"You must go to Alton right away and see the trust company. I will meet you there whenever you like—there's nothing to keep me here much longer."

"When you are feeling ready for the trip, let me know," the mason said with good feeling. "Say," he added with some confusion, "you're a good one to be sittin' there calmly talkin' to me about what I am goin' to do with your money."

"It isn't mine any longer—you must get over that idea."

"What you've always considered to be yours, anyway, and that amounts to the same thing in this world."

"I like to talk about it with you," Adelle replied simply, and with perfect sincerity, as every important statement of Adelle's was sincere. "I want you to have the money really.... I'm glad it is you, too."

"Thank you."

"I'll do everything I can to make it easy for you to get it soon, and that is why I will go to Alton."

The mason rose from the doorstep and walked nervously to and fro in front of the shack. At last he muttered,—

"Guess I won't say nothin' to the folks about the money until it is all settled—it might make 'em kind of anxious."

"No, that would be better," Adelle agreed.

"I'm goin' to pull out of here to-night!"

He turned as he spoke and shoved one foot through the paper wall of his home, as if he were thus symbolically shedding himself of his toilsome past. Adelle did not like this impulsive expression, she did not know why. She rose.

"Let me know your San Francisco address," she said, "and I will write you when to meet me in Alton."

"All right!"

The mason walked back with her down the hill to the grave of her little boy. He would have turned back here, but she gently encouraged him to come with her and stand beside the flower-laden grave. It seemed to her, after what he had done in risking his life to rescue the child, he had more right to be there than any one else except herself—far more than her child's own father. They stood there silently at the foot of the little mound for some minutes, until Adelle spoke in a perfectly natural voice.

"I'd have wanted him to do some real work, if he had grown up—I mean like yours, and become a strong man."

"He was a mighty nice little kid," the mason observed, remembering well the child, who had often that summer played about his staging and talked to him.

Adelle explained her scheme of treatment for the grave and the grounds about it, and they walked slowly down the path to the orangery.

"Would you like me to fix it all up as you want it?" the mason asked.

"Would you?"

"All right—I'll start in to-day and you can watch me and see if it's done right."

"But you wanted to go up to the city," Adelle suggested.

"That don't matter much—there's plenty of time," Clark replied hastily.

And in a few minutes he remarked gruffly, "Say, I don't want you to think I was goin' up to 'Frisco on a tear."

"I didn't think so!"

She realized then that Clark had not left the place all these ten days since the fire.

"I'm goin' to cut out the booze, now there's something else for excitement," he added.

"That's good!"



XLV

Adelle registered at the Eclair Hotel in B—— with her maid. It was the only hotel that she knew in the city, although when she first crossed the ornate lobby she remembered with a sick sensation that other visit with Archie on their scandalously notorious arrival from Europe to take possession of her fortune. However, Adelle was not one to allow sentimental impressions to upset her, and signed the register carefully—"Mrs. Adelle Clark and maid, Bellevue, California." She had resolved to signify her new life by renouncing her married name here in the country where she had begun life as Adelle Clark, although her divorce was not yet even started.

She expected her cousin Tom Clark in a few days. She had thought it best to precede him and pave the way for him at the Washington Trust Company by announcing her news to the officers first. A little reflection and the memory of certain expressions from the trust officers of complacency in their success in "quieting" the Clark title had convinced her that this would be the wiser course to pursue. The trust company might find some objections to undoing all the fine legal work that they had accomplished in the settlement of the estate.

Adelle was received by the new president, that same Mr. Solomon Smith who had delivered the trust company's ultimatum to her after her marriage. Mr. Smith, it seemed, had recently succeeded to the dignity of President West, who had retired as chairman of the company's board, fat with honor and profit. President Solomon Smith received Adelle with all the consideration due to such an old and rich client, whose business interests were still presumably considerable, although latterly she had seen fit to remove them from the cautious guardianship of the trust company. She was in mourning, he noticed, and looked much older and more of a person in every way than when it had been his official duty to deliver his solemn wigging in the Paris studio to the trust company's erring ward. Mr. Smith probably realized with satisfaction the success of his prophecies on the consequences of her rash act, which he had so eloquently pointed out. Adelle made no reference, however, to her own troubles, nor explained why she had announced herself by her maiden name. She had come on more important business.

It took her some time to make clear to the banker what the real purpose of her visit was, and when Mr. Smith realized it he summoned to the conference two other officers of the institution, who were better acquainted with the detail of the Clark estate than he was. After the thing had been put before them, the temperature in the president's office leaped upwards with astonishing rapidity on this chilly day in early May. Three more horrified gentlemen it would have been hard to find in the entire city, whose citizens are easily horrified. For this woman, whom Fate and the Washington Trust Company had endowed with a large fortune, to try to raise the ghost of that troublesome Edward S. Clark, whom they had been at so much pains and expense to lay, seemed merely mad. When Adelle reiterated her conviction that she herself had discovered at last the heirs of the lost Edward S., President Smith demanded with some asperity whether Mrs. Davis—Mrs. Clark—understood what this meant. Adelle replied very simply that she supposed it meant the California Clarks getting at last their half of Clark's Field, which certainly belonged to them more than to her.

"Not at all!" all three gentlemen roared at her exasperatedly.

"They'd have a hard time making good their title now!" one of them remarked, with a cynical laugh.

"It would mean a lot of expensive litigation for one thing," another injected.

"Which would fall upon you," the trust president pointed out.

"But why?" Adelle asked quietly. "I shouldn't fight their claims."

The three gentlemen gasped, and then let forth a flood of discordant protest, which was summed up by the president's flat assertion,—

"You'd have to!"

Patiently, while his colleagues waited, he tried to make clear to Adelle in words of two syllables that the Clark's Field Associates would be obliged to defend the titles they had given to the land, and she as majority partner in this lucrative enterprise would have to stand her share of the risk and the legal expense involved. Adelle saw that the affair was more complex than she had thought and said so, with no indication, however, of giving up her purpose.

"It is not a simple matter at all to consider the claims of these California Clarks. The land has passed out of our—your control: it has probably passed through several hands in many instances, each owner pledging his faith in the validity of his title. You can see that any action taken now by these heirs of Edward S. Clark against the present owners of Clark's Field would injure numberless innocent people. It is not to be thought of for one moment!" Having reached a moral ground for not upsetting things as they were, the president of the trust company felt more at ease and expatiated at length on "the good faith of the Washington Trust Company and all others" who had been parties to the transaction. Adelle sighed as she listened to the torrent of eloquence and realized what an upheaval her simple act of restitution would cause. It seemed to her that the law was a very peculiar institution, indeed, which prevented people from using their property for many years in order not to injure some possible heirs, and then just as stoutly prevented those heirs when they had been discovered from getting their own!

"It is simply preposterous, the whole thing," one of the younger officers observed, rising to go about more important business.

"It's not likely to come to anything—they are poor people, these other Clarks, you said?" inquired Mr. Smith.

"I know only one of them," Adelle replied. "He was a stone mason working on my place in California. It was by accident that I learned of his relationship to me. He has some brothers and sisters living, four of them I think he said. They are all poor people. I don't know whether he has any cousins. I didn't ask him. But I think he said something once about an uncle or aunt, so it's likely there are other heirs, too."

The trust president asked testily,—

"You didn't by any chance mention to this stone mason your belief that he was entitled to a share in his grandfather's property?"

"Yes, I did!" Adelle promptly replied. "We talked it over several times."

The three gentlemen murmured something.

"And he is coming on to see about it. I arranged to meet him here on the sixteenth, day after to-morrow."

"Here!"

Adelle nodded.

"We thought that would be the quickest way to settle it, as you know all about the property."

"The young man will have his journey for nothing," the president said grimly.

Then he took Adelle to task in the same patronizing, moral tone he had used to her on the occasion of her marriage.

"My dear young woman, you have acted in this matter very inadvisedly, very rashly!"

That was her unfortunate habit, he seemed to say, to act rashly. The irony of it all was that Adelle, who acted so rarely of her own initiative, should be exposed to this charge in the two most important instances when she had acted of her own volition and acted promptly!

