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Clark's Field

by Robert Herrick · English · Gutenberg #30736 · 663,378 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Clark's Field

Author: Robert Herrick


        
Release date: December 22, 2009 [eBook #30736]

Language: English

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                                 CLARK'S FIELD

                               BY ROBERT HERRICK


BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1914

COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY ROBERT HERRICK
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published June 1914_




CLARK'S FIELD


The other day I happened to be in the town where I was born and not far
from the commonplace house in the humbler quarter of the town where my
parents were living at the time of my birth, half a century and more
ago. I am not fond of my native town, although I lived in the place
until I was seventeen or eighteen years old. It was never a
distinguished spot and seems to have gained nothing as yet from having
been my birthplace. It has some reputation of its own, however, but that
is due to the enduring popularity of a certain cookstove that has long
been manufactured there, the "Stearns and Frost Cooker," known to many
housewives of several generations. In my youth the Stearns and Frost
stove works were reputed to be the largest in the world, and most of the
plain citizens of Alton were concerned in one way or another with them.
I do not happen to be interested in the manufacture or sale, or I may
add the use, of the domestic cookstove. As a boy I always thought the
town a dull, ugly sort of place, and although it has grown marvelously
these last thirty years, having been completely surrounded and absorbed
by the neighboring city of B----, it did not seem to me that day when I
revisited it to have grown perceptibly in grace....

Having a couple of spare hours before meeting a dinner engagement, I
descended into a subway and was shot out in less than ten minutes from
the heart of the city to the old "Square" of Alton,--a journey that took
us formerly from half to three quarters of an hour, and in cold or rainy
weather, of which there is a good deal in Alton, seemed truly
interminable. From the "Square," which no longer had the noble amplitude
of my memory, the direct way to Fuller Place lay up the South Road,--a
broad thoroughfare, through the center of which there used to trickle
occasionally a tiny horse-drawn vehicle to and from the great city of
B----. South Road, I found, had changed its name to the more pompous
designation of State Avenue, and it was noisy and busy enough to accord
with my childish imagination of it, but none too large for the mammoth
moving-vans in which the electric railroad now transported the
inhabitants. These shot by me in bewildering numbers. I had chosen to
make the rest of my journey on foot, trying leisurely to revive old
memories and sensations. For a few blocks I succeeded in picking out
here and there a familiar object, but by the time I reached the
cross-street where we used to descend from the street-cars and penetrate
the lane that led to Fuller Place I was completely at sea. The ample
wooden houses fronting the South Road, each surrounded by its green lawn
with appropriate shrubbery, had all given way before the march of brick
business blocks. Even the "Reformed Methodist" church on the corner of
Lamb Street had been replaced by a stone structure that discreetly
concealed its denominational quality from the passer-by. Beyond the
church there had been a half-mile of unoccupied land fronting on the
Road, but now the line of "permanent improvements" ran unbroken as far
as the eye could see. Into this maze of unfamiliar buildings I plunged
and wandered at random for half an hour through blocks of brick stores,
office buildings, factories, tenements,--chiefly tenements it seemed to
me. Off in one corner of the district instead of high tenement buildings
there was something almost worse, rows of mean, little two-story brick
cottages that ranged upwards along a gentle slope that I tried to fancy
was Swan's Hill,--a dangerous descent where my older brothers and I were
once allowed to coast on our "double-runner." I will not weary the
reader with further details of my wandering with its disappointment and
shattered illusions, which can in no way be of interest to any but the
one in search of his past, and of purely sentimental importance to him.
It is, of course, a common form of egotism to chronicle such small-beer
of one's origin, but it happens to have nothing to do with my purpose.

Enough to say that at last I discovered Fuller Place,--a mean, little
right-angled street that led nowhere; but from one end to the other I
could not find my old home. Its site must now be occupied by one of
those ugly five-story apartment boxes that spring like weeds in old
towns and cities. As I lingered in front of the brick wall that I judged
must very nearly cover the site of my birthplace, I tried to understand
the sensation of utter unfamiliarity with which the whole place filled
me. The answer came to me in a flash as I turned away from Fuller
Place,--Clark's Field no longer existed! Its place was completely filled
by the maze of brick and mortar in which for the better part of an hour
I had lost myself. There was nothing surprising that after a third of a
century a large, vacant field should have been carved up into streets,
alleys, and lots, and be covered with buildings to house the growing
population of a city. It is one of the usual commonplaces in our
American cities and towns. But to me the total disappearance of Clark's
Field seemed momentous. That large, open tract near my old home had more
significance, at least in memory, than the home itself. It was
intricately interwoven with all the imaginative and more personal life
that I had known as a boy. One corner of the irregular open land known
as Clark's Field had abutted my father's small property in Fuller Place,
and I and my older brothers and our friends had taken advantage of this
fact to open an unauthorized entrance into the Field through the board
fence in the rear yard. Over that fence lay freedom from parental
control and family tasks, and there was also, it happened, a certain bed
of luscious strawberries which we regularly looted until the market
gardener, who at the time leased this corner of Clark's Field, resigned
himself to the inevitable and substituted winter cabbages for the
strawberries,--a crop he had never been able to get to market.

From the gardener's beds and small forcing-houses the land stretched
away unbroken by cultivation or building to that Swan's Hill where we
coasted and farther to the suburban estates of several affluent
citizens,--I presume the homes of Stearns and Frost of stove fame and
others no longer remembered. These places, with their stately trees and
greenhouses and careful lawns, have also been merged into the domain of
brick and mortar and concrete. To the right of the market garden,
between us and the South Road, lay the level, treeless tract, about
fifty acres in extent, which was specifically known as Clark's Field,
although all the unused land in the neighborhood had originally belonged
to the Clark farm. The Field was carefully fenced in with high white
palings,--too high for a small boy to climb safely in a hurry. Certain
large signs, at the different corners, averred that the Field was for
sale and would be divided into suitable lots for building purposes, and
also that trespassers were so little desired that they would be
prosecuted by law. These signs were regularly defaced with stones and
snowballs according to season, and were as regularly rëerected every
spring by the hopeful owner or his agent. For in spite of its difficult
paling and warning signs, Clark's Field remained our favorite ball-field
and recreation spot where in summer we dug caves and skated when the
autumn rains were obliging enough to come before the frost. I suppose
that we destroyed the signs as a point of honor, and preferred Clark's
Field to all the other open land free to us because we could see no
reason for the prohibition. At any rate, we "trespassed" upon it at all
hours of day and night, and many a time have I ripped my clothes on the
sharp points of those palings in my breathless haste to escape some real
or fancied pursuit by one in authority. We had not only the regular
police--the "cops"--to contend with, but we believed that old man Clark
employed private watchmen and even descended to the mean habit of
sneaking about the Field himself, peering through the close palings to
snare us. There must have been some fire in all this smoke of memory,
for I distinctly recall one occasion that resulted disastrously to me
and has left with me such a vivid picture that its origin must have been
real. I was one of the younger and less athletic of our gang and had
been nabbed by the fat policeman on our beat and led ignominiously
through the streets of Alton by the collar of my coat,--not to the
police station in the "Square," nor to my father's house where my older
brothers had often been brought in similar disgrace. This time the
policeman, with the ingenuity of a Persian cadi, took me through the
public streets direct to headquarters,--the home of Mr. Samuel Clark. It
was, I believe, the only occasion on which I ever met the owner of
Clark's Field, certainly the only time I ever had speech with him; not
that there was much speech from me then. As I was reluctantly urged up
the long graveled drive of the respectable wooden house near the Square,
I saw an old, white-haired man getting into his family carriage with
some difficulty. The large, heavy person of the owner of Clark's Field
seemed to me a very formidable object when he turned upon me a pair of
dark, scowling eyes beneath bushy white brows and muttered something
about "bad boys." Those eyes and a curious trembling of the heavy
limbs--due to palsy, I suppose--are the only things I recollect of
Samuel Clark. Nor do I remember what he said to me beyond calling me a
bad boy or what judgment he meted out. All I know is that I returned
home without visiting the "lockup" behind the Square and became the
subject of a protracted and animated family discussion. My mother,
unexpectedly, took my part, inveighing against the "ogre" of a Clark who
deprived "nice" boys of the enjoyment of his useless field, and urged my
father, who had some acquaintance with fact as well as with law, to "do
something about Clark's Field." My father, I think, was at last
persuaded to visit the owner of the field to see what lawful
arrangements could be made so that well-behaved boys might freely and
honorably use the Field for their pleasure, until it should be disposed
of to builders. (Which, of course, would have taken from it every shred
of charm!) Whether in fact he made some such arrangement I cannot
remember, nor whether having been once caught I was sufficiently
intimidated by my visit to old Clark. All I know is that as long as we
remained in Alton, the Field continued its useless, forlorn, unoccupied
existence, jealously surrounded by a dilapidated though constantly
patched fence, with its numerous signs inviting prospective purchasers
to consult with the "owner"--signs that were regularly destroyed by
succeeding generations of boys. Already in my youth the busy town was
growing far beyond Clark's Field, along the South Road towards the new
railroad station; but the Field remained in dreary isolation from all
this new life until long after I had left the town.

As I have said, this empty field of fifty acres was the most permanent
experience of my youth. Its large, level surface, so persistently
offered to unwilling purchasers of real estate, seized hold of my boyish
imagination. I invented mysterious reasons for its condition, which as
time went on must have been influenced by what I heard at the family
table of the Clarks and their possessions. Now it is all inextricably
woven in my memory into a web of fact and fancy. The Field stood for me
during those fertile years as the physical symbol of the unknown, the
mysterious,--the source of adventure and legend,--long, long after I had
outgrown childish imaginings and had become fully involved in what we
like to call the serious matters of life. To-day I had but to close my
eyes and think of Fuller Place and my boyhood there to see that lonely
field, jealously hedged about by its fence of tall white palings,--see
it in all its former emptiness and mystery.

Of Clark's Field and the Clarks I mused as I retraced my way through the
maze of living that had been planted upon the old open land. All this
close-packed brick and mortar, these dull streets and high business
buildings, had been crowded man-fashion into the free, wind-swept field
of my fancy. Five thousand people at least must now be living and
largely have their being on our old playground,--a small town in itself.
And the change had come about in the last fifteen years or less. How had
it been brought to pass? Why after all the years of idleness that it had
endured had a use for Clark's Field been found? Something must have
broken that spell which had effectually restrained prospective
purchasers of real estate through all the years when the city was
pressing on beyond this point far away into the country.... The facts
are not all dime-novelish, but very human and significant, and by chance
the main thread of the real story of Clark's Field came to my knowledge
shortly after my visit, correcting and enlarging the impressions I had
formed from family gossip, the talk of playmates, and my own
imagination. And this story--the story of Clark's Field--I deem well
worth setting forth....

That same evening, when I entered the city hotel where I was to dine, I
found my friend walking impatiently up and down the lobby, for in my
search for the past I had forgotten my engagement and was late. Scarcely
greeting my guest, I burst out,--

"Edsall, do you remember Clark's Field?" (For Edsall had once lived in
Alton, though not in my part of the town.)

"Yes," he replied, somewhat surprised by my breathless eagerness. "What
about it?"

"I want to know what happened to it and why?"

Edsall, being a lawyer with a special interest in real estate, could
tell me many of the known facts about the Clark property over which
there had been some curious litigation. So the story grew that evening
over our dinner, to be filled in later by many details that came to me
unexpectedly,--I suppose because I was interested in the fate of Clark's
Field.




I


The Clarks, as their name implies, were of common English blood,
originally of some clerkly tribe and so possessing no distinctive
patronymic. These Clarks were ordinary Yankee farmers, who had been
settled in one place for upwards of two hundred years. Very likely some
ancestor of my old Samuel Clark had stood at Concord with "the embattled
farmers." I know not. He easily could have done so, for Alton was not
many miles distant from the battle field. But little either spiritual or
militant fervor from these Puritan ancestors seems to have come down to
Samuel, who in 1860 occupied the family farm of one hundred and forty
acres, "more or less," according to the loose description of old deeds.
Samuel, indeed, had not enough patriotism to sympathize with his son,
John Parsons, who finally ran off to the war, as so many boys did, to
escape the monotony of farm life. For Samuel, his father, was a plain,
ordinary, selfish, and not very thrifty New England farmer, who laid
down his fields every year to the same crops of oats and rye and hay,
kept a few sheep and hogs and cows, and in the easy, shiftless way of
his kind drained the soil of his old farm, with the narrow consolation
that it would somehow last his time.

So little ambition he had that shortly after his son went to the war,
thus depriving him of free labor, he "retired" from his farm,--that is,
he sold what he could of its fields and pastures and bought himself a
house on Church Street near the Square in Alton, probably the same house
where I was taken for my one interview with him. What he did not sell of
the farm he rented to another more energetic farmer, one Everitt Adams,
the old market-gardener whom I remembered. Adams with more thrift and
the great incentive of necessity built hothouses and went in for
market-gardening to supply the wants of the neighboring city, which was
already making itself felt upon the surrounding country. Hence the long
rows of celery, cabbage, lettuce, and peas that I remember across my
father's back fence. All the near-by farmers were doing much the same
thing, turning the better part of their land into gardens. They would
start before dawn in summer time for the city, making their way along
the South Road, which was the main thoroughfare into this part of the
country. Many a time have I seen their covered wagons returning from the
city about the time when I was starting for school, the horses wearily
plodding along at a walk, the farmer or his boy asleep in the wagon on
his empty crates.

I don't know what sort of an arrangement old Clark made with his tenant,
but Adams, who was a hard-working fellow with a tribe of strong
children, must have found the business profitable, especially after he
built the forcing-houses and began to supply unseasonable luxuries to
the prosperous citizens of B----. Prices ran high in the years of the
great war, and those farmers who stayed at home and cultivated their
gardens industriously made money at every turn. At any rate, it was
common knowledge in the neighborhood of Fuller Place that Everitt Adams
wished to purchase Clark's Field from its owner--the last piece of the
old farm that he had not hitherto disposed of--and had the money to pay
for it in the River Savings Bank. Indeed, gossip said that the price was
agreed upon,--five thousand dollars,--which was considered a fair price
in those days for fifty acres, six or seven miles from the city. And
Samuel Clark, so tradition also says, was anxious to sell his last field
for that price. His son had returned from the war wounded and incapable
of work, and his father wanted to set him up in a small shop in the
Square. The son, in spite of his invalidism, married shortly after his
return from the ranks and this made the need of ready money in the
Church Street house all the more urgent.

Trouble came when the lawyer employed by the market-gardener discovered
what old Clark must have known all the time, and that is that the Field
had a cloud upon its title, or rather an absolute restriction which
would render worthless any title that Samuel might give alone. To
explain this legal obstacle we must go back before the war and my day
into the previous generation. There had been a family quarrel between
Samuel and his older brother, which had resulted finally in Edward
Stanley--the elder son--going off to seek his fortunes in the new West,
which was attracting young men from the East at that time. This was in
1840 or thereabouts when Edward S. left his father's home in Alton, and
nothing more had been heard of him except the vague report from some
other exile from Alton that he had been seen in Chicago where he had
become a carpenter, and it was said had married. Probably Samuel, who
was then a young man and recently married with two little children, had
no great desire to have his elder brother's existence recalled to his
father. Everything I have learned about Samuel confirms the impression
of him I had as a boy, that he was not the kind of man whose conscience
would be sensitive in such matters. He probably considered that his
brother Ed, having taken his fate in his hands, should expect nothing
from the more timid members of the family who had stuck by the old farm.
But when the elder Clark died, a will was found in which to Samuel's
disgust an undivided half interest in the Field--the best part of the
farm--was left to his eldest son and his heirs.

There is no evidence that Samuel, at the time of his father's death,
ever took any measures, even of the most casual sort, to hunt up this
elder brother or find out if he had left any children. He made some sort
of deal with a younger brother who could not be ignored and continued to
work the old farm, living in his father's house on Swan's Hill. Probably
a long term of undisturbed possession of the farm convinced him that he
was the sole legitimate owner of the property, that the land was
absolutely and wholly his to do with what he would. And so, as we have
seen, in his old age he tried to dispose of the Field to the
market-gardener for five thousand dollars. But the lawyer raised the
obvious objection that the Field could not be sold without Edward's
consent, and of Edward nothing whatsoever was known. Some attempt was
made at this time by John Clark on behalf of his father to trace the
missing Edward--a feeble attempt. He wrote to an army friend in Chicago,
who found evidence that Edward S. Clark, a carpenter, had lived in the
city for five or six years and had moved thence to St. Louis. No trace
of him could be found in St. Louis, where John also wrote to the
postmaster. At that time, it should be remembered, St. Louis was the
port of departure for the little-known West, and possibly Edward and his
family had taken boat up the Missouri and gone on to the distant gold
fields or had merely drifted out into the neighboring prairie country
and stuck in some nook. It was all speculation. Nothing further of
Edward Stanley Clark was ever known by either Samuel or his son John. He
never announced himself to his Eastern relatives.

But Samuel could not sell the Field. Old Adams was altogether too shrewd
to spend five thousand dollars upon a property that had such an
uncertainty about its title, and in those days the lawyers whose advice
they were able to get could not suggest a satisfactory way of evading
the difficulty. No such thing as a title guaranty company had ever been
heard of in the old Commonwealth of M----. There was nothing to do but
wait in the hope that either information about Edward S. would be
forthcoming some day or that in time the law could be invoked to gloss
over the title. But Samuel, in hope of inducing some gullible purchaser
to run the risk, had the Field carefully fenced and put signs upon it.
For he needed the money, and needed it more as the years went by and
John's invalidism turned into chronic laziness and incapacity for
earning a livelihood. Everitt Adams moved away after a time and his
successors who leased the Field were never satisfactory. There were
taxes and assessments to be met, which grew all the time with the rising
value of adjacent land, as well as lawyer's fees. The income from the
small part of the Field now under cultivation was hardly adequate to
meet these, and after a time this income ceased altogether and the Field
became an absolute burden. For nobody seemed willing either to rent or
buy the property.

Of course, the son John, if he had had the energy, might have followed
old Adams's example and worked the Field for a time, until the gas and
sewer mains had corrupted the soil and spoiled it for market gardening.
But he preferred to rely upon his record as an old soldier and secured a
small clerkship in the Alton Gas Company, and some years later obtained
a pension. Of course, all this trouble with the Field supplied both him
and his father with ample cause for grumbling. Samuel had never liked
his brother Edward, who seemed almost spitefully to be turning this
trick against him in his old age, and he handed on his grievance to John
and his wife. The small, wooden house in Church Street contained a
narrow, ungracious family life, it can be seen, of petty economies and
few interests. No wonder that the Field--the one important family
possession remaining--became the favorite topic of discussion and
speculation. The city was growing fast, and Alton was already its most
considerable suburb. The lines of modern life had crept up to within
call of the old Field before the death of Samuel. So the old fellow was
not indulging in much exaggeration when he bragged towards the end that
he wouldn't take twenty-five thousand dollars for his property, although
ten years earlier he had been eager to sell for five thousand dollars!

That twenty-five thousand dollars, however, was as far away as the five
thousand, and the life in the Church Street house was more penurious and
uncomfortable than it had ever been on the old farm, which had provided
a coarse plenty for many generations. The Clarks were obviously running
out, and when the old man died in 1882 he must have had the bitter
consciousness that the family destiny had dwindled in his hands. From
being prosperous and respected farmers, living on their own land in
their ancestral square wooden house with its one enormous chimney, they
were living in real poverty in a small house on a dusty side street off
the noisy Square, which was not what it had once been as a place of
residence. And they did not even own this Church Street house--merely
clung to it from inertia and bad habit. The only thing they did own was
Clark's Field, and Mrs. John sometimes thought it would be better if
that had gone the way of the rest of the Clark farm, so insidious was
its moral influence upon the men as well as costly in the way of
outgo....

