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Clark's Field, a novel by Robert Herrick |
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Chapter 47 |
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_ CHAPTER XLVII When Adelle descended from her room to the hotel parlor to meet her cousin on his arrival, she was conscious of trepidation. However the matter might turn out in the end, she must now give the young mason a first disappointment, and she was keenly aware of what that might be to him after dreaming his dream all these weeks of freedom and power that was unexpectedly to be his. She did not like to disappoint him, even temporarily, and she also felt somewhat foolish because she had so confidently assumed that it would be a simple matter to set the Clark inheritance right. The stone mason was sitting cornerwise on his chair in the hotel room, twirling on his thumb a new "Stetson" hat that he had purchased as part of his holiday equipment. There was nothing especially bizarre in the costume that Tom Clark had chosen. Democracy has eradicated almost everything individual or picturesque in man's attire. The standard equipment may be had in every town in the land. There remains merely the fine distinction of being well dressed against being badly dressed, and Clark was badly dressed, as any experienced eye such as Adelle's could see at a glance. Nothing he had on fitted him or became him. A very red neck and face emerged from a high white collar, and those muscular arms that Adelle had always admired for their color of copper bronze and their free, graceful action, now merely prodded out the stiff folds of his readymade suit. His muscles seemed to resent their confinement in good clothes and played tricks like a naughty boy. Adelle, perceiving him in his corner as soon as she entered the room, realized at once that he was out of place. It seemed that there were people, men as well as women, who were born to wear fine clothes and to acquire all the habits that went with them. For the past ten years these were the people she had associated with almost exclusively, people who could be known by their clothes. The stone mason belonged to that large fringe of the social world who must be known by something else. Adelle had recently perceived that there was another, small class of people like Judge Orcutt who could be known both by their clothes and by something finer than the clothes which they wore. Tom Clark could never become one of these. But as soon as Adelle was seated near her cousin and talking to him, she forgot his defects of appearance--his red neck and great paws and clumsy posture. She felt once more the man--the man she had come to respect and like, who had an individuality quite independent of clothes and culture. After the first greetings Adelle was silent, and it was the mason himself who asked her bluntly,-- "Well, what did the bank say? I guess it surprised 'em some, didn't it?" Then Adelle was obliged to tell him of her fruitless expedition to the Washington Trust Company. "So they turned us down hard!" Clark commented, with a slight contraction of his eyebrows. "The stiffs!" Already a sardonic grin was loosening the corners of his compressed lips. Life had in fact jested with him too often and too bitterly for him to trust its promises completely. He had no real confidence in Fortune's smiles. "It doesn't seem right," Adelle hastened to say. "But I am afraid what they said must be so, for Judge Orcutt told me it was the law." "And who is your Judge Orcutt?" the mason demanded suspiciously. For an instant he seemed to doubt Adelle's good faith, believed that she was trying to "double-cross" him as he would express it, having had time since they parted to realize that it was not for her own interest to admit the claims of the senior branch of the Clarks. But he could not have kept his suspicion long, for Adelle's honest, troubled eyes were plain proof of her concern for him. "Judge Orcutt," she explained, "was the probate judge who had charge of the estate when my uncle died. He made the trust company my guardian then. I went to see him yesterday, and had a long talk with him about it all. I want you to see him, too;--can't you go to his house with me this morning?" "Why should I see the judge?" the mason demanded. "He can make you understand better than I can the reasons why all the titles can't be disturbed. And there may be a way, another way of doing what we want," Adelle added hesitantly, with some confusion. The mason looked at her closely, but he seemed to have no more suspicion than Adelle herself had had at first of what this way was. He said,-- "Well, I've got no particular objection to seeing the judge. There's plenty of time--ain't much else for me to do in these parts, now I'm here." With another sardonic laugh for his dashed hopes, he rose jerkily, as if he was ready to go anywhere at once. "It's rather early yet," Adelle remarked, consulting her watch. "We had better wait a little while before going to the judge." The young man reseated himself and looked about idly at the rich ornamentation of the hotel room. "Some class this," he observed, concerning the Eclair Hotel, which was precisely what the hotel management wanted its patrons to feel. "Did you see your sister in Philadelphia?" Adelle asked. "Yep," he replied non-committally. Evidently his tour of the family had not begun favorably, and Adelle refrained from pressing the questions she had in mind. "You have some first cousins, too, haven't you?" Adelle asked, remembering the judge's inquiry. "A whole bunch of 'em!" the mason laughed. "Father had two brothers and one sister, and all of 'em had big families, and my mother had a lot of nephews and nieces, but they don't count for the inheritance." In contrast with the Alton Clarks, of whom Adelle was the sole survivor, the California branch of the family had been prolific. Adelle realized that as the judge had pointed out to her, it was not simply a question of endowing one intelligent, interesting young man with a half of Clark's Field, but of parceling it out in small lots to a numerous family connection--a much less pleasant deed. "Do you know these Clark cousins?" she asked. "Some of 'em," the mason said. "They don't amount to much, the lot of 'em. There's only one made any stir in the world, that's Stan Clark, my uncle Samuel's son. He's in the California Legislature," he said with a certain pride. "And they tell me he's as much of a crook as they make 'em! Then there's a brother of Stan--Sol Clark. He runs a newspaper up in Fresno County, and I guess he's another little crook. There's a bunch of Clarks down in Los Angeles, in the fruit commission business--I don't know nothing about them. Oh, there's Clarks enough of our sort!" he concluded