brought her much! Why should she +cling to it? + +The mason was still doubtful and observed frowningly,-- + +"It's a mighty long time since grandfather left Alton--more'n fifty +years." + +"Clark's Field has only been put on the market for a little over ten +years," Adelle remarked. "They couldn't do it before, as I told you." + +"But it's been settled now," the mason demurred. "I don't know the law, +but it must be queer if the property could hang fire all these years and +be growing richer all the time." + +"Alton is a big city now where the old Clark farm was," Adelle +explained. + +"I suppose it's growed considerable." + +Then both were silent. The mason's mind was turbulent with feelings and +thoughts. Across the glorious reach of land and sky before his eyes +there opened a vision of radiant palaces and possessions, all that money +could buy to appease the desires of a starved life. + +"My folks will be some surprised," he remarked at last, with his +ironical laugh. + +"I suppose so," Adelle replied seriously. "You'll have to explain it to +them. How many brothers and sisters have you?" + +"There are five of us left," Clark said. "I'm sorry mother has gone. She +would have liked mighty well having a bit of ready money for herself. +She never had much of a time in her life," he added, thinking of the +hard-working wife and mother who had died in poverty after struggling +against odds for fifty years. "It'll mean a good deal, too, to Will and +Stan, I guess;--they've got families, you know." + +Adelle listened with a curious detachment to the happiness that her +magic lamp might bestow when handed over to the other branch of the +family. + +"Money doesn't always mean so much," she remarked, with a deep +realization of the platitude which so many people repeat hypocritically. + +The mason looked at her skeptically out of his blue eyes. That was the +sort of silly pretense the rich or well-to-do often got off for the +benefit of their poorer neighbors--he read stories like that in the +newspapers and magazines. But he knew that the rich usually clung to all +their possessions, in spite of their expressed conviction, at times, of +the inadequacy of material things to provide them with happiness. He was +quite ready for his part, having experienced the other side, to run the +risks of property! + +"I'd like to try having all the money I want for a time!" he laughed +hardily. + +"I almost believe it would have been better for me if I had never heard +of Clark's Field!" Adelle exclaimed, with a bitter sense of the futility +of her own living. And then she told her cousin very briefly what had +happened to her since she first entered the probate court and had been +made a ward of the trust company. + +The mason listened with interest and tried to make out, as well as he +could with his meager equipment of experience in such matters and +Adelle's bare statement, what had been the trouble with her life. At the +end he stated his conclusion,-- + +"I guess it depends on what sort of stuff you've got in you whether +money agrees with you or don't. To some folks it does seem poison, like +drink; but the trouble ain't with the money, perhaps, it's with them." + +"I suppose so," Adelle admitted meekly. "I had no one to show me, and, +anyway, I am not the right kind, I suppose. It takes a good deal of a +person to spend money right and get the best out of it there is." + +"Sure!" the mason replied freely; and added with a frank laugh,--"But we +all want our chance to try!" + +"What will you do with your money?" Adelle asked. + +The young man threw back his head and drew in a long breath as if he +were trying to focus in one desire all the aspirations of his thirsty +soul, which now he could satisfy. + +"I'll take a suite at the Palace and have the best booze money can buy!" +he said with a careless laugh. + +"No, don't do that!" Adelle protested earnestly, thinking of Archie. +"You won't get much out of your money that way." + +"I was joking," the young man laughed. "No, I don't mean to be any booze +fighter. There's too much else to do." + +He confessed to his new cousin some of the aspirations that had been +thwarted by his present condition,--all his longing for education, +experience, and, above all, the desire to be "as good as the next man, +bar none, no matter where I be," an aspiration inexplicable to Adelle, a +curiously aristocratic sensitiveness to caste distinction that might not +be expected in a healthy-minded laboring-man. It was the most American +note in his character, and like a true American he felt sure that money +would enable him to attain "equality" with the land's best. + +"When I see some folks swelling around in motor-cars and spending their +money in big hotels like it was dirt, and doing nothin' to earn it, and +I know those who are starving or slaving every day just to live in a +mean, dirty little way--why, it makes me hot in the collar. It makes me +'most an anarchist. The world's wrong the way things are divided up!" he +exclaimed, forgetting that he was about to take his seat with the +privileged. + +"Well," Adelle mused dubiously, "now you'll have a chance to do what you +want and be 'on top' as you call it." + +"Mos' likely then," the mason turned on himself with an ironic laugh, "I +shan't want to do one thing I think I do now!" + +"I hope it won't change you," Adelle remarked quite frankly. + +The quality that had first attracted her to the young man was his manly +independence and ability to do good, honest, powerful work. If he should +lose this vital expression of himself and his zest for action, the half +of Clark's Field would scarcely pay him for the loss. + +"Don't you worry about me, cousin!" he laughed back confidently. "But +here we are gassin' away as if I were already a millionaire. And most +likely it's nothin' more than a pipe-dream, all told." + +"No, it's true!" Adelle protested. + +"I'll wait to see it in the bank before I chuck my tools. I guess the +lawyers will have to talk before they upset all their fine work for me," +he suggested shrewdly. + +"You must go to Alton right away and see the trust company. I will meet +you there whenever you like--there's nothing to keep me here much +longer." + +"When you are feeling ready for the trip, let me know," the mason said +with good feeling. "Say," he added with some confusion, "you're a good +one to be sittin' there calmly talkin' to me about what I am goin' to do +with your money." + +"It isn't mine any longer--you must get over that idea." + +"What you've always considered to be yours, anyway, and that amounts to +the same thing in this world." + +"I like to talk about it with you," Adelle replied simply, and with +perfect sincerity, as every important statement of Adelle's was sincere. +"I want you to have the money really.... I'm glad it is you, too." + +"Thank you." + +"I'll do everything I can to make it easy for you to get it soon, and +that is why I will go to Alton." + +The mason rose from the doorstep and walked nervously to and fro in +front of the shack. At last he muttered,-- + +"Guess I won't say nothin' to the folks about the money until it is all +settled--it might make 'em kind of anxious." + +"No, that would be better," Adelle agreed. + +"I'm goin' to pull out of here to-night!" + +He turned as he spoke and shoved one foot through the paper wall of his +home, as if he were thus symbolically shedding himself of his toilsome +past. Adelle did not like this impulsive expression, she did not know +why. She rose. + +"Let me know your San Francisco address," she said, "and I will write +you when to meet me in Alton." + +"All right!" + +The mason walked back with her down the hill to the grave of her little +boy. He would have turned back here, but she gently encouraged him to +come with her and stand beside the flower-laden grave. It seemed to her, +after what he had done in risking his life to rescue the child, he had +more right to be there than any one else except herself--far more than +her child's own father. They stood there silently at the foot of the +little mound for some minutes, until Adelle spoke in a perfectly natural +voice. + +"I'd have wanted him to do some real work, if he had grown up--I mean +like yours, and become a strong man." + +"He was a mighty nice little kid," the mason observed, remembering well +the child, who had often that summer played about his staging and talked +to him. + +Adelle explained her scheme of treatment for the grave and the grounds +about it, and they walked slowly down the path to the orangery. + +"Would you like me to fix it all up as you want it?" the mason asked. + +"Would you?" + +"All right--I'll start in to-day and you can watch me and see if it's +done right." + +"But you wanted to go up to the city," Adelle suggested. + +"That don't matter much--there's plenty of time," Clark replied hastily. + +And in a few minutes he remarked gruffly, "Say, I don't want you to +think I was goin' up to 'Frisco on a tear." + +"I didn't think so!" + +She realized then that Clark had not left the place all these ten days +since the fire. + +"I'm goin' to cut out the booze, now there's something else for +excitement," he added. + +"That's good!" + + + + +XLV + + +Adelle registered at the Eclair Hotel in B---- with her maid. It was the +only hotel that she knew in the city, although when she first crossed +the ornate lobby she remembered with a sick sensation that other visit +with Archie on their scandalously notorious arrival from Europe to take +possession of her fortune. However, Adelle was not one to allow +sentimental impressions to upset her, and signed the register +carefully--"Mrs. Adelle Clark and maid, Bellevue, California." She had +resolved to signify her new life by renouncing her married name here in +the country where she had begun life as Adelle Clark, although her +divorce was not yet even started. + +She expected her cousin Tom Clark in a few days. She had thought it best +to precede him and pave the way for him at the Washington Trust Company +by announcing her news to the officers first. A little reflection and +the memory of certain expressions from the trust officers of complacency +in their success in "quieting" the Clark title had convinced her that +this would be the wiser course to pursue. The trust company might find +some objections to undoing all the fine legal work that they had +accomplished in the settlement of the estate. + +Adelle was received by the new president, that same Mr. Solomon Smith +who had delivered the trust company's ultimatum to her after her +marriage. Mr. Smith, it seemed, had recently succeeded to the dignity of +President West, who had retired as chairman of the company's board, fat +with honor and profit. President Solomon Smith received Adelle with all +the consideration due to such an old and rich client, whose business +interests were still presumably considerable, although latterly she had +seen fit to remove them from the cautious guardianship of the trust +company. She was in mourning, he noticed, and looked much older and more +of a person in every way than when it had been his official duty to +deliver his solemn wigging in the Paris studio to the trust company's +erring ward. Mr. Smith probably realized with satisfaction the success +of his prophecies on the consequences of her rash act, which he had so +eloquently pointed out. Adelle made no reference, however, to her own +troubles, nor explained why she had announced herself by her maiden +name. She had come on more important business. + +It took her some time to make clear to the banker what the real purpose +of her visit was, and when Mr. Smith realized it he summoned to the +conference two other officers of the institution, who were better +acquainted with the detail of the Clark estate than he was. After the +thing had been put before them, the temperature in the president's +office leaped upwards with astonishing rapidity on this chilly day in +early May. Three more horrified gentlemen it would have been hard to +find in the entire city, whose citizens are easily horrified. For this +woman, whom Fate and the Washington Trust Company had endowed with a +large fortune, to try to raise the ghost of that troublesome Edward S. +Clark, whom they had been at so much pains and expense to lay, seemed +merely mad. When Adelle reiterated her conviction that she herself had +discovered at last the heirs of the lost Edward S., President Smith +demanded with some asperity whether Mrs. Davis--Mrs. Clark--understood +what this meant. Adelle replied very simply that she supposed it meant +the California Clarks getting at last their half of Clark's Field, which +certainly belonged to them more than to her. + +"Not at all!" all three gentlemen roared at her exasperatedly. + +"They'd have a hard time making good their title now!" one of them +remarked, with a cynical laugh. + +"It would mean a lot of expensive litigation for one thing," another +injected. + +"Which would fall upon you," the trust president pointed out. + +"But why?" Adelle asked quietly. "I shouldn't fight their claims." + +The three gentlemen gasped, and then let forth a flood of discordant +protest, which was summed up by the president's flat assertion,-- + +"You'd have to!" + +Patiently, while his colleagues waited, he tried to make clear to Adelle +in words of two syllables that the Clark's Field Associates would be +obliged to defend the titles they had given to the land, and she as +majority partner in this lucrative enterprise would have to stand her +share of the risk and the legal expense involved. Adelle saw that the +affair was more complex than she had thought and said so, with no +indication, however, of