"May I read them?" she asked, looking curiously at the package of faded letters.
"Sure! Read "em over. That"s what I brought "em to you for," the mason said heartily. "I couldn"t make much out of the old writing myself. I ain"t no scholar, you know, and the ink is pretty thin in spots. But I seed the Alton postmark and thought you would be interested."
"I"ll look them over," Adelle said slowly, "and let you know what I find in them."
She carried the letters with her back to her rooms, but she did not open them at once. She had no desire to do so, now that she had them. It was not until the afternoon, while she was lounging in her room,--Archie having gone to play polo at the club,--that she finally took up the stained packet of old letters, and opened them. They were addressed variously to "E. S. Clark," or "Edward S. Clark," and one to "E. Stanley Clark," but that was a later one than the others and had to do with some land business in California. The mason had spoken of his grandfather as "Stanley Clark"--"old Stan Clark," he called him. Evidently the elder Clark had called himself by his middle name after settling in California, but before that he had been known as "Edward" or "Edward S.
Clark."
Almost at random Adelle opened a letter--the one that the mason had pointed out to her as having the Alton postmark. It was written in a scrawly, heavy hand, which was almost illegibly faint and yellow after the lapse of more than fifty years, and must have been written by one little accustomed to the pen, for there was much hard spelling as well as irregular chirography. Adelle looked for the signature. It was in the lower inside corner, and the name, in the effort to economize s.p.a.ce, was almost unreadable. It might be "Sam." After considerable puzzlement, she felt sure that it was "Sam." The S had an indubitable corkscrew effect, and the straight splotches must have been an _m_, and there was the faint trace of the _a_. But who was "Sam"?
It was a few moments before Adelle realized that the "Sam" at the bottom of the old letter was an abbreviation for her grandfather"s name. It was old Samuel Clark"s signature. When she had grasped this fact, she turned back to look at the date. It was 1847--July 19. She looked at the envelope. It was addressed to "Mr. Edward S. Clark," at "Mr. Knowlton"s, 8 Dearborn St., Chicago." At last Adelle got to the letter itself and spent much time trying to make out the parts she could read. It was all about family matters--the letter of one brother to another. There were references to some family trouble, and "Sam" seemed to be defending himself from a charge of unfair dealing with his brother, and protested his good faith many times. Adelle was not greatly interested in the contents of the letter, with its reference to a musty family row. She knew too little of the Clark history to appreciate the significance of Sam"s verbose self-defense.
What she did realize overwhelmingly was the fact that the young mason was related to her--was her second cousin, the grandson of the elder brother Clark, while she was the granddaughter, through her mother, of the younger brother. And that was all she realized for the present. It was a large enough fact. She was not a familyless woman as she had always supposed, and this young workman on her estate was her cousin. He had the same blood that she had in part, was of the same race, and as he inherited through his father from the elder brother, while she inherited through the mother from the younger brother, he would be considered in certain social systems to be her family superior! The Head of the Family! Adelle had no great cla.s.s pride, as must have been perceived, but even to her it was something of a shock to discover that she was cousin to the stone mason employed in building her wall--an uneducated young man who chewed tobacco, used poor grammar, and went on sprees, vulgar sprees, for Archie had taught her that money makes a great difference in the way men get drunk. And she remembered that Clark had said, in his bitter indictment of the laboring-man"s lot, that one of his sisters was not all that she should be! Naturally it gave her much to think about. Not the question whether she should tell him what she had discovered from his grandfather"s letters, but the fact itself of her relationship with the young mason. That was stunning at first, even to Adelle!
But as she lay upon her pretty bed, which had been painted for her in Paris with a flock of unblushing Amours, and stared at the painted ceiling, her good sense rapidly came back to her. In her character it was the subst.i.tute for humor. After all, there was nothing so extraordinary in the fact. There must be many similar cases of poor relations among all the people she knew, even with the Paysons and the Carharts, who were the primates of Bellevue society. When families had been living for a long time on this earth, there must grow up such inequalities of fortune between the different branches, even among the different members of the same generation. If people were only aware of all their relations, there would doubtless be many surprises in life.
What would Archie say to it? In the first place, she probably would not tell him, and he had no good ground for criticism anyway. The Davises were not highly distinguished folk: no doubt Archie could find in any telephone directory plenty of distant cousins of humble station. As for Tom Clark himself, she did not feel that he would be disagreeable after he had learned his relationship to his employer. He might whistle and laugh and get off one of those ironical and contemptuous utterances about society of which he seemed fond.
