Clark's Field Part 18

"Go on, you two, and have a good time," she said amiably.

And presently Archie departed with Irene, driving her back to Bellevue in his own car. As Adelle watched them depart from the veranda, very companionably, in close conversation, she smiled, perhaps because she knew that they were still talking about her and her social delinquency, perhaps because it amused her to think how thoroughly Irene had revised her opinion of the "red-headed bounder." In the still twilight her quiet mind speculated upon many things--the friendship between Archie and Irene, the obsession most people seemed to have to get together in one way or another, Irene's creed of "taking your place in the world,"--possibly even the purpose and meaning of life in general, although Adelle would scarcely recognize her meditations under those terms.... In the end she went up softly to her baby's room and spent a long time in examining minutely the child's features. Now that she had discovered all the delights of maternity she wondered at herself for having been so indifferent to this great power latent in her of creating life, and determined to have other children as soon as possible. As a matter of course she thought of Archie as their father, but it was only in that way that she thought of him at all, if she did happen to think of him. A husband was the necessary means of fulfilling her new desire to have her own young.

x.x.xIII

That summer while the new house was going up they went back to Europe for a few months, as it was too hot on the ranch and they had nothing better to do. They also meant to buy furniture, rugs, pictures, and other material for the new home which they expected would be their permanent abiding-place....

It would be a waste of time to chronicle in minute detail this period of Adelle's marriage. As the reader must suspect by this time, nothing of spiritual significance was to come to Adelle through Archie nor to Archie through Adelle. They did continue for a number of years to be man and wife, although they frequently had bitter quarrels and felt rather than clearly recognized that their union had been a mistake, which neither one seemed able to rectify nor make the best of. It was not so much principle that prolonged their tie, nor design on Archie's part to keep possession of the wealth his wife had brought him, as the fact of the child--and Adelle's hope, which was never realized, of having other children.

One of their more serious quarrels was occasioned by Adelle's discovery at this time of Archie's unfortunate speculations. She had already yielded to his constant demands for money for the ranch and broken her arrangement with the Washington Trust Company, converting part of their excellent investments into cash, which she removed to San Francisco, where it could be got at more easily. Archie had had charge of this uninvested portion of the estate; it gave him something to do and to talk about with men. Until her illness, to be sure, Adelle had kept run of what was being done with her money, and opposed any considerable further changes in the investments of the estate, which were of the sort that a good trust company would make, and which had very greatly appreciated in value during these last years of national prosperity. But during her illness and afterwards when she was absorbed in the child, Archie had taken a freer hand and had changed some of the investments unknown to his wife. He had put the money into local enterprises, of which the men he met told him, but about which he could know very little. There were new water-power companies up in the mountains, and there was especially the Seaboard Railroad and Development Company--a daring scheme for opening up a tract of land along the northern coast of California. Into this last venture Archie had put much more of Adelle's money than he liked to remember. It was a pet project of the men he knew best in the Bellevue Club--the polo-playing set. The Honorable George Pointer was very active in Seaboard, representing an English syndicate that was supposed to be backing the enterprise with ample funds, and for this reason the Pointers had prolonged their California sojourn beyond the usual term. Seaboard, it was said, would prove eventually to be much more important than a short line of new railroad developing a desolate stretch of the Pacific: it was to be used as a club upon one of the older railroads. The best families of the State were heavily interested in it, the younger generation of bloods expecting by means of it to rival the railroading exploits of their fathers, whose fortunes, as everybody knows, were acquired in the golden seventies and eighties in much the same way. (And when the explosion in Seaboard came off, it left deep scars all through California society.)

All this Archie tried to make Adelle understand, when unexpectedly she gained a knowledge of his operations in Seaboard. She happened to open some letters from his brokers that came to Archie during his absence--letters that clamored for more ready money with which to pay for options that Archie had taken upon the common stock of the new company. Adelle was disturbed when she discovered that more than a million of her money had already gone into Seaboard. The couple had some sharp words about the matter, in which Adelle put the thing rather too bluntly to Archie,--

"What do you know about railroads? You aren't a business man--you never earned a dollar in business in your life!"