giving up her purpose. + +"It is not a simple matter at all to consider the claims of these +California Clarks. The land has passed out of our--your control: it has +probably passed through several hands in many instances, each owner +pledging his faith in the validity of his title. You can see that any +action taken now by these heirs of Edward S. Clark against the present +owners of Clark's Field would injure numberless innocent people. It is +not to be thought of for one moment!" Having reached a moral ground for +not upsetting things as they were, the president of the trust company +felt more at ease and expatiated at length on "the good faith of the +Washington Trust Company and all others" who had been parties to the +transaction. Adelle sighed as she listened to the torrent of eloquence +and realized what an upheaval her simple act of restitution would cause. +It seemed to her that the law was a very peculiar institution, indeed, +which prevented people from using their property for many years in order +not to injure some possible heirs, and then just as stoutly prevented +those heirs when they had been discovered from getting their own! + +"It is simply preposterous, the whole thing," one of the younger +officers observed, rising to go about more important business. + +"It's not likely to come to anything--they are poor people, these other +Clarks, you said?" inquired Mr. Smith. + +"I know only one of them," Adelle replied. "He was a stone mason working +on my place in California. It was by accident that I learned of his +relationship to me. He has some brothers and sisters living, four of +them I think he said. They are all poor people. I don't know whether he +has any cousins. I didn't ask him. But I think he said something once +about an uncle or aunt, so it's likely there are other heirs, too." + +The trust president asked testily,-- + +"You didn't by any chance mention to this stone mason your belief that +he was entitled to a share in his grandfather's property?" + +"Yes, I did!" Adelle promptly replied. "We talked it over several +times." + +The three gentlemen murmured something. + +"And he is coming on to see about it. I arranged to meet him here on the +sixteenth, day after to-morrow." + +"Here!" + +Adelle nodded. + +"We thought that would be the quickest way to settle it, as you know all +about the property." + +"The young man will have his journey for nothing," the president said +grimly. + +Then he took Adelle to task in the same patronizing, moral tone he had +used to her on the occasion of her marriage. + +"My dear young woman, you have acted in this matter very inadvisedly, +very rashly!" + +That was her unfortunate habit, he seemed to say, to act rashly. The +irony of it all was that Adelle, who acted so rarely of her own +initiative, should be exposed to this charge in the two most important +instances when she had acted of her own volition and acted promptly! + +"You see now how disastrous any such course as you proposed would be for +you and for many others." (He was thinking chiefly of his board of +directors and the gentlemen who had profited through the Clark's Field +Associates, but he put it in the altruistic way.) "Fortunately, you can +do no great harm to these innocent persons. The titles to Clark's Field +we firmly believe are unassailable, impregnable. No court in this State +would void those titles after they have once been quieted. You have +merely aroused false hopes, I am afraid, and the spirit of greed in a +lot of ignorant poor people,--who unless they are well advised will +waste their savings in a vain attempt to get property that doesn't +belong to them." + +His tone was both moral and reproving. He wanted her to feel that, +whereas she had thought she was doing a generous and high-minded thing +by communicating to this lost tribe of Clarks her knowledge of their +outlawed opportunity for riches, she had in reality merely made trouble +for every one including herself. + +"You are a woman," Mr. Solomon Smith continued severely, "and naturally +ignorant of business and law. It is a pity that you did not consult some +one, some strong, sensible person whose judgment you could rely on, and +not fly off at a tangent on a foolish ideal!... By the way, where is +your husband?" + +"In California," Adelle replied sulkily. + +She did not like Mr. Smith's tone. He knew very well that Archie was not +the strong, sensible person upon whose judgment she might rely. + +"Are you divorced?" the president asked, remembering that she had +announced herself by her maiden name. + +"No," Adelle admitted, wondering what this had to do with the business. + +"Well, your husband is concerned--what does he think of it?" + +"I don't know. It makes no difference what he thinks of it," Adelle +replied. + +"You will find that it does make a great difference," the trust officer +quickly rejoined, seizing upon Archie as a convenient weapon. He +thereupon discoursed upon the legal and moral rights of a husband in his +wife's property and warned Adelle solemnly that she was taking a +dangerous course in acting without Archie's consent. Archie doubtless +would have been much pleased. It seemed trying to Adelle, who had not +the least idea of ever again waiting upon Archie's consent about +anything, to have her marriage used against her in this fashion by the +trust company. They had done everything they could to keep Archie's +hands off the property, and now they gravely told her that it belonged +to Archie as well as to herself! + +Mr. Smith continued to talk for some time longer, but Adelle was calmly +oblivious to what he was saying. She was thinking. It was clear to her +that there were objections to the simple method by which she had +expected to transfer a part of Clark's Field to its rightful owners, but +she had by no means abandoned her purpose, as the trust company +president thought. Like many forceful men whom President Smith very much +admired, she was no great respecter of law as such. What couldn't be +done in one way might in another, and she must now find out that other +way, which obviously she would not discover from the officers of the +Washington Trust Company. So she rose and pulled on her long gloves. + +"I must think it over," she remarked thoughtfully, "and see what my +cousin, Mr. Clark, thinks about it. I will come in again in a few days." +And with a slight nod to the assembled gentlemen she passed out of the +president's private office. + +Three disgusted gentlemen looked at each other after her departure. One +of them said the trite and stupid and untrue thing,--"Just like a +woman!" + +Another reacted equally conventionally,--"She must be a little queer." + +And the third--the president--vouchsafed,--"What she needs is a strong +hand to keep her straight." + +All of which Adelle, like any self-respecting woman, might have +resented. + + + + +XLVI + + +Adelle passed through the marble banking-room of the trust company, +which once had been for her the acme of splendor, out upon the narrow +city street in considerable puzzlement. She did not know which way to +turn next, literally. She might consult some lawyer; that in fact was +what the trust people had advised--that she should see their lawyers. +But Adelle shrewdly concluded that it would be useless to see the +Washington Trust Company's lawyers, who would doubtless tell her again +in less intelligible language precisely what the trust officers had +said. And she knew of no other lawyers in the city whom she might +consult independently. Besides, she thought it better to see her cousin +before going to the lawyers, feeling that this self-reliant, if socially +inexperienced, young workman might have pertinent suggestions to offer. +In the mean time, not having anything else to do immediately, she turned +in the direction of her hotel. + +Any of the preoccupied citizens of B---- who might have encountered this +black-dressed, pale young woman sauntering up their crowded street this +morning, could scarcely have divined what was going on behind those +still, gray eyes. She was not thinking of the goods displayed in the +shop windows, though her eyes mechanically flitted over them, nor was +she musing upon a lover, though Tom Clark often crossed her mind, nor +was she considering the weather, which was puritanically raw and +ruffling, nor of any other thing than how she might divest herself of a +large part of that fortune which the Washington Trust Company had so +meritoriously preserved for her! There was a very simple way out of her +dilemma, of course, but it had never occurred to her; and if it had +occurred to the trust officers, they had thought best not to suggest it +to their scatter-brained client. So she knitted her brows and thought, +without heeding where she was. + +When she came to a certain small square, she turned off the main street +unconsciously and walked up a quiet block towards the court-house. It +was the path she had trod eleven years before, only in the reverse +direction when she had led her aunt from Judge Orcutt's courtroom to the +home of the Washington Trust Company. Her mind took charge of her +without calling upon her will, as it did so often, and presently she +entered the great granite court-house with no clear purpose in her mind, +other than a hidden desire, perhaps, to see the probate judge once more. +Judge Orcutt was not in the room on the second floor which she +remembered. Instead, there was a stranger holding court there, a +dull-eyed, fat gentleman with drooping black mustache and a snappy +voice, who did not attract Adelle. She thought she had made a mistake in +the room and looked up and down the corridor for a room labeled with +Judge Orcutt's name, but found none. Then she asked a court attendant, +who told her that the judge had been retired for the last two years! +Adelle was turning away, with a sense of disappointment, when it came +into her mind like an inspiration--"He might still be living in the +city!" She inquired, and the court attendant, who did not know, was +polite enough to consult a directory and found that sure enough Judge +Orcutt was living on Mountcourt Street, which happened to be not far +away--in fact just over the hill from the court-house. + +Thereupon, Adelle went on her way more swiftly, with a conscious purpose +guiding her feet, and found Mountcourt Street--a little, quiet, by-path +of a street such as exists in no other city of our famous land. It was +not a rifle-shot from the court-house and the busiest centers of the +city, yet it was as retired and as reposeful as if it had been forgotten +ever since the previous century, when its houses were built. And in the +middle of the first block, a sober, little brick house with an old white +painted door and window lights, was Judge Orcutt's number. Adelle was +shown to a small room in the front of the house and sat down, her heart +strangely beating as if she were waiting an appointment with a lover. +The house was so still! An old French clock ticked silently on the +mantelpiece beneath a glass case. All the chairs and tables, even the +rug, in the small room seemed like the house and the street, relics of +an orderly, peaceful past. Adelle knew something about furniture and +house decoration: it was one of the minor arts patronized by her class, +and she had learned enough to talk knowingly about "periods" and +"styles." Judge Orcutt's house was of no particular "period" or "style," +but it was remarkably harmonious--the garment carefully chosen by a +person with traditions.... Presently the servant came back and invited +Adelle to go upstairs to the judge's library, as Judge Orcutt was not +feeling well to-day, she explained. + +The study was like the room below, only larger, lighter, and well filled +with books. The judge was sitting near the grate, in which was burning a +soft-coal fire. He smiled on Adelle's entrance and apologized for not +rising. + +"It's the east wind," he explained. "I've known it all my life, but it +gets us old fellows, you know, on days like these!" + +Adelle took his thin hand and sat down in the seat he pointed out near +the fire. The judge appeared to her to be no older than he had the first +time she had seen him when she went to the probate court with her aunt. +Then he had seemed to her child's eyes an old man, and now he was +indubitably old and rather frail, with a clean-shaven, delicately +moulded chin beneath his white mustache. Adelle was in no hurry to begin +on her errand. She glanced about at the cheerful room with its rows of +old books, presumably the works of those poet friends to whom the judge +could now devote an uninterrupted leisure in communion. She looked at +the old chairs and lounge and mahogany secretary, handed down, no doubt, +from the judge's ancestors, for they antedated even the old judge. And +then, through the little square panes in the windows, out to the +chimney-pots on the slope of the hill, and across the harbor, with its +tangle of wharves and masts, to the bay, through which the ships passed +on into the ocean. She felt that it was exactly the right location for +an old gentleman, who was done with the battles of life and yet wanted +to remain within sight and sound of the battle-field. + +The judge, noticing her roving eyes, remarked genially,--"I like to look +out over the place where I have been working so many years!" + +"It's nice here," Adelle replied. + +There was much more in the room and the house that Adelle vaguely +felt--an air of peace, of gentle and serene contemplation, that came +from the man himself, who had taken what life had offered him and turned +it to good in the alembic of his peculiar nature. It had