"You didn"t happen to see any of the men hanging about the place when you came up last night?" he asked.
"No," the mason replied shortly.
"I thought maybe those Italians might have been sneaking about here.
They"re ugly fellows," Archie remarked.
"I didn"t see n.o.body around."
"Some of those fellows are regular anarchists," Archie persisted. "They wouldn"t stop at firing a house to get even with a man they"re down on."
The mason stared at him out of his steely blue eyes, but said nothing.
He began to understand what Archie was driving at, and a deep disgust for the man before him, who was trying to "put over" this cheap falsehood to "save his face," filled the mason"s soul. The others had instinctively drawn away from them, and Clark himself looked as if he wanted to turn on his heel. But he listened.
"I shouldn"t be surprised if the house had been set on fire," Archie continued confidentially. "I"m going to have detectives look into it. It must have been either that or spontaneous combustion in the drawing-room."
The mason"s lips twitched ominously.
"But I think it was set on purpose!" Archie a.s.serted.
"Oh, go to h.e.l.l!" the mason groaned, his emotions getting the better of him. "Set, nothing!... Spontaneous combustion! You know how it got on fire better than anybody."
"What do you mean?" Archie demanded.
But the mason strode away from him around the corner of the wall and disappeared. Archie followed him with his eyes, dazed and scowling. He had never liked the fellow, and resented the fact that he had been the hero of the disaster, while he himself, as he was well enough aware, had presented a sorry figure. Now this common workman had insulted him a second time, treated him as though he were dirt, dared even to make dastardly insinuations. Across Archie"s miserable mind came Adelle"s confused words about her property belonging to the stone mason--a half of it. He had explained this at the time as due to the shock and a woman"s sentimental feeling of grat.i.tude, but now he began to give it another and more sinister interpretation. What had she been doing up at this fellow"s shack that afternoon? It hardly seemed possible, but unfortunately in Archie"s set, even among the very best people socially of Bellevue, almost anything in the way of s.e.x aberration was possible.
He started back for the orangery, but before he got there he realized that it would be just as well not to approach his wife at this time with what he had in mind. Lying there with her dead child in her arms she had the air of a wounded wild animal that might be aroused to a dangerous fury. He had the sense to see that even if his worst suspicions were justified, it was hardly the moment to exact his social rights.
So he wandered back to the ruin of Highcourt, where he found condoling friends, who took him off to the country club and kept him there, and it is to be feared provided him with his usual consolation for the manifold contrarieties of life, even for the very rich.
XLIV
In due time Adelle roused herself and took direction of affairs. She went down to the manager"s cottage near the gate of Highcourt and thither brought the body of her child. From this cottage the little boy was buried on the next day. Adelle directed that the grave should be prepared among the tall eucalyptus trees on the hillside behind the ruins--there where she had often played with the little fellow. She herself carried the body to its small grave and laid it tenderly away in the earth, being the only one to touch it since the mason had first put it lifeless in her arms. Then she scattered the first dirt upon the still figure and turned away only when the flowers had been heaped high over the little grave. Archie was there and a few of their friends from Bellevue, as well as a group of servants, by whom Adelle had always been liked; and among the latter was the stone mason. Adelle did not seem to notice any one, and when all was over she walked off alone to the manager"s cottage.
Observing his wife"s tragic calm, her bloodless face, Archie might well have forgotten his suspicions and refrained from attacking her, as he had meant to. But he never had the opportunity to attack her. In some way Adelle conveyed to him that all was at an end between them, and made it so plain that even Archie was forced to accept it as a fact for the time being. He never saw Adelle again after the brief service at the hillside grave.
Such a conclusion was inevitable: it came to Adelle without debate or struggle of any sort. A tragedy such as theirs, common to man and woman, either knits the two indissolubly together as nothing else can, or marks the complete cessation of all relationship. In their case they had nothing now, absolutely, to cement together. And Adelle was dimly conscious that she had before her pressing duties to perform in which Archie would be a mere drag.
