Clark's Field Part 17

x.x.x

Archie was pacified by a copious luncheon in the Eclair restaurant, which is almost as good as a second-cla.s.s Paris restaurant, and after an idle afternoon the couple went to a popular musical comedy to end their day. Adelle's business with the trust company was now finished, and they must decide upon their next move. Their first impulse after the rout upon the dock had been to dart back to Europe as expeditiously as possible, with Adelle's recovered lamp, and never darken again their native sh.o.r.es. But this pettish mood had been largely forgotten during the fortnight that ensued, and they remembered their plan of going to California so that Archie might present himself in his new estate and his wife to his own people. A cable from Sadie Paul, stating that she had taken "the B. and T." (which being properly interpreted meant that she had decided to marry her Hungarian count) and was returning to her home to celebrate her wedding, determined them. They forthwith made their arrangements to cross the continent and spend the summer on the Pacific Coast.

It may as well be said that before departing Adelle had one quite serious business talk with President West of the trust company and the excellent Mr. Smith, whose had been the chastening hand at the time of her elopement. Possibly the wisdom of his remarks was becoming more evident to Adelle as marriage wore on, or it might be that she still did usually as she was told, if she were told with sufficient authority. At any rate, she agreed to leave in the hands of the Washington Trust Company the bulk of her estate, not strictly in the form of a trust,--they could not induce her to surrender the privilege of the lamp to that extent,--but under an agreement by which she bound herself not to disturb the princ.i.p.al of her fortune for a term of years. The bankers represented to her tactfully that neither she nor Mr. Davis had yet had extensive experience in the investment of money; that the operations of the Clark's Field a.s.sociates were not finally wound up; that they had had such success in their investments on her account that it would be well to allow them to carry out their scheme of investment, etc. In short, she signed the agreement, which was the last thing she did in B----.

Archie, when he learned what she had done, was irritated. Naturally he did not like Mr. Smith and had a grudge against the trust company as a whole. He said that the arrangement reflected upon him and his dignity as a husband, although, as Mr. West had pointed out to Adelle, it was not customary for a husband to be entrusted with the disposal of all his wife's property. Since the vogue of international marriages, American fathers had taken refuge in the trust companies. In spite of argument and sulks, however, Archie could not prevail upon Adelle to undo what she had done, and he had to content himself with the shrewd reflection that it was probably not legally binding and could be broken when opportunity offered.

In this affair Adelle displayed an unexpected caution by her willingness to let the trust company remain guardian of her magic lamp for the present. She had a woman's instinctive confidence in an inst.i.tution, especially in one which years of use had made familiar to her. Archie, she felt justly, must content himself with their income, which would be more than two hundred thousand a year. That should satisfy their immediate wants after the eighteen months of bread-and-b.u.t.ter probation.

And after all it was her own money, as the trust officers had said to her again and again. This, however, she did not repeat to Archie. She soothed his irritated pride in other ways, and in the end a fairly contented and harmonious couple were whirled westward in the track of the setting sun to that more golden sh.o.r.e of our continent, where other fate awaited them.

x.x.xI

After a brief visit at the Santa Rosa vineyard, where oddly enough Adelle seemed to feel more at home than Archie, they went to Bellevue to attend the famous Paul wedding. Here Irene Paul, now an "Honorable Mrs."

George Pointer, entertained them, both Adelle and Irene apparently forgetting their old grudges. Arm about waist they went lovingly up the grand staircase of the old Paul mansion to Adelle's rooms, babbling about school days, p.u.s.s.y Comstock, and the other girls of her famous "family." Irene even looked with favor upon Archie in his developed condition of a rich woman's husband. Adelle reflected complacently that he was quite as presentable as a man as the young Englishman Irene had married. All you had to do to succeed, in marriage as in other things, was to do what you wanted and make the world accept you and your acts.

And she honestly admired the tall blonde Irene, who had bloomed under the influences of matrimony into something suggestively English--high-colored, stately, emphatic. She liked the rambling ugly mansion built in the eighties after Hermann Paul's success with railroads, in the best mansard style of the day, and never touched since. The grounds which had been extensively planted by the railroad man were now covered with a luxuriant growth of exotic trees that completely hid the house and afforded only peeps of the distant bay.

California, with its pungent stimulants of odor and color, appealed to her from the very first. She was quite happy, and Archie seemed to expand in his native soil and was less peevish than he had grown to be latterly.

After the wedding, which according to the local newspapers was a very grand affair, but which unfortunately does not come into this story, Archie and Adelle prolonged their visit. They found the easy atmosphere of this pretty California town so agreeable, with its busy air of luxurious leisure, that they took a furnished house for the remainder of the season, and in the autumn they rented a larger place out on the hills behind the town, having a lovely view of the great valley and the distant waters of the Bay, with the blue tips of the inland hills rising through the mists. They still talked confidently of returning to Europe to live.

