Chapter 21

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.