If a man's accomplishment in this life is to be reckoned by the
substantial gains he has made on his father's estate and condition, old
Samuel Clark had nothing to be proud of when he was borne to his grave
in the new cemetery a mile south of Clark's Field. He had left nothing
to his children but the Field, encumbered with the undivided and
indivisible half interest belonging to his brother Edward Stanley, were
he alive at this date, and to his heirs if he had any.




II


The possession of property of any kind gives a curious consciousness of
dignity to the human being who is its owner, due very likely to the
traditional estimate of the importance of all possessions, and to the
mystical but generally erroneous belief that property is in some way an
outward and visible proof of the worth or the ability of its
possessor--or his forbears. Even the possession of a possibility such as
Clark's Field--which was of no positive value to the Clarks, and indeed
an increasing source of expense and anxiety to the impoverished family,
as taxes rose in company with the rise of all values--conferred upon the
Clarks some small consideration in Alton and made them feel the dignity
and the tragedy of property ownership. John, who was nothing but a
seedy, middle-aged clerk, none too careful of his appearance and
uneasily aware of his failure, had ample excuse to himself for his
shortcomings and willingness to live on a kind Government, because he
had been hardly used by fate in the matter of his inheritance. As the
property that might have been his was just beyond his reach, he had a
small swagger of superiority in the gas office, and the tradition was
well established there that he belonged to a family "land poor,"--the
most genteel form of poverty if any form of poverty can be genteel. Even
old farmer Samuel had tottered about the Square on his malacca stick and
exchanged the time of day with the small merchants there, with a sense
of his own importance as the owner of "a valuable piece of property"
temporarily under legal disability.

As for the women of the family this sense of unrealized importance grew
tenfold in their consciousness, because they had few opportunities of
encountering reality in their narrow lives and because as women they
were apt to dream of wealth, even of visionary wealth. It cannot be said
that Clark's Field had much to do with John's marriage which had taken
place in 'sixty-seven, because at that early date it was not considered
a large expectation even by the Clarks. But John had a younger sister,
Ada or "Addie" Clark as she was always known, and over Addie's destiny
Clark's Field had a large and sinister influence as I shall presently
show. At the time when her father finally abandoned his farm in favor of
town life, Addie was a mere child, so young that she could forget the
wholesome pictures of domestic farm industry that she must have shared.
Or, if there lingered in the background of her memory a consciousness of
her mother's butter-making, feeding the pigs, cooking for the occasional
farm hands, washing and mending, and all the other common tasks of this
laborious condition, she conveniently ignored it as women easily
contrive to do. Her life was centered in the Church Street house where
the Clarks had at first indulged in certain pretensions. Addie had gone
to the Alton schools and there associated with the better class of
children,--a doctor's daughter and a retired bank clerk's family being
the more intimate of these. As a young girl she had a transparent
complexion and a thin sort of American prettiness that unfortunately
quickly faded, under the influences of the Church Street house, into a
sallow commonplaceness. But Addie unlike the men of the family never
wholly abandoned her aspirations and ambitions. She was very careful
about the young men whom she "encouraged," and the families into whose
houses she would enter. Thus she sacrificed her slim chances of
matrimony on the altar of a visionary family pride. One of her
high-school mates, the son of the prosperous liveryman in Alton, might
have married her had he been more warmly met, and taken her with him to
Detroit, where in time he became the well-to-do head of a large
automobile manufactory. This was not the single instance of her family
pride.

It is a fascinating subject to speculate what would have happened to Ada
if she had had the moral vigor to shake herself loose from the hampering
family traditions of riches to be, and struck out for an independent,
wholesome life as women have been known to do under similar
circumstances. But Alton, like most old towns, had strong class
traditions that exercised an iron influence upon feminine destinies. It
was, of course, hopeless for Ada, the daughter of a retired farmer who
could not sell his farm, to come into close social contact with the
local aristocracy, which consisted at this time of the Stearns and Frost
relationship together with a few well-to-do merchants from B---- who had
always lived in Alton and owned those large semi-suburban estates in its
environs. But at least she could jealously guard herself from falling
into the mire of the commoner sort of small shopkeepers who were
pressing into the Square. The end was that Addie fast became what was
then called, without any circumlocution, an "old maid," and an
uninteresting one, whose days were occupied by church and gossip, and
who went over and over the threadbare family tradition. Old Mrs. Clark,
her mother, was a realist and never forgot the farm days. She was enough
of a woman to regret sincerely the fatal mistake that the family had
made in trying to become something other than their destiny had fitted
them to be. She was a thorn in the sentimental flesh of Addie, whose
thoughts preferred to play with the dignities and ease that would be
hers when the Field had been sold. Addie dressed herself as finely as
she could on Sundays and in the afternoons would walk down the South
Road past the abandoned Field and remark to a friend upon the family
property and the misfortune that kept them all down in the depths of
poverty. As the years went on and the price of real estate advanced, her
tale sounded less ridiculous than it might. But it was a bloodless sort
of consolation even for Addie, and all her friends knew the story by
heart and listened to it merely with kind indulgence. "A bird in the
hand," etc., is a proverb peculiarly to the liking of Yankees. They do
not take much interest in Peruvian mines or other forms of
non-negotiable wealth unless they see a chance to work them off on a
more credulous public. As for old Mrs. Clark, when she became tied to
her chair, she was bitter on the topic. "That dratted old Field!" she
would say with the brutal directness of the realist; "your father would
have sold the whole of it for five thousand dollars and been
thankful!"--a fact that seemed to her children of no importance.

When the old woman was laid away in Woodlawn beside her husband, Addie
could give free rein to her fancies, untroubled by the darts of the
realist. But the family fortunes soon became most desperate. Fortunately
John had no children, his one small son having died as a baby. His wife,
who had perhaps become tired of the family fortune as it never quite
realized itself, tried to prod her shiftless husband into a greater
activity. But except for the getting of the pension, which was put
through in 1885, John added little to the family purse, and before his
mother's death lost his position in the gas office, a new administration
of the company holding that a municipal utility was not an asylum for
old soldiers. The trouble was, as Mrs. John knew, and as Ada always
refused to recognize, John drank. At first it was a convivial weakness
indulged in only at the reunions of old veterans,--John was a most
ardent "Vet,"--but it became a habit that took away his little
usefulness for anything. So now the family for steady income was reduced
to the pension, which was only twenty-two dollars a month. Clearly
something had to be done. Mrs. John took in lodgers in the Church Street
house, a clerk or two from the neighboring shops. And Addie finally
brought herself to learn the manipulation of the typewriter, which was
fast becoming a woman's profession, and found a position in a large
store in the city.

It would seem that the Clark fortunes had reached their lowest ebb:
family extinction was all that now remained for them. The Church Street
house rested solely, save for the small pension, on the exertions of two
ineffective women. It could just get on as it was, and if the family
life had never been a bright and cheerful one, it was now drearier than
ever. Then Addie married. She was nearly if not quite forty years old,
and neither her brother nor sister-in-law expected such an event. She
was sallow, thin, and rather querulous in temperament. Very likely Addie
felt that marriage could not make her lot worse, and as middle-age
threatened, she accepted the defeat of her ambitions and in the spirit
of better-late-than-never struck out for herself in the race for
personal happiness, throwing over the burden of Clark's Field.

At any rate, she was married to William Scarp, a fellow-clerk in Minot
Brothers--wholesale wool. Addie represented that Mr. Scarp was of
excellent Southern blood from somewhere in North Carolina. It is
needless to enter into that nebulous question. He was earning thirty
dollars a week with Minot Brothers when they became engaged and was a
few years younger than his bride. The firm gave him a five-dollar
increase of salary on his marriage, old Savage remarking facetiously
that he believed in rewarding courage. The couple went to live in the
city, and for a year or two they moved nomadically from one
boarding-house or cheap hotel to another. It may be presumed that Addie,
without any clear idea of deceiving, had misled William Scarp in the
matter of Clark's Field--her fixed delusion. The Field made this
marriage, and it was not a happy one. The John Clarks, who still hung on
in the Church Street house with an additional roomer, soon began to
suspect that Addie was not wholly happy in her married life. William had
a quick temper and was very plain-spoken about the "job" that Addie had
"put over him" in the matter of the Clark property, though in fact she
had exercised no more mendacity than women of forty in her position are
wont to do. At one time shortly after the marriage Scarp had an
"understanding" with John Clark about the family estate. When he learned
that the Field could not be sold in the present state of its title and
that such leases as had been made of it to meet taxes and other
obligations tied it up until the opening of the next century, he
expressed himself abusively. Later he suggested that a "syndicate"
should be formed to employ lawyers to straighten out the title and
dispose of the property piecemeal as the leases fell in. It seemed a
brilliant plan, quite modern in its sound, but alas! William, no more
than John, could finance the "syndicate." So the suggestion lapsed, and
the Scarps worried along on William's salary for a time, and then moved
to Philadelphia. What Addie's experiences were there, or in Cincinnati
and Indianapolis, to which cities they also wandered, I have no means of
knowing, nor did the John Clarks hear from her, except for a rare
penciled postcard. The Clarks, as may be observed, were no great
letter-writers.

All is that one day in November of 1889, Addie arrived at the Church
Street house with a forlorn parcel of a little girl and a bedraggled bag
that contained her entire worldly possessions. She was ill and old. She
would say little about her husband, but later it came out in the
newspapers that William Scarp had been convicted of forgery and sent to
prison in Indiana (where he died soon after of consumption contracted in
prison). Addie had come back to the only human refuge she knew. She was
too ill and too beaten by life to work. She sat around in the Church
Street house dumbly for nearly a year, then died, leaving the forlorn,
pale little girl to her brother and sister-in-law as a legacy. This
child she had named Adelle, thus proving the persistence of her fancy
even in her forlornest hours. Ada or Addie was too common for the last
of the Clarks. She should at least have something poetic for name. For
who could say? She might some day become an heiress and shine in that
social firmament so much desired by her mother. In that event she should
not be handicapped by a vulgar name. As Addie had resumed her maiden
name after Scarp had been sent to prison, the little girl was destined
to grow up as Adelle Clark,--the last member of the Alton branch of the
Clarks, ultimate heiress to Clark's Field, should there be anything of
it left to inherit when the law let go.

The silent little girl, who played about the lodgers' rooms in the dingy
Church Street house, was of course unaware of the weight of expectation
hanging to her. She was almost abnormally silent, perhaps because of her
depressing prenatal experiences as well as the forlorn environment of
the rooming-house,--perhaps because of physical and spiritual anæmia.
"She's a puny mite of a child," Mrs. John Clark said complainingly,
unpromising like everything Clark; nevertheless, the last of the sturdy
yeoman stock of Clarks.




III


That "weight of expectation" hanging to the little girl was not quite as
fantastic as might seem. It must be remembered that old Samuel before
his death, in pressing need of ready money to finance some foolish
venture of his son, had leased a good part of Clark's Field to some
speculative builders, who had covered that portion of the old pasture
that bordered the South Road with a leprous growth of cheap stores,
which brought in a fair return. The leases ran up to the new century.
Just why this precise term for the gambling venture had been chosen
probably only the lawyers who made the arrangement could say. Possibly
old Samuel had superstitious reasons for not pledging the family
expectation beyond the present century. He may have thought that the
turn of the century would bring about some profound change in the
customs and habits of society that the family could take advantage of.
At any rate, so it was. And it was not many years now to the close of
the century when Clark's Field would be released to its original owners
with all its shabby encumbrances.

The field had gained enormously in value and importance in men's eyes
these last years. The city of B---- had eaten far into the country,
creating prosperous appendages in the way of modern suburbs for twenty
miles and more from Alton, and there was much talk of its annexing the
old town to itself, which it accomplished not long after. Those were the
days of the "greater" everything, the worship of size. Alton in fact was
now a city itself of no mean size, and the shallow stream of water that
nominally divided it from B---- was a mere boundary line. As men had
multiplied upon this spot of earth, needing land for dwelling and
business, envious eyes had been cast upon the Field, the last large
"undeveloped" tract anywhere near the great city. Men who were skillful
in such real estate "deals," greedy and ingenious in the various ways of
turning civic growth to private profit, were figuring upon the
possibility of getting hold of Clark's Field, when the short leases
expired, and after making the necessary "improvements" cutting it up for
sale. They saw fat profits in the transaction. Men needed it for their
lives; the community needed it for its growing corporate life. And yet
it was "tied up" with a legal disability--left largely useless and
waste. It looked as if when the legal spell was finally broken, as it
must be, and the land so long unprofitable and idle should be
apportioned to these human needs, it would be neither the Clarks nor the
community that would derive benefit from it,--certainly not the people
who would live upon it,--but some gang of skillful speculators, who knew
the precise moment to take advantage of the mechanism of the law and the
more uncertain mechanism of human nature so as to obtain for a small
amount what they could sell to others for much. The crisis in the
history of Clark's Field seemed approaching.

It was time. The fence of high white palings that Samuel had jealously
maintained about his old field had long since completely disappeared.
Latterly the neighbors crisscrossed the vacant portions of the Field
with short cuts and contractors either dumped refuse upon it or burrowed
into it for gravel. The sod had long since been stripped from every foot
of its surface. In a word, it was treated as no man's land, so low had
the Clark family sunk in the world. And it was covered with a cloud of
invisible disabilities, further than the original difficulty created by
Edward S. in not leaving an address behind him. There were liens against
it by the city for improvements in the way of gas and sewer and water
pipes, and for taxes, as well as first, second, and third mortgages of a
dubious character that John in extremity had been forced to put upon the
Field in order to "carry" his expectation. Under this burden of
invisible lien as well as outward degradation Clark's Field had
struggled until 1898, and the ultimate doom was not far off. John
thought so and struggled less to preserve his inheritance. What he owned
of the Field was a diminishing fraction, long since negligible, were it
not for the marvelous increase in all real-estate values, due to the
growth of population in these parts and the activity of the country. It
was rumored about the Square that Clark's Field would shortly be sold
for taxes, and a tax title, poor as that is, would probably be the best
title that could ever be got for the Field. Capitalists and their
lawyers were already figuring on that basis for the distribution of the
property....

But before we concern ourselves in the plot of these greedy exploiters,
it would be well to go back for a time to the dingy Church Street house
and the pale little Adelle, who was now in her twelfth year. Her
ancestors, certainly, had done little for her physical being. She was a
plain, small child, with not enough active blood in her apparently to
make a vivid life under any circumstances. She was meek and
self-effacing,--two excellent virtues for certain spheres, but not for a
poor child in America at the opening of the new century! Her earliest
impressions of life must have been the dusty stairs and torn stair
carpet of her aunt's house, defaced under the dirty feet of many
transient "roomers," and next her aunt herself, a silent, morose woman
over fifty, who accepted life as nearly in the stoic spirit as her
education permitted. Mrs. John Clark had none of Addie's cheap
pretentions, fortunately: she was obviously the poor woman with a
worthless husband, who kept cheap lodgings for a livelihood. She was
kind enough to the little girl as such people have the time and the
energy to be kind. She could not give her much thought, and as soon as
Adelle was old enough to handle a broom or make beds she had to help in
the endless housework. At eight she was sent to school, however, to the
public school close by in the rear of the livery-stable, where she
learned what American children are supposed to learn in the grade
schools. At twelve she was a small, undersized, poorly dressed,
white-faced little girl, so little distinctive in any way that probably
hundreds exactly like her could be picked from the public schools of any
American city. If this story were a mere matter of fiction, we should be
obliged to endow Adelle with some marks of exceptionality of person, or
mind, or soul,--evident to the discerning reader even in her childhood.
She would already possess the rudiments of an individuality under her
Cinderella outside,--some poetic quality of day-dreaming or laughing or
sketching. But this is a plain chronicle of very plain people as they
actually found themselves in life, and it is not necessary to embellish
the truth so that it may please any reader's sensibilities or ideals.
Adelle Clark was a wholly ordinary, dumb little creature, neither
passionate nor spiritual. She laughed less than children of her age
because there was not much in her experience to laugh about. She talked
less--much less--than other little girls, because the Church Street
house was not a place to encourage conversation. She liked her aunt
rather better than her uncle, who was an untidy, not to say smelly,
person, who sat dozing in the kitchen much of the time, a few strands of
long gray hair vainly trying to cover the baldness of a blotchy head.
His principal occupation these latter years was being a "Vet." He was a
faithful attendant at all "post nights," "camp-fires," and veteran
"reunions," and when in funds visited neighboring posts where he had
friends. On his return from these festivities he was smellier and
stupider than ever,--that was all his small niece realized. He never did
any work, so far as she was aware, but as his wife had accepted the fact
and no longer discussed it in public, the little girl did not think much
about his idleness. That might be the man-habit generally.

Adelle was in her thirteenth year and in the last grade of her school
when she first began to notice the presence of some strangers in the
Church Street house. She was not an observant child, and there was such
a succession of "roomers" in the house that a stranger's face aroused
little curiosity. But these men were better dressed than any roomers and
talked in tones of authority and conscious position. They held long
conversations with her uncle and aunt in the dining-room behind closed
doors, and once she saw a bundle of papers spread out upon the table.
These days her uncle and aunt talked much about titles, mortgages,
deeds, and other matters she did not understand nor ask about. But she
felt that something important was astir in the Church Street house, as a
child realizes vaguely such movements outside its own sphere. Once one
of the men, who was putting on his silk hat in the hall and preparing to
leave the house, inquired, "Is that the girl?" To which question her
uncle and aunt answered briefly, "Yes." The tone of the stranger was
exactly as if he had asked, "Is that the bundle of clothes we were
talking about?"

Something was afoot of momentous importance to Adelle, as we shall
shortly discover. Fate once more in the person of a feeble Clark was
about to play her an unkind trick. For John, reduced to complete
incompetence by his life and his habit of drink, pestered by the
accumulating claims upon Clark's Field, had consented to an
"arrangement" that certain capitalists had presented to him through
their lawyers. They had urged him to sell to them all the remaining
equity that he held in the property, giving a quitclaim deed for himself
and his wife and for Adelle, whose legal guardian he was. The purchasers
would assume all the liabilities of the encumbered Field, the risk of
title, and for this complete surrender of the family interest in Clark's
Field, John Clark was to receive the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars
all told in cash. It was five times what his father had been anxious to
get for the same property, as the lawyers pointed out, when John in the
beginning talked large about the great possibilities of his Field. It
was true, so they said, that the property had increased in value in the
last twenty years, but so had the encumbrances increased, and there was
always the danger of expensive litigation and loss due to the cloudy
title, even after the lapse of fifty years since the disappearance of
Edward S. They could not see their way to offering another dollar for
the dubious gamble before them, so they said. And for this twenty-five
thousand dollars in ready money, all the family expectations were to be
cashed in, all the hopes of Samuel, the pretensions of Addie, the
desires and needs of John and his wife, not to mention the future of the
small Adelle. John hesitated....

