Chapter 38

________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER 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. _

Read next: Chapter 39

Read previous: Chapter 37

Table of content of Clark's Field


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book