"You see now how disastrous any such course as you proposed would be for you and for many others." (He was thinking chiefly of his board of directors and the gentlemen who had profited through the Clark's Field Associates, but he put it in the altruistic way.) "Fortunately, you can do no great harm to these innocent persons. The titles to Clark's Field we firmly believe are unassailable, impregnable. No court in this State would void those titles after they have once been quieted. You have merely aroused false hopes, I am afraid, and the spirit of greed in a lot of ignorant poor people,—who unless they are well advised will waste their savings in a vain attempt to get property that doesn't belong to them."

His tone was both moral and reproving. He wanted her to feel that, whereas she had thought she was doing a generous and high-minded thing by communicating to this lost tribe of Clarks her knowledge of their outlawed opportunity for riches, she had in reality merely made trouble for every one including herself.

"You are a woman," Mr. Solomon Smith continued severely, "and naturally ignorant of business and law. It is a pity that you did not consult some one, some strong, sensible person whose judgment you could rely on, and not fly off at a tangent on a foolish ideal!... By the way, where is your husband?"

"In California," Adelle replied sulkily.

She did not like Mr. Smith's tone. He knew very well that Archie was not the strong, sensible person upon whose judgment she might rely.

"Are you divorced?" the president asked, remembering that she had announced herself by her maiden name.

"No," Adelle admitted, wondering what this had to do with the business.

"Well, your husband is concerned—what does he think of it?"

"I don't know. It makes no difference what he thinks of it," Adelle replied.

"You will find that it does make a great difference," the trust officer quickly rejoined, seizing upon Archie as a convenient weapon. He thereupon discoursed upon the legal and moral rights of a husband in his wife's property and warned Adelle solemnly that she was taking a dangerous course in acting without Archie's consent. Archie doubtless would have been much pleased. It seemed trying to Adelle, who had not the least idea of ever again waiting upon Archie's consent about anything, to have her marriage used against her in this fashion by the trust company. They had done everything they could to keep Archie's hands off the property, and now they gravely told her that it belonged to Archie as well as to herself!

Mr. Smith continued to talk for some time longer, but Adelle was calmly oblivious to what he was saying. She was thinking. It was clear to her that there were objections to the simple method by which she had expected to transfer a part of Clark's Field to its rightful owners, but she had by no means abandoned her purpose, as the trust company president thought. Like many forceful men whom President Smith very much admired, she was no great respecter of law as such. What couldn't be done in one way might in another, and she must now find out that other way, which obviously she would not discover from the officers of the Washington Trust Company. So she rose and pulled on her long gloves.

"I must think it over," she remarked thoughtfully, "and see what my cousin, Mr. Clark, thinks about it. I will come in again in a few days." And with a slight nod to the assembled gentlemen she passed out of the president's private office.

Three disgusted gentlemen looked at each other after her departure. One of them said the trite and stupid and untrue thing,—"Just like a woman!"

Another reacted equally conventionally,—"She must be a little queer."

And the third—the president—vouchsafed,—"What she needs is a strong hand to keep her straight."

All of which Adelle, like any self-respecting woman, might have resented.



XLVI

Adelle passed through the marble banking-room of the trust company, which once had been for her the acme of splendor, out upon the narrow city street in considerable puzzlement. She did not know which way to turn next, literally. She might consult some lawyer; that in fact was what the trust people had advised—that she should see their lawyers. But Adelle shrewdly concluded that it would be useless to see the Washington Trust Company's lawyers, who would doubtless tell her again in less intelligible language precisely what the trust officers had said. And she knew of no other lawyers in the city whom she might consult independently. Besides, she thought it better to see her cousin before going to the lawyers, feeling that this self-reliant, if socially inexperienced, young workman might have pertinent suggestions to offer. In the mean time, not having anything else to do immediately, she turned in the direction of her hotel.

Any of the preoccupied citizens of B—— who might have encountered this black-dressed, pale young woman sauntering up their crowded street this morning, could scarcely have divined what was going on behind those still, gray eyes. She was not thinking of the goods displayed in the shop windows, though her eyes mechanically flitted over them, nor was she musing upon a lover, though Tom Clark often crossed her mind, nor was she considering the weather, which was puritanically raw and ruffling, nor of any other thing than how she might divest herself of a large part of that fortune which the Washington Trust Company had so meritoriously preserved for her! There was a very simple way out of her dilemma, of course, but it had never occurred to her; and if it had occurred to the trust officers, they had thought best not to suggest it to their scatter-brained client. So she knitted her brows and thought, without heeding where she was.

When she came to a certain small square, she turned off the main street unconsciously and walked up a quiet block towards the court-house. It was the path she had trod eleven years before, only in the reverse direction when she had led her aunt from Judge Orcutt's courtroom to the home of the Washington Trust Company. Her mind took charge of her without calling upon her will, as it did so often, and presently she entered the great granite court-house with no clear purpose in her mind, other than a hidden desire, perhaps, to see the probate judge once more. Judge Orcutt was not in the room on the second floor which she remembered. Instead, there was a stranger holding court there, a dull-eyed, fat gentleman with drooping black mustache and a snappy voice, who did not attract Adelle. She thought she had made a mistake in the room and looked up and down the corridor for a room labeled with Judge Orcutt's name, but found none. Then she asked a court attendant, who told her that the judge had been retired for the last two years! Adelle was turning away, with a sense of disappointment, when it came into her mind like an inspiration—"He might still be living in the city!" She inquired, and the court attendant, who did not know, was polite enough to consult a directory and found that sure enough Judge Orcutt was living on Mountcourt Street, which happened to be not far away—in fact just over the hill from the court-house.

Thereupon, Adelle went on her way more swiftly, with a conscious purpose guiding her feet, and found Mountcourt Street—a little, quiet, by-path of a street such as exists in no other city of our famous land. It was not a rifle-shot from the court-house and the busiest centers of the city, yet it was as retired and as reposeful as if it had been forgotten ever since the previous century, when its houses were built. And in the middle of the first block, a sober, little brick house with an old white painted door and window lights, was Judge Orcutt's number. Adelle was shown to a small room in the front of the house and sat down, her heart strangely beating as if she were waiting an appointment with a lover. The house was so still! An old French clock ticked silently on the mantelpiece beneath a glass case. All the chairs and tables, even the rug, in the small room seemed like the house and the street, relics of an orderly, peaceful past. Adelle knew something about furniture and house decoration: it was one of the minor arts patronized by her class, and she had learned enough to talk knowingly about "periods" and "styles." Judge Orcutt's house was of no particular "period" or "style," but it was remarkably harmonious—the garment carefully chosen by a person with traditions.... Presently the servant came back and invited Adelle to go upstairs to the judge's library, as Judge Orcutt was not feeling well to-day, she explained.

The study was like the room below, only larger, lighter, and well filled with books. The judge was sitting near the grate, in which was burning a soft-coal fire. He smiled on Adelle's entrance and apologized for not rising.

"It's the east wind," he explained. "I've known it all my life, but it gets us old fellows, you know, on days like these!"

Adelle took his thin hand and sat down in the seat he pointed out near the fire. The judge appeared to her to be no older than he had the first time she had seen him when she went to the probate court with her aunt. Then he had seemed to her child's eyes an old man, and now he was indubitably old and rather frail, with a clean-shaven, delicately moulded chin beneath his white mustache. Adelle was in no hurry to begin on her errand. She glanced about at the cheerful room with its rows of old books, presumably the works of those poet friends to whom the judge could now devote an uninterrupted leisure in communion. She looked at the old chairs and lounge and mahogany secretary, handed down, no doubt, from the judge's ancestors, for they antedated even the old judge. And then, through the little square panes in the windows, out to the chimney-pots on the slope of the hill, and across the harbor, with its tangle of wharves and masts, to the bay, through which the ships passed on into the ocean. She felt that it was exactly the right location for an old gentleman, who was done with the battles of life and yet wanted to remain within sight and sound of the battle-field.

The judge, noticing her roving eyes, remarked genially,—"I like to look out over the place where I have been working so many years!"

"It's nice here," Adelle replied.