In the end he was convinced, or his desire for some ready money overcame
his scruples. His wife, who was perhaps agreeably surprised to find that
the Clark expectations had any cash value, counseled him to accept the
offered terms. No doubt, she admitted, the lawyers were probably doing
them; that was the way of lawyers. But they had no money to spend on
other lawyers to find a better bargain or to engage in the speculation
upon the Field themselves. As for hanging on to Clark's Field, the
family had had enough of that. "A bird in the hand," etc. So the
numerous papers were drawn and John even touched a small advance
payment. Adelle remembered the discussions--not to say quarrels--between
her uncle and aunt over the use to which they should put the Clark
fortune when it should finally be theirs. John was for moving away from
Alton altogether, which was not what it had been once for residence he
said. He talked of going into the country and buying a farm. His wife,
who remembered how he had scorned to work the old Clark farm when it was
a paying possibility, smiled grimly at his talk. She wanted to take a
larger house in the neighborhood, furnish it better, and bid for a
higher class of roomers. Hers was, of course, the more sensible plan.
They were still discussing their plans, and the lawyers were taking
their time about preparing the interminable series of legal papers that
seemed necessary when the great Grand Army Encampment of 1900 came off
in Chicago. John, who had been obliged latterly to forego these annual
sprees, resolved to attend the reunion of his old comrades and "to go in
style." For this purpose he obtained a small sum from the prospective
purchasers of Clark's Field, who were only too ready to get him further
committed to their bargain by a payment down and a receipt on
account,--on condition, of course, that he sign an agreement to sell the
property when the necessary formalities could be satisfied. So he signed
with an easy flourish the simple agreement presented to him, pocketed
two hundred dollars, and bought a new suit of clothes with a black-felt
veteran's hat, the first he had had in many years. When Adelle watched
him strut down Church Street on the way to the train one hot July
morning, splendid in his new uniform with his white gloves and short
sword under his arm, she did not know that she herself had contributed
to this piece of self-indulgence her last right to a share in the Clark
possession,--her one inheritance of any value from her mother. Very
possibly she would not have said anything had she known all the facts,
had she been old enough to realize the significance of that signature
her uncle had given the lawyers a few days before. Probably she would
have accepted this act of fate as meekly as she had all else in her
short life. For it must be clearly understood that the signature was
irrevocable. No change of mind, no sober second thought coming into
John's cloudy mind, would be of any use. A contract of sale is as
binding under such circumstances as the deed itself.

Adelle felt an unconscious relief in the absence of her uncle from the
house. There was an end to the disputes about the money, and his
unpleasant person no longer occupied the best chair in the kitchen. Her
aunt also seemed to be more cheerful than was her wont. It was the slack
season in the rooming business, and so the two had some spare time on
their hands in the long summer days and could dawdle about, an unusual
luxury. They even went to walk in the afternoons. Her aunt took Adelle
to see Clark's Field,--a forlorn expanse of empty land with a fringe of
flimsy one-story shops along its edge that did not attract the child.
She never remembered, naturally, what her aunt told her about the Field,
but she must have learned something of its story because she always had
in her mind a sense of the importance of this waste and desolate city
field. In her childish way she got a vague notion of some great wrong
that had been done about the land so that her uncle was smelly and
stupid and her aunt had to take in more roomers than she liked. That was
as close to the facts as she could get then--as close, it may be said,
as many people ever get.... Then they went to look at houses, a more
interesting occupation to the child. Her aunt seemed much concerned in
the comparative size and location and number of rooms of different
houses and this Adelle could understand. The family was going to move
sometime from the Church Street house.... In these simple ways the two
passed a quiet vacation of ten days. Then came a telegram, and three
days later arrived the remains of Veteran John Clark, accompanied by
members of the local G. A. R. post who had brought back the body of
their dead comrade. John Clark had kept his boasting word to his wife
that "this time he would show the boys a good time and prove to 'em that
his talk about his property wasn't all hot air!" He had in truth shown
himself such a good time that he could not stand a spell of excessively
hot weather, to which he succumbed like a sapped reed. A very
considerable funeral was arranged and conducted by the members of G. A.
R. Post Number I of Alton, to which John Clark had belonged. There was a
military band and the post colors, and a number of oldish men in blue
uniforms trailed behind the hearse all the way to the cemetery where the
veteran was laid away in the lot with his mother and father. Little
Adelle, riding in the first carriage with her aunt, observed all this
military display over the dead veteran, and concluded that she had done
her uncle an injustice during his life. It seemed that he was really a
much more important person than she had supposed him to be. This burial
was the last benefit poor John Clark received from a grateful country
for that spurt of patriotism or willfulness that had led him to run away
from the Clark farm to the war forty years before.

And here really concludes the history of the Clarks in the story of
Clark's Field. For Adelle, upon whom the burden of the inheritance was
to fall, was only half a Clark at the most, and had largely escaped the
deadly tradition of family expectations under which Addie had been
blighted; while her aunt, of course, had no Clark blood in her veins and
had been cured of the Clark habit of expecting.




IV


It may easily be imagined that the veteran's untimely death at the Grand
Army Reunion caused more uneasiness in certain other quarters than it
did in the Church Street house, where John's going had its mitigations.
The lawyers who had arranged the purchase of the Clark interest in the
great Field did not really fear that their plans for the cheap capture
of the property would ultimately miscarry. But John's death must cause
further delay, which might possibly be improved by other interested
speculators. And so the legal representatives of the capitalists
concerned in the "deal" constituted themselves at once friends and
advisers of the widow. They assured her that a mere formality must be
satisfied before she could actually touch her husband's estate, and
promised to attend to the legal matters without expense to her, it being
understood, of course, that whenever the law allowed she should carry
out her husband's agreement to sell the Clark interest in the Field.
They even went so far as to offer further small advances to the widow if
she found herself in immediate need. But this the widow resolutely
refused. She was becoming a little suspicious of so much thoughtful
kindliness from these lawyers, whom after the prejudice of her sort she
was wont to regard as human harpies. She had her widow's pension and her
roomers, and her expenses would be considerably lessened by the death of
the incompetent veteran, who would no longer be begging money for his
"reunions."

There was, of course, Adelle. Her uncle had been her legal guardian and
as such had intended to sell her interest in the Field for a pittance.
The lawyers assumed that her aunt would be appointed by the probate
court to the empty honor of guardianship. Otherwise they regarded her,
as everybody always did, as entirely negligible. And she so regarded
herself. The lawyers were prompt in having the guardianship question
brought up in the probate court for settlement first. It was introduced
there as a motion early in the fall term of court, the papers being
presented to the judge by the junior member of the distinguished firm of
B---- lawyers, Bright, Seagrove, and Bright. Any other judge, probably,
would have scribbled his initials then and there upon the printed
application for guardianship,--the affair being in charge of such
eminent counsel,--and there must have been an end altogether to Adelle's
expectations and of this story. That was what the lawyers naturally
expected. But this judge, after a hasty glance or two at the
application, took the matter under advisement.

"Of course the old boy had to sleep upon it!" young Bright reported to
the senior members of the firm. The lawyers of B---- were accustomed to
make fun of Judge Orcutt or grumble about his ways of doing things. He
was certainly different from the ordinary run of probate judges or of
all judges for that matter. The smart law firms that had dealings with
him professed to consider him a poor lawyer, but everybody knows that
eminent lawyers usually have a poor opinion of the ability of judges.
They reason that if the judges had their ability, they would not be
poorly paid judges, but holding out their baskets for the fat fruit
falling abundantly from the corporation trees.

It should be said that the law was not Judge Orcutt's first love:
probably was not his supreme mistress at any time. Perhaps for that very
reason he made a better probate judge--a more human judge--than any of
the smart lawyers could have made. The little gray-haired judge was a
poet, and not an unpublished poet. I will not stop to pass judgment on
those thin volumes of verse, elegantly printed and bound, that from time
to time appeared in the welter of modern literature with the judge's
name. The judge was fonder of them, no doubt, and perhaps prouder of
them than Bright, Seagrove, and Bright are of their large retainers. And
I believe that the published volumes of verse, and the unprinted ones
within his heart and brain, made Judge Orcutt an altogether sounder
judge than if he had mused in his idle hours upon the law or upon
corporation fees. He was one of those rare judges, who even after twenty
years of forms--motions and pleas and precedents--could never wholly
forget the individual human being behind the legal form.

And so in this trivial matter of appointing a guardian for a poor girl,
the probate judge could not ignore Adelle in the mass of legal verbiage
through which such things are done. Who was this Adelle Clark? and what
sort of person was this aunt who seemed willing and anxious to assume
the legal and moral guardianship of the minor? An aunt by marriage only,
wasn't it? Yes, by marriage he assured himself after consulting again
the stiff paper form that the lawyers had properly filled out; and he
gave one of those funny little quirks to his eye which he did when not
wholly satisfied with a "proposition" presented to him. And here was the
characteristic difference between Judge Orcutt and any other probate
judge. He speculated--maybe for only the better part of ten seconds--but
he speculated upon the entity of the small human being that had fallen
within the bounds of his court. Was it really for this little girl's
best good to let this aunt by marriage take charge of her? Did any
hocus-pocus contriving, with which he had become only too familiar, lie
beneath this innocent application?

Probably at this point the poet judge would have dismissed the matter
from speculation and signed the papers as he usually did, very much,
after all, like any other judge, with an additional sigh because he
could never really discover all the necessary facts. But another
observation held his pen. The paper had been brought to him by young
Bright, of Bright, Seagrove, and Bright--a notable firm of lawyers, but
not one famous for their charitable practice. Why should Bright,
Seagrove, and Bright interest themselves in procuring the guardianship
of a poor girl? Ah, it is to be feared that this is where the eminent
counsel "fell down" badly, as young Bright said. They should have sent
an office boy with the papers or let the aunt go there alone to see the
judge! For Judge Orcutt, after another moment of frowning meditation,
threw the document into that basket which contained papers for further
consideration. Had the girl expectations of property? He would inquire,
at least have the girl and her aunt into his court and get a good look
at them before performing his routine function of initialing the legal
form. Poet that he was, he prided himself much on his powers of
penetration into human motives, when he had his subject before him....

For this reason Adelle and her aunt were notified that they should
appear before His Honor. The lawyers told Mrs. Clark that the visit to
the probate court was a mere formality,--meant nothing at all. But under
their breaths they cursed Judge Orcutt for a meddlesome old nuisance,
which would not have worried him. Adelle and her aunt, got up in their
best mourning, accordingly appeared before the probate judge, who at the
moment was hearing a case of non-support. So they waited in the dim,
empty courtroom, while the judge, ignoring their presence, went on with
the question of whether John Thums could pay his wife three dollars a
week or only two-fifty. At last he settled it at three dollars and
beckoned to Mrs. Clark and the little girl to come forward and
courteously inquired their business. Ignoring the officious young
lawyer, who was there and tried to shuffle the matter through, Judge
Orcutt asked both Adelle and her aunt all sorts of questions that did
not always seem to the point. He appeared to be curious about the family
history. Mr. Bright fumed. However, it was all going well enough until
Mrs. John blurted out something about the girl's share of the money that
was coming to them. At the word "money" the judge pricked up his ears.
In his court certainly money was the root of much evil as well as of
pain. What money? Was the little girl an heiress? From the blundering
lips of honest Mrs. Clark the story tumbled out, under the judge's
expert questioning, exactly as it was. At the conclusion, with one
significant scowl at the uncomfortable Mr. Bright, the judge gathered to
himself all the papers, saying that he should give the matter further
consideration and disappeared into his private chamber. The two Clarks
returned to Alton much mystified.

Young Mr. Bright remarked to his superiors, on his return to the office,
that he thought "there will be the devil to pay!" And there was. Of this
the little girl and her aunt knew nothing except that another legal
difficulty had been discovered and that the lawyers did not seem as
genial and happy as they had before. Thus a week slipped past, and then
they were again summoned to the probate court and taken into the judge's
private chamber behind the courtroom.




V


A good deal had happened in a quiet way during these seven days that had
much influence upon the fate of Clark's Field and of Adelle Clark. Up to
this time Judge Orcutt had never heard of Clark's Field or of the
Clarks. He lived on the other side of B----, in the country, and was not
much of a gossip. But he had ways of finding out about what was going on
when he wanted to. A word lightly cast forth at the club table where he
always lunched, and he could get a clue to almost anything of current
interest. And that noon, after he had first seen Mrs. Clark and her
niece, my friend Edsall happened to be at the judge's table. Orcutt
asked him what he knew about the Clark property in Alton. Edsall
happened to know almost all of importance that has been told here and
more. He knew of the movement on foot to develop the property, so long
held in idleness, but he did not know who were the persons interested.
He could find out. He did so, and within the week he had given the
probate judge the outline of as pretty a story of cheap knavishness as
the judge had come across for years.

"No one can say what the property is worth now," Edsall reported, "but
it must be millions."

"Millions!" the judge growled. "And they're trying to get it from an old
woman and a girl for twenty-five thousand dollars."

"A plain steal," the real estate man remarked.

"Sculduggery--I smelt it!" laughed the judge.

One of the first results of this was that Mr. Osmond Bright, senior
member of Bright, Seagrove, and Bright, was invited to call upon Judge
Orcutt in his chambers, and there received probably the worst lecture
this eminent corporation lawyer ever took from any man. He blustered, of
course, and defended his clients on the ground that they were taking a
great risk with the title, which was unsound, etc., etc. The poet judge
dealt him a savage look and curtly advised him to withdraw at once from
the position of counsel to the men involved in this shady transaction;
at least never to appear in his court in the guardianship case. (It may
be said here that the firm did withdraw from the case, as there was, in
their words, "nothing doing." But not much was accomplished, for another
equally eminent and unscrupulous firm of lawyers was employed the next
day and went to work in a more devious manner to get hold of the Field.)

Next the judge devoted half an hour to meditation over the fate of
Adelle Clark, more time than any one in her whole career hitherto had
given to consideration of her. It was clear enough to him that Mrs. John
Clark, honest woman though she appeared to be, could not cope with the
situation that must present itself. Nor, of course, could the girl. The
nefarious agreement to sell out all the Clark equity in the Field which
John Clark had executed prior to his departure for the Grand Army
Reunion, and which Judge Orcutt had forced the elder Bright to produce,
was evidence enough that the little girl needed some strong defender if
she were not to be fleeced utterly of her property. For she was heir now
to nearly three fourths of what the Clark estate might bring, and her
aunt to the remaining portion--so said the law. But who could be found,
modern knight, honest and disinterested and able enough to take upon his
shoulders the difficult defense of the girl's rights?

Judge Orcutt had not been greatly impressed by the appearance of the
girl. She was nearly fourteen now, and seemed to the discriminating
taste of the judge to be a quite ordinary young girl with a rather
common aunt. Nevertheless that must not enter into the question: she had
her rights just as much as if she had been all that his poet's heart
might desire a young girl to be! Rights--a curious term over which the
judge often stumbled. Had she any more real right to the property than
the sharks who were trying to steal it from her? Who had any right to
this abandoned field that for fifty years had been waiting for an absent
heir to announce himself? Did it really belong to the Public? When he
got thus far in his speculation, the judge always pulled himself up with
a start. That wasn't his business. He was bound to administer the
antiquated and curious system of laws concerning the bequest of property
with a serious sense of their sacredness whether he felt it or not. They
seemed to be an essential part of the crazy structure of society that
must not be questioned, least of all by a probate judge! If men had
devised these unreal rules and absurd regulations, probably there was
some divine necessity for them beyond his human insight. Judge Orcutt
never got farther than this point in his speculations. With a sigh he
dropped the Clark case, and the next morning sent for the two women to
appear in his court.

It did not take him long this time to discover that they were singularly
without good friends or advisers. They had no known relatives, no one
who could be expected to take a friendly interest in their affairs and
trusted to manage the business wisely. In earlier days Judge Orcutt
would have tried to find, in such a case, some able and scrupulous young
lawyer to perform the necessary function, somebody like himself who
would have a chivalrous regard for the defenseless condition of the two
women. Either that breed of lawyers had run out, or the judge was
becoming less confiding. For latterly, since the introduction of trust
companies, he had more than once put such cases in charge of these
impersonal agents. Trust companies were specially designed to meet two
pressing human wants,--permanence and honesty. They might not always be
efficient, for they were under such strict legal supervision that they
must always take the timid course, and they charged highly for their
services. But they could not very well be dishonest, nor die! They would
go on forever, at least as long as there was the institution of private
property and an intricate code of laws to safeguard it. Thus the judge
argued to himself again in considering the plight of these Clarks, and
decided to use the Washington Trust Company of B----, whose officers he
knew....

After explaining all this in simple terms to Mrs. Clark, he proposed to
her that her niece's interest in the Clark estate should be placed in
the hands of the trust company rather than hers, if they would accept
such an involved guardianship as Adelle Clark's promised to be.

"You know, my good woman," he said in conclusion, "you must be careful
in this matter." (The judge's manner towards "ordinary people" was
aristocratically condescending, and he considered the rooming-house
keeper very ordinary.) "Of course, you understand that I--that this
court--has no control whatever over your acts. You can if you like carry
out your husband's intention and convey to these parties all your
interest in his estate. But I cannot permit you to jeopardize the
interests of this minor, who is a ward of my court, by conveying her
share of the estate to them on any such terms as they propose."

"I'm sure," Mrs. John Clark mumbled in an aggrieved tone, "I had no idea
of doing any harm to the girl."

"No, of course not, my good woman. But you don't understand. As I have
told you, it looks as if there might be some money, considerable money,
coming to you and to her from this land when the title is straightened
out, and you don't want to do anything foolish now."

"I s'pose not," Mrs. Clark assented, somewhat dubiously. The "good
woman" had heard of this bonanza to come from Clark's Field when the
title was made right for so many years that she was humanly anxious to
touch a tangible profit at once. But she knew only too well that her
husband was a poor business man and probably the judge was right in
telling her not to sell the Field yet. The probate judge seemed to take
a good deal of interest in them for a gentleman of his importance. So
she listened respectfully to what he went on to say.

"You can do whatever you like, as I said. But if you should decide to
dispose of your husband's estate as he intended, your niece's
representative might be forced to oppose you, which would add another
bad complication to the legal troubles of Clark's Field, and necessarily
defer the time when either of you could sell the land or derive an
adequate return from it."

He paused after this polite threat, to let the idea sink in.

"I'm sure she and me don't want to fight," Mrs. Clark quickly replied
with a touch of humor, and the first expression that the judge had seen
upon the little girl's mute face appeared. A smile touched her lips,
flickered and went out. She sat stiffly beside her aunt in the judge's
great leather chair,--a pale, badly dressed little mouse of a girl, who
did not seem to understand the conversation.

"Well, then, I take it you will be guided in your actions about your
estate by the advice of your niece's guardian, whom I shall appoint."

He explained to them what a trust company was, and said that he hoped to
get the Washington Trust Company to undertake the guardianship of the
little girl. Then he dismissed them, appointing another meeting a week
hence when they were to return for final settlement of the matter. So
they left the judge's chambers. The girl neither dropped a curtesy, as
the judge would have thought suitable, nor gave him another smile, nor
even opened her lips. She faded out of his chambers after her black aunt
like a pale winter shadow.

The judge thought she showed a deplorable lack of breeding. He was
conscious that he had probably saved a fortune for the girl by all the
pains he was taking in this matter and felt that at least common
politeness was his due. But one was never paid for these things except
by a sense of duty generously performed. What was duty? And off the
judge went into another thorny speculation that would have made Bright,
Seagrove, and Bright laugh, and they were not inclined to laugh either
at or with Judge Orcutt these days. For in the words of the junior
member, this old maid of a probate judge had cut them out of the fattest
little piece of graft the office had seen in a twelvemonth! If judges
had been elective in the good old Commonwealth of M----, Judge Orcutt's
chances of reelection would have been slim, for Bright, Seagrove, and
Bright had strange underground connections with the politicians then
governing the city. Perhaps the poet in the judge would have rejoiced at
such a misadventure and profited thereby. As it was, whenever Bright,
Seagrove, and Bright had business in the probate court, which was not
often, they got other lawyers to represent them. Even "eminent counsel"
shrink from appearing before a judge who knows their real character.