They did not, however, at least for permanent residence. Archie was too content with life in this land of sunshine, flowers, and informal living, to leave. He said quite flatly now that he did not think he was meant to be a painter and there was no point in being an artist if you did not have to be something. Adelle perceived that according to Archie there was not much point in doing anything unless one had to. She began to suspect dimly the existence of a deep human law. "By the sweat of thy brow," it had been writ in that Puritan Bible she studied at the First Congregational Church in Alton. Then it had a very definite meaning even to her child's mind, but during the easy years since, she had forgotten it altogether. Now something like its stern truth was boring into her consciousness. It seemed that when the larger incentives of living--the big universal ones--had been removed for any cause, human beings were often at a loss what to do with themselves. They sighed for "freedom"

when bound to the common wheel, but when released, as Archie and Adelle had been, the average man or woman had but the feeblest notion of what to do with his "freedom."

With women such as Adelle the tragedy is less apparent than with men, because woman's life for uncounted ages has consisted in great part of playing games with herself at the dictates of men, and large wealth a.s.sists her in making these games socially interesting and agreeable.

Adelle, to be sure, had no social ambition of the conventional sort. She was more content than Archie with merely being married and having plenty of money to spend in any way she chose. In this respect she was nearer the primitive than Archie, who often reminded her of the fact somewhat cruelly. Yet, as we shall see, when the time came she awoke to the full realization of the situation, which Archie never understood at all.

Art having finally been thrown out of the window by both, it remained to determine how best they could dispose of themselves and their riches so as to "get the most out of life." The first of the game subst.i.tutes for real living happened to be a "ranch." The suggestion came from Irene's husband, who had been attracted to California by this lure of "ranching."

"Why don't you go in for a big ranch?" he said to Archie one evening, when the four were yawning sleepily over the fire after a day spent motoring in the wind. "There's the Arivista property in Sonoma County. I hear they want to sell--ten thousand acres."

The idea of becoming a large landowner appealed to the Californian in Archie. They talked the matter over, and it resulted in their all motoring down the State to the Arivista property. In the end they bought at considerable expense this ten-thousand-acre tract of mountain, valley, and plain, and began elaborate improvements. It had been once a "cattle proposition," but Archie's idea was to turn it into fruit and nuts, as well as a gentleman's estate of a princely sort, with a large "mission style" cement mansion. He engaged an architect and a superintendent, and began building and planting on an elaborate scale.

Adelle was glad to see her Archie really interested in something and encouraged him in all his ambitious plans. They motored frequently to the ranch to inspect operations. It took them two days to go and return, and there were only rough accommodations at the ranch. But she liked it.

The great untamed s.p.a.ces of hill and plain, with the broad horizon of blue mountains, appealed to her. She was less interested in the big house, the barns, outbuildings, orchards,--all the paraphernalia that goes with an "estate," which Archie wished impatiently to have created at once. It took, naturally, a great deal of money. Before the work at Arivista was finally stopped, it was estimated that close to half a million dollars of Clark's Field had been poured into this California "ranch," from which, of course, less than a quarter was ever recovered, no other rich man being found with similar conceptions of what a "ranch"

should be. All told, the Davises lived upon their ranch less than four months during the next spring, and before the blossoms had finally fallen sufficient reasons were found to move them back nearer people and the ordinary diversions of life. Water, it was discovered, could not be got in sufficient quant.i.ty. The relaxing climate of the south did not seem to agree with Adelle. And, above all, a child was expected.

The little boy was born in Bellevue. He had come to them by accident, for neither felt that it was yet the right time to have children; but Adelle recognized almost at once that it was likely to be a happy accident for her and welcomed it with all proper fervor. It served, at any rate, to settle them in California for the present. They decided to buy the place they had rented upon the hills and live there for most of the year. And it also served to strengthen the bond between husband and wife, which was wearing dangerously thin in places. With the coming of the child the family was const.i.tuted, and another interest was given to Adelle, which compensated for Archie's pettish moods. The child also released Archie from the constant attention which Adelle exacted of him, and permitted him more of that precious "freedom," which he found wealth did not always bring.

Thus they definitely started their California life.

x.x.xII

Bellevue is one of those country towns in the neighborhood of a large city that have flourished especially since the discovery of the motor-car. It took quite two hours to reach it from San Francis...o...b.. train and nearly that by fast driving in a car, owing to the poor roads.

Thus it was removed for the present from the contaminating contact of the "commuter" and all the commonness of suburbanism. Bellevue had, of course, its country club, with a charming new clubhouse, where polo was played in season, as well as the humbler forms of sport such as golf and tennis, and where a good deal of lively entertaining went on at all seasons. It was an old settlement; that is, it had been the country home of a few families for almost two generations, the first of the great places having been developed in the seventies when the railroad fortunes were being made. Besides these older estates, which were marked by the luxuriance of their planting and by the ugliness of their houses, there was a growing number of smaller, more modern estates with attractive houses, and also a little settlement "across the tracks" of trades-people and servants. Except for the eternal spring and the wealth of California foliage, Bellevue was much like any number of towns outside of Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, or Boston. And the social life of the place, except for the minor modifications due to climate and environment, was so exactly typical of what everybody knows that it needs no description.