There was much more in the room and the house that Adelle vaguely felt—an air of peace, of gentle and serene contemplation, that came from the man himself, who had taken what life had offered him and turned it to good in the alembic of his peculiar nature. It had been a sound and sweet life, on the whole, and this was a sweet retreat, smelling of old books and old meetings, fragrant with memories of another world, another people! This fruit of the spirit, which is all that is left from living, Adelle could now feel acutely, if she could not express it fitly in words. And she was grateful for it. She knew that at last she had come to the right place for the solution of her problem, and she did not hasten. Neither did the judge hurry her to her errand. Evidently he recalled who she was, and his keen eyes probably read more of the secrets of those years since her last appearance in his court—extravagantly dressed, almost insolent, to listen indifferently to his severe homily upon Clark's Field—than she suspected. So they chatted for a few minutes about the view, the city, the old house, and then, as Adele still seemed tongue-tied, the judge remarked,—

"My servant gave your name as Mrs. Clark—did she not make a mistake?"

"No," Adelle said, "That is what I shall call myself now—Mrs. Adelle Clark."

The judge murmured something behind his hand. Hers was another of these modern mishaps, it seemed, falsely called marriages. Each case of divorce gave his old heart a little stab, wounding a loyalty to a beautiful ideal that he had kept intact. But he was old enough and wise enough, having judged men and women all his life, not to pronounce judgment on the most intimate and secret of all human affairs. He waited for Adelle to tell her story, and presently she began.

"Judge Orcutt," she said, "I want to tell you something and ask your advice because I feel that you will know what to do."

With this introduction she proceeded to retell her story, the one she had told that morning to the officers of the trust company. But having been over it once she told it much better to the judge, more coherently, more fully, with many small, intimate, revealing touches that she had omitted before. It was easier for her to talk to the old man, who listened with warm, understanding eyes, and nodded his white head when she cut to the quick of things as if he understood why without being told everything precisely. She felt that she could tell him everything, all her own life, all that she was but now beginning to comprehend and see as a whole. He had for her the lure of the confessor, and Adelle needed a confessor.

So she described to him briefly the course of her married life up to the time when she first began to notice the mason at work upon the terrace wall. Without accusing Archie, she made the judge nevertheless comprehend why she no longer could bear his name. From her first meeting with her cousin she was much more detailed in her story, giving everything chronologically, anxious to omit nothing which might be of importance. She told all the circumstances of her slow comprehension of the truth, that this stone mason was her second cousin and should have inherited equally with herself the riches of Clark's Field. She told squarely of her weeks of hesitation and final decision not to reveal to the mason or to any one her knowledge of the truth. Then came the night of the fire and her personal tragedy in the ruin of Highcourt. And all this she told, dry-eyed, without passion, quite baldly, as if that was the only way in which she could face it. Lastly she told of sending for the mason the next morning and before her husband confessing her useless secret, and then briefly she spoke of the subsequent steps that had brought her to the city to see the Washington Trust Company.

"And they told you?" queried the judge, leaning forward to poke the coal fire into flame.

"They said that nothing could be done now for these California Clarks, because it would make a lot of trouble and harm innocent people to go back of the new titles to the property," Adelle replied.

"And they were perfectly right," Judge Orcutt said, with a long sigh, after a moment of consideration. "It was the only thing they could say to you!"

He went into the law of it and explained to Adelle, more clearly than it had ever been done, just how the uncertain title had finally been "quieted," all the legal steps which had been duly taken to notify the unknown heirs, and the judicial sale ordered by the court, with the meaning of the process.

"So you can see that the law took great pains to find these people, and make sure that no wrong should be done to any rightful claimants, and because it failed to find the lost heirs there is no reason why people who bought the land in good faith should be made to suffer. You see?"

Adelle saw, but she was disappointed. It was the same thing the trust company had said to her, only now she felt sure of it. What could she say to her young cousin? That troubled her a great deal. She hated to disappoint his expectations, which she had ignorantly aroused.

"And the law is right," the old judge mused aloud, "whatever hardship it may seem to work to these unknown heirs like your California cousins. For you must see that human life could not go on unless we cleaned the slate sometimes arbitrarily, and began all over. It is better for everybody to accept certain inexact or unjust conditions rather than to disturb the whole fabric of human society by attempting to do exact justice, which, after all, is in itself a human impossibility. That is what our good people, reformers and anarchists alike, often fail to understand!... So these Clarks, I am afraid, will have to suffer for the carelessness of their ancestor in not leaving his address behind him when he left for the West. No court would open up the old tangle about Clark's Field now that it has been finally adjudicated according to due process of law. No court would order the case reopened—it is res judicata, fixed unalterably!"

He smiled indulgently upon Adelle with his little tag of legal Latin. He might be a poet, but he knew the laws of inheritance, and moreover, now in his old age, he had come out from his valleys of indecision and knew that there must be many wrongs both legal and extra-legal in our human system, and that it was not always accomplishing the most good to try to do exact justice. As he had said to Adelle, ours is a world of chance and mistake, and the most wholesome thing for every generation is to wipe the slate clean as far as possible and go ahead hopefully, courageously to create a new and sounder life upon a substructure possibly of fraud and injustice and cruelty. Thus man climbed always upwards. To rend and tear and fight, to try to eradicate every wrong was also human, but it was largely futile.

So when Adelle ventured to say,—

"But people often do try to upset titles, don't they? I have seen stories in the newspapers about heirs getting together to recover possession of valuable lands that have been out of the family longer than Clark's Field."

The judge nodded, and added,—

"Too true! But do you know how few of these attempts ever succeed—even get to a trial of the case? Almost none. Usually they are fraudulent schemes of rascals who collect money from gullible persons and then put the money into their own pockets and nothing whatever is done. It would be very foolish of these cousins of yours to try anything of the sort. It would make them miserable for years and eat up what little money they have. You must make this all clear to the young man who is to meet you here. Send him to me if he has any doubts!"

"What can I do about it, then?" Adelle demanded. "It belongs to them, and I want them to have it. There must be some way!"

The judge looked at the young woman with a curious, indulgent smile. He had gathered from her story that her own experience with Clark's Field had not been a successful one by any means. Was that why she was so anxious to shoulder off upon these unknown members of her family the burden of riches which had proved too much for her? Just what was her motive? A conscience newly aroused by her terrible tragedy and hypersensitive? An interest womanwise in this young stone mason, who was the only one of the California Clarks she had yet seen?... The judge leaned forward and took Adelle's hand.

"Tell me, my dear," he said, "just why you want them to have your money. For of course it would be your money that they would get in the end, if by any possibility they could win their case."

Adelle looked into the old man's kind eyes, but did not reply. It was not easy for her to explain the persistent purpose that moved her.

"Has wealth meant so much to you? or so little?" the judge asked, thinking of his own part in providing Adelle's fortune for her.

Adelle slowly shook her head.

"Do you think that these other Clarks would use it more wisely?" And as Adelle did not reply at once he repeated,—"Have you any reason to believe that they would be happier than you have been or better?"

"Money doesn't make happiness," Adelle said with a pathetic conviction of the truth of the truism. The energy of her life, it seemed, as in the case of so many others, had been given to proving the truth of axioms one after another!

The judge smiled and released her hand. He sat back in his deep chair watching Adelle with kindly eyes. He seemed to see the woman's awakening mind slowly at work before him, struggling patiently to grasp what was still just beyond her comprehension.

"What shall I do?" she appealed finally. "Tell me!"

"There is something you can do—a very simple thing! I wonder it has not occurred to you before."

"What is it?" Adelle asked eagerly.

"You can give part of your own fortune—an exact half of it if you like—to these new cousins of yours, and so accomplish what you want without hurting any one but yourself."

"I don't think they would take the money that way—I don't believe he would!" Adelle said doubtfully.

"There are few persons," the judge observed indulgently, "who cannot be induced to take money in one way or another!"

"It isn't quite the same thing," Adelle said, in a disappointed tone. "I don't think he would like it that way."

"It amounts to the same thing in the end, doesn't it?"

"Perhaps."