VI


Adelle was not really unresponsive to the judge's kindness. She liked
the polite old gentleman,--old to fourteen because of the grizzled
mustache,--and was for her deeply impressed by her visits to the probate
judge's chambers. It was the first real event in her pale life, that and
her uncle's funeral, which seemed closely related. They made the date
from which she could reckon herself a person. What impressed her more
than the austere dignity of the judge's private rooms, with their prints
of famous personages, lined bookcases, and rich furniture, was Judge
Orcutt himself. He was the first gentleman she had ever met in any real
sense of the word. And Judge Orcutt was very much of a gentleman in
almost every sense of the word. He came from an old Puritan family, as
American families are reckoned, which had had its worthies for a young
man to respect, and its traditions, not of wealth but of culture and
breeding, kindly humanity, and an interest in life and letters.
Something of this aristocratic inheritance could be felt in his manners
by the two women who were not of his social class and who were treated
with an even greater consideration than if they had been. Adelle liked
also his sober gray suit with the very white linen and black tie, which
he wore like a man who cares more for the cleanliness and propriety of
his person than for fashion. All this and the modulated tones of his
cultivated voice had made a lively impression upon the dumb little girl.
She would have done anything in the world to please the judge, even
defying her aunt if that had been necessary. And she had always stood in
a healthy awe of her vigorous, outspoken aunt.

The first occasion when Adelle had an opinion all her own and announced
it publicly and unasked was due to the judge. Of course the question of
guardianship was much discussed in their very limited circle. Joseph
Lovejoy, the manager of Pike's Livery at the corner of Church
Street,--the Pike whose son Addie Clark had disdained,--was the oldest
and most important of the "roomers." Mr. Lovejoy was of the opinion that
trust companies were risky inventions that might some day disappear in
smoke. He advised the perplexed widow to "hire a smart lawyer" to look
out for her business interests. What did an old probate judge know about
real estate? This was the occasion on which Adelle made her one
contribution: she thought that "Judge Orcutt must be wiser than any
lawyer because he was a judge." A silly answer as the liveryman said,
yet surprising to her aunt. And she added--"He's a gentleman, too,"
though how the little girl discovered it is inexplicable.

The news of the prospective importance of Clark's Field had quickly
spread through Church Street and the Square, where the widow's credit
much improved. Something really seemed about to happen of consequence to
the old Field and the modest remnants of the Clark family. Emissaries
from the routed speculators came to see the widow. It dribbled down from
the magnates of the local bank, the River National, by way of the
cashier to the chief clerk, that the widow Clark might easily get
herself into trouble and lose her property if she took everybody's
advice. It should be said that the River National Bank disliked these
rich upstart trust companies; also that the capitalists who had laid
envious eyes on the Field were associated with the local bank, which
expected to derive profit from this deal,-the largest that Alton had
ever known even during the boom years at the turn of the century.

What wonder, then, that the widow Clark, who was a sensible enough woman
in the matter of roomers and household management and knew a bum from a
modest paying laboring man as well as any one in the profession, was
perplexed in the present situation as to the course of true wisdom?
Incredible as it may seem, it was Adelle who during this time of doubt
gave her aunt strength to resist much bad advice. Her influence was, as
might be expected, merely negative. For after that single deliverance of
opinion she made no comment on all the discussion and advice. She seemed
to consider the question settled already: it was this tacit method of
treating the guardianship as an accomplished fact that really influenced
her troubled aunt. When a certain point of household routine came up
between them, Adelle observed that, as they should not be at home on
Thursday morning, the thing would have to go over till the following
day. Thursday was the day of their appointment with the probate judge.
Mrs. Clark, of course, had not forgotten this important fact, but not
having yet made up her distracted mind she had purposely ignored the
appointment to see what her niece would say. Thus Adelle quietly settled
the point: they were to keep the appointment with the judge. Another
faint occasion of displaying will came to her, so faint that it would
seem hardly worth mentioning except that a faithful historian must
present every possible manifestation of character on the part of this
colorless heroine.

It occurred when they saw the judge on Thursday. The probate judge, who
was busy with another case on their arrival, did not invite them into
his private room as on former occasions, but merely shoved across his
bench a card on which he had written a name and an address.

"It's all arranged," he said to Mrs. Clark. "Just go over to the
Washington Trust Company and ask for Mr. Gardiner. He will take care of
you," and he smiled pleasantly in dismissal.

The widow was much put out by this summary way of dealing, for she had
intended to pour out to the judge her doubts, though she probably knew
that in the end she should follow his advice. She hesitated in the
corridor of the court-house, saying something about not being in any
hurry to go to the Washington Trust Company. She had not fully made up
her mind, etc. But Adelle, as if she had not heard her aunt's
objections, set off down the street in the direction of the trust
company's handsome building. Her aunt followed her. The matter was thus
settled.

Adelle had also felt disappointed at their brief interview; not bitterly
disappointed because she never felt bitterly about anything, but
consciously sorry to have missed the expected conference in the judge's
private chamber. She might never see him again! As a matter of fact,
although the probate court necessarily had much to do with her fate in
the settlement of the involved estate, it was not for seven years that
she had another chance of seeing the judge in chambers, and that, as we
shall discover, was on a very different occasion. Whether during all
these years Adelle ever thought much about the judge, nobody knows, but
Judge Orcutt often had occasion to recollect the pale, badly dressed
little girl who had no manners, when he signed orders and approved
papers _in re Adelle Clark, minor_.




VII


The Washington Trust Company had grown in power to the envy of its
conservative rivals ever since its organization, and was now one of the
richest reservoirs of capital in the city. Recently it had moved into
its new home in the banking quarter of the city,--the most expensive,
commodious, and richly ornamented bank premises in B----. The Washington
Trust Company was managed by "the younger crowd," and one way in which
the new blood manifested itself was by the erection of this handsome
granite building with its ornate bronze and marble appointments. The
officers felt that theirs was a new kind of business, largely involving
women, invalids, and dependents of rich habits, and for these a display
of magnificence was "good business."

When Adelle and her aunt paused inside the massive bronze doors of the
Trust Building and looked about them in bewilderment across the immense
surface of polished marble floor, it probably did not occur to either of
them that a new page in the book of destiny had been turned for them.
Yet even in Adelle's small, silent brain there must have penetrated a
consciousness of the place,--the home as it were of her new
guardian,--and such a magnificent home that it inspired at once both
timidity and pride. The two women wandered about the banking floor for
some minutes, peering through the various grilles at the busy clerks,
observing the careless profusion of notes, gold, and documents of value
that seemed piled on every desk, as if to indicate ostentatiously the
immensity of the property interests confided to the company's care. At
last, after they had been rebuffed by several busy clerks, a uniformed
attendant found them and inquired their business. The widow handed to
him the card she had received from the probate judge, and the usher at
once led them to an elegant little private elevator that shot them
upwards through the floors of the bank to the upper story. Here, in a
small, heavily rugged room behind a broad mahogany table, they met Mr.
John Gardiner, then the "trust officer" of the Washington Trust Company.
He was a heavy, serious-minded, bald man of middle age, and Adelle at
once made up her mind that she liked him far less than the judge. The
trust officer did not rise on their entrance as the judge always had
risen; merely nodded to them, motioned to some chairs against the wall,
and continued writing on a memorandum pad. Both the widow and Adelle
felt that they were not of much importance to the Washington Trust
Company, which was precisely what the trust company liked to have its
clients feel.

"Well," Mr. Gardiner said at last, clearing his voice, "so you are Mrs.
John Clark and Miss Adelle Clark?"

Of course he knew the fact, but some sort of introduction must be made.
Mrs. Clark, who was sitting hostilely on the edge of her chair, hugging
to herself a little black bag, nodded her head guardedly in response.

"I presume you have come to see me about the guardianship matter," the
trust officer continued. Then he fussed for some moments among the
papers on his desk as if he were hunting for something, which he at last
found. He seized the paper with relief, and took another furtive look at
his visitors from under his gold glasses as if to make sure that no
mistake had been made and began again:--

"At the request of Judge Orcutt,"--he pronounced the probate judge's
name with unction and emphasis,--"we have looked into the matter of the
Clark estate, and we have found, what I suppose you are already aware
of, that your husband's estate is extremely involved and with it this
little girl's interest in the property," For the first time he turned
his big bald head in Adelle's direction, and finding there apparently
nothing to hold his attention, ignored her completely thereafter, and
confined himself exclusively to the widow.

He paused and cleared his throat as if he expected some defense of the
Clark estate from the widow. But she said nothing. To tell the truth,
she didn't like the trust officer's manner. As she said afterwards to
Mr. Lovejoy, he seemed to be "throwing it into her," trying to impress
her with her own unimportance and the goodness of the Washington Trust
Company in concerning itself with her soiled linen. "As if he were doing
me a big favor," she grumbled. That was in fact exactly the idea that
Mr. Gardiner had of the whole affair. If it had been left to him, as he
had told the president of the trust company, he would not have the
Washington Trust Company mix itself up in such a dubious "proposition"
as the Clark estate was likely to prove. He was of the "old school" of
banking,--a relic of earlier days,--and did not approve of the company's
accepting any but the most solid trusts that involved merely the trouble
of cutting four per cent coupons in their management. But his superior
officers had listened favorably to the request of the probate judge,
wishing always to "keep in close touch" with the judge of the court
where they had so much business, and also having a somewhat farther
vision than the trust officer, as will be seen. A recommendation by the
probate judge was to the Washington Trust Company in the nature of a
royal invitation, not to be considered on purely selfish grounds; and
besides, they already scented rich pickings in the litigious situation
of Clark's Fields. They would be stupid if they had to content
themselves with their usual one per cent commission on income. The
assistant to the president of the trust company, a lively young banker
of the "new school," Mr. Ashly Crane, who had been asked to examine into
the situation of the Clark estate, had recognized its manifold
possibilities and had recommended favorable action. In the event it
proved that the "new school" was right: the Washington Trust Company
lost nothing by its disinterested act. (It never did lose anything by
its acts of charity, and that is why it has prospered so abundantly.)

"I do not know what the trust company will be able to do with the
property," the cautious Mr. Gardiner continued. "We have not yet
completed our examination: our attorneys are at present considering
certain legal points. But one thing is pretty certain," he hastened to
add with emphasis. "You must look for no income from the estate for the
present,--probably not for a term of years."

This made little impression upon the women. It meant nothing at all to
Adelle, and the widow had become so accustomed to disappointments about
the Clark property that she did not move a muscle at the announcement,
though she inwardly might regret the twenty-five thousand dollars which
had been promised her husband by the other crowd. That would mean a good
deal more to her business than two or three times the amount after a
"term of years." She was getting on, and the rooming business needed
capital badly. However, she had determined to do nothing detrimental to
the interests of her husband's niece, as the probate judge had told her
she might if she listened to the seduction of immediate cash. And
fortunately the bank officer did not ask for money to pay taxes and
interest on the mortgages, which had been the bugbear of her married
life. This was the next point touched upon by the trust officer.

"I presume that you are not in a financial position to advance anything
towards the expenses of the estate, which for the present may be heavy?"
He gave the widow another furtive look under his glasses, as if to
detect what money she had on her person.

Mrs. Clark shook her head vigorously: that she would not do--go on
pouring money into the bottomless pit of Clark's Field! Of course the
trust company had considered this point and made up its mind already to
advance the estate the necessary funds up to a safe amount, which would
become another lien on the little girl's income from her mother's
inheritance, should there be any.

This matter disposed of, the trust officer asked searching questions
about the Clark genealogy, which the widow answered quite fully, for it
was a subject on which her sister-in-law Addie had educated her so
completely that she knew everything there was to know except the exact
whereabouts of Edward S. or his heirs. Mr. Gardiner was specially
interested in Edward S., who had disappeared fifty years ago, and asked
Mrs. Clark to send him immediately all family letters bearing on Edward.
It was apparent that the trust company meant to go after Edward and his
heirs and either discover them if it were humanly possible or establish
the fact that they could safely be ignored. And they were in a much
better position, with their numerous connections and correspondents, to
prosecute such a search successfully than any one else who had tried it.
Mr. Gardiner, however, expressed himself doubtfully of their success.

"We shall do our best," he said, "and let you know from time to time of
the progress we are making."

And after exacting a few more signatures from the widow, who by this
time had become adept in signing "Ellen Trigg Clark," the trust officer
nodded to his visitors in dismissal.

It would be difficult to say what Adelle was thinking about during this
interview. She sat perfectly still as she always did: one of her minor
virtues as a child was that she could sit for hours without wriggling or
saying a word. She did not even stare about her at the lofty room with
its colored glass windows and shiny mahogany furniture as any other
young person might. She gazed just above the bald crown of the trust
officer's head and seemed more nearly absorbed in Nirvana than a young
American ever becomes. But there is little doubt that the long interview
in the still, high room of the bank building did make an impression upon
the trust company's ward.

She trailed after her aunt down the marble stairs, for the trust officer
did not trouble himself about their exit from his office as he did with
solid clients who had going estates, and the widow was too timid to
summon the bronze car from its hole in the wall. They passed through the
great banking room on the main floor, where, because of the largeness
and the decorum of this sanctuary of property, a crowd of patrons seemed
to make no disturbance. Adelle sat in reverie all the way out to Alton
in the street-car and did not wake up until they turned from the Square
into the dingy side street. Then she said, apropos of nothing,--

"It's a pretty place."

"What place?" snapped the widow, who realized that a whole working day
had been lost "for nothing," and the roomers' beds were still to make.

"That trust place," Adelle explained.

"Um," her aunt responded enigmatically, as one who would say that
"pretty is as pretty does."

It had not appeared to her as a place of beauty. But to Adelle, who had
seen nothing more ornate than the Everitt Grade School of Alton, the
Second Congregational Church, and the new City Hall, the interior of the
Washington Trust Company, with its bronze and marble and windows that
shed soft violet lights on the white floors, awakened an unknown
appetite for richness and splendor, color and size. That was what she
had been thinking about without realizing it while the trust officer
talked to her aunt. She called this barbaric profusion of rich materials
"pretty," and felt, very faintly, a personal happiness in being
connected with it in some slight manner.




VIII


If the excursions to the probate court and the trust company had roused
expectations of change in their condition, they were to be disappointed.
From that afternoon when they turned into Church Street on their return
from the Washington Trust Company, the monotony and drudgery of their
former life settled down on them with an even greater insistence. The
dusty ROOMS FOR RENT sign was tucked into the front window with its
usual regularity, for do what she could, Mrs. Clark could not attain
that pinnacle of the landlady's aspirations, a houseful of permanent
roomers. The young men were inconstant, the middle-aged liable to
matrimony, the old to death, and all to penury or change of occupation
and residence. So the old fight went on as before during all the
twenty-three years of the widow Clark's married life,--a fight to exist
in a dusty, worn, and shabby fashion, with a file of roomers tramping
out the stair carpet, spotting the furniture, and using up the linen. To
be sure, two great drains upon income no longer troubled her,--Clark's
Field and the Veteran. With these encumbrances removed she could make
ends meet.

After a few weeks she forgot her doubts about the wisdom of following
Judge Orcutt's advice and placing her interest in the estate together
with her niece's in care of the trust company. The manager of the
livery-stable, who was the nearest thing to permanency the house knew,
shook his head over her folly in trusting a trust company, but the
speculators and their lawyers let her severely alone, knowing that they
had been outwitted and flitting to other schemes. The Square seemed to
accept the fresh eclipse of the Clark estate after its false appearance
of coming to a crisis. And the character of the Square was fast changing
with all else these busy years. It was no longer a neighborhood center
of gossip. There were new faces--and many foreign ones--in the rows of
shops. The neighborhood was deteriorating, or evolving, as you happened
to look at it.

The Washington Trust Company seemed to have quite forgotten the
existence of the Clark women except for the occasional appearance in the
mail of an oblong letter addressed in type to Mrs. Ellen Trigg Clark,
which bore in its upper left-hand corner a neat vignette of the trust
building. Adelle studied these envelopes carefully, not to say tenderly,
with something of the emotion that the trust company's home had roused
in her the only time she had been within its doors. The vignette, which
represented a considerable Grecian temple, she thought "pretty," and the
neat, substantial-looking envelope suggested a rich importance to the
communication within that also pleased the girl. She knew that it had to
do with her remotely. Yet there was never anything thrilling in these
communications from the trust company. They were signed by Mr. Gardiner
and curtly informed Mrs. Clark of certain meaningless facts or more
often curtly inquired for information,--"Awaiting your kind reply,"
etc., or merely requested politely another example of the widow's
signature. They were models of brief, impersonal, business
communications. If Adelle had ever had any experience of personal
relationship she might have resented these perfunctory epistles from her
legal guardian, but for all she knew that was the way all people treated
one another. Evidently her legal guardian had no desire for any closer
personal contact with its ward, and she waited, not so much patiently as
pensively, for it to demonstrate a more lively interest in her
existence....

Meanwhile there was debate in the Church Street house about a matter
that more closely touched the young girl. She had graduated from the
Everitt School the preceding June and would naturally be going on now
into the high school with her better conditioned schoolmates. But she
herself, though not averse to school, had suggested that she should stay
at home and help her aunt in the house or find a place in one of the
shops in the Square where she might earn a little money. Mrs. Clark, who
has been described as a realist, might have favored this practical plan,
had it not been that Adelle was a Clark--all that was left of them, in
fact. The widow had lived so long under the shadow of the Clark
expectations that she could not easily escape from their control now
that she was alone. A Trigg, of course, under similar circumstances
would have gone into a shop at once, but a Clark ought to have a better
education in deference to her expectations. The heiress of Clark's Field
must never conclude her education with the grades.... So finally it was
decided that Adelle should enter the high school for a year, at any
rate, and to that end a new school dress of sober blue serge was
provided, made by Adelle with her aunt's assistance.

These days Adelle rose at an early hour to do the chamber work while her
aunt got breakfast, then changed her dress, looked hurriedly over her
lessons, gobbled her breakfast, and with her books and a tin lunch-box
strapped together set forth to walk the mile and a half to the high
school in order to save car-fare. There she performed her daily tasks in
a perfunctory, dead manner, not uncommon. Once an exasperated teacher
had demanded testily,--

"Miss Clark, don't you ever think?"

The timid child had answered seriously,--

"Yes, sometimes I think."

Whereat the class tittered and Adelle had a mild sensation of dislike
for the irascible teacher, who reported in "teachers' meeting" that
Adelle Clark was as nearly defective as a child of her years could be
and be "all right," and that the grades ought not to permit such pupils
to graduate into the high school. Indeed, algebra, Cæsar, and Greek
history were as nearly senseless to Adelle Clark as they could be. They
were entirely remote from her life, and nothing of imagination rose from
within to give them meaning. She learned by rote, and she had a poor
memory. It was much the same, however, with English literature or social
science or French, subjects that might be expected to awaken some
response in the mind of a girl. The only subject that she really liked
was dancing, which the gymnasium instructor taught. Adelle danced very
well, as if she were aware of being alive when she danced. But even the
athletic young woman who had the gymnasium classes reported that Adelle
Clark was too dull, too lifeless, to succeed as a dancer or athletic
teacher. These public guardians of youth may or may not have been right
in their judgments, but certainly as yet the girl had not "waked up"....

Adelle's high-school career was interrupted in January, just as she had
turned fifteen, by her aunt's sickness. For the first time in forty
years, as the widow told the doctor, she had taken to her bed. "Time to
make up for all the good loafing you have missed," the young doctor
joked cheaply in reply, not realizing the hardship of invalidism, with a
houseful of roomers, in a small back bedroom near enough to the center
of activities for the sick woman to know all that happened without
having the strength to interfere. It was only the grippe, the doctor
said, advising rest, care, and food. It would be a matter of a week or
two, and Adelle was doing her best to take her aunt's place in the house
and also nurse her aunt. But Mrs. Clark never left her bed until she was
carried to the cemetery to be laid beside the Veteran in the already
crowded lot. The grippe proved to be a convenient name to conceal a
general breaking-up, due to years of wearing, ceaseless woman's toil
without hope, in the disintegrating Clark atmosphere that ate like an
acid into the consciousness even of plain Ellen Trigg, with her humble
expectations from life.

