"Have you always been a stone mason?" she wanted to know.
"Pretty much ever since I could lift a stone. An old feller took me from mother to work for my keep when I was fourteen. He used to do some mason work, and he knew how to lay stone—none better! He learned his trade back East where he come from. He was one of the real forty-niners, and knew my grandfather's folks—they all came to California the same time.... I've been all over this country, up and down the Coast, to Alasky and over in Nevada, at Carson City; drilling for oil, too, south. Oh, I've seen things," he mused complacently, puffing at his pipe and scratching his bare arms that were as smooth and brown as fine bronze. "And I tell you there ain't much in it for the laboring-man, no matter what wages he gets, unless he's got extry luck, which most of 'em ain't. No wonder he goes after booze when he has the chance. What's there in it for him anyhow?"
Adelle, who had not been educated to philanthropy and social service, did not attempt to answer this difficult question.
"Not that I booze often," the mason explained with pride. "I reckon not to make a hog of myself, but when you've been off on a job for months, working all day long six days in the week in the heat and dust, you accumulate a thirst and a devilment in you that needs letting out."
He grinned at Adelle as if he felt that she might be sympathetic with his simple point of view and added,—
"I guess that's what made me sassy to you this morning!"
It was his sole apology. They both laughed, accepting it as such, and Adelle, to shift the topic, remarked,—
"You've got a nice place up here for your house."
The mason wrinkled his lips against the suggestion of sentiment.
"The shack's all right—kind of fur to tote supplies over the hill. But I can't stand those dagoes and their dirty ways. They have too many boarders where they live."
His American ancestry betrayed itself thus in his selection of an exclusive position for his bunk. The conversation seemed to have come to a natural conclusion, but Adelle did not start. At last she said what she had had in mind for some time,—
"You'd better stay here—come back to work Monday."
"I don't know as I want to," the mason replied, with a touch of his former truculency. "I can get all the work I want most anywheres."
"I'll speak to Mr. Ferguson about it," Adelle said. "Good-night!"
She could not do more, she thought, as she hurried along the path, although she was unreasonably anxious not to have the young stone mason leave, more anxious than she had been that morning to have him discharged for his insolence to her. When she was about to enter the wood, she turned and looked back at the shack. She hoped that he was not going to start on a spree. The mason, who had been sitting on the step where she had left him, rose as if he had come to a sudden resolution and marched into the shack. Adelle felt sure that he had made up his mind to go to San Francisco and get his "booze." She divined the craving in him for excitement, some relief from his toilsome hours under the hot sun. Possibly he had fought against this desire all the summer, restrained from breaking loose by a prudence which she had defeated by arbitrarily discharging him from his job and could not so easily restore with her change of whim. She did not feel any personal blame for his action, however, nor did she blame him for yielding to this gross temptation, as her more conservative neighbors might, although they sometimes yielded themselves both to drink and the stock market to stimulate their nerves. She merely hoped that he would think better of his purpose. For the man interested her, and before she dressed for dinner she sent a servant to the village with a note for the contractor, asking him to reëngage the discharged stone mason and be sure that he came back to work on the Monday.
Nevertheless, when Adelle looked for him the next Monday morning his was not among the faces of the men at work on the lofty retaining wall. She asked the contractor about him, but the boss merely shrugged his shoulders and said that somebody had seen the man getting on the late Saturday night train for the city.
"It's too bad," he added, to punish Adelle for interfering in his business. "He was a mighty good worker, and you don't get that kind often these days. I'd rather have him than any four of these dagoes."
He waved a disdainful arm at the squad of sons of sunny Italy who were toiling along the wall.
Adelle did not forget the young stone mason, but she could do nothing more for him even had she known just what to do. Then one morning when she made her usual rounds, she was happily surprised to find him back on the job, working as was his wont a little to one side of his foreign mates with his own helper. His face looked as red as ever, and his eyes were also suspiciously red, but this was the only evidence of his spree that she could see. As Adelle advanced to the place where he was working, the mason glanced up and replied gruffly to her greeting,—
"Morning, ma'am!"
She knew that he was not ashamed of himself, merely embarrassed. And she thought that if he had not felt kindly to her, he would not have come back to Highcourt to work after his spree—or was it, perhaps, his pleasant shack on the hill that lured him to his old job? Adelle did not tell him that she was glad to see him back, but passed on without stopping. Presently, however, when his helper had disappeared for a load of mortar she came back to the place and watched him. He worked as steadily and swiftly as ever, his lithe bronze arm lifting the stones accurately to their places, his wrist giving a practiced flip to each trowel full of mortar, which landed it on the right spot. Adelle wanted to talk to him again, to ask him questions, but did not know how to begin. Apparently he meant to let her make all the advances.
"That's fascinating work," she said at length.
He flipped a fresh dab of mortar to place and replied,—
"You might think so lookin' on—but no work is fascinatin' when you've had too much of it. I've laid enough stone to last me a lifetime."
"What else had you rather do?"
"Oh," he said, pausing a moment to wipe the sweat from his face with the back of his shirt-sleeve, "'Most anything at times! I tried mining once, but it's worse and uncertain. And lumbering—no pay. When I was a kid I wanted to be a doctor—that's before I left school. A nice sort of doctor I'd make, wouldn't I?"
He laughed at himself, but Adelle felt that in spite of his mirthless laugh his mind was chafing. He was dissatisfied with himself and the work he was doing and hungered for some larger demand upon his powers than laying so many feet of rock wall per day. She herself had so little of this sort of hunger in her own soul that it made the young mason all the more interesting to her.
"You might save up your money and try—" she began.
"To be a doctor?" he laughed back. "I saved up once—got most five hundred dollars and a feller came along and persuaded me to put it into some land. Well, I got the land still.... No, ma'am, there ain't much chance to change for the workingman when he's once fixed in his creek bed. He must just roll along with the rest the best he can. And I'm better off than most because I've got a paying trade. Lots of boys like me and my brothers don't learn ever to do anything, and just slave on all their lives at any job comes handy until they are all wore out. Lots and lots. Their folks can't keep 'em in school and they never know enough to more'n sign their names. All they are good for is rough work, same as the dago helper here. He thinks two dollars a day big money. I guess it is to him."
He spat disdainfully with all an American's contempt for the inferior.
"I expect where he come from it was a fortune, two dollars a day, eh?" He appealed to Adelle to appreciate the joke. "Think of that now! And he's got a woman and kids, and I bet has saved money, too. But he's only a dago," he explained tolerantly.
