That Saturday night there was a large dinner-party at Highcourt in
celebration of some polo match, where the local team was gloriously
vanquished. Archie was eager to gather people around him, all the more
as his drinking and his mistakes in "investments" had lowered his
prestige in the "colony." Why had they gone to the expense and the
bother of this big establishment, he argued, if they were not to
entertain, and entertain in a large and lavish fashion? This was the
first of a series of dinners he had planned to give. If the invitations
had not been sent long before, Adelle would never have had the party,
for with the strained relations between herself and her husband, social
life was more difficult than ever to her. Adelle was never a brilliant
hostess. She talked little and with effort, and people herded together
in large numbers rendered her quite dumb. This evening she was more
distrait than ever, for her mind clung tenaciously to its one theme as
was the habit of her mind. It would stick to an idea until some solution
presented itself. No mere distraction could shunt it off its course, as
with Archie, who drank and gambled and played polo and shouted and
laughed in order not to think of the many disagreeable things there were
to think about when he allowed himself to lapse into a sober mood.
Even Major Pound, who sat at his hostess's right, noticed after a time
Adelle's preoccupation, although he could be trusted to monologize
egotistically by the half-hour. He had started zestfully on the building
trades in San Francisco. The settlement of the long strike did not seem
to please him any more than it had Tom Clark. He thought that the
"tyranny of labor" was altogether unsupportable, that this country was
fast sinking into the horrors of "socialism," and capital was already
winging its way in fear to other safer refuges. Adelle had heard all
this many times not only from Major Pound and Nelson Carhart, but from
George Pointer and the other men she saw. It was the only kind of
"serious" conversation they ever indulged in. To-night, although she
heard the familiar prophecies of ruin faintly, through the haze of her
own problem, she had a distinct perception of the stupidity of it. What
right had any man to talk in this bitter, doleful tone of his country
and the life of the day? How could any man tell what the times were
going to bring forth? Perhaps her anarchistic cousin--the stone mason
who had considered these matters as he plied his trade under blistering
heat or chilling winds--had arrived at as sane conclusions as this
sleek, well-dressed, well-fed railroad man by her side. She recognized
that life was mostly a bitter fight, and her sympathies were strangely
not with her own class as represented by this gathering.
All day long a high north wind had been blowing, one of those shrill
winds from the snow-capped Sierras that bring drought to California and
rasp the nerves like a steel whip. The wind had not gone down at sunset,
as it often did, and even while they dined with a roaring wood fire in
the great chimney-place, the noise of the wind could be heard as it
streamed through the canon, lashing the tall trees above the house.
Adelle, listening to the uproar outside, wondered whether the tar-paper
shack on the hillside, which must be directly in the path of the gale,
had been able to withstand it. She thought of the mason sitting in his
flimsy beaten room listening to the mouthings of the tempest, alone. He
was not complaining, she felt. The tempest and the strife of life merely
roused the ironic demon within him--to laugh sardonically, to laugh but
fight on....
"As I was saying," the major iterated to fix her wandering mind, and she
stared at him. What difference did it make what he was saying! The
polite major shifted his conversation from politics to art, with the
urbanity of the good diner-out. Had she seen the work of the "futurists"
when she was last in Paris. Really it was beyond belief! Another sign of
the general degeneracy of the age--revolt from discipline, etc. But
Adelle had nothing for the "futurists"; and finally Major Pound gave her
up and turned to the lady on his right. Archie, whose restless eyes had
seen the situation opposite him, cast his wife some sour looks. He
himself was more boisterous than usual, as if to cover up the dumbness
of his wife. They were dining to-night the younger "polo" set for the
most part, and the men and women of this set liked to make a great deal
of noise, laughed boisterously at nothing, shouted at each other, sang
at the table, and often drank more than was good for them. Archie
ordered in the victrola, and between courses the couples "trotted," then
a new amusement that had just reached the Coast.
When at last the company divided for coffee and smoking, Archie
whispered to his wife snarlingly,--
"Can't you open your mouth?"
Adelle was insensible to his little dig, as she called it, and silently,
mechanically went through with her petty task of hostess in the hall
where the women sat, as the drawing-room was still in the hands of the
decorators. All the fictitious gayety of the party died out as soon as
the sexes separated. The women gathered in a little knot around the
fireplaces to smoke and talked about the wind. It got on their nerves,
they asserted querulously.
"It's the one thing I can't stand in California," a pretty little woman,
who had recently taken up her residence on the Coast, remarked in a tone
of personal grievance.
"We have had a great deal of north wind this year," another said.
Adelle made no comment. The weather never interested her. It was one of
the large impersonal facts of life, outside her control, that she
accepted without criticism. The men stayed away a long time in Archie's
"library" in the other wing, probably talking polo or business, and
cosily enjoying their coffee, liqueurs, and cigars. Archie's cigars took
a long time to smoke and the older men usually had two. The women were
bored. Irene Pointer yawned openly in her corner by the fire. She and
her old friend rarely exchanged remarks these days. Irene avoided
Adelle, which Adelle was beginning to perceive. It was understood in the
colony that Irene Pointer did not approve of the way in which Adelle
"managed" her husband, and told her so. Irene herself was very discreet,
and "managed" George Pointer admirably so that she had a great deal of
freedom, and he was perfectly content.
At last the men drifted back and stood in a row before the blazing fire.
Archie had in the victrola once more and tried to start them dancing,
but the hall was too crowded with furniture and the drawing-room could
not be used. He wanted to have the dining-room cleared, but there was a
spirit of restlessness among the guests. They could not revive the
gayety of the dinner-table. It was not long before the last motor had
rolled down the drive. Archie came back into the hall from the door
after speeding his guests and stood moodily staring at Adelle. He was
vexed. The party had been a failure,--dull. And she knew that he thought
her responsible for it. She expected an outburst, for Archie did not
usually take any pains to control his feelings. She waited. She knew
that if he spoke she should say something this time. She would probably
regret it, but she might even tell him her secret, as the easiest way to
crush him utterly. She looked at him, a dangerous light in her gray
eyes.