Adelle was probably remembering how she had given Archie the only order he had ever received for his painting. Archie naturally resented her allusion to his penniless and dependent state. He knew, he a.s.serted, quite as much as other men, whom he instanced, all of whom managed their wives' money affairs without being scolded for what they did.

But why, Adelle urged more softly, did he have to speculate--try to make more money than they already had? And Archie's somewhat incoherent reply was much the same as Irene Pointer's reasons for going into the society of one's fellows. To try to make more money when one already had the use of a great deal was an honorable and sensible ambition--every one would tell her so. All moneyed men who were worth their salt were always alive to opportunities of enlarging their possessions. Did she want her husband to sit around with folded hands and do nothing in the world?

Archie waxed righteous and right-minded, which is the easiest way to eloquence.

Adelle was silent, though not convinced by his reasoning any more than she had been by Irene's about "taking her part." Both seemed to make life needlessly dangerous and complicated, under the disguise of duty.

But she could not endure sullenness and bad temper in Archie. Having taken the sort of husband she had, she must make the best of life with him, even if he hazarded her fortune in doubtful enterprises. She remembered with comfort that there was a great deal of money, and ultimately would be even more when Clark's Field was finally liquidated.

Archie could hardly go so wrong in investments as to make away with all of it. So she agreed to his selling another block of General Electric or Bell Telephone and taking up his options, and having thus made up their difference, they drifted on their way.

They motored across the continent to the remote fastness where the Countess Zornec was housed upon her husband's estate and spent some weeks with the couple. It was easy, even for Adelle's un.o.bservant eyes, to detect signs of trouble in this new marriage. Sadie had a temper. All the girls at the Hall had known that. Indeed, she had the characteristics of her mother, who report said had been an Irish girl in one of the U. P. construction camps when old Paul found her--that was long before his fortune came, when he was a simple contractor for the railroad. Sadie had an unfortunate mouth, with coa.r.s.e teeth, and when she was crossed, this long mouth wrinkled into a snarl. The Count apparently had already found out how to cross her. Indeed, he did not disguise his contempt for his bride's origins, and sometimes decorum was badly strained at the dinner-table. Sadie was little and lithe and was something of the _gamine_--her "tricks," as the girls called her daring maneuvers, had always pleased men. But the Count did not like "tricks."

He wished more dignity in the wife of a Zornec and did not hesitate to tell Sadie so. Nor did he care to have her _gaminerie_ attract other men. In short, as Sadie confided to Adelle in a burst shortly after her arrival, the Count was a "regular brute." It seemed that Europeans made very good lovers, but dangerous husbands. Adelle was to be congratulated for having married an American, "who at least knew how to treat a woman," as if she were more than his horse or his servant. Adelle might once have been pleased by this admission of envy of her Archie; but now she had her own troubles. However, she did not confess them to any one.

She said good-naturedly that it was hard being married to most any man, until you got used to it. Sadie shook her small head and showed her large teeth.

"I'll show him," she said, "that he can't wipe his feet on me! An American woman won't stand what he's used to."

Adelle suspected dire things, physical violence even, and was silent.

Sadie continued,--"Some day he'll go too far, and then--" She closed her lips over the teeth in a hard fashion.

Adelle wondered what she would do with the Count in such an event. She could hardly divorce him, for the Pauls were Catholic as well as the Zornecs, of course. It was very inconvenient being a Catholic, she reflected, if you were to be married. And it seemed less easy to drop a husband in Europe than it was in America. There would be trouble about the children and all that.

Archie did not find the Count so bad, although he growled sometimes at his host's thinly veiled contempt for all Americans. Archie felt superior to the foreign n.o.bleman who had made a rich American marriage.

At least he had taken an heiress from his own people, and there was distinction in that. But the Count and Archie hunted and rode together, also drank deeply of the Hungarian wines and excellent French champagne that the castle contained. He was of the opinion that Sadie Paul had got "what she deserved."

"She needed a man to throw her around a bit--she was always too fresh,"

he told Adelle.

