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Clark's Field, a novel by Robert Herrick |
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Chapter 37 |
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_ CHAPTER 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. _ |
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