grimly. Adelle could see that the stone mason had very slight intercourse with any of his cousins. Like most working-people he was necessarily limited in his social relations to his immediate neighbors, the relatives he could get at easily in his free hours--holidays and Sundays and after his eight hours of work was done. The mason's hands were not formed for much penmanship! Adelle also realized that the stone mason, like more prosperous people, did not love the members of his family just because they were Clarks. There was no close family bond of any sort. The mason knew less about his immediate relatives than he did about many other people in the world, and felt less close to them; and of course she knew them not even by name. She felt no great incentive to bequeath small portions of Clark's Field to these unknown little people who happened to bear the name of Clark--now that the law no longer demanded a distribution of the estate, in fact prohibited it! Thus Adelle realized the absurdity of the family inheritance scheme by which property is preserved for the use of blood descendants of its owner, irrespective of their fitness to use it. She saw that inheritance was a mere survival of an archaic system of tribal bond, which society, through its customary inertia and timidity and general dislike for change, had preserved,--indeed, had made infinitely complex and precise by a code of property laws. She sat back in her chair, silent, puzzled and baffled by the situation. The only way, it seemed, in which she could give the stone mason his share of his grandfather's property was by stripping herself of all her possessions for the tribe of California Clarks, which she felt no inclination to do. Her cousin, apparently, had been following the same course of reflection in part. He observed dispassionately,-- "I don't know much about 'em, and you don't know anything at all, of course. Mos' likely they 're no better and no worse than any average bunch of human beings. It's curious to think that if grandfather had kept his folks back East informed of his post-office address, all these Clarks big and little would have come in for a slice of the pie!" "It might not have been such a big pie, then," Adelle remarked. She remembered quite well what the judge had said about the accumulation of her fortune. It was just because these California Clarks had been lost to sight that there was any "pie" at all. If Edward S. had left his post-office address, there was no doubt that long before this Clark's Field would have been eaten up: there would have been no Adelle Clark--and no book about her and Clark's Field! The mason tossed his hat in the air and caught it dexterously on the point of his thumb. He mused,-- "All the same they'd open their eyes some, I guess, if they knew what we know. My, wouldn't it make 'em mad to think how near they'd come to some easy money!" He laughed with relish at the ironical humor of the situation--the picture of the California Clarks running hungrily with outstretched hands to grab their piece of Clark's Field. And he laughed with a bitter perception of the underlying farce of human society. It was his ironic sense of the accidental element in life, especially in relation to property ownership and class distinctions, based on property possession, that made him an incipient anarchist, such as he had described himself to Adelle. He was far too intelligent to believe what the Sunday School taught, and the average American thinks he believes, that property and position in this world are apportioned by desert of one sort or another. He knew in the radius of his own circumscribed life too many instances where privilege was based on nothing more real than Adelle's claim to Clark's Field. In the hasty fashion of his nature he concluded intolerantly that all personal privilege was rotten, and hated--or thought he did--all those "grafters" who enjoyed what Fate had not been kind enough to give him. Adelle disliked his ironical laughter, for without knowing it she was groping towards a sounder belief about life than the anarchist's, and she felt sorry for her mistake in arousing false expectations in her cousin, because in the end it might make him all the harder, confirm him in his revolt against life. No, she must find some way out, so that a part of her unearned fortune could be of real benefit to him. "Tell me again," Clark demanded moodily, "just what those banker stiffs said about the title? When was it finally fixed up so as to shut us out?" "I don't know just when, but I suppose some time before I came of age. It must have been between the time my aunt and I first went to see them and my twenty-first birthday." Clark made a rapid calculation. "That was about the time father died and mother and we kids were tryin' to live on nothin'. The money would have come in mighty handy then, let me tell you!... Well, I suppose the lawyers know what they're about." "I suppose they do," Adelle admitted reluctantly. "I guess they don't want no more fuss with Clark's Field--after they've got the thing all troweled out fine and smooth." Adelle felt the cynicism in his voice, and keenly realized that it was for her benefit that the "troweling" had been skillfully performed. "That's gone into the discard!" the mason exclaimed finally, jumping up and whistling softly. He had that look in his blue eyes that Adelle recognized--the dangerous glint. If she were not there or if she had been a man, he would have found the shortest path to a drink, then taken another, and probably many others. Very likely that was what he meant to do to-night, but at least she would keep him for dinner and make him take her to the theater for which she had already procured seats. Adelle did not censure him for drinking, not as she had censured Archie, because she felt that he drank in a different spirit, as an outlet for his realization of the sardonic inadequacy of life, not as a mere sensual indulgence. If the keen spirit of the man were satisfied with work, he would never drink at all, she was sure. "I think we can go over to the judge's now," she said, observing his restlessness. The two crossed the few blocks of city streets to the quiet corner on the hill behind the court-house where Judge Orcutt lived. The east wind had blown itself out the night before, and a beautiful May morning filled even the city with the spirit of spring. They found the old judge up and about his study, quite lively and full of cordial welcome. He glanced keenly at the young mason, who lingered awkwardly, scowling, beside the door. "Come in, do!... It's too fine a day for indoors, isn't it? I've ordered a carriage," he said almost at once, "and I want you both to take a drive with me." _ |
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