For the present Archie went to the club to live, crestfallen, but unbelieving that his little gilded world had come to an end for good in this summary fashion. After a few attempts to get an interview with his wife, and learning finally that she had left the neighborhood, he drifted up to the city, for he found Bellevue less congenial than it had been, with all the talk about the Davises" affairs that was rife. His true performances the night of the fire had leaked out in a somewhat exaggerated form and even his pleasure-loving a.s.sociates found him "too yellow." Oddly enough, Adelle, who had been thought generally "cold" and "stupid," "no addition to the colony," came in for a good deal of belated praise for her "strong character," and there was much sympathy expressed for her tragedy. Thus the world revises its hasty judgments with other equally hasty ones, remaining always helplessly in error whether it thinks well or ill of its neighbors!
For a number of days after the burial of her child, Adelle remained at the manager"s cottage in a state of complete pa.s.sivity, scarcely making even a physical exertion. She did not cry. She did not talk. She neither writhed nor moaned in her pain. She was making no effort to control her feelings: she did not play the stoic or the Christian. Actually she did not feel: she was numb in body and soul. This hebetude of all faculty was the merciful, protecting method that Nature took with her, dimming the lamp of consciousness until the wounded creature could gain sufficient resiliency to bear a full realization of life. The pain would come, months and years hence, bitter, aching pain; but then she would be able to bear it.
Each day she went to the grave on the hillside, and carefully ordered the planting of the place so that it should be surrounded with flowers that she liked. Also she laid out a little shrub-bordered path to be made from the pool beside the orangery to the hillside. In these ways she displayed her concrete habit of thought. For the rest she sat or lay upon her bed, seeing nothing, probably thinking very little. It was a form of torpor, and after it had continued for a week or ten days, her maid was for sending for a doctor. That functionary merely talked plat.i.tudes that Adelle neither understood nor heeded. The maid would have tried a priest, but feared to suggest it to her mistress.
The truth was that Adelle was recovering very slowly from her shock. She was only twenty-five and strong. Her body held many years of activity, possibly other children, and her mind still awaited its full development. How that would come was the really vital matter. The ordinary result would be that, after the full period of lethargy and physical and mental recuperation, Adelle should drift back into something like the same life she had previously led. She would go abroad and establish herself in a new environment, gradually acquiring new a.s.sociations that in time would efface the more poignant surfaces of her tragedy at Highcourt. She would probably marry again, for she was still a young woman and had a considerable remnant of her fortune. She might reasonably expect more children to come to her, and thus, with certain modifications due to her experiences with Archie, live out an average life of ease and personal interests in the manner of that cla.s.s that the probate court and the laws of our civilization had made it possible for her to join.
But all that conventional resolution of her destiny was not to be because of ideas already at work within her--the sole vital remains from her previous life. Even in her dullest moments of physical and mental hebetude she felt something pressing upon her from within for accomplishment, like a piece of unfinished business that she must presently rouse herself to put through. She scarcely knew what it was until she made an effort to think it out, and for days she did not make this effort.
Gradually she focussed more concretely this unconscious weight upon her soul. It had to do with the stone mason and his rights to his grandfather"s inheritance. She must see him before he left the country and come to a final understanding about it all. She wanted, anyway, to see him more than anybody else. He seemed to her in her dark hour the healthiest and most natural person she knew--most nearly on her own level of understanding, the one who really knew all about her and what her boy"s death meant to her. But she was still too utterly will-less to bring about an interview between herself and her cousin either by sending for him or going up to the shack to find him.
Finally, after ten days of this semi-conscious existence, she awoke one morning with a definite purpose stirring at the roots of her being, and instead of returning from her child"s grave as before she kept on up over the brow of the hill to the open field. The sight of the large sweep of earth and ocean and sky on this clear April morning was the first sensation of returning life that came to her. She stood for some time contemplating the scene, which glowed with that peculiar intense light, like vivid illumination, that is characteristic of California.
The world seemed to her this morning a very big place and lonely--largely untried, unexplored by her, for all her moving about in it and tasting its sweets. In this mood she proceeded to the little tar-paper shack. She feared to find it empty, to discover that the mason had gone to the city, in which case she should have to follow him and go to the trouble of hunting him up.