been a sound +and sweet life, on the whole, and this was a sweet retreat, smelling of +old books and old meetings, fragrant with memories of another world, +another people! This fruit of the spirit, which is all that is left from +living, Adelle could now feel acutely, if she could not express it fitly +in words. And she was grateful for it. She knew that at last she had +come to the right place for the solution of her problem, and she did not +hasten. Neither did the judge hurry her to her errand. Evidently he +recalled who she was, and his keen eyes probably read more of the +secrets of those years since her last appearance in his +court--extravagantly dressed, almost insolent, to listen indifferently +to his severe homily upon Clark's Field--than she suspected. So they +chatted for a few minutes about the view, the city, the old house, and +then, as Adele still seemed tongue-tied, the judge remarked,-- + +"My servant gave your name as Mrs. Clark--did she not make a mistake?" + +"No," Adelle said, "That is what I shall call myself now--Mrs. Adelle +Clark." + +The judge murmured something behind his hand. Hers was another of these +modern mishaps, it seemed, falsely called marriages. Each case of +divorce gave his old heart a little stab, wounding a loyalty to a +beautiful ideal that he had kept intact. But he was old enough and wise +enough, having judged men and women all his life, not to pronounce +judgment on the most intimate and secret of all human affairs. He waited +for Adelle to tell her story, and presently she began. + +"Judge Orcutt," she said, "I want to tell you something and ask your +advice because I feel that you will know what to do." + +With this introduction she proceeded to retell her story, the one she +had told that morning to the officers of the trust company. But having +been over it once she told it much better to the judge, more coherently, +more fully, with many small, intimate, revealing touches that she had +omitted before. It was easier for her to talk to the old man, who +listened with warm, understanding eyes, and nodded his white head when +she cut to the quick of things as if he understood why without being +told everything precisely. She felt that she could tell him everything, +all her own life, all that she was but now beginning to comprehend and +see as a whole. He had for her the lure of the confessor, and Adelle +needed a confessor. + +So she described to him briefly the course of her married life up to the +time when she first began to notice the mason at work upon the terrace +wall. Without accusing Archie, she made the judge nevertheless +comprehend why she no longer could bear his name. From her first meeting +with her cousin she was much more detailed in her story, giving +everything chronologically, anxious to omit nothing which might be of +importance. She told all the circumstances of her slow comprehension of +the truth, that this stone mason was her second cousin and should have +inherited equally with herself the riches of Clark's Field. She told +squarely of her weeks of hesitation and final decision not to reveal to +the mason or to any one her knowledge of the truth. Then came the night +of the fire and her personal tragedy in the ruin of Highcourt. And all +this she told, dry-eyed, without passion, quite baldly, as if that was +the only way in which she could face it. Lastly she told of sending for +the mason the next morning and before her husband confessing her useless +secret, and then briefly she spoke of the subsequent steps that had +brought her to the city to see the Washington Trust Company. + +"And they told you?" queried the judge, leaning forward to poke the coal +fire into flame. + +"They said that nothing could be done now for these California Clarks, +because it would make a lot of trouble and harm innocent people to go +back of the new titles to the property," Adelle replied. + +"And they were perfectly right," Judge Orcutt said, with a long sigh, +after a moment of consideration. "It was the only thing they could say +to you!" + +He went into the law of it and explained to Adelle, more clearly than it +had ever been done, just how the uncertain title had finally been +"quieted," all the legal steps which had been duly taken to notify the +unknown heirs, and the judicial sale ordered by the court, with the +meaning of the process. + +"So you can see that the law took great pains to find these people, and +make sure that no wrong should be done to any rightful claimants, and +because it failed to find the lost heirs there is no reason why people +who bought the land in good faith should be made to suffer. You see?" + +Adelle saw, but she was disappointed. It was the same thing the trust +company had said to her, only now she felt sure of it. What could she +say to her young cousin? That troubled her a great deal. She hated to +disappoint his expectations, which she had ignorantly aroused. + +"And the law is right," the old judge mused aloud, "whatever hardship it +may seem to work to these unknown heirs like your California cousins. +For you must see that human life could not go on unless we cleaned the +slate sometimes arbitrarily, and began all over. It is better for +everybody to accept certain inexact or unjust conditions rather than to +disturb the whole fabric of human society by attempting to do exact +justice, which, after all, is in itself a human impossibility. That is +what our good people, reformers and anarchists alike, often fail to +understand!... So these Clarks, I am afraid, will have to suffer for the +carelessness of their ancestor in not leaving his address behind him +when he left for the West. No court would open up the old tangle about +Clark's Field now that it has been finally adjudicated according to due +process of law. No court would order the case reopened--it is _res +judicata_, fixed unalterably!" + +He smiled indulgently upon Adelle with his little tag of legal Latin. He +might be a poet, but he knew the laws of inheritance, and moreover, now +in his old age, he had come out from his valleys of indecision and knew +that there must be many wrongs both legal and extra-legal in our human +system, and that it was not always accomplishing the most good to try to +do exact justice. As he had said to Adelle, ours is a world of chance +and mistake, and the most wholesome thing for every generation is to +wipe the slate clean as far as possible and go ahead hopefully, +courageously to create a new and sounder life upon a substructure +possibly of fraud and injustice and cruelty. Thus man climbed always +upwards. To rend and tear and fight, to try to eradicate every wrong was +also human, but it was largely futile. + +So when Adelle ventured to say,-- + +"But people often do try to upset titles, don't they? I have seen +stories in the newspapers about heirs getting together to recover +possession of valuable lands that have been out of the family longer +than Clark's Field." + +The judge nodded, and added,-- + +"Too true! But do you know how few of these attempts ever succeed--even +get to a trial of the case? Almost none. Usually they are fraudulent +schemes of rascals who collect money from gullible persons and then put +the money into their own pockets and nothing whatever is done. It would +be very foolish of these cousins of yours to try anything of the sort. +It would make them miserable for years and eat up what little money they +have. You must make this all clear to the young man who is to meet you +here. Send him to me if he has any doubts!" + +"What can I do about it, then?" Adelle demanded. "It belongs to them, +and I want them to have it. There must be some way!" + +The judge looked at the young woman with a curious, indulgent smile. He +had gathered from her story that her own experience with Clark's Field +had not been a successful one by any means. Was that why she was so +anxious to shoulder off upon these unknown members of her family the +burden of riches which had proved too much for her? Just what was her +motive? A conscience newly aroused by her terrible tragedy and +hypersensitive? An interest womanwise in this young stone mason, who was +the only one of the California Clarks she had yet seen?... The judge +leaned forward and took Adelle's hand. + +"Tell me, my dear," he said, "just why you want them to have your money. +For of course it would be _your_ money that they would get in the end, +if by any possibility they could win their case." + +Adelle looked into the old man's kind eyes, but did not reply. It was +not easy for her to explain the persistent purpose that moved her. + +"Has wealth meant so much to you? or so little?" the judge asked, +thinking of his own part in providing Adelle's fortune for her. + +Adelle slowly shook her head. + +"Do you think that these other Clarks would use it more wisely?" And as +Adelle did not reply at once he repeated,--"Have you any reason to +believe that they would be happier than you have been or better?" + +"Money doesn't make happiness," Adelle said with a pathetic conviction +of the truth of the truism. The energy of her life, it seemed, as in the +case of so many others, had been given to proving the truth of axioms +one after another! + +The judge smiled and released her hand. He sat back in his deep chair +watching Adelle with kindly eyes. He seemed to see the woman's awakening +mind slowly at work before him, struggling patiently to grasp what was +still just beyond her comprehension. + +"What shall I do?" she appealed finally. "Tell me!" + +"There is something you can do--a very simple thing! I wonder it has not +occurred to you before." + +"What is it?" Adelle asked eagerly. + +"You can give part of your own fortune--an exact half of it if you +like--to these new cousins of yours, and so accomplish what you want +without hurting any one but yourself." + +"I don't think they would take the money that way--I don't believe _he_ +would!" Adelle said doubtfully. + +"There are few persons," the judge observed indulgently, "who cannot be +induced to take money in one way or another!" + +"It isn't quite the same thing," Adelle said, in a disappointed tone. "I +don't think he would like it that way." + +"It amounts to the same thing in the end, doesn't it?" + +"Perhaps." + +She did not tell the judge that if she should give these California +Clarks one half of the fortune she had received from Clark's Field, she +should be poor, perhaps destitute. + +"But before you decide to do anything, you must make up your mind very +carefully, for it cannot be undone. Are you quite sure that you are +doing the wisest thing in turning over such a large fortune to persons +you know almost nothing about?" + +"I know _him_--the mason, and I think it would be safer with him than +with me." + +The judge smiled enigmatically. + +"If he would take it from me like that--perhaps he need not know?" she +asked. + +"I think that he had better know!... Bring him to see me when he comes +and we can talk it over together, all three of us," the judge suggested. + +"I will do that!" + +"And now I want you to give me the pleasure of lunching with me, a very +simple old man's lunch, when we can talk about other things than money!" +And with another gentle smile the judge took Adelle's arm and hobbled +out to the next room. + +A cheerful bar of sunlight fell across the small table between the two +napkins and made the old silver gleam. Adelle felt more at peace, more +calmly content with life, than she had since the death of her child. She +was sure that somehow it was all coming out right, not only the money +from Clark's Field, but also her own troubled life, although she could +not see the precise steps to be taken. As usual her destiny, after +leading her by many devious routes, brought her to the one door where +she might obtain light.... + +"Tell me," said her host in his courteous tones, "about your +California--I have always wanted to go there some day." + + + + +XLVII + + +When Adelle descended from her room to the hotel parlor to meet her +cousin on his arrival, she was conscious of trepidation. However the +matter might turn out in the end, she must now give the young mason a +first disappointment, and she was keenly aware of what that might be to +him after dreaming his dream all these weeks of freedom and power that +was unexpectedly to be his. She did not like to disappoint him, even +temporarily, and she also felt somewhat foolish because she had so +confidently assumed that it would be a simple matter to set the Clark +inheritance right. + +The stone mason was sitting cornerwise on his chair in the hotel room, +twirling on his thumb a new "Stetson" hat that he had purchased as part +of his holiday equipment. There was nothing especially bizarre in the +costume that Tom Clark had chosen. Democracy has eradicated almost +everything individual or picturesque in man's attire. The standard +equipment may be had in every town in the land. There remains merely the +fine distinction of being well dressed against being badly dressed, and +Clark was badly dressed, as any experienced eye such as Adelle's could +see at a glance. Nothing he had on fitted him or became him. A very red +neck and face emerged from a high white collar, and those muscular arms +that Adelle had always admired for their color of copper bronze and +their free, graceful action, now merely prodded out the stiff folds of +his readymade suit. His muscles seemed to resent their confinement in +good clothes and played tricks like a naughty boy. + +Adelle, perceiving him in his corner as soon as she entered the room, +realized at once that he was out of place. It seemed that there were +people, men as well as women, who