"Say!" and throwing down his trowel he hunted for something in his hip
pocket. "You was asking me about that town in the East--Alton. Well, I
found this after you had gone."
He produced a tattered package of what seemed to be old letters,
yellowed with age and torn at the corners, and handed them up to Adelle.
"They were grandfather's and mother always kep' 'em; I don't know why.
When she died one of my sisters giv' em to me. I been totin' 'em 'round
in my trunk ever since. They're kind of dirty and spotted," he
apologized for their condition. "But they were pretty old, I guess, when
I got 'em, and they ain't had much care since.... Last night after you
were up there I got 'em out of the trunk and tried to read 'em. There's
one there from Alton--it's got the postmark on the outside."
Clark pointed with his mortar-coated thumb to the faint circle of the
stamp in the corner. Adelle took the letter from him with a sense of
faintness that she could not explain. She had been right in her
conjecture: that seemed to her a very great point.
"I was bringin' 'em up to the house last night," the mason explained,
"but seen you had company, so kep' 'em until to-day."
So he had not thought of going to San Francisco on a spree! Adelle's
woman conceit might have been sadly dashed.
"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 space, 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 class 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 substitute 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 damned--beggin' your pardon,
cousin!" the mason exclaimed.
Except for this familiar use of the term of relationship Tom Clark's
attitude 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.
"What do you say?"