She did not tell the judge that if she should give these California Clarks one half of the fortune she had received from Clark's Field, she should be poor, perhaps destitute.

"But before you decide to do anything, you must make up your mind very carefully, for it cannot be undone. Are you quite sure that you are doing the wisest thing in turning over such a large fortune to persons you know almost nothing about?"

"I know him—the mason, and I think it would be safer with him than with me."

The judge smiled enigmatically.

"If he would take it from me like that—perhaps he need not know?" she asked.

"I think that he had better know!... Bring him to see me when he comes and we can talk it over together, all three of us," the judge suggested.

"I will do that!"

"And now I want you to give me the pleasure of lunching with me, a very simple old man's lunch, when we can talk about other things than money!" And with another gentle smile the judge took Adelle's arm and hobbled out to the next room.

A cheerful bar of sunlight fell across the small table between the two napkins and made the old silver gleam. Adelle felt more at peace, more calmly content with life, than she had since the death of her child. She was sure that somehow it was all coming out right, not only the money from Clark's Field, but also her own troubled life, although she could not see the precise steps to be taken. As usual her destiny, after leading her by many devious routes, brought her to the one door where she might obtain light....

"Tell me," said her host in his courteous tones, "about your California—I have always wanted to go there some day."



XLVII

When Adelle descended from her room to the hotel parlor to meet her cousin on his arrival, she was conscious of trepidation. However the matter might turn out in the end, she must now give the young mason a first disappointment, and she was keenly aware of what that might be to him after dreaming his dream all these weeks of freedom and power that was unexpectedly to be his. She did not like to disappoint him, even temporarily, and she also felt somewhat foolish because she had so confidently assumed that it would be a simple matter to set the Clark inheritance right.

The stone mason was sitting cornerwise on his chair in the hotel room, twirling on his thumb a new "Stetson" hat that he had purchased as part of his holiday equipment. There was nothing especially bizarre in the costume that Tom Clark had chosen. Democracy has eradicated almost everything individual or picturesque in man's attire. The standard equipment may be had in every town in the land. There remains merely the fine distinction of being well dressed against being badly dressed, and Clark was badly dressed, as any experienced eye such as Adelle's could see at a glance. Nothing he had on fitted him or became him. A very red neck and face emerged from a high white collar, and those muscular arms that Adelle had always admired for their color of copper bronze and their free, graceful action, now merely prodded out the stiff folds of his readymade suit. His muscles seemed to resent their confinement in good clothes and played tricks like a naughty boy.

Adelle, perceiving him in his corner as soon as she entered the room, realized at once that he was out of place. It seemed that there were people, men as well as women, who were born to wear fine clothes and to acquire all the habits that went with them. For the past ten years these were the people she had associated with almost exclusively, people who could be known by their clothes. The stone mason belonged to that large fringe of the social world who must be known by something else. Adelle had recently perceived that there was another, small class of people like Judge Orcutt who could be known both by their clothes and by something finer than the clothes which they wore. Tom Clark could never become one of these.

But as soon as Adelle was seated near her cousin and talking to him, she forgot his defects of appearance—his red neck and great paws and clumsy posture. She felt once more the man—the man she had come to respect and like, who had an individuality quite independent of clothes and culture. After the first greetings Adelle was silent, and it was the mason himself who asked her bluntly,—

"Well, what did the bank say? I guess it surprised 'em some, didn't it?"

Then Adelle was obliged to tell him of her fruitless expedition to the Washington Trust Company.

"So they turned us down hard!" Clark commented, with a slight contraction of his eyebrows. "The stiffs!"

Already a sardonic grin was loosening the corners of his compressed lips. Life had in fact jested with him too often and too bitterly for him to trust its promises completely. He had no real confidence in Fortune's smiles.

"It doesn't seem right," Adelle hastened to say. "But I am afraid what they said must be so, for Judge Orcutt told me it was the law."

"And who is your Judge Orcutt?" the mason demanded suspiciously.

For an instant he seemed to doubt Adelle's good faith, believed that she was trying to "double-cross" him as he would express it, having had time since they parted to realize that it was not for her own interest to admit the claims of the senior branch of the Clarks. But he could not have kept his suspicion long, for Adelle's honest, troubled eyes were plain proof of her concern for him.

"Judge Orcutt," she explained, "was the probate judge who had charge of the estate when my uncle died. He made the trust company my guardian then. I went to see him yesterday, and had a long talk with him about it all. I want you to see him, too;—can't you go to his house with me this morning?"

"Why should I see the judge?" the mason demanded.

"He can make you understand better than I can the reasons why all the titles can't be disturbed. And there may be a way, another way of doing what we want," Adelle added hesitantly, with some confusion.

The mason looked at her closely, but he seemed to have no more suspicion than Adelle herself had had at first of what this way was. He said,—

"Well, I've got no particular objection to seeing the judge. There's plenty of time—ain't much else for me to do in these parts, now I'm here."

With another sardonic laugh for his dashed hopes, he rose jerkily, as if he was ready to go anywhere at once.

"It's rather early yet," Adelle remarked, consulting her watch. "We had better wait a little while before going to the judge."

The young man reseated himself and looked about idly at the rich ornamentation of the hotel room.

"Some class this," he observed, concerning the Eclair Hotel, which was precisely what the hotel management wanted its patrons to feel.

"Did you see your sister in Philadelphia?" Adelle asked.

"Yep," he replied non-committally. Evidently his tour of the family had not begun favorably, and Adelle refrained from pressing the questions she had in mind.

"You have some first cousins, too, haven't you?" Adelle asked, remembering the judge's inquiry.

"A whole bunch of 'em!" the mason laughed. "Father had two brothers and one sister, and all of 'em had big families, and my mother had a lot of nephews and nieces, but they don't count for the inheritance."

In contrast with the Alton Clarks, of whom Adelle was the sole survivor, the California branch of the family had been prolific. Adelle realized that as the judge had pointed out to her, it was not simply a question of endowing one intelligent, interesting young man with a half of Clark's Field, but of parceling it out in small lots to a numerous family connection—a much less pleasant deed.

"Do you know these Clark cousins?" she asked.

"Some of 'em," the mason said. "They don't amount to much, the lot of 'em. There's only one made any stir in the world, that's Stan Clark, my uncle Samuel's son. He's in the California Legislature," he said with a certain pride. "And they tell me he's as much of a crook as they make 'em! Then there's a brother of Stan—Sol Clark. He runs a newspaper up in Fresno County, and I guess he's another little crook. There's a bunch of Clarks down in Los Angeles, in the fruit commission business—I don't know nothing about them. Oh, there's Clarks enough of our sort!" he concluded grimly.

Adelle could see that the stone mason had very slight intercourse with any of his cousins. Like most working-people he was necessarily limited in his social relations to his immediate neighbors, the relatives he could get at easily in his free hours—holidays and Sundays and after his eight hours of work was done. The mason's hands were not formed for much penmanship! Adelle also realized that the stone mason, like more prosperous people, did not love the members of his family just because they were Clarks. There was no close family bond of any sort. The mason knew less about his immediate relatives than he did about many other people in the world, and felt less close to them; and of course she knew them not even by name. She felt no great incentive to bequeath small portions of Clark's Field to these unknown little people who happened to bear the name of Clark—now that the law no longer demanded a distribution of the estate, in fact prohibited it!

Thus Adelle realized the absurdity of the family inheritance scheme by which property is preserved for the use of blood descendants of its owner, irrespective of their fitness to use it. She saw that inheritance was a mere survival of an archaic system of tribal bond, which society, through its customary inertia and timidity and general dislike for change, had preserved,—indeed, had made infinitely complex and precise by a code of property laws. She sat back in her chair, silent, puzzled and baffled by the situation. The only way, it seemed, in which she could give the stone mason his share of his grandfather's property was by stripping herself of all her possessions for the tribe of California Clarks, which she felt no inclination to do.

Her cousin, apparently, had been following the same course of reflection in part. He observed dispassionately,—

"I don't know much about 'em, and you don't know anything at all, of course. Mos' likely they 're no better and no worse than any average bunch of human beings. It's curious to think that if grandfather had kept his folks back East informed of his post-office address, all these Clarks big and little would have come in for a slice of the pie!"