Adelle was much moved by the death of her aunt, the last remaining
relative that she knew of, though the few people who saw her at this
time thought she "took it remarkably well." They interpreted her
expressionless passivity to a lack of feeling. As a matter of fact, she
had been much more attached to her aunt than to any one she had ever
known. The plain woman, who had no pretensions and did her work
uncomplainingly because it was useless to complain, had inspired the
girl with respect and given her what little character she had. Ellen
Clark was a stoic, unconsciously, and she had taught Adelle the wisdom
of the stoic's creed. The girl realized fully now that she was alone in
life, alone spiritually as well as physically, and though she did not
drop tears as she came back to the empty Church Street house from the
cemetery,--for that was not the thing to do now: it was to get back as
soon as possible and set the house to rights as her aunt would have done
so that the roomers should not be put out any further,--her heart was
heavy, nevertheless, and she may even have wondered sadly what was to
become of her.

That was the question that disturbed the few persons who had any
interest in the Clark women,--the manager of the livery-stable among
them. It was plainly not the "proper thing" for the girl to continue
long in a house full of men, and irresponsible men at that. Adelle was
not aware what was the "proper thing," but she felt herself inadequate
to keeping up the establishment unaided by her aunt, although that is
what she would have liked to do, go on sweeping and making beds and
counting out the wash and making up the bills, with or without school.
But the liveryman hinted to her on her return from the funeral that she
ought to go immediately to some friend's house, or have some married
woman stay with her until her future had been determined upon. Adelle
knew of no house where she could make such a visit, nor of any one whom
she could invite to stay with her. It may seem incredible, as it did to
Mr. Lovejoy, that "folks could live all their lives in Alton like the
Clarks" and have no relatives or friends to lean upon in an emergency.
But the truth is that when a family begins to go down in this world,
after having some pretensions, it is likely to shed social relations
very fast instead of acquiring new ones. A family in a settled social
equilibrium (rarely the case in America), or one that is going up in the
human scale, is apt to acquire connections, quite apart from the
accidents of birth and social gifts, because the mental attitude is an
open and optimistic one, attracting to itself humanity instead of
timidly withdrawing into itself. Strength attracts and weakness repels
in the long run here as elsewhere. The Clarks, who had never been
considerable or numerous, had in the course of three generations
gradually lost their hold upon the complex threads of life, shiftlessly
shedding relationships as the Veteran had done, or proudly refusing
inferior connections as Addie had, until the family was left solitary in
the person of this one fifteen-year-old girl, in whom the social habit
seemed utterly atrophied. Of course, Adelle could have appealed to her
aunt's pastor, but it never occurred to her to do that or to make use of
any other social machinery. She went back to the Church Street house,
occupied her old room, and for the next few days continued the catlike
routine of her life as nearly as she could under the changed conditions.

Mr. Lovejoy, who continued to be the one most concerned in her welfare,
induced her to write a crude little note to the "Washington Trust
Company, Dear Sirs," notifying them of the demise of her aunt. The
livery-stable man, who was a widower and not beyond middle age, which
does not necessarily mean in his class that the wife is dead and buried,
but merely permanently absent for one reason or another, might have
thrown sentimental eyes upon the girl if she had been different, more of
a woman.

"She'll likely enough be an heiress some of these days," he said to his
employer, old John Pike.

Pike was an old resident of Alton and had known all the Clarks. He
grunted as if he had heard that song before. "That's what they used to
say of her mother, Addie Clark," he remarked, remembering Addie's
superior air towards his son.

"Well," his manager continued, "I see that trust company's got its signs
up all over the Field."

"'T ain't the first time there's been signs there," Pike retorted,
eyeing a succulent cigar he had succeeded in extracting from an inner
pocket, "nor the last either, I expect!"

"It looks as if they meant business this time."

"They can't get no title," Pike averred, for he banked with the River
National, which was now quite bearish on Clark's Field. After a pause
the old liveryman asked with a broad smile,--"Why don't you go in for
the heiress, Jim?"

(Mr. Lovejoy was accounted "gay," a man to please the ladies.)

"Me! I never thought of it--she's nothing but a girl. The old one
pleased me better--she was a smart woman!"

"The girl's got all the property, ain't she?"

"I suppose so."

"Well, then, you get two bites from the same cherry."

The manager made no advances to the girl, however, and for that we must
consider Adelle herself as chiefly responsible. For, as a woman, or
rather the hope of a woman, she was uninteresting,--still a pale,
passive, commonplace girl. What womanhood she might expect was slow in
coming to her. Even with the halo of the Clark inheritance she could
arouse slight amorous interest in any man. And thus Adelle's
insignificance again saved her--shall we say?--from the mean fate of
becoming the prey of this "roomer."

"No man will ever take the trouble to marry that girl," Mr. Love joy
remarked to his employer, "unless she gets her fortune in hard cash." In
which prophecy the widower was wrong.




IX


In a few days Mr. Gardiner called at the Church Street house on behalf
of the trust company, to express to its ward its sympathy with her in
her bereavement and to find out what her situation was, and her needs
for the future. Adelle, sitting opposite the portly, bald-headed bank
officer in the little front room, did not feel especially excited. She
could not imagine what this visit might mean to her. She answered all
his questions in a low, colorless voice, promptly enough and
intelligently enough. Yes, her aunt was her only relative so far as she
knew. No, she had made no plans--she would like to stay where she was if
she could. It would be pretty hard to do everything alone, etc. As the
trust officer, puzzled by the situation, continued to ply her with
questions so that he might gain a clearer understanding of the
circumstances, he became more and more perplexed. This was something
quite out of his experience as a trust officer. He had supposed in
making this call that he would have merely a perfunctory duty to
perform, to ratify some obviously "sensible" plan for the future of the
institution's ward. As he happened to have other business in Alton, he
called personally instead of writing a note.

But now he discovered that this fifteen-year-old girl had absolutely no
relatives, nor "proper friends," nor visible means of support except the
income from "a third-class boarding-house," as he told the president of
the trust company the next day. Clearly the company must do something
for its ward, whose fortune they were now beginning to discuss in seven
figures.

"She must have a suitable allowance."

That the good Mr. Gardiner saw at once. For to his thrifty, suburban
soul the situation of a girl of fifteen with large prospects in a
third-class rooming-house was truly deplorable. The dignities and
proprieties of life were being outraged: it might affect the character
of the trust company should it become known....

Rising at last from the dusty sofa where he had placed his large person
for this talk, the trust officer said kindly,--

"We must consider what is best to be done, my girl. Can you come to the
bank to see me next Monday?"

Adelle saw no reason why she should not go to see him Monday, as high
school still seemed impossible with the house on her hands.

"Come in, then, Monday morning!" And the trust officer went homewards to
confide his perplexity to his wife as trust officers sometimes do. It
was a queer business, his. As trust officer he had once gone out to some
awful place in Dakota to take charge of the remains of a client who had
got himself shot in a brawl, and brought the body back and buried it
decently in a New England graveyard with his ancestors. He had advised
young widows how to conduct themselves so that they should not be
exposed to the wiles of rapacious men. Once even he had counseled
matrimony to a client who was difficult to control and had approved,
unofficially, of her selection of a mate. A good many of the social
burdens of humanity came upon his desk in the course of the day's
business, and he was no more inhuman than the next man. He was a father
of a respectable family in the neighboring suburb of Chester. His habit
was naturally to hunt for the proper formula for each situation as it
arose and to apply this formula conscientiously. According to Mr.
Gardiner, the duty of trust companies to society consisted in applying
suitable formulas to the human tangles submitted to them by their
clients. And in the present case Mrs. Gardiner suggested the necessary
formula.

"Why don't you send the girl to a good boarding-school? You say she's
fifteen and will have money."

"Yes,--some money, perhaps a good deal," her husband replied. Even in
the bosom of his family, the trust officer was guarded in statement.

"How much?" Mrs. Gardiner demanded.

"What difference does it make how much, so long as we can pay her school
bills?"

"It makes all the difference in the world!" the wife replied, with the
superior tone of wisdom. "It makes the difference whether you send her
to St. Catherine's or Herndon Hall."

It will be seen that the trust officer's wife believed in that clause of
the catechism that recommends contentment with that state of life to
which Providence hath called one, and also that education should fit one
for the state of life to which he or she was to be called by Providence.
St. Catherine's, as the trust officer very well knew, was a modest
institution for girls under the direction of the Episcopal Church, for
which he served as trustee, where needy girls were cheaply provided with
a "sensible" education, and "the household arts" were not neglected. In
other words, the girls swept their rooms, made their own beds, and
washed the dishes after the austere repasts, and the fee was
correspondingly small. Whereas Herndon Hall--well, every one who has
young daughters to launch upon the troubled sea of social life, and the
ambition to give them the most exclusive companionship and no very high
regard for learning,--at least for women,--knows all about Herndon Hall,
by that name or some other equally euphonious. The fees at Herndon Hall
were fabulous, and it was supposed to be so "careful" in its scrutiny of
applicants that only those parents with the best introductions could
possibly secure admission for their daughters. There were, of course, no
examinations or mental tests of any kind.

Mrs. Gardiner, who had the ambition to send her Alicia to Herndon Hall
in due course, if the trust officer felt that he could afford the
expense, opened her eyes when her husband replied to her question
promptly,--

"I guess we'll figure on Herndon Hall."

Mrs. Gardiner inferred that the prospects of the trust company's ward
must be quite brilliant, and she was prepared to do her part.

"Why don't you ask the girl out here over Sunday?" she suggested.

"Oh, she's a queer little piece," the trust officer replied evasively.
"I don't believe you would find her interesting--it isn't necessary."




X


On her next visit to the splendid home of her guardian, Adelle was
received by no less a person than the president of the trust company
himself. In conference between the officers of the trust company it had
been decided that the president, his assistant, and the trust officer
should meet the girl, explain to her cautiously the nature of her
prospects, and announce to her the arrangement for her education that
they had made. But before recording this interview a word should be said
about the present situation of Clark's Field.

The search that the bank had started for trace of the missing Edward S.
and his heirs had resulted as futilely as the more feeble measures taken
earlier by Samuel Clark. It is astonishing how completely people can
obliterate themselves, give them a few years! There was absolutely no
clue in all the United States for discovering this lost branch of the
Alton Clarks, nor any reason to believe in their existence except the
established fact that in 1848 Edward S., with a wife and at least three
babies, had left Chicago for St. Louis. Although the Alton branch of the
Clarks had shown no powers of multiplying,--their sole representative
now being one little girl,--nevertheless there might be a whole colony
of Clarks somewhere interested in one half of the valuable Field. But
more than fifty years had now passed since the final disappearance of
Edward S. Clark, and the law was willing to consider means of ignoring
all claims derived from him. It was the young assistant to the
president, Mr. Ashly Crane, who worked out the details of the plan by
which the restless title was to be finally "quieted" and the trust
company enabled to dispose of its ward's valuable estate. Some of the
officers and larger stockholders of the trust company were interested in
an affiliated institution known as the Washington Guaranty and Title
Company, which was prepared to do business in the guaranteeing of
real-estate titles that were from one reason or another defective, which
it is needless to say the majority are. For a reasonable sum this new
company undertook to perfect the title to Clark's Field and then to
insure purchasers and sellers against any inconvenient claims that might
arise in the future, defending the title against all comers or in case
of defeat assuming the losses. A very convenient institution in a
society where the laws of property are so intricate and sacred! As a
first step there was an extensive public advertisement for the missing
heir or heirs, and then in due form a "judicial sale" of the property by
order of court, after which the court pronounced the title to Clark's
Field, so long clouded, to be "quieted." And woe to any one who might
now dare to raise that restless spirit, be he Edward S. or any
descendant of his!

This legal process of purification for Clark's Field being under way,
the ingenious mind of Mr. Ashly Crane turned to the next problem, which
was to dispose of the property advantageously. Manifestly the Washington
Trust Company could not go into the real estate business on behalf of
its ward and peddle out slices of her Field. That would not be proper,
nor would it be especially profitable to the trust company. Mr. Crane,
therefore, conceived the brilliant idea of forming a "Clark's Field
Associates" corporation to buy the undeveloped tract of land from the
trust company, who as guardian could sell it in whole or in part, and
the new corporation might then proceed at its leisure to "develop" the
old Field advantageously. For the benefit of the ignorant it maybe
bluntly stated here that this was merely a device for buying Adelle's
property cheaply and selling it at a big profit,--not as crude a method
as the other that the Veteran had almost fallen a victim to, because the
Washington Trust Company was a "high-toned" institution and did not do
things crudely; but in effect the device was the same.

The Clark's Field Associates was, therefore, incorporated and made an
offer to the trust company for Clark's Field,--a fair offer in the
neighborhood of a million dollars for the fifty-acre tract of city land.
An obstacle, however, presented itself at this point, which in the end
forced the Associates to modify their plan materially. The sale had to
be approved by the probate judge, the same Judge Orcutt who had once
before befriended the unknown little girl. This time the judge examined
the scheme carefully, even asked for a list of the Associates, which was
an innocent collection of dummy names, and finally after conference with
the trust officers insisted that the ward should reserve for herself one
half the shares of the Clark's Field Associates, thus obtaining an
interest in the possible benefits to be derived from their transactions.
This was accordingly done, and the subscription to the stock of the new
corporation by some of the capitalists who had been invited to
"participate" in this juicy melon was cut down one half. They were not
pleased by the act of the probate judge, but they accepted half the
melon with good grace, assuring the judge through Mr. Crane that it was
a highly speculative venture anyhow to put Clark's Field on the market,
and the Associates might lose every penny they risked on it. The judge
merely smiled. Poet that he was, he was by no means a fool in the
affairs of this life.

When Adelle made her second visit to the Washington Trust Company, the
scheme outlined above had not been perfected, but the legal process was
far enough along to show promise of a brilliant fulfillment. The "queer
little piece," as Mr. Gardiner described Adelle to his wife, had thus
grown in importance within a brief year to such dignified persons as
President West of the trust company and the wealthy stockholders who
under various disguises were embarking upon the venture of the Clark's
Field Associates. She was no longer merely the heiress of a legal mess:
she was the means by which a powerful modern banking institution hoped
to make for its inner circle of patrons a very profitable investment. So
these gentlemen examined with curiosity the shy little person who slowly
advanced across the carpeted floor of Mr. Gardiner's private office. The
president himself rose from his chair and extended to Adelle a large,
handsome, white hand with the polite greeting,--

"I am very glad to meet you, Miss Clark."

Adelle was more than ordinarily dumb. She had expected to see the trust
officer alone as she had the other time, and in the presence of these
strangers she took her one means of defense,--silence. The president,
however, did the talking, and he talked more humanly than stuffy Mr.
Gardiner. After expressing a deep sympathy with Adelle for the death of
her aunt (of whose existence he had not been aware before this week), he
easily shifted to the topic of Adelle's future. She must, of course,
continue her education. Adelle replied that she should like to keep on
with school, by which she meant the Alton Girls' High.

"Of course, of course," the president said easily. "Every girl should
have the proper sort of education, and it is all the more important when
her responsibilities and opportunities in life are likely to be
increased by the possession of property."

But Adelle did not see how she could continue at the high school, now
that her aunt had died and there was no one but herself to look after
the roomers.

"Oh, very easily, very easily," the president thought. "How would you
like to go to boarding-school, my dear?"

Adelle did not know all at once. She had read something about
boarding-schools in story-books, but her conception of them was hazy.
And she ventured to say out loud that they must take a "sight of money."
The president of the trust company smiled for the benefit of his
fellow-officers and proceeded to break the news of the rich expectations
awaiting the timid little girl.

"I think we shall find enough money somehow to send you to a good
school," he said gayly. "You know we have some money in the bank that
will be yours,--oh, not a great deal at present, but enough to give you
a good education, provided you don't spend too much on clothes, young
lady."

This was a cruel jest, considering the quality of Adelle's one poor
little serge dress which she had on, and she took it quite literally.
While absorbing the idea that she must make her clothes go as far as
possible, she made no remark.

"The property that we hold in trust for you until you shall become of
age," the president resumed more seriously, "is not yet in such
condition that we can tell you exactly how much it will amount to. But
it is safe to say that all your reasonable needs will be provided for.
You'll never have to worry about money!"

He congratulated himself upon the happy phrasing of his announcement. It
was cautiously vague, and yet must relieve the little girl of all
apprehension or worry. Adelle made no response. For a Clark to be told
that there was no need to worry over money was too astounding for
belief.

"Now," said the president, who felt that he had done everything called
for in the situation, "I will leave Mr. Gardiner to explain all the
details to you. I hope you will enjoy your new school.... Whenever you
are in the city, come in and see us!"

He shook the little girl's hand and went off with his good-looking young
assistant, whose sharp glances had made Adelle shyer than ever. The two
men smiled as they went out, as though they were saying to
themselves,--"Queer little piece to have all that money!"

Mr. Gardiner took a great many words to explain to Adelle that her
guardians had thought it best "after due consideration" to send her to
an excellent boarding-school for young ladies--Herndon Hall. He rolled
the name with an unction he had learned from his wife. Herndon Hall, it
seemed, was in a neighboring State, not far from the great city of New
York, and Adelle must prepare herself for her first long railroad
journey. She would not have to take this alone, however, for Miss
Thompson, the head teacher, had telephoned the trust company that she
herself would be in B---- on the following Friday and would escort Miss
Clark to the Hall. Adelle could be ready, of course, by Friday.

Here Adelle demurred. There were the roomers--what would happen to them?
And the old Church Street house--what was to become of the house? The
banker waved aside these practical woman's considerations with a smile.
Some one would be sent out from the trust company to look after all such
unimportant matters. So, intimidated rather than persuaded, Adelle left
the trust company building to prepare herself for her new life that was
to begin on the following Friday noon.

They were accustomed to doing large things in the Washington Trust
Company, and of course they did small things in a large way. But the
little orphan's fate had really been the subject of more consideration
than might possibly be inferred from the foregoing. The school matter
had been carefully canvassed among the officers of the company. Mr.
Gardiner had expressed some doubts as to the wisdom of sending Adelle at
once to a large, fashionable school, even if she had the money to pay
for it. Vague glimmerings of reason as to what really might make for the
little girl's happiness in life troubled him, even after his wife's
unhesitating verdict. But President West had no doubts whatever and
easily bore down his scruples. He belonged to a slightly superior class
socially and did not hold Herndon Hall in the same awe in which it was
regarded in the Gardiner household. His daughters had friends who had
got what education they had under Miss Annette Thompson and had married
well afterwards and "taken a good position in society," which was really
the important thing. Miss Thompson herself was of a very good New York
family,--he had known her father who had been something of a figure in
finance until the crash of ninety-three,--and the head of Herndon Hall
was reputed to have an excellent "formative" influence upon her girls.
And certainly that raw little specimen who had presented herself in his
office needed all the "formative influence" she could get!

"We must give her the best," he pronounced easily, "for she is likely to
be a rich woman some day."

It may be seen that President West agreed with Mrs. Gardiner's practical
interpretation of the catechism. After his interview with Adelle he said
to the trust officer,--"She needs--everything! Herndon Hall will be the
very thing for her--will teach her what a girl in her position ought to
know."

These remarks reveal on his part a special philosophy that will become
clearer as we get to know better Miss Annette Thompson and Herndon Hall.
The officers of the trust company felt that in sending their ward to
this fashionable girls' school, they were doing their duty by her not
only safely but handsomely, and thenceforth dismissed her from their
thoughts, except when a subordinate brought them at regular intervals a
voucher to sign before issuing a check on behalf of Adelle....

