"Adelle," she said with a sneer, sitting down before the fire, "I thought you knew too much to do this sort of thing."

Adelle was silent.

"And such a common bounder, too!"

It was Irene Paul's opprobrious epithet, which Adelle was beginning to comprehend. She winced, but made no reply.

"You might easily get yourself into serious trouble, my dear, with a man like that."

Adelle cowered under the stings of her lash and said nothing.

"I shall write the young man to-morrow that if he wants to see you he had better pay his visits here," she said tolerantly. "This is your house—you can see him here, you know. There are ways and ways of doing such things, my dear."

With a yawn and a hateful smile Pussy departed.

It was over, and she was alive. At first Adelle felt relieved until she pondered what it meant. Archie would be exposed to the keen shafts of Pussy's contempt and to the girls' titters and snubs. And probably there would be no chance at all for the kissing and all the rest. It was Pussy's clever way of effectually disposing of Archie. She understood that.

Adelle stayed awake for several hours, a most unusual occurrence, revolving matters in her confused mind. When she could stand it no longer she got up, dressed herself carefully in her motoring dress, and stole downstairs through the silent house, out to the garage which was at the other end of the garden. Eveline's little Pomeranian squeaked once, but did not arouse the household. Adelle cranked her car feverishly and succeeded at last, after much effort, in starting the engine and in pushing back the garage door. It was by far the most desperate step in life she had ever taken, and she felt ready to faint. She clambered into the car and released the clutch, more dead than alive, as she thought. With a leap and a whir she was down the road to Archie's cottage.



XXIII

Safely there she felt more composed. Stopping her engine she got out and walked to the window of the room on the ground floor that she knew the young Californian occupied. It was open. Leaning through the rose-vine she called faintly,—"Archie! Archie!" But the young painter slept solidly, and she was forced to take a stick and poke the bunch of bed-clothes in the corner before she could arouse the sleeping Archie. When he came to the window, she exclaimed,—

"Some thing awful has happened, Archie!"

"What's the row?"

"We're found out. Pussy knows and the girls. Irene told 'em!"

That apparently did not seem to Archie the ultimate catastrophe that it did to her. He stood in his pajamas beside the window, ungallantly yawning and rubbing his eyes.

"Well," he observed, "what are you going to do about it?"

Doubtless to his masculine good sense it seemed merely adding folly to folly thus to run away from the villa at midnight and expose them to further trouble.

Adelle did not argue nor explain.

"Put your clothes on," she said, with considerable decision, "and come out to the car."

Thereupon she went back to the car, cranked it afresh, and waited for him to appear. He came out of the rose-covered window, after a reasonable time, and climbed in beside the girl. She seemed to expect it, and there was not anything else to do. Adelle threw in the clutch and started at a lively pace, turning into the broad highroad which ran in a straight line southwards towards the French capital.

"What are you going to do?" Archie asked, now seriously awake and somewhat disturbed.

"I'm never going back to that place again," the girl flamed resolutely. "Never!"

As if to emphasize a vow she threw one arm around her lover's neck and drew his face to hers so that she could kiss it,—a maneuver she executed at some risk to their safety. "Oh, Archie, I love you so—I can't give you up!" she whispered by way of explanation.

He returned her kiss with good will, though mentally preoccupied, and said, "Of course not, dearest!" and continued to hold her while she steered the car, which was traveling at a lively rate along the empty route nationale in the direction of Paris. And thus they proceeded for mile after mile or rather ten kilometres after ten kilometres. Adelle and the car seemed to be inspired by the same energy and will. Archie realized that they were going rapidly to Paris and felt rather frightened at first. It was one thing to make love to an heiress not yet of age, but another to elope with her across France at night. Archie was not sure, but he thought there might be legal complications in the way of immediate matrimony. He might be getting himself in for a thoroughgoing scrape, which was not much to his liking. But there seemed no way of stopping Adelle or the car.

For Adelle had no doubts. It was the greatest night of her life. She drove the car recklessly, but splendidly. Every now and then she would turn her pale face to her lover and say peremptorily,—"Kiss me, Archie!"—and Archie dutifully gave the kiss, which seemed to be all the stimulant she needed.

The wild rush through the night beside her lover appeased something within her. It answered her craving for romance, newly awakened, for daring and desperation and achievement of bliss. She felt exalted, proud of herself, as if she were vindicating her claim to character. To-morrow, when Pussy Comstock and the girls found that she had gone, they would know that she was no weak fool. And by that time, of course, it would all be over—irrevocable.

"You'll marry me as soon as we get there," she remarked once to Archie in exactly the same tone as she said, "Kiss me, Archie." The young man falteringly replied,—"Of course, if we can."

"Of course we can! Why not?" Adelle replied firmly. "Americans can marry any time."

She felt sure that speedy marriage was an inalienable right that went with American citizenship together with the privilege of getting divorced whenever one cared to. Archie was by no means so sure of this point, but he thought it well not to discuss it until they both had more exact information. So the car bowled along through the night at a good forty miles an hour.

Long before they reached Paris the sun had come up out of the hot meadows along the road and they were forced to stop at Chartres for petrol and breakfast. Adelle wanted to cut the breakfast to a bowl of hot coffee, but Archie firmly insisted that they must be braced with food for the ordeal before them. She yielded to Archie and reluctantly descended from her seat, stiff with fatigue but elated. After breakfast Archie suggested that they should leave the car at the inn and proceed to Paris conventionally by train. But Adelle would not give up one kilometre of her great dash for liberty and Archie. Nor would she consider his going on by train to make arrangements for the marriage.

So they resumed their rapid flight, but mishaps with tires began, and it was noon before they entered the Porte Maillot. As they drove past the Villa Ponitowski, Adelle looked furtively up at the shutters as if she expected to see Pussy's severe face lurking there. She guided the machine to the Rue de l'Universite and stopped beneath Miss Baxter's studio windows. If Archie had proposed it, she would have gone at once to a hotel with him and registered, but he prudently suggested the studio, where he hoped to find Cornelia Baxter. But the sculptress had gone away somewhere, and the big room was empty—also hot and dusty. They sat down before the fireless stove and looked at each other.

Adelle was very tired and on the verge of hysterical tears. Archie had not been very efficient in the tire trouble. She felt that now, at any rate, he should take hold of their situation and manage. But Archie seemed helpless, was not at home in the situation. (If Adelle had had more experience she might have been chilled even now by his conduct and managed her life differently.)

"I'm so tired," she moaned, throwing herself down on the divan. "Don't you love me, Archie?"

Of course he did, but he did not offer to embrace her, and she was obliged to go over to where he sat in a wilted attitude and embrace him.

"You are mine now for always," she said, almost solemnly.

"Yes," he admitted, as if he did not exactly like the form in which the sentiment had been expressed.

"What are we going to do?"

"Get some food first. I'm starved, aren't you?"

Adelle, weary as she was, might not consider food as of the first importance in this crisis, but recognizing Archie's greater feebleness, she yielded to his desire for refreshment. So they drove to Foyot's and consumed two hours more in lunching delectably. Archie seemed somewhat aimless after dejeuner, perhaps he did not know just how to attack his formidable problem. It was Adelle who suggested that they drive to her banker's and inquire how to get married in American fashion in France. Adelle felt that bankers knew everything. It was a very elegant and bewildered young Frenchman whom they found alone in this vacation season at the bank which Adelle used. After he understood what they wanted he directed them to their consul. Adelle knew the American consulate because she had been there to sign papers, and turned the car into the Avenue de l'Opera with renewed hope. They stopped before the building from which the American flag was languidly floating and mounted the stairs to the offices. In the further room, beyond the assortment of deadbeats that own allegiance to the great American nation, was a little Irish clerk, who in the absence of the consul and his chief assistant held up the dignity of the United States. He was a political appointee from the great State of Illinois, and after an apprenticeship in the City Hall of Chicago was much more familiar with hasty matrimony than either of the two flustered young persons who demanded his advice. To Adelle's blunt salutation, "We want to get married, please!" and then, as if not sufficiently impressive,—"Now—right off!" he replied agreeably, not taking the time to remove the cigarette from his mouth,—"Sure! That's easy."

And he made it easy for them. He found the necessary blank forms in an office desk and filled them out according to the information the couple gave him. Adelle in deference to Archie's scruples stretched a point and made herself of age. When the formalities had been completed, the young Irishman called in from the outer office one of the hangers-on who happened to be a seedy minister of the gospel and who looked as if he were in Paris by mistake.