Thanks to Irene's good will as well as to Adelle's fortune the Davises became immediately acquainted with the "colony" of Bellevue, and were easily accepted as members of that supposedly exclusive society. Archie rapidly made a place for himself at the club. Having no regular occupation he could devote himself to polo with the exclusiveness of a single pa.s.sion. For diversion he motored up to the city frequently, where he became a member of several clubs, and for business there was always the ranch to worry about. In this way he kept up a current of movement in his daily life, which for persons like the Davises takes the place of real activity.

Adelle was indolent about social life as about much else. She did not like to take pains over anything and found entertaining a bore. She was a poor diner-out, and when the coming of her child gave her an excuse she was quite content to leave the social aspect of their life to Archie, who was generally thought to be much more agreeable than his wife. After they finally decided to buy the Bellevue place, Adelle occupied herself with ambitious schemes for the improvement of the property. She decided that the old house was uncomfortable and badly placed, too near the road, and selected a site upon the steep hillside, which commanded a large view of the valley and the great Bay across the verdurous growth of the town. Then she engaged a young architect, who was a member of the Bellevue Country Club and had "done" several houses in the neighborhood, and at once she was involved in a bewildering maze of plans for house and grounds. This kept her busy during her convalescence and gratified the rudimentary creative instinct in her, which had led her before to making jewelry. In planning a large country estate there was also a pleasant sense of rivalry with her old friend Irene, who was forced to content herself for the present with her father's out-of-date mansion. It took much money, of course, and the young architect spared his clients no possible expense, but Adelle felt that the springs of Clark's Field were inexhaustible.

It was, perhaps, the happiest period of Adelle's existence. Her marriage had begun to prove uncomfortable in Europe and threatened badly at Arivista, because there was not enough of anything between her and her husband to support idleness alone. It was much better at Bellevue, for here Archie was taken care of, not always in a safe way, but, as far as Adelle knew, satisfactorily. The rich, sensuous country, with its peculiar profusion of exotic vegetation and the luxury of perpetual good weather, made Adelle, pale offspring of an outworn Puritanism, bloom, especially after the birth of her child. It was as if all the desires of the old Clarks to escape the hardships of their bleak lives found at last their fulfillment in her. She expanded under the influence of warmth and color; for climate is a larger moral factor than is usually recognized. In California the struggle for life is a meaningless figure of speech, and Adelle did not like struggling. She loved to putter about in the overgrown garden and to slumber in the sun beside her little boy, refusing to descend to the delights of the club and Bellevue hospitality even after she had no excuse. When Irene took her to task for her dawdling by herself she gurgled contentedly,--

"What's the good of doing those things? Archie likes it--he sees the crowd at the club--that's enough for him."

"You've got to take your position," Irene remonstrated with a new pose.

She herself aspired to lead on the score of her family's antiquity in Bellevue.

"What's that?" Adelle asked blankly.

It was difficult as Irene found to explain just what position Adelle Davis should take in human society, just what it meant to be a "leader."

But she talked much about "the world going by one," and "duties of our position," and "keeping in touch," with a note of mature tolerance and responsibility in her voice. To all of which Adelle opposed merely a lazy stare. In her gray eyes she seemed to mirror the fussy little social life of this ideal country town, with its spread of motors about the station on the arrival of the afternoon train from the city, its properly garbed men and women strenuously amusing themselves at the country club, its numerous "places," all very much alike, with their gardens and greenhouses and tennis-courts, and ten masters' and five servants' rooms, and all the rest of it.

If Adelle could find no very cogent reason why she should make herself toilsomely a pillar of this society, shall we blame her? If she found for the present enough of content in the soft sunshine, the fragrant flowers, her baby, and her own home, with the intermittent companionship of the one man she had chosen to spend her life with, shall we consider her highly culpable, deficient in the moral or social sense? All the rest was much ado about nothing to Adelle, and, perhaps, as far as Bellevue went,--and a good deal like it in life elsewhere,--Adelle was not far wrong in her instinct....

"Here's Archie now," she remarked, observing her lord coming up the drive in his car.

"h.e.l.lo, Archie!" Irene called in greeting. Her tone was quite friendly and intimate. Archie certainly had been "accepted" in this quarter.

"Going to the Carharts?"

Archie, of course, was going to the Carharts to dine and play cards.

"Coming, Dell?" he asked his wife casually.

Adelle shook her head.

"I've been telling Dell she ought not to be so lazy," Irene commented.

"She never goes off the place if she can help it!"

"Adelle don't like people," Archie observed gloomily.

"Yes I do, well enough," his wife protested.

"It's a queer way you have of showing it, then."

"Why should I like 'em, anyway, if I don't want to?" she retorted with some heat, childishly eager to put herself in the right.

"That's just it," Irene commented. "I tell her some day she will want people, and she will find it isn't easy to have them then.... Besides, it's her duty to take her part--everybody must."

Adelle made a bored gesture and filched a cigarette from Archie's case.