"It might not have been such a big pie, then," Adelle remarked.

She remembered quite well what the judge had said about the accumulation of her fortune. It was just because these California Clarks had been lost to sight that there was any "pie" at all. If Edward S. had left his post-office address, there was no doubt that long before this Clark's Field would have been eaten up: there would have been no Adelle Clark—and no book about her and Clark's Field!

The mason tossed his hat in the air and caught it dexterously on the point of his thumb. He mused,—

"All the same they'd open their eyes some, I guess, if they knew what we know. My, wouldn't it make 'em mad to think how near they'd come to some easy money!"

He laughed with relish at the ironical humor of the situation—the picture of the California Clarks running hungrily with outstretched hands to grab their piece of Clark's Field. And he laughed with a bitter perception of the underlying farce of human society. It was his ironic sense of the accidental element in life, especially in relation to property ownership and class distinctions, based on property possession, that made him an incipient anarchist, such as he had described himself to Adelle. He was far too intelligent to believe what the Sunday School taught, and the average American thinks he believes, that property and position in this world are apportioned by desert of one sort or another. He knew in the radius of his own circumscribed life too many instances where privilege was based on nothing more real than Adelle's claim to Clark's Field. In the hasty fashion of his nature he concluded intolerantly that all personal privilege was rotten, and hated—or thought he did—all those "grafters" who enjoyed what Fate had not been kind enough to give him. Adelle disliked his ironical laughter, for without knowing it she was groping towards a sounder belief about life than the anarchist's, and she felt sorry for her mistake in arousing false expectations in her cousin, because in the end it might make him all the harder, confirm him in his revolt against life. No, she must find some way out, so that a part of her unearned fortune could be of real benefit to him.

"Tell me again," Clark demanded moodily, "just what those banker stiffs said about the title? When was it finally fixed up so as to shut us out?"

"I don't know just when, but I suppose some time before I came of age. It must have been between the time my aunt and I first went to see them and my twenty-first birthday."

Clark made a rapid calculation.

"That was about the time father died and mother and we kids were tryin' to live on nothin'. The money would have come in mighty handy then, let me tell you!... Well, I suppose the lawyers know what they're about."

"I suppose they do," Adelle admitted reluctantly.

"I guess they don't want no more fuss with Clark's Field—after they've got the thing all troweled out fine and smooth."

Adelle felt the cynicism in his voice, and keenly realized that it was for her benefit that the "troweling" had been skillfully performed.

"That's gone into the discard!" the mason exclaimed finally, jumping up and whistling softly.

He had that look in his blue eyes that Adelle recognized—the dangerous glint. If she were not there or if she had been a man, he would have found the shortest path to a drink, then taken another, and probably many others. Very likely that was what he meant to do to-night, but at least she would keep him for dinner and make him take her to the theater for which she had already procured seats. Adelle did not censure him for drinking, not as she had censured Archie, because she felt that he drank in a different spirit, as an outlet for his realization of the sardonic inadequacy of life, not as a mere sensual indulgence. If the keen spirit of the man were satisfied with work, he would never drink at all, she was sure.

"I think we can go over to the judge's now," she said, observing his restlessness.

The two crossed the few blocks of city streets to the quiet corner on the hill behind the court-house where Judge Orcutt lived. The east wind had blown itself out the night before, and a beautiful May morning filled even the city with the spirit of spring.

They found the old judge up and about his study, quite lively and full of cordial welcome. He glanced keenly at the young mason, who lingered awkwardly, scowling, beside the door.

"Come in, do!... It's too fine a day for indoors, isn't it? I've ordered a carriage," he said almost at once, "and I want you both to take a drive with me."



XLVIII

Since Adelle's visit Judge Orcutt had given some hours of profound reflection to Clark's Field, for the second time in his life. Not to the legal problem suggested by the young woman's desire to upset the disposition of her property. That he had answered in the only way he could, firmly and decisively. Unscrupulous lawyers might hold out delusive hopes to these newly found heirs if they should fall into their clutches; but the probate judge knew the law of the land and the temper of the courts on this familiar topic. No, his attention had been given to Adelle herself and to her request for his advice upon what she should do with the property that had been given her in the due process of the law. He realized that he was called upon to advise again crucially in regard to Clark's Field. For he recognized Adelle's earnestness of purpose and her pathetically groping desire for light upon life.

He had already reversed that decision about her, given when Adelle upon her majority appeared in his court and he had had occasion to lecture her about the nature of the fortune he was handing over to her. Then his harsh tone had been due to a sense of futility in having been at great pains to preserve for this foolishly dressed and apparently empty-headed young woman a very great property. To him had come then acutely the disheartening realization of the underlying irony of life, when such power and privilege could be put into such futile hands. And he—the conscientious judge—had been the instrument of the law in perpetrating this bitter jest upon justice. But now he felt that Adelle might justify her good fortune. For it seemed that her riches after poisoning her had already begun to work their own cure. She wanted to rid herself of them. That was a good sign.

Not that he sympathized in her crude plan of endowing these unknown Clark cousins with a lot of her money. He was glad that, at any rate, the law put a stop to further litigation over Clark's Field. If she wanted to distribute her estate to them she could, of course. But in all probability it would do them little good; and it might do a great deal of harm. He was interested in Adelle, in her development and her being, much more than in the Clark money. What would be best for her ultimately? If he had been a conventionally minded old gentleman, he would have urged her to bestow her money prudently upon safe charities—perhaps create a special philanthropic trust for the distribution of Clark's Field, after her death, of course, for the good of education, or hospitals, or art—the ordinary channels chosen by those rich persons who cared to alienate from themselves and their heirs a portion of their property. But the judge, fortunately, was not conventionally minded, although he had sat upon the bench for upwards of forty years. He knew that philanthropy was a very wasteful and mechanical method of attaining an end, and often did great harm to everybody, because such a little charity made such an immense amount of social salve. He did not believe that "philanthropy" would appeal in its common forms to Adelle, certainly not deathbed giving.

She had been through some terrible experiences, that was evident, and was still more shaken by them than she knew. But she was young, with a long life presumably to lead, and other children and loves and interests to blossom in it. Would it not be wise for her to retain her property, now that she had learned something of the nature of money, and endeavor by herself to use Clark's Field wisely? It was here that the judge's musings brought up. He was inclined to have faith in Adelle as a person for the first time.

We can see how far from the anarchist his philosophy of life led him. The accidents of life—yes, but mysterious, not merely ironic and meaningless, accidents! Adelle Clark, the unpromising little girl, the loud, silly young married woman, was the instrument chosen by Fate—only the judge said God-sharpened by pain and sorrow to become the intelligent destiny of Clark's Field. Could the law with all its hedging and guarding beat that? Could the stone mason or the judge himself or any human mind select a better executor for Clark's Field than the unlikely instrument which Fate had chosen? The judge thought not, and with his own little plan in mind serenely awaited the arrival of the Clark cousins on this joyous May morning, having previously ordered the horses and carriage that he commonly used for his outings.

* * * * *

Adelle sat beside the judge in the old-fashioned brougham, and the stone mason opposite to them, his great brown hands bedded on his knees, his face critically examining the city landscape. The judge talked chiefly to the young man, in his humorous and rather garrulous manner, describing for his benefit the glories of the old city. They plunged almost at once off the hill into a slum, where in the tall brick tenements women were hanging out of the windows enjoying the spring day. The sunshine and the blue sky made the narrow, dirty streets, and the evil-looking buildings even more out of place than usual. The young Californian wrinkled his mouth scornfully over it. But soon they drove out upon a new bridge that bound the two parts of the city together where the breeze came in across the water gayly. The mason was specially pleased with the tunnel through which the surface cars disappeared into the bowels of the city. That was some good, he said, and added that they did not have it in California. "But we don't need it yet—we aren't so crowded out there," he explained. He did not think much of the tall buildings they encountered on their route. They had better ones in "'Frisco," and had he not seen New York? His attitude towards this home of his forefathers was mildly tolerant. If the issue had been put to him squarely, he would never have exchanged his free California inheritance for his share of Clark's Field! He seemed to think better of his grandfather for having shaken the dust of Alton from his scornful feet. That was exactly what he himself would have done if it had been his misfortune to belong to the younger branch of the family. But in that case, perhaps, he would not have had the courage to brave the unknown!

