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Clark's Field, a novel by Robert Herrick |
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Chapter 3 |
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_ CHAPTER 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. _ |
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