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.