Adelle from her corner of the carriage silently followed this in her cousin's expressive face. She saw that it all seemed small to him, petty, planned on a little scale.

"Give me the Coast!" he said when at last they reached the famous Square of Alton, which was now little more than the intersection of three noisy streets, and turned up the old South Road. That simple expression meant volumes as she knew. It expressed the love of freedom, vigor, simplicity, natural manhood, the longing for the large, fresh face of Nature, where the hopeful soul of man is ready to meet his destiny by himself, unpropped by his ancestors and relatives. There was an echo in her own soul to this primitive lyric cry,—"Give me the Coast!"

(Need we explain that to the true son of California there is but one "Coast" in all the world?)

The old judge smiled sympathetically in response to the cry. Evidently he liked the young man, for he was at great pains to point out to him everything of interest and to explain certain historic monuments that they passed.

Alton had never been notable as a place of residence even in Adelle's childhood, but now it was almost completely converted to industrial uses. The stove factory had grown like a tropic plant, and had spawned about itself a number of parasitic industries, such as tack-mills, paper-box factories, and other occupations that use the labor of women and children. It was one long, smoky, grimy thoroughfare, where in a small, congested area the coarser labors of humanity were performed wholesale by a race of imported gnomes, such as might be found in any of the larger centers of the country. Alton was not one of the "show places," and it may be wondered why the judge had chosen to drive his guests thither instead of to the famous parks of the city.

But Adelle suspected something of his purpose, and more when they turned into that brick maze of small streets that had once been Clark's Field. At this the Californian's mobile face expressed frank contempt, not to say disgust. Even on this beautiful May morning, Clark's Field, with its close-packed rows of lofty tenements, its narrow, dirty alleys, and monotonous blocks of ugly brick facades, was dreary, depressing, a needless monstrosity of civilization. And all this had come about in a little over ten years, as the judge carefully explained to the mason. It had taken less than a generation to cover Clark's Field with its load of brick and mortar, to make it into a swarming hive of mean human lives—a triumph of our day, so often boastfully celebrated in newspaper and magazine, the triumph of efficient property exploitation by the Washington Trust Company under the thin disguise of the "Clark's Field Associates"!

The judge was indefatigable in his determination to penetrate to every dreary corner, every noisome alley of the place, although the young stranger seemed to think that he had had enough at the first glance. It is not necessary for us to make the rounds of the Field for the third time with the little party. Adelle, who had a greater interest than her cousin because of her dim understanding of the judge's purpose, gazed searchingly at everything, and was able to see it differently, to comprehend it all as she had not been able to the time before when she had forced Archie to make the expedition with her. She realized now, at least in part, what Clark's Field really meant, what the magic lamp she had so carelessly rubbed for years to gratify her desires was made of. And it made her thoughtful.

About noon, when the little streets were flooded from curb to curb by a motley army of pale-faced foreign workers from the high lofts and the noisy factories, the judge's carriage drew up beside a vacant corner, the one large undeveloped bit of land still left, nearly in the center of the whole tract. This was plastered with the signs of the realty company, seductively offering to lease it for a term of years or improve it with a building to suit tenant, etc.

"About all the open space and blue sky there is left!" the judge remarked, pointing out the figures of a few dirty children who were exploring a puddle and a pit of rubbish in the vacant lot. (These, I suppose, were the descendants of that brave body of little hoodlums of which I and my brothers were members years ago, and the puddle and pit were all that was left of our mysterious playground!)

"There's a heap of cheap foreign rubbish all around here," the mason growled, spitting contemptuously into the roadbed, as if he resented that human beings could be found forlorn enough, low enough, to labor under such conditions. "Not one of 'em looks as if he had had enough to eat or knew what a good wash was or what the earth smells like!"

No, the Coast for him, and the sooner the better, too!

The judge smiled tolerantly, observing,—

"I don't suppose they have much chance to bathe here. The city cannot afford to put up public baths and employers rarely think of those things."

"Look at the rotten stuff they eat!" The mason pointed disdainfully to the tipcarts drawn up along the curb, where men and women were chaffering over dried fish and forlorn vegetables that would have soured the soul of old Adams, who once raised celery on this very spot. "Don't the folks in these parts eat better than that?"

"Not generally," the judge replied. "We have no public market in this city, and it is very difficult for the poorer sort to get fresh food."

"You'd oughter see the California markets!" the young man bragged.

"Tell me about them," the judge said.

And while the young mason expatiated on his land of plenty where the poor man could still enjoy his own bit of God's sunlight and fresh fruit and flowers from the earth, Adelle watched the thick stream of workers in Clark's Field, pushing and dawdling along the narrow street. There were girls with bare arms and soiled shirt-waists and black skirts, there were lean, pale boys, and women old before their time, hurrying from tenement to shop, their hearts divided between the two cares of home and livelihood. Adelle recalled one of her first talks with the stone mason, in which he had crudely told her that her yearly income represented the total wages of four or five hundred able-bodied men and women, such as these, who worked from ten to sixteen hours a day for three hundred days each year, when they could, and all told earned hardly what she drew by signing her name to slips of paper as income from her property during the same space of time. He said to her,—"You can think that you are worth about four hundred human lives! Who talks about slavery being abolished? Hell!" She had thought then that his way of putting it was quite wrong, unjust: she was sure that Major Pound could easily have disposed of his contention. Indeed, she had heard the major and men like him maintain that capitalists like herself were the only true benefactors of humanity, that without them the working-people could never be fed! But to-day she was not sure that her cousin had been wrong. She saw a concrete proof of his statement in this stream of poorly nourished, hard-worked men, women, boys, and girls, all toiling to maintain themselves and pay her the interest upon the crowded land of Clark's Field. In a very definite sense they were all working for her; they were her slaves!

The younger women and girls looked into the judge's brougham curiously or impudently, attracted by the spectacle of leisure and quiet richness that Adelle presented, a sight not commonly afforded them in the streets of Clark's Field and always fascinating to women of any class wherever it may be. Adelle's dress was plain black, and she had shed much of her jewelry; but beneath her simple gown and fine linen and carefully cherished skin she began to feel a new sensation, not exactly pity for these less lucky sisters, rather wonder that it should all be so, that she should be sitting there in idleness and comfort and they should be tramping the pavement of Clark's Field to the factory....

When she saw the boys playing in the mud puddle in the one vacant lot, she thought of her own little boy, on whom she had lavished every care, every luxury. So with these working-girls, she thought how easily she might have been one of them going from the rooming-house in Church Street to shop or factory, as many women of better Puritan families than hers had done. It was pure accident, she could see, why she and her child had been saved from such a lot—due neither to her own ability nor that of any of her Clark forbears! It was a humbling perception.

"Hell!" her cousin was saying explosively, "these people are no better 'n cattle. At least they ought to give 'em a trough to wash in and a place where they could buy decent food."

"A few other things, too, perhaps," the judge added with his gentle smile. "But who will do it? The city is already badly debt-ridden. The owners of the land pay so much in taxes and interest, due to the high price of the land here, that they probably make a bare eight per cent net on their investment."

He looked inquiringly at the young man.

"It's all wrong," the mason retorted heatedly, forgetting that he had hoped to become one of these "owners of the land," and returning to his incipient rebellion at the state of society in which he lived. "Somebody ought to be made to do such things."

The judge smiled finely, merely remarking in a casual tone,—

"It is a very perplexing question, all that, my young friend!"

"But you don't think it's right so," the mason persisted belligerently, thinking to challenge a supporter of things as they are.

"There's very little that is quite right in this world, my boy," the judge replied simply.

"Well, we'd better set out now to make it nearer right," the young man grumbled.

"Oh, yes, that is perfectly sound doctrine.... And shall we begin with Clark's Field?" he asked, turning to Adelle with one of his playful, kindly smiles.