"Say," he resumed after a pause. "It costs more 'n two dollars to go to the opery in San Francisco."
"Did you go to the opera?" Adelle asked, recalling that Archie had said something about the current engagement of the New York Opera company. They had a box or something for the season—they always did. "What did they give?"
"Oh, it was some German piece. It took place in the woods with a lot of folks in armor, but the music was fine, and there was one place where they had a castle upon a big hill, like that where my shack is, way off towards the clouds, and a river down in front going by with women in it swimming," and he described with relish the last act of the "Rheingold-dammerung," which Adelle recognized because she had seen it many times in Europe and been horribly bored by it. The story of the opera seemed to interest the young mason especially. He retold it minutely for Adelle's benefit, offering amusing explanations of its mythological mysteries.
"But how did you happen to go to the opera?" Adelle asked.
"Well," he said in vague diffidence, "I was feeling pretty good by that time, and I seen the poster. I had the price—why shouldn't I go?" he demanded brusquely; and with another sardonic laugh the real motive came out,—"I wanted to see what you folks who go to the opery see—how you enjoy yourselves. Well, the opery ain't so bad—it ain't one bit bad," and he attempted to hum the Rheingold music. "I believe I'll go to the opery again when I'm on the loose and don't know any better way to blow my money. I like music," he added inconsequentially. "Mother used to sing sometimes."
This was as far as they got conversationally that day. Something interrupted Adelle in the midst of the musical discussion and she did not have a chance to return to the wall. But she had almost daily opportunity for talk with the young mason in the succeeding weeks, for after his return from his spree, he worked steadily on his job every day. He was one of the very few American-born workmen employed at Highcourt, and after their misunderstanding and subsequent agreement, Adelle felt better acquainted with him than with the others. He taught her to handle the trowel and to lay stone. After a few attempts, she managed quite well and found a curious pleasure in the manual labor of fitting stone to stone and properly bedding the whole in cement. She learned to select the right pieces with a rapid glance and to chip an obtrusive corner or face a rock with a few taps of the heavy hammer. It gave her a pleasure akin to her experiments in jewelry, and it must be said the results were better. She used to show her visitors proudly the bit of wall she had laid up herself under the young mason's direction and assert that, instead of bookbinding or jewelry or other ladylike occupations, she meant to set up stone walls about Highcourt for her recreation. The Bellevue people considered her whim a harmless bit of eccentricity in the young mistress of Highcourt, and she was the object of many a good-humored joke about her new method of "beating the unions." Little did any of these pleasure-loving rich folk suspect where Adelle's instinct for manual labor came from, how natural it was for her to work at coarse tasks with her large, shapely hands.
She needed all the distraction she could get, for these were not happy days for Adelle within her big new house. The inexplicable stringency of money grew worse, and there were constant quarrels between her and Archie over her "extravagance" when he was at home. Adelle could not understand why she should be obliged to curb her prodigal hand in making "improvements" at Highcourt. Did the trust officers not tell her that hers was a "large fortune," not far from five millions, enough surely to permit a woman freedom for every whim? If there was trouble about money, it must be Archie's fault: she wished she had never consented to take her property out of the safe keeping of the careful trust company. Her logic in these discussions, if irrefutable, was bitter, and Archie resented it, all the more because he knew that he had made a fool of himself with his wife's ample fortune, and allowed stronger men to bite him. He had not sufficient character to confess the fact and refrain altogether from further speculation. He tried instead to make good what had been lost in Seaboard and was always nagging Adelle to dispose of certain stocks and bonds that still remained from the investments of the prudent trust company. But Adelle was obstinate: she would not sell anything more. So Archie's large debit at his brokers went on rolling up, and there continued to be "words" at Highcourt whenever he was there, which was less often then he might have been.
Proverbially, money is the cause of the bitterest disputes in families. Abstractly it might seem remarkable that this should be so, but the peculiar nature of property of all sorts is that it becomes the inmost shrine of its possessor's being, and when the shrine is robbed or desecrated, the injured personality resents the outrage with bitterness. Many a man or woman will submit with Christian fortitude to insults upon character or positive unjust burdens, but will flame into rebellion at the least touch upon the purse. In the case of Archie and Adelle it was all the more remarkable because neither had been born to wealth so that property could become a part of the nature: they were both "the spoiled children of fortune" as the story-books say, having had their wealth thrust upon them unexpectedly, and so might take its loss lightly. Not at all! Adelle felt as much wronged as if she had been the last of an ancient line of dukes and duchesses or had accumulated the riches of Clark's Field by a lifetime of toil and self-denial. Was it nothers? Had the law not made it inalienably a part of her? Such is human nature in a capitalistic society.
Bellevue began to gossip about the couple at Highcourt, and divided as always into two camps with shades of opinion within each camp. The women were generally for Archie, even if he had been foolish with his wife's money and was conducting his "affair" with Irene Pointer rather recklessly. If his wife were less stupid and selfish about not going about with him in society, she could have "held him." The men liked Archie well enough, but knew that he was "no good."
It was some time after the young mason's return to his job before Adelle even learned his name. She had no curiosity about his name, indicating how little of the personal or sentimental there was in the interest she felt in him. He was just the "mason," and she always addressed him as "mason" until one day she heard the foreman call him—"Clark"; and then, when the foreman had passed on, she said with mild curiosity,—
"Is your name Clark?"
"Yes," the man replied with a touch of pride in the pure English name,—"Clark without the e. I'm Tom Clark. Father's name was Stanley Clark, same as grandfather's. Everybody about Sacramento used to know old Stan Clark!"
"My name was Clark, too, before I was married," Adelle remarked.
"Did you spell it with ane?" Tom Clark asked.
"No, the same as yours, without thee," she replied.
"We must be related somewheres," the mason laughed, with a sense of irony.
"Where did your family come from?"
"Somewhere East—Missouri, I think. But that was long ago—before the gold times. Grandfather Stan came out in forty-nine and settled on the Sacramento River, and that was where father was raised."
Adelle felt a slight increase in her interest in the mason from their having the same name, and she remarked idly,—
"So your family lived once in Missouri?"
"The Clarks came from Missouri—that's all I know. Mother's folks were Scotch-Irish, and that's where I get my red head, I guess!"
