"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, Caesar, 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.