"It needs it," she said simply.

"Yes, I think it needs it!"

"Sure!" the mason asserted resoundingly.

A little while afterwards the judge said to the driver,—

"I think that we will go home now, John."



XLIX

In these last moments something had happened to Adelle. While the judge and her cousin had been talking, she had been watching the stream of humanity flow past her, not hearing what the two were saying, listening to the voice of her own soul. It is difficult to describe in exact words the nature of Adelle's mental life. Ideas never came to her in orderly succession. They were not evolved out of other ideas, nor gathered up from obvious sources and repeated by her brain, parrotlike, as with so many of us. They came to her slowly from some reservoir of her being, came painfully, strugglingly, and often were accompanied to their birth by an inner glow of emotional illumination like the present when she saw herself and her child living the life of Clark's Field. But after they had struggled into birth, they became eternal possessions of her consciousness, never to be forgotten, or debated, or denied. She had thus slowly and painfully achieved whatever personality she had since she came for the first time a pale child into Judge Orcutt's court. If any one had talked to her about the "obligations of wealth," "social service," or "love of humanity," she would have listened with a vacant stare and replied like a child of ten. The judge seemed to know that.

It was only by idleness and Archie and unhappiness and the fire and the tragic death of her child that she had come to realize that there were other people in the world besides herself and the few who were a necessary part of herself, and that these other lives were of importance to themselves and might be almost as important to her as her own. It had taken Adelle a good many years of foolish living and reckless use of her magic lamp to get this simple understanding of life. But she was not yet twenty-six, really at the start of life. If already she had come so far along the road, what might she not reach by fifty? In such matters it is the destination alone that counts....

Just now, as has been said, a greater illumination had come over her spirit than was ever there before, although for the life of her Adelle could not have expressed in words what she felt, or at this time put her new thought into concrete acts. But with Adelle acts had never been wanting when the time for them came, and her slow mind had absorbed all the necessary ideas. The judge recognized the illumination in the young woman at his side. For the first time in her life, perhaps, at least for one of the rare moments of it, her face was in no sense vacant. The wide gray eyes that looked forth upon the sordid world of Clark's Field were seeing eyes, though they did not see merely physical facts. Instead of their usual blankness or passive intelligence, they had a quality in them now of dream. And this gave Adelle's pale face a certain rare loveliness that in human faces does not depend upon color or line or emotional vivacity. It is rather the still radiance of the inner spirit, penetrating in some inexplicable manner the physical envelope and creating a beauty far more enduring, more compelling to those who perceive it, than any other form of beauty intelligible to human eyes. The judge perceived it. As the carriage slowly retraced its way through the crowded streets of Clark's Field, he silently took the young woman's hand and held it within his own, smiling gently before him as one who understood what was too complex to put in words. He was an old man now, and it was permitted him to express thus the compulsion of Adelle's rare loveliness, thus to confide to her the sympathy of his own dreaming heart. The little ungloved hand lay within his old hand, warm and passive, not clinging, content to rest there in peace.

Thus they jogged back to the city, all three silent, occupied with personal thoughts suggested by their expedition this fine May morning into Clark's Field, which the judge for one felt had been thoroughly successful.

* * * * *

Judge Orcutt kept the two cousins to luncheon, and when Adelle had gone with his housekeeper to lay aside her hat and wraps, he was left alone with the young stone mason. After long years of watching human beings from the bench, the judge formed his opinions of people rapidly and was rarely mistaken upon the essential quality of any one. He liked Tom Clark. He did not mind, as much as Adelle did, his spitting habit, for he remembered the time not more than a generation or two ago when the best American gentlemen chewed tobacco or took snuff, and he could see quality in a person who spat upon the ground, but did not conceal ugly and vile thoughts, or who abused the language of books in favor of that more enduring vernacular of the street, or who confused the table implements, or did the hundred and one other little things that are supposedly the indelible marks of an inferior culture. A most fastidious person himself, as was obvious, he looked in others for a fastidiousness of spirit rather than for a correct performance of the whims of refinement. For the one, as everybody knows but forgets, is eternal, and the other is merely transitory—the most transitory aspect of human beings, their manners. He was pleased with Tom Clark's vigorous reaction against the East in favor of his own freer land, his disgust with the incipient squalor of Clark's Field, and his honest scorn for a civilization that would permit human beings to live as they lived there and generally in the more crowded industrial centers of the world. What the stone mason had recklessly vaunted to Adelle as "anarchism," the judge recognized as a healthy reaction against unworthy human institutions,—the idiom in him of youth and hope and will. And he could understand, now that he was face to face with the vigorous young man, the reason why Adelle had been drawn to the stone mason from that first time when she had discharged him from her employ. For he had those qualities of vitality, expression, initiative that the younger branch of the Clarks had exhausted. The Edward S. Clarks, transplanted fifty years and more ago to new soil, may not have risen far in the human scale in their new environment, but they had renewed there, at least in the person of this young stone mason, their capacity for health and vigor. Once more they had strong desires, will, and the courage to revolt against the settled, the safe, the formal, and the proper. Of course, this Clark was an anarchist! All strong blood must create some such anarchists, if there is to be progress in this world.

It did not seem so preposterous to the judge, after these few hours of contact with the mason, that Adelle should want to endow her cousin with a part of that fortune which but for accident and legal formality would have been his. There were, however, many other of these California Clarks, in whom Adelle could not possibly be interested and who might not be equally promising, but who would have to share her liberality with the mason. It was a delicate tangle, as the judge realized when he attempted to untie the knot.

"Mr. Clark," he began, sinking into the deep wing chair before his fireplace, "I suppose your cousin has informed you of the results of her interview with the Washington Trust Company?"

"Yes!" the young man emitted shortly, with an inquiring grin. "She said there was nothing doing about our claim."

"The officers of the trust company were right so far as the law is concerned, as I had to tell Mrs. Clark. The law is doubtless often slow and bungling in its processes, but when it has once fully decided an issue it is very loath to open it up again, especially when, as in this case, litigation would involve hardship and injustice to a great many innocent people."

"Well, I somehow thought it might be too late," the young mason remarked, throwing himself loosely into the chair opposite the judge. After a moment of reflection he added feelingly,—"The law is an infernal contraption anyhow—it's always rigged so's the little feller gets left."

"The law rigged it so that your cousin, who was a penniless girl, got a thousand times more than her grandfather asked for his property," the judge observed with a twinkle.

"She had the luck, that's all—and we other Clarks didn't!" the young man replied.

"You can call it luck, if you like," the judge mused.

"That's what most folks would call it, I guess."

"I suppose that is what she feels, because she was anxious when she came to see me yesterday to divide her fortune with you other Clarks."

It was a daring move, and as he spoke the judge looked keenly into the young man's face.

"Did she?" Tom Clark inquired unconcernedly. "I know she's always on the square—there aren't many like her!"

"You may not know that if she should carry out her intention, she would strip herself of almost every dollar she possesses."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Her husband, I understand, conducted her affairs so badly that very nearly if not quite half the great fortune she received five years ago from her guardians has wasted away. I don't know what ultimately may be recovered from these California investments, but judging from what Mrs. Clark tells me I should say almost nothing. So that there can be left of the original estate only a little over two millions of dollars."

"Well, that's enough for any woman to worry along on," the mason grinned lightly.

"But not enough for her to pay out of it two and a half millions, which would have been the share of your grandfather's heirs."

"Hell! She ain't thinkin' of doin' that!"

"She certainly was. She would have made the proposal to you already, if I had not asked her to wait until I could advise with her again."

The young man's blue eyes opened wide in astonishment.

"What good would that do her?"

"It would give all of you California Clarks your slice of Clark's Field—how many of you are there?"

"I dunno exactly—maybe twenty or twenty-five—I haven't kep' count."

"Say there are twenty-five heirs of old Edward S. living. Each of them would have a hundred thousand dollars apiece roughly. That sum of money is not to be despised even to-day."

"You bet it ain't," murmured the mason feelingly. His face settled into a scowl; and leaning forward he demanded,—"What are you drivin' at anyway, Judge?"