Like most Americans of his class he knew nothing more of his origin than the preceding two generations. The family was lost in the vague limbo of "back East somewheres." Yet he was proud that the Clarks had come from the East and were among the first Americans to enter the golden land of opportunity. And he apologized for the failure of his ancestors to attach to themselves a larger share of prosperity.
"If we could have hung on to grandfather's old ranch, we'd not one of us been working for other folks to-day. He had a hundred and sixty acres of as pretty a bit of land as there is in Sacramento Valley—part of it is now in the city limits, too. But father was sort of slack in some ways,—didn't realize what a big future California had,—so he sold off most of the ranch for almost nothing, and mother had to part with the rest."
He flipped a trowelful of mortar and whistled as if to express thus his sense of fate.
"Too bad," Adelle replied. "They say you ought never to sell any land. It's all likely to be more valuable some day."
"Sure!" the mason rejoined sourly. "That's why most of us work for a few of you!"
"What do you mean?" Adelle asked, puzzled by the economic theory implied in this remark.
But before Clark could explain, Adelle was summoned to the house. As she went up the slippery path she thought about what the mason had said, about his being a Clark, too. She felt herself on much closer terms of knowledge and sympathy with this workman of her own name than with the fashionable women who had come for luncheon to Highcourt.
Hitherto Adelle had met in the journey of life mainly coarse-minded persons—I do not mean by this, nasty or vulgar people, but simply men and women who were content to live on the surfaces and let others do for them what thinking they needed—people upon whom the experience of living could make little fine impression. In the rooming-house, with her aunt and uncle and the transient roomers, naturally there had been no refinement of any sort. Nor, in spite of its luxury and its boast of educating the daughters of "our best families," had the expensive boarding-school to which the trust company in their blindness condemned their ward added much to Adelle's spiritual opportunities. Pussy Comstock, for all her sophistication, was no better, and as for the "two Pols" and Archie Davis, the reader can judge what fineness of mind or soul was to be found in them. Even the officers of the Washington Trust Company, who were of indubitable respectability and prominence in their own community,—everything that bankers should be,—had neither mental nor spiritual elevation, and coarsely pigeonholed their ideas about life as they had done with Adelle. The thinking of the best spirits in Bellevue has been exemplified in the utterance upon labor that Adelle had taken from Major Pound and Nelson Carhart who are doubtless still enunciating the same trite remarks at the dinner-table and in their clubs with a profound conviction of thinking seriously upon important topics. All these diverse human elements, which thus far had been cast up in Adelle's path, were good people enough—some of them earnest and serious about living, but all without exception coarse-minded. All the wealth of Clark's Field had not yet given its owner one simple, clear-thinking human companion.
The young stone mason, Tom Clark, outwardly crude and coarse and with a knowledge of life limited by his personal estate, was nevertheless the first person Adelle had met who tried to do his own thinking about life. It was not very important thinking, perhaps, but it had for Adelle the attraction of freshness and sincerity. The mason stimulated the mistress of Highcourt intellectually and spiritually, which would have made the good ladies at luncheon with her that day laugh or do worse. Adelle felt that he could help her to understand many things that she was beginning to think about, that were stirring in her dumb soul and troubling her. And she knew that she could talk to him about them, as she could not talk to George Pointer nor Major Pound nor even Archie. In her simple way, when she discovered what she wanted, she went directly after it until she was satisfied. She meant to talk more with the young stone mason of the widespread race of Clark.
The next time Adelle made the ascent of the hill behind Highcourt she took her little boy with her, and after wandering about the eucalyptus wood with him in search of flowers sent him back to the house with his nurse and kept on over the hill to the shack where Clark lived. She examined the tar-paper structure more carefully, noticing that the mason had set out some vegetables beside the door and that a little vine was climbing up the paper façade of the temporary home. She knew that the mason was still at his work below, and so she ventured to peek into the shack. Everything within the one small room was clean and orderly. There was a rough bunk in one corner, which was made into a neat bed, and beneath this were arranged in pairs the man's extra shoes, one pair bleached by lime and another newer pair of modern cut for dress use. In one corner was a small camper's stove with a piece of drain-pipe for chimney; a board table, one or two boxes, and some automobile oil cans made up the furniture of the room. There was also a little lime-spotted canvas trunk that probably contained the mason's better clothes and his extra tools. On the table was a lamp and a few soiled magazines, with which Clark probably whiled away free hours when not disposed to descend to the town for active amusement.
For a woman in Adelle's position such a workingman's home has the interest of the unfamiliar. It is always incomprehensible to a woman nurtured to a high standard of comfort to realize a totally different and presumably lower standard of living. This may be seen when travelers peer with exclamations of surprise and pity or disgust into the stuffy homes of European peasants or the dark mud-floor rooms of Asiatics. The prejudices of race as well as of social class seem to come to the surface in this concrete experience of how another kind of human being sleeps, eats, and amuses himself. With Adelle this sensation of strangeness was not very keen, because her own acquaintance with the habits of the rich was less than ten full years old. Clark's one-room tar-paper shack did not seem so squalid to her as it might to Irene Pointer, though Adelle had never before had the curiosity to enter a humble dwelling. She looked about her, indeed, with a certain appreciation of its coziness and adequacy. All that a single man really needed for decency and modest comfort was to be found here, at least under the conditions of the sunny California clime, which Providence seems to have adapted for poverty. All the wealth of Clark's Field could have added little valuable luxury to this tar-paper shack on the ridge of high hills with a prospect of mountain, valley, and ocean before the front door. Of course, with the assistance of Clark's Field, its proprietor would have been sitting in the great room of the Pacific Coast Club, as Archie was at this moment, imbibing foreign wine and deploring the "agitation among the people," which was making a very bad stock market.
After having taken in every item in the single room carefully, Adelle went on her way full of thought. Her first impression was that the mason must be a superior sort of workman because he kept his home and his few possessions neatly and orderly. She did not know that there are many naturally clean persons in the laboring-classes. However, she made no fetish of tubbing herself once a day, and thought on to more important considerations. Evidently the young man was attached to his beautiful solitary abode—he had planted and watered a vine for the door. She resolved to tell him that he could help himself to the fruit and flowers in Highcourt. If he cared to set out a small flower garden, he could get seeds and slips from her own formal garden. But there was the question of water: it would not be possible for him to start a garden on this hilltop without water. She supposed that he must lug what water he used from Highcourt. Probably that was the use he put those large tin cans to....