This was the man she had craved so utterly that she had run every risk
to possess him! Irene had called him "a bounder"; and now he was "going
too far" with Irene--not that she especially cared about that, either.
But all his arrogance, his folly, his idleness and futility were built
upon her fortune, which really did not belong to her after all. A cruel
desire to see him crumble entered her heart, and she knew that she
should tell him the truth if he attacked her as she expected.
But this one time Archie refrained from expressing himself. Even in his
flustered state he recognized a peculiar danger signal in the stare of
his passive wife. With a gesture of disgust he lounged out of the hall
in the direction of his library. Adelle watched him go. Should she
follow him in there and deal her blow? She heard the door of the large
drawing-room open and close behind him. She knew that he would keep on
drinking by himself until he felt properly sleepy. She did not follow
him. Instead, she went upstairs to the rooms occupied by her child and
his nurse, as she did every night before going to bed. The little fellow
was lying at full length on his small bed. His hands were clenched; his
arms stretched out above his head; his face had an expression of effort,
as if in his dreams he were putting forth all his tiny might to
accomplish something. He looked very handsome. Except for that weak
curve to the pleasure-loving lips, he resembled neither Archie nor
Adelle. Nature seemingly had been dissatisfied with them both, and in
drawing new life from them had chosen to return along the line of their
ancestry to select a more promising mould than either of the parents.
The fact that this could be so--that the child from her womb might be
more than herself or Archie--thrilled Adelle. "Boy" as she called him
was mystery and religion to her. He was to become the unfulfilled dream
of her life. This one perfect thing had been given her out of the
accidents of her disordered life, and she must make the utmost of it.
She covered him up where in his dream he had kicked himself free from
the blanket. She bent and kissed him on the forehead gently not to
awaken him. He rolled over, settled himself into an easier position, and
the tension of his small face relaxed. Instead of the frown of effort a
beautiful smile broke over his face, as if at the touch of his mother's
lips the character of his dreams had changed to something highly
pleasurable. Adelle's eyes filled with unaccustomed tears, and she
lingered there a few moments. Nothing was too much to do for him, to
bear for him, no sacrifice that she might make for his future! It was
settled. She should never speak to any one of what she knew. "Boy"
should have everything she could give him, all that was left of her
magic lamp. Even Archie could never exasperate her again enough to
endanger the child's future.
She turned down the night-light and tiptoed out of the room. To-morrow
she would move up here, even if she had to put the nurse in some other
place, and henceforth she would never be separated from her child. He
should stand between her and his father. She went to her rooms on the
lower floor, but before undressing she stepped out on the broad terrace,
which was now almost ready for the sod. The great wall was all but
finished--the corner by the orangery to be built up even with the rest.
As she came out from the shelter of the house the blast of wind caught
her thin dress and swept it out before her like a streamer. She had to
hold her hair to prevent the wind from unwinding it. She could see
nothing--the impalpable blackness reached far down into the depths of
the canon, far out into the space above the land and the sea. Usually
even on dark nights the hill behind the house brooded over the place
like a faint shadow, but to-night it was blotted out. The house was dark
except for the light in Archie's library at the other end of the terrace
and the faint candle gleam of the night-light in the nursery.
Adelle liked the black storm. It soothed her troubled mind by its sheer
force, passing through her like the will of a stronger being. Adelle was
growing, at last, after all these years of imperceptible change, of
spiritual stagnation. She had begun to grow with the coming of her
child, and these last weeks she had been growing fast. She even realized
that she was changing, was becoming another, unfamiliar person. She felt
it to-night more than at any time in all her life--the strangeness of
being somebody other than her familiar self. She said it was her
"experiences." It was, indeed, familiarity with Archie and his
disgusting weakness. It was her young cousin, the stone mason, and all
that the discovery of him as a person, as well as her relationship to
him and his claim upon her property, had meant. It was, of course, the
influence of creative motherhood upon her. But it was more than all
these combined that had started the belated growth of her soul, now that
she was twenty-five, married, and had a child. It was an unknown power
within her, like this mighty passionate wind, germinating late and
unexpectedly in the thin soil of her mind, irresistibly taking
possession of her and shaping her anew. Many would call it God. Adelle
did not name the power.
This becoming another person was not especially pleasurable. It was
perplexing and tragic as now. But Adelle was beginning to realize very
dimly that she was not living for her own happiness, not even for the
happiness of her child, wholly. She did not know why she was living. But
she knew that life meant much more than the happiness of any one being
or of many beings. It was like this high wind from the mountains and the
deserts, rushing over the earth with a fierce, compelling
impulse--whither? Ah, that no one could say. One must bend before the
blast, but not yield to it altogether--not be scattered fruitless by its
careless hand. Adelle thus had come a long way from that girl who had
run off with Archie to Paris: she knew it. And having come so far, who
could say where she would finally end?... She pressed her body against
the strong wind and felt it wrap her about like the firm embrace of a
living being. The tempest calmed and strengthened her.
At last she went back to her room, undressed quickly, and got to bed.
The last conscious thought that came to her was a resolve to look into
her affairs herself at once and put an end to all the folly that she and
Archie had committed with her money--to guard what was left for the use
of her boy. For the rest, she should go on as she had begun, waiting
always for the convincing urge of her destiny, proving her way step by
step. She would not confide in any one what she knew about the lost
heirs of Clark's Field.