Thus almost before Archie knew it he had taken to himself Adelle Clark as wife, the ceremony being witnessed by the consular clerk,—Morris McBride of Chicago,—and an ex-sailor on his way back to New York of the name of Harrington. Adelle distributed the remaining pieces of gold in her purse in the way of pour-boires, and then the two found themselves in the runabout on the Avenue de l'Opera—married.

"I didn't know it could be done so easily," Archie observed breathlessly.

"Anything can be done when you want to, if you have the money," Adelle replied, evincing how thoroughly she had mastered the philosophy of the magic lamp.

"And what shall we do now?" her husband inquired.

(They say that in marriage the first trivial events are significant of what will happen thereafter, like straws upon the stream betraying which way the current flows. Possibly Archie's question indicates the quality of this marriage, also the fact that presently Adelle set their course.)

The consular clerk, judging that his compatriots were affluent, had hinted at the propriety of a wedding feast at the Cafe de Paris; but Adelle, who hated dinners, vetoed the suggestion. Archie was for returning unsentimentally to the empty studio for their wedding night, as they were short of cash and it was after banking hours. But Adelle had not dashed madly across half of France in the night to spend the first hours of her honeymoon in a dusty, hot studio on the Rue de l'Universite. She turned the car into the great Avenue and swept on past the Arch, through the Bois, out into the open country. Ultimately the lack of petrol stopped them at a little wayside cabaret some miles outside of the fortifications, where, too exhausted to proceed farther, they decided to spend the night.



XXIV

Fortunately Adelle was not of an imaginative habit of mind. She rarely envisaged with keenness anything of the future, and thus escaped many of the perplexities and annoyances of life, with some of its pleasures. Hers was always a single road,—from desire to the gratification of desire,—as it had been with Archie. Thus far her nature had developed few disturbing impulses, which accounts for the simple, not to say dull, character of her story up to the present. Even the supreme desire of woman's heart had come to her in a commonplace way and had been fulfilled precipitately, as the desires of the untutored usually are, but uncomplexly. As she fondly contemplated her husband the next morning, she did not realize that in one swift day she had accomplished the main drama of her existence and henceforth must be content with the humdrum course of life. Archie was scarcely more concerned with mental complexities.

"Won't Pussy Comstock be jarred!" was about the depth of his reaction to the momentous step they had taken.

Adelle smiled a wary smile in answer: she distinctly enjoyed having both outwitted Pussy and escaped the bother of opposition to her desires and the shafts of ridicule. She stroked her master's bright red hair and kissed him again. They felt very well content with themselves this morning. Archie certainly ought to have congratulated himself. He had a young wife, who loved him to distraction and who was extremely well-to-do, and, moreover, had no inconvenient relatives to "cut up ugly" over her imprudent step. There was only a trust company to reckon with, and what can a trust company do when it feels fussed and aggrieved?...

After a leisurely breakfast and more love-making under the plane trees in the little garden behind the inn, the pair had to reckon with fact. They must get some money at once: they had only enough loose silver in their two purses to pay the modest charges at the cabaret and buy a litre or two of petrol to get them to Paris. Yet they dallied on in the way of young love and drove up to the bank just before it closed. When Adelle in her nonchalant manner asked the young man at the window to give her five thousand francs in notes, she received a great shock—the worst shock of her life. The young cashier, who had paid out to her through the little brass guichet many tens of thousands of pretty white notes and gold-pieces, informed her that he could not give her any money. It developed, under a storm of exclamation and protest, that only that noon the bankers had received a cablegram from their correspondent in America curtly directing them not to cash further drafts drawn by Miss Clark against the Washington Trust Company. The magic lamp had gone out most inopportunely! In vain Adelle expostulated, declared there was a mistake, even introduced to the cashier "my husband," who looked uncomfortable, but tried to assume authority and demanded reasons for the bank's treatment of his wife. All the reason lay in that brief cablegram. The couple at last turned dejectedly into the street and again got into Adelle's runabout, which obviously was in need of more petrol.

"It's Pussy," Adelle pronounced with divination.

"If it is, she's got in her fine work fast."

The two might reflect sadly that if they had been prudent, they would not have spent all that morning in love-making, having a lifetime for that, but would have taken prompt measures to secure funds as soon as the bank opened. Of course, it had never occurred to either of them that trouble would fall in just this way.

And now what was to be done? Adelle felt that they should drive at once to the Villa Ponitowski, secure her clothes and jewelry, and make Pussy, who she had no doubt was there, bank them until the embargo on her drafts was raised. But neither had what Archie called "the nerve" to do this. So they went for refuge to the only place they knew, Miss Baxter's studio.

There they found Miss Comstock. She had come to Paris, of course, by the first train the day before, arriving at the studio shortly after they had left in search of food. She had vibrated between the studio and the Neuilly villa ever since, sure that when Adelle was short of funds she would go home to roost. And Pussy had taken immediate measures to cut off funds by cabling to the trust company the exact facts of Adelle's disappearance in company with the Californian. She received them amiably.

"My dear Adelle," she began, "you should not be so eccentric. You gave us all a shock!... I was coming up to Paris and would have been glad to motor up with you and—er—Mr. Davis, I believe." There was a deadly pause while she scrutinized the guilty couple through her glasses, as if she were determining the exact extent of the mischief already done. She looked disgustedly over the dusty studio and observed,—"It's not a sweet place for—er—love-making is it? Why didn't you go to the Villa, my dear, and let Marie look after you?"

Archie laughed inanely. Adelle felt that she could not stand more of this feline fooling. She said bluntly,—

"We're married."

"Married! So soon! How—er—nice!" Pussy commented.

"Yes, we're married, Miss Comstock," Archie added lamely, mopping his brow.

"You don't mean that?" Miss Comstock said quickly, her tone changing.

Adelle nodded.

"Then it is really a serious matter."

Adelle's blood froze.

"I can't believe you have been such a fool," she said to the girl. "Or you such a scamp," she turned upon the frightened youth.

It seemed to Adelle that Pussy would have condoned anything or everything except that fatal visit to the consulate. Pussy's morals, she knew, were of the strictly serviceable sort, and she was gladder than ever that she had prodded Archie into having the ceremony performed at once. Now Pussy could do nothing but scold.

But Miss Comstock accepted only the inevitable, and she was not yet convinced that the visit to the consulate and the ceremony there constituted an inevitable marriage. She pleaded with Adelle to leave her so-called husband and come back with her to the Neuilly villa "until the matter could be straightened out, and an announcement of the marriage made to the world," as she was wily enough to put it. But Adelle was adamant. Archie, to whom the woman next appealed, was more yielding. She succeeded in frightening him, talking about the dangers of French laws that had to do with minors. Of course they had lied about Adelle's age, and there were all sorts of complications besides the scandal, which was perfectly needless in any case. And Miss Comstock assured them that the trust company would probably take every step to annul the marriage. There was a very hard road ahead of them if they persisted in their idiotic course. Finally she even suggested that Archie might return to the Villa with them until his status could be determined. Adelle, however, feared Pussy's cleverness and would not stir from the studio. All through the protracted interview in this crisis, when her heart's desire was threatened, Adelle displayed surprising courage and steadfastness of purpose. Her courage naturally was an egotistic courage: it amounted in sum to this—nobody should take away her toy from her this time. And finally Miss Comstock retired from the scene defeated and somewhat venomous.

"I hope, my dear," she sent as a parting shot, "that Mr. Davis can give you the comforts you are used to. I think it may be extremely difficult for you to use your own money for the present."

Adelle seemed quite indifferent to the comforts she had been used to, although she well knew that there was not a five-franc piece in the studio, when Miss Comstock departed to cable the trust company the results of her interview. The trust company, it may be said in passing, was much upset over the news, and after consultation decided to send the third vice-president across the ocean to examine into the matter, Mr. Ashly Crane having declined to undertake the delicate mission. Meantime they did not rescind their instructions to their Paris correspondent, and so for some days to come the young people were reduced to absurd straits for the want of money.

