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Clark's Field, a novel by Robert Herrick |
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Chapter 50 |
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_ CHAPTER L And here we must abandon Adelle Clark and Clark's Field, not that another volume might not be written concerning her further adventures with the old Field. But that would be an altogether different story. She went back to see Judge Orcutt, not only at this time, but many times later, as long as the judge lived. So he was able to watch the idea that had sprung into being, helped by his wise sympathy, grow and bear its slow fruit to his satisfaction. In starting this chance couple upon the quest of their scattered relatives, to play the part of Providence to all the little, unknown California Clarks, and also to restore to Clark's Field its own riches, which for two generations had been unjustly hoarded for the use of one human being, the judge was doubtless doing a dangerous and revolutionary thing, according to the belief of many good people, something certainly ill befitting a retired judge of the probate courts of his staid Commonwealth! Had he not been employed for forty years of his life in expounding and upholding that absurd code of inheritance and property rights that the Anglo-Saxon peoples have preserved from their ancient tribal days in the gloomy forests of the lower Rhine? Nay, worse, was he not guilty of disrespect to the most sacred object of worship that the race has--the holy institution of private property, aiding and abetting an anarchist in his loose views upon this subject? I will not try to defend the judge. He seemed tranquil that first day as he hobbled up his old stairs to his study, as if he felt that he had done a good day's business and was enjoying the approval of a good conscience; also, the satisfaction of insight into human nature, which is one of the rare rewards of becoming old. Nor did he worry for one moment about our heroine Adelle. He thought Adelle one of the safest persons in the universe, because she could derive good from her mistakes, and any one who can get good out of evil is the safest sort of human being to raise in this garden plot of human souls. The judge may have been more doubtful about the stone mason, but in the young man's own phrase he considered him, too, a good bet in the human lottery. As to what they might do to each other in the course of their mutual education, the judge left that wisely to that other Providence of his fathers, sure that Adelle this time would not take such a long and painful road to wisdom as she had done in marrying Archie. But we must not mistake the judge's last foolish remark,--interpret it, at least in a merely sentimental sense, too literally. Like a poet the judge spoke in symbols of matters that cannot be phrased in any tongue precisely. He did not think of their marrying each other, because they were deeply concerned together, although I am aware that my readers are speculating on this point already. The judge left that to Adelle and Tom Clark and Providence, and we can safely do the same thing. He set them forth on their jaunt after the stray members of the Clark tribe and other deeds with a favorable expectation that they would commit along the road only the necessary minimum of folly, and above all, sure of Adelle's destination. For at twenty-six she had passed through crude desire, through passion and pain and sorrow, and had discovered for herself the last commonplace of human thinking--that the end of life is not the "pursuit of happiness," as our materialistic forefathers put it in the Constitution they made for us, and cannot be "guaranteed" to any mortal. With that bedrock axiom of human wisdom embedded in her steadfast nature, to what heights might not the dumb Adelle, the pale, passive, inarticulate woman creature, ultimately rise? There were many stations on her road. And first of all her husband, Archie. Adelle began to think again about Archie in the new light she had. She had not thought about him at all since she had dropped him so summarily from her life after the fire at Highcourt. She wrote him finally a considerable letter, in which she made plain the results of her thinking. It was a surprising letter, as Archie felt, not only in length, but in its point of view and its kindly tone. She seemed to see the great wrong she had ignorantly done to him. The youth she had blindly taken to gratify her green passion and to become the father of her only child! She had ruined him, as far as any one human being can ruin another, and now she knew it. She had been the stupid means of providing him with a feast of folly, and then had abandoned him when he behaved badly. So she wrote him gently, as one who at last comprehended that mercy and forgiveness are due all those whom we harm upon our road either consciously or ignorantly, giving them evil to eat. Yet she saw the crude folly of attempting to resume their marriage in any way, and did not for once consider it. They had sinned gravely against each other and must face life anew, separately, recognizing that theirs was an irreparable mistake. So she wrote unpassionately of the legal divorce which must come. And she gave him money, promising him more as he might need it, within reason. Archie straightway put a good part of it into oil wells because every one in California was talking oil, and of course lost it all. Then Adelle sent him money to buy a nut ranch, in one of the interior valleys, and there we may leave Archie growing English walnuts fitfully. At times he felt aggrieved with Adelle, complained that he had been abused as a man who had married a rich woman and then been thrown aside when he considered himself placed for life. But also at times he had a fleeting conception of Adelle's character, realized that she was not now the girl who had married him out of hand after a mad night ride across France. She was bigger and better than he now, and he was not really worthy of her. But these rare moments of insight usually came only when Adelle had answered favorably his pleas for more money. * * * * * One memory of her early years came back to Adelle at this time--a picture that had been dark to her then. It was when she first met her little Mexican friend at the fashionable boarding-school. She could not understand the girl's foreign name, and so the little Mexican had written it out in pencil,--"Diane Merelda," and underneath she wrote in tiny letters,--"F. de M." "What do those mean?" Adelle had demanded, pointing to the mysterious letters. "Fille de Marie," the little Catholic lisped, and translated,--"Daughter of the Blessed Virgin; you understand?" Adelle had not understood then, nor had she thought of it all these years. But now the incident came back to her from its deep resting-place in her consciousness, and she understood its full meaning. She, too, was a child of God! albeit she had lived many years and done folly and suffered sorrow before she could recognize it. And so Clark's Field had taught its last great lesson,--Clark's Field, that fifty acres of lean, level land with its crop of bricks and mortar, its heavy burden of human lives, the sacrificial altar of our economic system and our race prejudices,--Clark's Field! We pass it night and morning of all the days of our lives, but rarely see it--see, that is, more than its bricks and mortar and empty faces. It should be called, in the quaint phrase of the judge's people, "God's Acre!" One might say that the beauty, the supreme fruit of this Clark's Field, which never blossomed into flower and fruit all these years we have been concerned with its fate, was Adelle. Just Adelle! The judge thought that was enough. Adelle would go on, he believed, growing into new wisdom, slowly acquired according to her nature, and also into tranquillity, friendship, love, and motherhood-all the eternal rewards of right living. Would she accomplish this best through that other Clark--the workman--whom she had discovered for herself? The sentimental reader probably has this already settled to his satisfaction. But I wonder! [THE END] _ |
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