The mason looked up for the first time. There was a glint in his clear blue eyes as he said distinctly, without any trace of foreign accent,--
"It"s got to go there!"
A smile relaxed his red face, a scornful smile at the impertinence of this dainty specimen of woman-kind who thought that the foundation course of his rock wall could be disturbed for such a trivial matter as a bush.
"No, it hasn"t," Adelle rejoined in her imperious tone. "Fix it some other way."
But the mason continued to pat his rock, looking around for the next one to lay upon it.
"Do what I say!" Adelle ordered, almost angrily, irritated by the man"s obstinacy.
Then the mason rose, and with his trowel tapping the rock said slowly and emphatically,--
"I"m laying this wall--and I don"t take no orders from you!"
Whereupon, after another shot from his hard blue eyes, he turned back to the wall.
At first Adelle was speechless; then she asked in a less peremptory tone,--
"Don"t you know who I am?"
"Yes," the mason called back over his shoulder. "You"re the boss up there." He indicated the unfinished house with a wave of his trowel, and went on with his work. He seemed indifferent to the fact that he was dealing with the mistress of Highcourt, and Adelle helplessly retreated.
"I will have you discharged!" she said as she walked away.
The mason did not reply, and his face exhibited no emotion over this dire threat.
After considerable search Adelle found the contractor and made her complaint against the mason.
"I warned him not to hurt the shrubs and he kept right on. Please discharge him at once."
The contractor, who had not been long away from the trowel and mortar himself, frowned.
"He"s a good worker, ma"am," he protested. "It ain"t always you can get a man like him out on a country job. Happens there is a building strike in the city, and he needed the work, so he came. And he"s been steady, which is more than most masons."
"He"s impudent," Adelle a.s.serted with an air of finality.
"Very well, ma"am," the contractor said reluctantly. "I"ll fire him to-night."
And Adelle thereupon went back to the house, gratified that she had enforced discipline, not hearing the contractor"s profanity about meddlesome women. Later on the same day after the workmen had left,--they knocked off from their eight hours while the sun was still high in the heavens,--Adelle was wandering over the place, idly looking for a suitable location for a tennis-court. The doctor had told her to take some active exercise like tennis to prevent becoming unduly stout.
And Archie had picked out a site below the new house on fairly level ground, but Adelle wanted to have the court cut out of the steep hillside above the pool. Having found what she considered to be the right spot, which would necessitate much expensive excavation and building of retaining walls, she followed a little worn path through the eucalyptus grove over the brow of the hill, curious to discover where it led. After a time she emerged on the other side of the hill, and getting through the barbed wire fence that marked the boundary of her own estate, she followed the path along the farther side of the slope through a clearing in the woods to an open field. From this side there was a wild prospect westwards to the low haze which she knew indicated the presence of the Pacific. The country on this slope of the hills seemed wild and uninhabited. Adelle did not remember ever to have been in the place and wondered if it was accessible by motor. At the farther end of the field there was one of the tar-paper shacks that the workmen put up for themselves, and the path evidently led to this hut. Usually these shacks were huddled together in bunches nearer the town, within easy reach of shop and saloon, but this one stood all alone on the edge of the clearing. A man was bending over a tin basin before the door, apparently washing out some clothes. As Adelle approached, he looked up from his washing and Adelle recognized the impertinent stone mason. He looked at her coolly, as if this time she were trespa.s.sing on his domain, and as she came leisurely down the path, trying to ignore his presence, he calmly threw out the dirty water from his pan on the path and went into his shack, pulling the door to after him with a bang.
Adelle suspected the smile of contempt upon his face as he recognized her. She did not like the movement he had made in throwing the dirty water from his washpan directly in her path, although she was some distance away. Probably by this time he had learned his fate and took this means of testifying his resentment. The color rose in her pale face. She was not a proud woman, had no large amount of that self-importance which is the almost inevitable result of possessing wealth. But one of the penalties of property is that it cultivates whatever egotism and sensitiveness to its prerogative its owner is capable of. That one of the common laborers employed upon her estate should thus openly flout her made Adelle angry.
She thought first to turn back,--her walk was really aimless,--but she felt that the man would interpret such a retreat as due to his impertinence, would think that she was afraid of him. So she kept on past the shack into another open field. This was but the beginning of a wild treeless descent towards the ocean. The little tar-paper shack was the only sign of habitation in sight. There was an immense panorama of tumbled hill and valley bounded westward by the curving coast-line where the Pacific surges broke into faint lines of white spume, and where, she might reflect sadly, the ill-fated Seaboard Railroad should now be running trains to open up all this unoccupied land to civilization.