Adelle's mind was naturally slow in its operations. Ideas and impressions seemed to lie in it for months like seed in a dry and cold ground without any sign of fruitful germination. But they were not always dead! Sometimes, after days or weeks or even months of apparent extinction, they came to life and bore fruit,—usually a meager fruit. To-day, for an inexplicable reason, she began to think again of the mason's family name. He was a Clark without the e, and his people came from "back East." It might seem strange that this fact had not at once roused a train of ideas in Adelle's mind when she first learned of it. But the lost heir to Clark's Field had never been to her of that vital importance he had been to her mother and uncle. It must be remembered that her aunt was the only one of her family who had been at all near to her, and her aunt had small faith in the Clark tradition and was not of a reminiscent turn of mind. Of course, the trust officers had explained carefully to Adelle's aunt in her hearing all about the difficulties with the title, and at various times after her aunt's death had alluded to this matter in their brief communications with her. But they had not gone into the specific measures they had taken to look for the lost heirs of old Edward Clark, nor the means by which the title at last had been "quieted," to use the expressive legal term. And finally all such business details passed through Adelle's mind like a stream of water through a pipe, leaving little sediment. She had not thought about the Clarks or Clark's Field for some years....
To-day she began wondering whether by chance this young mason of the name of Clark could be related to any of her mother's people. She must find out more about his family history. So she prolonged her walk among the hills until the declining sun told her that the mason would have returned to his home. Then she came back along the path by the shack. Clark was inside, whistling loudly, and evidently preparing his evening meal, for a thin stream of bluish smoke emerged into the still air from the mouth of the drain-pipe. Adelle called,—
"Mr. Clark!"
The mason came to the open door. He was bareheaded and barearmed, clothed merely in khaki trousers and red flannel undershirt, but he was glisteningly clean and shaved. In one hand he carried his frying-pan into which he had just put some junks of beef. He seemed surprised on seeing the lady of Highcourt at his door and scowled slightly in the sunlight.
"I was going by," she explained without any embarrassment, "and wanted to ask you about something."
The mason removed his pipe from his teeth and stood at attention.
"Do you know where your family came from before they lived in Missouri?" she asked. "I mean the Clarks, your grandfather's people."
The mason looked surprised to find this was the important question she had come all the way to his shack to ask.
"No, I don't know, Mrs. Davis."
"Did you ever hear any one of them speak of Alton?"
He slowly shook his head.
"Never heard the name of the place before that I know of."
"Oh," Adelle observed in a disappointed tone, "I thought you might know where they came from before the Missouri time."
The mason gave a short, harsh laugh and stuck his pipe back between his teeth.
"I don't see as it makes any odds where they came from," he remarked. "I guess we ain't got any fancy family tree to boast of."
"Well," Adelle observed; and then, recollecting her other intention, she said,—
"Don't you want some flowers or fruit or stuff from the garden? You can't raise much up here."
"No, thanks; I don't want nothin'—much obliged to you."
In spite of the conventional terms there was a surly burr to his tone that belied the courtesy. Adelle was surprised at the hardness of his mood. She felt quite friendly, almost intimate with him, after all their talks, and now he was as gruff as he had been the first day. She looked at his face for an explanation. He was scowling slightly, and in the reddish light of the setting sun his face seemed to burn as with fever, and his blue eyes glinted dangerously. She could not make out what was going on in the man's mind. Probably he did not himself rightly know. The discovery that he bore the same name as his employer had once might have set off some unpleasant train of subconscious reflection, accentuating the bitter sense of class distinction and the unreason of it, which he was only too prone to entertain. He did not want any "kindness" from rich people. He worked for them because he must, but he worked in a spirit of armed neutrality at the best, like so many of his kind, and he spat mentally upon Carnegie libraries and all other evidences of the philanthropic spirit in those relieved from the toil of day labor.
Adelle could not follow this, but she knew that the man was close to an explosion point of some sort, as he had been that other time when she had encountered him before his shack. Then he had suddenly jumped up from the doorstep, the lust for action in his movement, and had disappeared for the better part of a week. She felt that he might be on the verge of another such outbreak and tried clumsily to prevent it if possible. She hesitated, thinking what to say, while the mason glared at her as if he were controlling himself with an effort.
"I thought you might like something," she said at last. "There's plenty, and you are welcome to what you want."
"I don't want nothin'"; and he added meaningly,—"least of all flowers and fruits."
"There are a lot of magazines at the house—you might call for them or books."
"I don't do much reading."
He checked her every move. There was nothing more to say, and so Adelle turned slowly and went on her way to her home, thinking rather sadly that the young mason would surely go to "'Frisco" to-night and might never come back. Meanwhile, the mason had entered his shack and closed the door, as if he wished to keep out intruders. He was not whistling....
That evening Archie arrived by motor from the city, bringing with him some friends, and others came up to dinner from Bellevue, so that they had a party of eight or ten. Dinner was late, and as the night was pleasant with starlight and a soft breeze, coffee was served on the unfinished terrace. As Adelle was pointing out to one of the guests the line of proposed wall, she saw a man's figure coming down the path from the eucalyptus grove. She watched it draw near to the terrace, then stop. She was sure that it was the mason's figure. He must be on his way to town to take the evening train for the city, which passed Bellevue at nine forty-five. She utterly forgot what she was saying, what was being said to her, in her intense effort to discover in the darkness what the figure just above the terrace was doing. She could not tell whether he had gone back to skirt the house and go on by a more roundabout way or was waiting for an opportunity to descend unobserved. Some time afterwards she heard the rolling of a stone on the hill-path and knew that he must have retraced his steps to the grove. She thought that there was no path down that way and was unreasonably glad for—she did not know what. Archie had observed her distraction and remarked,—
"Must be one of the workmen sneaking about up there. They are all over the place, thick as flies. There's one has built himself a shack on the other side of the hill and worn a path down here across the terrace—cheeky rascal. I'll tell Ferguson to smoke him out!"
Adelle said nothing, but she was sure that Ferguson would never execute that order.
The next morning Adelle went straight to the terrace wall from her room where she had her coffee. All she had to do was to step out of the French window and around the corner of the house, for she had not yet moved to the rooms designed for her in the other wing. This morning she wished to know surely whether the mason had gone off on his spree or had really turned back as she thought he had the night before. And there he was on the job, sure enough! Upon her approach, he looked up and rumpled his hat over his head, which was his shamefaced method of saluting a lady. He still looked somewhat stormy, but there were no traces of debauch in his eyes, and he was tossing in his mortar with a fine swing, and handling the heavy stones as if they were loaves of bread.