were born to wear fine clothes and to +acquire all the habits that went with them. For the past ten years these +were the people she had associated with almost exclusively, people who +could be known by their clothes. The stone mason belonged to that large +fringe of the social world who must be known by something else. Adelle +had recently perceived that there was another, small class of people +like Judge Orcutt who could be known both by their clothes and by +something finer than the clothes which they wore. Tom Clark could never +become one of these. + +But as soon as Adelle was seated near her cousin and talking to him, she +forgot his defects of appearance--his red neck and great paws and clumsy +posture. She felt once more the man--the man she had come to respect and +like, who had an individuality quite independent of clothes and culture. +After the first greetings Adelle was silent, and it was the mason +himself who asked her bluntly,-- + +"Well, what did the bank say? I guess it surprised 'em some, didn't it?" + +Then Adelle was obliged to tell him of her fruitless expedition to the +Washington Trust Company. + +"So they turned us down hard!" Clark commented, with a slight +contraction of his eyebrows. "The stiffs!" + +Already a sardonic grin was loosening the corners of his compressed +lips. Life had in fact jested with him too often and too bitterly for +him to trust its promises completely. He had no real confidence in +Fortune's smiles. + +"It doesn't seem right," Adelle hastened to say. "But I am afraid what +they said must be so, for Judge Orcutt told me it was the law." + +"And who is your Judge Orcutt?" the mason demanded suspiciously. + +For an instant he seemed to doubt Adelle's good faith, believed that she +was trying to "double-cross" him as he would express it, having had time +since they parted to realize that it was not for her own interest to +admit the claims of the senior branch of the Clarks. But he could not +have kept his suspicion long, for Adelle's honest, troubled eyes were +plain proof of her concern for him. + +"Judge Orcutt," she explained, "was the probate judge who had charge of +the estate when my uncle died. He made the trust company my guardian +then. I went to see him yesterday, and had a long talk with him about it +all. I want you to see him, too;--can't you go to his house with me this +morning?" + +"Why should I see the judge?" the mason demanded. + +"He can make you understand better than I can the reasons why all the +titles can't be disturbed. And there may be a way, another way of doing +what we want," Adelle added hesitantly, with some confusion. + +The mason looked at her closely, but he seemed to have no more suspicion +than Adelle herself had had at first of what this way was. He said,-- + +"Well, I've got no particular objection to seeing the judge. There's +plenty of time--ain't much else for me to do in these parts, now I'm +here." + +With another sardonic laugh for his dashed hopes, he rose jerkily, as if +he was ready to go anywhere at once. + +"It's rather early yet," Adelle remarked, consulting her watch. "We had +better wait a little while before going to the judge." + +The young man reseated himself and looked about idly at the rich +ornamentation of the hotel room. + +"Some class this," he observed, concerning the Eclair Hotel, which was +precisely what the hotel management wanted its patrons to feel. + +"Did you see your sister in Philadelphia?" Adelle asked. + +"Yep," he replied non-committally. Evidently his tour of the family had +not begun favorably, and Adelle refrained from pressing the questions +she had in mind. + +"You have some first cousins, too, haven't you?" Adelle asked, +remembering the judge's inquiry. + +"A whole bunch of 'em!" the mason laughed. "Father had two brothers and +one sister, and all of 'em had big families, and my mother had a lot of +nephews and nieces, but they don't count for the inheritance." + +In contrast with the Alton Clarks, of whom Adelle was the sole survivor, +the California branch of the family had been prolific. Adelle realized +that as the judge had pointed out to her, it was not simply a question +of endowing one intelligent, interesting young man with a half of +Clark's Field, but of parceling it out in small lots to a numerous +family connection--a much less pleasant deed. + +"Do you know these Clark cousins?" she asked. + +"Some of 'em," the mason said. "They don't amount to much, the lot of +'em. There's only one made any stir in the world, that's Stan Clark, my +uncle Samuel's son. He's in the California Legislature," he said with a +certain pride. "And they tell me he's as much of a crook as they make +'em! Then there's a brother of Stan--Sol Clark. He runs a newspaper up +in Fresno County, and I guess he's another little crook. There's a bunch +of Clarks down in Los Angeles, in the fruit commission business--I don't +know nothing about them. Oh, there's Clarks enough of our sort!" he +concluded grimly. + +Adelle could see that the stone mason had very slight intercourse with +any of his cousins. Like most working-people he was necessarily limited +in his social relations to his immediate neighbors, the relatives he +could get at easily in his free hours--holidays and Sundays and after +his eight hours of work was done. The mason's hands were not formed for +much penmanship! Adelle also realized that the stone mason, like more +prosperous people, did not love the members of his family just because +they were Clarks. There was no close family bond of any sort. The mason +knew less about his immediate relatives than he did about many other +people in the world, and felt less close to them; and of course she knew +them not even by name. She felt no great incentive to bequeath small +portions of Clark's Field to these unknown little people who happened to +bear the name of Clark--now that the law no longer demanded a +distribution of the estate, in fact prohibited it! + +Thus Adelle realized the absurdity of the family inheritance scheme by +which property is preserved for the use of blood descendants of its +owner, irrespective of their fitness to use it. She saw that inheritance +was a mere survival of an archaic system of tribal bond, which society, +through its customary inertia and timidity and general dislike for +change, had preserved,--indeed, had made infinitely complex and precise +by a code of property laws. She sat back in her chair, silent, puzzled +and baffled by the situation. The only way, it seemed, in which she +could give the stone mason his share of his grandfather's property was +by stripping herself of all her possessions for the tribe of California +Clarks, which she felt no inclination to do. + +Her cousin, apparently, had been following the same course of reflection +in part. He observed dispassionately,-- + +"I don't know much about 'em, and you don't know anything at all, of +course. Mos' likely they 're no better and no worse than any average +bunch of human beings. It's curious to think that if grandfather had +kept his folks back East informed of his post-office address, all these +Clarks big and little would have come in for a slice of the pie!" + +"It might not have been such a big pie, then," Adelle remarked. + +She remembered quite well what the judge had said about the accumulation +of her fortune. It was just because these California Clarks had been +lost to sight that there was any "pie" at all. If Edward S. had left his +post-office address, there was no doubt that long before this Clark's +Field would have been eaten up: there would have been no Adelle +Clark--and no book about her and Clark's Field! + +The mason tossed his hat in the air and caught it dexterously on the +point of his thumb. He mused,-- + +"All the same they'd open their eyes some, I guess, if they knew what we +know. My, wouldn't it make 'em mad to think how near they'd come to some +easy money!" + +He laughed with relish at the ironical humor of the situation--the +picture of the California Clarks running hungrily with outstretched +hands to grab their piece of Clark's Field. And he laughed with a bitter +perception of the underlying farce of human society. It was his ironic +sense of the accidental element in life, especially in relation to +property ownership and class distinctions, based on property possession, +that made him an incipient anarchist, such as he had described himself +to Adelle. He was far too intelligent to believe what the Sunday School +taught, and the average American thinks he believes, that property and +position in this world are apportioned by desert of one sort or another. +He knew in the radius of his own circumscribed life too many instances +where privilege was based on nothing more real than Adelle's claim to +Clark's Field. In the hasty fashion of his nature he concluded +intolerantly that all personal privilege was rotten, and hated--or +thought he did--all those "grafters" who enjoyed what Fate had not been +kind enough to give him. Adelle disliked his ironical laughter, for +without knowing it she was groping towards a sounder belief about life +than the anarchist's, and she felt sorry for her mistake in arousing +false expectations in her cousin, because in the end it might make him +all the harder, confirm him in his revolt against life. No, she must +find some way out, so that a part of her unearned fortune could be of +real benefit to him. + +"Tell me again," Clark demanded moodily, "just what those banker stiffs +said about the title? When was it finally fixed up so as to shut us +out?" + +"I don't know just when, but I suppose some time before I came of age. +It must have been between the time my aunt and I first went to see them +and my twenty-first birthday." + +Clark made a rapid calculation. + +"That was about the time father died and mother and we kids were tryin' +to live on nothin'. The money would have come in mighty handy then, let +me tell you!... Well, I suppose the lawyers know what they're about." + +"I suppose they do," Adelle admitted reluctantly. + +"I guess they don't want no more fuss with Clark's Field--after they've +got the thing all troweled out fine and smooth." + +Adelle felt the cynicism in his voice, and keenly realized that it was +for her benefit that the "troweling" had been skillfully performed. + +"That's gone into the discard!" the mason exclaimed finally, jumping up +and whistling softly. + +He had that look in his blue eyes that Adelle recognized--the dangerous +glint. If she were not there or if she had been a man, he would have +found the shortest path to a drink, then taken another, and probably +many others. Very likely that was what he meant to do to-night, but at +least she would keep him for dinner and make him take her to the theater +for which she had already procured seats. Adelle did not censure him for +drinking, not as she had censured Archie, because she felt that he drank +in a different spirit, as an outlet for his realization of the sardonic +inadequacy of life, not as a mere sensual indulgence. If the keen spirit +of the man were satisfied with work, he would never drink at all, she +was sure. + +"I think we can go over to the judge's now," she said, observing his +restlessness. + +The two crossed the few blocks of city streets to the quiet corner on +the hill behind the court-house where Judge Orcutt lived. The east wind +had blown itself out the night before, and a beautiful May morning +filled even the city with the spirit of spring. + +They found the old judge up and about his study, quite lively and full +of cordial welcome. He glanced keenly at the young mason, who lingered +awkwardly, scowling, beside the door. + +"Come in, do!... It's too fine a day for indoors, isn't it? I've ordered +a carriage," he said almost at once, "and I want you both to take a +drive with me." + + + + +XLVIII + + +Since Adelle's visit Judge Orcutt had given some hours of profound +reflection to Clark's Field, for the second time in his life. Not to the +legal problem suggested by the young woman's desire to upset the +disposition of her property. That he had answered in the only way he +could, firmly and decisively. Unscrupulous lawyers might hold out +delusive hopes to these newly found heirs if they should fall into their +clutches; but the probate judge knew the law of the land and the temper +of the courts on this familiar topic. No, his attention had been given +to Adelle herself and to her request for his advice upon what she should +do with the property that had been given her in the due process of the +law. He realized that he was called upon to advise again crucially in +regard to Clark's Field. For he recognized Adelle's earnestness of +purpose and her pathetically groping desire for light upon life. + +He had already reversed that decision about her, given when Adelle upon +her majority appeared in his court and he had had occasion to lecture +her about the nature of the fortune he was handing over to her. Then his +harsh tone had been due to a sense of futility in having been at great +pains to preserve for this foolishly dressed and apparently empty-headed +young woman a very great property. To him had come then acutely the +disheartening realization of the underlying irony of life, when such +power and privilege could be put into such futile hands. And he--the +conscientious judge--had been the instrument of the law in perpetrating +this bitter jest upon justice. But now he felt that Adelle might justify +her good fortune. For it seemed that her riches after poisoning her had +already begun to work their own cure. She wanted to rid herself of them. +That was a good sign. + +Not that he sympathized in