"You might think so lookin' on--but no work is fascinatin' when you've
had too much of it. I've laid enough stone to last me a lifetime."
"What else had you rather do?"
"Oh," he said, pausing a moment to wipe the sweat from his face with the
back of his shirt-sleeve, "'Most anything at times! I tried mining once,
but it's worse and uncertain. And lumbering--no pay. When I was a kid I
wanted to be a doctor--that's before I left school. A nice sort of
doctor I'd make, wouldn't I?"
He laughed at himself, but Adelle felt that in spite of his mirthless
laugh his mind was chafing. He was dissatisfied with himself and the
work he was doing and hungered for some larger demand upon his powers
than laying so many feet of rock wall per day. She herself had so little
of this sort of hunger in her own soul that it made the young mason all
the more interesting to her.
"You might save up your money and try--" she began.
"To be a doctor?" he laughed back. "I saved up once--got most five
hundred dollars and a feller came along and persuaded me to put it into
some land. Well, I got the land still.... No, ma'am, there ain't much
chance to change for the workingman when he's once fixed in his creek
bed. He must just roll along with the rest the best he can. And I'm
better off than most because I've got a paying trade. Lots of boys like
me and my brothers don't learn ever to do anything, and just slave on
all their lives at any job comes handy until they are all wore out. Lots
and lots. Their folks can't keep 'em in school and they never know
enough to more'n sign their names. All they are good for is rough work,
same as the dago helper here. He thinks two dollars a day big money. I
guess it is to him."
He spat disdainfully with all an American's contempt for the inferior.
"I expect where he come from it was a fortune, two dollars a day, eh?"
He appealed to Adelle to appreciate the joke. "Think of that now! And
he's got a woman and kids, and I bet has saved money, too. But he's only
a dago," he explained tolerantly.
"Say," he resumed after a pause. "It costs more 'n two dollars to go to
the opery in San Francisco."
"Did you go to the opera?" Adelle asked, recalling that Archie had said
something about the current engagement of the New York Opera company.
They had a box or something for the season--they always did. "What did
they give?"
"Oh, it was some German piece. It took place in the woods with a lot of
folks in armor, but the music was fine, and there was one place where
they had a castle upon a big hill, like that where my shack is, way off
towards the clouds, and a river down in front going by with women in it
swimming," and he described with relish the last act of the
"Rheingold-dammerung," which Adelle recognized because she had seen it
many times in Europe and been horribly bored by it. The story of the
opera seemed to interest the young mason especially. He retold it
minutely for Adelle's benefit, offering amusing explanations of its
mythological mysteries.
"But how did you happen to go to the opera?" Adelle asked.
"Well," he said in vague diffidence, "I was feeling pretty good by that
time, and I seen the poster. I had the price--why shouldn't I go?" he
demanded brusquely; and with another sardonic laugh the real motive came
out,--"I wanted to see what you folks who go to the opery see--how you
enjoy yourselves. Well, the opery ain't so bad--it ain't one bit bad,"
and he attempted to hum the Rheingold music. "I believe I'll go to the
opery again when I'm on the loose and don't know any better way to blow
my money. I like music," he added inconsequentially. "Mother used to
sing sometimes."
This was as far as they got conversationally that day. Something
interrupted Adelle in the midst of the musical discussion and she did
not have a chance to return to the wall. But she had almost daily
opportunity for talk with the young mason in the succeeding weeks, for
after his return from his spree, he worked steadily on his job every
day. He was one of the very few American-born workmen employed at
Highcourt, and after their misunderstanding and subsequent agreement,
Adelle felt better acquainted with him than with the others. He taught
her to handle the trowel and to lay stone. After a few attempts, she
managed quite well and found a curious pleasure in the manual labor of
fitting stone to stone and properly bedding the whole in cement. She
learned to select the right pieces with a rapid glance and to chip an
obtrusive corner or face a rock with a few taps of the heavy hammer. It
gave her a pleasure akin to her experiments in jewelry, and it must be
said the results were better. She used to show her visitors proudly the
bit of wall she had laid up herself under the young mason's direction
and assert that, instead of bookbinding or jewelry or other ladylike
occupations, she meant to set up stone walls about Highcourt for her
recreation. The Bellevue people considered her whim a harmless bit of
eccentricity in the young mistress of Highcourt, and she was the object
of many a good-humored joke about her new method of "beating the
unions." Little did any of these pleasure-loving rich folk suspect where
Adelle's instinct for manual labor came from, how natural it was for her
to work at coarse tasks with her large, shapely hands.
* * * * *
She needed all the distraction she could get, for these were not happy
days for Adelle within her big new house. The inexplicable stringency of
money grew worse, and there were constant quarrels between her and
Archie over her "extravagance" when he was at home. Adelle could not
understand why she should be obliged to curb her prodigal hand in making
"improvements" at Highcourt. Did the trust officers not tell her that
hers was a "large fortune," not far from five millions, enough surely to
permit a woman freedom for every whim? If there was trouble about money,
it must be Archie's fault: she wished she had never consented to take
her property out of the safe keeping of the careful trust company. Her
logic in these discussions, if irrefutable, was bitter, and Archie
resented it, all the more because he knew that he had made a fool of
himself with his wife's ample fortune, and allowed stronger men to bite
him. He had not sufficient character to confess the fact and refrain
altogether from further speculation. He tried instead to make good what
had been lost in Seaboard and was always nagging Adelle to dispose of
certain stocks and bonds that still remained from the investments of the
prudent trust company. But Adelle was obstinate: she would not sell
anything more. So Archie's large debit at his brokers went on rolling
up, and there continued to be "words" at Highcourt whenever he was
there, which was less often then he might have been.
Proverbially, money is the cause of the bitterest disputes in families.
Abstractly it might seem remarkable that this should be so, but the
peculiar nature of property of all sorts is that it becomes the inmost
shrine of its possessor's being, and when the shrine is robbed or
desecrated, the injured personality resents the outrage with bitterness.
Many a man or woman will submit with Christian fortitude to insults upon
character or positive unjust burdens, but will flame into rebellion at
the least touch upon the purse. In the case of Archie and Adelle it was
all the more remarkable because neither had been born to wealth so that
property could become a part of the nature: they were both "the spoiled
children of fortune" as the story-books say, having had their wealth
thrust upon them unexpectedly, and so might take its loss lightly. Not
at all! Adelle felt as much wronged as if she had been the last of an
ancient line of dukes and duchesses or had accumulated the riches of
Clark's Field by a lifetime of toil and self-denial. Was it not _hers_?
Had the law not made it inalienably a part of her? Such is human nature
in a capitalistic society.
Bellevue began to gossip about the couple at Highcourt, and divided as
always into two camps with shades of opinion within each camp. The women
were generally for Archie, even if he had been foolish with his wife's
money and was conducting his "affair" with Irene Pointer rather
recklessly. If his wife were less stupid and selfish about not going
about with him in society, she could have "held him." The men liked
Archie well enough, but knew that he was "no good."