The judge did not answer.

"You ain't goin' to let that woman hand over all her money to a lot of little no-'count people she's never laid eyes on, just because they are called 'Clark' instead of 'Smith' or some other name?"

"You happen to be one of them," the judge observed with a laugh.

"I know that,—and I guess I'm a pretty fair sample of the whole bunch,—but I ain't takin' charity from any woman!"

The judge settled back into his chair, a satisfied little smile on his lips. The mason's reaction was better than he had dared expect.

"It ought not to be called charity, exactly," he mused.

"What is it, then? It ain't law!"

"No, it wouldn't be legal either," the judge admitted. "But there are things that are neither legal nor charitable. There are," he suggested, "justice and wisdom and mercy!"

The mason could not follow such abstract thought. He looked blankly at the judge. His mind had done its best when it had rejected without hesitation the gift of Adelle's fortune because he happened to be a grandson of Edward S. Clark.

"Tell me," said the judge after a time, as if his mind had wandered to other considerations, "about these California Clarks—what do you know of them?"

The mason related for the judge's edification the scraps of family history and biography that he could recollect. Adelle, who had come into the room, listened to his story. Tom Clark might be limited in knowledge of his family as he was in education, but he was certainly literal and picturesque. He spared neither himself nor his brothers and sisters, nor his remoter cousins. The one whose career seemed to interest him most was that Stan Clark, the politician, who now represented Fresno County in the State Legislature. There was a curious mixture of pride and contempt in his feeling for this cousin, who had risen above the dead level of local obscurity.

"He thinks almighty well of himself," he concluded his portrait; "but there ain't a rottener peanut politician in the State of California, and that's sayin' some. He got into the legislater by stringin' labor, and now, of course, the S. P. owns him hide and clothes and toothpick. I hear he's bought a block of stores in Fresno and is puttin' the dough away thick. He don't need no Clark's Field! He's got the whole people of California for his pickings."

The judge turned to Adelle laughingly.

"Your cousin doesn't seem to see any good reason why the California Clarks should be chosen for Fortune's favor."

"Ain't one of 'em," the young man asserted emphatically, "so far as I know, would know what to do with a hundred dollars, would be any better off after a couple of years if he had it. That's gospel truth—and I ain't exceptin' myself!" he added after a moment of sober reflection.

Adelle made no comment. She did not seem to be thinking along the same line as the judge and the young mason. Since the yesterday her conception of her problem had changed and grown. Adelle was living fast these days, not in the sense in which she and Archie had lived fast according to their kind, but psychologically and spiritually she was living fast. Her state of yesterday had already given place to another broader, loftier one: she was fast escaping from the purely personal out into the freedom of the impersonal.

"Allowing for Mr. Clark's natural vivacity of statement," the judge observed with an appreciative chuckle, "these California relatives of yours, so far as I can see, are pretty much like everybody else in the world, struggling along the best they can with the limitations of environment and character which they have inherited.... And I am rather inclined to agree with Mr. Clark that it might be unwise to give them, most of them, any special privilege which they hadn't earned for themselves over their neighbors."

"What right have they got to it anyway?" the mason demanded.

"Oh, when you go into rights, Mr. Clark," the judge retorted, "the whole thing is a hopeless muddle. None of us in a very real sense has any rights—extremely few rights, at any rate."

"Well, then, they've no good reason for havin' the money."

"I agree with you. There is no good reason why these twenty-five Clarks, more or less, should arbitrarily be selected for the favors of Clark's Field. And yet they might prove to be as good material to work upon as any other twenty-five taken at random."

Adelle looked up expectantly to the judge. She understood that his mind was thinking forward to wider reaches than his words indicated.

"But you would want to know much more about them than you do now, to study each case carefully in all its bearings, and then doubtless you would make your mistakes, with the best of judgment!"

"I don't see what you mean," the mason said.

"Nor I," said Adelle.

"Let us have some lunch first," the judge replied. "We have done a good deal this morning and need food. Perhaps later we shall all arrive at a complete understanding."

* * * * *

At the close of their luncheon the judge remarked to Adelle,—

"Your cousin and I, Mrs. Clark, have talked over your idea of giving to him and his relatives what the law will not compel you to distribute of Clark's Field. He doesn't seem to think well of the idea."

"It's foolish," the mason growled.

Adelle looked at him swiftly, with a little smile that was sad.

"I was afraid he would say that, Judge," she said softly.

"You know any man would!... I ain't never begged from a woman yet."

"The woman, it seems to me, has nothing to do with the question," the judge put in.

"And it isn't begging," Adelle protested. "It's really yours, a part of it, as much as mine,—more, perhaps."

"It's nobody's by rights, so far as I can see!" the mason retorted with his dry laugh.

"Exactly!" the judge exclaimed. "Young man, you have pronounced the one final word of wisdom on the whole situation. With that for a premise we can start safely towards a conclusion. Clark's Field doesn't belong to you or to your cousin or to any of the Clarks living or dead. It belongs to itself—to the people who live upon it, who use it, who need it to get from it their daily bread and shelter."

"But," jeered the mason, "you can't call 'em out into the street and hand each of 'em a thousand-dollar bill."

"No, and you would make a lot of trouble for everybody if you did—especially for the Alton police courts, I am afraid! But you can act as trustees for Clark's Field—" He turned to Adelle and continued whimsically,—"That's what the old Field did for you, my dear, with my assistance. Its wealth was tied up for fifty years to be let loose in your lap! You found it not such a great gift, after all, so why not pour it back upon the Field?... Why not make a splendid public market on that vacant lot that's still left? And put some public baths in, and a public hall for everybody's use, and a few other really permanent improvements?—which I fear the city will never feel able to do! In that way you would be giving back to Clark's Field and its real owners what properly belongs to it and to them."

So the judge's thought was out at last. It did not take Adelle long to understand it now.

"I'll do it," she said simply, as if the judge had merely voiced the struggling ideas of her own brain. "But how shall I go to work?"

"I think your cousin can show you," the judge laughed. "He has many more ideas than I should dare call my own about what society should do for its disinherited. Suppose you talk it over with him and get his suggestions."

"My God!" the stone mason groaned enigmatically.

The sardonic smile spread over his lean face as he further explained himself,—

"It ain't exactly what I took this trip from California for."

"You didn't understand then," the judge remarked.

"And I didn't understand either," Adelle added.

"I guess I could keep you from getting into trouble with your money as well as the next man. I'd keep you out of the hands of the charity grafters anyhow!"

"I think," the judge summed up whimsically, "that you are one of the best persons in the world to advise on how to distribute the Clark millions. That is what should be done with every young anarchist—set him to work spending money on others. He would end up either in prison or among the conservatives."

"But," Adelle demurred finally, "that leaves the others—all the California Clarks—out of it for good."

"Where they belong," put in the mason.

"I'm not so sure of that," the judge added cautiously. And after further reflection he suggested, "Why shouldn't you two make yourselves into a little private and extra-legal Providence for these members of your family? Once, my dear," he said to Adelle, "I did the same for you! At considerable risk to your welfare I intervened and prevented certain greedy rascals from doing your aunt and you out of Clark's Field, you remember?"

He paused to relate for Tom Clark's benefit the story of the transaction with which we are fully familiar.

"Of course, if then I had known of the existence of our young friend and his family, I should have been obliged to include him in the beneficence of my Providence. But I didn't. It was left for you, my dear, to discover him!... There was a time when I felt that I had played the part of Providence rashly,"—he smiled upon Adelle, who recalled quite vividly the stern lecture that the court had given her when she was about to receive her fortune. "But now I feel that I did very well, indeed. In fact I am rather proud of my success as Providence to this young woman.... So I recommend the same role to you and Mr. Clark. Look up these California Clarks, study them, make up your minds what they need most, then act as wisely as you can, not merely in their behalf, but in behalf of us all, of all the people who find themselves upon this earth in the long struggle out of ignorance and misery upwards to light.... It will keep you busy," he concluded with his fine smile,—"busy, I think, for the better part of your two lives. But I can think of no more interesting occupation than to try to be a just and wise Providence!"