Archie believed in the strong hand with women. Adelle wondered whether Archie would ever attempt to use it upon her and what she would do under such circ.u.mstances. She was sure that she would resent it dreadfully.

That would seem too much for any woman to bear--to marry a poor man and support him quite handsomely in idleness and then be abused by him. But fortunately it had not got to that point in their marriage--nothing worse than sullenness and silence or angry words had happened thus far.

The Davises terminated their visit sooner than had been expected. The little boy's ill health was made the excuse, but the fact was that the tempestuous atmosphere of the Zornec household was far from pleasant to easy-going people. They engaged the couple for a return visit the next spring in California and motored off to Paris. The Zornecs had been a good object lesson to them, and for the rest of their trip they remained good friends, being almost lover-like in their respect for each other.

They seemed to feel the dangers ahead and restrained their moods.

Finally, gathering together their plunder they sailed home, and this time did not make any attempt to evade the custom-house ordeal. They paid n.o.bly for the privilege of being American citizens and did not demur. Adelle insisted upon that, remembering their former experience.

Archie was in such haste to get back to California where "Seaboard was acting queer" that he would have paid double for the privilege of entering his own country. They sped swiftly across the continent to their new home.

x.x.xIV

The house was far from finished by the end of September when they arrived. Their idea of what it should be had developed so fast under the stimulus of the young architect that they could not recognize the original conception in the imposing structure that awaited them. It was meant to be an adaptation of a Spanish villa, in two wings, with a long elevation upon the ravine connecting the two. There was also to be a complicated set of terraces and forecourt, formal gardens, pool, and orangery, which required an immense amount of masonry work that had scarce been begun. Nevertheless they attempted to install themselves in spite of the fact that the workmen were cluttered all over the place, and moved into the wing that was most nearly completed, husband and wife occupying a ground floor suite that was meant for bachelor guests, the child and its nurse being housed temporarily upstairs in the main house.

Adelle did not like this separation from the child, but there seemed nothing else to do for the present.

That autumn and winter they lived at close quarters with an army of workmen, who, having three masters,--Adelle, Archie, and the architect,--took advantage of the resulting confusion to move as slowly as possible. Adelle was not impatient as Archie had been with the ranch.

She liked directing the work, and discovered that she had her own ideas, which necessitated extensive changes. She spent almost all her time on the place, while Archie was often away for days at a time in the city, attending to business or amusing himself. Adelle scarcely noticed his absences. With her little boy and the house she had her hands quite full, and it was easier to do things when Archie was not there to interfere.

Theirs was a rare location, even in this lovely land, as all their neighbors said. Behind the house the land rose rapidly to a steep ridge of hill that divided the valley from the coast valleys, and thus protected them with its crown of tall eucalyptus trees from the raw sea winds. Their hillside had been thickly planted to cedars and eucalyptus, and the house looked out from its niche in the hill upon the fertile valley in which Bellevue lies, dotted with rich country estates and fruit orchards. Farther east shimmered the waters of the Bay, and on clear days the blue tops of the Santa Clara mountains melted into the clouds beyond the Bay. Immediately beneath the house was the canon, through which in the rainy season a stream of water gushed melodiously.

The steep sides of this canon were covered with a growth of aromatic plants and shrubs, the pale blues of the wild lilac touching it here and there. Like a bit of real California, "Highcourt," as they had called the place, was a perpetual bower of bloom and fragrance and sunshine, with a broad panorama of valley, sea, and mountain to gaze upon. Adelle loved to wander about her new possession, exploring its every corner, and when she was tired she could come back to the sunny forecourt and supervise the workmen, making petty decisions, summoning the foreman and the architect for consultation. She thus planned so many alterations which entailed delays that Archie grumbled that they would never get to rights and be able to have people to dinner. Adelle did not seem to care. She had not profited by Irene's advice, and made no effort to create a social atmosphere. Irene apparently gave her up as a hopeless case, and rarely came up the long driveway to Highcourt. The Pointers were still anch.o.r.ed in California, thanks to Seaboard and the darkening financial horizon, and Irene was improving her time by "living hard,"

which was her philosophy. Adelle knew that she and Archie saw much of each other, were very good friends, indeed, but the intimacy did not disturb her. She no longer had that pa.s.sionate jealousy of Archie's every movement which had rendered the first years of their marriage so irksome to Archie. It is doubtful if she would have resented his intimacy with any woman, but his "affair" with Irene Pointer merely amused her. Archie was no longer her most precious possession....