"Good-morning, Mr. Clark," was all that Adelle said, and started to go on.
But the mason called out,—
"Say!" and throwing down his trowel he hunted for something in his hip pocket. "You was asking me about that town in the East—Alton. Well, I found this after you had gone."
He produced a tattered package of what seemed to be old letters, yellowed with age and torn at the corners, and handed them up to Adelle.
"They were grandfather's and mother always kep' 'em; I don't know why. When she died one of my sisters giv' em to me. I been totin' 'em 'round in my trunk ever since. They're kind of dirty and spotted," he apologized for their condition. "But they were pretty old, I guess, when I got 'em, and they ain't had much care since.... Last night after you were up there I got 'em out of the trunk and tried to read 'em. There's one there from Alton—it's got the postmark on the outside."
Clark pointed with his mortar-coated thumb to the faint circle of the stamp in the corner. Adelle took the letter from him with a sense of faintness that she could not explain. She had been right in her conjecture: that seemed to her a very great point.
"I was bringin' 'em up to the house last night," the mason explained, "but seen you had company, so kep' 'em until to-day."
So he had not thought of going to San Francisco on a spree! Adelle's woman conceit might have been sadly dashed.
"May I read them?" she asked, looking curiously at the package of faded letters.
"Sure! Read 'em over. That's what I brought 'em to you for," the mason said heartily. "I couldn't make much out of the old writing myself. I ain't no scholar, you know, and the ink is pretty thin in spots. But I seed the Alton postmark and thought you would be interested."
"I'll look them over," Adelle said slowly, "and let you know what I find in them."
She carried the letters with her back to her rooms, but she did not open them at once. She had no desire to do so, now that she had them. It was not until the afternoon, while she was lounging in her room,—Archie having gone to play polo at the club,—that she finally took up the stained packet of old letters, and opened them. They were addressed variously to "E. S. Clark," or "Edward S. Clark," and one to "E. Stanley Clark," but that was a later one than the others and had to do with some land business in California. The mason had spoken of his grandfather as "Stanley Clark"—"old Stan Clark," he called him. Evidently the elder Clark had called himself by his middle name after settling in California, but before that he had been known as "Edward" or "Edward S. Clark."
Almost at random Adelle opened a letter—the one that the mason had pointed out to her as having the Alton postmark. It was written in a scrawly, heavy hand, which was almost illegibly faint and yellow after the lapse of more than fifty years, and must have been written by one little accustomed to the pen, for there was much hard spelling as well as irregular chirography. Adelle looked for the signature. It was in the lower inside corner, and the name, in the effort to economize space, was almost unreadable. It might be "Sam." After considerable puzzlement, she felt sure that it was "Sam." The S had an indubitable corkscrew effect, and the straight splotches must have been anm, and there was the faint trace of thea. But who was "Sam"?
It was a few moments before Adelle realized that the "Sam" at the bottom of the old letter was an abbreviation for her grandfather's name. It was old Samuel Clark's signature. When she had grasped this fact, she turned back to look at the date. It was 1847—July 19. She looked at the envelope. It was addressed to "Mr. Edward S. Clark," at "Mr. Knowlton's, 8 Dearborn St., Chicago." At last Adelle got to the letter itself and spent much time trying to make out the parts she could read. It was all about family matters—the letter of one brother to another. There were references to some family trouble, and "Sam" seemed to be defending himself from a charge of unfair dealing with his brother, and protested his good faith many times. Adelle was not greatly interested in the contents of the letter, with its reference to a musty family row. She knew too little of the Clark history to appreciate the significance of Sam's verbose self-defense.
What she did realize overwhelmingly was the fact that the young mason was related to her—was her second cousin, the grandson of the elder brother Clark, while she was the granddaughter, through her mother, of the younger brother. And that was all she realized for the present. It was a large enough fact. She was not a familyless woman as she had always supposed, and this young workman on her estate was her cousin. He had the same blood that she had in part, was of the same race, and as he inherited through his father from the elder brother, while she inherited through the mother from the younger brother, he would be considered in certain social systems to be her family superior! The Head of the Family! Adelle had no great class pride, as must have been perceived, but even to her it was something of a shock to discover that she was cousin to the stone mason employed in building her wall—an uneducated young man who chewed tobacco, used poor grammar, and went on sprees, vulgar sprees, for Archie had taught her that money makes a great difference in the way men get drunk. And she remembered that Clark had said, in his bitter indictment of the laboring-man's lot, that one of his sisters was not all that she should be! Naturally it gave her much to think about. Not the question whether she should tell him what she had discovered from his grandfather's letters, but the fact itself of her relationship with the young mason. That was stunning at first, even to Adelle!
But as she lay upon her pretty bed, which had been painted for her in Paris with a flock of unblushing Amours, and stared at the painted ceiling, her good sense rapidly came back to her. In her character it was the substitute for humor. After all, there was nothing so extraordinary in the fact. There must be many similar cases of poor relations among all the people she knew, even with the Paysons and the Carharts, who were the primates of Bellevue society. When families had been living for a long time on this earth, there must grow up such inequalities of fortune between the different branches, even among the different members of the same generation. If people were only aware of all their relations, there would doubtless be many surprises in life. What would Archie say to it? In the first place, she probably would not tell him, and he had no good ground for criticism anyway. The Davises were not highly distinguished folk: no doubt Archie could find in any telephone directory plenty of distant cousins of humble station. As for Tom Clark himself, she did not feel that he would be disagreeable after he had learned his relationship to his employer. He might whistle and laugh and get off one of those ironical and contemptuous utterances about society of which he seemed fond.
After thinking it all over, Adelle rose and dressed herself; then, taking the package of letters, of which she had only casually examined the others, went up the path to the tar-paper shack. It was a hot afternoon, and the mason had only just come back from his task. He had not yet washed, and was sitting before his door, all red and sweaty, smoking his pipe and scratching his arms in a sensuous relaxation of muscles after the day's work. He looked altogether the workman. He did not rise at her approach, but removing his pipe, remarked, as if he had been expecting her visit,—
"Well, did you read the stuff?"
"Yes," Adelle replied, holding out the package; "I read some of them."
"That's more'n I could do," he said, receiving the letters and staring at them as if they had been Egyptian hieroglyphs. "What could you make out of 'em?"
"One thing!" Adelle exclaimed. "Your grandfather and my grandfather must have been own brothers."