her crude plan of endowing these unknown +Clark cousins with a lot of her money. He was glad that, at any rate, +the law put a stop to further litigation over Clark's Field. If she +wanted to distribute her estate to them she could, of course. But in all +probability it would do them little good; and it might do a great deal +of harm. He was interested in Adelle, in her development and her being, +much more than in the Clark money. What would be best for her +ultimately? If he had been a conventionally minded old gentleman, he +would have urged her to bestow her money prudently upon safe +charities--perhaps create a special philanthropic trust for the +distribution of Clark's Field, after her death, of course, for the good +of education, or hospitals, or art--the ordinary channels chosen by +those rich persons who cared to alienate from themselves and their heirs +a portion of their property. But the judge, fortunately, was not +conventionally minded, although he had sat upon the bench for upwards of +forty years. He knew that philanthropy was a very wasteful and +mechanical method of attaining an end, and often did great harm to +everybody, because such a little charity made such an immense amount of +social salve. He did not believe that "philanthropy" would appeal in its +common forms to Adelle, certainly not deathbed giving. + +She had been through some terrible experiences, that was evident, and +was still more shaken by them than she knew. But she was young, with a +long life presumably to lead, and other children and loves and interests +to blossom in it. Would it not be wise for her to retain her property, +now that she had learned something of the nature of money, and endeavor +by herself to use Clark's Field wisely? It was here that the judge's +musings brought up. He was inclined to have faith in Adelle as a person +for the first time. + +We can see how far from the anarchist his philosophy of life led him. +The accidents of life--yes, but mysterious, not merely ironic and +meaningless, accidents! Adelle Clark, the unpromising little girl, the +loud, silly young married woman, was the instrument chosen by Fate--only +the judge said God-sharpened by pain and sorrow to become the +intelligent destiny of Clark's Field. Could the law with all its hedging +and guarding beat that? Could the stone mason or the judge himself or +any human mind select a better executor for Clark's Field than the +unlikely instrument which Fate had chosen? The judge thought not, and +with his own little plan in mind serenely awaited the arrival of the +Clark cousins on this joyous May morning, having previously ordered the +horses and carriage that he commonly used for his outings. + + * * * * * + +Adelle sat beside the judge in the old-fashioned brougham, and the stone +mason opposite to them, his great brown hands bedded on his knees, his +face critically examining the city landscape. The judge talked chiefly +to the young man, in his humorous and rather garrulous manner, +describing for his benefit the glories of the old city. They plunged +almost at once off the hill into a slum, where in the tall brick +tenements women were hanging out of the windows enjoying the spring day. +The sunshine and the blue sky made the narrow, dirty streets, and the +evil-looking buildings even more out of place than usual. The young +Californian wrinkled his mouth scornfully over it. But soon they drove +out upon a new bridge that bound the two parts of the city together +where the breeze came in across the water gayly. The mason was specially +pleased with the tunnel through which the surface cars disappeared into +the bowels of the city. That was some good, he said, and added that they +did not have it in California. "But we don't need it yet--we aren't so +crowded out there," he explained. He did not think much of the tall +buildings they encountered on their route. They had better ones in +"'Frisco," and had he not seen New York? His attitude towards this home +of his forefathers was mildly tolerant. If the issue had been put to him +squarely, he would never have exchanged his free California inheritance +for his share of Clark's Field! He seemed to think better of his +grandfather for having shaken the dust of Alton from his scornful feet. +That was exactly what he himself would have done if it had been his +misfortune to belong to the younger branch of the family. But in that +case, perhaps, he would not have had the courage to brave the unknown! + +Adelle from her corner of the carriage silently followed this in her +cousin's expressive face. She saw that it all seemed small to him, +petty, planned on a little scale. + +"Give me the Coast!" he said when at last they reached the famous Square +of Alton, which was now little more than the intersection of three noisy +streets, and turned up the old South Road. That simple expression meant +volumes as she knew. It expressed the love of freedom, vigor, +simplicity, natural manhood, the longing for the large, fresh face of +Nature, where the hopeful soul of man is ready to meet his destiny by +himself, unpropped by his ancestors and relatives. There was an echo in +her own soul to this primitive lyric cry,--"Give me the Coast!" + +(Need we explain that to the true son of California there is but one +"Coast" in all the world?) + +The old judge smiled sympathetically in response to the cry. Evidently +he liked the young man, for he was at great pains to point out to him +everything of interest and to explain certain historic monuments that +they passed. + +Alton had never been notable as a place of residence even in Adelle's +childhood, but now it was almost completely converted to industrial +uses. The stove factory had grown like a tropic plant, and had spawned +about itself a number of parasitic industries, such as tack-mills, +paper-box factories, and other occupations that use the labor of women +and children. It was one long, smoky, grimy thoroughfare, where in a +small, congested area the coarser labors of humanity were performed +wholesale by a race of imported gnomes, such as might be found in any of +the larger centers of the country. Alton was not one of the "show +places," and it may be wondered why the judge had chosen to drive his +guests thither instead of to the famous parks of the city. + +But Adelle suspected something of his purpose, and more when they turned +into that brick maze of small streets that had once been Clark's Field. +At this the Californian's mobile face expressed frank contempt, not to +say disgust. Even on this beautiful May morning, Clark's Field, with its +close-packed rows of lofty tenements, its narrow, dirty alleys, and +monotonous blocks of ugly brick facades, was dreary, depressing, a +needless monstrosity of civilization. And all this had come about in a +little over ten years, as the judge carefully explained to the mason. It +had taken less than a generation to cover Clark's Field with its load of +brick and mortar, to make it into a swarming hive of mean human lives--a +triumph of our day, so often boastfully celebrated in newspaper and +magazine, the triumph of efficient property exploitation by the +Washington Trust Company under the thin disguise of the "Clark's Field +Associates"! + +The judge was indefatigable in his determination to penetrate to every +dreary corner, every noisome alley of the place, although the young +stranger seemed to think that he had had enough at the first glance. It +is not necessary for us to make the rounds of the Field for the third +time with the little party. Adelle, who had a greater interest than her +cousin because of her dim understanding of the judge's purpose, gazed +searchingly at everything, and was able to see it differently, to +comprehend it all as she had not been able to the time before when she +had forced Archie to make the expedition with her. She realized now, at +least in part, what Clark's Field really meant, what the magic lamp she +had so carelessly rubbed for years to gratify her desires was made of. +And it made her thoughtful. + +About noon, when the little streets were flooded from curb to curb by a +motley army of pale-faced foreign workers from the high lofts and the +noisy factories, the judge's carriage drew up beside a vacant corner, +the one large undeveloped bit of land still left, nearly in the center +of the whole tract. This was plastered with the signs of the realty +company, seductively offering to lease it for a term of years or improve +it with a building to suit tenant, etc. + +"About all the open space and blue sky there is left!" the judge +remarked, pointing out the figures of a few dirty children who were +exploring a puddle and a pit of rubbish in the vacant lot. (These, I +suppose, were the descendants of that brave body of little hoodlums of +which I and my brothers were members years ago, and the puddle and pit +were all that was left of our mysterious playground!) + +"There's a heap of cheap foreign rubbish all around here," the mason +growled, spitting contemptuously into the roadbed, as if he resented +that human beings could be found forlorn enough, low enough, to labor +under such conditions. "Not one of 'em looks as if he had had enough to +eat or knew what a good wash was or what the earth smells like!" + +No, the Coast for him, and the sooner the better, too! + +The judge smiled tolerantly, observing,-- + +"I don't suppose they have much chance to bathe here. The city cannot +afford to put up public baths and employers rarely think of those +things." + +"Look at the rotten stuff they eat!" The mason pointed disdainfully to +the tipcarts drawn up along the curb, where men and women were +chaffering over dried fish and forlorn vegetables that would have soured +the soul of old Adams, who once raised celery on this very spot. "Don't +the folks in these parts eat better than that?" + +"Not generally," the judge replied. "We have no public market in this +city, and it is very difficult for the poorer sort to get fresh food." + +"You'd oughter see the California markets!" the young man bragged. + +"Tell me about them," the judge said. + +And while the young mason expatiated on his land of plenty where the +poor man could still enjoy his own bit of God's sunlight and fresh fruit +and flowers from the earth, Adelle watched the thick stream of workers +in Clark's Field, pushing and dawdling along the narrow street. There +were girls with bare arms and soiled shirt-waists and black skirts, +there were lean, pale boys, and women old before their time, hurrying +from tenement to shop, their hearts divided between the two cares of +home and livelihood. Adelle recalled one of her first talks with the +stone mason, in which he had crudely told her that her yearly income +represented the total wages of four or five hundred able-bodied men and +women, such as these, who worked from ten to sixteen hours a day for +three hundred days each year, when they could, and all told earned +hardly what she drew by signing her name to slips of paper as income +from her property during the same space of time. He said to her,--"You +can think that you are worth about four hundred human lives! Who talks +about slavery being abolished? Hell!" She had thought then that his way +of putting it was quite wrong, unjust: she was sure that Major Pound +could easily have disposed of his contention. Indeed, she had heard the +major and men like him maintain that capitalists like herself were the +only true benefactors of humanity, that without them the working-people +could never be fed! But to-day she was not sure that her cousin had been +wrong. She saw a concrete proof of his statement in this stream of +poorly nourished, hard-worked men, women, boys, and girls, all toiling +to maintain themselves and pay her the interest upon the crowded land of +Clark's Field. In a very definite sense they were all working for her; +they were her slaves! + +The younger women and girls looked into the judge's brougham curiously +or impudently, attracted by the spectacle of leisure and quiet richness +that Adelle presented, a sight not commonly afforded them in the streets +of Clark's Field and always fascinating to women of any class wherever +it may be. Adelle's dress was plain black, and she had shed much of her +jewelry; but beneath her simple gown and fine linen and carefully +cherished skin she began to feel a new sensation, not exactly pity for +these less lucky sisters, rather wonder that it should all be so, that +she should be sitting there in idleness and comfort and they should be +tramping the pavement of Clark's Field to the factory.... + +When she saw the boys playing in the mud puddle in the one vacant lot, +she thought of her own little boy, on whom she had lavished every care, +every luxury. So with these working-girls, she thought how easily she +might have been one of them going from the rooming-house in Church +Street to shop or factory, as many women of better Puritan families than +hers had done. It was pure accident, she could see, why she and her +child had been saved from such a lot--due neither to her own ability nor +that of any of her Clark forbears! It was a humbling perception. + +"Hell!" her cousin was saying explosively, "these people are no better +'n cattle. At least they ought to give 'em a trough to wash in and a +place where they could buy decent food." + +"A few other things, too, perhaps," the judge added with his gentle +smile. "But who will do it? The city is already badly debt-ridden. The +owners of the land pay so much in taxes and interest, due to the high +price of the land here, that they probably make a bare eight per cent +net on their investment." + +He looked