* * * * *

After Pussy had gone, with her threat, Adelle burst into tears and accused Archie of not supporting her in this battle. Was she not giving up everything for him?—etc. Archie had his first lesson in being the husband of an heiress, even a much-petted husband. It was finally learned, and kisses were exchanged. Then they thought to appease their hunger, which by this time was acute, and debated how this was to be done. Adelle was confident that on the morrow she could sell what jewelry she had with her for enough to support them pleasantly until she could make it right with the trust company and get hold of her lamp again. For this evening she borrowed five francs from the suspicious and unwilling concierge, and with the money Archie went forth to the corner and brought back a dubious mess of cold food and a bottle of poor wine, which they consumed in the dark studio, then went to sleep upon the divan in each other's arms like a couple of romance. Rather late in the day on the morrow Adelle sallied out in a cab to the Rue de la Paix confident that she would return with much gold. She found naturally that her own handiwork was unsalable at any price, and that the fashionable shops where she had dealt prodigally would not advance her a cent even upon their own wares. Pussy, she realized, had shut off also this avenue to ease! They were obliged to induce the concierge's wife to pledge at the pawnshop the more marketable things Adelle had with her. With the few francs thus derived they managed to picnic in the studio for the next week. They became acquainted with busses and the batteau mouche and other lowly forms of transportation and amusement, but spent most of their time in the studio, love-making, of which Adelle did not weary. Archie was used to the devices of a short purse and Adelle thought it all a great lark for love's sake. Besides, it must end soon, and the high noon of prosperity return with the possession of her precious lamp. To hasten that event she wrote a rather peremptory note to the Washington Trust Company, notifying them of her change of name and complaining of the mistake they had made in cutting off her drafts. It would take a fortnight at the most to get a reply, and then all would be right. Archie did not feel so confident.



XXV

Prosperity did not return as completely as Adelle expected, nor as easily. Mr. Solomon Smith, the vice-president of the trust company, arrived in Paris in due course on the seventh day and fell naturally first into the hands of Miss Comstock. For Pussy, realizing to the full the consequences of this situation to herself as an exploiter of rich American girls from the very best families, had moved her family back to the Villa Ponitowski and had set the stage demurely and convincingly for the arrival of the trust company's emissary. She impressed Mr. Smith easily as an intelligent and prudent woman, who was terribly concerned over Adelle's false step, and quite blameless in the affair.

"Such an unfortunate accident," she explained to him, "from every point of view:—think of my dear girls, the example to them!... And such deceit,—one would not have expected it of the girl, I must say!... I know nothing whatever about the young man, except that he comes from the West—from California. One of my girls—a daughter of Hermann Paul, the rich San Francisco railroad man, you know—tells me that this Davis fellow is of most ordinary people, what is called a 'bounder,' you know. Adelle naturally did not meet him here, but at the studio of one of her friends. I knew nothing whatever about it until just before the elopement—the very day before, in fact, when I surprised them together in a motor-car. I spoke to the girl that night, of course, kindly but severely. I had no idea she could do such a thing! It must have been in her mind a long time. The girl showed great powers of duplicity, all the trickiness of a parvenue, to be quite frank. I never had a girl of such low tastes, I may say;—all my girls are from the very best families, most carefully selected."

Thus Miss Comstock skillfully contrived to throw the responsibility for Adelle's misstep upon her birth and upon the trust company which had brought her up. In doing this she but confirmed Mr. Smith in his opinion that the guardianship of minor girls was not a branch of the business that the Washington Trust Company should undertake. They lacked the proper facilities, as he would express it, and it was more of a nuisance than it was worth. He had had a tempestuous September passage across the ocean and dreaded the return voyage.

Having won a vantage-point Miss Comstock next proceeded to give a piquant account of Mr. Ashly Crane's dealings with the girl, who in a way had been his special charge.

"Fortunately I nipped that affair in the bud," she said, "although, as it turned out, I suppose he might have been less objectionable than the fellow she took. I am afraid that Mr. Crane lowered the girl's ideals of manhood and thus paved the way for her fall," she added gravely.

Mr. Smith listened to the tale of Mr. Crane's futile attempt in rising astonishment and wrath. He was himself a married man with a family of growing daughters. He made a mental note of Mr. Crane's conduct, which ultimately terminated that promising young banker's career in finance with the trust company.

"Where is the girl?" he asked at the end, sighing. "I must see her, I suppose, though it seems too late to do anything now."

Pussy had sagely taken account of Mr. Solomon Smith's character and concluded that the banker was the sort of middle-class American who might insist upon the young couple's being married all over again in due form if he suspected anything irregular, and so to save bother all around she assured him that she herself had made inquiry at the consulate and found that the marriage performed there was binding enough,—"unless the trust company wished to intervene as guardian of the minor and contest its validity on the ground of misrepresentation of Adelle's age," which, of course, must involve considerable scandal.

"It would be very unpleasant, indeed," she said meaningly.

The banker, who hated all publicity for himself and for his institution, hastened to say that he had no idea of taking such action; merely wished to be sure that the girl was really married and that her children, if any came to her, would be born in lawful wedlock. Miss Comstock hid a smile and set his mind at rest on that point.

(One sequel of this affair, by the way, was the prompt conclusion of Mr. Morris McBride's diplomatic career: he returned presently to a patient fatherland to renew in Cook County, Illinois, his services to the Republican Party.)

After a delectable luncheon at Miss Comstock's, Mr. Smith drove alone from the Neuilly villa to Miss Baxter's studio, where he found the young couple somewhat in neglige, recovering from one of the concierge's indigestible repasts, funds now running too low to permit them to indulge in restaurant life. The untidy studio and the disheveled couple themselves made a very bad impression upon the trust company's officer, who loathed from the depths of his orderly soul all slatternness and especially "bohemian art." He examined the young husband through his horn-bowed glasses so sternly that Archie slunk into the darkest corner of the studio and remained there during the banker's visit, which he left to Adelle to bear. Mr. Smith could not be harsh with the young bride, no matter how foolish and wrong-headed he thought her.

"Mrs.—er—Davis," he began, going straight to the point like a business man, "I am informed that you are regularly married. It might be possible to have such a marriage as you have chosen to make set aside on the ground that you are a minor—still a ward of an American court—and misrepresented your age to the consular officer."

Adelle opened her gray eyes in consternation. Were they, after all, thinking of taking Archie from her? But she was reassured by the trust officer's next words.

"Your guardians, however, will in all likelihood not take any such steps—I shall not recommend it. Although you yet lack eighteen months of being legally of age, and of course ought not to have married without our consent, nevertheless you are of an age when many young women assume the responsibilities of marriage. The facts being what they are,"—he paused to look around disgustedly at the evidences of the picnicking menage,—"I see no use in our interfering now in this unfortunate affair."

Adelle's pale face brightened. He was a good old sort, she thought, and wasn't going to make trouble, after all,—merely lecture them a bit, and she composed her face properly to receive his scolding. It came, but it was not very bad, at least Adelle did not feel its sting.

"It is also needless for me to pain you," he began, "by telling you what I—what every mature person—must think of your rash step. Its consequences upon your own future life will probably manifest themselves only too soon. For a young girl like you, carefully brought up under the best educational influences, and still in the charge of a—er—companion,—" Adelle smiled demurely at Mr. Smith's difficulty in finding the right word to describe Pussy Comstock,—"to deceive the kind watchfulness, the confidence reposed in you, and carry on clandestine relations"—What's that? thought Adelle—"with the first young fellow who presents himself, indicates a serious lack on your part of something that every woman should have to—er—to cope with life successfully," he concluded, letting her down at the end softly.

This long sentence, by the way, was an interesting composite of several "forms" that Mr. Smith used frequently on different occasions. It did not impress Adelle as it should. She felt, as a matter of fact, that in deceiving Pussy, she had merely pitted her feeble will and intelligence against a much stronger one of an experienced woman, who was none too scrupulous in her own methods. Also that in acting as she had in running away with Archie, she had displayed the first real gleam of character in her whole life. But she could not put these things into words. So she let Mr. Smith continue without protest, which was the best way.

"As for the husband you have chosen, I know nothing about him of course. I can only say that men of standing have slight regard for any man who takes advantage of the weakness and folly of a school-girl, especially when he has everything to gain financially from her and nothing to give."

Archie winced at this truthful statement and nervously dropped a palette with which he had been fussing. It clattered to the floor and broke, setting the nerves of all three on edge.

"Such a man," Mr. Smith proceeded in his most acid tones, glaring at Archie, "is properly called an adventurer, and rarely if ever proves to have character enough to retain the respect of the woman he has wheedled into sacrificing herself."

This was a bit unfair, for Archie had been wheedled rather than wheedled Adelle. Moreover, the world is full, as Mr. Smith must surely know, of young men who have committed matrimony with girls financially to their advantage and who have retained not only their own self-respect, but won the admiration of their acquaintances into the bargain for their skill and good luck.