However, wild and unsettled as it was, it offered an attractive view, and Adelle at once coveted it. They must buy up this tract over the hill--they should have looked into it when they had arranged to take Highcourt. Thus musing, she wandered on into the country until the sun dipping into the ocean warned her to return for dinner.
As she came back along the crest of the hill, she thought again of the discharged stone mason and for her did a large amount of reflection. Why was he living like this in a lonely shack far away from everybody? Why had he chosen to isolate himself from his fellow-workmen, who herded together near the town where they could slip down to the saloons after their work? He must be by nature a sullen, unsociable fellow. And what sort of life did he live in there, doing his own washing and probably also his own cooking? A kind of curiosity about the truculent stone mason and his way of life thus occupied Adelle"s unspeculative mind. He was a good-looking young fellow, lean and well muscled. If he were dissipated, as she had been told all the laborers were, his excesses had not yet shown in his person. What would he do now that he had lost his job at Highcourt?
There he was sitting on the doorstep of his shack, smoking his pipe, his bare arms akimbo, staring out across the sunset void towards the sea. He seemed also to be meditating with himself upon something of interest.
Upon Adelle"s approach this time, he did not take himself off, but continued to smoke indifferently, totally ignoring her presence. As she came in front of him, she stopped involuntarily and found herself speaking to the mason.
"Good-evening," was all she said.
The man mumbled some reply, as if against his will. And then again the unexpected happened to Adelle,--at least the unforeseen. She asked him a question. It was a simple question, but it was entirely out of Adelle"s character to make even the small advance implied by asking a question, especially to a servant who had been discharged on her orders.
"Do you live up here alone?"
"Have been living here," the man replied grudgingly, "till to-day. Don"t expect to much longer," he added meaningly.
Adelle knew that he was referring to what had occurred earlier in the day between them, and throwing the blame for his dislodgment upon her.
"What are you going to do?" she asked after a pause.
He looked at her with mild astonishment for her question in his blue eyes, then said,--
"Donno exactly--get drunk, maybe," and he glanced at her truculently.
Adelle did not know why she went on talking to the man, but her curiosity was thoroughly aroused and the questions popped unexpectedly into her mind.
"Why did you kill that shrub when I asked you not to put the stone upon it?" she demanded next.
The man looked at her for a moment with an expression of mingled surprise, dislike, and amus.e.m.e.nt.
"Asked me! You ordered me."
"Why did you do it?" Adelle repeated, ignoring this subtle distinction.
"Guess I felt like it," he replied evasively. "I don"t take no orders except from my boss," he grumbled. "Don"t like no interference."
"But it"s my place--you were working for me!" Adelle rejoined convincingly.
"And," the mason demanded bluntly, "who in h.e.l.l are you, anyway?"
Adelle had not heard such direct language from a man for a good many years, although Archie sometimes hinted the same thing in slightly more polished language. At first she was staggered and thought she had made a mistake in giving this man another opportunity to insult her. But Adelle, thanks to her origin, was not easily insulted. She stayed on--to hear more.
"You"ve got a big pile of money and that place and lots of servants and motors and all the rest," the mason went on to explain. "But that"s no reason you should go bossing around my job "bout what you don"t know nothing. I get my orders from the boss, _my_ boss--see? And I know how to lay a wall as good as any man--and your d.a.m.ned bushes shouldn"t been there."
"You needn"t be insulting," Adelle gasped with an attempt at dignity.
"Insultin"!" the man blazed. "Who"s insultin"? It"s you who are insultin" to G.o.d"s earth--rich folks like you who"ve got more money that ain"t yours by rights than you know what to do with. You think because you pay the bill you own the earth and every man on it. But you don"t--not everybody! And the quicker you and your kind learn that the easier it will be for all of us."
This was what Major Pound meant by "anarchy among the working-cla.s.ses."
She had often heard him and Nelson Carhart deplore this,--using interchangeably the two dread terms, "socialism" and "anarchy." Both the gentlemen were of the opinion that "before we see an end to this spirit in the working-cla.s.ses, we shall have bloodshed." But it was the first time Adelle had met the thing face to face, and it gave her a faint thrill. She tried to think of some of Major Pound"s excellent arguments directed against the "anarchy" of the laboring-cla.s.ses.
"You"re paid good wages, very high wages," she said after a time, remembering that that was one of the grievances gentlemen most often complained of--that laborers were paid altogether too much, thanks to the unions, so that no profit was left for the men who supplied capital, and also that they did less work and poorer work than they had once done when they got only half the wages now paid.
"You think five dollars a day is big money, don"t you? It wouldn"t go far to fit _you_ out!" He nodded at Adelle"s rich dress. "It would hardly get you a dinner--wouldn"t pay for the booze your husband will drink to-night."