"You didn't by any chance mention to this stone mason your belief that
he was entitled to a share in his grandfather's property?"
"Yes, I did!" Adelle promptly replied. "We talked it over several
times."
The three gentlemen murmured something.
"And he is coming on to see about it. I arranged to meet him here on the
sixteenth, day after to-morrow."
"Here!"
Adelle nodded.
"We thought that would be the quickest way to settle it, as you know all
about the property."
"The young man will have his journey for nothing," the president said
grimly.
Then he took Adelle to task in the same patronizing, moral tone he had
used to her on the occasion of her marriage.
"My dear young woman, you have acted in this matter very inadvisedly,
very rashly!"
That was her unfortunate habit, he seemed to say, to act rashly. The
irony of it all was that Adelle, who acted so rarely of her own
initiative, should be exposed to this charge in the two most important
instances when she had acted of her own volition and acted promptly!
"You see now how disastrous any such course as you proposed would be for
you and for many others." (He was thinking chiefly of his board of
directors and the gentlemen who had profited through the Clark's Field
Associates, but he put it in the altruistic way.) "Fortunately, you can
do no great harm to these innocent persons. The titles to Clark's Field
we firmly believe are unassailable, impregnable. No court in this State
would void those titles after they have once been quieted. You have
merely aroused false hopes, I am afraid, and the spirit of greed in a
lot of ignorant poor people,--who unless they are well advised will
waste their savings in a vain attempt to get property that doesn't
belong to them."
His tone was both moral and reproving. He wanted her to feel that,
whereas she had thought she was doing a generous and high-minded thing
by communicating to this lost tribe of Clarks her knowledge of their
outlawed opportunity for riches, she had in reality merely made trouble
for every one including herself.
"You are a woman," Mr. Solomon Smith continued severely, "and naturally
ignorant of business and law. It is a pity that you did not consult some
one, some strong, sensible person whose judgment you could rely on, and
not fly off at a tangent on a foolish ideal!... By the way, where is
your husband?"
"In California," Adelle replied sulkily.
She did not like Mr. Smith's tone. He knew very well that Archie was not
the strong, sensible person upon whose judgment she might rely.
"Are you divorced?" the president asked, remembering that she had
announced herself by her maiden name.
"No," Adelle admitted, wondering what this had to do with the business.
"Well, your husband is concerned--what does he think of it?"
"I don't know. It makes no difference what he thinks of it," Adelle
replied.
"You will find that it does make a great difference," the trust officer
quickly rejoined, seizing upon Archie as a convenient weapon. He
thereupon discoursed upon the legal and moral rights of a husband in his
wife's property and warned Adelle solemnly that she was taking a
dangerous course in acting without Archie's consent. Archie doubtless
would have been much pleased. It seemed trying to Adelle, who had not
the least idea of ever again waiting upon Archie's consent about
anything, to have her marriage used against her in this fashion by the
trust company. They had done everything they could to keep Archie's
hands off the property, and now they gravely told her that it belonged
to Archie as well as to herself!
Mr. Smith continued to talk for some time longer, but Adelle was calmly
oblivious to what he was saying. She was thinking. It was clear to her
that there were objections to the simple method by which she had
expected to transfer a part of Clark's Field to its rightful owners, but
she had by no means abandoned her purpose, as the trust company
president thought. Like many forceful men whom President Smith very much
admired, she was no great respecter of law as such. What couldn't be
done in one way might in another, and she must now find out that other
way, which obviously she would not discover from the officers of the
Washington Trust Company. So she rose and pulled on her long gloves.
"I must think it over," she remarked thoughtfully, "and see what my
cousin, Mr. Clark, thinks about it. I will come in again in a few days."
And with a slight nod to the assembled gentlemen she passed out of the
president's private office.
Three disgusted gentlemen looked at each other after her departure. One
of them said the trite and stupid and untrue thing,--"Just like a
woman!"