And Adelle resented the slur for Archie even more than the young man did. She felt vaguely that Archie ought to do something to demonstrate that he was not a worthless character, possibly kick Mr. Smith out of the studio, at least protest at being called a "cad" and "adventurer." But Archie took it all meekly and busied himself with recovering the pieces of the broken palette from the floor. Mr. Smith did not press his dialectic advantage; in other words, did not specifically hit Archie again. Perhaps a human compunction, for the sake of the young girl who had just rashly hazarded her life's happiness with the young man, restrained him. He turned instead again to Adelle in a gentler tone.

"I feel sincerely sorry for you, Mrs. Davis. A young woman in your position, without family or near friends to shield her, is exposed to all the evil selfishness of the world. You have succumbed, I am afraid, to a delusion, although the trust company did its best to supply your lack of natural protectors, to shield you."

He reflected, perhaps, that the trust company had been, even from the easy American standard, a rather negligent parent, chiefly concerned with its ward's fortune, and hastened to say defensively,—"We placed you with an excellent woman,"—Adelle had placed herself, but it made no difference,—"one in whom we have every confidence not only as a teacher, but also as a friend and guide." Even Adelle smiled broadly at this description of Pussy. "But all our care has been in vain: you have put us now where we cannot help you further!"

Adelle lowered her eyes, but felt happier—the sermon was coming to an end.

"It is useless for me to continue, however. It rests with you alone, with you and your husband,"—he pronounced the term with infinite scorn,—"to prove that your rash choice is not what it seems,—the end of your career, the end of your happiness. And it rests with you, sir," he added severely, looking over at Archie, "to prove that you are man enough to be a kind husband to the girl who has married you under such circumstances. I sincerely hope that your future will be better than your act promises!"

Here was another opening for the kick, but Archie failed to grasp it. He took his cue from Adelle and maintained a sulky silence.

"There remains but one more thing for me to speak of, Mrs. Davis, and that is your property, of which the trust company must continue guardian for nearly two years more until you become of age and the company is released from its guardianship by the court."

The couple pricked up their ears with relief at the mention of property.

"You have shown yourself to be prodigal in expenditure," Mr. Smith remarked, pulling from his pocket a card with a list of figures. "This past year you drew very nearly if not quite thirty-eight thousand dollars,—altogether too much money, I should say, for a young woman to spend safely."

"It was the cars and the Nile trip," Adelle murmured.

"Fortunately it happens to be well within the income of your estate, and so I suppose I cannot raise objections except upon moral grounds. It is too much money for any woman to spend wisely!"

Mr. Smith apparently had positive convictions on this subject. Adelle did not seem to care what he thought a woman could spend wisely.

"And so I propose that for the remainder of the time while you are nominally under our guardianship the trust company shall allow you—" He paused as if debating the figure with himself, and Archie unconsciously walked a couple of steps nearer the others. Alas! It drew Mr. Smith's attention from Adelle, for whom he was sorry, to the cause, as he thought, of her misfortune. Whatever had been in his mind he said curtly, looking at Archie, "Five thousand dollars a year, to be paid in quarterly installments on your personal order, Mrs. Davis."

The young people looked at him aghast. As a matter of fact, five thousand dollars a year was not penury, at least to Archie, who had rarely seen a clear twelve hundred from January to January. Even Adelle, after her training in the Church Street house, might at a pinch hold herself in for eighteen months, all the more as after that period of probation she could not be prevented by the trust company from indulging herself to the full extent of her income. Adelle, indeed, who was still somewhat vague about the limitations and possibilities of money, was not as much annoyed as Archie. But she knew that she was being punished for her conduct in running away with Archie by this disagreeable old man, and she resented punishment as a child might resent it. Mr. Smith, observing the signs of discontent with his announcement, remarked with increased decision and satisfaction:—

"I am sure that will be best for both of you. Especially for you, Mrs. Davis! It will give you an opportunity to find out how much you care for each other, without the luxuries that wealth brings. And it will protect you, my dear, from—er—the indiscretions of a young husband, who has not been accustomed to the use of much money, I gather."

Undoubtedly Mr. Smith thought he was acting wisely towards them,—"Just as I would if it had been my own daughter," according to his report to President West. As a matter of fact, he acted precisely as parents are only too prone to act, with one third desire for the best interests of the parties concerned and two thirds desire to have them punished for their folly. The punitive motive was large in Mr. Smith's decision to put the couple on short rations as long as he had the power to do so. He would have liked to tie up Adelle's fortune indefinitely, so that the young scamp who had married her for her money (as he was convinced) might get as little of it as possible. Unfortunately the trust company had no control after Adelle's twenty-first birthday, unless by that time experience should teach her the wisdom of voluntarily putting her fortune beyond her husband's reach; but, at any rate, for the next few months it could arbitrarily and tyrannically disappoint his hungry appetite, and that is what Mr. Smith meant to do. His psychology, unfortunately, was faulty. It was perhaps the poorest way of securing Adelle's happiness in the end, as he might have foreseen if he had been less conscientious and more human....

Shortly after delivering his blow, Mr. Smith took his hat and left the studio without shaking hands with Archie, although he smiled frostily on the trust company's ward and "hoped all would go well with her in her new life." All the way back to his hotel he congratulated himself for his dispatch, finesse, eloquence, and wisdom in handling a deplorable and difficult situation. Yet it is hard to see just what he had accomplished by crossing the ocean. He washed his hands of "the Clark girl" before he left Paris for his return voyage, and, like so many persons with whom the young heiress had dealings, never again actively entered her life.



XXVI

When the studio door closed upon the emissary of the trust company, the young couple looked at each other a little ruefully. Archie kicked over a chair or two and expressed himself volubly, now that it was safe, upon the priggishness and meanness of such folks as Mr. Solomon Smith. Adelle might wish that he had expressed himself in these vigorous terms earlier, when there could have been discussion and a chance of modifying Mr. Smith's decision. But she realized how raw he was feeling from the old gentleman's contempt and sweetly put her arms around her husband's strong shoulders and kissed him tenderly.

"It won't be so bad, Archie," she said hopefully. "We'll get on somehow, I expect, and it isn't forever—not two years." She could recall much graver crises in life than being compelled to live for eighteen months with an adored companion on seventy-five hundred dollars, and people somehow survived them.

"It isn't just the money," Archie protested, a little shamed, but still grumpy. "It's his rotten talk. A feller doesn't like being called all sorts of names."

"Well, he's gone now and he won't come back," Adelle remarked soothingly, with another effort to caress her young lord into amiability and resignation to fate. That proved more difficult than usual: Archie felt the sting of the older man's taunts, especially the horrid word "adventurer" rankled in his subconsciousness. He saw himself reflected in the opinion of other men,—at least of stodgy, middle-aged men like Mr. Smith, who worked hard for what they got and had families,—and it ruffled him seriously. He was not in a happy temper otherwise. A fortnight of conjugal picnicking in the perpetual society of Adelle, whose conversational powers were limited, had chafed him. So Adelle had her first experience in that woman's pathetic task of endeavoring to soothe and harmonize the disturbed soul of her lord, who, she is aware, has only himself to blame for his state of spiritual discomfiture. But Adelle, like all her sisters who love, since the world began, rose nobly to her part.

Finally, they sallied forth and with some money that Adelle had contrived to extract, probably from the sale of another piece of real jewelry, they consoled themselves with an elaborate dinner at a famous restaurant in the Champs Elysees, and as it was a warm evening drove afterwards out to the Bois. The next day Adelle ventured forth to the bankers alone, and secured the first quarterly installment of the funds left there to her account by the prim Mr. Smith. With the notes and gold she hastened back to Archie, and the couple began to plan seriously for the future.

It is not my purpose to follow the pair in their erratic course during the next eighteen months, although it had its ludicrous as well as pathetic steps. That they were not ready for any sort of matrimonial partnership, is of course obvious, but as they shared their disability with a goodly proportion of young married people the world over, it does not count. Adelle, being the woman, learned her lesson more quickly than Archie, and under conceivable circumstances might have made as much of a success with her rash choice, in spite of Mr. Smith's prophecies, as many others make with their more prudently premeditated ones. She wanted to be married, and on the whole she was content when she got what she wanted,—at least, in the beginning,—which is the essential condition of marital comfort. But Archie had not by any means been as anxious to tie himself up for good as Adelle had been, and was more restive with what he found marriage to a rich—at least, expectantly rich—wife to be.