inquiringly at the young man. + +"It's all wrong," the mason retorted heatedly, forgetting that he had +hoped to become one of these "owners of the land," and returning to his +incipient rebellion at the state of society in which he lived. "Somebody +ought to be made to do such things." + +The judge smiled finely, merely remarking in a casual tone,-- + +"It is a very perplexing question, all that, my young friend!" + +"But you don't think it's right so," the mason persisted belligerently, +thinking to challenge a supporter of things as they are. + +"There's very little that is quite right in this world, my boy," the +judge replied simply. + +"Well, we'd better set out now to make it nearer right," the young man +grumbled. + +"Oh, yes, that is perfectly sound doctrine.... And shall we begin with +Clark's Field?" he asked, turning to Adelle with one of his playful, +kindly smiles. + +"It needs it," she said simply. + +"Yes, I think it needs it!" + +"Sure!" the mason asserted resoundingly. + +A little while afterwards the judge said to the driver,-- + +"I think that we will go home now, John." + + + + +XLIX + + +In these last moments something had happened to Adelle. While the judge +and her cousin had been talking, she had been watching the stream of +humanity flow past her, not hearing what the two were saying, listening +to the voice of her own soul. It is difficult to describe in exact words +the nature of Adelle's mental life. Ideas never came to her in orderly +succession. They were not evolved out of other ideas, nor gathered up +from obvious sources and repeated by her brain, parrotlike, as with so +many of us. They came to her slowly from some reservoir of her being, +came painfully, strugglingly, and often were accompanied to their birth +by an inner glow of emotional illumination like the present when she saw +herself and her child living the life of Clark's Field. But after they +had struggled into birth, they became eternal possessions of her +consciousness, never to be forgotten, or debated, or denied. She had +thus slowly and painfully achieved whatever personality she had since +she came for the first time a pale child into Judge Orcutt's court. If +any one had talked to her about the "obligations of wealth," "social +service," or "love of humanity," she would have listened with a vacant +stare and replied like a child of ten. The judge seemed to know that. + +It was only by idleness and Archie and unhappiness and the fire and the +tragic death of her child that she had come to realize that there were +other people in the world besides herself and the few who were a +necessary part of herself, and that these other lives were of importance +to themselves and might be almost as important to her as her own. It had +taken Adelle a good many years of foolish living and reckless use of her +magic lamp to get this simple understanding of life. But she was not yet +twenty-six, really at the start of life. If already she had come so far +along the road, what might she not reach by fifty? In such matters it is +the destination alone that counts.... + +Just now, as has been said, a greater illumination had come over her +spirit than was ever there before, although for the life of her Adelle +could not have expressed in words what she felt, or at this time put her +new thought into concrete acts. But with Adelle acts had never been +wanting when the time for them came, and her slow mind had absorbed all +the necessary ideas. The judge recognized the illumination in the young +woman at his side. For the first time in her life, perhaps, at least for +one of the rare moments of it, her face was in no sense vacant. The wide +gray eyes that looked forth upon the sordid world of Clark's Field were +seeing eyes, though they did not see merely physical facts. Instead of +their usual blankness or passive intelligence, they had a quality in +them now of dream. And this gave Adelle's pale face a certain rare +loveliness that in human faces does not depend upon color or line or +emotional vivacity. It is rather the still radiance of the inner spirit, +penetrating in some inexplicable manner the physical envelope and +creating a beauty far more enduring, more compelling to those who +perceive it, than any other form of beauty intelligible to human eyes. +The judge perceived it. As the carriage slowly retraced its way through +the crowded streets of Clark's Field, he silently took the young woman's +hand and held it within his own, smiling gently before him as one who +understood what was too complex to put in words. He was an old man now, +and it was permitted him to express thus the compulsion of Adelle's rare +loveliness, thus to confide to her the sympathy of his own dreaming +heart. The little ungloved hand lay within his old hand, warm and +passive, not clinging, content to rest there in peace. + +Thus they jogged back to the city, all three silent, occupied with +personal thoughts suggested by their expedition this fine May morning +into Clark's Field, which the judge for one felt had been thoroughly +successful. + + * * * * * + +Judge Orcutt kept the two cousins to luncheon, and when Adelle had gone +with his housekeeper to lay aside her hat and wraps, he was left alone +with the young stone mason. After long years of watching human beings +from the bench, the judge formed his opinions of people rapidly and was +rarely mistaken upon the essential quality of any one. He liked Tom +Clark. He did not mind, as much as Adelle did, his spitting habit, for +he remembered the time not more than a generation or two ago when the +best American gentlemen chewed tobacco or took snuff, and he could see +quality in a person who spat upon the ground, but did not conceal ugly +and vile thoughts, or who abused the language of books in favor of that +more enduring vernacular of the street, or who confused the table +implements, or did the hundred and one other little things that are +supposedly the indelible marks of an inferior culture. A most fastidious +person himself, as was obvious, he looked in others for a fastidiousness +of spirit rather than for a correct performance of the whims of +refinement. For the one, as everybody knows but forgets, is eternal, and +the other is merely transitory--the most transitory aspect of human +beings, their manners. He was pleased with Tom Clark's vigorous reaction +against the East in favor of his own freer land, his disgust with the +incipient squalor of Clark's Field, and his honest scorn for a +civilization that would permit human beings to live as they lived there +and generally in the more crowded industrial centers of the world. What +the stone mason had recklessly vaunted to Adelle as "anarchism," the +judge recognized as a healthy reaction against unworthy human +institutions,--the idiom in him of youth and hope and will. And he could +understand, now that he was face to face with the vigorous young man, +the reason why Adelle had been drawn to the stone mason from that first +time when she had discharged him from her employ. For he had those +qualities of vitality, expression, initiative that the younger branch of +the Clarks had exhausted. The Edward S. Clarks, transplanted fifty years +and more ago to new soil, may not have risen far in the human scale in +their new environment, but they had renewed there, at least in the +person of this young stone mason, their capacity for health and vigor. +Once more they had strong desires, will, and the courage to revolt +against the settled, the safe, the formal, and the proper. Of course, +this Clark was an anarchist! All strong blood must create some such +anarchists, if there is to be progress in this world. + +It did not seem so preposterous to the judge, after these few hours of +contact with the mason, that Adelle should want to endow her cousin with +a part of that fortune which but for accident and legal formality would +have been his. There were, however, many other of these California +Clarks, in whom Adelle could not possibly be interested and who might +not be equally promising, but who would have to share her liberality +with the mason. It was a delicate tangle, as the judge realized when he +attempted to untie the knot. + +"Mr. Clark," he began, sinking into the deep wing chair before his +fireplace, "I suppose your cousin has informed you of the results of her +interview with the Washington Trust Company?" + +"Yes!" the young man emitted shortly, with an inquiring grin. "She said +there was nothing doing about our claim." + +"The officers of the trust company were right so far as the law is +concerned, as I had to tell Mrs. Clark. The law is doubtless often slow +and bungling in its processes, but when it has once fully decided an +issue it is very loath to open it up again, especially when, as in this +case, litigation would involve hardship and injustice to a great many +innocent people." + +"Well, I somehow thought it might be too late," the young mason +remarked, throwing himself loosely into the chair opposite the judge. +After a moment of reflection he added feelingly,--"The law is an +infernal contraption anyhow--it's always rigged so's the little feller +gets left." + +"The law rigged it so that your cousin, who was a penniless girl, got a +thousand times more than her grandfather asked for his property," the +judge observed with a twinkle. + +"She had the luck, that's all--and we other Clarks didn't!" the young +man replied. + +"You can call it luck, if you like," the judge mused. + +"That's what most folks would call it, I guess." + +"I suppose that is what she feels, because she was anxious when she came +to see me yesterday to divide her fortune with you other Clarks." + +It was a daring move, and as he spoke the judge looked keenly into the +young man's face. + +"Did she?" Tom Clark inquired unconcernedly. "I know she's always on the +square--there aren't many like her!" + +"You may not know that if she should carry out her intention, she would +strip herself of almost every dollar she possesses." + +"What do you mean by that?" + +"Her husband, I understand, conducted her affairs so badly that very +nearly if not quite half the great fortune she received five years ago +from her guardians has wasted away. I don't know what ultimately may be +recovered from these California investments, but judging from what Mrs. +Clark tells me I should say almost nothing. So that there can be left of +the original estate only a little over two millions of dollars." + +"Well, that's enough for any woman to worry along on," the mason grinned +lightly. + +"But not enough for her to pay out of it two and a half millions, which +would have been the share of your grandfather's heirs." + +"Hell! She ain't thinkin' of doin' that!" + +"She certainly was. She would have made the proposal to you already, if +I had not asked her to wait until I could advise with her again." + +The young man's blue eyes opened wide in astonishment. + +"What good would that do her?" + +"It would give all of you California Clarks your slice of Clark's +Field--how many of you are there?" + +"I dunno exactly--maybe twenty or twenty-five--I haven't kep' count." + +"Say there are twenty-five heirs of old Edward S. living. Each of them +would have a hundred thousand dollars apiece roughly. That sum of money +is not to be despised even to-day." + +"You bet it ain't," murmured the mason feelingly. His face settled into +a scowl; and leaning forward he demanded,--"What are you drivin' at +anyway, Judge?" + +The judge did not answer. + +"You ain't goin' to let that woman hand over all her money to a lot of +little no-'count people she's never laid eyes on, just because they are +called 'Clark' instead of 'Smith' or some other name?" + +"You happen to be one of them," the judge observed with a laugh. + +"I know that,--and I guess I'm a pretty fair sample of the whole +bunch,--but I ain't takin' charity from any woman!" + +The judge settled back into his chair, a satisfied little smile on his +lips. The mason's reaction was better than he had dared expect. + +"It ought not to be called charity, exactly," he mused. + +"What is it, then? It ain't law!" + +"No, it wouldn't be legal either," the judge admitted. "But there are +things that are neither legal nor charitable. There are," he suggested, +"justice and wisdom and mercy!" + +The mason could not follow such abstract thought. He looked blankly at +the judge. His mind had done its best when it had rejected without +hesitation the gift of Adelle's fortune because he happened to be a +grandson of Edward S. Clark. + +"Tell me," said the judge after a time, as if his mind had wandered to +other considerations, "about these California Clarks--what do you know +of them?" + +The mason related for the judge's edification the scraps of family +history and biography that he could recollect. Adelle, who had come into +the room, listened to his story. Tom Clark might be limited in knowledge +of his family as he was in education, but he was certainly literal and +picturesque. He spared neither himself nor his brothers and sisters, nor +his remoter cousins. The one whose career seemed to interest him most +was that Stan Clark, the politician, who now represented Fresno County +in the State Legislature. There was a curious mixture of pride and +contempt in his feeling for this cousin, who had risen above the dead +level of local obscurity. + +"He thinks almighty well of himself," he concluded his portrait; "but +there ain't a rottener peanut politician in the State of California, and +that's sayin' some. He got into the legislater by stringin' labor, and +now, of course, the S. P. owns him hide and clothes and toothpick. I +hear he's bought a