"You don't say!" Tom Clark exclaimed, throwing back his head and giving vent to that robust, ironical laugh that Adelle had expected. "So old Stan Clark was your great-uncle?"
Adelle nodded.
"Just think of that now!" and the mason went off into another peal of laughter which made Adelle uncomfortable. He did not take seriously his relationship with the mistress of Highcourt. "I bet old grandfather Stan would have been mighty surprised if he could see his niece and her swell house!"
Suddenly the mason rose, and, fetching out a box from his house, said with an elaborate flourish of ironical courtesy,—
"Sit down, cousin, and we'll talk it over."
Adelle accepted the seat meekly.
"So father's folks didn't really come from Missouri—but from way back East?" he inquired with appreciation of the added aristocracy that this gave the family.
"Surely they came from Alton," Adelle replied. "That was where the Clarks had always lived—ever since before the Revolution."
"As long as that! Think of it—I'll be damned—beggin' your pardon, cousin!" the mason exclaimed.
Except for this familiar use of the term of relationship Tom Clark's attitude was respectful enough, more humorous than anything else, as if the news Adelle had given him merely completed his ironic philosophy of life. He mused,—
"So I had to get into a fight in 'Frisco and come here to work on this job to find out my family connections."
He seemed impressed with the devious paths of Providence.
"And I had to go all the way from Alton to Paris to find a Californian husband, who brought me out here!" laughed Adelle, who was beginning to comprehend the mason's humor and the situation.
Neither thought of any money concern in the new-found relationship. They were still sitting before the shack on boxes in the red light of the descending sun and Clark was explaining to "cousin" his theory of the unimportance of family ties, when Archie came up the path. Adelle perceived him first, and hastily getting up went to meet him. She did not want him to hear the news, at least not until she had had time to manage his susceptibilities, for she knew that his first reaction would be to get rid of her "cousin" as soon as possible, and he would nag her until the mason had been discharged. Archie, who had been drinking enough since his game to give free rein to his poor temper, immediately began the attack within hearing of the stone mason.
"So this is where you are! I've been looking for you all over the place. Thought you were too tired to go to the polo," he said accusingly.
"I only just came up the hill for a little walk," Adelle explained.
"I've been back an hour myself, and they said you'd gone out before," her husband retorted suspiciously.
"Perhaps it was earlier," Adelle replied indifferently.
She cared less than she had once for Archie's outbursts of temper, and at present her mind was occupied with other matters than calming him. Archie looked at her with a peculiar stare in which ugliness and something more evil were mixed.
"Been having such an interesting conversation that you didn't know how fast time was going?" he sneered.
"Yes," Adelle replied literally.
"Talkin' with that fellow?" Archie demanded, hitching a shoulder in the direction of the stone mason, who was still sitting not far off watching the couple.
"Yes, I had something important to say to him," Adelle replied, and started away.
But Archie did not stir.
"I have something important to say to him, too," he growled, walking towards the mason.
"Archie!" Adelle called.
But Archie paid no attention. He strode furiously up to the shack, and even before he reached it he called out,—
"Here, you there! What business have you got building your dirty little roost on my land without permission?"
The mason merely smiled at the angry man in reply. Adelle, who had run up to her husband, tried to pull him back, with a hand on his arm.
"It isn't our land," she said disgustedly. Her foolish husband did not even know the boundaries of their own property, which stopped at the edge of the eucalyptus grove on the top of the hill.
"Well, I won't have him tracking up the place with his paths," Archie said weakly. "He was prowling around the house last night. I saw him."
The mason again smiled at him, as if he scorned to answer back a man who was so evidently "in his booze," as he would put it, and trying to pick a quarrel.
"Anyway you are discharged," he said, in a lordly attempt to get back his dignity. "See Mr. Ferguson in the morning and get your money and—get out!"
"I will not," the mason replied imperturbably.
"What do you say?"
Clark grinned at Adelle and replied with an intentional drawl,—
"I been discharged once on this job and taken back, and this time I mean to stick until the job's done."
"No, you won't!" Archie shouted.
"Oh, so I won't?... Well, I ain't taking my orders from you. She's the boss on the ranch, I guess."
He indicated Adelle with a nod. This came altogether too near the truth to be pleasant for Archie.
"You damned—"
With his heavy polo whip raised he sprang at the mason. Adelle dragged at his arm, and he turned to shake her off, raising his free hand threateningly.
"Take care!" the mason called out. "Don't hit a woman!"
As if in defiance, as if to show that he could hit at least this woman who belonged to him by law, even though her possessions might not belong to him entirely, Archie's left hand came down upon Adelle's arm with sufficient force to be called a blow. Adelle dropped her grip of her husband's arm with a slight cry of fright and shame rather than of pain. Archie did not have to step forward to get at the mason, for with one bound Clark sprang from his seat on the box and dealt Archie such a smashing blow in the middle of the face that he fell crumpled in a heap on the ground between Adelle and the mason. He lay there gasping and groaning for a few moments—long enough for Adelle to realize completely how she loathed him. Before this she had known that she was not happy in her marriage, that Archie was far from the lover she had dreamed of, that he was lacking in certain common virtues very necessary in any society. Indeed, he had treated her roughly before now, in accesses of alcoholic irritation, but always there had been in her mind a lingering affection for the boy she had once loved and spoiled—enough to make her pardon and forget. But now she saw him beneath the skin with the deadly clearness of vision that precludes all forgiveness.
At last Archie crawled giddily to his feet, his nose running with blood which spattered over his rumpled silk shirt. He looked at his opponent uncertainly, as if he would like to try conclusions again, but a glance at the mason's large hard hands and stocky frame was enough. Turning, he said,—"I'll fix you for this," and started for Highcourt.
"Oh, go to hell!" the mason called after him, resuming his seat on the soap-box and relighting his pipe.
Adelle, before she followed her husband, said to her new-found cousin in a tone clear enough to reach Archie's ears,—
"Of course you are not discharged. I am very sorry for this."
"That's all right," the mason replied. "I don't worry about him."
Archie kept on as if he had not heard, and Adelle followed back to Highcourt at sufficient distance not to be forced to speak to him. They did not meet or speak that night, which had happened before more than once. Adelle lay awake far into the night, thinking many surprisingly new thoughts—about the cousin in his shack, the way in which he had taken her news of their relationship, and also the calm manner in which he had stood her husband's outrageous behavior. She as nearly admired the cold humor with which he received her husband's abuse until Archie had struck her as she did anything she knew in the way of conduct. The mason cousin might use bad grammar and chew tobacco and go on sprees occasionally, but as between him and her husband he was the gentleman of the two—better still, the man of the two. His patience under insult and his treating Archie like a child when he saw that the "gentleman" had been drinking were truly admirable!