In a blind effort to find a congenial environment, they moved about over the map a good deal. First they went to Venice, of which Adelle especially had rosy memories associated with the dawn of love. They took a furnished apartment in an old palace over the Canal, and set up four swarthy, muscled rowers in blue sashes. Venice has been for many generations the haven of love, especially of irregular or illicit love: but its attraction evaporates swiftly after the ceremony has taken place. No spot where the male cannot stretch himself and get away from domesticity for a few hours is safe except for the diviner, more ecstatic forms of passion. In a few weeks the couple became deadly bored with Venice and its picture postcard replica of life. At Archie's suggestion they next sought Munich, where some of his artist acquaintance had settled.

This was an atmosphere of work, more or less, and Adelle amused herself by thinking that she and her husband were members of that glorious band of free lances of art. They took a studio apartment and set up their crafts jointly. If either had had the real stuff of the artist, it might have gone well; but two idle and rather uninformed persons in the same studio produce disaster. Munich soon became an affair of beer, skittles, and music in company with the more careless spirits that gathered there that winter. Among them happened to be Sadie Paul.

A good deal had happened to the California sisters, and as the "two Pols" will come into Adelle's life later on, their story can be briefly given here. Irene, the sister who had brutally betrayed Adelle in a spirit of careless mischief, had attracted with her ripe California charm a young Englishman of family. Mr. Hermann Paul, the "San Francisco railroad man" referred to by Miss Comstock, meantime had died, and Irene had gone home to join her mother and younger brothers and ultimately was married to her Englishman. She divided her time thereafter about equally between England and the new earthly paradise of the Pacific. Her sister Sadie had determined to remain in Europe, under other chaperonage than Pussy Comstock. It was rumored that a young Hungarian nobleman was hanging somewhere in the horizon, but for the present she played about with Adelle and Archie. Apparently Sadie Paul did not share her sister's prejudices about "the red-headed bounder," for she flirted unconcernedly with Archie as far as he would go, which to do Archie justice was not dangerously far. Adelle, good-natured and easy-going by disposition, welcomed the return of her old school friend and was not in the least disturbed by her flirtatious attempts with Archie. That sort of amorous pretense was more or less the habit of the world she had known, and besides, she was aware that Sadie was "having a desperate affair" with Count Zornec, the Hungarian referred to above, who was temporarily exiled to his remote estate. Indeed, she became the means of furthering this passion and speeding it to its destined end in matrimony, which has to do with a subsequent part of our tale....

To return to the wanderings of Adelle and Archie, in the Easter holidays they left Munich for Switzerland for the winter sports, and in the spring Archie conceiving the idea that he wanted to do Dutch landscape, they went to Holland for a few weeks. That summer they rented a small villa along the Bay of Biscay and had Sadie Paul and her Count as their guests for a time. The second winter of their marriage they spent in Paris, and by this time were rather hard-pressed for ready money, as neither had relaxed in wanting things and Adelle especially still had the habit of buying whatever attracted her attention,—bright-colored stuffs, jewels, and useless odds and ends of bric-a-brac, with the idea that sometime they should want to establish themselves permanently somewhere and purchases would all come in usefully. It was much as a bird gathers sticks, straws, and bright-colored threads, but in Adelle it was an expensive instinct. Towards the end of their period of probation, they had to get aid from money-lenders, to whom Sadie Paul introduced them. Adelle did not find it difficult to raise money on her expectations, at a stiff rate of interest, and thus the object of the Puritan Mr. Smith was defeated. It would have pained his thrifty banker's soul had he known that the trust company's ward was gayly paying ten and fifteen percent for "temporary accommodation," while her own funds were barely earning five per cent in the careful investments of the trust company! When Adelle finally got hold of her fortune, a goodly sum had to be paid over to settle the claims of these obliging money-lenders....

Of the quarrels, big and little, that the young couple had these first months it is useless to speak. Thus far they were neither excessively severe nor dangerously frequent—no worse, perhaps, than the average idle couple must create in love's readjustment to prosaic fact. Adelle no longer believed that her Archie would be the great painter that she had once fondly dreamed of helping him to become. He was too lazy and fond of good things to eat and drink and other sensual rewards of life to become distinguished in anything, unless perchance he were well starved into discipline. His present life of comparative ease and expected wealth was the very worst thing for him as man and as artist. Like an over-fertilized plant he went to leaf and bore little fruit. And thus again Clark's Field, with its delayed expectations, had a baleful influence upon a new generation of human beings. The Davises had just enough money to wander loose over Europe, disturbed, as Addie had once been disturbed, by the hope of a more golden future.

Adelle herself was content not to work hard at the manufacture of jewelry, although if she had been encouraged, she might have become almost second-rate in this minor art. She, too, was indolent, if not by disposition, by training, and Europe offers abundant distraction of a semi-intellectual sort to fill the days of people like Archie and Adelle. To loaf herself was not so fatal for Adelle as to acquiesce in Archie's loafing, to accept the parasitic notion for her man that obtained in the easy-going circles she knew. "Oh, well," she said to Sadie, "why should Archie work if he doesn't want to?"

Sadie saw no reason and suggested,—"There isn't one of those painters who would stick at it if he didn't have to."

Like all poor people, they hadn't any luck; that was her idea. And Adelle cultivated another dangerous conception of marriage.

"It's enough for me if he's good to me and loves me—I have plenty of money for us both."

In other words, she thought that she should be satisfied to keep her lover always as an appanage of her magic lamp, to maintain a human being and a male human being as she might maintain a motor-car or an estate or a stable, as something desirable and pleasurable, contributing to her happiness,—the privilege of her fortunate position as a woman of means. There were many rich women who had that idea or cultivated it as a solace to their defeated souls.

"Isn't he a dear?" she would say to Sadie Paul in these moments of proud consciousness of possession; and conversely she would say sternly when some case of masculine errancy was brought to her notice,—"If Archie treated me like that, he'd find his bag packed and sitting outside the door!"

So she was very fussy about her husband's appearance,—his dress and manners and appointments; and insisted upon giving him every accessory of luxury, everything that rich men supposably enjoy. As her nearest and dearest possession, she was more concerned with his brave appearance than she was with her own. She "dolled" him up, as Sadie Paul laughingly called it. "Isn't he cunning?" was one of her common expressions of marital happiness. Occasionally, in more serious moods, she might talk largely about Archie's "going into business" when they "got their money," but as time went on and Archie displayed little aptitude for managing money, she talked less about this. Adelle would have been content to buy the Basque villa they had rented and establish herself and Archie there in complete idleness and luxury, provided he would always be "good" to her, by which she meant faithful to those unconsidered marriage vows made in the Paris consulate, and not too cross.

And thus Archie and Adelle drifted on towards that great date of their complete emancipation from control, when all the riches of Clark's Field, now accumulating in the trust company's pool, should be handed over to them. That would be, indeed, the ultimate crisis for the old Field, when, having been finally transmuted into coin of the realm, it should cease to have an entity or any personal relation with the Clark race!

Meantime Archie and Adelle were not vicious, though Archie drank too much for his digestion and was often peevish in consequence, and Adelle was almost aimless and lazy enough to be described as vicious. Yet they were no worse than many, many other well-to-do young persons with no deep roots, no permanent incentives, no profound passions to give them significance. Likely enough they might have ended in some charming English country house, or Roman palace, or pink-and-white villa along the Mediterranean,—if their fate had not been still involved with Clark's Field. They would have become perfectly respectable, utterly negligible modern citizens of the world,—the infertile by-product of a rich civilization with its perfected machinery for the preservation of accumulated wealth. There are more Archies and Adelles about us than is commonly recognized: they are on all our calling-lists, in every European capital or congregation of expensive country homes. Their names stud the "blue books" and the "red books" of conventional "society." They fill the great hotels and the mammoth steamships. They, in sum, make up a large part of that fine fruit of civilization for which the immense majority toil, and for whom serious people plan and legislate, for whom laws are interpreted and trust companies formed in order to handle the money they themselves are incapable of controlling usefully, even of safely preserving....

Archie and Adelle were hungry at this period for more money and felt themselves martyrized by the whim of an ill-natured old man who had arbitrarily made them wait to be wholly happy. They talked perpetually about what they should do with themselves "after" the great event,—the sort of touring-car they should buy, the kind of establishment they should keep, the best place to live in, etc. It must be somewhere in Europe, of course, for neither was eager to return to America "where everybody worked and there was nothing fit to eat," according to Archie. Adelle's ideas of America, never extensive, were growing dimmer every season, and the occasional friends who returned from the other shore described their native land in unflattering terms. Adelle thought that every American who could lived as much of the time as possible somewhere in Europe, but she did not think much about it at this time.