The winter after their return to California a new specter appeared--the last that Adelle expected to encounter in her life. Archie hinted that it would be well to go slow with their "improvements" at Highcourt. The times were getting bad, he said, and the market looked as if they would get worse rather than better. Every one was talking of a dark future, unsettled conditions industrially in the country, and "tightening money," whatever that might mean. Adelle could not see why it should affect her solid fortune based upon Clark's Field. To be sure, men talked business more than usually, the ill treatment that capital was receiving, the "social unrest," and such matters, which did not interest her. She thought that Archie had caught the trick of complaining about business and cursing social conditions in America from the men at his clubs, most of whom were obliged to earn their living by business. If the worst came, if America became impossible, as Nelson Carhart was always predicting, for "decent people to endure," they could go abroad until things straightened out again.

Then in midwinter came the Seaboard smash. As a matter of fact, that crazy enterprise had been tottering upon the brink of failure from its inception, and Archie was merely one of the stool pigeons on whom the shrewd promoters had unloaded their "underwriting" in approved style. He came back from San Francisco one night very glum and announced peremptorily that they must cut down their expenses and "quit all this fool building." He wanted to sell the ranch, but it could not be sold in these depressed times when rich men were h.o.a.rding their pennies like paupers. And there began at Highcourt a regime of retrenchment, bitterly fought by Adelle--the rich man's poverty where there is no actual want, but a series of petty curtailments and borrowings and sometimes a real shortness of cash, almost as squalid as the commoner sort of poverty.

Adelle could not understand the reason for this sudden change, and refused absolutely to stop all work upon Highcourt and go abroad again for the sake of economy. Why should she be made uncomfortable, just because Archie had been foolish about investments and felt hard up? So they had some words, and Archie went oftener than ever to San Francisco, frequently staying in the city for days at a time, which was bad for Adelle's fortune, had she but realized it. But, as has been shown, she had come now to the time when she felt relieved if Archie was not at home, glum and sulky, or nagging and fighting her will. With the place and her boy she had enough to fill her mind, and easily forgot all money troubles when Archie was not there to remind her of them. Somehow they raised the money for the workmen, and the building went on, more slowly.

x.x.xV

The workmen at Highcourt were of the nondescript labor army that America has recruited. For the rougher outside work there were a number of Italians, whom Adelle liked to entertain with her tourist Italian. There were also a few Greeks and Slavs who had got into this kind of work from other occupations. Inside the house the carpenters, painters, and plumbers were Swedes, Finns, Germans, one Englishman--no one who might justly be described as a native American. It was a typical instance of the way in which all the hard, rough labor of the country was being done, from building railroads to getting out the timber from the forests or making shoes and blankets in the factories. Hard physical labor was no longer performed to any extent by native Americans. Contractors everywhere recruited their polyglot companies in the great cities and shipped them out into the country where there was a demand. The men employed at Highcourt were thus obtained in San Francis...o...b.. the head contractor and merely boarded in the town of Bellevue. They lived "across the tracks" in the labor settlement, or in lath and tar-paper shacks about the hills, camping in their eternal campaign of day labor wherever the job happened to take them. Few were married, and all were given more or less to drink and riotous living when pay-day came; and of course they were constantly changing jobs. Adelle often heard the architect and the head contractor deplore the conditions of the labor market and the poor quality of work to be got out of the men at ruinous wages. She had also heard her neighbors, Carter Pound and Nelson Carhart, speak feelingly about the "foreign riff-raff" they had to employ on their estates. No workman had a conscience these days, they said. The women, too, talked of the rowdy character of the town "across the tracks," and the unsafety of the roads for women. Adelle did not think much about the matter, accepting it as a necessity, like gnats or drought or flood.

