Clark's Field Part 15

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 a.s.suming 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 a.s.surance, 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 "sn.o.b," 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 gla.s.ses at the lofty buildings, and imbibing more c.o.c.ktails 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 acc.u.mulating 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 pract.i.tioners 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 pa.s.sed. 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 coa.r.s.e, 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-a.s.sertion 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 t.i.tle 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 gla.s.ses and consulted his little book, laid the gla.s.ses 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."