"Terribly crude little piece," the president of the trust company said
of Adelle, thinking of his own vivacious daughters, who at her age had
been complete little women of the world, and of all the other pretty,
confident, voluble girls he met in his social life. "She has seen
nothing of life," he said in extenuation, by which he meant naturally
that Adelle Clark had never known how "nice people live," had never been
to dancing-school or parties, or country clubs or smart dressmakers, and
all the rest of what to him constituted a "suitable education" for a
young girl who was to inherit money.

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile the "crude little piece" returned to her old home, somewhat
shaken in mind by what had happened to her. It never entered her little
head to argue with the august officers of the trust company, who stood
to her as the sacred symbol of Authority. She must buy a trunk, pack it,
and be at the Eclair Hotel in B---- by noon on the following Friday.
Those were her orders. She looked wonderingly at the two hundred dollar
check which Mr. Gardiner had given her for the expense of making herself
ready. She had never before seen two hundred dollars. She knew only
abstractly by the way of her arithmetic that such vast sums of money
existed. And now she was expected to spend this fortune in the space of
three days upon herself. She folded up the slip of paper and tucked it
carefully into her purse. When she presented it at one of the shops in
the Square in payment for the cheap trunk she had selected, she started
a local sensation. By the time the check had traveled from the clerk to
the proprietor and thence to the River National Bank, which did not take
long, it was known in that busy neighborhood that Clark's Field had made
good at last! Here was ready money from it as evidence. Adelle Clark was
in fact the heiress that her mother Addie had been in fancy.

The manager of the livery-stable may have had his regrets for the light
manner in which he had treated old Pike's suggestion. He drove the girl
himself into B---- on Friday with her new trunk strapped behind the
closed carriage and touched his high hat when she dismounted before the
flunky-guarded doors of the hotel. Adelle did not notice the hat
business: she gave her old friend and best "roomer" her hand as she said
good-bye, then slowly mounted the stone steps of the hotel. And that was
the last that Church Street saw of the Clarks.

The liveryman, slowly retracing his way across the bridge to Alton,
mused upon the picture that the little girl presented in her blue school
suit, going up the steps of the Eclair Hotel. It was all like a stage
story, he felt, and he thought long about the Clarks, whom he had known
for two generations and about human fate generally. He summed up his
reflections in one enigmatic exclamation,--"That blamed old pasture!"

Adelle was an "heiress." Already she had been whisked away from Church
Street to her new life. And all because of "that blamed old
pasture"--otherwise Clark's Field.




XI


The civilized inhabitants of our twentieth-century world are acquainted
with many more kinds of torture than the ingenious managers of the
Inquisition ever dreamed of in their most lurid nightmares. And of all
these peculiarly modern forms of torture, perhaps the fashionable girls'
school such as Herndon Hall takes first rank. A boys' school of the same
order--conducted under the patronage of some holy saint's name--is often
pretty bad, but it cannot rival the girls' school because women are more
skillful in applying social torture and have a thousand ways of doing it
to a man's or boy's one. Even among the softest and snobbiest of boys
and masters there will always remain a residuum of male self-respect. If
the newcomer, no matter how wrongly classed, proves that he has physical
courage, or an aptitude for sports, or even a sunny, common-sense
disposition, he will quickly escape from his probationary period of
torture and become tolerated; while if a girl appears among her future
schoolmates with an ill-made, unfashionable frock, or has manners that
betray less sophistication than is to be expected, she may never survive
the torture that begins on the instant and follows her relentlessly, in
the schoolroom and out, until she either adapts herself to her
environment, becoming in turn a torturer, or is removed to a more
congenial environment.

Adelle Clark presented to the little world of Herndon Hall a very
vulnerable appearance when she arrived at the school on that Friday
evening. She was still wearing the blue serge school dress that she and
her aunt had made for her high-school début, also some coarse, faded
brown stockings, and stout cheap shoes, not to mention an unmentionable
hat of no style at all. She had taken that unfortunate joke of the trust
company's president literally: she must not waste her substance upon
clothes. Even without this inhibition she had scarcely the skill and the
courage necessary to spend her two hundred dollars to advantage in three
days. So she had bought herself a trunk, a few suits of much-needed
heavy underwear, some handkerchiefs, and a coat that she had desired all
winter, a thick, clumsy affair that completely enveloped her slight
figure. Then her imagination of wants had given out.

The young teacher, who had taken Miss Thompson's place because of a
sudden indisposition that attacked the head mistress, had made Adelle
uncomfortably aware that something was wrong, but she put down her
coolness and unsympathetic silence during their brief journey to the
fact that Miss Stevens was a "teacher" and therefore felt "superior,"
"Rosy," as the older Hall girls called Miss Stevens, was not at all
"superior" in her attitude to the girls. She dressed quite smartly and
youthfully and was their best confidante. But she had received a shock
when she saw "that little fright" (as she reported to Miss Thompson)
timidly sitting on the edge of her chair in the parlor of the Eclair
Hotel. "Where can she come from?" she had said to herself; and later she
had supplemented this query by thinking, "wherever it was, she had
better go back to it as fast as she can--the little fright!"

Fortunately Adelle did not understand the glances that the elegant young
women who were chattering in the Hall drawing-room before dinner cast
upon her when she was introduced to her schoolmates. Nor did she
immediately comprehend the intention of the insults and tortures to
which she was submitted during the ensuing year. She felt lonely: she
missed her aunt and even the "roomers" more than she had expected to.
But gradually even into her dumb mind there penetrated a sense of
undeserved ignominy, not clearly localized, because she did not possess
a sufficient knowledge of sophisticated manners to realize the refined
nature of her torture. She had merely an accumulating sense of pain and
outrage. She was not happy in Herndon Hall: she did not know it until
afterwards, but that was the plain truth. Nobody wanted her there, and
she knew enough to understand it. Even a cat or a dog has sufficient
social sense for that!

       *       *       *       *       *

Externally Herndon Hall was all that was charming and gracious--a much
more beautiful and refined home than Adelle had ever seen. It occupied
one of those spacious old manorial houses above the Hudson, where the
river swept in a gracious curve at the foot of the long lawn. An avenue
of old trees led up to the large stone house from the high road half a
mile away. There were all sorts of dependencies,--stables, greenhouses,
and ornamental gardens of the old-fashioned kind,--which were carefully
kept up so that the Hall resembled a large private estate, such as it
was meant to be, rather than a school. It was popularly supposed that
Herndon Hall had once been the country-place of Miss Thompson's people,
which was not true; but that shrewd woman of the world, recognizing all
the advantages of an aristocratic background, kept up the place on a
generous footing, with gardeners, stablemen, and many inside servants,
for which, of course, the pupils paid liberally. The Hall was run less
as a school than as a private estate. Many of the girls had their own
horses in the stable, and rode every pleasant afternoon under the care
of an old English riding-master, who was supposed to have been "Somebody
in England" once. (Later on, when the motor became popular the girls had
their own machines, but that was after Adelle's time.) There was lawn
tennis on the ample lawns, and this with the horseback riding and
occasional strolls was the only concession to the athletic spirit of the
day.

The schoolrooms were not the feature of the Hall that one might expect.
They were confined to a small wing in the rear, or the basement, and
there were no laboratories or other paraphernalia of modern education.
The long drawing-room, with its recessed windows facing the river, was
hung with "old masters"--a few faded American protraits and some recent
copies of the Italian school. It was also furnished luxuriously and had
books in handsome bindings. But educationally, in any accepted sense of
the word, Herndon Hall was quite negligible, as all such institutions
for the care of the daughters of the rich must be, as long as the chief
concern of its patrons is to see their daughters properly married and
"taking a good position in society." Adelle quickly perceived that,
though she had been reckoned a dull pupil in the Alton Girls' High
School, she had much more than enough book knowledge to hold her own in
the classes of her new school. If it is difficult to say what is a good
education for a boy whose parents can afford to give him "the best," it
is almost impossible to solve the educational riddle for his sister. She
must have good manners, an attractive person, and, less clearly, some
acquaintance with literature, music, and art, and one modern language to
enable her to hold her own in the social circles that it is presumed she
will adorn. At least that was the way Miss Thompson looked at the
profound problem of girls' education. She herself was accounted
"accomplished," a "brilliant conversationalist," and "broadly cultured,"
with the confident air that the best society is supposed to give, and
her business was to impart some of this polish to her pupils.
"Conversation," it may be added, was one of the features of Herndon
Hall.

Art, music, and literature did not seem to awaken Adelle's dormant mind
any more than had the rigorous course of the public schools. She did as
most of the girls did,--nothing,--coming unprepared day after day to her
recitations to be helped through the lessons by the obliging teachers,
who professed to care little for "mere scholarship" and strove rather to
"awaken the intelligence" and "stir the spirit," "educate the taste,"
and all the rest of the fluff with which an easy age excuses its
laziness. The girls at Herndon Hall impudently bluffed their teachers or
impertinently replied that they "didn't remember," just like their papas
and future husbands when they were cornered on the witness stand by
inconvenient questions about shady transactions.

The tone of the school was distinctly fashionable, also idle and
luxurious, which was what its patrons desired. Many of the mothers and
other female relatives of the girls, besides the "old girls" themselves,
ran up to the school from New York, which was not far away, bringing
with them a rich atmosphere of jewels, clothes, and gossip that seemed
to hang about the large drawing-room of the stately stone mansion. The
more fortunate pupils found frequent excuses for getting down to the gay
city for the theater and parties, and there were besides boys from a
neighboring college, with parties to the races, all discreetly
chaperoned, of course.

Miss Thompson was at great pains to maintain what the "old Hall girls"
called the "tone of Herndon," so that careful mothers and fathers should
have no hesitation in confiding to it their daughters from fear that
they might encounter "undesirable associates." In all the years of its
existence Miss Thompson had never admitted a member of a certain
religious creed. Yet latterly there had been rumors that the Hall was
not what it once had been. There were too many "Western" girls: some
said Herndon was getting "Pittsburghy." There were certain lively
daughters of Western millionaires, two in especial from the great State
of California whom Adelle later on was thrown with, who did not add to
the exclusive atmosphere of the Hall.

The path of the manager of a fashionable school is by no means an easy
one. It is, in fact, as Miss Thompson had found, more difficult than the
famous eye of the needle. For if she were so scrupulous as to bar out
all the daughters of new wealth, she was in danger of lacking that
material support without which Herndon Hall could not be maintained. And
if she admitted too freely rich "Western girls" whose parents were
"nobodies," but were keenly anxious to have their daughters become
"somebodies," she was in danger of watering her wine to the point where
it would lose all its potency. A constant equilibrium between the
good-family class and the merely rich must be maintained if the school
was to preserve its position. And so it can be understood why the
proprietor and the teachers of Herndon Hall carefully scrutinized Adelle
on her first appearance. Would she merely water their precious wine? If
so she must be very rich, indeed, to compensate for her diluting
presence. Miss Thompson had accepted her on the strength of President
West's personal letter, and it did not take her long to discover that
she had made a grave mistake. Adelle was all water!

She folded up her napkin at dinner in the thrifty manner of the Church
Street house. She ate her soup from the point of her spoon, and the
wrong spoon, and she wore her one dress from the time she got up in the
morning until she went to bed. If it had not been for the solid social
position of President West and the prestige of the trust company, whose
ward she was, it is probable that Adelle would have been sent packing by
the end of the second day. As it was, the head mistress said to Miss
Stevens, with a sigh of commendable Christian resignation,--"We must do
our best for the poor little thing--send her in to me after dinner."

When Adelle entered the private sitting-room of the head mistress, she
expected to be given directions about her classes. Not at all. Miss
Thomson, who still seemed to be suffering from the indisposition that
Adelle found frequently attacked her, looked her over coldly as she
sipped her coffee and remarked that she "must have something fit to wear
at once." She put the little girl through a careful examination as to
the contents of her trunk, with the result that in a few days Adelle's
wardrobe was marvelously increased with a supply of suitable frocks for
all occasions, slippers, lingerie, and hats, and the bill was sent to
the trust company, which honored it promptly without question, not
knowing exactly what a girl ought to cost. Having equipped her pupil
"decently," Miss Thompson observed "that she didn't have an idea how to
wear her clothes," but she trusted to the spirit of the school to
correct that deficiency. Next she sent Adelle to the dentist and had her
teeth straightened,--a painful operation that dragged through several
years at great cost of time and money, and resulted finally in a set of
regular teeth that looked much like false ones. Having provided for her
outside, the teachers turned their attention to her manners and "form,"
and here lay Adelle's worst mental torture. That young teacher, "Rosy"
Stevens, who had fetched her from B----, had this task. "Rosy," who was
only thirty, was supposed to be having "a desperate affair of the heart"
with an actor, which she discussed with the older girls. She was the
most popular chaperone in the school because she was "dead easy" and
connived at much that might have resulted scandalously. "Rosy" shared
the girls' tastes for sweets, dress, and jewelry, and smuggled into the
Hall, not candy--because that was openly permitted in any quantity--but
forbidden "naughty" novels.

Miss Stevens had the deadliest weapon at her command that Adelle had
ever encountered--sarcasm. "My dear girl," she would say before a
tableful of girls, in the pityingly sweet tone of an experienced woman
of the world to a vulgar nobody, "how can you speak like that!" (This
when Adelle had emitted the vernacular grunt in answer to some
question.) "You are not a little ape, my dear." Then she would mimic in
her dainty drawl Adelle's habit of speech, which, of course, set all the
girls at the table tittering. Adelle naturally did not love "Rosy," but
she was helpless before her darts. The other teachers generally ignored
her presence, treating her with the perfect politeness of complete
indifference. Once, soon after her arrival, the child was caught talking
with one of the housemaids in the upper corridor, and was severely
reprimanded. She had merely sought for a ray of human sunlight, but she
was told that young women of her station in life were never familiar
with servants. In a word, Adelle was more nearly encased in an airproof
lining at Herndon Hall than ever before, and remained for another two
years the pale, furtive, undeveloped child she was when she first came.
Some cures, it seems, are so radical that they paralyze the nervous
system and develop rather than cure the disease. Such was the case of
Adelle in Herndon Hall. For nearly two years she sneaked about its
comfortable premises, a silent, forlorn, miserable little being,
frightened at what she could not understand, ready for a blow, but not
keen enough to put up a protecting hand. The verdict of the school was
that "the little fright of a Clark girl" was too stupid to learn
anything. As one girl said to "Rosy,"--"The Clark girl must have piles
of money to be here at all."

And the teacher replied,--"She'll need it all, every cent, she's so
deadly common."

       *       *       *       *       *

Let no reader suppose that Herndon Hall in which Adelle was suffering
her martyrdom is typical of all fashionable girls' boarding-schools. In
a real sense nothing in this life is sufficiently universal to be
considered typical. There are to-day many schools that have some of the
characteristics of Herndon Hall, though fortunately fewer than there
were when Adelle got her education. But even at that time there were
many excellent schools for girls where the teachers made sincere efforts
to teach the girls something, where the girls were human and well-bred,
and the teachers were kind and sympathetic and would not have tolerated
such conduct as went on almost openly in this "exclusive" establishment,
nor such brutal treatment as the girls dealt out to Adelle.

Herndon Hall, with its utterly false standards of everything that
concerns woman's being, was the fruit of those ideals that have obtained
about women, their position and education, for many centuries. And
Herndon Hall was Adelle's accident--the fate to which the trust officers
in all good will consigned her. There always is and must be, even in our
own enlightened age of feminist movements, a Herndon Hall--perhaps more
than one. Parents who believe that marriage and "a suitable position in
society" are all there is in life for a woman will always create Herndon
Halls.




XII


If the history of Clark's Field and those whom it concerned were an
idealistic or romantic story, striving to present the world as it ought
to be rather than as it often happens to be, our little heroine should
at this crisis awaken from her apathy. Her spark of a soul should be
touched by some sympathetic agent,--one of the teachers who had lived
sadly and deeply, or some generous exception among her school-fellows,
who would extend a protecting wing to the persecuted girl. No doubt even
in Herndon Hall there were such who might have answered at a pinch to
regenerate Adelle and start her forth on a series of physical if not
spiritual adventures that would be exhilarating to the reader. But
nothing of the sort came into her life at this period. She was too
unpromising to arouse the incipient Samaritans.

There was, of course, the religious or rather the church side of the
school in which Adelle might have taken refuge. This consisted of
attending the small Episcopal Church in the neighboring village, where
the excellent rector, a married man and the father of daughters, often
directed his discourses at the Hall pews. But Adelle was no more
religiously minded than her worldly little associates. There was nothing
in the service of ritualistic beauty to arouse a latent
sensuousness--nothing of color or form or sound. Religion in fact had
even less to do with daily life in Herndon Hall, in spite of weekly
church and morning prayers, than it had in the Church Street house.
There was more or less talk about "the Church" and "the spiritual life,"
but, as Adelle soon perceived, the girls lied, cheated in their lessons,
spoke spitefully of one another--did even worse--quite as people acted
in the world outside. Even the teachers, she learned after a time,
failed to connect the religious life with their personal conduct.
"Rosy," the teacher with whom she had most to do the first year, aimed
to be the companion rather than the guide of the girls in their frequent
escapades. Miss Thompson herself, it was whispered among the older
girls, suffered from something worse than "neuralgia" in those frequent
attacks which incapacitated her. As for the general morale of the
school, even more serious things could be said if it were not for fear
that the authorities of Herndon Hall and others of a similar mind might
ban this tale as unfit for "nice girls" to peruse, although they
tolerate the deeds themselves. Of such matters, to be sure, Adelle knew
nothing until later, for at first she was so much an outsider that she
was not allowed to look beneath the decorous surface, and experienced
merely petty attacks of selfishness and snobbery.

She might never have got completely beneath the surface if she had not
been obliged to spend all her vacations at the Hall. The teachers were
then off duty, when they were not visiting at the homes of their pupils,
and spoke and acted before the silent girl quite freely because they
considered her lacking mentally and harmless. And she was allowed to
converse occasionally with the house servants, who sometimes spoke
openly about Herndon Hall. She knew that the teachers had lively parties
where wine was served freely. Adelle was supposed to be in her room on
the third floor when these festivities were in progress, but she could
not be unaware of them. And once she encountered "Rosy" in a curious
state of exaltation that filled her with fear. At that time she did not
understand the working of wine upon the spirit....

She was, of course, often dull and lonely, especially the first summer
in the empty house above the steaming river. It was too hot much of the
time to do more than loll about the porches with a book or some sewing.
She tried to do a little gardening because she liked flowers, and
occasionally took walks alone into the country. It was a lazy,
unwholesome existence, and she was surprised to find herself looking
forward to the day when her tormentors would return and the routine of
school life would begin once more. During this first long vacation Mrs.
Gardiner made a feeble effort "to do something" for the trust company's
ward. She asked Adelle for a week's visit in the mountains, and shy as
she was Adelle longed for that week at the end of August as an escape
from prison. But, alas, the Gardiner children inopportunely contracted
some minor disease and Mrs. Gardiner wrote to recall her invitation.
Providence seemed determined to do nothing more for Adelle at present.

The only other event of this twelve weeks was the letter she wrote to
Mr. Lovejoy, the manager of the livery-stable in Alton. This was the
result of an acute attack of loneliness when, after a thorough canvass
of her friends, Mr. Lovejoy's name was the only one she could think of.
She told him in her little letter about the school, said she missed the
Church Street house, and asked specifically after certain "roomers." But
she never received a reply. Whether the teachers suppressed Mr.
Lovejoy's letter, or he had never received Adelle's, or, which was more
likely, he was not sufficiently stimulated by the girl's epistle to
answer her, she never knew. After that one attempt Adelle made no effort
to reach back into her past: she accepted the present with that strange
stoicism that young people sometimes exhibit.