They had no children. Adelle had no objections to child-bearing and expected "sometime" to have "two or three" children. Archie thought there would be plenty of time for that "later on" when they had their money. Adelle was still very young, and in the present wandering state of their life children would be a nuisance.

Finally they were neither happy nor unhappy. Restless was the adjective that described them most closely. Their bodies and stomachs and nerves and minds and souls were always in a state of disequilibrium, and they were feeling about for equilibrium like blind kittens without forming any successful plan of extricating themselves from their subconscious state of dissatisfaction. With another order of gray matter in their brains either one might have produced out of this disequilibrium some fine, rare flower of form or color or words. But Archie's gray matter, like Adelle's, was not expressive.

Their friends thought them happy as well as fortunate. Sadie Paul reported to her sister and Eveline Glynn,—"Dell is crazy about her Archie—she won't let him out of her sight. He's not such a bad sort, but fearfully stuck on himself, just because Dell pets him so."

Adelle, as she frequently told Archie, infinitely preferred her choice to Sadie's "Black-and-Tan," as she called the Count Zornec.

This was their state after eighteen months of married life.



XXVII

The trust company had left its ward severely alone since Mr. Smith's visit to Paris. Like punishing parents they seemed resolved to let Adelle taste the dregs of her folly by herself. Each quarter they deposited with the Paris bankers twelve hundred and fifty dollars and notified them not to honor Mrs. Davis's drafts in excess of this amount. It was automatic. That was the ideal of the trust company, as it is of many private persons, to reduce life to automatic processes.

But as the day drew near when the trust company had to give a final accounting to the probate court of its guardianship, they notified Adelle by a curt letter that her presence would be desirable. There were certain matters in connection with her assuming control of her fortune and terminating their trust that could be transacted more expeditiously if Mrs. Davis would present herself at their office by the end of May. "We beg to remain," etc.

The suggestion came as a welcome incentive to the young couple. Anything that might expedite matters was to their taste. They had talked of making a visit to Archie's relatives and introducing Adelle to the modern paradise of the golden slope and at the same time visiting the Pauls. And so, about the middle of May, the Davises took ship from Havre for the New World, occupying, in deference to their coming wealth, an expensive deck suite in the transatlantic hotel, and thus made their journey in all possible comfort.

They arrived in B—— with a great many trunks that contained a small part of all those purchases which Adelle had made; also with a dog and Adelle's maid. Their first real experience of their American citizenship came naturally at the dock. Archie, who had lost some money on the way across, and was hazy about his duties and rights as a returning citizen, had put in an absurd declaration for the customs officers. With their formidable array of trunks the couple presented at once a vulnerable aspect to the inspectors, and long after the procession of travelers had scurried away in cabs, Archie and Adelle were left, hot and uncomfortable, trying to "explain" their false declaration. Adelle, who was not usually untruthful, lied shamelessly about the prices she had paid for things. "It cost just nothing at all,—twenty francs," she declared as the officer held forth some article whose real value he knew perfectly well. Adelle lost her assurance, shed tears of shame; Archie lost his temper and swore at the officer for insulting his wife, and in consequence every article in the fourteen pieces of baggage was dumped upon the dock while a grinning audience of inspectors, reporters, and stevedores gathered about the unhappy pair.

"What a country!" Archie fumed while the inspector was summoning his superior officer.

"No wonder Americans prefer to live abroad," he remarked loftily to a convenient reporter, who was preparing copy with his eager eyes.

"We won't live here, will we!" Adelle chorused to her husband.

"Not much!"

"To treat decent people like this, just because they have a few clothes and things. What do they take us for—hoboes?" Archie continued.

He forgot that he had departed from his native land a scant two years before with a lean dress-suit case and a small trunk. Also that his wife and indirectly himself were among the beneficiaries of the law they had tried to evade. The reporter, who had appraised the pair more expeditiously than the inspector had their goods, hypocritically drew them out, asking their opinion of America and Americans, which Archie set forth volubly.

When the inspectors finally came upon deposits of Adelle's jewelry which she had skillfully concealed in the toes of her shoes, they declared the game off and sent all the trunks forthwith to the stores. Their case was so serious that it must be dealt with specially. The pair finally left the dock, much chagrined, feeling as nearly like common criminals as they were ever likely to feel; indeed, somewhat frightened and much less voluble in protest, whatever their opinion of their fatherland might still be. It was evidently a serious affair they had got themselves in for by their perfectly natural desire to save a few dollars at the expense of the Government.

The next morning when they awoke in the Eclair Hotel, which still remained B——'s best hostelry, where they had consoled themselves by taking an expensive suite and ordering a good dinner, they found that their arrival in America was not unheralded. The reporter had not been idle. His description of Archie was unkind, and his satirical report of the couple's sayings and doings was unfriendly. He had somehow discovered Adelle's connection with Clark's Field, the story of which in a much garbled form he gave to the public and incidentally doubled the size of her fortune,—"drawn from one of the most unblushing pieces of real estate promotion this State has ever seen." Altogether it was the kind of article to make the conservative gentlemen of the Washington Trust Company very unhappy. When they read it they wished again that they had never seen Adelle.

Other papers took up the scent of the "Morning Herald," and for a week Archie and Adelle were thoroughly introduced to the American people as an idle pair, of immense inherited wealth, who had failed in their attempt to defraud the custom house of a few thousand dollars. This affair kept them busy for the better part of a week, and was finally settled without prosecution when the collector became convinced that no serious wrong had been plotted by Archie and Adelle. He gave them both a little lecture, which they received in a humbler frame of mind than they had shown at the dock.

Archie rather enjoyed the newspaper notoriety that his marriage to the heiress of Clark's Field was bringing him. He entertained the reporters affably at the hotel bar, and established a reputation for not being a "snob," though so much of a "swell." In fact he was a much less uncouth specimen than when Adelle had first encountered him in the Paris studio. A year and a half of ease and petting had served to smooth off those more obvious roughnesses that had caused Irene Paul to describe him as a "bounder." He was fashionably dressed according to the Anglo-French style, and fortunately did not affect soft shirts or flowing ties or eccentric head-gear, or any other of the traditional marks of the artist. Lounging in the luxurious hotel corridor, he looked like any well-to-do young American of twenty-seven or eight. His bright red hair and small waxed mustache, and his habit of dangling a small cane, perhaps, were the only distinguishing marks about him. After the customs case had been disposed of, Archie found time hanging on his hands. Adelle was occupied with the trust company and all the formalities she had to go through with before she could actually lay her hands upon her fortune. Archie read the lighter magazines and loafed about the streets of B——, peering up through his glasses at the lofty buildings, and imbibing more cocktails and other varieties of American stimulants than was good for him.



XXVIII

Adelle was distinctly roused by her return to America and all the memories awakened at the sight of familiar streets, the home of the Washington Trust Company, and the probate court whither she was obliged to go. Judge Orcutt was still sitting on the bench and seemed to her to be exactly as she remembered him, only grayer and a little more bent over his high bench. He was still that courteous, slightly distant gentleman from another age, whose mind behind the dreamy eyes seemed eternally occupied with larger matters than the administration and disposal of human property. He remembered Adelle, or professed to, and gave her a kindly old man's smile when he shook hands with her, in spite of all the reclame of her indecorous return to her native land. He said nothing of that, however, but refreshed his memory by consulting a little book where he entered all sorts of curious items not strictly legal that occurred to him in connection with important cases. From these pages he easily revived all the details of Adelle, her aunt, and the now famous Clark's Field.

Looking up from his book, he scrutinized with unusual interest the young woman who had come before him after an absence of seven years. He was reflecting, perhaps, that, although she was unaware of the fact, he had played the part to her in an important crisis of a wise and beneficent Providence. In all likelihood he had preserved for her the chance of possessing the large fortune which she was about to receive with his approval from the Washington Trust Company. No wonder that he looked keenly at the young woman standing before him! What was she now? What had she done with herself these seven crucial years of her life to prepare herself for her good fortune and justify his care of her interests? How had the enjoyment of ease and the expectation of coming wealth, with all its opening of gates and widening of horizons, affected little Adelle Clark—the insignificant drudge from the Alton rooming-house?...