As for Archie it was not a new experience for her latterly to lie awake cogitating her marriage in unhappy sleeplessness. It had seemed to her on such occasions that all the old banker's predictions about the results of her marrying Archie had come true like a curse, and sooner than might have been thought. But never before had she seen so clearly how impossible Archie was, never before felt herself without one atom of regard for him—not even desire. And yet her mind was too little fertile in expedients to suggest to her any way out of her trouble. She was of those many women who will not take a step even against the most brutal of husbands until driven into it. So she quickly dismissed him from her thoughts.
It was then that for the first time, in connection with her new cousin, she thought of the money—the buried treasure of Clark's Field, which had been discovered for her benefit and which had been of such poor use to her apparently. Archie, she had said to herself, was less of a man than this rough stone mason, Tom Clark. He was, after all, nothing more than a very ordinary American citizen, with the prestige and power of her wealth. If that other man had happened to have the money—and it was here that light broke over her. It did belong to him, at least a large part of it! She recalled now the substance of those legal lectures she had received at different times from the officers of the trust company. The trouble about Clark's Field all these years had been the disappearance of an heir, the elder brother of her grandfather, and the lack of absolute proof that he had left no heirs behind him when he died, to claim his undivided half interest in the field. But he had left heirs, a whole family of them, it seemed! And to them, of course, belonged at least a half of the property quite as much as it did to her!
When she had arrived at this illumination she was in a great state of excitement. She almost waked Archie from his alcoholic slumbers in the neighboring room to tell him that he was not married to a rich woman—at least to one as rich as he thought by a half. And the workman whom he had insulted and discharged in his fury was really his superior, in money as well as character, and might perhaps drive him out of Highcourt, instead! But she decided to put off this ironical blow until a more opportune time, when Archie was nagging her for money. He could be too disagreeable in his present state.
Then she thought of breaking the astounding news to the stone mason himself. She must do that the first thing in the morning. But presently doubts began to rise in her mind. Of course, knowing nothing of law, she resolved the problem by the very simple rules of thumb she was capable of. These California Clarks, of whom the mason was one, undoubtedly owned a half of Clark's Field,—in other words, of her estate,—for Clark's Field had been sold for the most part and no longer belonged to her. If so there would be only one half left for her and her child, and she had good reason to fear that her half had considerably shrunken by now, thanks to Archie's investments and their way of living, if it had not wholly disappeared! What then? She would be poor, as poor as Tom Clark was now. And it would all go to him—the thought made her smile. But no, he had brothers and sisters, probably uncles and aunts and cousins. He would have to share his half with them. And one of his sisters was the sort of woman she had been taught to despise and abhor. It was all a horrible tangle, which she felt herself incapable to see through at once. She was not sure that she could tell Archie or even her new cousin, anyway not until she had thought it out more clearly and knew the case in all its bearings.
The truth was, perhaps, that Adelle's natural fund of egotism, which was not small, had begun to work as soon as she realized that she might lose her magic lamp altogether. It may be doubted that, if certain events had not happened, Adelle ever would have risen to the point where she could have told any one the truth as she was now convinced she knew it. For the present she would put it off,—a few days. It was so much easier to say nothing at all: the mason did not seem to suspect the truth. She could let things go on as fate had shaped them thus far.
And there was her little boy, too, who was very precious to her. She would be disinheriting him, which she had no right to do. It was all horribly mixed up! Adelle did not get much sleep that night.
Although she had made up her mind not to tell her secret to any one at present, Adelle could not refrain from looking up the stone mason the first thing in the morning. She seemed to be attracted to him as the moth is to the proverbial flame, all the more after her new understanding of the situation between them. And she was also apprehensive of what Archie might be up to. If he were violent, and the two men had another quarrel, she might be forced to declare the truth, which she didn't want to do this morning.
Therefore, she felt relieved to find that Tom Clark was not at his post on the wall. She asked no questions of Mr. Ferguson. And morning after morning she was both disappointed and relieved when she went to the wall and found his place still empty. The foreman had not put other masons to work there, but continued the work at a different point. She asked him no questions. Perhaps her cousin had left voluntarily in disgust with Highcourt. She even went up the hill one morning and found his little shack closed. Peeking through the windows she perceived his trunk and kitty-bag in their place, with his old shoes and clothes beside them. So he intended to come back! Again she was both pleased and frightened. The return would mean complications. She must make up her mind definitely whether she should tell him the secret. She felt a strong impulse to do so and take the consequences. And there was Archie, with whom she had not exchanged a dozen words since the scene on the hill. It was quite the longest quarrel that they had ever had and wearing to them both. So it went for nearly a week.
And then one morning, as she was passing heedlessly along the terrace, she heard a man's voice which was familiar, and peering over the great wall, saw Tom Clark below at his accustomed post. He caught sight of the mistress of Highcourt, and bobbed his head shamefacedly. After a time she came to him through the cañon, but he pretended not to see her. She knew that he was ashamed of himself for something he had done—she wondered what—probably drinking. He looked a trifle paler than usual and very red-eyed. He acted like a puppy that knows perfectly well it has been up to mischief and deserves a licking, wishes, indeed, that its master would go to it and get it over soon so that they could come back to the old normal friendship. Adelle herself felt cold with excitement of all sorts, and could hardly control her voice enough to say unconcernedly,—
"Haven't seen you, Mr. Clark, for some time."
"No!" (Head down.) "Just thought I'd take a little vacation—and rest up."
"Did you go up to San Francisco?"
"Yep!"
"Did you see another opera?"
"There weren't no opera this trip," the mason replied, spitting out his quid. "I—seed—other things."
"Is that so—what?"
The mason did not reply, but there was a reckless gleam in his blue eyes. He worked vigorously, then volunteered evasively,—
"I was just celebratin' around."
"Celebrating what?"
"Things in general—what you was tellin' me about our bein' cousins," he said, with a touch of his usual humor.
"Oh!" Adelle replied, discomposed. He had been thinking about it, then.
"Thought it deserved some celebratin'," Clark added.
Adelle's heart beat a little faster. If he only knew the whole truth!—then there would be something to celebrate, indeed!
