Chapter 19

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....