Judge Orcutt no longer published thin volumes of poetry. The bar said that he was now devoting himself more seriously to his profession. The truth was, perhaps, that in face of his accumulating knowledge of life and human beings, he no longer had the incentive to write lyrics. The poetry, however, was there ineradicably in his soul, affecting his judgments,—the lawyers still called him "cranky" or "erratic,"—and giving even to routine judicial acts a significance and dignity little suspected by the careless practitioners in his court.... And so this elderly gentleman, for he had crossed the sixty mark by now, recalled the timid, pale-faced, undersized girl, with her "common" aunt, who seven years before had appeared in his court and to whom he had been the instrument of giving riches. What had she done with the golden spoon he had thrust into her mouth and what would she do with it now? Ah, that was always the question with these inheritances which he was called upon to administer according to the complicated rules of law—and the law books afforded no answer to such questions!...

"My dear," he said, with one of his beautiful smiles that seemed to irradiate the "case" before him with its personal kindliness and sympathy, "so you have been living in Europe the last few years and are now married?"

Adelle said "yes" to both questions, while the trust officer who had accompanied her to court—not our Mr. Ashly Crane—fussed inwardly because he saw that Judge Orcutt was in one of his "wandering" and leisurely moods, and might detain them to discourse upon Europe or anything that happened into his mind before signing the necessary order. But after this introduction, the judge was silent, while his smile still lingered in the gaze he directed to the young woman before him.

Adelle, as has been amply admitted in these pages, was neither beautiful nor compelling. But she was very different indeed from the small, shabby girl of fourteen. She was taller, with a well-trained figure that showed the efforts of all the deft maids and skillful dressmakers through which it had passed. She was dressed in the very height of the prevailing fashions—a high-water mark of eccentricity that Judge Orcutt rarely encountered in the staid circles of the good city of B——. Her skirt was slit so as to accentuate all there was of hips, and the bodice did the same for the bust. And the hat—well, even in New York its long aigrette and daring folds had caused women to look around in the streets. She carried in one hand a large bunch of mauve orchids and wore an abundance of chains and coarse, bizarre jewelry. Her face was still pale, and the gray eyes were almost as empty of expression as they had been seven years before. But altogether Adelle was chic and modern, as she felt with satisfaction, of a type that might find more approval in Paris than in America, where a pretty face and fresh coloring still win distinction. She was new all over from head to foot, of a loud, hard newness that gave the impression of impertinence, even defiance.

This was accentuated by Adelle's new manner—the one that had grown upon her ever since her elopement. Then she had taken a great step in defiance of authority, and to support her self-assertion she had put on this defiant manner, of conscious indifference to expected criticism. It was the note of her period, moreover, to flaunt independence, to push things to extremes. Needless to say that in Adelle's case it had been further emphasized by the episode with the customs officers. Here again she had defied recognized authorities and got into trouble over it; indeed, had become mildly notorious in the newspapers. The only way she could carry off her mistake and her notoriety was, like a child, by exaggerating her nonchalance. Thus she had met President West and the other officers of the trust company. Alone—for as usual Archie had evaded the disagreeable—she had met them in their temple and felt their frigid disapprobation of her and all her ways. She had carried it off by forcing her note, "throwing it into the old boy," as she described it to Archie, with all the loud clothes, the loud manners she had at her command, and she knew that she had succeeded in making a very bad impression upon the trust company's president. She felt that she did not care—he was nothing to her.

In the same defiant mood and with the same "war-paint" she had entered Judge Orcutt's court and answered his preliminary questions. But she felt ill at ease, rather miserable under his kindly, heart-searching gaze. She wished that she hadn't: she wanted to blush and drop her eyes. Instead she returned his look out of her still, gray eyes with a fascinated stare.

At last the smile faded from the judge's lips, and he withdrew his gaze from the bizarre figure before him. He asked in a brisker tone with several shades less of personal interest,—

"Your husband is with you?"

"No," she stammered uncomfortably, realizing that Archie was again evading.

He was outside lolling in the motor that they had hired by the day, fooling with Adelle's lapdog and getting through the time as best he could. Adelle so informed the judge, who received the news with a slight frown and proceeded to the business before them. The trust officer thought that now matters would be expedited, but the judge disappointed him. After taking his pen to sign the papers, he kept his hand upon them, and clearing his throat addressed Adelle.

"Mrs. Davis," he began in formal tones, "you first came into my court seven years ago, with your aunt, at the time of your uncle's death—you remember, doubtless?"

Adelle said "yes" faintly.

"As your mother's only heir, and owing to the death of your aunt the following year who left you her sole heir, you became vested with all the known interest in certain valuable real estate that had belonged to your ancestors for many generations—what was known then as 'Clark's Field.' As you are probably aware, this property, after many years of disuse and much litigation, has finally been cleared as to title and put upon the market. It has been sold, or much of it, for large prices. For in all these years its value has very greatly increased—ten and twentyfold."

He paused for a moment, then with an unaccustomed sternness he resumed,—

"Clark's Field is no longer the pasture land of an outlying farm. In the course of all these years the city has grown up to it and around it. Generations of men have been born, come into activity, and died, increasing in numbers all the time, demanding more and more room for homes and places of business. Thus the value of real estate has greatly risen, latterly doubling and trebling almost each year."

He stopped again, and the bored trust officer thought, "The old fellow is worse than ever to-day—getting positively dotty—likes to hear himself talk...."

"For thus," resumed the judge slowly, impressively, "is the nature of man, of the civilization he has created. Men must have room—land to grow upon; and that which was of little or no value becomes by the economic accidents of life of exceedingly great importance because of its necessity to the race.... Your forefathers, Mrs. Davis, got their own living from the farm of which this piece of land—Clark's Field—was a part; a meager living for themselves and their families they got by tilling the poor soil. They were content with taking a living out of it for themselves and their families. Indeed, if I am not mistaken, your own grandfather was anxious to sell this same field, which was all that was left to him of the ancestral farm, for a comparatively small sum of ready money—five thousand dollars."

Adelle had time to reflect that this was the exact sum on which she and Archie had tried to live for a year, with considerable inconvenience. But then everybody said times had changed, and you couldn't do now with a thousand dollars what you could once.

"Fortunately for you, Mrs. Davis," the judge was saying with a dry little smile, "your grandfather was unable to carry out his intention of disposing of Clark's Field for five thousand dollars. Nor were your mother and her brother—his children—more successful in selling their ancestral estate, although I believe they made many attempts to do so. There were legal obstructions in the way, of which doubtless you have heard. But at the very close of your uncle's life he had entered into an agreement with some real estate speculators to dispose of his equity in the property and of yours also—you being his ward—for twenty-five thousand dollars—I believe that was the sum."

Judge Orcutt put on his glasses and consulted his little book, laid the glasses down, and repeated reflectively,—

"Yes, for twenty-five thousand dollars! And he had so far carried out his intention that had he lived but a few weeks longer there would not have remained a foot of Clark's Field belonging now to any of the Clark family."

Poor uncle! Adelle thought. He was very little good in the world.

"Twenty-five thousand dollars, Mrs. Davis, is a considerable sum of money, but it is a small mess of pottage compared with what awaits you in the hands of the Washington Trust Company. Let me see how much the estate amounts to now!"

Hereupon the trust officer handed to the judge an inventory of the estate, which the judge ran over through his glasses, muttering the items,—"Stocks, bonds, mortgages, interest in the Clark's Field Associates," etc.

At last he laid the paper aside, and looking up announced in grave tones,—

"It comes very near being five millions of dollars."

Adelle had already been told the figures by the trust company, but in the mouth of the probate judge the sum took on a new solemnity.

"Five millions of dollars," he repeated slowly. "Even in our day of large accumulations, that is a very considerable sum of money, Mrs. Davis. It is just one thousand times more than the amount your grandfather hoped to derive from the same piece of property."

The trust officer smiled, and thrusting his hands deep into his trousers' pockets gazed at the ceiling. Of course five millions was a lot of cash, but the judge seemed to forget the hour in which they were, when everyday transactions involved millions. The young woman, who had expensive tastes, would not find the income of five millions such a huge fortune to spend. She didn't look as if she would have any trouble in spending it, nor the red-headed chap she had married. Still a comfortable little fortune, all in "gilt-edge stuff"....

"Your estate represents an increment in value of one thousand per cent in—let me see—a little over forty-five years, less than fifty years, less than a lifetime, less than my own lifetime!"

Here the judge seemed to come to a dead stop, forgetting himself in reverie. But rousing himself suddenly he asked Adelle,—

"Have you ever seen Clark's Field?"

Adelle thought she remembered being taken there as a young girl by her aunt.

"I mean have you been there recently, since it has been subdivided and brought into human use?"

No, she had not been in Alton since her return to America, in fact not for seven years.