"The strike's off," the mason remarked soon, as if he were anxious to get away from his own misdeeds.
"Is it?"
"Yep! They made a compromise—that's what they call it when the fellers on top get together and deal it out so the men lose."
"I suppose, then, you will be going back to the city when you finish the work here?" Adelle asked.
"Maybe—I dunno—got some money comin' to me"—Adelle's guilty heart stood quite still. "I ain't drawed a cent on this job so far," he added to her relief. "Perhaps I'll blow in what's coming to me in goin' East to see where my folks used to live in Alton."
He spoke half in jest, but Adelle replied faintly,—
"That might be a good idea."
"I heard from one of my sisters while I was gone. She's in Philadelphy—married to a feller there that works in the carpet mills. I ain't seen her for more 'n ten years—might stop in Philadelphy, too."
Adelle was curious to know whether this was the sister who "had gone wrong," but did not know how to phrase the question. After a time, she felt the temptation to tell the mason what she knew becoming intolerable. Her mind hovered about her secret as a bird hovers over a great void; she was irresistibly drawn to the fatal plunge. She moved off while she yet felt the power to do so without speaking. Her cousin looked up in some surprise.
"You goin'?" he asked.
"Let me know before you start East," she called back to him. "Perhaps I could do something to help you on your trip."
"Sure I'll let you know," came up heartily from the bottom of the wall where the mason had gone for a tool.
If Archie realized Tom Clark's return to Highcourt, he was wise enough to make nothing of it. He was in a poor way nervously at this time, playing bad polo and drinking altogether too much. He stayed away from the city, which was a nuisance to Adelle, but he spent most of his time at the country club. Adelle meanwhile was wrestling with herself; with what people have the habit of calling the "conscience," but what had better be called the "consciousness," endeavoring to realize more fully the position in which she found herself. The idea within, like most ideas hotly nursed in a troubled brain, was growing all the time, until it filled all her waking moments and most of her dreams. She had to will deliberately not to take the little path up the hill to the mason's shack. Once she yielded, and when she arrived breathless, her heart thumping, she found the door safely padlocked. The mason had gone to the town for supplies. She sneaked back to Highcourt by a roundabout course through the eucalyptus wood, to avoid meeting her cousin on the path. Thus day by day she lived in an agony of preoccupation, so that even Archie began to notice how thin and pale she was, and attributed her distress to all sorts of reasons except the right one, of which he knew nothing. Her friends said that she was "trying to do too much," needed distraction, and recommended a trip somewhere, though what she did, except to dine and lunch out a few times each week or trail about the unfinished estate and play with her child, would be hard to say. Adelle, in truth, was thinking, thinking harder than ever before in her life. Her new secret was the most stimulating influence, next to her child, that she had known in all her life. Her brain once started led her into all sorts of mad by-paths, ramifications of perception that she and the reader, too, might not suspect lay within her powers. She asked herself what the mason, with his ideas about the injustice of property, would do with her money? She began even to question the meaning of life! Its queer treatment of her, in jerking her up to a high plane of privilege and then throwing her down in this unexpected manner, appeared for the first time inexplicable.
But greatest of all triumphs from this thinking was that Adelle began to look upon life objectively, trying to see what it must mean to others—to her new cousin, who evidently had had his own ambitions, which had been thwarted by a fate that he could not surmount alone. Would he do better with the money than she had? Achieve happiness more lastingly? She began to doubt the power of money to give happiness. She was losing faith in magic lamps. Of course, if Adelle had profited by her Puritan ancestry, she would have known that all this kind of reasoning was useless; for she had no business to assume the part of Providence to the stone mason and deprive him of his own choice in the matter of the inheritance. But fortunately she was not given to the picking of moral bones. She said to herself positively that Tom Clark, whatever he might once have become under other conditions, would not know now what to do with money: he would merely "get into trouble with it," as Archie had got into trouble. Already he had the habit of going off on "vacations" like the past week, for which he seemed ashamed.
And there were other lives than his to be considered—hers and Archie's, though she did not give much thought to them. But there was her boy's future. He had been Adelle's other great education. She had studied him from the hour he was born and noted each tiny, trivial development of his character. Already she knew that he was gay and pleasure-loving by nature—had a curling, sensuous lip much like his father's. She felt that he would need a great deal of guidance and care if he were to arrive safely at man's estate. Of course, it was often said that the struggle of poverty was the way of salvation. But she was not convinced of this heroic creed. All the more if the little fellow should really develop weakness; for wealth covered up and prevented the more dreadful aspects of incompetence. No, she could never bring herself to deprive her boy of his inheritance. She thought that this was the deciding consideration in her resolve finally to keep her secret to herself. It was a large reason, no doubt. But the decision came rather from her old habit of letting fate work with her as it would; that passive acceptance of whatever happened which had always been her characteristic attitude towards life. She had an almost superstitious shrinking from interfering with this outside arrangement of destiny. For where she had interfered—as in getting Archie—she had brought disaster upon herself. It was always the safer and wiser part for a woman to do nothing until she was compelled to act. This conviction of Adelle's may seem to our modernly strenuous natures to evince the last degree of cowardice and pusillanimity before life. We like to believe that we are changing our destiny every day and "making character" through a multitude of petty decisions. As a matter of cold examination, it would probably be found that few of us, through all our momentous and character-forming decisions, affect the stream of life as much as we like to think, or mould character. The difference between Adelle and the strenuous type of constantly willing woman lies more in the consciousness of fuss and effort that the latter has. When it came to the necessary point Adelle, as we have seen, made her own decisions and abided by them, which is more than the strenuous always do.
At one time, in the course of the long debate with herself, Adelle felt that she must appeal to some one for advice. In such stress and perplexity a woman usually appeals to priest or doctor, or both. But Adelle was entirely without any religious connection, and she had no doctor in whom she trusted. Instead, she thought of the Washington Trust Company, which had been the nearest thing to parental authority she had ever known, but rejected the idea of presenting to them this delicate problem. The thing, she saw, was beyond their scope and jurisdiction. The only person she instinctively turned towards for advice was the old probate judge, who had given her such a lecture on Clark's Field for a benediction when she last appeared before him. She felt that he would understand, and that he would have the right idea of what ought to be done....
Possibly, as the days passed and her mind grew still more towards comprehension, she would have consulted Judge Orcutt, although she hated to write letters. She might even have crossed the continent to talk with the judge. But again Fate took the matter out of her hands and resolved it in other ways.