After thinking it all over, Adelle rose and dressed herself; then, taking the package of letters, of which she had only casually examined the others, went up the path to the tar-paper shack. It was a hot afternoon, and the mason had only just come back from his task. He had not yet washed, and was sitting before his door, all red and sweaty, smoking his pipe and scratching his arms in a sensuous relaxation of muscles after the day"s work. He looked altogether the workman. He did not rise at her approach, but removing his pipe, remarked, as if he had been expecting her visit,--
"Well, did you read the stuff?"
"Yes," Adelle replied, holding out the package; "I read some of them."
"That"s more"n I could do," he said, receiving the letters and staring at them as if they had been Egyptian hieroglyphs. "What could you make out of "em?"
"One thing!" Adelle exclaimed. "Your grandfather and my grandfather must have been own brothers."
"You don"t say!" Tom Clark exclaimed, throwing back his head and giving vent to that robust, ironical laugh that Adelle had expected. "So old Stan Clark was your great-uncle?"
Adelle nodded.
"Just think of that now!" and the mason went off into another peal of laughter which made Adelle uncomfortable. He did not take seriously his relationship with the mistress of Highcourt. "I bet old grandfather Stan would have been mighty surprised if he could see his niece and her swell house!"
Suddenly the mason rose, and, fetching out a box from his house, said with an elaborate flourish of ironical courtesy,--
"Sit down, cousin, and we"ll talk it over."
Adelle accepted the seat meekly.
"So father"s folks didn"t really come from Missouri--but from way back East?" he inquired with appreciation of the added aristocracy that this gave the family.
"Surely they came from Alton," Adelle replied. "That was where the Clarks had always lived--ever since before the Revolution."
"As long as that! Think of it--I"ll be d.a.m.ned--beggin" your pardon, cousin!" the mason exclaimed.
Except for this familiar use of the term of relationship Tom Clark"s att.i.tude was respectful enough, more humorous than anything else, as if the news Adelle had given him merely completed his ironic philosophy of life. He mused,--
"So I had to get into a fight in "Frisco and come here to work on this job to find out my family connections."
He seemed impressed with the devious paths of Providence.
"And I had to go all the way from Alton to Paris to find a Californian husband, who brought me out here!" laughed Adelle, who was beginning to comprehend the mason"s humor and the situation.
Neither thought of any money concern in the new-found relationship. They were still sitting before the shack on boxes in the red light of the descending sun and Clark was explaining to "cousin" his theory of the unimportance of family ties, when Archie came up the path. Adelle perceived him first, and hastily getting up went to meet him. She did not want him to hear the news, at least not until she had had time to manage his susceptibilities, for she knew that his first reaction would be to get rid of her "cousin" as soon as possible, and he would nag her until the mason had been discharged. Archie, who had been drinking enough since his game to give free rein to his poor temper, immediately began the attack within hearing of the stone mason.
"So this is where you are! I"ve been looking for you all over the place.
Thought you were too tired to go to the polo," he said accusingly.
"I only just came up the hill for a little walk," Adelle explained.
"I"ve been back an hour myself, and they said you"d gone out before,"
her husband retorted suspiciously.
"Perhaps it was earlier," Adelle replied indifferently.
She cared less than she had once for Archie"s outbursts of temper, and at present her mind was occupied with other matters than calming him.
Archie looked at her with a peculiar stare in which ugliness and something more evil were mixed.
"Been having such an interesting conversation that you didn"t know how fast time was going?" he sneered.
"Yes," Adelle replied literally.
"Talkin" with that fellow?" Archie demanded, hitching a shoulder in the direction of the stone mason, who was still sitting not far off watching the couple.
"Yes, I had something important to say to him," Adelle replied, and started away.
But Archie did not stir.
"I have something important to say to him, too," he growled, walking towards the mason.
"Archie!" Adelle called.
But Archie paid no attention. He strode furiously up to the shack, and even before he reached it he called out,--
"Here, you there! What business have you got building your dirty little roost on my land without permission?"
The mason merely smiled at the angry man in reply. Adelle, who had run up to her husband, tried to pull him back, with a hand on his arm.
"It isn"t our land," she said disgustedly. Her foolish husband did not even know the boundaries of their own property, which stopped at the edge of the eucalyptus grove on the top of the hill.
"Well, I won"t have him tracking up the place with his paths," Archie said weakly. "He was prowling around the house last night. I saw him."
The mason again smiled at him, as if he scorned to answer back a man who was so evidently "in his booze," as he would put it, and trying to pick a quarrel.
"Anyway you are discharged," he said, in a lordly attempt to get back his dignity. "See Mr. Ferguson in the morning and get your money and--get out!"
"I will not," the mason replied imperturbably.