block of stores in Fresno and is puttin' the dough +away thick. He don't need no Clark's Field! He's got the whole people of +California for his pickings." + +The judge turned to Adelle laughingly. + +"Your cousin doesn't seem to see any good reason why the California +Clarks should be chosen for Fortune's favor." + +"Ain't one of 'em," the young man asserted emphatically, "so far as I +know, would know what to do with a hundred dollars, would be any better +off after a couple of years if he had it. That's gospel truth--and I +ain't exceptin' myself!" he added after a moment of sober reflection. + +Adelle made no comment. She did not seem to be thinking along the same +line as the judge and the young mason. Since the yesterday her +conception of her problem had changed and grown. Adelle was living fast +these days, not in the sense in which she and Archie had lived fast +according to their kind, but psychologically and spiritually she was +living fast. Her state of yesterday had already given place to another +broader, loftier one: she was fast escaping from the purely personal out +into the freedom of the impersonal. + +"Allowing for Mr. Clark's natural vivacity of statement," the judge +observed with an appreciative chuckle, "these California relatives of +yours, so far as I can see, are pretty much like everybody else in the +world, struggling along the best they can with the limitations of +environment and character which they have inherited.... And I am rather +inclined to agree with Mr. Clark that it might be unwise to give them, +most of them, any special privilege which they hadn't earned for +themselves over their neighbors." + +"What right have they got to it anyway?" the mason demanded. + +"Oh, when you go into rights, Mr. Clark," the judge retorted, "the whole +thing is a hopeless muddle. None of us in a very real sense has any +rights--extremely few rights, at any rate." + +"Well, then, they've no good reason for havin' the money." + +"I agree with you. There is no good reason why these twenty-five Clarks, +more or less, should arbitrarily be selected for the favors of Clark's +Field. And yet they might prove to be as good material to work upon as +any other twenty-five taken at random." + +Adelle looked up expectantly to the judge. She understood that his mind +was thinking forward to wider reaches than his words indicated. + +"But you would want to know much more about them than you do now, to +study each case carefully in all its bearings, and then doubtless you +would make your mistakes, with the best of judgment!" + +"I don't see what you mean," the mason said. + +"Nor I," said Adelle. + +"Let us have some lunch first," the judge replied. "We have done a good +deal this morning and need food. Perhaps later we shall all arrive at a +complete understanding." + + * * * * * + +At the close of their luncheon the judge remarked to Adelle,-- + +"Your cousin and I, Mrs. Clark, have talked over your idea of giving to +him and his relatives what the law will not compel you to distribute of +Clark's Field. He doesn't seem to think well of the idea." + +"It's foolish," the mason growled. + +Adelle looked at him swiftly, with a little smile that was sad. + +"I was afraid he would say that, Judge," she said softly. + +"You know any man would!... I ain't never begged from a woman yet." + +"The woman, it seems to me, has nothing to do with the question," the +judge put in. + +"And it isn't begging," Adelle protested. "It's really yours, a part of +it, as much as mine,--more, perhaps." + +"It's nobody's by rights, so far as I can see!" the mason retorted with +his dry laugh. + +"Exactly!" the judge exclaimed. "Young man, you have pronounced the one +final word of wisdom on the whole situation. With that for a premise we +can start safely towards a conclusion. Clark's Field doesn't belong to +you or to your cousin or to any of the Clarks living or dead. It belongs +to itself--to the people who live upon it, who use it, who need it to +get from it their daily bread and shelter." + +"But," jeered the mason, "you can't call 'em out into the street and +hand each of 'em a thousand-dollar bill." + +"No, and you would make a lot of trouble for everybody if you +did--especially for the Alton police courts, I am afraid! But you can +act as trustees for Clark's Field--" He turned to Adelle and continued +whimsically,--"That's what the old Field did for you, my dear, with my +assistance. Its wealth was tied up for fifty years to be let loose in +your lap! You found it not such a great gift, after all, so why not pour +it back upon the Field?... Why not make a splendid public market on that +vacant lot that's still left? And put some public baths in, and a public +hall for everybody's use, and a few other really permanent +improvements?--which I fear the city will never feel able to do! In that +way you would be giving back to Clark's Field and its real owners what +properly belongs to it and to them." + +So the judge's thought was out at last. It did not take Adelle long to +understand it now. + +"I'll do it," she said simply, as if the judge had merely voiced the +struggling ideas of her own brain. "But how shall I go to work?" + +"I think your cousin can show you," the judge laughed. "He has many more +ideas than I should dare call my own about what society should do for +its disinherited. Suppose you talk it over with him and get his +suggestions." + +"My God!" the stone mason groaned enigmatically. + +The sardonic smile spread over his lean face as he further explained +himself,-- + +"It ain't exactly what I took this trip from California for." + +"You didn't understand then," the judge remarked. + +"And I didn't understand either," Adelle added. + +"I guess I could keep you from getting into trouble with your money as +well as the next man. I'd keep you out of the hands of the charity +grafters anyhow!" + +"I think," the judge summed up whimsically, "that you are one of the +best persons in the world to advise on how to distribute the Clark +millions. That is what should be done with every young anarchist--set +him to work spending money on others. He would end up either in prison +or among the conservatives." + +"But," Adelle demurred finally, "that leaves the others--all the +California Clarks--out of it for good." + +"Where they belong," put in the mason. + +"I'm not so sure of that," the judge added cautiously. And after further +reflection he suggested, "Why shouldn't you two make yourselves into a +little private and extra-legal Providence for these members of your +family? Once, my dear," he said to Adelle, "I did the same for you! At +considerable risk to your welfare I intervened and prevented certain +greedy rascals from doing your aunt and you out of Clark's Field, you +remember?" + +He paused to relate for Tom Clark's benefit the story of the transaction +with which we are fully familiar. + +"Of course, if then I had known of the existence of our young friend and +his family, I should have been obliged to include him in the beneficence +of my Providence. But I didn't. It was left for you, my dear, to +discover him!... There was a time when I felt that I had played the part +of Providence rashly,"--he smiled upon Adelle, who recalled quite +vividly the stern lecture that the court had given her when she was +about to receive her fortune. "But now I feel that I did very well, +indeed. In fact I am rather proud of my success as Providence to this +young woman.... So I recommend the same role to you and Mr. Clark. Look +up these California Clarks, study them, make up your minds what they +need most, then act as wisely as you can, not merely in their behalf, +but in behalf of us all, of all the people who find themselves upon this +earth in the long struggle out of ignorance and misery upwards to +light.... It will keep you busy," he concluded with his fine +smile,--"busy, I think, for the better part of your two lives. But I can +think of no more interesting occupation than to try to be a just and +wise Providence!" + +"It's some job," the mason remarked. "I don't feel sure we'd succeed in +it much better than Fate." + +"You will become a part of Fate," the judge said earnestly, "as we all +are! Don't you see?" + +"We'd better begin with Cousin Stan first," the mason shouted. "I'd like +to be his fate, you bet!" + +"What would you do with the Honorable Stanley Clark?" the judge asked. + +"Boot him clear out of the State of California--show him up for what he +is--a mean little cuss of a grafter; no friend of labor or anything else +but his own pocket." + +"Good! But it will take money to do that these days, a good deal of +money! You will have to pay for publicity and court expenses and all the +rest of it." + +"Hoorah! I'd like to soak him one with his share of Clark's Field!" + +"Providence blesses as well as curses," warned the old judge. "And it's +chief work, I take it, is educational--to develop all that is possible +from within. Remember that, sir, when you are 'soaking' Cousin Stan." + +"The educational can wait until we've done some correctin'!" + +They all laughed. And presently they parted. As they stood in the little +front room waiting for Adelle's car to fetch her, the judge remarked +with a certain solemnity,-- + +"Now at last I believe the fate of Clark's Field is settled. In that +good old legal term, the title to the Field, so long restless and +unsettled, at last is 'quieted,' I think for good and all, humanly +speaking!" + +"I think so," Adelle assented, with the same dreamy look in her gray +eyes that had moved the judge to take her hand that morning. "At least I +see quite clearly what I must do with my share of it." + +"Come and see me again before you go away, as often as you can, both of +you!" the judge said as they left. "Remember that I am an old man, and +my best amusement is watching Providence working out its ways with us +all. And you two are part of Providence:--come and tell me what you +find!" + +"We will!" they said. + +After the door had swung to behind his visitors, the judge stood +thoughtfully beside the window watching the cousins depart. As the young +mason hopped into the car in response to Adelle's invitation, and +clumsily swung the door after him with a bang, the judge smiled +tenderly, murmuring to himself,-- + +"It's all education, and they'll educate each other!" + + + + +L + + +And here we must abandon Adelle Clark and Clark's Field, not that +another volume might not be written concerning her further adventures +with the old Field. But that would be an altogether different story. She +went back to see Judge Orcutt, not only at this time, but many times +later, as long as the judge lived. So he was able to watch the idea that +had sprung into being, helped by his wise sympathy, grow and bear its +slow fruit to his satisfaction. In starting this chance couple upon the +quest of their scattered relatives, to play the part of Providence to +all the little, unknown California Clarks, and also to restore to +Clark's Field its own riches, which for two generations had been +unjustly hoarded for the use of one human being, the judge was doubtless +doing a dangerous and revolutionary thing, according to the belief of +many good people, something certainly ill befitting a retired judge of +the probate courts of his staid Commonwealth! Had he not been employed +for forty years of his life in expounding and upholding that absurd code +of inheritance and property rights that the Anglo-Saxon peoples have +preserved from their ancient tribal days in the gloomy forests of the +lower Rhine? Nay, worse, was he not guilty of disrespect to the most +sacred object of worship that the race has--the holy institution of +private property, aiding and abetting an anarchist in his loose views +upon this subject? I will not try to defend the judge. He seemed +tranquil that first day as he hobbled up his old stairs to his study, as +if he felt that he had done a good day's business and was enjoying the +approval of a good conscience; also, the satisfaction of insight into +human nature, which is one of the rare rewards of becoming old. Nor did +he worry for one moment about our heroine Adelle. He thought Adelle one +of the safest persons in the universe, because she could derive good +from her mistakes, and any one who can get good out of evil is the +safest sort of human being to raise in this garden plot of human souls. +The judge may have been more doubtful about the stone mason, but in the +young man's own phrase he considered him, too, a good bet in the human +lottery. + +As to what they might do to each other in the course of their mutual +education, the judge left that wisely to that other Providence of his +fathers, sure that Adelle this time would not take such a long and +painful road to wisdom as she had done in marrying Archie. But we must +not mistake the judge's last foolish remark,--interpret it, at least in +a merely sentimental sense, too literally. Like a poet the judge spoke +in symbols of matters that cannot be phrased in any tongue precisely. He +did not think of their marrying each other, because they were deeply +concerned together, although I am aware that my readers are speculating +on this point already. The judge left that to Adelle and Tom Clark and +Providence, and we can safely do the same thing. He set them forth on +their jaunt after the stray members of the Clark tribe and other deeds +with a favorable expectation that they would commit along the road only +the necessary minimum of folly, and above all, sure of Adelle's +destination. For at twenty-six she had passed through crude desire, +through passion and pain and sorrow, and had discovered for herself