The Italians at least stuck to their jobs and were good-natured. Adelle always said "bon giorno" when she ran across them toiling up the slippery paths with their loads of stone or cement. She liked the way in which they showed their teeth and touched their hats politely to "la signora." They had a feeling for her as the mistress of the house, a latent sense of feudal loyalty to their employer that had quite disappeared among the other workmen. Apart from the Italians, the faces of the men upon the job were not familiar to her and were constantly changing, a strange one appearing almost every day. So Adelle felt less at home with them and rarely spoke to them unless she had an order to give that she could not easily transmit through the foreman.

One morning in early March--it was while the Seaboard trouble was acute--Adelle made her customary rounds of the place to see what was being done. She descended to the canon and stopped for some time where the stone masons were laying up the wall that was to support the terraces. It was a continuation of the ma.s.sive wall that rose sheer from the bottom of the little canon to the front of the house, nearly a hundred feet in all perpendicularly from the bottom course to the first floor of the house. (It was the decision to thrust the house out over the canon that had necessitated the building of this ma.s.sive wall and had delayed matters for months.) Adelle had heard Archie grumble about the useless expense caused by this great wall, but she liked it. Its sheer height and strength gave her a pleasant sensation of accomplishment and endurance. She liked to stare up at it as she liked to see great trees or ma.s.sive mountains or tall buildings. It was a symbol of something humanly important which supplied a secret craving in her soul.

So this morning she stood silently watching the masons at their slow work. One of the men she recognized as having been steadily on the job ever since her arrival at Highcourt. He was a youngish, slender man with sandy hair and blue eyes, and had the unmistakable air of being a native-born American. His sinewy hands were roughened by his work, and his face was almost a brick red, either from constant exposure to the sun or from drinking, probably both. He seemed morose, as if he were consciously ignoring the presence of his "boss," and worked steadily on, once even failing to answer Adelle when she spoke, apparently unconscious of her presence behind him. Adelle liked especially to watch the masons at work. Their clever management of the great stones they had to handle, the precise yet easy way in which they lined and chipped and trigged and mortared, fitting all the detail of their rough mosaic, gave her a pleasant sense of accomplishment such as she had felt in her own efforts with metal and stone. It stirred an instinct for manual labor which was not far down in her character, and actually made her own shapely hands twitch to be at the fascinating work. And the masons' work grew so surely, course upon course, and when done seemed so solid, so eternal!... This morning she lingered longer than usual watching the young mason wield his hammer and trowel. Archie had ruffled her badly with his talk about money losses, and now she felt soothed, freed from stupid perplexities. The mason's large hands, she noted, were supple and dexterous--he made no useless movements. Occasionally he turned his head to spit tobacco or drew off to look at his wall, but these were the only interruptions in his rhythmic motions. He paid no attention whatever to the woman behind him.

Adelle was prettily dressed in a costume of white linen with a cloud of chiffon tied about her small hat and a parasol that she had purchased this summer in Paris, which consisted of an enormous gold lace b.u.t.terfly. She was fuller in figure than before her child had come and in perfect health, though still pale. Fresh and well cared for, she was if not beautiful very attractive and dainty--all that money could make of her human person. Adelle was not given to prolonged reflection of any sort, but probably she could not help comparing her own dainty, cool, exquisitely clean person with this sweaty, sun-burned, coa.r.s.e laborer in his black cotton shirt, frayed khaki trousers, and shoes that the lime had burned all color from. She must have felt a complacent sense of physical superiority to the man who was working for her, and perhaps congratulated herself that her lot in the universe had come out such a comfortable one.

The mason rolled up a large stone and prepared to set it home in the bottom course. Adelle observed that he was about to crush one of the j.a.panese shrubs that she had been at such pains to have planted along the bank of the canon.

"Look out--don't hurt that bush!" she ordered peremptorily, as she was in the habit of speaking to servants.

The mason tranquilly deposited the rock full upon the shrub and proceeded to slap mortar around it and tap it home with his mallet.

"Didn't you hear me?" Adelle demanded, stepping forward and pointing at the offending rock with her heavily jeweled finger. "Take it out! I don't want the shrubs killed."