"Then, Mrs. Davis," the judge said very earnestly, almost sternly, "I most strongly advise you to go there at once and see what has happened to your grandfather's old pasture. Look at the source of your wealth! It must interest you deeply, I should think! The changes that you will find in Clark's Field are very great, the spiritual changes even greater than the physical ones, perhaps. Go to Clark's Field, by all means, before you leave the city. Go at once! And take your husband with you.... And now, Mr. Niver," he said to the astonished trust officer, "if you have all the papers—yes, I have examined the inventory of the estate sufficiently. Mr. Smith brought it to me some time ago...."

There followed certain legal exchanges between the court and the trust officer, while Adelle thought over what the judge had said to her about Clark's Field and felt rather queer, uncomfortably so, as if the probate judge had distilled a subtle medicine in her cup of joy, or had clouded the clear horizon of her young life with a mysterious veil of unintelligible considerations. Yet he seemed to be, as she had always thought him, a good old man, and wise. And he was making no trouble about giving her and Archie the money they so much wanted to have. Even now he was writing his signature with the old-fashioned steel pen he used, a clear, beautiful signature, upon several documents. As he finished the last one, he glanced up at her and with another of his fine smiles, as if he wished to reassure her after his little sermon, said to Adelle,—

"Now, Mrs. Davis, it is yours,—your own property, to do with as you will. You are no longer a ward of my court!"

He rose from his judge's chair and took her hand, which he held a trifle longer than necessary, smiling down upon the woman-girl, his lips apparently forming themselves for another little speech, but he did not utter it. Instead, he dropped Adelle's hand and with a nod of dismissal turned into his chambers. So Adelle left the probate court, as she thought for the last time, wondering what the judge wanted to say to her, but had refrained from speaking.

It would be interesting to know, also, what were the entries that Judge Orcutt made in his little note-book upon this, his final official act in the Clark's Field drama. But that we have no means of discovering. All legal requirements had been duly fulfilled, and everything else must remain within the judge's breast for his own spiritual nourishment—and for Adelle's if she could divine what he meant.



XXIX

When Adelle reached the street she found Archie lolling in the car, across the way, in the shade of a tall building. At her appearance he yawned and stretched his cramped legs.

"It took you an awful time," he grumbled to his wife. "What was the trouble?"

"Nothing," Adelle replied.

As she got into the car she gave the driver an order,—"Go out to Alton."

"Where's that?" Archie inquired.

"A little way out—across the river," Adelle informed him.

"What do you want to go there for—it's nearly lunch-time," Archie demurred.

"I'm going out to see Clark's Field," Adelle replied succinctly.

Archie knew vaguely that the Field had something to do with his wife's fortune, but understood that it had been mostly "cashed in" as he would phrase it.

"What's your hurry?" Archie objected. "We can go out there some other time just as well."

But for once Archie was compelled to bend to a superior purpose and endure being bumped over the rough pavements of the city out to the old South Road, which was still cut up badly by heavy teaming as it had been in the days of the farmers' market carts, and which also swarmed with huge trolley boxes and motor trucks and pedestrians. For Alton was now merely a lively industrial quarter of the "greater" city. In addition to the old stove-works of enduring fame there were also foundries and factories and mills. The old, leisurely "Square" had become a knot of squalid arteries radiating into this human hive. Life teemed all over, swarmed upon the pavements, hung from the high tenement windows, infested the strange delicatessen and drink shops, many of which bore foreign names. Most marvelous fact of all was that the thin, pale American type, of which Adelle herself was an example, had largely disappeared from the Alton streets, and in its place there were members from pretty nearly all the races of the earth,—Greeks, Poles, Slavs, Persians,—especially Italians. Many a sturdy young woman, with bare brown arms and glossy black hair, strode along, hatless and unashamed, on her way to shop or mill through the streets where Addie Clark had sidled with prim consciousness of her "place" in society. Archie remarked the growing cosmopolitanism of his native land with strong expressions of disapproval.

"It looks like a slum," he grumbled. "And nothing but dagoes in it. What a place!—and what scum!" he commented frankly upon his wife's birthplace. "Was it like this when you lived here?" he asked pityingly.

"Not so much," she said quietly, not knowing why she disliked his tone and his comment upon the present population of Alton.

"They ought to do something to prevent all this foreign trash from swarming over here," Archie observed.

He did not reflect, nor did Adelle, that this "foreign scum" had come to replace his race because he and his kind refused any longer to do the hard labor of the world. If he had been of a more serious turn of mind, he would have joined the anti-Immigration League and raised the patriotic slogan of "America for Americans!"

Adelle made no reply to his remarks. She sat silent in her corner of the car, glancing intently at the old scenes that were so new and unexpected. From time to time she directed the chauffeur when he was in doubt, the old turnings of the streets coming back to her with astonishing sureness. At last, at Shepard Street, she told him to turn off the South Road, and at once they were in the maze of brick and mortar that had been Clark's Field,—the old Clark pasture. The bulky car had to move slowly through the narrow streets, much to the driver's impatience, and he had frequently to toot his horn or screech his raucous Claxton to warn the pedestrians to make way for the visitors. The children crawled off the streets with the instinctive unconcern of familiarity with traffic; the bareheaded women and dark-faced men scowlingly gave the chariot of the rich space to proceed. So they threaded the lanes and the cross-streets that ribbed the old Field, crossing it twice and completely circling it once, until Archie was in a state of vocal rebellion at the stench, the squalor, the ugliness of the place.

But Adelle looked and looked with unwonted curiosity. In her European wanderings she had penetrated by necessity or accident similar industrial neighborhoods, where human beings swarmed and life was ugly, only to escape as soon as possible. But this time she did not wish to hurry. Clark's Field seemed different to her from anything else she had ever seen.

It was all new, and yet in the way of slums it was immemorially ancient at the same time, as if the members of old races that had come to fill it had brought with them all the grime, all the dreariness of generations of bitter living. And it was this, rather than the marvelous transformation of the sandy field which Adelle dimly remembered, that seized hold of her. How could people live so thickly together, swarm like flies in so many identical doorways, get along with so little air or sunshine or freedom of movement!

"Packed like rotting sardines," was Archie's sneering comment.

Artificially packed, too, scientifically packed in an up-to-date manner, and all in the space of a few years! Modern magic they said of things like this, and took a strange blind pride in it. Even Archie observed with curiosity,—"They must have been a busy little bunch that got this up so quickly!"

Indeed, the Washington Trust Company, under the thin disguise of the Clark's Field Associates, had shown great shrewdness and ingenuity in "developing" the fifty-acre tract so that the greatest possible sum could be extracted from its lean soil. They had resisted all temptations to open it as "a residential section" of the growing city. They knew that Alton was condemned to the coarser uses of society and must be an industrial slum. So they had sold a small portion in one corner to a steel foundry—one of the subsidiaries of a great corporation. And then they developed the remainder for the use of the operatives gathered together from all parts of the earth. The choicest lots they reserved for "future growth." Along the broad South Road they built substantial brick buildings for stores and offices. In the nest of by-streets that ribbed the tract they erected lofty tenement warrens, as closely packed as the law allows,—not the lowest order of tenement, to be sure, because in the long run such buildings do not make a good investment; but a slightly higher class of brick, bathroomed, three-and four-room tenements, from the rear of which flowed out long streamers of clothes drying in the wind. For the most part Clark's Field had thus received its "development." That which had agitated a number of generations of Alton citizens had been accomplished. For a considerable term of years Clark's Field would not change in character unless a disturbance of unexpected magnitude should wipe clean the ground for men to plan anew.

As I have said, Clark's Field was now an industrial slum, but its character was not as bad as much else in the cities of men. There are far worse places in London or New York or Chicago—even in such smaller cities as Pittsburg and Liverpool—for filth, crowding, and gloom. Age added to cheapness increases misery and squalor, and Clark's Field was still an infant. Indeed, the promoters of Clark's Field were proud of their achievement and advertised it as the last and most enlightened example of wholesale, industrial housing. But as Archie felt about it, the place was worse really than the more celebrated slums of older cities in its pretentious cheapness, its dreary monotony and colorlessness, its very respectability and smug tediousness. A life dropped into its maze and growing up in it must be lost for good and all—must become just another human ant crawling over Clark's Field, with the habits and coloring of all the other human ants striving there for life and happiness. Archie, perhaps, felt this cramped and deadening atmosphere more keenly than Adelle, and he prided himself on his greater sensitiveness. He thanked God that he had come from the broad sunny vineyards of the Golden State, where life still touches the arcadian age,—not from this, as his wife had! His two years of foreign rambling had educated him into a prideful sense of American vulgarity and hideousness of detail.