the +last commonplace of human thinking--that the end of life is not the +"pursuit of happiness," as our materialistic forefathers put it in the +Constitution they made for us, and cannot be "guaranteed" to any mortal. +With that bedrock axiom of human wisdom embedded in her steadfast +nature, to what heights might not the dumb Adelle, the pale, passive, +inarticulate woman creature, ultimately rise? + +There were many stations on her road. And first of all her husband, +Archie. Adelle began to think again about Archie in the new light she +had. She had not thought about him at all since she had dropped him so +summarily from her life after the fire at Highcourt. She wrote him +finally a considerable letter, in which she made plain the results of +her thinking. It was a surprising letter, as Archie felt, not only in +length, but in its point of view and its kindly tone. She seemed to see +the great wrong she had ignorantly done to him. The youth she had +blindly taken to gratify her green passion and to become the father of +her only child! She had ruined him, as far as any one human being can +ruin another, and now she knew it. She had been the stupid means of +providing him with a feast of folly, and then had abandoned him when he +behaved badly. So she wrote him gently, as one who at last comprehended +that mercy and forgiveness are due all those whom we harm upon our road +either consciously or ignorantly, giving them evil to eat. Yet she saw +the crude folly of attempting to resume their marriage in any way, and +did not for once consider it. They had sinned gravely against each other +and must face life anew, separately, recognizing that theirs was an +irreparable mistake. So she wrote unpassionately of the legal divorce +which must come. And she gave him money, promising him more as he might +need it, within reason. Archie straightway put a good part of it into +oil wells because every one in California was talking oil, and of course +lost it all. Then Adelle sent him money to buy a nut ranch, in one of +the interior valleys, and there we may leave Archie growing English +walnuts fitfully. At times he felt aggrieved with Adelle, complained +that he had been abused as a man who had married a rich woman and then +been thrown aside when he considered himself placed for life. But also +at times he had a fleeting conception of Adelle's character, realized +that she was not now the girl who had married him out of hand after a +mad night ride across France. She was bigger and better than he now, and +he was not really worthy of her. But these rare moments of insight +usually came only when Adelle had answered favorably his pleas for more +money. + + * * * * * + +One memory of her early years came back to Adelle at this time--a +picture that had been dark to her then. It was when she first met her +little Mexican friend at the fashionable boarding-school. She could not +understand the girl's foreign name, and so the little Mexican had +written it out in pencil,--"Diane Merelda," and underneath she wrote in +tiny letters,--"F. de M." + +"What do those mean?" Adelle had demanded, pointing to the mysterious +letters. + +"Fille de Marie," the little Catholic lisped, and translated,--"Daughter +of the Blessed Virgin; you understand?" + +Adelle had not understood then, nor had she thought of it all these +years. But now the incident came back to her from its deep resting-place +in her consciousness, and she understood its full meaning. She, too, was +a child of God! albeit she had lived many years and done folly and +suffered sorrow before she could recognize it. + +And so Clark's Field had taught its last great lesson,--Clark's Field, +that fifty acres of lean, level land with its crop of bricks and mortar, +its heavy burden of human lives, the sacrificial altar of our economic +system and our race prejudices,--Clark's Field! We pass it night and +morning of all the days of our lives, but rarely see it--see, that is, +more than its bricks and mortar and empty faces. It should be called, in +the quaint phrase of the judge's people, "God's Acre!" One might say +that the beauty, the supreme fruit of this Clark's Field, which never +blossomed into flower and fruit all these years we have been concerned +with its fate, was Adelle. Just Adelle! The judge thought that was +enough. Adelle would go on, he believed, growing into new wisdom, slowly +acquired according to her nature, and also into tranquillity, +friendship, love, and motherhood-all the eternal rewards of right +living. Would she accomplish this best through that other Clark--the +workman--whom she had discovered for herself? The sentimental reader +probably has this already settled to his satisfaction. + +But I wonder! + + +THE END + + + + +By ARTHUR STANWOOD PIER + +THE WOMEN WE MARRY + + +"Keen and incisive in character study, logical and life-like in plot +invention and development, 'The Women We Marry,' is a novel that stands +sturdily on its own merits. It is vigorous, frank and emotional in the +best sense of that much-abused word, and there is little in it that is +not faithfully representative of life." _Boston Transcript._ + +"The author of this realistic novel has not been afraid to endow his +people richly with the ordinary faults and foibles of human nature.... +Both his men and women are very real, human people." _New York Times._ + +"As a study of types, 'The Women We Marry' is one of the best things +that American fiction has recently produced." _Springfield Republican._ + + + + +By WILLA SIBERT CATHER + +O PIONEERS! + + +"A great romantic novel, written with striking brilliancy and power, in +which one sees emerge a new country and a new people.... Throughout the +story one has the sense of great spaces; of the soil dominating +everything, even the human drama that takes place upon it; renewing +itself while the generations come and pass away."--_McClure's Magazine._ + + +"The book is big in its conception and strikes many great live topics of +the day--the feminist movement and the back-to-the-soil doctrines being +two of the most conspicuous. There is a spirit of the open spaces about +this story--a bigness that suggests that Miss Cather has taken more than +her title from Whitman's hymn to progress, 'Pioneers, O +Pioneers.'"--_San Francisco Chronicle._ + + + + +By ELIA W. PEATTIE + +THE PRECIPICE + + +"A frank and fearless study of the New Womanhood which we now see all +around us ... done upon a broad canvas."--_The Bookman._ + +"No stronger novel pleading the cause of woman has yet been written than +'The Precipice.'"--_Los Angeles Times._ + +"The author knows life and human nature thoroughly, and she has written +out of ripened perceptions and a full heart ... a book which men and +women alike will be better for reading, of which any true hearted author +might be proud."--_Chicago Record Herald._ + +"So absolutely true to life that it is hard to consider it +fiction."--_Boston Post._ + + + + +By HENRY SYDNOR HARRISON + +V. V.'S EYES + + +"'V. V.'s Eyes' is a novel of so elevated a spirit, yet of such strong +interest, unartificial, and uncritical, that it is obviously a +fulfillment of Mr. Harrison's intention to 'create real +literature.'"--_Baltimore News._ + +"In our judgment it is one of the strongest and at the same time most +delicately wrought American novels of recent years."--_The Outlook._ + +"'V. V.'s Eyes' is an almost perfect example of idealistic realism. It +has the soft heart, the clear vision and the boundless faith in humanity +that are typical of our American outlook on life."--_Chicago +Record-Herald._ + +"A delicate and artistic study of striking power and literary quality +which may well remain the high-water mark in American fiction for the +year.... Mr. Harrison definitely takes his place as the one among our +younger American novelists of whom the most enduring work may be hoped +for."--_Springfield Republican._ + + + + +By Mrs. Romilly Fedden + +THE SPARE ROOM + + +"A bride and groom, a villa in Capri, a spare room and seven guests +(assorted varieties) are the ingredients which go to make this +thoroughly amusing book."--_Chicago Evening Post._ + +"Bubbling over with laughter ... distinctly a book to read and chuckle +over."--_Yorkshire Observer._ + +"Mrs. Fedden has succeeded in arranging for her readers a constant fund +of natural yet wildly amusing complications."--_Springfield Republican._ + +"A clever bit of comedy that goes with spirit and sparkle, Mrs. Fedden's +little story shows her to be a genuine humorist.... She deserves to be +welcomed cordially to the ranks of those who can make us laugh."--_New +York Times._ + +"Brimful of rich humor."--_Grand Rapids Herald._ + + + + +By Meredith Nicholson + +OTHERWISE PHYLLIS + + +"The most delightful novel-heroine you've met in a long time. You like +it all, but you love Phyllis."--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._ + +"A true-blue, genuine American girl of the 20th century."--_Boston +Globe._ + +"Phyllis is a fine creature.... 'Otherwise Phyllis' is a 'comfortable, +folksy, neighborly tale' which is genuinely and unaffectedly American in +its atmosphere and point of view."--_Hamilton Wright Mabie, in the +Outlook._ + +"'Phil' Kirkwood--'Otherwise Phyllis'--is a creature to welcome to our +hearth, not to our shelf, for she does not belong among the things that +are doomed to become musty."--_Boston Herald._ + +"Phyllis is a healthy, hearty, vivacious young woman of prankish +disposition and inquiring mind.... About the best example between book +covers of the American girl whose general attitude toward mankind is one +of friendliness."--_Boston Advertiser._ + + + + +By Grant Richards + +VALENTINE + + +"A far better novel than its predecessor, 'Caviare.'"--_London +Athenaeum._ + +"Cheeriness, youth, high spirits and the joy of life--these are the +principal ingredients of this novel."--_London Telegraph._ + +"In 'Valentine' the action is laid almost wholly in London, with +occasional week ends at Paris.... 'Valentine' is a good story about +enjoyably human people, told with the rich personal charm of the +accomplished raconteur."--_Boston Transcript._ + +"Its details and all the actions of all connected with its details are +worked out with a realistic thoroughness that makes the story seem a +piece of recorded history.... Distinctly light reading, clever, +engaging, skillfully wrought."--_Churchman._ + + + + +By Sarah Morgan Dawson + +A CONFEDERATE GIRL'S DIARY + + +"A living voice from the past of the Civil War comes to us from the +pages of 'A Confederate Girl's Diary.'... It is fascinatingly +interesting, a volume of real life.... A very human document, and one +remarkably mature and just, to have been written by so young a girl in +times so trying."--_Chicago Tribune._ + +"No such intimate diary of the war from a woman's point of view has yet +been given to the world, and certainly no diary of such unusual literary +merit."--_San Francisco Argonaut._ + +"We can but wonder that this maiden of the sixties could have created +and left to posterity such an adequate, convincing and psychologically +perfect portrayal of a woman of the South in the era that closed with +the surrender at Appomattox.... Not a page of the story could be spared. +No one can wonder at the intense courage and bravery of the Southern +soldiers after reading with what passionate faith and devotion these +fiery-hearted Southern women sent them into battle."--_Boston +Transcript._ + + + + +By Mary Johnston + +HAGAR + + +"Hagar will stand out as one of the splendid woman characters of modern +fiction--serene and strong, an ideal feminist and a thorough +American."--_Portland (Me.) Telegram._ + +"A splendid story ... not the least part of its charm is that delightful +atmosphere of Virginia family life with which Miss Johnston's readers +are familiar."--_Baltimore Evening Sun._ + +"A powerful plea for woman suffrage in the guise of gripping +fiction."--_Springfield Republican._ + +"Feminism has never had a more human exposition. It is a book notable +for sane methods as well as a delightful plot."--_Literary Digest._ + +"Hagar is one of the most admirable of Miss Johnston's creations and the +novel is a worthy addition to Miss Johnston's works."--_Philadelphia +Record._ + + + + +By KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN + +The Story of Waitstill Baxter + + +"It cannot fail to prove a delight of delights to 'Rebecca of Sunnybrook +Farm' enthusiasts."--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._ + +"All admirers of Jane Austen will enjoy Waitstill Baxter.... The +solution the reader must find out for himself. It is a triumph of +ingenuity. The characters are happy in their background of Puritan +village life. The drudgery, the flowers, the strictness in morals and +the narrowness of outlook all combine to form a harmonious +picture."--_The London Times._ + +"Always generously giving of her best, and delightful as that best +always is, Mrs. Wiggin has provided us with something even better in +'Waitstill Baxter.'"--_Montreal Star._ + +"In the strength of its sympathy, in the vivid reality of the lives it +portrays, this story will be accepted as the very best of all the +popular books that Mrs. Wiggin has written for an admiring +constituency."--_Wilmington Every Evening._ + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Clark's Field, by Robert Herrick + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLARK'S FIELD *** + +***** This file should be named 30736.txt or 30736.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/0/7/3/30736/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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