At last when she had laboriously completed "Little Dorrit" and was
beginning heavily upon the "Christmas Stories," the vacation came to an
end and the Herndon girls returned for the fall term. Adelle was now a
familiar figure to them, and therefore less interesting to snub. She was
merely ignored, which did not hurt her. Whatever might have been her
slender expectations of happiness, she must have long since given up any
idea of accomplishing them like other girls. She was becoming a perfect
small realist, content to take the facts of life for what they seemed.
She watched without conscious pain or envy the flurry of greetings and
boastful exchanges of experiences among the girls the first day of their
return to school. She was either ignored or passed by with a polite nod
and a "Hello, Adelle! Did you have a good time with Rosy?"--while the
other girls gathered into knots and resorted to each others' rooms for
deeper confidences. It was an old story now, being an outsider, and the
small, unobtrusive girl of fifteen was fast sinking into a state of
apathy--the most dangerous condition of all.

The new school year, however, brought her something--the arrival of a
friend. As she was dawdling with a book in a corner of the drawing-room,
watching a circle of "old girls" who were whispering and giggling over
some vacation tale, a small voice came to her ears,--

"Is it that you also are strange here?"

Adelle was so surprised at being addressed, also at the foreign-looking
girl who had spoken, that she did not answer, and the other continued
with a smile on her singularly red lips,--

"I speak English ver--ver badly!"

"What is your name?" Adelle asked bluntly.

"Diane Merelda," the girl said in a liquid tone.

"What?" Adelle asked with puckered brows.

"Di-ane Merel-da," came more slowly in the same soft tone. "See!" She
took with a gracious movement the pencil from Adelle's hand and wrote on
a piece of paper the name, and added beneath in small letters "F. de M."

"Oh," said Adelle, "what do those mean?" pointing to the letters
beneath.

"Fille de Marie--a daughter of the Blessed Virgin," the girl translated
sweetly.

Adelle looked at the stranger in bewilderment. She was a dainty person,
as small as Adelle, but a perfectly formed young woman. Her black hair
was tightly braided over her small head, in a fashion then strange, and
her face was very pale, of a natural pallor emphasized by the line of
carmine lips. Her eyes were black and wide. She smiled gently,
contentedly, upon Adelle. Altogether she was an unusual phenomenon to
the young American. She explained herself volubly if not fluently in
broken English, pausing every now and then with a charming birdlike toss
of her little black head and, "You say so, no?"--waiting for Adelle's
nod to dash on into further intricacies of speech.

Miss Diane Merelda, as she told Adelle Clark, was the daughter of a
wealthy Mexican whose acquaintance with Americans had so liberalized him
that he preferred to educate his children in the States and in schools
not under Catholic control. Señorita Diane had left her father's home in
Morelos earlier than intended, however, because of the outbreak of an
insurrection in the province, in which her father was concerned. As his
haçienda near Morelos was not safe on account of brigands, Señor Merelda
had sent his wife and daughter abroad to join his sons, and so Diane had
reached Herndon Hall by the way of Madrid, Paris, and New York, after a
summer spent with relatives in Spain. Her mother had learned of Herndon
Hall from a chance traveling companion, and in some way had induced Miss
Thompson to waive her strict requirements for admission.

From her way of dressing her hair to her pointed slippers and broken
English, the little Mexican was even more markedly different from the
Herndon type than Adelle, and though the older girls knew enough of the
world to recognize a distinction in differences, Diane did not seem to.
She was gracious to all, and Adelle happened to be the first girl she
could speak to while she waited for her mother, who was closeted with
Miss Thompson. Here was Adelle's chance, although she did not recognize
it as such. They talked for an hour, rather Diane talked and Adelle did
her best to understand the rapid, lisping, birdlike notes of the
foreigner. She learned that Diane had a brother in a school near St.
Louis, another in a technical college, and still another now in Germany.
The Merelda family seemed much scattered, but that did not disturb the
little Mexican.

"We shall all be back in Morelos sometime!" She added sweetly, "Perhaps
you will come to Mexico with me, no?"

Adelle soon learned all about Madrid, the Spanish relatives, the sight
of the young King of Spain at San Sebastian, the trip to Lourdes which
the family had taken in hope that the holy cure might help her mother's
lame knee, and too much else to relate here. Señorita Diane was
exceedingly loquacious: her little tongue wove in and out of the new
idiom with surprising facility, forever wagging in a low, sweet babble
of nothings. Adelle, as has been sufficiently indicated, absorbed
passively the small and the large facts of life. Diane was like a
twittering bird on a tiny twig that shook with the vehemence of her
expression. She reacted instinctively to every stimulus from a new
toothbrush to the sight of a motor-car, and she preferred not to react
alone. Thus Adelle did more talking of her blunt, bald kind to her new
friend than she had accomplished hitherto all her life. She explained
Herndon Hall literally to the stranger, while Diane exclaimed in three
languages.

The presence of the little Mexican in the school did much to ameliorate
Adelle's lonely lot this second year. She formed a connecting link of a
sort between her and the rest of her schoolmates, who liked the
foreigner. Diane reported fully to Adelle what the other girls were
doing,--how Betty Langton was in love with an actor and for this reason
went to New York almost every week on one excuse or another; how the two
Californians, Irene and Sadie Paul, had a party in their room the night
before, with wine, much wine. Diane shook her head wonderingly over all
these doings of "the Americans." American girls seemed to her all
"queer," and, though she did not say so, rather vulgar and underbred.
Oddly enough she put Adelle apart in this sweeping judgment, for she was
not able to appreciate Adelle's common accent and primitive manners.
Adelle did not snub nor condescend nor do "naughty" things, and so, from
the Mexican's standard, a simple and somewhat antiquated one, Adelle was
a lady. Diane concluded that she must be poor and for that reason the
other girls treated her badly. To be poor was no disgrace in the eyes of
the Mexican. Many of the best people she had known, including her
Spanish relatives, were dreadfully poor, but none the less to be
considered. Poverty was a matter of God's will in the delightful Latin
sense of the word, not a matter of inherited personal disgrace as in a
free, Anglo-Saxon democracy.

"I do not like your America," she said gravely to Adelle after she had
been a couple of months in the school. "Not to live in always when I am
married."

"What's the matter with America?" Adelle asked.

"It is all money, money," the little Mexican replied. "You come to see
nothing in your heart but dollars, dollars, dollars. It makes the heart
heavy."

Adelle, who had never looked at the world in this light, thought Diane a
little "queer." Nevertheless they were good friends as school-girl
friendships go and consoled each other for what they lacked in their
common environment.

Another event of this new year was perhaps even more momentous to Adelle
than the arrival of the little Mexican, and that was the visit paid to
her shortly after her sixteenth birthday by one of the trust company's
officers. It was Mr. Ashly Crane--the new trust officer, in fact--who
rode up the winding avenue from the river road in one of the noisy,
new-fangled motors that announced itself from afar. Mr. Gardiner, it
seemed, had been retired from his position as trust officer and was no
longer to be the human symbol of Adelle's wardship to the trust company.
The new trust officer had not of design chosen the occasion of the
ward's birthday to pay her a visit. Happening to be in the neighboring
city of Albany with a few hours on his hands before he could make
connections for the West, he bethought himself of the trust company's
young charge and ran out to look over the school and incidentally
Adelle. No one from the Washington Trust Company had ever paid its ward
a visit,--Adelle was the only unvisited girl in the school,--but Mr.
Ashly Crane was the kind of vigorous young banker, not yet quite forty,
who could be depended upon to "keep in personal touch" with all his
clients. That is why, probably, he had superseded Mr. Gardiner, who had
a staid habit of relying upon printed forms and the mail.

Mr. Ashly Crane was a good-looking, keen American banker, who paid
strict attention to his manners, clothes, and habits. He was ambitious,
of course, and had been so busily climbing upwards from his first
clerkship in the trust company that he had not yet married. Very likely
he felt that with his ever-widening horizon of prospects it would not be
wise to anchor himself socially to any woman, who might prove to be a
drag upon his future. He was still well within the marriageable limits
and looked even younger. Nothing so well preserves youth as Success, and
of this tonic Mr. Ashly Crane had had an abundance. Mr. Crane, it should
not be thought, had armed himself with a bunch of enormous red roses
from the leading florist of Albany and set forth upon his expedition
with any formulated plot against the little heiress who was the
company's ward. He recalled her in fact as a most unattractive, gawky
little girl, who must have changed inconceivably for the better if she
were to interest Mr. Ashly Crane personally. But the Clark estate, under
the skillful method of treatment for which he was largely responsible,
was growing all the time, and thanks to the probate judge's precaution,
Adelle would ultimately reap rather more than one half of the earnings
of the Clark's Field Associates. Already her expenses, represented by
the liberal checks to Herndon Hall, were a mere nothing in the total of
the income that went on rolling up in conservative bonds and stocks that
were safely stowed away in the vaults under the Washington Trust
Company. It seemed only proper that the sole representative of so much
tangible property should be accorded every consideration by those
legally constituted her servants and guardians. Single motives are more
rarely found in life than in art, and Mr. Ashly Crane's motives this
fine April morning were quite typically hybrid.

Whatever incipient anticipations of the girl herself he might have
entertained during his ride were immediately dissipated as soon as
Adelle entered the drawing-room from the class whence she had been
summoned. She was a little larger, perhaps, than he remembered her, but
essentially the same awkward, homely child, and she was now wearing an
ugly harness upon her teeth that further disfigured her. Mr. Ashly Crane
was an observant man, and he became at once merely the business man,
solely intent upon performing his duty and getting back to Albany in
time to catch his train. He presented his roses, which Adelle took from
him clumsily and allowed to lie across her lap, while with legs spread
apart to sustain their burden she listened to what he had to say. Mr.
Crane explained to her briefly Mr. Gardiner's retirement and his own
recent elevation to the post of being her nominal guardian, and then
inquired if everything was satisfactory in the school. When Adelle
replied, yes, she guessed so, he observed that the Hall was prettily
located above the river with a good view and that a girl ought to have a
fine time in such a pleasant country.

"What do you do with yourself when you are not studying?" he concluded
in a patronizing tone.

"Oh," Adelle responded vaguely, "I don't know. Nothing much--read some
and take walks."

The new trust officer was enough of a human being to realize the
emptiness of this reply, and for a few moments was puzzled. This was a
woman's job, rather than a man's, he reflected sagely. However, being a
man he must do the best he could to win the girl's confidence, and after
all Herndon Hall had the highest reputation.

"They treat you right?" he inquired bluntly.

The girl murmured something in assent, because she could think of
nothing better to say. It was quite impossible for her to phrase the
sense of misery and indignity that was nearly constant in her mind.

"The teachers are kind?" the trust officer pursued.

"I guess so," she said, with a dumb look that made him uncomfortable.

He rose nervously and walked across the room. As he gazed out of the
open window at the distant prospect across the "Noble River" (so
described in the dainty leaflet sent forth by the school) "from the
ivy-shrouded old stone Hall," he caught sight of a party of girls riding
off on horseback for their daily excursion. That gave him an idea.

"You ride, too?" he inquired, turning again to the girl.

"No, I haven't any horse," she replied simply. "You have to have your
own horse."

"But you can have a horse if you want to ride," the trust officer
hastily remarked. "Riding is a very good exercise, and I should think it
would be fine in this country."

Here was something tangible that a man could get hold of. The girl
looked pale and probably needed healthful exercise. If other girls had
their own horses, she could have one. It was really ridiculous how
little she was spending of her swelling income. And he proceeded at once
to take up this topic with Miss Thompson, who presently arrived upon the
scene. Mr. Ashly Crane was much more successful in impressing the head
mistress of Herndon Hall with the importance of the ward of the
Washington Trust Company than in probing the heart of the lonely little
girl. He gave the elegant Miss Thompson to understand clearly that Miss
Adelle Clark was to have every advantage that money could buy, not
merely music and art as extras, but horses,--he even put it in the
plural,--a groom, and if she wanted it a private maid, which he was told
was never permitted. Miss Thompson quickly gathered from his tone and
his words that Miss Adelle Clark's expectations were such as to insure
her the most careful consideration in every respect, and if Herndon Hall
could not provide her with all the advantages to which wealth was
entitled, her guardians would quickly remove her from the school. Miss
Thompson accompanied the trust officer to the door out of earshot of
Adelle and assured him haughtily that Herndon Hall which sheltered a
Steigman of Philadelphia, a Dyboy of Baltimore, not to mention a Miss
Saltonsby from his own city, knew quite as well as he what was fitting
under the circumstances. However, they shook hands as two persons from
the same world and parted in complete understanding. Adelle had already
slipped off with her armful of roses.




XIII


From the moment, when she emerged upon the corridor that led to the
schoolrooms with that huge bunch of American Beauty roses in her arms, a
new period of her school life began. The girls, of course, had seen from
their desks the arrival of the motor-car and its single occupant,--a
Man,--and the older girls who had peeked into the drawing-room reported
that Mr. Ashly Crane was a very smart-looking man, indeed. When a woman
first receives flowers from a man, an event of importance in her
existence has happened. Señorita Diane, who was an incorrigible
sentimentalist, went into ecstasies over the roses and at once whispered
about the school that they were the fruit of an admirer, not of a mere
relative. Miss Thompson talked to her teachers, especially to "Rosy,"
and it became known throughout the Hall that the ugly duckling was
undoubtedly Somebody, and she was treated thereafter with more
consideration. If the trust company had thought to take notice of its
ward's existence earlier in her school career, Adelle might have been
saved a very disagreeable year of her life.

In due time there arrived a beautiful saddle-horse and a groom, both
selected with judgment by Mr. Ashly Crane and charged to the ward's
account. The appearance of the blooded mount did more than anything else
to acquaint Adelle with the meaning and the power of money. In many
subtle ways she began to feel a change in the attitude of her world
towards her, and naturally related it immediately to the possession of
this unknown power. A dangerous weapon had thus been suddenly placed in
her hands. She could command respect, attention, even consideration,
thanks to this weapon--money. It was merely human that as the years went
on the silent child, who had absorbed many unhappy impressions of life
before discovering this key to the world, should become rapidly cynical
in her use of her one great weapon of offense and defense. The next few
years of her life was the period when she exercised herself in the use
of this weapon, although she did not become really proficient in its
control until much later.

A suitable habit was quickly provided, and she set forth each pleasant
day with that little group of older girls who enjoyed this privilege,
accompanied always by her own groom, who was a well-trained servant and
effaced himself as nearly as possible. The California girls rode, and
that Miss Dyboy of Baltimore, but the little Mexican, though she had
ridden all her life, had no horse, and as long as affairs continued
unsettled in Morelos was not likely to have one. When Adelle discovered
this fact, she did not play the part of the unselfish heroine, I am
sorry to say, and allow Diane to use her horse even on those days when
she did not care to ride (as of course she would do in a well-conducted
story). Instead she merely wrote a little letter to Mr. Crane at the
Washington Trust Company, telling him rather peremptorily to send her
another horse. Somewhat to her surprise the second horse arrived in due
season, and now she lent the beast to her little friend, carefully
refraining from giving up her title to him. For a second time she felt
the sweet sense of unlimited power in response to desire. She wrote her
letter as Aladdin rubbed his magic lamp, and straightway her desire
became fact! It was modern magic. This time it happened that her desire
was a generous one and brought her the approval as well as the envy of
the small social world at the Hall. But that was purely accidental: the
next time she should try her lamp, as likely as not the cause might be
purely selfish. As a matter of fact she soon discovered that, by
distributing her favors and lending her extra horse to a number of
schoolmates, she could enlarge her circle of influence and
consideration. So the little Mexican by no means had all the rides.

Horseback riding was a beneficial pleasure in more than one way. Adelle,
of course, profited from the exercise in the open air: she began to grow
slowly and to promise womanhood at some not distant day. It also brought
her into close relations with some of the leading girls, who had thus
far ignored her existence; among them the breezy California sisters,
"the two Pols," as they were known in school. These girls profited by
Adelle's groom to dispense with the chaperonage of the old
riding-master, and before long Adelle learned why this arrangement was
made. In their long expeditions across country, with the discreet groom
well in the rear, the girls put their heads together in the most
intimate gossip, from which Adelle learned much that completed her
knowledge of life. Most of this was innocent enough, though some was
not, as when one afternoon, when "the Pols" judged that Adelle was a
"good sport," they led the way to a remote road-house where a couple of
men were waiting evidently by appointment. One of them, a fair-haired,
overdressed young man, Adelle was given to understand was Sadie Pol's
"artist" friend. She herself was sent back to entertain the groom while
the two sisters went into the road-house with their "friends." Conduct,
even conduct that came near being vice, was largely meaningless to
Adelle: she silently observed. She had no evil impulses herself, very
few impulses, in fact, of any kind. But she was the last person to tell
tales, and "the two Pols," having tested her and pronounced her "safe,"
she was allowed to see more and went more than once to the rendezvous at
the quiet road-house. In this way she raised herself nearly to a plane
of equality with the leaders of the school. Indeed, it was Adelle who
assisted Irene Paul to escape from the Hall one winter night, and stayed
awake far into the morning in order to let the girl in. But that was a
year later....

When Adelle discovered the power of her magic lamp, she was generous
with her pocket-money, ordering and buying whatever the older girls
desired. In this way she rapidly attained favor in the Hall, where few
even of the richer girls could procure money so easily as the ward of
the Washington Trust Company. "Get Adelle to do it," or "Adelle will dig
up the money," "Ask Adelle to write her bank," became familiar
expressions, and Adelle never failed to "make good." It is safe to say
that if contact with any sort of human experience gives education,
Adelle was being educated rapidly, although she was completely ignorant
of books and as nearly illiterate as a carefully protected rich girl can
be. Before Nature had completed within her its mission, Adelle was
cognizant of many kinds of knowledge, some of which included depravity.
For in the exclusive, protected, rich world of Herndon Hall she had met
everything she might have encountered in the Alton Girls' High and a
good deal more beside.

By the end of this second year she was not much happier, perhaps, but
she was perfectly comfortable at the Hall and thoroughly used to her new
environment. The blonde Irene had given her a diploma,--

"Dell's all right--she's a good little kid."




XIV


That summer she did not have to mope by herself in the empty Hall. The
little Mexican carried her away for a long visit to her distant home.
The trouble in Morelos had temporarily subsided, so that Señor Merelda
felt that it was safe to gather his large family at the haçienda. The
journey, which the two girls made alone as far as St. Louis, where
Diane's elder brother met them, was the first view of the large world
that Adelle had ever had. They were both filled with the excitements of
their journey so that even Adelle's pale cheeks glowed with a happy
sense of the mystery of living. This ecstasy was somewhat broken by the
presence of Carlos, a gentlemanly enough young man; but Adelle was
afraid of all men. She failed also to assimilate the strange sights that
she encountered south of St. Louis. The journey became a jumble in her
memory of heat and red sunsets and dirty Indians and stuffy dining-cars.
But Morelos itself made a more lasting impression upon her little mind.
There was, first of all, the strange landscape, dominated by the snowy
peak of Popocatepetl, the sugar-fields, and the drowsy languor of the
little town, and then there was the family life of the Mereldas at the
haçienda. That was both delightful and queer to Adelle. Instead of one
"queer" person to whom she had become accustomed, there were half a
dozen odd human beings in the persons of Señor and Señora Merelda and
the older boys and girls. They all spoke all the time as did Diane,
about everything and nothing. They seemed to care warmly for one
another, yet quarreled like children over nothings. Young Carlos, who
was at a technical school, made violent love to Adelle. It was the first
time that a boy had looked at her twice even under compulsion, and it
bewildered and troubled Adelle until she perceived that it was all a
joke, a "queer" way of expressing courtesy to a stranger.