But he had not yet left, although his belongings were neatly packed in his trunk and kitty-bag. He was fussing about the stove, whistling to himself as he prepared a bird which he had shot that morning for his dinner. He had on his town clothes, which made him slightly unfamiliar in appearance. She knew him in khaki and flannel shirt, with bare arms and neck. He looked rougher in conventional dress than in his workingman"s clothes.
At sight of Adelle standing in the doorway, the mason laid down his frying-pan and stopped whistling. Without greeting he hastily took up the only chair he had and placed it in the shade of the pepper tree in front of the shack. Adelle sat down with a wan little smile of thanks.
"I"m glad you hadn"t gone," she said.
"I ain"t been in any particular hurry," her cousin answered. "Been huntin" some down in the woods," he added, nodding westward. He sat on the doorsill and picked up a twig to chew.
"I"ve been wanting to talk to you about that matter I told you of the morning after the fire."
The mason nodded quickly.
"I don"t know yet what should be done about the property," she went on directly. "I must see some lawyer, I suppose. But it"s just what I told you, I"m sure. Half of Clark"s Field belonged to your grandfather and half to mine, and I have had the whole of it because they couldn"t find your family."
The mason listened gravely, his bright blue eyes unfathomable. He had had ample time, naturally, to think over the astounding communication Adelle had made to him, though he had come to no clear comprehension of it. A poor man, who for years has longed with all the force of his being for some of the privilege and freedom of wealth, could not be told that a large fortune was rightfully his without rousing scintillating lights in his hungry soul.
"There isn"t all the money there was when I got it," Adelle continued.
"We have spent a lot of money--I don"t know just how much there is left.
But there must be at least a half of it--what belongs to you!"
"Are you sure about this?" the mason demanded, frowning, a slight tremor in his voice; "about its belonging to father"s folks? I never heard any one say there was money in the family."
"There wasn"t anything but the land--Clark"s Field," Adelle explained.
"It was just a farm in grandfather"s time, and nothing was done with it for a long time. It was like that when I was a girl and living in Alton.
It"s only recently it has become so valuable."
"You didn"t say nothin" about any property the first time we talked about our being related," the mason observed.
"I know," Adelle replied, with a sad little smile. Then she blurted out the truth,--"I knew it--not then, but afterwards. But I didn"t tell you--I wanted to--but I meant never to tell. I meant to keep it all for myself and for him--my boy."
The mason nodded understandingly, while Adelle tried to explain her ruthless decision.
"You"d never had money and didn"t know about the Field. And it seemed wrong to take it all away from him--it wasn"t his fault, and I didn"t want him to grow up poor and have to fight for a living," she explained bravely, displaying all the petty consideration she had given to her problem. Then she added with a sob--"Now it"s all different! He was taken away," she said slowly, using the fatalistic formula which generations of religious superst.i.tion have engraved in human hearts. "He will not need it!"
There was silence. Then unconsciously, as if uttered by another person, came from her the awful judgment,--"Perhaps that was why he was taken--because I wouldn"t tell about the money."
"It ain"t so!" the mason retorted hastily, with a healthy reaction against this terrible creed of his ancestors. "It had nothin" to do with your actions, with you, his being smothered in the fire--don"t you go worryin" "bout that!"
In his dislike of the doctrine and his desire to deal generously with the woman, the mason was not wholly right, and later Adelle was to perceive this. For if she had not been such as she was she would not have willfully taken to herself such a disastrous person as Archie and thus planted the seed of tragedy in her life as in her womb. If human beings are responsible for anything in their lives, she was responsible for Archie, which sometime she must recognize.
"You don"t think so?" Adelle mused, somewhat relieved. After a little time she came safely back to sound earth as was her wont,--"Anyway, it"s all different now. I don"t want to keep the money. It isn"t mine--it never was; never really belonged to me. Perhaps that was why I spent it so badly.... I want you to have your share as soon as possible."