Clark's Field Part 31

"Tell me, my dear," he said, "just why you want them to have your money.

For of course it would be _your_ money that they would get in the end, if by any possibility they could win their case."

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

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

Adelle slowly shook her head.

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

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

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

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

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

"What is it?" Adelle asked eagerly.

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

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

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

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

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

"Perhaps."

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

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

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

The judge smiled enigmatically.

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

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

"I will do that!"

"And now I want you to give me the pleasure of lunching with me, a very simple old man's lunch, when we can talk about other things than money!"

And with another gentle smile the judge took Adelle's arm and hobbled out to the next room.

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

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

XLVII

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

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

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

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

After the first greetings Adelle was silent, and it was the mason himself who asked her bluntly,--

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

Then Adelle was obliged to tell him of her fruitless expedition to the Was.h.i.+ngton Trust Company.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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