"It would not be polite," Diane explained demurely, "if Carlos did not
make the bear to my friend."

So Adelle got over her fright when the youth uttered strange speeches
and tried to take her hand. She even felt a faint pleasure in thus
becoming of a new importance.

"Of course," Diane remarked sagely, "Carlos cannot marry yet--he is
still in school. But he will marry soon--why not you?... You are so very
rich. I should like Carlos to marry a rich girl and my friend, too ..."
And with a little sigh,--"It must be pleasant to be so rich as you!"
From which it will be seen that the little Mexican had also become
somewhat corrupted by her year at Herndon Hall.

Adelle had not yet found out fully how nice it was to be rich, but she
was learning fast. To be able to attract the attentions of agreeable
young men like Carlos Merelda was another of the virtues of her magic
lamp that she had never thought of before. Although she had no idea of
taking Carlos's courtship seriously, she thought all the better of
herself for this extra magnetism which her money gave her person. The
kindliness of the Mereldas and their Mexican circle to the little
American was due largely to her being a good friend of their Diane and
also their guest, but it made Adelle grow in her own estimation. At
present life seemed to consist in a gradual unfolding to her of the
meaning of her new power, and a consequent enlargement of her egotism.
That is unfortunately one of the commonest properties of
wealth,--stimulating egotism,--and it takes much experience or an
extraordinary nature to counteract this unhealthy stimulus. For the
ordinary nature it is impossible to live day after day, year in and year
out, under the powerful external stimulus of riches, without confounding
the outer source of power with an innate virtue.

But with our Adelle, by the time her visit had come to an end, her new
education had got merely to the point where she had the self-interest
and assurance of the ordinary American girl of twelve. That Church
Street experience had chastened her. But if her education was to
continue at the present rate, she was likely to become selfish,
egotistical, and purse-proud in a few years. As yet it had not made her
unpleasant, merely given her a little needed confidence in her own
being.

She chose to make the long journey homewards by water from Vera Cruz to
New York in charge of the captain of the vessel. For Señor Merelda,
after the harassing activities of political warfare and its pecuniary
drains, did not feel able to send his daughter back to Herndon Hall. So
the two friends kissed and parted at Vera Cruz, Diane shedding all the
tears. They expected to meet again before long, and of course agreed to
write frequently. But life never again brought Adelle in contact with
the warm-hearted little Latin, who had first held out to her the olive
branch of human sympathy.

Adelle was met at the dock by "Rosy," who had with her "the two Pols"
and Eveline Glynn at whose country home they were staying. "Rosy," as
well as her schoolmates, was agreeably surprised by Adelle's appearance
after her summer in Mexico. Nature was tardily asserting herself; Adelle
was becoming a woman,--a small, delicate, pale little creature, whose
rounding bust under her white dress gave her the dainty atmosphere of an
early spring flower, fragile and frigid, but full of charm for some
connoisseurs of human beauty. She had also acquired in Mexico a note of
her own, which was perhaps due to the clothes she had bought in Mexico
City on her way home, of filmy fabric and prominent colors; and her
usually taciturn speech had taken on a languorous slowness in imitation
of the Mereldas' way of speaking English. In the drawling manner in
which she said,--"Hello, Rosy," and nonchalantly accepted Miss Glynn's
invitation for the intervening days before school opened, the new Adelle
was revealed. The girls exchanged glances. And "Rosy" whispered Irene
Paul,--"Our little Adelle is coming on." To which the California girl
replied with a chuckle,--"Didn't I tell you she was a good old sport?"

Adelle, overhearing this, felt an almost vivid sense of pride.

But as yet hers was only a very little air, which was quickly wilted by
the oppressive luxury of the Glynns' country-place--one of those large,
ostentatious establishments that Americans are wont to start before they
know how, and where consequently the elaborate domestic machinery
creaks. There were men-servants of different nationalities, ladies'
maids, and a houseful of guests coming and going as in a private hotel.
Adelle shrank into the obscurest corner and her anemonelike charm,
tentatively putting forth, was quite lost in the scramble. Beechwood was
a much less genial home than the slipshod Mexican haçienda of the
Mereldas and nobody paid any attention to the shy girl. Eveline Glynn,
who expected in another year to be free from school, was too much
occupied with her own flirtations to bother herself about her chance
guest. Adelle, being left to her usual occupation of silent observation,
managed to absorb a good deal at Beechwood in four days, chiefly of the
machinery of modern wealth. There were the elaborate meals, the
drinking, the card-playing, the motors, the innumerable servants, and
the sickening atmosphere of inane sentimentalism between the sexes.
Everybody seemed to be having "an affair," and the talk was redolent of
innuendo. Adelle had occasion to observe the potency of her lamp in this
society. She worked it first upon the waiting-woman assigned to her, to
whom she gave a large fee and who coached her devotedly in the ways of
the house and supplied her with the gossip. It also brought her the
annoying attentions of a middle-aged man, to whom her hostess had
confided that the dumb little Clark girl was "awful rich."

At the end of the visit the girls went back to New York, under the
chaperonage of "Rosy," to equip themselves for the school term, staying
at a great new hotel, and here Adelle's corruption by her wealth was
continued at an accelerated pace. The four girls flitted up and down the
Avenue, buying and ordering what they would. There were definite limits
to the purse of the Californians, but Adelle, perceiving the distinction
to be had from free spending, ordered with a splendid indifference to
price or amount. She won the admiration of her friends by the ease with
which she gave her name and address. Adelle was in fact a little
frightened by her own extravagance, but persisted with a child's
curiosity to find out the limit of her magic lamp. She did not reach it,
however. Mr. Crane at her request had opened an account for her at the
trust company's correspondent on upper Fifth Avenue, and apparently it
was of a size that produced respect in the heart of the shopkeeper.

All these purchases, the clothes and the jewelry and the other rubbish
that the girl bought, gave her no special pleasure, gratified no
desires: she did not know what she could do with half the things at
Herndon Hall. What gave her keen pleasure was the prestige of lavish
spending.... After a debauch of theaters and dinners and shopping, the
four girls were again taken in tow by the sophisticated "Rosy" and went
up the river to Herndon Hall for Adelle's third year of boarding-school.




XV


Adelle Clark was thoroughly infected with the corruption of property by
this time, and the coming years merely confirmed the ideas and the
habits that had been started. She was now seventeen and an "old girl" at
the Hall, privileged to torture less sophisticated girls when they
presented themselves, if she had felt the desire to do so. She had not
forgotten her Church Street existence: it had been much too definite to
be easily forgotten. But she had been removed from it long enough to
realize herself thoroughly in her new life and to know that it was not a
dream. She would always remember Church Street, her aunt and uncle, and
the laborious years of poverty with which it was identified; but
gradually that part of her life was becoming the dream, while Herndon
Hall and the Aladdin lamp of her fortune were the reality. By means of
the latter she had won her position among her mates, and naturally she
respected more and more the source of her power. Eveline Glynn "took her
up" this year, and quite replaced the gentler Diane Merelda in her
affections.

There was if anything less study this year than before. The older girls
scouted the idea of studying anything. Most of them expected to leave
school forever the next spring and under the auspices of their mothers
to enter the marriage game. A few intended as a preliminary to travel in
Europe, "studying art or music," But the minds of all were much more
occupied with love than anything else. Although the sex interest was
still entirely dormant in Adelle, she learned a great deal about it from
her schoolmates. Those good people who believe in a censorship of
literature for the sake of protecting the innocent American girl should
become enrolled at Herndon Hall. There they might be occasionally
horrified, but they would come out wiser mortals. Adelle knew all about
incredible scandals. Divorce, with the reasons for it,--especially the
statutory one,--was freely discussed, and a certain base, pandering
sheet of fashionable gossip was taken in at the Hall and eagerly
devoured each week by the girls, who tried to guess at the thinly
disguised persons therein pilloried. Thus Adelle became fully acquainted
with the facts of sex in their abnormal as well as more normal aspects.
That she got no special personal harm from this irregular education and
from the example of "the two Pols" was due solely to her own unawakened
temperament. Life had no gloss for her, and it had no poetic appeal. She
supposed, when she considered the matter at all, that sometime as a
woman she would be submitted to the coil of passion and sex, like all
the others about whom her friends talked incessantly. They seemed to
regard every man as a possible source of excitement to a woman. But she
resolved for her part to put off the interference of this fateful
influence as long as possible. Sometime, of course, she must marry and
have a child,--that was part of the fate of a girl with money of her
own,--and then she should hope to marry a nice man who would not scold
or ill-treat her or prefer some other woman--that was all.

"Dell is just a lump of ice!" Irene Paul often said, putting her own
plump arms about Adelle's thin little body; and while Adelle tried to
wriggle out of the embrace she teased her by assuming the man's
aggressive rôle.

       *       *       *       *       *

Thus the last months of her formal education slipped by. Adelle went
through the easy routine of the Hall like the other girls, riding
horseback a good deal during pleasant weather, taking a lively interest
in dancing, upon which great stress was laid by Miss Thompson as an
accomplishment and healthy exercise. She took a mild share in the
escapades of her more lively friends, but for the most part her life was
dull, though she did not feel it. The life of the rich, instead of being
varied and full of deep experience, is actually in most cases
exceedingly monotonous and narrowing. The common belief that wealth is
an open sesame to a life of universal human experience is a stupid
delusion, frequently used as a gloss to their souls by well-intentioned
people. Apart from the strict class limitations imposed by the
possession of large property, the object of protected and luxurious
people is generally merely pleasure. And pleasure is one of the
narrowest fields of human experience conceivable, becoming quickly
monotonous, which accounts for many extravagancies and abnormalities
among the rich. Moreover, the sensual life of the well-fed and idle
deadens imagination to such a degree that even their pleasures are
imitative, not original: they do what their kind have found to be
pleasurable without the incentive of initiative. If Adelle Clark had not
been attached to Clark's Field and had been forced to remain in the
Church Street rooming-house, by this time she would have been at work as
a clerk or in some other business: in any case she must have touched
realities closely and thus been immeasurably ahead of all the Herndon
Hall girls.

Probably this doctrine would shock not only the managers of Herndon
Hall, but also the officers of the trust company, who felt that they
were giving their ward the best preparation for "a full life," such as
the possession of a large property entitles mortals to expect. And
though it may seem that the Washington Trust Company had been somewhat
perfunctory in its care of its young ward, merely accepting the routine
ideas of the day in regard to her education and preparation for life,
they did nothing more nor worse in this than the majority of well-to-do
parents who may be supposed to have every incentive of love and family
pride in dealing with their young. The trust company in fact was merely
an impersonal and legal means of fulfilling the ideals of the average
member of our society. Indeed, the trust company, in the person of its
president and also of Mr. Ashly Crane, were just now giving some of
their valuable time to consideration of the personal fate of their ward.
She had been the subject of at least one conference between these
officers. She was now on her way towards eighteen, and that was the age,
as President West well knew, when properly conditioned young women
usually left school, unless they were "queer" enough to seek college,
and entered "society" for the unavowed but perfectly understood object
of getting husbands for themselves. The trust company was puzzled as to
how best to provide this necessary function for its ward. They felt that
there existed no suitable machinery for taking this next step. They
could order her clothes, or rather hire some one to buy them for her,
order her a suitable "education" and pay for it, but they could not
"introduce her to society" nor provide her with a good husband. And that
was the situation which now confronted them.

They had received excellent reports of their ward latterly from Herndon
Hall. Although Miss Thompson admitted that Miss Clark was not
"intellectually brilliant," she had a "good mind," whatever that might
mean, and had developed wonderfully at the Hall in bearing, deportment,
manner--in all the essential matters of woman's education. Miss Thompson
meant that Adelle spoke fairly correct English, drawled her _A_'s, wore
her clothes as if she owned them, had sufficiently good table-manners to
dine in public, and could hold her own in the conversation of girls of
her kind. Miss Thompson recommended warmly that Adelle join Miss
Stevens's "Travel Class," which was going abroad in June to tour the
Continent and study the masterpieces of art upon the spot. The
suggestion came as a relief to the trust company's officers: it put over
their problem with Adelle for another year. But before accepting Miss
Thompson's advice, Mr. Ashly Crane thought it wise to make another visit
to Herndon Hall and talk the matter over with Adelle herself. He
believed always in the "personal touch" method. And so once more he
broke a journey westwards at Albany and rolled up the long drive in a
motor-car.

       *       *       *       *       *

Adelle enjoyed the impression which she was able to make upon the young
banker this time. She had seen his approach in the car on her return
from her ride, and had kept him waiting half an hour while she took a
bath and dressed herself with elaborate care as she had often seen other
girls do. Her teeth had at last been released from their harness and
were nice little regular teeth. Her dull brown hair, thanks to constant
skillful attention, had lately come to a healthy gloss. Her complexion
was clear though pale, and her dress was a dream of revealing
simplicity. Mr. Ashly Crane took in all these details at a glance, and
felt a glow of satisfaction beyond the purely male sense of
appreciation: the trust company which he represented had done its duty
by the little orphan, and what is more had got what it paid for. Their
ward, as she stood before him with a faint smile on her thin lips, was a
creditable creation of modern art. A thoroughly unpromising specimen of
female clay had been moulded into something agreeable and almost pretty,
with a faint, anemonelike bloom and fragrance. Mr. Ashly Crane, who was
rather given to generalization about the might and majesty of American
achievements, felt that the girl was a triumphant example of modern
power,--"what we do when we try to do something,"--like converting the
waste land of Clark's Field into a city of brick and mortar, or making a
hydrangea out of a field shrub.

"Well, Miss Clark," he began as the two seated themselves where they had
sat the year before, "I needn't ask you how you are--your looks answer
the question."

It was a banal remark, but Adelle recognized it for a compliment and
smiled prettily. She said nothing. Silence was still the principal
method of her social tactics.

"You are getting to be a young woman fast," the banker continued quite
bluntly.

Adelle looked down and possibly blushed.

"Mr. West and I have been considering what to do"--he caught himself and
tried again;--"that is we have been in consultation with Miss Thompson
about--your future."

Here Adelle looked the trust officer fully in the eye. On this point she
seemed really interested this time. So Mr. Crane proceeded more easily
to question her about the plan of joining Miss Stevens's "Travel Class."
Adelle listened blankly while Mr. Crane wandered off into generalities
about the advantages of travel and the study of "art" under the guidance
of a mature woman. Suddenly she said quite positively,--

"I don't want to go with the 'Travel Class.'"

This was the first positive expression of any sort that the trust
officer had ever heard from the ward. It was one of the very few that
Adelle Clark had ever made in the eighteen years of her existence. Under
Mr. Crane's inquiries it soon developed that Adelle did not like "Rosy"
Stevens,--as nearly hated her as she was capable of hating any one,--nor
had she any great fondness for the girls who were to compose this year's
"Travel Class." They belonged to the snobbiest element in the school....
What, then, did she wish to do with herself--remain another year at
Herndon Hall? Here again the ward amazed Mr. Crane, for she had ready a
definite plan of her own--a small plan to be sure and imitative, but a
plan.

She wished to go with her new friend Eveline Glynn and the California
sisters to Paris. Eveline's parents, it seemed, were spending the next
season in Europe, and after the manner of their kind they did not
propose to be encumbered with a young daughter. So they had arranged to
send her to Miss Catherine Comstock at Neuilly, and "the two Pols" had
decided to do the same thing. It was not a school,--oh, no, not even a
"finishing school,"--but the home of an accomplished and brilliant
American woman, who had long lived abroad and who undertook to chaperone
in the French capital a very few desirable girls. The banker could not
see how Miss Comstock's establishment in Neuilly differed essentially
from the "Travel Class," except that it was more permanent, which shows
how socially blunt Mr. Crane was. But after an interview with Miss
Thompson he satisfied himself that the Glynns were "our very best
people"; anything they thought right for their daughter must be fit for
the Washington Trust Company's ward. So her guardian's assent to the
plan was easily obtained, and the four friends rejoiced in their coming
freedom....

Adelle had no clear idea why she preferred Neuilly to the "Travel
Class," except to be with Eveline Glynn and the two Paul girls. Paris
and Rome were hazily mixed geographically in her ill-furnished mind, and
culturally both were blank. Eveline had known girls who had stayed with
Miss Comstock and they had given glowing accounts of their experiences.
The Neuilly establishment, it appeared, was a place of perfect freedom,
where the girls were chaperoned sufficiently to keep them out of serious
mischief, but otherwise were allowed to please themselves in their own
way. And there was Paris, which, according to Eveline, who had informed
herself from many sources, was the best place in the world for a good
time. Friends were always coming there, to buy clothes and to make
excursions. Adelle could have her own car, in which the four would take
motor trips, and there was the opera, etc. And lastly Society--real
Society;--for it seemed that this was one of Miss Comstock's strong
points. She knew people, and had actually put a number of her girls in
the way of marrying titled foreigners. The California girls knew of a
compatriot who had thus acquired a Polish title. In short, there was
nothing of the boarding-school in Miss Comstock's establishment, except
the fees, which were enormous--five thousand dollars to start with.

       *       *       *       *       *

Thus Adelle left Herndon Hall in the beautiful month of June, having
received her last communion in the little ivy-covered stone chapel from
the hands of the bishop himself, smiled upon by Miss Thompson and the
other teachers, who had three years before pronounced her "a perfect
little fright," and kissed by a few of her schoolmates. She felt that
she was coming into her own, thanks to her magic lamp--that life ahead
looked promising. Yet she had changed as little fundamentally during
these three years as a human being well could. She had passed from the
narrowest poverty of the Alton side street to the prodigal ease of
Herndon Hall, from the environment of an inferior "rooming-house" to
companionship with the rich daughters of "our very best people,"--from
an unformed child to the full physical estate of womanhood,--all within
three short years; but she had accommodated herself to these great
transitions with as little inward change as possible. Her soul was the
soul of the Clarks, tricked out with good clothes and the manners and
habits of the rich. Addie, it seemed, had at last arrived at her
paradise in the person of her daughter, but it was a pale and
inexpressive Addie, who made no large drafts upon paradise.

Adelle departed in the Glynn motor for the Glynn country-place, where
she was to stay until the Glynns sailed for Europe. She was prettily
dressed in écru-colored embroidered linen, with a broad straw hat and
suède gloves and boots, according to the style of the day, and she was
really happy and almost aware of it. Eveline was glum because her
mother--a stern-looking matron who knew exactly what she wanted out of
life and how to get it--had refused peremptorily to let her invite Bobby
Trenow to accompany them. Bobby was Eveline's darling of the hour, as
Adelle knew: Eveline had let him kiss her for the first time the
previous evening, and she was "perfectly crazy" about him. To Adelle,
Bobby was merely a smooth, downy boy like all the rest, who showed bare
brown arms and white flannels in summer, and had as little to say for
himself as she had. She was amused at Nelly's fussed state over the loss
of Bobby; she could not understand Mother Glynn's objection to the
harmless Bobby's occupying the vacant seat in the roomy car;--but then
she did not understand many things in the intricate social world in
which she found herself. She did not know that there is no one of their
possessions that the rich learn more quickly to guard than their women.
The aristocrats of all ages have jealously housed and protected their
women from entangling sexual relations, while permitting the greatest
license to their predatory males. The reasons are obvious enough to the
mature intelligence, but difficult for the young to comprehend.

Adelle had not yet felt the need of a Bobby Trenow.




XVI


Some years ago Prince Ponitowski had built in Neuilly, near the gate of
the Bois, what contemporary novelists described as a "nest" for his
mistress--a famous Parisian lady. It was a fasc

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