"It's a mighty long time since grandfather left Alton--more'n fifty
years."
"Clark's Field has only been put on the market for a little over ten
years," Adelle remarked. "They couldn't do it before, as I told you."
"But it's been settled now," the mason demurred. "I don't know the law,
but it must be queer if the property could hang fire all these years and
be growing richer all the time."
"Alton is a big city now where the old Clark farm was," Adelle
explained.
"I suppose it's growed considerable."
Then both were silent. The mason's mind was turbulent with feelings and
thoughts. Across the glorious reach of land and sky before his eyes
there opened a vision of radiant palaces and possessions, all that money
could buy to appease the desires of a starved life.
"My folks will be some surprised," he remarked at last, with his
ironical laugh.
"I suppose so," Adelle replied seriously. "You'll have to explain it to
them. How many brothers and sisters have you?"
"There are five of us left," Clark said. "I'm sorry mother has gone. She
would have liked mighty well having a bit of ready money for herself.
She never had much of a time in her life," he added, thinking of the
hard-working wife and mother who had died in poverty after struggling
against odds for fifty years. "It'll mean a good deal, too, to Will and
Stan, I guess;--they've got families, you know."
Adelle listened with a curious detachment to the happiness that her
magic lamp might bestow when handed over to the other branch of the
family.
"Money doesn't always mean so much," she remarked, with a deep
realization of the platitude which so many people repeat hypocritically.
The mason looked at her skeptically out of his blue eyes. That was the
sort of silly pretense the rich or well-to-do often got off for the
benefit of their poorer neighbors--he read stories like that in the
newspapers and magazines. But he knew that the rich usually clung to all
their possessions, in spite of their expressed conviction, at times, of
the inadequacy of material things to provide them with happiness. He was
quite ready for his part, having experienced the other side, to run the
risks of property!
"I'd like to try having all the money I want for a time!" he laughed
hardily.
"I almost believe it would have been better for me if I had never heard
of Clark's Field!" Adelle exclaimed, with a bitter sense of the futility
of her own living. And then she told her cousin very briefly what had
happened to her since she first entered the probate court and had been
made a ward of the trust company.
The mason listened with interest and tried to make out, as well as he
could with his meager equipment of experience in such matters and
Adelle's bare statement, what had been the trouble with her life. At the
end he stated his conclusion,--
"I guess it depends on what sort of stuff you've got in you whether
money agrees with you or don't. To some folks it does seem poison, like
drink; but the trouble ain't with the money, perhaps, it's with them."
"I suppose so," Adelle admitted meekly. "I had no one to show me, and,
anyway, I am not the right kind, I suppose. It takes a good deal of a
person to spend money right and get the best out of it there is."
"Sure!" the mason replied freely; and added with a frank laugh,--"But we
all want our chance to try!"
"What will you do with your money?" Adelle asked.
The young man threw back his head and drew in a long breath as if he
were trying to focus in one desire all the aspirations of his thirsty
soul, which now he could satisfy.
"I'll take a suite at the Palace and have the best booze money can buy!"
he said with a careless laugh.
"No, don't do that!" Adelle protested earnestly, thinking of Archie.
"You won't get much out of your money that way."
"I was joking," the young man laughed. "No, I don't mean to be any booze
fighter. There's too much else to do."
He confessed to his new cousin some of the aspirations that had been
thwarted by his present condition,--all his longing for education,
experience, and, above all, the desire to be "as good as the next man,
bar none, no matter where I be," an aspiration inexplicable to Adelle, a
curiously aristocratic sensitiveness to caste distinction that might not
be expected in a healthy-minded laboring-man. It was the most American
note in his character, and like a true American he felt sure that money
would enable him to attain "equality" with the land's best.
"When I see some folks swelling around in motor-cars and spending their
money in big hotels like it was dirt, and doing nothin' to earn it, and
I know those who are starving or slaving every day just to live in a
mean, dirty little way--why, it makes me hot in the collar. It makes me
'most an anarchist. The world's wrong the way things are divided up!" he
exclaimed, forgetting that he was about to take his seat with the
privileged.
"Well," Adelle mused dubiously, "now you'll have a chance to do what you
want and be 'on top' as you call it."
"Mos' likely then," the mason turned on himself with an ironic laugh, "I
shan't want to do one thing I think I do now!"
"I hope it won't change you," Adelle remarked quite frankly.
The quality that had first attracted her to the young man was his manly
independence and ability to do good, honest, powerful work. If he should
lose this vital expression of himself and his zest for action, the half
of Clark's Field would scarcely pay him for the loss.
"Don't you worry about me, cousin!" he laughed back confidently. "But
here we are gassin' away as if I were already a millionaire. And most
likely it's nothin' more than a pipe-dream, all told."
"No, it's true!" Adelle protested.
"I'll wait to see it in the bank before I chuck my tools. I guess the
lawyers will have to talk before they upset all their fine work for me,"
he suggested shrewdly.
"You must go to Alton right away and see the trust company. I will meet
you there whenever you like--there's nothing to keep me here much
longer."
"When you are feeling ready for the trip, let me know," the mason said
with good feeling. "Say," he added with some confusion, "you're a good
one to be sittin' there calmly talkin' to me about what I am goin' to do
with your money."
"It isn't mine any longer--you must get over that idea."
"What you've always considered to be yours, anyway, and that amounts to
the same thing in this world."
"I like to talk about it with you," Adelle replied simply, and with
perfect sincerity, as every important statement of Adelle's was sincere.
"I want you to have the money really.... I'm glad it is you, too."
"Thank you."
"I'll do everything I can to make it easy for you to get it soon, and
that is why I will go to Alton."
The mason rose from the doorstep and walked nervously to and fro in
front of the shack. At last he muttered,--
"Guess I won't say nothin' to the folks about the money until it is all
settled--it might make 'em kind of anxious."
"No, that would be better," Adelle agreed.
"I'm goin' to pull out of here to-night!"
He turned as he spoke and shoved one foot through the paper wall of his
home, as if he were thus symbolically shedding himself of his toilsome
past. Adelle did not like this impulsive expression, she did not know
why. She rose.
"Let me know your San Francisco address," she said, "and I will write
you when to meet me in Alton."
"All right!"
The mason walked back with her down the hill to the grave of her little
boy. He would have turned back here, but she gently encouraged him to
come with her and stand beside the flower-laden grave. It seemed to her,
after what he had done in risking his life to rescue the child, he had
more right to be there than any one else except herself--far more than
her child's own father. They stood there silently at the foot of the
little mound for some minutes, until Adelle spoke in a perfectly natural
voice.
"I'd have wanted him to do some real work, if he had grown up--I mean
like yours, and become a strong man."
"He was a mighty nice little kid," the mason observed, remembering well
the child, who had often that summer played about his staging and talked
to him.
Adelle explained her scheme of treatment for the grave and the grounds
about it, and they walked slowly down the path to the orangery.
"Would you like me to fix it all up as you want it?" the mason asked.
"Would you?"
"All right--I'll start in to-day and you can watch me and see if it's
done right."
"But you wanted to go up to the city," Adelle suggested.
"That don't matter much--there's plenty of time," Clark replied hastily.
And in a few minutes he remarked gruffly, "Say, I don't want you to
think I was goin' up to 'Frisco on a tear."
"I didn't think so!"
She realized then that Clark had not left the place all these ten days
since the fire.
"I'm goin' to cut out the booze, now there's something else for
excitement," he added.
"That's good!"